The Unseen World, and Other Essays

By John Fiske

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Title: The Unseen World and Other Essays

Author: John Fiske

Posting Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #1486]
Release Date: October, 1998

Language: English


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Produced by Charles Keller





THE UNSEEN WORLD AND OTHER ESSAYS

By John Fiske



Transcriber's Note: This reviews Draper's Science and Religion and
contrasts two Dante translations.



  TO
  JAMES SIME.

  MY DEAR SIME:

  Life has now and then some supreme moments of pure happiness,
  which in reminiscence give to single days the value of months
  or years. Two or three such moments it has been my good fortune
  to enjoy with you, in talking over the mysteries which forever
  fascinate while they forever baffle us. It was our midnight talks
  in Great Russell Street and the Addison Road, and our bright May
  holiday on the Thames, that led me to write this scanty essay on
  the "Unseen World," and to whom could I so heartily dedicate it
  as to you? I only wish it were more worthy of its origin. As for
  the dozen papers which I have appended to it, by way of clearing
  out my workshop, I hope you will read them indulgently, and
  believe
  me

  Ever faithfully yours,
  JOHN
  FISKE.

  HARVARD UNIVERSITY, February 3, 1876.




CONTENTS.

     I.   THE UNSEEN WORLD
     II.  "THE TO-MORROW OF DEATH"
     III. THE JESUS OF HISTORY
     IV.  THE CHRIST OF DOGMA
     V.   A WORD ABOUT MIRACLES
     VI.  DRAPER ON SCIENCE AND RELIGION
     VII. NATHAN THE WISE
     VIII. HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES
     IX.  THE FAMINE OF 1770 IN BENGAL
     X.   SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS
     XI.  LONGFELLOW'S DANTE
     XII. PAINE'S "ST. PETER"
     XIII. A PHILOSOPHY OF ART
     XIV. ATHENIAN AND AMERICAN LIFE




ESSAYS.




I. THE UNSEEN WORLD.


PART FIRST.

"What are you, where did you come from, and whither are you bound?"--the
question which from Homer's days has been put to the wayfarer in strange
lands--is likewise the all-absorbing question which man is ever asking
of the universe of which he is himself so tiny yet so wondrous a part.
From the earliest times the ultimate purpose of all scientific research
has been to elicit fragmentary or partial responses to this question,
and philosophy has ever busied itself in piecing together these several
bits of information according to the best methods at its disposal, in
order to make up something like a satisfactory answer. In old times the
best methods which philosophy had at its disposal for this purpose
were such as now seem very crude, and accordingly ancient philosophers
bungled considerably in their task, though now and then they came
surprisingly near what would to-day be called the truth. It was natural
that their methods should be crude, for scientific inquiry had as yet
supplied but scanty materials for them to work with, and it was only
after a very long course of speculation and criticism that men could
find out what ways of going to work are likely to prove successful and
what are not. The earliest thinkers, indeed, were further hindered from
accomplishing much by the imperfections of the language by the aid of
which their thinking was done; for science and philosophy have had to
make a serviceable terminology by dint of long and arduous trial
and practice, and linguistic processes fit for expressing general or
abstract notions accurately grew up only through numberless failures and
at the expense of much inaccurate thinking and loose talking. As in most
of nature's processes, there was a great waste of energy before a good
result could be secured. Accordingly primitive men were very wide of the
mark in their views of nature. To them the world was a sort of enchanted
ground, peopled with sprites and goblins; the quaint notions with which
we now amuse our children in fairy tales represent a style of thinking
which once was current among grown men and women, and which is still
current wherever men remain in a savage condition. The theories of the
world wrought out by early priest-philosophers were in great part made
up of such grotesque notions; and having become variously implicated
with ethical opinions as to the nature and consequences of right and
wrong behaviour, they acquired a kind of sanctity, so that any thinker
who in the light of a wider experience ventured to alter or amend the
primitive theory was likely to be vituperated as an irreligious man or
atheist. This sort of inference has not yet been wholly abandoned,
even in civilized communities. Even to-day books are written about "the
conflict between religion and science," and other books are written
with intent to reconcile the two presumed antagonists. But when we look
beneath the surface of things, we see that in reality there has
never been any conflict between religion and science, nor is any
reconciliation called for where harmony has always existed. The real
historical conflict, which has been thus curiously misnamed, has been
the conflict between the more-crude opinions belonging to the science of
an earlier age and the less-crude opinions belonging to the science of
a later age. In the course of this contest the more-crude opinions
have usually been defended in the name of religion, and the less-crude
opinions have invariably won the victory; but religion itself, which is
not concerned with opinion, but with the aspiration which leads us to
strive after a purer and holier life, has seldom or never been attacked.
On the contrary, the scientific men who have conducted the battle on
behalf of the less-crude opinions have generally been influenced by
this religious aspiration quite as strongly as the apologists of the
more-crude opinions, and so far from religious feeling having been
weakened by their perennial series of victories, it has apparently been
growing deeper and stronger all the time. The religious sense is as yet
too feebly developed in most of us; but certainly in no preceding age
have men taken up the work of life with more earnestness or with more
real faith in the unseen than at the present day, when so much of what
was once deemed all-important knowledge has been consigned to the limbo
of mythology.

The more-crude theories of early times are to be chiefly distinguished
from the less-crude theories of to-day as being largely the products
of random guesswork. Hypothesis, or guesswork, indeed, lies at the
foundation of all scientific knowledge. The riddle of the universe, like
less important riddles, is unravelled only by approximative trials, and
the most brilliant discoverers have usually been the bravest guessers.
Kepler's laws were the result of indefatigable guessing, and so, in
a somewhat different sense, was the wave-theory of light. But the
guesswork of scientific inquirers is very different now from what it was
in older times. In the first place, we have slowly learned that a guess
must be verified before it can be accepted as a sound theory; and,
secondly, so many truths have been established beyond contravention,
that the latitude for hypothesis is much less than it once was.
Nine tenths of the guesses which might have occurred to a mediaeval
philosopher would now be ruled out as inadmissible, because they would
not harmonize with the knowledge which has been acquired since the
Middle Ages. There is one direction especially in which this continuous
limitation of guesswork by ever-accumulating experience has manifested
itself. From first to last, all our speculative successes and failures
have agreed in teaching us that the most general principles of action
which prevail to-day, and in our own corner of the universe, have always
prevailed throughout as much of the universe as is accessible to our
research. They have taught us that for the deciphering of the past and
the predicting of the future, no hypotheses are admissible which are not
based upon the actual behaviour of things in the present. Once there was
unlimited facility for guessing as to how the solar system might have
come into existence; now the origin of the sun and planets is adequately
explained when we have unfolded all that is implied in the processes
which are still going on in the solar system. Formerly appeals were made
to all manner of violent agencies to account for the changes which the
earth's surface has undergone since our planet began its independent
career; now it is seen that the same slow working of rain and tide, of
wind and wave and frost, of secular contraction and of earthquake pulse,
which is visible to-day, will account for the whole. It is not long
since it was supposed that a species of animals or plants could be swept
away only by some unusual catastrophe, while for the origination of new
species something called an act of "special creation" was necessary; and
as to the nature of such extraordinary events there was endless room for
guesswork; but the discovery of natural selection was the discovery of a
process, going on perpetually under our very eyes, which must inevitably
of itself extinguish some species and bring new ones into being. In
these and countless other ways we have learned that all the rich variety
of nature is pervaded by unity of action, such as we might expect to
find if nature is the manifestation of an infinite God who is without
variableness or shadow of turning, but quite incompatible with the
fitful behaviour of the anthropomorphic deities of the old mythologies.
By thus abstaining from all appeal to agencies that are extra-cosmic,
or not involved in the orderly system of events that we see occurring
around us, we have at last succeeded in eliminating from philosophic
speculation the character of random guesswork which at first of
necessity belonged to it. Modern scientific hypothesis is so far from
being a haphazard mental proceeding that it is perhaps hardly fair to
classify it with guesses. It is lifted out of the plane of guesswork,
in so far as it has acquired the character of inevitable inference from
that which now is to that which has been or will be. Instead of the
innumerable particular assumptions which were once admitted into cosmic
philosophy, we are now reduced to the one universal assumption which
has been variously described as the "principle of continuity," the
"uniformity of nature," the "persistence of force," or the "law of
causation," and which has been variously explained as a necessary datum
for scientific thinking or as a net result of all induction. I am not
unwilling, however, to adopt the language of a book which has furnished
the occasion for the present discussion, and to say that this grand
assumption is a supreme act of faith, the definite expression of a
trust that the infinite Sustainer of the universe "will not put us to
permanent intellectual confusion." For in this mode of statement the
harmony between the scientific and the religious points of view is
well brought out. It is as affording the only outlet from permanent
intellectual confusion that inquirers have been driven to appeal to
the principle of continuity; and it is by unswerving reliance upon this
principle that we have obtained such insight into the past, present, and
future of the world as we now possess.

The work just mentioned [1] is especially interesting as an attempt to
bring the probable destiny of the human soul into connection with the
modern theories which explain the past and future career of the physical
universe in accordance with the principle of continuity. Its authorship
is as yet unknown, but it is believed to be the joint production of
two of the most eminent physicists in Great Britain, and certainly the
accurate knowledge and the ingenuity and subtlety of thought displayed
in it are such as to lend great probability to this conjecture. Some
account of the argument it contains may well precede the suggestions
presently to be set forth concerning the Unseen World; and we shall find
it most convenient to begin, like our authors, with a brief statement of
what the principle of continuity teaches as to the proximate beginning
and end of the visible universe. I shall in the main set down only
results, having elsewhere [2] given a simple exposition of the arguments
upon which these results are founded.

 [1] The Unseen Universe; or, Physical Speculations on a Future
State. [Attributed to Professors TAIT and BALFOUR STEWART.] New York:
Macmillan & Co. 1875. 8vo. pp. 212.

 [2] Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, based on the Doctrine of
Evolution. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co. 1875. 2 vols. 8vo.


The first great cosmological speculation which has been raised quite
above the plane of guesswork by making no other assumption than that of
the uniformity of nature, is the well-known Nebular Hypothesis. Every
astronomer knows that the earth, like all other cosmical bodies
which are flattened at the poles, was formerly a mass of fluid, and
consequently filled a much larger space than at present. It is further
agreed, on all hands, that the sun is a contracting body, since there
is no other possible way of accounting for the enormous quantity of heat
which he generates. The so-called primeval nebula follows as a necessary
inference from these facts. There was once a time when the earth was
distended on all sides away out to the moon and beyond it, so that the
matter now contained in the moon was then a part of our equatorial
zone. And at a still remoter date in the past, the mass of the sun was
diffused in every direction beyond the orbit of Neptune, and no planet
had an individual existence, for all were indistinguishable parts of the
solar mass. When the great mass of the sun, increased by the relatively
small mass of all the planets put together, was spread out in this way,
it was a rare vapour or gas. At the period where the question is taken
up in Laplace's treatment of the nebular theory, the shape of this mass
is regarded as spheroidal; but at an earlier period its shape may well
have been as irregular as that of any of the nebulae which we now see
in distant parts of the heavens, for, whatever its primitive shape, the
equalization of its rotation would in time make it spheroidal. That the
QUANTITY of rotation was the same then as now is unquestionable; for no
system of particles, great or small, can acquire or lose rotation by any
action going on within itself, any more than a man could pick himself
up by his waistband and lift himself over a stone wale So that
the primitive rotating spheroidal solar nebula is not a matter of
assumption, but is just what must once have existed, provided there has
been no breach of continuity in nature's operations. Now proceeding to
reason back from the past to the present, it has been shown that the
abandonment of successive equatorial belts by the contracting solar
mass must have ensued in accordance with known mechanical laws; and in
similar wise, under ordinary circumstances each belt must have parted
into fragments, and the fragments chasing each other around the same
orbit, must have at last coalesced into a spheroidal planet. Not only
this, but it has also been shown that as the result of such a process
the relative sizes of the planets would be likely to take the order
which they now follow; that the ring immediately succeeding that of
Jupiter would be likely to abort and produce a great number of tiny
planets instead of one good-sized one; that the outer planets would be
likely to have many moons, and that Saturn, besides having the greatest
number of moons, would be likely to retain some of his inner rings
unbroken; that the earth would be likely to have a long day and Jupiter
a short one; that the extreme outer planets would be not unlikely to
rotate in a retrograde direction; and so on, through a long list of
interesting and striking details. Not only, therefore, are we driven to
the inference that our solar system was once a vaporous nebula, but we
find that the mere contraction of such a nebula, under the influence of
the enormous mutual gravitation of its particles, carries with it the
explanation of both the more general and the more particular features of
the present system. So that we may fairly regard this stupendous process
as veritable matter of history, while we proceed to study it under some
further aspects and to consider what consequences are likely to follow.

Our attention should first be directed to the enormous waste of energy
which has accompanied this contraction of the solar nebula. The first
result of such a contraction is the generation of a great quantity of
heat, and when the heat thus generated has been lost by radiation into
surrounding space it becomes possible for the contraction to continue.
Thus, as concentration goes on, heat is incessantly generated and
incessantly dissipated. How long this process is to endure depends
chiefly on the size of the contracting mass, as small bodies radiate
heat much faster than large ones. The moon seems to be already
thoroughly refrigerated, while Jupiter and Saturn are very much hotter
than the earth, as is shown by the tremendous atmospheric phenomena
which occur on their surfaces. The sun, again, generates heat so
rapidly, owing to his great energy of contraction, and loses it so
slowly, owing to his great size, that his surface is always kept in a
state of incandescence. His surface-temperature is estimated at some
three million degrees of Fahrenheit, and a diminution of his diameter
far too small to be detected by the finest existing instruments would
suffice to maintain the present supply of heat for more than fifty
centuries. These facts point to a very long future during which the sun
will continue to warm the earth and its companion planets, but at the
same time they carry on their face the story of inevitable ultimate
doom. If things continue to go on as they have all along gone on, the
sun must by and by grow black and cold, and all life whatever throughout
the solar system must come to an end. Long before this consummation,
however, life will probably have become extinct through the
refrigeration of each of the planets into a state like the present state
of the moon, in which the atmosphere and oceans have disappeared from
the surface. No doubt the sun will continue to give out heat a long time
after heat has ceased to be needed for the support of living organisms.
For the final refrigeration of the sun will long be postponed by the
fate of the planets themselves. The separation of the planets from their
parent solar mass seems to be after all but a temporary separation. So
nicely balanced are they now in their orbits that they may well seem
capable of rolling on in their present courses forever. But this is not
the case. Two sets of circumstances are all the while striving, the one
to drive the planets farther away from the sun, the other to draw them
all into it. On the one hand, every body in our system which contains
fluid matter has tides raised upon its surface by the attraction of
neighbouring bodies. All the planets raise tides upon the surface of the
sun and the periodicity of sun-spots (or solar cyclones) depends upon
this fact. These tidal waves act as a drag or brake upon the rotation
of the sun, somewhat diminishing its rapidity. But, in conformity with a
principle of mechanics well known to astronomers, though not familiar to
the general reader, all the motion of rotation thus lost by the sun is
added to the planets in the shape of annual motion of revolution, and
thus their orbits all tend to enlarge,--they all tend to recede somewhat
from the sun. But this state of things, though long-enduring enough, is
after all only temporary, and will at any rate come to an end when
the sun and planets have become solid. Meanwhile another set of
circumstances is all the time tending to bring the planets nearer to the
sun, and in the long run must gain the mastery. The space through which
the planets move is filled with a kind of matter which serves as a
medium for the transmission of heat and light, and this kind of matter,
though different in some respects from ordinary ponderable matter, is
yet like it in exerting friction. This friction is almost infinitely
little, yet it has a wellnigh infinite length of time to work in, and
during all this wellnigh infinite length of time it is slowly eating up
the momentum of the planets and diminishing their ability to maintain
their distances from the sun. Hence in course of time the planets will
all fall into the sun, one after another, so that the solar system will
end, as it began, by consisting of a single mass of matter.

But this is by no means the end of the story. When two bodies rush
together, each parts with some of its energy of motion, and this lost
energy of motion reappears as heat. In the concussion of two cosmical
bodies, like the sun and the earth, an enormous quantity of motion is
thus converted into heat. Now heat, when not allowed to radiate, or when
generated faster than it can be radiated, is transformed into motion of
expansion. Hence the shock of sun and planet would at once result in the
vaporization of both bodies; and there can be no doubt that by the time
the sun has absorbed the outermost of his attendant planets, he will
have resumed something like his original nebulous condition. He will
have been dilated into a huge mass of vapour, and will have become
fit for a new process of contraction and for a new production of
life-bearing planets.

We are now, however, confronted by an interesting but difficult
question. Throughout all this grand past and future career of the solar
system which we have just briefly traced, we have been witnessing a
most prodigal dissipation of energy in the shape of radiant heat. At
the outset we had an enormous quantity of what is called "energy of
position," that is, the outer parts of our primitive nebula had a very
long distance through which to travel towards one another in the slow
process of concentration; and this distance was the measure of the
quantity of work possible to our system. As the particles of our nebula
drew nearer and nearer together, the energy of position continually lost
reappeared continually as heat, of which the greater part was radiated
off, but of which a certain amount was retained. All the gigantic
amount of work achieved in the geologic development of our earth and
its companion planets, and in the development of life wherever life may
exist in our system, has been the product of this retained heat. At the
present day the same wasteful process is going on. Each moment the sun's
particles are losing energy of position as they draw closer and closer
together, and the heat into which this lost energy is metamorphosed is
poured out most prodigally in every direction. Let us consider for a
moment how little of it gets used in our system. The earth's orbit is
a nearly circular figure more than five hundred million miles in
circumference, while only eight thousand miles of this path are at any
one time occupied by the earth's mass. Through these eight thousand
miles the sun's radiated energy is doing work, but through the remainder
of the five hundred million it is idle and wasted. But the case is far
more striking when we reflect that it is not in the plane of the earth's
orbit only that the sun's radiance is being poured out. It is not an
affair of a circle, but of a sphere. In order to utilize all the solar
rays, we should need to have an immense number of earths arranged so as
to touch each other, forming a hollow sphere around the sun, with the
present radius of the earth's orbit. We may well believe Professor
Tyndall, therefore, when he tells us that all the solar radiance we
receive is less than a two-billionth part of what is sent flying through
the desert regions of space. Some of the immense residue of course hits
other planets stationed in the way of it, and is utilized upon their
surfaces; but the planets, all put together, stop so little of the total
quantity that our startling illustration is not materially altered by
taking them into the account. Now this two-billionth part of the solar
radiance poured out from moment to moment suffices to blow every wind,
to raise every cloud, to drive every engine, to build up the tissue of
every plant, to sustain the activity of every animal, including man,
upon the surface of our vast and stately globe. Considering the wondrous
richness and variety of the terrestrial life wrought out by the few
sunbeams which we catch in our career through space, we may well
pause overwhelmed and stupefied at the thought of the incalculable
possibilities of existence which are thrown away with the potent
actinism that darts unceasingly into the unfathomed abysms of immensity.
Where it goes to or what becomes of it, no one of us can surmise.

Now when, in the remote future, our sun is reduced to vapour by the
impact of the several planets upon his surface, the resulting nebulous
mass must be a very insignificant affair compared with the nebulous mass
with which we started. In order to make a second nebula equal in size
and potential energy to the first one, all the energy of position at
first existing should have been retained in some form or other. But
nearly all of it has been lost, and only an insignificant fraction
remains with which to endow a new system. In order to reproduce, in
future ages, anything like that cosmical development which is now
going on in the solar system, aid must be sought from without. We must
endeavour to frame some valid hypothesis as to the relation of our solar
system to other systems.

Thus far our view has been confined to the career of a single star,--our
sun,--with the tiny, easily-cooling balls which it has cast off in the
course of its development. Thus far, too, our inferences have been
very secure, for we have been dealing with a circumscribed group of
phenomena, the beginning and end of which have been brought pretty well
within the compass of our imagination. It is quite another thing to deal
with the actual or probable career of the stars in general, inasmuch
as we do not even know how many stars there are, which form parts of
a common system, or what are their precise dynamic relations to one
another. Nevertheless we have knowledge of a few facts which may support
some cautious inferences. All the stars which we can see are undoubtedly
bound together by relations of gravitation. No doubt our sun attracts
all the other stars within our ken, and is reciprocally attracted by
them. The stars, too, lie mostly in or around one great plane, as is the
case with the members of the solar system. Moreover, the stars are shown
by the spectroscope to consist of chemical elements identical with
those which are found in the solar system. Such facts as these make it
probable that the career of other stars, when adequately inquired
into, would be found to be like that of our own sun. Observation daily
enhances this probability, for our study of the sidereal universe is
continually showing us stars in all stages of development. We find
irregular nebulae, for example; we find spiral and spheroidal nebulae;
we find stars which have got beyond the nebulous stage, but are still at
a whiter heat than our sun; and we also find many stars which yield the
same sort of spectrum as our sun. The inference seems forced upon us
that the same process of concentration which has gone on in the case
of our solar nebula has been going on in the case of other nebulae. The
history of the sun is but a type of the history of stars in general. And
when we consider that all other visible stars and nebulae are cooling
and contracting bodies, like our sun, to what other conclusion could we
very well come? When we look at Sirius, for instance, we do not see
him surrounded by planets, for at such a distance no planet could be
visible, even Sirius himself, though fourteen times larger than our sun,
appearing only as a "twinkling little star." But a comparative survey
of the heavens assures us that Sirius can hardly have arrived at his
present stage of concentration without detaching, planet-forming rings,
for there is no reason for supposing that mechanical laws out there are
at all different from what they are in our own system. And the same kind
of inference must apply to all the matured stars which we see in the
heavens.

When we duly take all these things into the account, the case of our
solar system will appear as only one of a thousand cases of evolution
and dissolution with which the heavens furnish us. Other stars, like our
sun, have undoubtedly started as vaporous masses, and have thrown off
planets in contracting. The inference may seem a bold one, but it after
all involves no other assumption than that of the continuity of natural
phenomena. It is not likely, therefore, that the solar system will
forever be left to itself. Stars which strongly gravitate toward each
other, while moving through a perennially resisting medium, must in
time be drawn together. The collision of our extinct sun with one of the
Pleiades, after this manner, would very likely suffice to generate even
a grander nebula than the one with which we started. Possibly the entire
galactic system may, in an inconceivably remote future, remodel itself
in this way; and possibly the nebula from which our own group of planets
has been formed may have owed its origin to the disintegration of
systems which had accomplished their career in the depths of the bygone
eternity.

When the problem is extended to these huge dimensions, the prospect of
an ultimate cessation of cosmical work is indefinitely postponed, but
at the same time it becomes impossible for us to deal very securely
with the questions we have raised. The magnitudes and periods we have
introduced are so nearly infinite as to baffle speculation itself: One
point, however, we seem dimly to discern. Supposing the stellar universe
not to be absolutely infinite in extent, we may hold that the day of
doom, so often postponed, must come at last. The concentration of matter
and dissipation of energy, so often checked, must in the end prevail,
so that, as the final outcome of things, the entire universe will be
reduced to a single enormous ball, dead and frozen, solid and black,
its potential energy of motion having been all transformed into heat
and radiated away. Such a conclusion has been suggested by Sir William
Thomson, and it is quite forcibly stated by the authors of "The Unseen
Universe." They remind us that "if there be any one form of energy
less readily or less completely transformable than the others, and if
transformations constantly go on, more and more of the whole energy
of the universe will inevitably sink into this lower grade as time
advances." Now radiant heat, as we have seen, is such a lower grade
of energy. "At each transformation of heat-energy into work, a large
portion is degraded, while only a small portion is transformed into
work. So that while it is very easy to change all of our mechanical or
useful energy into heat, it is only possible to transform a portion of
this heat-energy back again into work. After each change, too, the
heat becomes more and more dissipated or degraded, and less and less
available for any future transformation. In other words," our authors
continue, "the tendency of heat is towards equalization; heat is
par excellence the communist of our universe, and it will no doubt
ultimately bring the system to an end..... It is absolutely certain that
life, so far as it is physical, depends essentially upon transformations
of energy; it is also absolutely certain that age after age the
possibility of such transformations is becoming less and less; and, so
far as we yet know, the final state of the present universe must be an
aggregation (into one mass) of all the matter it contains, i. e. the
potential energy gone, and a practically useless state of kinetic
energy, i. e. uniform temperature throughout that mass." Thus our
authors conclude that the visible universe began in time and will in
time come to an end; and they add that under the physical conditions of
such a universe "immortality is impossible."

Concerning the latter inference we shall by and by have something to
say. Meanwhile this whole speculation as to the final cessation of
cosmical work seems to me--as it does to my friend, Professor Clifford
[3]--by no means trustworthy. The conditions of the problem so
far transcend our grasp that any such speculation must remain an
unverifiable guess. I do not go with Professor Clifford in doubting
whether the laws of mechanics are absolutely the same throughout
eternity; I cannot quite reconcile such a doubt with faith in the
principle of continuity. But it does seem to me needful, before we
conclude that radiated energy is absolutely and forever wasted, that we
should find out what becomes of it. What we call radiant heat is simply
transverse wave-motion, propagated with enormous velocity through an
ocean of subtle ethereal matter which bathes the atoms of all visible
or palpable bodies and fills the whole of space, extending beyond the
remotest star which the telescope can reach. Whether there are any
bounds at all to this ethereal ocean, or whether it is as infinite
as space itself, we cannot surmise. If it be limited, the possible
dispersion of radiant energy is limited by its extent. Heat and light
cannot travel through emptiness. If the ether is bounded by surrounding
emptiness, then a ray of heat, on arriving at this limiting emptiness,
would be reflected back as surely as a ball is sent back when thrown
against a solid wall. If this be the case, it will not affect our
conclusions concerning such a tiny region of space as is occupied by
the solar system, but it will seriously modify Sir William Thomson's
suggestion as to the fate of the universe as a whole. The radiance
thrown away by the sun is indeed lost so far as the future of our system
is concerned, but not a single unit of it is lost from the universe.
Sooner or later, reflected back in all directions, it must do work in
one quarter or another, so that ultimate stagnation be comes impossible.
It is true that no such return of radiant energy has been detected in
our corner of the world; but we have not yet so far disentangled all the
force-relations of the universe that we are entitled to regard such a
return as impossible. This is one way of escape from the consummation
of things depicted by our authors. Another way of escape is equally
available, if we suppose that while the ether is without bounds
the stellar universe also extends to infinity. For in this case the
reproduction of nebulous masses fit for generating new systems of worlds
must go on through space that is endless, and consequently the process
can never come to an end and can never have had a beginning. We have,
therefore, three alternatives: either the visible universe is finite,
while the ether is infinite; or both are finite; or both are infinite.
Only on the first supposition, I think, do we get a universe which began
in time and must end in time. Between such stupendous alternatives we
have no grounds for choosing. But it would seem that the third, whether
strictly true or not, best represents the state of the case relatively
to our feeble capacity of comprehension. Whether absolutely infinite
or not, the dimensions of the universe must be taken as practically
infinite, so far as human thought is concerned. They immeasurably
transcend the capabilities of any gauge we can bring to bear on them.
Accordingly all that we are really entitled to hold, as the outcome of
sound speculation, is the conception of innumerable systems of worlds
concentrating out of nebulous masses, and then rushing together and
dissolving into similar masses, as bubbles unite and break up--now
here, now there--in their play on the surface of a pool, and to this
tremendous series of events we can assign neither a beginning nor an
end.

 [3] Fortnightly Review, April, 1875.


We must now make some more explicit mention of the ether which carries
through space the rays of heat and light. In closest connection with
the visible stellar universe, the vicissitudes of which we have briefly
traced, the all-pervading ether constitutes a sort of unseen world
remarkable enough from any point of view, but to which the theory of our
authors ascribes capacities hitherto unsuspected by science. The very
existence of an ocean of ether enveloping the molecules of material
bodies has been doubted or denied by many eminent physicists, though of
course none have called in question the necessity for some interstellar
medium for the transmission of thermal and luminous vibrations.
This scepticism has been, I think, partially justified by the many
difficulties encompassing the conception, into which, however, we need
not here enter. That light and heat cannot be conveyed by any of the
ordinary sensible forms of matter is unquestionable. None of the forms
of sensible matter can be imagined sufficiently elastic to propagate
wave-motion at the rate of one hundred and eighty-eight thousand miles
per second. Yet a ray of light is a series of waves, and implies some
substance in which the waves occur. The substance required is one which
seems to possess strangely contradictory properties. It is commonly
regarded as an "ether" or infinitely rare substance; but, as Professor
Jevons observes, we might as well regard it as an infinitely solid
"adamant." "Sir John Herschel has calculated the amount of force which
may be supposed, according to the undulatory theory of light, to be
exerted at each point in space, and finds it to be 1,148,000,000,000
times the elastic force of ordinary air at the earth's surface, so that
the pressure of the ether upon a square inch of surface must be about
17,000,000,000,000, or seventeen billions of pounds." [4] Yet at the
same time the resistance offered by the ether to the planetary motions
is too minute to be appreciable. "All our ordinary notions," says
Professor Jevons, "must be laid aside in contemplating such an
hypothesis; yet [it is] no more than the observed phenomena of light and
heat force us to accept. We cannot deny even the strange suggestion of
Dr. Young, that there may be independent worlds, some possibly existing
in different parts of space, but others perhaps pervading each other,
unseen and unknown, in the same space. For if we are bound to admit the
conception of this adamantine firmament, it is equally easy to admit a
plurality of such."

 [4] Jevons's Principles of Science, Vol. II. p. 145. The figures,
which in the English system of numeration read as seventeen billions,
would in the American system read as seventeen trillions.


The ether, therefore, is unlike any of the forms of matter which we
can weigh and measure. In some respects it resembles a fluid, in some
respects a solid. It is both hard and elastic to an almost inconceivable
degree. It fills all material bodies like a sea in which the atoms of
the material bodies are as islands, and it occupies the whole of what we
call empty space. It is so sensitive that a disturbance in any part of
it causes a "tremour which is felt on the surface of countless worlds."
Our old experiences of matter give us no account of any substance like
this; yet the undulatory theory of light obliges us to admit such a
substance, and that theory is as well established as the theory of
gravitation. Obviously we have here an enlargement of our experience
of matter. The analysis of the phenomena of light and radiant heat has
brought us into mental relations with matter in a different state from
any in which we previously knew it. For the supposition that the ether
may be something essentially different from matter is contradicted by
all the terms we have used in describing it. Strange and contradictory
as its properties may seem, are they any more strange than the
properties of a gas would seem if we were for the first time to discover
a gas after heretofore knowing nothing but solids and liquids? I think
not; and the conclusion implied by our authors seems to me eminently
probable, that in the so-called ether we have simply a state of matter
more primitive than what we know as the gaseous state. Indeed, the
conceptions of matter now current, and inherited from barbarous ages,
are likely enough to be crude in the extreme. It is not strange that
the study of such subtle agencies as heat and light should oblige us
to modify them; and it will not be strange if the study of electricity
should entail still further revision of our ideas.

We are now brought to one of the profoundest speculations of modern
times, the vortex-atom theory of Helmholtz and Thomson, in which the
evolution of ordinary matter from ether is plainly indicated. The
reader first needs to know what vortex-motion is; and this has been
so beautifully explained by Professor Clifford, that I quote his
description entire: "Imagine a ring of india-rubber, made by joining
together the ends of a cylindrical piece (like a lead-pencil before
it is cut), to be put upon a round stick which it will just fit with a
little stretching. Let the stick be now pulled through the ring while
the latter is kept in its place by being pulled the other way on the
outside. The india-rubber has then what is called vortex-motion. Before
the ends were joined together, while it was straight, it might have been
made to turn around without changing position, by rolling it between the
hands. Just the same motion of rotation it has on the stick, only that
the ends are now joined together. All the inside surface of the ring is
going one way, namely, the way the stick is pulled; and all the outside
is going the other way. Such a vortex-ring is made by the smoker who
purses his lips into a round hole and sends out a puff of smoke. The
outside of the ring is kept back by the friction of his lips while
the inside is going forwards; thus a rotation is set up all round the
smoke-ring as it travels out into the air." In these cases, and in
others as we commonly find it, vortex-motion owes its origin to friction
and is after a while brought to an end by friction. But in 1858 the
equations of motion of an incompressible frictionless fluid were first
successfully solved by Helmholtz, and among other things he proved
that, though vortex-motion could not be originated in such a fluid, yet
supposing it once to exist, it would exist to all eternity and could
not be diminished by any mechanical action whatever. A vortex-ring, for
example, in such a fluid, would forever preserve its own rotation, and
would thus forever retain its peculiar individuality, being, as it were,
marked off from its neighbour vortex-rings. Upon this mechanical truth
Sir William Thomson based his wonderfully suggestive theory of the
constitution of matter. That which is permanent or indestructible in
matter is the ultimate homogeneous atom; and this is probably all that
is permanent, since chemists now almost unanimously hold that so-called
elementary molecules are not really simple, but owe their sensible
differences to the various groupings of an ultimate atom which is alike
for all. Relatively to our powers of comprehension the atom endures
eternally; that is, it retains forever unalterable its definite mass
and its definite rate of vibration. Now this is just what a vortex-ring
would do in an incompressible frictionless fluid. Thus the startling
question is suggested, Why may not the ultimate atoms of matter be
vortex-rings forever existing in such a frictionless fluid filling the
whole of space? Such a hypothesis is not less brilliant than Huyghens's
conjectural identification of light with undulatory motion; and it is
moreover a legitimate hypothesis, since it can be brought to the test
of verification. Sir William Thomson has shown that it explains a great
many of the physical properties of matter: it remains to be seen whether
it can explain them all.

Of course the ether which conveys thermal and luminous undulations is
not the frictionless fluid postulated by Sir William Thomson. The most
conspicuous property of the ether is its enormous elasticity, a property
which we should not find in a frictionless fluid. "To account for such
elasticity," says Professor Clifford (whose exposition of the subject is
still more lucid than that of our authors), "it has to be supposed that
even where there are no material molecules the universal fluid is full
of vortex-motion, but that the vortices are smaller and more closely
packed than those of [ordinary] matter, forming altogether a more finely
grained structure. So that the difference between matter and ether
is reduced to a mere difference in the size and arrangement of the
component vortex-rings. Now, whatever may turn out to be the ultimate
nature of the ether and of molecules, we know that to some extent
at least they obey the same dynamic laws, and that they act upon
one another in accordance with these laws. Until, therefore, it is
absolutely disproved, it must remain the simplest and most probable
assumption that they are finally made of the same stuff, that the
material molecule is some kind of knot or coagulation of ether." [5]

 [5] Fortnightly Review, June, 1875, p. 784.


Another interesting consequence of Sir William Thomson's pregnant
hypothesis is that the absolute hardness which has been attributed to
material atoms from the time of Lucretius downward may be dispensed
with. Somewhat in the same way that a loosely suspended chain
becomes rigid with rapid rotation, the hardness and elasticity of the
vortex-atom are explained as due to the swift rotary motion of a soft
and yielding fluid. So that the vortex-atom is really indivisible,
not by reason of its hardness or solidity, but by reason of the
indestructibleness of its motion.

Supposing, now, that we adopt provisionally the vortex theory,--the
great power of which is well shown by the consideration just
mentioned,--we must not forget that it is absolutely essential to the
indestructibleness of the material atom that the universal fluid in
which it has an existence as a vortex-ring should be entirely destitute
of friction. Once admit even the most infinitesimal amount of friction,
while retaining the conception of vortex-motion in a universal fluid,
and the whole case is so far altered that the material atom can
no longer be regarded as absolutely indestructible, but only as
indefinitely enduring. It may have been generated, in bygone eternity,
by a natural process of evolution, and in future eternity may come to an
end. Relatively to our powers of comprehension the practical difference
is perhaps not great. Scientifically speaking, Helmholtz and Thomson
are as well entitled to reason upon the assumption of a perfectly
frictionless fluid as geometers in general are entitled to assume
perfect lines without breadth and perfect surfaces without thickness.
Perfect lines and surfaces do not exist within the region of our
experience; yet the conclusions of geometry are none the less true
ideally, though in any particular concrete instance they are only
approximately realized. Just so with the conception of a frictionless
fluid. So far as experience goes, such a thing has no more real
existence than a line without breadth; and hence an atomic theory based
upon such an assumption may be as true ideally as any of the theorems
of Euclid, but it can give only an approximatively true account of
the actual universe. These considerations do not at all affect the
scientific value of the theory; but they will modify the tenour of
such transcendental inferences as may be drawn from it regarding, the
probable origin and destiny of the universe.

The conclusions reached in the first part of this paper, while we were
dealing only with gross visible matter, may have seemed bold enough; but
they are far surpassed by the inference which our authors draw from the
vortex theory as they interpret it. Our authors exhibit various reasons,
more or less sound, for attributing to the primordial fluid some slight
amount of friction; and in support of this view they adduce Le Sage's
explanation of gravitation as a differential result of pressure,
and Struve's theory of the partial absorption of light-rays by the
ether,--questions with which our present purpose does not require us
to meddle. Apart from such questions it is every way probable that the
primary assumption of Helmholtz and Thomson is only an approximation
to the truth. But if we accredit the primordial fluid with even an
infinitesimal amount of friction, then we are required to conceive of
the visible universe as developed from the invisible and as destined to
return into the invisible. The vortex-atom, produced by infinitesimal
friction operating through wellnigh infinite time, is to be ultimately
abolished by the agency which produced it. In the words of our authors,
"If the visible universe be developed from an invisible which is not
a perfect fluid, then the argument deduced by Sir William Thomson
in favour of the eternity of ordinary matter disappears, since this
eternity depends upon the perfect fluidity of the invisible. In fine,
if we suppose the material universe to be composed of a series of
vortex-rings developed from an invisible universe which is not a perfect
fluid, it will be ephemeral, just as the smoke-ring which we develop
from air, or that which we develop from water, is ephemeral, the only
difference being in duration, these lasting only for a few seconds,
and the others it may be for billions of years." Thus, as our authors
suppose that "the available energy of the visible universe will
ultimately be appropriated by the invisible," they go on to imagine,
"at least as a possibility, that the separate existence of the visible
universe will share the same fate, so that we shall have no huge,
useless, inert mass existing in after ages to remind the passer-by of
a form of energy and a species of matter that is long since out of date
and functionally effete. Why should not the universe bury its dead out
of sight?"

In one respect perhaps no more stupendous subject of contemplation than
this has ever been offered to the mind of man. In comparison with the
length of time thus required to efface the tiny individual atom, the
entire cosmical career of our solar system, or even that of the whole
starry galaxy, shrinks into utter nothingness. Whether we shall adopt
the conclusion suggested must depend on the extent of our speculative
audacity. We have seen wherein its probability consists, but in
reasoning upon such a scale we may fitly be cautious and modest in
accepting inferences, and our authors, we may be sure, would be the
first to recommend such modesty and caution. Even at the dimensions to
which our theorizing has here grown, we may for instance discern the
possible alternative of a simultaneous or rhythmically successive
generation and destruction of vortex-atoms which would go far to modify
the conclusion just suggested. But here we must pause for a moment,
reserving for a second paper the weightier thoughts as to futurity
which our authors have sought to enwrap in these sublime physical
speculations.



PART SECOND.


UP to this point, however remote from ordinary every-day thoughts may be
the region of speculation which we have been called upon to traverse, we
have still kept within the limits of legitimate scientific hypothesis.
Though we have ventured for a goodly distance into the unknown, we have
not yet been required to abandon our base of operations in the known. Of
the views presented in the preceding paper, some are wellnigh certainly
established, some are probable, some have a sort of plausibility,
others--to which we have refrained from giving assent--may possibly be
true; but none are irretrievably beyond the jurisdiction of scientific
tests. No suggestion has so far been broached which a very little
further increase of our scientific knowledge may not show to be either
eminently probable or eminently improbable. We have kept pretty clear of
mere subjective guesses, such as men may wrangle about forever without
coming to any conclusion. The theory of the nebular origin of our
planetary system has come to command the assent of all persons qualified
to appreciate the evidence on which it is based; and the more immediate
conclusions which we have drawn from that theory are only such as
are commonly drawn by astronomers and physicists. The doctrine of
an intermolecular and interstellar ether is wrapped up in the
well-established undulatory theory of light. Such is by no means the
case with Sir William Thomson's vortex-atom theory, which to-day is in
somewhat the same condition as the undulatory theory of Huyghens two
centuries ago. This, however, is none the less a hypothesis truly
scientific in conception, and in the speculations to which it leads us
we are still sure of dealing with views that admit at least of definite
expression and treatment. In other words, though our study of the
visible universe has led us to the recognition of a kind of unseen world
underlying the world of things that are seen, yet concerning the economy
of this unseen world we have not been led to entertain any hypothesis
that has not its possible justification in our experiences of visible
phenomena.

We are now called upon, following in the wake of our esteemed authors,
to venture on a different sort of exploration, in which we must cut
loose altogether from our moorings in the world of which we have
definite experience. We are invited to entertain suggestions concerning
the peculiar economy of the invisible portion of the universe which we
have no means of subjecting to any sort of test of probability, either
experimental or deductive. These suggestions are, therefore, not to be
regarded as properly scientific; but, with this word of caution, we may
proceed to show what they are.

Compared with the life and death of cosmical systems which we have
heretofore contemplated, the life and death of individuals of the human
race may perhaps seem a small matter; yet because we are ourselves the
men who live and die, the small event is of vastly greater interest to
us than the grand series of events of which it is part and parcel. It
is natural that we should be more interested in the ultimate fate of
humanity than in the fate of a world which is of no account to us save
as our present dwelling-place. Whether the human soul is to come to an
end or not is to us a more important question than whether the visible
universe, with its matter and energy, is to be absorbed in an invisible
ether. It is indeed only because we are interested in the former
question that we are so curious about the latter. If we could dissociate
ourselves from the material universe, our habitat, we should probably
speculate much less about its past and future. We care very little what
becomes of the black ball of the earth, after all life has vanished
from its surface; or, if we care at all about it, it is only because our
thoughts about the career of the earth are necessarily mixed up with our
thoughts about life. Hence in considering the probable ultimate destiny
of the physical universe, our innermost purpose must be to know what
is to become of all this rich and wonderful life of which the physical
universe is the theatre. Has it all been developed, apparently at almost
infinite waste of effort, only to be abolished again before it
has attained to completeness, or does it contain or shelter some
indestructible element which having drawn sustenance for a while from
the senseless turmoil of physical phenomena shall still survive their
final decay? This question is closely connected with the time-honoured
question of the meaning, purpose, or tendency of the world. In the
career of the world is life an end, or a means toward an end, or only an
incidental phenomenon in which we can discover no meaning? Contemporary
theologians seem generally to believe that one necessary result of
modern scientific inquiry must be the destruction of the belief in
immortal life, since against every thoroughgoing expounder of scientific
knowledge they seek to hurl the charge of "materialism." Their doubts,
however, are not shared by our authors, thorough men of science as they
are, though their mode of dealing with the question may not be such as
we can well adopt. While upholding the doctrine of evolution, and all
the so-called "materialistic" views of modern science, they not only
regard the hypothesis of a future life as admissible, but they even go
so far as to propound a physical theory as to the nature of existence
after death. Let us see what this physical theory is.

As far as the visible universe is concerned, we do not find in it any
evidence of immortality or of permanence of any sort, unless it be in
the sum of potential and kinetic energies on the persistency of which
depends our principle of continuity. In ordinary language "the stars in
their courses" serve as symbols of permanence, yet we have found reason
to regard them as but temporary phenomena. So, in the language of our
authors, "if we take the individual man, we find that he lives his short
tale of years, and that then the visible machinery which connects him
with the past, as well as that which enables him to act in the present,
falls into ruin and is brought to an end. If any germ or potentiality
remains, it is certainly not connected with the visible order of
things." In like manner our race is pretty sure to come to an end
long before the destruction of the planet from which it now gets its
sustenance. And in our authors opinion even the universe will by and
by become "old and effete, no less truly than the individual: it is a
glorious garment this visible universe, but not an immortal one; we
must look elsewhere if we are to be clothed with immortality as with a
garment."

It is at this point that our authors call attention to "the apparently
wasteful character of the arrangements of the visible universe." The
fact is one which we have already sufficiently described, but we shall
do well to quote the words in which our authors recur to it: "All but a
very small portion of the sun's heat goes day by day into what we call
empty space, and it is only this very small remainder that is made use
of by the various planets for purposes of their own. Can anything be
more perplexing than this seemingly frightful expenditure of the very
life and essence of the system? That this vast store of high-class
energy should be doing nothing but travelling outwards in space at the
rate of 188,000 miles per second is hardly conceivable, especially when
the result of it is the inevitable destruction of the visible universe."

Pursuing this teleological argument, it is suggested that perhaps this
apparent waste of energy is "only an arrangement in virtue of which our
universe keeps up a memory of the past at the expense of the present,
inasmuch as all memory consists in an investiture of present resources
in order to keep a hold upon the past." Recourse is had to the ingenious
argument in which Mr. Babbage showed that "if we had power to follow
and detect the minutest effects of any disturbance, each particle of
existing matter must be a register of all that has happened. The track
of every canoe, of every vessel that has yet disturbed the surface of
the ocean, whether impelled by manual force or elemental power, remains
forever registered in the future movement of all succeeding particles
which may occupy its place. The furrow which is left is, indeed,
instantly filled up by the closing waters; but they draw after them
other and larger portions of the surrounding element, and these again,
once moved, communicate motion to others in endless succession." In like
manner, "the air itself is one vast library, on whose pages are forever
written all that man has ever said or even whispered. There in their
mutable but unerring characters, mixed with the earliest as well as
the latest sighs of mortality, stand forever recorded vows unredeemed,
promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in the united movements of each
particle the testimony of man's changeful will." [6] In some such way as
this, records of every movement that takes place in the world are each
moment transmitted, with the speed of light, through the invisible
ocean of ether with which the world is surrounded. Even the molecular
displacements which occur in our brains when we feel and think are thus
propagated in their effects into the unseen world. The world of ether is
thus regarded by our authors as in some sort the obverse or complement
of the world of sensible matter, so that whatever energy is dissipated
in the one is by the same act accumulated in the other. It is like the
negative plate in photography, where light answers to shadow and shadow
to light. Or, still better, it is like the case of an equation in which
whatever quantity you take from one side is added to the other with a
contrary sign, while the relation of equality remains undisturbed. Thus,
it will be noticed, from the ingenious and subtle, but quite defensible
suggestion of Mr. Babbage, a leap is made to an assumption which cannot
be defended scientifically, but only teleologically. It is one thing
to say that every movement in the visible world transmits a record of
itself to the surrounding ether, in such a way that from the undulation
of the ether a sufficiently powerful intelligence might infer the
character of the generating movement in the visible world. It is quite
another thing to say that the ether is organized in such a complex and
delicate way as to be like a negative image or counterpart of the world
of sensible matter. The latter view is no doubt ingenious, but it is
gratuitous. It is sustained not by scientific analogy, but by the desire
to find some assignable use for the energy which is constantly escaping
from visible matter into invisible ether. The moment we ask how do we
know that this energy is not really wasted, or that it is not put to
some use wholly undiscoverable by human intelligence, this assumption of
an organized ether is at once seen to be groundless. It belongs not to
the region of science, but to that of pure mythology.

 [6] Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, p. 115; Jevons,
Principles of Science, Vol. II. p. 455.


In justice to our authors, however, it should be remembered that this
assumption is put forth not as something scientifically probable, but as
something which for aught we know to the contrary may possibly be true.
This, to be sure, we need not deny; nor if we once allow this prodigious
leap of inference, shall we find much difficulty in reaching the famous
conclusion that "thought conceived to affect the matter of another
universe simultaneously with this may explain a future state." This
proposition, quaintly couched in an anagram, like the discoveries of old
astronomers, was published last year in "Nature," as containing the gist
of the forthcoming book. On the negative-image hypothesis it is not hard
to see how thought is conceived to affect the seen and the unseen worlds
simultaneously. Every act of consciousness is accompanied by molecular
displacements in the brain, and these are of course responded to by
movements in the ethereal world. Thus as a series of conscious states
build up a continuous memory in strict accordance with physical laws of
motion, [7] so a correlative memory is simultaneously built up in
the ethereal world out of the ethereal correlatives of the molecular
displacements which go on in our brains. And as there is a continual
transfer of energy from the visible world to the ether, the extinction
of vital energy which we call death must coincide in some way with
the awakening of vital energy in the correlative world; so that the
darkening of consciousness here is coincident with its dawning there.
In this way death is for the individual but a transfer from one physical
state of existence to another; and so, on the largest scale, the
death or final loss of energy by the whole visible universe has its
counterpart in the acquirement of a maximum of life by the correlative
unseen world.

There seems to be a certain sort of rigorous logical consistency in this
daring speculation; but really the propositions of which it consists are
so far from answering to anything within the domain of human experience
that we are unable to tell whether any one of them logically follows
from its predecessor or not. It is evident that we are quite out of the
region of scientific tests, and to whatever view our authors may urge we
can only languidly assent that it is out of our power to disprove it.

 [7] See my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. II. pp. 142-148.


The essential weakness of such a theory as this lies in the fact that it
is thoroughly materialistic in character. It is currently assumed that
the doctrine of a life after death cannot be defended on materialistic
grounds, but this is altogether too hasty an assumption. Our authors,
indeed, are not philosophical materialists, like Dr. Priestley,--who
nevertheless believed in a future life,--but one of the primary
doctrines of materialism lies at the bottom of their argument.
Materialism holds for one thing that consciousness is a product of
a peculiar organization of matter, and for another thing that
consciousness cannot survive the disorganization of the material body
with which it is associated. As held by philosophical materialists, like
Buchner and Moleschott, these two opinions are strictly consistent with
each other; nay, the latter seems to be the inevitable inference from
the former, though Priestley did not so regard it. Now our authors very
properly refuse to commit themselves to the opinion that mind is the
product of matter, but their argument nevertheless implies that some
sort of material vehicle is necessary for the continuance of mind in a
future state of existence. This material vehicle they seek to supply in
the theory which connects by invisible bonds of transmitted energy the
perishable material body with its counterpart in the world of ether. The
materialism of the argument is indeed partly veiled by the terminology
in which this counterpart is called a "spiritual body," but in this
novel use or abuse of scriptural language there seems to me to be a
strange confusion of ideas. Bear in mind that the "invisible universe"
into which energy is constantly passing is simply the luminiferous
ether, which our authors, to suit the requirements of their hypothesis,
have gratuitously endowed with a complexity and variety of structure
analogous to that of the visible world of matter. Their language is not
always quite so precise as one could desire, for while they sometimes
speak of the ether itself as the "unseen universe," they sometimes
allude to a primordial medium yet subtler in constitution and presumably
more immaterial. Herein lies the confusion. Why should the luminiferous
ether, or any primordial medium in which it may have been generated, be
regarded as in any way "spiritual"? Great physicists, like less trained
thinkers, are sometimes liable to be unconsciously influenced by old
associations of ideas which, ostensibly repudiated, still lurk under
cover of the words we use. I fear that the old associations which led
the ancients to describe the soul as a breath or a shadow, and which
account for the etymologies of such words as "ghost" and "spirit,"
have had something to do with this spiritualization of the interstellar
ether. Some share may also have been contributed by the Platonic notion
of the "grossness" or "bruteness" of tangible matter,--a notion which
has survived in Christian theology, and which educated men of the
present day have by no means universally outgrown. Save for some such
old associations as these, why should it be supposed that matter becomes
"spriritualized" as it diminishes in apparent substantiality? Why should
matter be pronounced respectable in the inverse ratio of its density
or ponderability? Why is a diamond any more chargeable with "grossness"
than a cubic centimetre of hydrogen? Obviously such fancies are purely
of mythologic parentage. Now the luminiferous ether, upon which our
authors make such extensive demands, may be physically "ethereal"
enough, in spite of the enormous elasticity which leads Professor Jevons
to characterize it as "adamantine"; but most assuredly we have not the
slightest reason for speaking of it as "immaterial" or "spiritual."
Though we are unable to weigh it in the balance, we at least know it as
a transmitter of undulatory movements, the size and shape of which we
can accurately measure. Its force-relations with ponderable matter are
not only universally and incessantly maintained, but they have that
precisely quantitative character which implies an essential identity
between the innermost natures of the two substances. We have seen
reason for thinking it probable that ether and ordinary matter are alike
composed of vortex-rings in a quasi-frictionless fluid; but whatever be
the fate of this subtle hypothesis, we may be sure that no theory
will ever be entertained in which the analysis of ether shall require
different symbols from that of ordinary matter. In our authors' theory,
therefore, the putting on of immortality is in no wise the passage from
a material to a spiritual state. It is the passage from one kind
of materially conditioned state to another. The theory thus appeals
directly to our experiences of the behaviour of matter; and in deriving
so little support as it does from these experiences, it remains an
essentially weak speculation, whatever we may think of its ingenuity.
For so long as we are asked to accept conclusions drawn from our
experiences of the material world, we are justified in demanding
something more than mere unconditioned possibility. We require some
positive evidence, be it ever so little in amount; and no theory which
cannot furnish such positive evidence is likely to carry to our minds
much practical conviction.

This is what I meant by saying that the great weakness of the hypothesis
here criticized lies in its materialistic character. In contrast with
this we shall presently see that the assertion of a future life which is
not materially conditioned, though unsupported by any item of experience
whatever, may nevertheless be an impregnable assertion. But first I
would conclude the foregoing criticism by ruling out altogether the
sense in which our authors use the expression "Unseen Universe."
Scientific inference, however remote, is connected by such insensible
gradations with ordinary perception, that one may well question the
propriety of applying the term "unseen" to that which is presented to
"the mind's eye" as inevitable matter of inference. It is true that we
cannot see the ocean of ether in which visible matter floats; but there
are many other invisible things which yet we do not regard as part of
the "unseen world." I do not see the air which I am now breathing within
the four walls of my study, yet its existence is sufficiently a matter
of sense-perception as it fills my lungs and fans my cheek. The atoms
which compose a drop of water are not only invisible, but cannot in any
way be made the objects of sense-perception; yet by proper inferences
from their behaviour we can single them out for measurement, so that Sir
William Thomson can tell us that if the drop of water were magnified to
the size of the earth, the constituent atoms would be larger than peas,
but not so large as billiard-balls. If we do not see such atoms with our
eyes, we have one adequate reason in their tiny dimensions, though
there are further reasons than this. It would be hard to say why the
luminiferous ether should be relegated to the "unseen world" any more
than the material atom. Whatever we know as possessing resistance
and extension, whatever we can subject to mathematical processes of
measurement, we also conceive as existing in such shape that, with
appropriate eyes and under proper visual conditions, we MIGHT see it,
and we are not entitled to draw any line of demarcation between such
an object of inference and others which may be made objects of
sense-perception. To set apart the ether as constituting an "unseen
universe" is therefore illegitimate and confusing. It introduces
a distinction where there is none, and obscures the fact that both
invisible ether and visible matter form but one grand universe in which
the sum of energy remains constant, though the order of its distribution
endlessly varies.

Very different would be the logical position of a theory which should
assume the existence of an "Unseen World" entirely spiritual in
constitution, and in which material conditions like those of the visible
world should have neither place nor meaning. Such a world would not
consist of ethers or gases or ghosts, but of purely psychical relations
akin to such as constitute thoughts and feelings when our minds are
least solicited by sense-perceptions. In thus marking off the "Unseen
World" from the objective universe of which we have knowledge, our
line of demarcation would at least be drawn in the right place. The
distinction between psychical and material phenomena is a distinction of
a different order from all other distinctions known to philosophy, and
it immeasurably transcends all others. The progress of modern discovery
has in no respect weakened the force of Descartes's remark, that between
that of which the differential attribute is Thought and that of which
the differential attribute is Extension, there can be no similarity, no
community of nature whatever. By no scientific cunning of experiment or
deduction can Thought be weighed or measured or in any way assimilated
to such things as may be made the actual or possible objects of
sense-perception. Modern discovery, so far from bridging over the chasm
between Mind and Matter, tends rather to exhibit the distinction between
them as absolute. It has, indeed, been rendered highly probable that
every act of consciousness is accompanied by a molecular motion in the
cells and fibres of the brain; and materialists have found great comfort
in this fact, while theologians and persons of little faith have been
very much frightened by it. But since no one ever pretended that thought
can go on, under the conditions of the present life, without a
brain, one finds it rather hard to sympathize either with the
self-congratulations of Dr. Buchner's disciples [8] or with the terrors
of their opponents. But what has been less commonly remarked is the
fact that when the thought and the molecular movement thus occur
simultaneously, in no scientific sense is the thought the product of the
molecular movement. The sun-derived energy of motion latent in the food
we eat is variously transformed within the organism, until some of
it appears as the motion of the molecules of a little globule of
nerve-matter in the brain. In a rough way we might thus say that the
chemical energy of the food indirectly produces the motion of these
little nerve-molecules. But does this motion of nerve-molecules now
produce a thought or state of consciousness? By no means. It simply
produces some other motion of nerve-molecules, and this in turn
produces motion of contraction or expansion in some muscle, or becomes
transformed into the chemical energy of some secreting gland. At no
point in the whole circuit does a unit of motion disappear as motion to
reappear as a unit of consciousness. The physical process is complete in
itself, and the thought does not enter into it. All that we can say is,
that the occurrence of the thought is simultaneous with that part of the
physical process which consists of a molecular movement in the brain.
[9] To be sure, the thought is always there when summoned, but it
stands outside the dynamic circuit, as something utterly alien from and
incomparable with the events which summon it. No doubt, as Professor
Tyndall observes, if we knew exhaustively the physical state of the
brain, "the corresponding thought or feeling might be inferred; or,
given the thought or feeling, the corresponding state of the brain
might be inferred. But how inferred? It would be at bottom not a case
of logical inference at all, but of empirical association. You may
reply that many of the inferences of science are of this character; the
inference, for example, that an electric current of a given direction
will deflect a magnetic needle in a definite way; but the cases differ
in this, that the passage from the current to the needle, if not
demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the
final mechanical solution of the problem. But the passage from the
physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is
unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular
action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess the
intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which
would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from the one to the
other. They appear together, but we do not know why." [10]

 [8] The Nation once wittily described these people as "people who
believe that they are going to die like the beasts, and who congratulate
themselves that they are going to die like the beasts."

 [9] For a fuller exposition of this point, see my Outlines of
Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. II. pp. 436-445.

 [10] Fragments of Science, p. 119.


An unseen world consisting of purely psychical or spiritual phenomena
would accordingly be demarcated by an absolute gulf from what we call
the material universe, but would not necessarily be discontinuous with
the psychical phenomena which we find manifested in connection with the
world of matter. The transfer of matter, or physical energy, or anything
else that is quantitatively measurable, into such an unseen world, may
be set down as impossible, by reason of the very definition of such a
world. Any hypothesis which should assume such a transfer would involve
a contradiction in terms. But the hypothesis of a survival of present
psychical phenomena in such a world, after being denuded of material
conditions, is not in itself absurd or self-contradictory, though it may
be impossible to support it by any arguments drawn from the domain of
human experience. Such is the shape which it seems to me that, in
the present state of philosophy, the hypothesis of a future life must
assume. We have nothing to say to gross materialistic notions of ghosts
and bogies, and spirits that upset tables and whisper to ignorant vulgar
women the wonderful information that you once had an aunt Susan. The
unseen world imagined in our hypothesis is not connected with the
present material universe by any such "invisible bonds" as would allow
Bacon and Addison to come to Boston and write the silliest twaddle in
the most ungrammatical English before a roomful of people who have never
learned how to test what they are pleased to call the "evidence of
their senses." Our hypothesis is expressly framed so as to exclude all
intercourse whatever between the unseen world of spirit unconditioned
by matter and the present world of spirit conditioned by matter in which
all our experiences have been gathered. The hypothesis being framed in
such a way, the question is, What has philosophy to say to it? Can
we, by searching our experiences, find any reason for adopting such an
hypothesis? Or, on the other hand, supposing we can find no such reason,
would the total failure of experimental evidence justify us in rejecting
it?

The question is so important that I will restate it. I have imagined a
world made up of psychical phenomena, freed from the material conditions
under which alone we know such phenomena. Can we adduce any proof of the
possibility of such a world? Or if we cannot, does our failure raise the
slightest presumption that such a world is impossible?

The reply to the first clause of the question is sufficiently obvious.
We have no experience whatever of psychical phenomena save as manifested
in connection with material phenomena. We know of Mind only as a group
of activities which are never exhibited to us except through the medium
of motions of matter. In all our experience we have never encountered
such activities save in connection with certain very complicated
groupings of highly mobile material particles into aggregates which we
call living organisms. And we have never found them manifested to a
very conspicuous extent save in connection with some of those specially
organized aggregates which have vertebrate skeletons and mammary glands.
Nay, more, when we survey the net results of our experience up to the
present time, we find indisputable evidence that in the past history
of the visible universe psychical phenomena have only begun to be
manifested in connection with certain complex aggregates of material
phenomena. As these material aggregates have age by age become more
complex in structure, more complex psychical phenomena have been
exhibited. The development of Mind has from the outset been associated
with the development of Matter. And to-day, though none of us has any
knowledge of the end of psychical phenomena in his own case, yet
from all the marks by which we recognize such phenomena in our
fellow-creatures, whether brute or human, we are taught that when
certain material processes have been gradually or suddenly brought to an
end, psychical phenomena are no longer manifested. From first to last,
therefore, our appeal to experience gets but one response. We have not
the faintest shadow of evidence wherewith to make it seem probable that
Mind can exist except in connection with a material body. Viewed from
this standpoint of terrestrial experience, there is no more reason for
supposing that consciousness survives the dissolution of the brain
than for supposing that the pungent flavour of table-salt survives its
decomposition into metallic sodium and gaseous chlorine.

Our answer from this side is thus unequivocal enough. Indeed, so uniform
has been the teaching of experience in this respect that even in their
attempts to depict a life after death, men have always found themselves
obliged to have recourse to materialistic symbols. To the mind of a
savage the future world is a mere reproduction of the present, with its
everlasting huntings and fightings. The early Christians looked forward
to a renovation of the earth and the bodily resurrection from Sheol of
the righteous. The pictures of hell and purgatory, and even of paradise,
in Dante's great poem, are so intensely materialistic as to seem
grotesque in this more spiritual age. But even to-day the popular
conceptions of heaven are by no means freed from the notion of matter;
and persons of high culture, who realize the inadequacy of these popular
conceptions, are wont to avoid the difficulty by refraining from putting
their hopes and beliefs into any definite or describable form. Not
unfrequently one sees a smile raised at the assumption of knowledge or
insight by preachers who describe in eloquent terms the joys of a future
state; yet the smile does not necessarily imply any scepticism as to the
abstract probability of the soul's survival. The scepticism is aimed at
the character of the description rather than at the reality of the thing
described. It implies a tacit agreement, among cultivated people, that
the unseen world must be purely spiritual in constitution. The agreement
is not habitually expressed in definite formulas, for the reason that no
mental image of a purely spiritual world can be formed. Much stress
is commonly laid upon the recognition of friends in a future life; and
however deep a meaning may be given to the phrase "the love of God,"
one does not easily realize that a heavenly existence could be worth the
longing that is felt for it, if it were to afford no further scope for
the pure and tender household affections which give to the present life
its powerful though indefinable charm. Yet the recognition of friends
in a purely spiritual world is something of which we can frame no
conception whatever. We may look with unspeakable reverence on the
features of wife or child, less because of their physical beauty than
because of the beauty of soul to which they give expression, but to
imagine the perception of soul by soul apart from the material structure
and activities in which soul is manifested, is something utterly beyond
our power. Nay, even when we try to represent to ourselves the psychical
activity of any single soul by itself as continuing without the aid
of the physical machinery of sensation, we get into unmanageable
difficulties. A great part of the contents of our minds consists of
sensuous (chiefly visual) images, and though we may imagine reflection
to go on without further images supplied by vision or hearing, touch or
taste or smell, yet we cannot well see how fresh experiences could be
gained in such a state. The reader, if he require further illustrations,
can easily follow out this line of thought. Enough has no doubt been
said to convince him that our hypothesis of the survival of conscious
activity apart from material conditions is not only utterly unsupported
by any evidence that can be gathered from the world of which we have
experience, but is utterly and hopelessly inconceivable.

It is inconceivable BECAUSE it is entirely without foundation in
experience. Our powers of conception are closely determined by the
limits of our experience. When a proposition, or combination of ideas,
is suggested, for which there has never been any precedent in human
experience, we find it to be UNTHINKABLE,--the ideas will not combine.
The proposition remains one which we may utter and defend, and perhaps
vituperate our neighbours for not accepting, but it remains none the
less an unthinkable proposition. It takes terms which severally have
meanings and puts them together into a phrase which has no meaning.
[11] Now when we try to combine the idea of the continuance of conscious
activity with the idea of the entire cessation of material conditions,
and thereby to assert the existence of a purely spiritual world, we
find that we have made an unthinkable proposition. We may defend our
hypothesis as passionately as we like, but when we strive coolly to
realize it in thought we find ourselves baulked at every step.

 [11] See my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. I. pp. 64-67.


But now we have to ask, How much does this inconceivability signify?
In most cases, when we say that a statement is inconceivable, we
practically declare it to be untrue; when we say that a statement is
without warrant in experience, we plainly indicate that we consider it
unworthy of our acceptance. This is legitimate in the majority of cases
with which we have to deal in the course of life, because experience,
and the capacities of thought called out and limited by experience, are
our only guides in the conduct of life. But every one will admit that
our experience is not infinite, and that our capacity of conception
is not coextensive with the possibilities of existence. It is not only
possible, but in the very highest degree probable, that there are
many things in heaven, if not on earth, which are undreamed of in our
philosophy. Since our ability to conceive anything is limited by the
extent of our experience, and since human experience is very far from
being infinite, it follows that there may be, and in all probability is,
an immense region of existence in every way as real as the region which
we know, yet concerning which we cannot form the faintest rudiment of a
conception. Any hypothesis relating to such a region of existence is not
only not disproved by the total failure of evidence in its favour, but
the total failure of evidence does not raise even the slightest prima
facie presumption against its validity.

These considerations apply with great force to the hypothesis of an
unseen world in which psychical phenomena persist in the absence of
material conditions. It is true, on the one hand, that we can bring
up no scientific evidence in support of such an hypothesis. But on the
other hand it is equally true that in the very nature of things no
such evidence could be expected to be forthcoming: even were there such
evidence in abundance, it could not be accessible to us. The existence
of a single soul, or congeries of psychical phenomena, unaccompanied
by a material body, would be evidence sufficient to demonstrate the
hypothesis. But in the nature of things, even were there a million such
souls round about us, we could not become aware of the existence of
one of them, for we have no organ or faculty for the perception of soul
apart from the material structure and activities in which it has been
manifested throughout the whole course of our experience. Even our own
self-consciousness involves the consciousness of ourselves as partly
material bodies. These considerations show that our hypothesis is very
different from the ordinary hypotheses with which science deals. The
entire absence of testimony does not raise a negative presumption except
in cases where testimony is accessible. In the hypotheses with which
scientific men are occupied, testimony is always accessible; and if we
do not find any, the presumption is raised that there is none. When Dr.
Bastian tells us that he has found living organisms to be generated in
sealed flasks from which all living germs had been excluded, we demand
the evidence for his assertion. The testimony of facts is in this case
hard to elicit, and only skilful reasoners can properly estimate its
worth. But still it is all accessible. With more or less labour it can
be got at; and if we find that Dr. Bastian has produced no evidence save
such as may equally well receive a different interpretation from that
which he has given it, we rightly feel that a strong presumption
has been raised against his hypothesis. It is a case in which we are
entitled to expect to find the favouring facts if there are any, and
so long as we do not find such, we are justified in doubting their
existence. So when our authors propound the hypothesis of an unseen
universe consisting of phenomena which occur in the interstellar ether,
or even in some primordial fluid with which the ether has physical
relations, we are entitled to demand their proofs. It is not enough to
tell us that we cannot disprove such a theory. The burden of proof lies
with them. The interstellar ether is something concerning the physical
properties of which we have some knowledge; and surely, if all the
things are going on which they suppose in a medium so closely related
to ordinary matter, there ought to be some traceable indications of
the fact. At least, until the contrary can be shown, we must refuse
to believe that all the testimony in a case like this is utterly
inaccessible; and accordingly, so long as none is found, especially
so long as none is even alleged, we feel that a presumption is raised
against their theory.

These illustrations will show, by sheer contrast, how different it is
with the hypothesis of an unseen world that is purely spiritual. The
testimony in such a case must, under the conditions of the present life,
be forever inaccessible. It lies wholly outside the range of experience.
However abundant it may be, we cannot expect to meet with it. And
accordingly our failure to produce it does not raise even the slightest
presumption against our theory. When conceived in this way, the belief
in a future life is without scientific support; but at the same time it
is placed beyond the need of scientific support and beyond the range of
scientific criticism. It is a belief which no imaginable future advance
in physical discovery can in any way impugn. It is a belief which is in
no sense irrational, and which may be logically entertained without
in the least affecting our scientific habit of mind or influencing our
scientific conclusions.

To take a brief illustration: we have alluded to the fact that in the
history of our present world the development of mental phenomena has
gone on hand in hand with the development of organic life, while at the
same time we have found it impossible to explain mental phenomena as in
any sense the product of material phenomena. Now there is another side
to all this. The great lesson which Berkeley taught mankind was that
what we call material phenomena are really the products of consciousness
co-operating with some Unknown Power (not material) existing beyond
consciousness. We do very well to speak of "matter" in common parlance,
but all that the word really means is a group of qualities which have no
existence apart from our minds. Modern philosophers have quite generally
accepted this conclusion, and every attempt to overturn Berkeley's
reasoning has hitherto resulted in complete and disastrous failure. In
admitting this, we do not admit the conclusion of Absolute Idealism,
that nothing exists outside of consciousness. What we admit as existing
independently of our own consciousness is the Power that causes in
us those conscious states which we call the perception of material
qualities. We have no reason for regarding this Power as in itself
material: indeed, we cannot do so, since by the theory material
qualities have no existence apart from our minds. I have elsewhere
sought to show that less difficulty is involved in regarding this Power
outside of us as quasi-psychical, or in some measure similar to the
mental part of ourselves; and I have gone on to conclude that this Power
may be identical with what men have, in all times and by the aid of
various imperfect symbols, endeavoured to apprehend as Deity. [12] We
are thus led to a view of things not very unlike the views entertained
by Spinoza and Berkeley. We are led to the inference that what we call
the material universe is but the manifestation of infinite Deity to our
finite minds. Obviously, on this view, Matter--the only thing to
which materialists concede real existence--is simply an orderly
phantasmagoria; and God and the Soul--which materialists regard as mere
fictions of the imagination--are the only conceptions that answer to
real existences.

 [12] See my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Part I. Chap. IV.;
Part III. Chaps. III., IV.


In the foregoing paragraph I have been setting down opinions with which
I am prepared to agree, and which are not in conflict with anything that
our study of the development of the objective world has taught us. In
so far as that study may be supposed to bear on the question of a future
life, two conclusions are open to us. First we may say that since
the phenomena of mind appear and run their course along with certain
specialized groups of material phenomena, so, too, they must disappear
when these specialized groups are broken up. Or, in other words, we may
say that every living person is an organized whole; consciousness is
something which pertains to this organized whole, as music belongs to
the harp that is entire; but when the harp is broken it is silent, and
when the organized whole of personality falls to pieces consciousness
ceases forever. To many well-disciplined minds this conclusion seems
irresistible; and doubtless it would be a sound one--a good Baconian
conclusion--if we were to admit, with the materialists, that the
possibilities of existence are limited by our tiny and ephemeral
experience.

But now, supposing some Platonic speculator were to come along and
insist upon our leaving room for an alternative conclusion; suppose he
were to urge upon us that all this process of material development, with
the discovery of which our patient study has been rewarded, may be
but the temporary manifestation of relations otherwise unknown between
ourselves and the infinite Deity; suppose he were to argue that
psychical qualities may be inherent in a spiritual substance which
under certain conditions becomes incarnated in matter, to wear it as a
perishable garment for a brief season, but presently to cast it off and
enter upon the freedom of a larger existence;--what reply should we be
bound to make, bearing in mind that the possibilities of existence are
in no wise limited by our experience? Obviously we should be bound to
admit that in sound philosophy this conclusion is just as likely to be
true as the other. We should, indeed, warn him not to call on us to help
him to establish it by scientific arguments; and we should remind him
that he must not make illicit use of his extra-experiential hypotheses
by bringing them into the treatment of scientific questions that lie
within the range of experience. In science, for example, we make no
use of the conception of a "spiritual substance" (or of a "material
substance" either), because we can get along sufficiently well by
dealing solely with qualities. But with this general understanding we
should feel bound to concede the impregnableness of his main position.

I have supposed this theory only as an illustration, not as a theory
which I am prepared to adopt. My present purpose is not to treat as an
advocate the question of a future life, but to endeavour to point
out what conditions should be observed in treating the question
philosophically. It seems to me that a great deal is gained when we have
distinctly set before us what are the peculiar conditions of proof in
the case of such transcendental questions. We have gained a great deal
when we have learned how thoroughly impotent, how truly irrelevant, is
physical investigation in the presence of such a question. If we get not
much positive satisfaction for our unquiet yearnings, we occupy at any
rate a sounder philosophic position when we recognize the limits within
which our conclusions, whether positive or negative, are valid.

It seems not improbable that Mr. Mill may have had in mind something
like the foregoing considerations when he suggested that there is no
reason why one should not entertain the belief in a future life if the
belief be necessary to one's spiritual comfort. Perhaps no suggestion
in Mr. Mill's richly suggestive posthumous work has been more generally
condemned as unphilosophical, on the ground that in matters of belief we
must be guided, not by our likes and dislikes, but by the evidence
that is accessible. The objection is certainly a sound one so far as
it relates to scientific questions where evidence is accessible.
To hesitate to adopt a well-supported theory because of some vague
preference for a different view is in scientific matters the one
unpardonable sin,--a sin which has been only too often committed. Even
in matters which lie beyond the range of experience, where evidence
is inaccessible, desire is not to be regarded as by itself an adequate
basis for belief. But it seems to me that Mr. Mill showed a deeper
knowledge of the limitations of scientific method than his critics, when
he thus hinted at the possibility of entertaining a belief not amenable
to scientific tests. The hypothesis of a purely spiritual unseen
world, as above described, is entirely removed from the jurisdiction of
physical inquiry, and can only be judged on general considerations of
what has been called "moral probability"; and considerations of this
sort are likely, in the future as in the past, to possess different
values for different minds. He who, on such considerations, entertains
a belief in a future life may not demand that his sceptical neighbour
shall be convinced by the same considerations; but his neighbour is at
the same time estopped from stigmatizing his belief as unphilosophical.

The consideration which must influence most minds in their attitude
toward this question, is the craving, almost universally felt, for some
teleological solution to the problem of existence. Why we are here now
is a question of even profounder interest than whether we are to live
hereafter. Unfortunately its solution carries us no less completely
beyond the range of experience! The belief that all things are working
together for some good end is the most essential expression of religious
faith: of all intellectual propositions it is the one most closely
related to that emotional yearning for a higher and better life which
is the sum and substance of religion. Yet all the treatises on
natural theology that have ever been written have barely succeeded in
establishing a low degree of scientific probability for this belief.
In spite of the eight Bridgewater Treatises, and the "Ninth" beside,
dysteleology still holds full half the field as against teleology. Most
of this difficulty, however, results from the crude anthropomorphic
views which theologians have held concerning God. Once admitting that
the Divine attributes may be (as they must be) incommensurably greater
than human attributes, our faith that all things are working together
for good may remain unimpugned.

To many minds such a faith will seem incompatible with belief in the
ultimate destruction of sentiency amid the general doom of the material
universe. A good end can have no meaning to us save in relation to
consciousness that distinguishes and knows the good from the evil. There
could be no better illustration of how we are hemmed in than the very
inadequacy of the words with which we try to discuss this subject. Such
words have all gained their meanings from human experience, and hence of
necessity carry anthropomorphic implications. But we cannot help this.
We must think with the symbols with which experience has furnished
us; and when we so think, there does seem to be little that is even
intellectually satisfying in the awful picture which science shows us,
of giant worlds concentrating out of nebulous vapour, developing with
prodigious waste of energy into theatres of all that is grand and
sacred in spiritual endeavour, clashing and exploding again into dead
vapour-balls, only to renew the same toilful process without end,--a
senseless bubble-play of Titan forces, with life, love, and aspiration
brought forth only to be extinguished. The human mind, however
"scientific" its training, must often recoil from the conclusion that
this is all; and there are moments when one passionately feels that this
cannot be all. On warm June mornings in green country lanes, with sweet
pine-odours wafted in the breeze which sighs through the branches, and
cloud-shadows flitting over far-off blue mountains, while little birds
sing their love-songs, and golden-haired children weave garlands of wild
roses; or when in the solemn twilight we listen to wondrous harmonies
of Beethoven and Chopin that stir the heart like voices from an unseen
world; at such times one feels that the profoundest answer which science
can give to our questionings is but a superficial answer after all. At
these moments, when the world seems fullest of beauty, one feels most
strongly that it is but the harbinger of something else,--that the
ceaseless play of phenomena is no mere sport of Titans, but an orderly
scene, with its reason for existing, its

          "One divine far-off event
      To which the whole creation moves."


Difficult as it is to disentangle the elements of reasoning that enter
into these complex groups of feeling, one may still see, I think, that
it is speculative interest in the world, rather than anxious interest in
self, that predominates. The desire for immortality in its lowest phase
is merely the outcome of the repugnance we feel toward thinking of the
final cessation of vigorous vital activity. Such a feeling is naturally
strong with healthy people. But in the mood which I have above tried to
depict, this feeling, or any other which is merely self-regarding, is
lost sight of in the feeling which associates a future life with some
solution of the burdensome problem of existence. Had we but faith enough
to lighten the burden of this problem, the inferior question would
perhaps be less absorbing. Could we but know that our present lives
are working together toward some good end, even an end in no wise
anthropomorphic, it would be of less consequence whether we were
individually to endure. To the dog under the knife of the experimenter,
the world is a world of pure evil; yet could the poor beast but
understand the alleviation of human suffering to which he is
contributing, he would be forced to own that this is not quite true;
and if he were also a heroic or Christian dog, the thought would perhaps
take away from death its sting. The analogy may be a crude one; but
the reasonableness of the universe is at least as far above our
comprehension as the purposes of man surpass the understanding of the
dog. Believing, however, though as a simple act of trust, that the end
will crown the work, we may rise superior to the question which has here
concerned us, and exclaim, in the supreme language of faith, "Though He
slay me, yet will I trust in Him!"

     July, 1875.




II. "THE TO-MORROW OF DEATH."

Few of those who find pleasure in frequenting bookstores can have failed
to come across one or more of the profusely illustrated volumes in which
M. Louis Figuier has sought to render dry science entertaining to the
multitude. And of those who may have casually turned over their pages,
there are probably none, competent to form an opinion, who have not
speedily perceived that these pretentious books belong to the class of
pests and unmitigated nuisances in literature. Antiquated views,
utter lack of comprehension of the subjects treated, and shameless
unscrupulousness as to accuracy of statement, are faults but ill atoned
for by sensational pictures of the "dragons of the prime that tare each
other in their slime," or of the Newton-like brow and silken curls of
that primitive man in contrast with whom the said dragons have been
likened to "mellow music."

Nevertheless, the sort of scientific reputation which these
discreditable performances have gained for M. Figuier among an
uncritical public is such as to justify us in devoting a few paragraphs
to a book [13] which, on its own merits, is unworthy of any notice
whatever. "The To-morrow of Death"--if one were to put his trust in the
translator's prefatory note--discusses a grave question upon "purely
scientific methods." We are glad to see this remark, because it shows
what notions may be entertained by persons of average intelligence with
reference to "scientific methods." Those--and they are many--who vaguely
think that science is something different from common-sense, and that
any book is scientific which talks about perihelia and asymptotes and
cetacea, will find their vague notions here well corroborated. Quite
different will be the impression made upon those--and they are yet too
few--who have learned that the method of science is the common-sense
method of cautiously weighing evidence and withholding judgment where
evidence is not forthcoming. If talking about remote and difficult
subjects suffice to make one scientific, then is M. Figuier scientific
to a quite terrible degree. He writes about the starry heavens as if he
had been present at the hour of creation, or had at least accompanied
the Arabian prophet on his famous night-journey. Nor is his knowledge of
physiology and other abstruse sciences at all less remarkable. But these
things will cease to surprise us when we learn the sources, hitherto
suspected only in mythology, from which favoured mortals can obtain a
knowledge of what is going on outside of our planet.

 [13] The To-morrow of Death; or, The Future Life according to
Science. By Louis Figuier. Translated from the French by S. R. Crocker.
Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1872.


The four inner planets being nearly alike in size (?) and in length of
day, M. Figuier infers, by strictly scientific methods, that whatever is
true of one of them, as our earth, will be true of the others (p. 34).
Hence, they are all inhabited by human beings. It is true that human
beings must find Venus rather warm, and are not unlikely to be seriously
incommoded by the tropical climate of Mercury. But we must remember
that "the men of Venus and Mercury are made by nature to resist heat,
as those of Jupiter and Saturn are made to endure cold, and those of the
Earth and Mars to live in a mean temperature: OTHERWISE THEY COULD NOT
EXIST" (p. 72). In view of this charming specimen of a truly scientific
inference, it is almost too bad to call attention to the fact that M.
Figuier is quite behind the age in his statement of facts. So far from
Jupiter and Saturn being cold, observation plainly indicates that they
are prodigiously hot, if not even incandescent and partly self-luminous;
the explanation being that, by reason of their huge bulk, they still
retain much of the primitive heat which smaller planets have more
quickly radiated away. As for M. Figuier's statement, that polar snows
have been witnessed on these planets, it is simply untrue; no such thing
has ever been seen there. Mars, on the other hand, has been observed
to resemble in many important respects its near neighbour, the Earth;
whence our author declares that if an aeronaut were to shoot clear of
terrestrial gravitation and land upon Mars, he would unquestionably
suppose himself to be still upon the earth. For aerolites, it seems, are
somehow fired down upon our planet both from Mars and from Venus; and
aerolites sometimes contain vegetable matter (?). Therefore, Mars has
a vegetation, and very likely its red colour is caused by its luxuriant
autumnal foliage! (p. 47.) To return to Jupiter: this planet, indeed,
has inconveniently short days. "In his 'Picture of the Heavens,'
the German astronomer, Littrow (these Germans think of nothing but
gormandizing), asks how the people of Jupiter order their meals in the
short interval of five hours." Nevertheless, says our author, the
great planet is compensated for this inconvenience by its equable and
delicious climate.

In view, however, of our author's more striking and original
disclosures, one would suppose that all this discussion of the physical
conditions of existence on the various planets might have been passed
over without detriment to the argument. After these efforts at proving
(for M. Figuier presumably regards this rigmarole as proof) that all the
members of our solar system are habitable, the interplanetary ether is
forthwith peopled thickly with "souls," without any resort to argument.
This, we suppose, is one of those scientific truths which as M. Figuier
tells us, precede and underlie demonstration. Upon this impregnable
basis is reared the scientific theory of a future life. When we die our
soul passes into some other terrestrial body, unless we have been very
good, in which case we at once soar aloft and join the noble fraternity
of the ether-folk. Bad men and young children, on dying, must undergo
renewed probation here below, but ultimately all pass away into the
interplanetary ether. The dweller in ether is chiefly distinguished
from the mundane mortal by his acute senses and his ability to subsist
without food. He can see as if through a telescope and microscope
combined. His intelligence is so great that in comparison an Aristotle
would seem idiotic. It should not be forgotten, too, that he possesses
eighty-five per cent of soul to fifteen per cent of body, whereas in
terrestrial man the two elements are mixed in equal proportions. There
is no sex among the ether-folk, their numbers being kept up by the
influx of souls from the various planets. "Alimentation, that necessity
which tyrannizes over men and animals, is not imposed upon the
inhabitants of ether. Their bodies must be repaired and sustained by the
simple respiration of the fluid in which they are immersed, that is, of
ether." Most likely, continues our scientific author, the physiological
functions of the ether-folk are confined to respiration, and that it is
possible to breathe "without numerous organs is proved by the fact that
in all of a whole class of animals--the batrachians--the mere bare skin
constitutes the whole machinery of respiration" (p. 95). Allowing for
the unfortunate slip of the pen by which "batrachians" are substituted
for "fresh-water polyps," how can we fail to admire the severity of the
scientific method employed in reaching these interesting conclusions?

But the King of Serendib must die, nor will the relentless scythe of
Time spare our Etherians, with all their exalted attributes. They will
die repeatedly; and after having through sundry periods of probation
attained spiritual perfection, they will all pour into the sun. Since
it is the sun which originates life and feeling and thought upon the
surface of our earth, "why may we not declare that the rays transmitted
by the sun to the earth and the other planets are nothing more nor less
than the emanations of these souls?" And now we may begin to form an
adequate conception, of the rigorously scientific character of our
author's method. There have been many hypotheses by which to account for
the supply of solar radiance. One of the most ingenious and probable
of these hypotheses is that of Helmholtz, according to which the
solar radiance is due to the arrested motion of the sun's constituent
particles toward their common centre of gravity. But this is too
fanciful to satisfy M. Figuier. The speculations of Helmholtz "have
the disadvantage of resting on the idea of the sun's nebulosity,--an
hypothesis which would need to be more closely examined before serving
as a basis for so important a deduction." Accordingly, M. Figuier
propounds an explanation which possesses the signal advantage that there
is nothing hypothetical in it. "In our opinion, the solar radiation is
sustained by the continual influx of souls into the sun." This, as the
reader will perceive, is the well-known theory of Mayer, that the solar
heat is due to a perennial bombardment of the sun by meteors, save that,
in place of gross materialistic meteors, M. Figuier puts ethereal souls.
The ether-folk are daily raining into the solar orb in untold millions,
and to the unceasing concussion is due the radiation which maintains
life in the planets, and thus the circle is complete.

In spite of their exalted position, the ether-folk do not disdain to
mingle with the affairs of terrestrial mortals. They give us counsel
in dreams, and it is from this source, we presume, that our author has
derived his rigid notions as to scientific method. In evidence of this
dream-theory we have the usual array of cases, "a celebrated journalist,
M. R----," "M. L----, a lawyer," etc., etc., as in most books of this
kind.

M. Figuier is not a Darwinian: the derivation of our bodies from the
bodies of apes is a conception too grossly materialistic for him. Our
souls, however, he is quite willing to derive from the souls of lower
animals. Obviously we have pre-existed; how are we to account for
Mozart's precocity save by supposing his pre-existence? He brought with
him the musical skill acquired in a previous life. In general, the souls
of musical children come from nightingales, while the souls of great
architects have passed into them from beavers (p. 247). We do not
remember these past existences, it is true; but when we become
ether-folk, we shall be able to look back in recollection over the whole
series.

Amid these sublime inquiries, M. Figuier is sometimes notably oblivious
of humbler truths, as might indeed be expected. Thus he repeatedly
alludes to Locke as the author of the doctrine of innate ideas (!!),
[14] and he informs us that Kepler never quitted Protestant England (p.
336), though we believe that the nearest Kepler ever came to living in
England was the refusing of Sir Henry Wotton's request that he should
move thither.

 [14] Pages 251, 252, 287. So in the twenty-first century some
avatar of M. Figuier will perhaps describe the late professor Agassiz as
the author of the Darwinian theory.


And lastly, we are treated to a real dialogue, with quite a dramatic
mise en scene. The author's imaginary friend, Theophilus, enters, "seats
himself in a comfortable chair, places an ottoman under his feet, a
book under his elbow to support it, and a cigarette of Turkish tobacco
between his lips, and sets himself to the task of listening with a
grave air of collectedness, relieved by a certain touch of suspicious
severity, as becomes the arbiter in a literary and philosophic matter."
"And so," begins our author, "you wish to know, my dear Theophilus,
WHERE I LOCATE GOD? I locate him in the centre of the universe, or, in
better phrase, at the central focus, which must exist somewhere, of all
the stars that make the universe, and which, borne onward in a common
movement, gravitate together around this focus."

Much more, of an equally scientific character, follows; but in fairness
to the reader, who is already blaming us for wasting the precious
moments over such sorry trash, we may as well conclude our sketch of
this new line of speculation.

     May, 1872.




III. THE JESUS OF HISTORY. [15]

 [15] The Jesus of History. Anonymous. 8vo. pp. 426. London:
Williams & Norgate, 1869.

Vie de Jesus, par Ernest Renan. Paris, 1867. (Thirteenth edition,
revised and partly rewritten.)

In republishing this and the following article on "The Christ of Dogma,"
I am aware that they do but scanty justice to their very interesting
subjects. So much ground is covered that it would be impossible to treat
it satisfactorily in a pair of review-articles; and in particular the
views adopted with regard to the New Testament literature are rather
indicated than justified. These defects I hope to remedy in a future
work on "Jesus of Nazareth, and the Founding of Christianity," for
which the present articles must be regarded as furnishing only a few
introductory hints. This work has been for several years on my mind,
but as it may still be long before I can find the leisure needful for
writing it out, it seemed best to republish these preliminary sketches
which have been some time out of print. The projected work, however,
while covering all the points here treated, will have a much wider
scope, dealing on the one hand with the natural genesis of the complex
aggregate of beliefs and aspirations known as Christianity, and on
the other hand with the metamorphoses which are being wrought in this
aggregate by modern knowledge and modern theories of the world.

The views adopted in the present essay as to the date of the Synoptic
Gospels may seem over-conservative to those who accept the ably-argued
conclusions of "Supernatural Religion." Quite possibly in a more
detailed discussion these briefly-indicated data may require revision;
but for the present it seems best to let the article stand as it was
written. The author of "Supernatural Religion" would no doubt admit
that, even if the synoptic gospels had not assumed their present form
before the end of the second century, nevertheless the body of tradition
contained in them had been committed to writing very early in that
century. So much appears to be proved by the very variations of text
upon which his argument relies. And if this be granted, the value of the
synoptics as HISTORICAL evidence is not materially altered. With their
value as testimony to so-called SUPERNATURAL events, the present essay
is in no way concerned.


Of all the great founders of religions, Jesus is at once the best known
and the least known to the modern scholar. From the dogmatic point of
view he is the best known, from the historic point of view he is the
least known. The Christ of dogma is in every lineament familiar to us
from early childhood; but concerning the Jesus of history we possess
but few facts resting upon trustworthy evidence, and in order to form
a picture of him at once consistent, probable, and distinct in
its outlines, it is necessary to enter upon a long and difficult
investigation, in the course of which some of the most delicate
apparatus of modern criticism is required. This circumstance is
sufficiently singular to require especial explanation. The case of
Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, which may perhaps be cited as
parallel, is in reality wholly different. Not only did Sakyamuni live
five centuries earlier than Jesus, among a people that have at no time
possessed the art of insuring authenticity in their records of events,
and at an era which is at best but dimly discerned through the mists of
fable and legend, but the work which he achieved lies wholly out of
the course of European history, and it is only in recent times that his
career has presented itself to us as a problem needing to be solved.
Jesus, on the other hand, appeared in an age which is familiarly and in
many respects minutely known to us, and among a people whose fortunes we
can trace with historic certainty for at least seven centuries previous
to his birth; while his life and achievements have probably had a
larger share in directing the entire subsequent intellectual and moral
development of Europe than those of any other man who has ever lived.
Nevertheless, the details of his personal career are shrouded in an
obscurity almost as dense as that which envelops the life of the remote
founder of Buddhism.

This phenomenon, however, appears less strange and paradoxical when we
come to examine it more closely. A little reflection will disclose to
us several good reasons why the historical records of the life of Jesus
should be so scanty as they are. In the first place, the activity of
Jesus was private rather than public. Confined within exceedingly narrow
limits, both of space and of duration, it made no impression whatever
upon the politics or the literature of the time. His name does not
occur in the pages of any contemporary writer, Roman, Greek, or Jewish.
Doubtless the case would have been wholly different, had he, like
Mohammed, lived to a ripe age, and had the exigencies of his peculiar
position as the Messiah of the Jewish people brought him into relations
with the Empire; though whether, in such case, the success of his grand
undertaking would have been as complete as it has actually been, may
well be doubted.

Secondly, Jesus did not, like Mohammed and Paul, leave behind him
authentic writings which might serve to throw light upon his mental
development as well as upon the external facts of his career. Without
the Koran and the four genuine Epistles of Paul, we should be nearly as
much in the dark concerning these great men as we now are concerning the
historical Jesus. We should be compelled to rely, in the one case, upon
the untrustworthy gossip of Mussulman chroniclers, and in the other
case upon the garbled statements of the "Acts of the Apostles," a book
written with a distinct dogmatic purpose, sixty or seventy years after
the occurrence of the events which it professes to record.

It is true, many of the words of Jesus, preserved by hearsay tradition
through the generation immediately succeeding his death, have come
down to us, probably with little alteration, in the pages of the three
earlier evangelists. These are priceless data, since, as we shall see,
they are almost the only materials at our command for forming even a
partial conception of the character of Jesus' work. Nevertheless, even
here the cautious inquirer has only too often to pause in face of the
difficulty of distinguishing the authentic utterances of the great
teacher from the later interpolations suggested by the dogmatic
necessities of the narrators. Bitterly must the historian regret
that Jesus had no philosophic disciple, like Xenophon, to record his
Memorabilia. Of the various writings included in the New Testament, the
Apocalypse alone (and possibly the Epistle of Jude) is from the pen of
a personal acquaintance of Jesus; and besides this, the four epistles of
Paul, to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, make up the sum of the
writings from which we may expect contemporary testimony. Yet from these
we obtain absolutely nothing of that for which we are seeking. The brief
writings of Paul are occupied exclusively with the internal significance
of Jesus' work. The epistle of Jude--if it be really written by Jesus'
brother of that name, which is doubtful--is solely a polemic directed
against the innovations of Paul. And the Apocalypse, the work of
the fiery and imaginative disciple John, is confined to a prophetic
description of the Messiah's anticipated return, and tells us nothing
concerning the deeds of that Messiah while on the earth.

Here we touch upon our third consideration,--the consideration which
best enables us to see why the historic notices of Jesus are so meagre.
Rightly considered, the statement with which we opened this article
is its own explanation. The Jesus of history is so little known just
because the Christ of dogma is so well known. [16] Other teachers--Paul,
Mohammed, Sakyamuni--have come merely as preachers of righteousness,
speaking in the name of general principles with which their own
personalities were not directly implicated. But Jesus, as we shall see,
before the close of his life, proclaimed himself to be something more
than a preacher of righteousness. He announced himself--and justly, from
his own point of view--as the long-expected Messiah sent by Jehovah to
liberate the Jewish race. Thus the success of his religious teachings
became at once implicated with the question of his personal nature and
character. After the sudden and violent termination of his career, it
immediately became all-important with his followers to prove that he
was really the Messiah, and to insist upon the certainty of his speedy
return to the earth. Thus the first generation of disciples dogmatized
about him, instead of narrating his life,--a task which to them would
have seemed of little profit. For them the all-absorbing object of
contemplation was the immediate future rather than the immediate past.
As all the earlier Christian literature informs us, for nearly a century
after the death of Jesus, his followers lived in daily anticipation of
his triumphant return to the earth. The end of all things being so near
at hand, no attempt was made to insure accurate and complete memoirs
for the use of a posterity which was destined, in Christian imagination,
never to arrive. The first Christians wrote but little; even Papias,
at the end of a century, preferring second-hand or third-hand oral
tradition to the written gospels which were then beginning to come into
circulation. [17] Memoirs of the life and teachings of Jesus were called
forth by the necessity of having a written standard of doctrine to which
to appeal amid the growing differences of opinion which disturbed the
Church. Thus the earlier gospels exhibit, though in different degrees,
the indications of a modifying, sometimes of an overruling dogmatic
purpose. There is, indeed, no conscious violation of historic truth, but
from the varied mass of material supplied by tradition, such incidents
are selected as are fit to support the views of the writers concerning
the personality of Jesus. Accordingly, while the early gospels throw a
strong light upon the state of Christian opinion at the dates when they
were successively composed, the information which they give concerning
Jesus himself is, for that very reason, often vague, uncritical, and
contradictory. Still more is this true of the fourth gospel, written
late in the second century, in which historic tradition is moulded in
the interests of dogma until it becomes no longer recognizable, and
in the place of the human Messiah of the earlier accounts, we have a
semi-divine Logos or Aeon, detached from God, and incarnate for a brief
season in the likeness of man.

 [16] "Wer einmal vergottert worden ist, der hat seine Mensetheit
unwiederbringlich eingebusst."--Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube,
p. 76.

 [17] "Roger was the attendant of Thomas  [Becket] during his
sojourn at Pontigny. We might have expected him to be very full on that
part of his history; but, writing doubtless mainly for the monks of
Pontigny, he says that HE WILL NOT ENLARGE UPON WHAT EVERY ONE KNOWS,
and cuts that part very short."--Freeman, Historical Essays, 1st series,
p. 90.


Not only was history subordinated to dogma by the writers of the
gospel-narratives, but in the minds of the Fathers of the Church who
assisted in determining what writings should be considered canonical,
dogmatic prepossession went very much further than critical acumen.
Nor is this strange when we reflect that critical discrimination in
questions of literary authenticity is one of the latest acquisitions of
the cultivated human mind. In the early ages of the Church the evidence
of the genuineness of any literary production was never weighed
critically; writings containing doctrines acceptable to the majority of
Christians were quoted as authoritative while writings which supplied
no dogmatic want were overlooked, or perhaps condemned as apocryphal.
A striking instance of this is furnished by the fortunes of the
Apocalypse. Although perhaps the best authenticated work in the New
Testament collection, its millenarian doctrines caused it to become
unpopular as the Church gradually ceased to look for the speedy return
of the Messiah, and, accordingly, as the canon assumed a definite shape,
it was placed among the "Antilegomena," or doubtful books, and continued
to hold a precarious position until after the time of the Protestant
Reformation. On the other hand, the fourth gospel, which was quite
unknown and probably did not exist at the time of the Quartodeciman
controversy (A. D. 168), was accepted with little hesitation, and at the
beginning of the third century is mentioned by Irenaeus, Clement, and
Tertullian, as the work of the Apostle John. To this uncritical spirit,
leading to the neglect of such books as failed to answer the dogmatic
requirements of the Church, may probably be attributed the loss of so
many of the earlier gospels. It is doubtless for this reason that we
do not possess the Aramaean original of the "Logia" of Matthew, or
the "Memorabilia" of Mark, the companion of Peter,--two works to which
Papias (A. D. 120) alludes as containing authentic reports of the
utterances of Jesus.

These considerations will, we believe, sufficiently explain the curious
circumstance that, while we know the Christ of dogma so intimately,
we know the Jesus of history so slightly. The literature of early
Christianity enables us to trace with tolerable completeness the
progress of opinion concerning the nature of Jesus, from the time of
Paul's early missions to the time of the Nicene Council; but upon the
actual words and deeds of Jesus it throws a very unsteady light. The
dogmatic purpose everywhere obscures the historic basis.

This same dogmatic prepossession which has rendered the data for
a biography of Jesus so scanty and untrustworthy, has also until
comparatively recent times prevented any unbiassed critical examination
of such data as we actually possess. Previous to the eighteenth century
any attempt to deal with the life of Jesus upon purely historical
methods would have been not only contemned as irrational, but
stigmatized as impious. And even in the eighteenth century, those
writers who had become wholly emancipated from ecclesiastic tradition
were so destitute of all historic sympathy and so unskilled in
scientific methods of criticism, that they utterly failed to comprehend
the requirements of the problem. Their aims were in the main polemic,
not historical. They thought more of overthrowing current dogmas than of
impartially examining the earliest Christian literature with a view of
eliciting its historic contents; and, accordingly, they accomplished but
little. Two brilliant exceptions must, however, be noticed. Spinoza, in
the seventeenth century, and Lessing, in the eighteenth, were men far
in advance of their age. They are the fathers of modern historical
criticism; and to Lessing in particular, with his enormous erudition and
incomparable sagacity, belongs the honour of initiating that method of
inquiry which, in the hands of the so-called Tubingen School, has led to
such striking and valuable conclusions concerning, the age and character
of all the New Testament literature. But it was long before any one
could be found fit to bend the bow which Lessing and Spinoza had
wielded. A succession of able scholars--Semler, Eichhorn, Paulus,
Schleiermacher Bretschneider, and De Wette--were required to examine,
with German patience and accuracy, the details of the subject, and
to propound various untenable hypotheses, before such a work could be
performed as that of Strauss. The "Life of Jesus," published by Strauss
when only twenty-six years of age, is one of the monumental works of the
nineteenth century, worthy to rank, as a historical effort, along with
such books as Niebuhr's "History of Rome," Wolf's "Prolegomena," or
Bentley's "Dissertations on Phalaris." It instantly superseded and
rendered antiquated everything which had preceded it; nor has any work
on early Christianity been written in Germany for the past thirty years
which has not been dominated by the recollection of that marvellous
book. Nevertheless, the labours of another generation of scholars have
carried our knowledge of the New Testament literature far beyond the
point which it had reached when Strauss first wrote. At that time the
dates of but few of the New Testament writings had been fixed with any
approach to certainty; the age and character of the fourth gospel, the
genuineness of the Pauline epistles, even the mutual relations of the
three synoptics, were still undetermined; and, as a natural result of
this uncertainty, the progress of dogma during the first century was ill
understood. At the present day it is impossible to read the early work
of Strauss without being impressed with the necessity of obtaining
positive data as to the origin and dogmatic character of the New
Testament writings, before attempting to reach any conclusions as to the
probable career of Jesus. These positive data we owe to the genius
and diligence of the Tubingen School, and, above all, to its founder,
Ferdinand Christian Baur. Beginning with the epistles of Paul, of which
he distinguished four as genuine, Baur gradually worked his way through
the entire New Testament collection, detecting--with that inspired
insight which only unflinching diligence can impart to original
genius--the age at which each book was written, and the circumstances
which called it forth. To give any account of Baur's detailed
conclusions, or of the method by which he reached them, would require
a volume. They are very scantily presented in Mr. Mackay's work on the
"Tubingen School and its Antecedents," to which we may refer the reader
desirous of further information. We can here merely say that twenty
years of energetic controversy have only served to establish most of
Baur's leading conclusions more firmly than ever. The priority of the
so-called gospel of Matthew, the Pauline purpose of "Luke," the second
in date of our gospels, the derivative and second-hand character of
"Mark," and the unapostolic origin of the fourth gospel, are points
which may for the future be regarded as wellnigh established by
circumstantial evidence. So with respect to the pseudo-Pauline epistles,
Baur's work was done so thoroughly that the only question still left
open for much discussion is that concerning the date and authorship
of the first and second "Thessalonians,"--a point of quite inferior
importance, so far as our present subject is concerned. Seldom have such
vast results been achieved by the labour of a single scholar. Seldom has
any historical critic possessed such a combination of analytic and
of co-ordinating powers as Baur. His keen criticism and his wonderful
flashes of insight exercise upon the reader a truly poetic effect like
that which is felt in contemplating the marvels of physical discovery.

The comprehensive labours of Baur were followed up by Zeller's able work
on the "Acts of the Apostles," in which that book was shown to have been
partly founded upon documents written by Luke, or some other companion
of Paul, and expanded and modified by a much later writer with the
purpose of covering up the traces of the early schism between the
Pauline and the Petrine sections of the Church. Along with this,
Schwegler's work on the "Post-Apostolic Times" deserves mention as
clearing up many obscure points relating to the early development
of dogma. Finally, the "New Life of Jesus," by Strauss, adopting and
utilizing the principal discoveries of Baur and his followers, and
combining all into one grand historical picture, worthily completes the
task which the earlier work of the same author had inaugurated.

The reader will have noticed that, with the exception of Spinoza, every
one of the names above cited in connection with the literary analysis
and criticism of the New Testament is the name of a German. Until
within the last decade, Germany has indeed possessed almost an absolute
monopoly of the science of Biblical criticism; other countries having
remained not only unfamiliar with its methods, but even grossly ignorant
of its conspicuous results, save when some German treatise of more than
ordinary popularity has now and then been translated. But during
the past ten years France has entered the lists; and the writings of
Reville, Reuss, Nicolas, D'Eichthal, Scherer, and Colani testify to the
rapidity with which the German seed has fructified upon her soil. [18]

 [18] But now, in annexing Alsace, Germany has "annexed" pretty
much the whole of this department of French scholarship,--a curious
incidental consequence of the late war.


None of these books, however, has achieved such wide-spread celebrity,
or done so much toward interesting the general public in this class
of historical inquiries, as the "Life of Jesus," by Renan. This
pre-eminence of fame is partly, but not wholly, deserved. From a purely
literary point of view, Renan's work doubtless merits all the celebrity
it has gained. Its author writes a style such as is perhaps surpassed by
that of no other living Frenchman. It is by far the most readable book
which has ever been written concerning the life of Jesus. And no doubt
some of its popularity is due to its very faults, which, from a critical
point of view, are neither few nor small. For Renan is certainly very
faulty, as a historical critic, when he practically ignores the extreme
meagreness of our positive knowledge of the career of Jesus, and
describes scene after scene in his life as minutely and with as much
confidence as if he had himself been present to witness it all. Again
and again the critical reader feels prompted to ask, How do you know all
this? or why, out of two or three conflicting accounts, do you
quietly adopt some particular one, as if its superior authority were
self-evident? But in the eye of the uncritical reader, these defects are
excellences; for it is unpleasant to be kept in ignorance when we are
seeking after definite knowledge, and it is disheartening to read page
after page of an elaborate discussion which ends in convincing us that
definite knowledge cannot be gained.

In the thirteenth edition of the "Vie de Jesus," Renan has corrected
some of the most striking errors of the original work, and in particular
has, with praiseworthy candour, abandoned his untenable position with
regard to the age and character of the fourth gospel. As is well known,
Renan, in his earlier editions, ascribed to this gospel a historical
value superior to that of the synoptics, believing it to have been
written by an eyewitness of the events which it relates; and from this
source, accordingly, he drew the larger share of his materials. Now,
if there is any one conclusion concerning the New Testament literature
which must be regarded as incontrovertibly established by the labours of
a whole generation of scholars, it is this, that the fourth gospel was
utterly unknown until about A. D. 170, that it was written by some
one who possessed very little direct knowledge of Palestine, that its
purpose was rather to expound a dogma than to give an accurate record of
events, and that as a guide to the comprehension of the career of
Jesus it is of far less value than the three synoptic gospels. It
is impossible, in a brief review like the present, to epitomize the
evidence upon which this conclusion rests, which may more profitably
be sought in the Rev. J. J. Tayler's work on "The Fourth Gospel," or
in Davidson's "Introduction to the New Testament." It must suffice to
mention that this gospel is not cited by Papias; that Justin, Marcion,
and Valentinus make no allusion to it, though, since it furnishes so
much that is germane to their views, they would gladly have appealed
to it, had it been in existence, when those views were as yet under
discussion; and that, finally, in the great Quartodeciman controversy,
A. D. 168, the gospel is not only not mentioned, but the authority of
John is cited by Polycarp in flat contradiction of the view afterwards
taken by this evangelist. Still more, the assumption of Renan led at
once into complicated difficulties with reference to the Apocalypse. The
fourth gospel, if it does not unmistakably announce itself as the work
of John, at least professes to be Johannine; and it cannot for a moment
be supposed that such a book, making such claims, could have gained
currency during John's lifetime without calling forth his indignant
protest. For, in reality, no book in the New Testament collection would
so completely have shocked the prejudices of the Johannine party. John's
own views are well known to us from the Apocalypse. John was the most
enthusiastic of millenarians and the most narrow and rigid of Judaizers.
In his antagonism to the Pauline innovations he went farther than Peter
himself. Intense hatred of Paul and his followers appears in several
passages of the Apocalypse, where they are stigmatized as "Nicolaitans,"
"deceivers of the people," "those who say they are apostles and are
not," "eaters of meat offered to idols," "fornicators," "pretended
Jews," "liars," "synagogue of Satan," etc. (Chap. II.). On the other
hand, the fourth gospel contains nothing millenarian or Judaical; it
carries Pauline universalism to a far greater extent than Paul himself
ventured to carry it, even condemning the Jews as children of darkness,
and by implication contrasting them unfavourably with the Gentiles;
and it contains a theory of the nature of Jesus which the Ebionitish
Christians, to whom John belonged, rejected to the last.

In his present edition Renan admits the insuperable force of these
objections, and abandons his theory of the apostolic origin of the
fourth gospel. And as this has necessitated the omission or alteration
of all such passages as rested upon the authority of that gospel, the
book is to a considerable extent rewritten, and the changes are such as
greatly to increase its value as a history of Jesus. Nevertheless, the
author has so long been in the habit of shaping his conceptions of the
career of Jesus by the aid of the fourth gospel, that it has become
very difficult for him to pass freely to another point of view. He still
clings to the hypothesis that there is an element of historic tradition
contained in the book, drawn from memorial writings which had perhaps
been handed down from John, and which were inaccessible to the
synoptists. In a very interesting appendix, he collects the evidence
in favour of this hypothesis, which indeed is not without plausibility,
since there is every reason for supposing that the gospel was written at
Ephesus, which a century before had been John's place of residence. But
even granting most of Renan's assumptions, it must still follow that the
authority of this gospel is far inferior to that of the synoptics, and
can in no case be very confidently appealed to. The question is one
of the first importance to the historian of early Christianity. In
inquiring into the life of Jesus, the very first thing to do is to
establish firmly in the mind the true relations of the fourth gospel to
the first three. Until this has been done, no one is competent to write
on the subject; and it is because he has done this so imperfectly,
that Renan's work is, from a critical point of view, so imperfectly
successful.

The anonymous work entitled "The Jesus of History," which we have placed
at the head of this article, is in every respect noteworthy as the first
systematic attempt made in England to follow in the footsteps of German
criticism in writing a life of Jesus. We know of no good reason why
the book should be published anonymously; for as a historical essay it
possesses extraordinary merit, and does great credit not only to its
author, but to English scholarship and acumen. [19] It is not, indeed,
a book calculated to captivate the imagination of the reading public.
Though written in a clear, forcible, and often elegant style, it
possesses no such wonderful rhetorical charm as the work of Renan;
and it will probably never find half a dozen readers where the "Vie de
Jesus" has found a hundred. But the success of a book of this sort is
not to be measured by its rhetorical excellence, or by its adaptation to
the literary tastes of an uncritical and uninstructed public, but rather
by the amount of critical sagacity which it brings to bear upon the
elucidation of the many difficult and disputed points in the subject of
which it treats. Measured by this standard, "The Jesus of History" must
rank very high indeed. To say that it throws more light upon the career
of Jesus than any work which has ever before been written in English
would be very inadequate praise, since the English language has been
singularly deficient in this branch of historical literature. We shall
convey a more just idea of its merits if we say that it will bear
comparison with anything which even Germany has produced, save only the
works of Strauss, Baur, and Zeller.

 [19] "The Jesus of History" is now known to have been written by
Sir Richard Hanson, Chief Justice of South Australia.


The fitness of our author for the task which he has undertaken is shown
at the outset by his choice of materials. In basing his conclusions
almost exclusively upon the statements contained in the first gospel, he
is upheld by every sound principle of criticism. The times and places
at which our three synoptic gospels were written have been, through the
labours of the Tubingen critics, determined almost to a certainty. Of
the three, "Mark" is unquestionably the latest; with the exception of
about twenty verses, it is entirely made up from "Matthew" and "Luke,"
the diverse Petrine and Pauline tendencies of which it strives to
neutralize in conformity to the conciliatory disposition of the Church
at Rome, at the epoch at which this gospel was written, about A. D. 130.
The third gospel was also written at Rome, some fifteen years earlier.
In the preface, its author describes it as a compilation from previously
existing written materials. Among these materials was certainly the
first gospel, several passages of which are adopted word for word by the
author of "Luke." Yet the narrative varies materially from that of the
first gospel in many essential points. The arrangement of events is
less natural, and, as in the "Acts of the Apostles," by the same author,
there is apparent throughout the design of suppressing the old
discord between Paul and the Judaizing disciples, and of representing
Christianity as essentially Pauline from the outset. How far Paul was
correct in his interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, it is difficult
to decide. It is, no doubt, possible that the first gospel may have lent
to the words of Jesus an Ebionite colouring in some instances, and that
now and then the third gospel may present us with a truer account.
To this supremely important point we shall by and by return. For the
present it must suffice to observe that the evidences of an overruling
dogmatic purpose are generally much more conspicuous in the third
synoptist than in the first; and that the very loose manner in which
this writer has handled his materials in the "Acts" is not calculated to
inspire us with confidence in the historical accuracy of his gospel.
The writer who, in spite of the direct testimony of Paul himself could
represent the apostle to the Gentiles as acting under the direction of
the disciples at Jerusalem, and who puts Pauline sentiments into the
mouth of Peter, would certainly have been capable of unwarrantably
giving a Pauline turn to the teachings of Jesus himself. We are
therefore, as a last resort, brought back to the first gospel, which we
find to possess, as a historical narrative, far stronger claims upon our
attention than the second and third. In all probability it had assumed
nearly its present shape before A. D. 100, its origin is unmistakably
Palestinian; it betrays comparatively few indications of dogmatic
purpose; and there are strong reasons for believing that the speeches of
Jesus recorded in it are in substance taken from the genuine "Logia" of
Matthew mentioned by Papias, which must have been written as early as A.
D. 60-70, before the destruction of Jerusalem. Indeed, we are inclined
to agree with our author that the gospel, even in its present shape
(save only a few interpolated passages), may have existed as early as
A. D. 80, since it places the time of Jesus' second coming immediately
after the destruction of Jerusalem; whereas the third evangelist, who
wrote forty-five years after that event, is careful to tell us, "The
end is NOT immediately." Moreover, it must have been written while the
Paulo-Petrine controversy was still raging, as is shown by the parable
of the "enemy who sowed the tares," which manifestly refers to Paul, and
also by the allusions to "false prophets" (vii. 15), to those who say
"Lord, Lord," and who "cast out demons in the name of the Lord" (vii.
21-23), teaching men to break the commandments (v. 17-20). There is,
therefore, good reason for believing that we have here a narrative
written not much more than fifty years after the death of Jesus,
based partly upon the written memorials of an apostle, and in the main
trustworthy, save where it relates occurrences of a marvellous and
legendary character. Such is our author's conclusion, and in describing
the career of the Jesus of history, he relies almost exclusively upon
the statements contained in the first gospel. Let us now after this long
but inadequate introduction, give a brief sketch of the life of Jesus,
as it is to be found in our author.


Concerning the time and place of the birth of Jesus, we know next to
nothing. According to uniform tradition, based upon a statement of the
third gospel, he was about thirty years of age at the time when he began
teaching. The same gospel states, with elaborate precision, that
the public career of John the Baptist began in the fifteenth year of
Tiberius, or A. D. 28. In the winter of A. D. 35-36, Pontius Pilate was
recalled from Judaea, so that the crucifixion could not have taken place
later than in the spring of 35. Thus we have a period of about six years
during which the ministry of Jesus must have begun and ended; and if the
tradition with respect to his age be trustworthy, we shall not be far
out of the way in supposing him to have been born somewhere between B.
C. 5 and A. D. 5. He is everywhere alluded to in the gospels as Jesus
of Nazareth in Galilee, where lived also his father, mother brothers and
sisters, and where very likely he was born. His parents' names are
said to have been Joseph and Mary. His own name is a Hellenized form of
Joshua, a name very common among the Jews. According to the first gospel
(xiii. 55), he had four brothers,--Joseph and Simon; James, who was
afterwards one of the heads of the church at Jerusalem, and the most
formidable enemy of Paul; and Judas or Jude, who is perhaps the author
of the anti-Pauline epistle commonly ascribed to him.

Of the early youth of Jesus, and of the circumstances which guided his
intellectual development, we know absolutely nothing, nor have we the
data requisite for forming any plausible hypothesis. He first appears
in history about A. D. 29 or 30, in connection with a very remarkable
person whom the third evangelist describes as his cousin, and who
seems, from his mode of life, to have been in some way connected with or
influenced by the Hellenizing sect of Essenes. Here we obtain our first
clew to guide us in forming a consecutive theory of the development of
Jesus' opinions. The sect of Essenes took its rise in the time of the
Maccabees, about B. C. 170. Upon the fundamental doctrines of Judaism it
had engrafted many Pythagorean notions, and was doubtless in the time of
Jesus instrumental in spreading Greek ideas among the people of Galilee,
where Judaism was far from being so narrow and rigid as at Jerusalem.
The Essenes attached but little importance to the Messianic expectations
of the Pharisees, and mingled scarcely at all in national politics.
They lived for the most part a strictly ascetic life, being indeed the
legitimate predecessors of the early Christian hermits and monks. But
while pre-eminent for sanctity of life, they heaped ridicule upon the
entire sacrificial service of the Temple, despised the Pharisees as
hypocrites, and insisted upon charity toward all men instead of the old
Jewish exclusiveness.

It was once a favourite theory that both John the Baptist and Jesus were
members of the Essenian brotherhood; but that theory is now generally
abandoned. Whatever may have been the case with John, who is said to
have lived like an anchorite in the desert, there seems to have been but
little practical Essenism in Jesus, who is almost uniformly represented
as cheerful and social in demeanour, and against whom it was expressly
urged that he came eating and drinking, making no presence of
puritanical holiness. He was neither a puritan, like the Essenes, nor a
ritualist, like the Pharisees. Besides which, both John and Jesus seem
to have begun their careers by preaching the un-Essene doctrine of the
speedy advent of the "kingdom of heaven," by which is meant the reign of
the Messiah upon the earth. Nevertheless, though we cannot regard Jesus
as actually a member of the Essenian community or sect, we can hardly
avoid the conclusion that he, as well as John the Baptist, had been at
some time strongly influenced by Essenian doctrines. The spiritualized
conception of the "kingdom of heaven" proclaimed by him was just what
would naturally and logically arise from a remodelling of the Messianic
theories of the Pharisees in conformity to advanced Essenian notions. It
seems highly probable that some such refined conception of the functions
of the Messiah was reached by John, who, stigmatizing the Pharisees and
Sadducees as a "generation of vipers," called aloud to the people to
repent of their sins, in view of the speedy advent of the Messiah, and
to testify to their repentance by submitting to the Essenian rite of
baptism. There is no positive evidence that Jesus was ever a disciple
of John; yet the account of the baptism, in spite of the legendary
character of its details, seems to rest upon a historical basis; and
perhaps the most plausible hypothesis which can be framed is, that Jesus
received baptism at John's hands, became for a while his disciple, and
acquired from him a knowledge of Essenian doctrines.

The career of John seems to have been very brief. His stern puritanism
brought him soon into disgrace with the government of Galilee. He was
seized by Herod, thrown into prison, and beheaded. After the brief hints
given as to the intercourse between Jesus and John, we next hear of
Jesus alone in the desert, where, like Sakyamuni and Mohammed, he may
have brooded in solitude over his great project. Yet we do not find that
he had as yet formed any distinct conception of his own Messiahship.
The total neglect of chronology by our authorities [20] renders it
impossible to trace the development of his thoughts step by step; but
for some time after John's catastrophe we find him calling upon the
people to repent, in view of the speedy approach of the Messiah,
speaking with great and commanding personal authority, but using no
language which would indicate that he was striving to do more than
worthily fill the place and add to the good work of his late master. The
Sermon on the Mount, which the first gospel inserts in this place, was
perhaps never spoken as a continuous discourse; but it no doubt for the
most part contains the very words of Jesus, and represents the general
spirit of his teaching during this earlier portion of his career. In
this is contained nearly all that has made Christianity so powerful in
the domain of ethics. If all the rest of the gospel were taken away,
or destroyed in the night of some future barbarian invasion, we should
still here possess the secret of the wonderful impression which Jesus
made upon those who heard him speak. Added to the Essenian scorn of
Pharisaic formalism, and the spiritualized conception of the Messianic
kingdom, which Jesus may probably have shared with John the Baptist, we
have here for the first time the distinctively Christian conception
of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men, which ultimately
insured the success of the new religion. The special point of
originality in Jesus was his conception of Deity. As Strauss well says,
"He conceived of God, in a moral point of view, as being identical in
character with himself in the most exalted moments of his religious
life, and strengthened in turn his own religious life by this ideal. But
the most exalted religious tendency in his own consciousness was exactly
that comprehensive love, overpowering the evil only by the good, which
he therefore transferred to God as the fundamental tendency of His
nature." From this conception of God, observes Zeller, flowed naturally
all the moral teaching of Jesus, the insistence upon spiritual
righteousness instead of the mere mechanical observance of Mosaic
precepts, the call to be perfect even as the Father is perfect, the
principle of the spiritual equality of men before God, and the equal
duties of all men toward each other.

 [20] "The biographers  [of Becket] are commonly rather careless as
to the order of time. Each.... recorded what struck him most or what
he best knew, one set down one event and another; and none of them paid
much regard to the order of details."--Freeman, Historical Essays, 1st
series, p. 94.


How far, in addition to these vitally important lessons, Jesus may have
taught doctrines of an ephemeral or visionary character, it is very
difficult to decide. We are inclined to regard the third gospel as
of some importance in settling this point. The author of that gospel
represents Jesus as decidedly hostile to the rich. Where Matthew has
"Blessed are the poor in spirit," Luke has "Blessed are ye poor." In
the first gospel we read, "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after
righteousness, for they will be filled"; but in the third gospel we
find, "Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye will be filled"; and this
assurance is immediately followed by the denunciation, "Woe to you that
are rich, for ye have received your consolation! Woe to you that
are full now, for ye will hunger." The parable of Dives and Lazarus
illustrates concretely this view of the case, which is still further
corroborated by the account, given in both the first and the third
gospels, of the young man who came to seek everlasting life. Jesus here
maintains that righteousness is insufficient unless voluntary poverty be
superadded. Though the young man has strictly fulfilled the greatest of
the commandments,--to love his neighbour as himself,--he is required, as
a needful proof of his sincerity, to distribute all his vast possessions
among the poor. And when he naturally manifests a reluctance to perform
so superfluous a sacrifice, Jesus observes that it will be easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to share
in the glories of the anticipated Messianic kingdom. It is difficult to
escape the conclusion that we have here a very primitive and probably
authentic tradition; and when we remember the importance which,
according to the "Acts," the earliest disciples attached to the
principle of communism, as illustrated in the legend of Ananias and
Sapphira, we must admit strong reasons for believing that Jesus himself
held views which tended toward the abolition of private property.
On this point, the testimony of the third evangelist singly is of
considerable weight; since at the time when he wrote, the communistic
theories of the first generation of Christians had been generally
abandoned, and in the absence of any dogmatic motives, he could only
have inserted these particular traditions because he believed them to
possess historical value. But we are not dependent on the third gospel
alone. The story just cited is attested by both our authorities, and is
in perfect keeping with the general views of Jesus as reported by the
first evangelist. Thus his disciples are enjoined to leave all, and
follow him; to take no thought for the morrow; to think no more of
laying up treasures on the earth, for in the Messianic kingdom they
shall have treasures in abundance, which can neither be wasted nor
stolen. On making their journeys, they are to provide neither money,
nor clothes, nor food, but are to live at the expense of those whom
they visit; and if any town refuse to harbour them, the Messiah, on his
arrival, will deal with that town more severely than Jehovah dealt with
the cities of the plain. Indeed, since the end of the world was to come
before the end of the generation then living (Matt. xxiv. 34; 1 Cor. xv.
51-56, vii. 29), there could be no need for acquiring property or making
arrangements for the future; even marriage became unnecessary. These
teachings of Jesus have a marked Essenian character, as well as his
declaration that in the Messianic kingdom there was to be no more
marriage, perhaps no distinction of sex (Matt. xxii. 30). The sect
of Ebionites, who represented the earliest doctrine and practice of
Christianity before it had been modified by Paul, differed from the
Essenes in no essential respect save in the acknowledgment of Jesus as
the Messiah, and the expectation of his speedy return to the earth.

How long, or with what success, Jesus continued to preach the coming
of the Messiah in Galilee, it is impossible to conjecture. His
fellow-townsmen of Nazareth appear to have ridiculed him in his
prophetical capacity; or, if we may trust the third evangelist, to have
arisen against him with indignation, and made an attempt upon his life.
To them he was but a carpenter, the son of a carpenter (Matt. xiii. 55;
Mark vi. 3), who told them disagreeable truths. Our author represents
his teaching in Galilee to have produced but little result, but the
gospel narratives afford no definite data for deciding this point. We
believe the most probable conclusion to be that Jesus did attract many
followers, and became famous throughout Galilee; for Herod is said to
have regarded him as John the Baptist risen from the grave. To escape
the malice of Herod, Jesus then retired to Syro-Phoenicia, and during
this eventful journey the consciousness of his own Messiahship seems for
the first time to have distinctly dawned upon him (Matt. xiv. 1, 13; xv.
21; xvi. 13-20). Already, it appears, speculations were rife as to
the character of this wonderful preacher. Some thought he was John the
Baptist, or perhaps one of the prophets of the Assyrian period returned
to the earth. Some, in accordance with a generally-received tradition,
supposed him to be Elijah, who had never seen death, and had now at last
returned from the regions above the firmament to announce the coming of
the Messiah in the clouds. It was generally admitted, among enthusiastic
hearers, that he who spake as never man spake before must have some
divine commission to execute. These speculations, coming to the ears of
Jesus during his preaching in Galilee, could not fail to excite in him
a train of self-conscious reflections. To him also must have been
presented the query as to his own proper character and functions;
and, as our author acutely demonstrates, his only choice lay between a
profitless life of exile in Syro-Phoenicia, and a bold return to
Jewish territory in some pronounced character. The problem being thus
propounded, there could hardly be a doubt as to what that character
should be. Jesus knew well that he was not John the Baptist; nor,
however completely he may have been dominated by his sublime enthusiasm,
was it likely that he could mistake himself for an ancient prophet
arisen from the lower world of shades, or for Elijah descended from
the sky. But the Messiah himself he might well be. Such indeed was the
almost inevitable corollary from his own conception of Messiahship.
We have seen that he had, probably from the very outset, discarded the
traditional notion of a political Messiah, and recognized the truth that
the happiness of a people lies not so much in political autonomy as in
the love of God and the sincere practice of righteousness. The people
were to be freed from the bondage of sin, of meaningless formalism, of
consecrated hypocrisy,--a bondage more degrading than the payment of
tribute to the emperor. The true business of the Messiah, then, was to
deliver his people from the former bondage; it might be left to Jehovah,
in his own good time, to deliver them from the latter. Holding these
views, it was hardly possible that it should not sooner or later occur
to Jesus that he himself was the person destined to discharge this
glorious function, to liberate his countrymen from the thraldom of
Pharisaic ritualism, and to inaugurate the real Messianic kingdom of
spiritual righteousness. Had he not already preached the advent of this
spiritual kingdom, and been instrumental in raising many to loftier
conceptions of duty, and to a higher and purer life? And might he
not now, by a grand attack upon Pharisaism in its central stronghold,
destroy its prestige in the eyes of the people, and cause Israel to
adopt a nobler religious and ethical doctrine? The temerity of such a
purpose detracts nothing from its sublimity. And if that purpose should
be accomplished, Jesus would really have performed the legitimate work
of the Messiah. Thus, from his own point of view, Jesus was thoroughly
consistent and rational in announcing himself as the expected Deliverer;
and in the eyes of the impartial historian his course is fully
justified.

"From that time," says the first evangelist, "Jesus began to show to his
disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from
the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be put to death, and rise
again on the third day." Here we have, obviously, the knowledge of the
writer, after the event, reflected back and attributed to Jesus. It
is of course impossible that Jesus should have predicted with such
definiteness his approaching death; nor is it very likely that he
entertained any hope of being raised from the grave "on the third day."
To a man in that age and country, the conception of a return from the
lower world of shades was not a difficult one to frame; and it may well
be that Jesus' sense of his own exalted position was sufficiently great
to inspire him with the confidence that, even in case of temporary
failure, Jehovah would rescue him from the grave and send him back
with larger powers to carry out the purpose of his mission. But
the difficulty of distinguishing between his own words and the
interpretation put upon them by his disciples becomes here insuperable;
and there will always be room for the hypothesis that Jesus had in
view no posthumous career of his own, but only expressed his unshaken
confidence in the success of his enterprise, even after and in spite of
his death.

At all events, the possibility of his death must now have been often in
his mind. He was undertaking a wellnigh desperate task,--to overthrow
the Pharisees in Jerusalem itself. No other alternative was left him.
And here we believe Mr. F. W. Newman to be singularly at fault in
pronouncing this attempt of Jesus upon Jerusalem a foolhardy attempt.
According to Mr. Newman, no man has any business to rush upon certain
death, and it is only a crazy fanatic who will do so. [21] But such
"glittering generalizations" will here help us but little. The historic
data show that to go to Jerusalem, even at the risk of death, was
absolutely necessary to the realization of Jesus' Messianic project.
Mr. Newman certainly would not have had him drag out an inglorious and
baffled existence in Syro-Phoenicia. If the Messianic kingdom was to be
fairly inaugurated, there was work to be done in Jerusalem, and Jesus
must go there as one in authority, cost what it might. We believe him to
have gone there in a spirit of grand and careless bravery, yet seriously
and soberly, and under the influence of no fanatical delusion. He
knew the risks, but deliberately chose to incur them, that the will of
Jehovah might be accomplished.

We next hear of Jesus travelling down to Jerusalem by way of Jericho,
and entering the sacred city in his character of Messiah, attended by a
great multitude. It was near the time of the Passover, when people from
all parts of Galilee and Judaea were sure to be at Jerusalem, and the
nature of his reception seems to indicate that he had already secured a
considerable number of followers upon whose assistance he might hope
to rely, though it nowhere appears that he intended to use other than
purely moral weapons to insure a favourable reception. We must remember
that for half a century many of the Jewish people had been constantly
looking for the arrival of the Messiah, and there can be little doubt
that the entry of Jesus riding upon an ass in literal fulfilment of
prophecy must have wrought powerfully upon the imagination of the
multitude. That the believers in him were very numerous must be
inferred from the cautious, not to say timid, behaviour of the rulers
at Jerusalem, who are represented as desiring to arrest him, but as
deterred from taking active steps through fear of the people. We are
led to the same conclusion by his driving the money-changers out of the
Temple; an act upon which he could hardly have ventured, had not the
popular enthusiasm in his favour been for the moment overwhelming. But
the enthusiasm of a mob is short-lived, and needs to be fed upon the
excitement of brilliant and dramatically arranged events. The calm
preacher of righteousness, or even the fiery denouncer of the scribes
and Pharisees, could not hope to retain undiminished authority save by
the display of extraordinary powers to which, so far as we know, Jesus
(like Mohammed) made no presence (Matt. xvi. 1-4). The ignorant and
materialistic populace could not understand the exalted conception of
Messiahship which had been formed by Jesus, and as day after day elapsed
without the appearance of any marvellous sign from Jehovah, their
enthusiasm must naturally have cooled down. Then the Pharisees appear
cautiously endeavouring to entrap him into admissions which might
render him obnoxious to the Roman governor. He saw through their design,
however, and foiled them by the magnificent repartee, "Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that
are God's." Nothing could more forcibly illustrate the completely
non-political character of his Messianic doctrines. Nevertheless, we
are told that, failing in this attempt, the chief priests suborned false
witnesses to testify against him: this Sabbath-breaker, this derider of
Mosaic formalism, who with his Messianic pretensions excited the people
against their hereditary teachers, must at all events be put out of the
way. Jesus must suffer the fate which society has too often had in store
for the reformer; the fate which Sokrates and Savonarola, Vanini
and Bruno, have suffered for being wiser than their own generation.
Messianic adventurers had already given much trouble to the Roman
authorities, who were not likely to scrutinize critically the peculiar
claims of Jesus. And when the chief priests accused him before Pilate
of professing to be "King of the Jews," this claim could in Roman
apprehension bear but one interpretation. The offence was treason,
punishable, save in the case of Roman citizens, by crucifixion.

 [21] Phases of Faith, pp. 158-164.


Such in its main outlines is the historic career of Jesus, as
constructed by our author from data furnished chiefly by the first
gospel. Connected with the narrative there are many interesting topics
of discussion, of which our rapidly diminishing space will allow us to
select only one for comment. That one is perhaps the most important of
all, namely, the question as to how far Jesus anticipated the views of
Paul in admitting Gentiles to share in the privileges of the Messianic
kingdom. Our author argues, with much force, that the designs of Jesus
were entirely confined to the Jewish people, and that it was Paul who
first, by admitting Gentiles to the Christian fold without requiring
them to live like Jews, gave to Christianity the character of a
universal religion. Our author reminds us that the third gospel is not
to be depended upon in determining this point, since it manifestly puts
Pauline sentiments into the mouth of Jesus, and in particular attributes
to Jesus an acquaintance with heretical Samaria which the first gospel
disclaims. He argues that the apostles were in every respect Jews, save
in their belief that Jesus was the Messiah; and he pertinently asks, if
James, who was the brother of Jesus, and Peter and John, who were his
nearest friends, unanimously opposed Paul and stigmatized him as a
liar and heretic, is it at all likely that Jesus had ever distinctly
sanctioned such views as Paul maintained?

In the course of many years' reflection upon this point, we have several
times been inclined to accept the narrow interpretation of Jesus'
teaching here indicated; yet, on the whole, we do not believe it
can ever be conclusively established. In the first place it must be
remembered that if the third gospel throws a Pauline colouring over
the events which it describes, the first gospel also shows a decidedly
anti-Pauline bias, and the one party was as likely as the other to
attribute its own views to Jesus himself. One striking instance of this
tendency has been pointed out by Strauss, who has shown that the verses
Matt. v. 17-20 are an interpolation. The person who teaches men to break
the commandments is undoubtedly Paul, and in order to furnish a text
against Paul's followers, the "Nicolaitans," Jesus is made to declare
that he came not to destroy one tittle of the law, but to fulfil
the whole in every particular. Such an utterance is in manifest
contradiction to the spirit of Jesus' teaching, as shown in the very
same chapter, and throughout a great part of the same gospel. He who
taught in his own name and not as the scribes, who proclaimed himself
Lord over the Sabbath, and who manifested from first to last a more than
Essenian contempt for rites and ceremonies, did not come to fulfil the
law of Mosaism, but to supersede it. Nor can any inference adverse to
this conclusion be drawn from the injunction to the disciples (Matt.
x. 5-7) not to preach to Gentiles and Samaritans, but only "to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel"; for this remark is placed before the
beginning of Jesus' Messianic career, and the reason assigned for the
restriction is merely that the disciples will not have time even to
preach to all the Jews before the coming of the Messiah, whose approach
Jesus was announcing (Matt. x. 23)

These examples show that we must use caution in weighing the testimony
even of the first gospel, and must not too hastily cite it as proof that
Jesus supposed his mission to be restricted to the Jews. When we come to
consider what happened a few years after the death of Jesus, we shall
be still less ready to insist upon the view defended by our anonymous
author. Paul, according to his own confession, persecuted the Christians
unto death. Now what, in the theories or in the practice of the Jewish
disciples of Jesus, could have moved Paul to such fanatic behaviour?
Certainly not their spiritual interpretation of Mosaism, for Paul
himself belonged to the liberal school of Gamaliel, to the views of
which the teachings and practices of Peter, James, and John might easily
be accommodated. Probably not their belief in Jesus as the Messiah,
for at the riot in which Stephen was murdered and all the Hellenist
disciples driven from Jerusalem, the Jewish disciples were allowed
to remain in the city unmolested. (See Acts viii. 1, 14.) This marked
difference of treatment indicates that Paul regarded Stephen and his
friends as decidedly more heretical and obnoxious than Peter, James, and
John, whom, indeed, Paul's own master Gamaliel had recently (Acts v. 34)
defended before the council. And this inference is fully confirmed by
the account of Stephen's death, where his murderers charge him with
maintaining that Jesus had founded a new religion which was destined
entirely to supersede and replace Judaism (Acts vi. 14). The Petrine
disciples never held this view of the mission of Jesus; and to this
difference it is undoubtedly owing that Paul and his companions forbore
to disturb them. It would thus appear that even previous to Paul's
conversion, within five or six years after the death of Jesus, there was
a prominent party among the disciples which held that the new religion
was not a modification but an abrogation of Judaism; and their name
"Hellenists" sufficiently shows either that there were Gentiles among
them or that they held fellowship with Gentiles. It was this which
aroused Paul to persecution, and upon his sudden conversion it was with
these Hellenistic doctrines that he fraternized, taking little heed of
the Petrine disciples (Galatians i. 17), who were hardly more than a
Jewish sect.

Now the existence of these Hellenists at Jerusalem so soon after
the death of Jesus is clear proof that he had never distinctly and
irrevocably pronounced against the admission of Gentiles to the
Messianic kingdom, and it makes it very probable that the downfall of
Mosaism as a result of his preaching was by no means unpremeditated.
While, on the other hand, the obstinacy of the Petrine party in adhering
to Jewish customs shows equally that Jesus could not have unequivocally
committed himself in favour of a new gospel for the Gentiles. Probably
Jesus was seldom brought into direct contact with others than Jews, so
that the questions concerning the admission of Gentile converts did
not come up during his lifetime; and thus the way was left open for the
controversy which soon broke out between the Petrine party and Paul.
Nevertheless, though Jesus may never have definitely pronounced upon
this point, it will hardly be denied that his teaching, even as reported
in the first gospel, is in its utter condemnation of formalism far more
closely allied to the Pauline than to the Petrine doctrines. In his
hands Mosaism became spiritualized until it really lost its identity,
and was transformed into a code fit for the whole Roman world. And we do
not doubt that if any one had asked Jesus whether circumcision were an
essential prerequisite for admission to the Messianic kingdom, he would
have given the same answer which Paul afterwards gave. We agree with
Zeller and Strauss that, "as Luther was a more liberal spirit than
the Lutheran divines of the succeeding generation, and Sokrates a more
profound thinker than Xenophon or Antisthenes, so also Jesus must
be credited with having raised himself far higher above the narrow
prejudices of his nation than those of his disciples who could scarcely
understand the spread of Christianity among the heathen when it had
become an accomplished fact."

            January, 1870.




IV. THE CHRIST OF DOGMA. [22]

 [22] Saint-Paul, par Ernest Renan. Paris, 1869.

Histoire du Dogme de la Divinite de Jesus-Christ, par Albert Reville.
Paris, 1869.

The End of the World and the Day of Judgment. Two Discourses by the Rev.
W. R. Alger. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1870.


The meagreness of our information concerning the historic career of
Jesus stands in striking contrast with the mass of information which
lies within our reach concerning the primitive character of Christologic
speculation. First we have the four epistles of Paul, written from
twenty to thirty years after the crucifixion, which, although they tell
us next to nothing about what Jesus did, nevertheless give us very
plain information as to the impression which he made. Then we have the
Apocalypse, written by John, A. D. 68, which exhibits the Messianic
theory entertained by the earliest disciples. Next we have the epistles
to the Hebrews, Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians, besides the four
gospels, constituting altogether a connected chain of testimony to the
progress of Christian doctrine from the destruction of Jerusalem to the
time of the Quartodeciman controversy (A. D. 70-170). Finally, there is
the vast collection of apocryphal, heretical, and patristic literature,
from the writings of Justin Martyr, the pseudo-Clement, and the
pseudo-Ignatius, down to the time of the Council of Nikaia, when the
official theories of Christ's person assumed very nearly the shape which
they have retained, within the orthodox churches of Christendom, down
to the present day. As we pointed out in the foregoing essay, while all
this voluminous literature throws but an uncertain light upon the life
and teachings of the founder of Christianity, it nevertheless furnishes
nearly all the data which we could desire for knowing what the early
Christians thought of the master of their faith. Having given a brief
account of the historic career of Jesus, so far as it can now be
determined, we propose here to sketch the rise and progress of
Christologic doctrine, in its most striking features, during the first
three centuries. Beginning with the apostolic view of the human Messiah
sent to deliver Judaism from its spiritual torpor, and prepare it
for the millennial kingdom, we shall briefly trace the progressive
metamorphosis of this conception until it completely loses its identity
in the Athanasian theory, according to which Jesus was God himself, the
Creator of the universe, incarnate in human flesh.

The earliest dogma held by the apostles concerning Jesus was that of his
resurrection from the grave after death. It was not only the earliest,
but the most essential to the success of the new religion. Christianity
might have overspread the Roman Empire, and maintained its hold upon
men's faith until to-day, without the dogmas of the incarnation and the
Trinity; but without the dogma of the resurrection it would probably
have failed at the very outset. Its lofty morality would not alone have
sufficed to insure its success. For what men needed then, as indeed they
still need, and will always need, was not merely a rule of life and a
mirror to the heart, but also a comprehensive and satisfactory theory
of things, a philosophy or theosophy. The times demanded intellectual as
well as moral consolation; and the disintegration of ancient theologies
needed to be repaired, that the new ethical impulse imparted by
Christianity might rest upon a plausible speculative basis. The doctrine
of the resurrection was but the beginning of a series of speculative
innovations which prepared the way for the new religion to emancipate
itself from Judaism, and achieve the conquest of the Empire. Even the
faith of the apostles in the speedy return of their master the Messiah
must have somewhat lost ground, had it not been supported by their
belief in his resurrection from the grave and his consequent transfer
from Sheol, the gloomy land of shadows, to the regions above the sky.

The origin of the dogma of the resurrection cannot be determined with
certainty. The question has, during the past century, been the subject
of much discussion, upon which it is not necessary for us here to
comment. Such apparent evidence as there is in favour of the old theory
of Jesus' natural recovery from the effects of the crucifixion may be
found in Salvador's "Jesus-Christ et sa Doctrine"; but, as Zeller has
shown, the theory is utterly unsatisfactory. The natural return of
Jesus to his disciples never could have given rise to the notion of his
resurrection, since the natural explanation would have been the more
obvious one; besides which, if we were to adopt this hypothesis, we
should be obliged to account for the fact that the historic career of
Jesus ends with the crucifixion. The most probable explanation, on the
whole, is the one suggested by the accounts in the gospels, that the
dogma of the resurrection is due originally to the excited imagination
of Mary of Magdala. [23] The testimony of Paul may also be cited in
favour of this view, since he always alludes to earlier Christophanies
in just the same language which he uses in describing his own vision on
the road to Damascus.

 [23] See Taine, De l'Intelligence, II. 192.


But the question as to how the belief in the resurrection of Jesus
originated is of less importance than the question as to how it should
have produced the effect that it did. The dogma of the resurrection has,
until recent times, been so rarely treated from the historical point
of view, that the student of history at first finds some difficulty
in thoroughly realizing its import to the minds of those who first
proclaimed it. We cannot hope to understand it without bearing in mind
the theories of the Jews and early Christians concerning the structure
of the world and the cosmic location of departed souls. Since the time
of Copernicus modern Christians no longer attempt to locate heaven and
hell; they are conceived merely as mysterious places remote from the
earth. The theological universe no longer corresponds to that which
physical science presents for our contemplation. It was quite different
with the Jew. His conception of the abode of Jehovah and the angels, and
of departed souls, was exceedingly simple and definite. In the Jewish
theory the universe is like a sort of three-story house. The flat earth
rests upon the waters, and under the earth's surface is the land of
graves, called Sheol, where after death the souls of all men go, the
righteous as well as the wicked, for the Jew had not arrived at the
doctrine of heaven and hell. The Hebrew Sheol corresponds strictly to
the Greek Hades, before the notions of Elysium and Tartarus were added
to it,--a land peopled with flitting shadows, suffering no torment, but
experiencing no pleasure, like those whom Dante met in one of the upper
circles of his Inferno. Sheol is the first story of the cosmic house;
the earth is the second. Above the earth is the firmament or sky, which,
according to the book of Genesis (chap. i. v. 6, Hebrew text), is a vast
plate hammered out by the gods, and supports a great ocean like that
upon which the earth rests. Rain is caused by the opening of little
windows or trap-doors in the firmament, through which pours the water
of this upper ocean. Upon this water rests the land of heaven, where
Jehovah reigns, surrounded by hosts of angels. To this blessed land two
only of the human race had ever been admitted,--Enoch and Elijah, the
latter of whom had ascended in a chariot of fire, and was destined to
return to earth as the herald and forerunner of the Messiah. Heaven
forms the third story of the cosmic house. Between the firmament and the
earth is the air, which is the habitation of evil demons ruled by Satan,
the "prince of the powers of the air."

Such was the cosmology of the ancient Jew; and his theology was equally
simple. Sheol was the destined abode of all men after death, and no
theory of moral retribution was attached to the conception. The rewards
and punishments known to the authors of the Pentateuch and the early
Psalms are all earthly rewards and punishments. But in course of
time the prosperity of the wicked and the misfortunes of the good man
furnished a troublesome problem for the Jewish thinker; and after the
Babylonish Captivity, we find the doctrine of a resurrection from Sheol
devised in order to meet this case. According to this doctrine--which
was borrowed from the Zarathustrian theology of Persia--the Messiah
on his arrival was to free from Sheol all the souls of the righteous,
causing them to ascend reinvested in their bodies to a renewed and
beautiful earth, while on the other hand the wicked were to be punished
with tortures like those of the valley of Hinnom, or were to be immersed
in liquid brimstone, like that which had rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah.
Here we get the first announcement of a future state of retribution. The
doctrine was peculiarly Pharisaic, and the Sadducees, who were strict
adherents to the letter of Mosaism, rejected it to the last. By
degrees this doctrine became coupled with the Messianic theories of
the Pharisees. The loss of Jewish independence under the dominion of
Persians, Macedonians, and Romans, caused the people to look ever more
earnestly toward the expected time when the Messiah should appear in
Jerusalem to deliver them from their oppressors. The moral doctrines
of the Psalms and earlier prophets assumed an increasingly political
aspect. The Jews were the righteous "under a cloud," whose sufferings
were symbolically depicted by the younger Isaiah as the afflictions of
the "servant of Jehovah"; while on the other hand, the "wicked" were the
Gentile oppressors of the holy people. Accordingly the Messiah, on his
arrival, was to sit in judgment in the valley of Jehoshaphat, rectifying
the wrongs of his chosen ones, condemning the Gentile tyrants to the
torments of Gehenna, and raising from Sheol all those Jews who had lived
and died during the evil times before his coming. These were to find
in the Messianic kingdom the compensation for the ills which they had
suffered in their first earthly existence. Such are the main outlines of
the theory found in the Book of Enoch, written about B. C. 100, and it
is adopted in the Johannine Apocalypse, with little variation, save in
the recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, and in the transferrence to
his second coming of all these wonderful proceedings. The manner of the
Messiah's coming had been variously imagined. According to an earlier
view, he was to enter Jerusalem as a King of the house of David, and
therefore of human lineage. According to a later view, presented in the
Book of Daniel, he was to descend from the sky, and appear among the
clouds. Both these views were adopted by the disciples of Jesus, who
harmonized them by referring the one to his first and the other to his
second appearance.

Now to the imaginations of these earliest disciples the belief in the
resurrection of Jesus presented itself as a needful guarantee of his
Messiahship. Their faith, which must have been shaken by his execution
and descent into Sheol, received welcome confirmation by the springing
up of the belief that he had been again seen upon the face of the earth.
Applying the imagery of Daniel, it became a logical conclusion that he
must have ascended into the sky, whence he might shortly be expected to
make his appearance, to enact the scenes foretold in prophecy. That
such was the actual process of inference is shown by the legend of the
Ascension in the first chapter of the "Acts," and especially by the
words, "This Jesus who hath been taken up from you into heaven, will
come in the same manner in which ye beheld him going into heaven." In
the Apocalypse, written A. D. 68, just after the death of Nero, this
second coming is described as something immediately to happen, and
the colours in which it is depicted show how closely allied were the
Johannine notions to those of the Pharisees. The glories of the New
Jerusalem are to be reserved for Jews, while for the Roman tyrants
of Judaea is reserved a fearful retribution. They are to be trodden
underfoot by the Messiah, like grapes in a wine-press, until the gushing
blood shall rise to the height of the horse's bridle.

In the writings of Paul the dogma of the resurrection assumes a very
different aspect. Though Paul, like the older apostles, held that Jesus,
as the Messiah, was to return to the earth within a few years, yet to
his catholic mind this anticipated event had become divested of its
narrow Jewish significance. In the eyes of Paul, the religion preached
by Jesus was an abrogation of Mosaism, and the truths contained in
it were a free gift to the Gentile as well as to the Jewish world.
According to Paul, death came into the world as a punishment for the
sin of Adam. By this he meant that, had it not been for the original
transgression, all men escaping death would either have remained
upon earth or have been conveyed to heaven, like Enoch and Elijah, in
incorruptible bodies. But in reality as a penance for disobedience, all
men, with these two exceptions, had suffered death, and been exiled to
the gloomy caverns of Sheol. The Mosaic ritual was powerless to free men
from this repulsive doom, but it had nevertheless served a good purpose
in keeping men's minds directed toward holiness, preparing them, as a
schoolmaster would prepare his pupils, to receive the vitalizing truths
of Christ. Now, at last, the Messiah or Christ had come as a second
Adam, and being without sin had been raised by Jehovah out of Sheol
and taken up into heaven, as testimony to men that the power of sin and
death was at last defeated. The way henceforth to avoid death and escape
the exile to Sheol was to live spiritually like Jesus, and with him to
be dead to sensual requirements. Faith, in Paul's apprehension, was not
an intellectual assent to definitely prescribed dogmas, but, as
Matthew Arnold has well pointed out, it was an emotional striving after
righteousness, a developing consciousness of God in the soul, such as
Jesus had possessed, or, in Paul's phraseology, a subjugation of the
flesh by the spirit. All those who should thus seek spiritual perfection
should escape the original curse. The Messiah was destined to return to
the earth to establish the reign of spiritual holiness, probably during
Paul's own lifetime (1 Cor. xv. 51). Then the true followers of Jesus
should be clothed in ethereal bodies, free from the imperfections of
"the flesh," and should ascend to heaven without suffering death, while
the righteous dead should at the same time be released from Sheol, even
as Jesus himself had been released.

To the doctrine of the resurrection, in which ethical and speculative
elements are thus happily blended by Paul, the new religion doubtless
owed in great part its rapid success. Into an account of the causes
which favoured the spreading of Christianity, it is not our purpose
to enter at present. But we may note that the local religions of
the ancient pagan world had partly destroyed each other by mutual
intermingling, and had lost their hold upon people from the circumstance
that their ethical teaching no longer corresponded to the advanced
ethical feeling of the age. Polytheism, in short, was outgrown. It was
outgrown both intellectually and morally. People were ceasing to believe
in its doctrines, and were ceasing to respect its precepts. The learned
were taking refuge in philosophy, the ignorant in mystical superstitions
imported from Asia. The commanding ethical motive of ancient republican
times had been patriotism,--devotion to the interests of the community.
But Roman dominion had destroyed patriotism as a guiding principle of
life, and thus in every way the minds of men were left in a sceptical,
unsatisfied state,--craving after a new theory of life, and craving
after a new stimulus to right action. Obviously the only theology which
could now be satisfactory to philosophy or to common-sense was some form
of monotheism;--some system of doctrines which should represent all men
as spiritually subjected to the will of a single God, just as they were
subjected to the temporal authority of the Emperor. And similarly the
only system of ethics which could have a chance of prevailing must be
some system which should clearly prescribe the mutual duties of all men
without distinction of race or locality. Thus the spiritual morality of
Jesus, and his conception of God as a father and of all men as brothers,
appeared at once to meet the ethical and speculative demands of the
time.

Yet whatever effect these teachings might have produced, if unaided
by further doctrinal elaboration, was enhanced myriadfold by the
elaboration which they received at the hands of Paul. Philosophic Stoics
and Epicureans had arrived at the conception of the brotherhood of men,
and the Greek hymn of Kleanthes had exhibited a deep spiritual sense of
the fatherhood of God. The originality of Christianity lay not so
much in its enunciation of new ethical precepts as in the fact that it
furnished a new ethical sanction,--a commanding incentive to holiness
of living. That it might accomplish this result, it was absolutely
necessary that it should begin by discarding both the ritualism and the
narrow theories of Judaism. The mere desire for a monotheistic creed
had led many pagans, in Paul's time, to embrace Judaism, in spite of
its requirements, which to Romans and Greeks were meaningless, and often
disgusting; but such conversions could never have been numerous. Judaism
could never have conquered the Roman world; nor is it likely that the
Judaical Christianity of Peter, James, and John would have been any more
successful. The doctrine of the resurrection, in particular, was not
likely to prove attractive when accompanied by the picture of the
Messiah treading the Gentiles in the wine-press of his righteous
indignation. But here Paul showed his profound originality The
condemnation of Jewish formalism which Jesus had pronounced, Paul
turned against the older apostles, who insisted upon circumcision. With
marvellous flexibility of mind, Paul placed circumcision and the Mosaic
injunctions about meats upon a level with the ritual observances of
pagan nations, allowing each feeble brother to perform such works as
might tickle his fancy, but bidding all take heed that salvation was not
to be obtained after any such mechanical method, but only by devoting
the whole soul to righteousness, after the example of Jesus.

This was the negative part of Paul's work. This was the knocking down of
the barriers which had kept men, and would always have kept them, from
entering into the kingdom of heaven. But the positive part of Paul's
work is contained in his theory of the salvation of men from death
through the second Adam, whom Jehovah rescued from Sheol for his
sinlessness. The resurrection of Jesus was the visible token of the
escape from death which might be achieved by all men who, with God's
aid, should succeed in freeing themselves from the burden of sin which
had encumbered all the children of Adam. The end of the world was at
hand, and they who would live with Christ must figuratively die with
Christ, must become dead to sin. Thus to the pure and spiritual ethics
contained in the teachings of Jesus, Paul added an incalculably powerful
incentive to right action, and a theory of life calculated to satisfy
the speculative necessities of the pagan or Gentile world. To the
educated and sceptical Athenian, as to the critical scholar of modern
times, the physical resurrection of Jesus from the grave, and his ascent
through the vaulted floor of heaven, might seem foolishness or naivete.
But to the average Greek or Roman the conception presented no serious
difficulty. The cosmical theories upon which the conception was founded
were essentially the same among Jews and Gentiles, and indeed were but
little modified until the establishment of the Copernican astronomy.
The doctrine of the Messiah's second coming was also received without
opposition, and for about a century men lived in continual anticipation
of that event, until hope long deferred produced its usual results;
the writings in which that event was predicted were gradually explained
away, ignored, or stigmatized as uncanonical; and the Church ended by
condemning as a heresy the very doctrine which Paul and the Judaizing
apostles, who agreed in little else, had alike made the basis of
their speculative teachings. Nevertheless, by the dint of allegorical
interpretation, the belief has maintained an obscure existence even down
to the present time; the Antiochus of the Book of Daniel and the Nero of
the Apocalypse having given place to the Roman Pontiff or to the Emperor
of the French.

But as the millenarism of the primitive Church gradually died out during
the second century, the essential principles involved in it lost none of
their hold on men's minds. As the generation contemporary with Paul died
away and was gathered into Sheol, it became apparent that the original
theory must be somewhat modified, and to this question the author of
the second epistle to the Thessalonians addresses himself. Instead of
literal preservation from death, the doctrine of a resurrection from the
grave was gradually extended to the case of the new believers, who were
to share in the same glorious revival with the righteous of ancient
times. And thus by slow degrees the victory over death, of which the
resurrection of Jesus was a symbol and a witness, became metamorphosed
into the comparatively modern doctrine of the rest of the saints in
heaven, while the banishment of the unrighteous to Sheol was made
still more dreadful by coupling with the vague conception of a gloomy
subterranean cavern the horrible imagery of the lake of fire and
brimstone borrowed from the apocalyptic descriptions of Gehenna. But
in this modification of the original theory, the fundamental idea of
a future state of retribution was only the more distinctly emphasized;
although, in course of time, the original incentive to righteousness
supplied by Paul was more and more subordinated to the comparatively
degrading incentive involved in the fear of damnation. There can hardly
be a doubt that the definiteness and vividness of the Pauline theory
of a future life contributed very largely to the rapid spread of the
Christian religion; nor can it be doubted that to the desire to be holy
like Jesus, in order to escape death and live with Jesus, is due
the elevating ethical influence which, even in the worst times of
ecclesiastic degeneracy, Christianity has never failed to exert.
Doubtless, as Lessing long, ago observed, the notion of future reward
and punishment needs to be eliminated in order that the incentive to
holiness may be a perfectly pure one. The highest virtue is that which
takes no thought of reward or punishment; but for a conception of this
sort the mind of antiquity was not ready, nor is the average mind
of to-day yet ready; and the sudden or premature dissolution of the
Christian theory--which is fortunately impossible--might perhaps entail
a moral retrogradation.

The above is by no means intended as a complete outline of the religious
philosophy of Paul. We have aimed only at a clear definition of the
character and scope of the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus, at the
time when it was first elaborated. We have now to notice the influence
of that doctrine upon the development of Christologic speculation.

In neither or the four genuine epistles of Paul is Jesus described
as superhuman, or as differing in nature from other men, save in his
freedom from sin. As Baur has shown, "the proper nature of the Pauline
Christ is human. He is a man, but a spiritual man, one in whom spirit
or pneuma was the essential principle, so that he was spirit as well
as man. The principle of an ideal humanity existed before Christ in
the bright form of a typical man, but was manifested to mankind in the
person of Christ." Such, according to Baur, is Paul's interpretation
of the Messianic idea. Paul knows nothing of the miracles, of the
supernatural conception, of the incarnation, or of the Logos. The Christ
whom he preaches is the man Jesus, the founder of a new and spiritual
order of humanity, as Adam was the father of humanity after the flesh.
The resurrection is uniformly described by him as a manifestation of the
power of Jehovah, not of Jesus himself. The later conception of Christ
bursting the barred gates of Sheol, and arising by his own might to
heaven, finds no warrant in the expressions of Paul. Indeed, it was
essential to Paul's theory of the Messiah as a new Adam, that he should
be human and not divine; for the escape of a divine being from Sheol
could afford no precedent and furnish no assurance of the future escape
of human beings. It was expressly because the man Jesus had been rescued
from the grave because of his spirituality, that other men might hope,
by becoming spiritual like him, to be rescued also. Accordingly Paul is
careful to state that "since through man came death, through man came
also the resurrection of the dead" (1 Cor. xv. 21); a passage which
would look like an express denial of Christ's superhuman character,
were it probable that any of Paul's contemporaries had ever conceived of
Jesus as other than essentially human.

But though Paul's Christology remained in this primitive stage, it
contained the germs of a more advanced theory. For even Paul conceived
of Jesus as a man wholly exceptional in spiritual character; or, in the
phraseology of the time, as consisting to a larger extent of pneuma than
any man who had lived before him. The question was sure to arise,
Whence came this pneuma or spiritual quality? Whether the question
ever distinctly presented itself to Paul's mind cannot be determined.
Probably it did not. In those writings of his which have come down to
us, he shows himself careless of metaphysical considerations. He is
mainly concerned with exhibiting the unsatisfactory character of Jewish
Christianity, and with inculcating a spiritual morality, to which the
doctrine of Christ's resurrection is made to supply a surpassingly
powerful sanction. But attempts to solve the problem were not long
in coming. According to a very early tradition, of which the obscured
traces remain in the synoptic gospels, Jesus received the pneuma at the
time of his baptism, when the Holy Spirit, or visible manifestation of
the essence of Jehovah, descended upon him and became incarnate in him.
This theory, however, was exposed to the objection that it implied
a sudden and entire transformation of an ordinary man into a person
inspired or possessed by the Deity. Though long maintained by the
Ebionites or primitive Christians, it was very soon rejected by the
great body of the Church, which asserted instead that Jesus had been
inspired by the Holy Spirit from the moment of his conception. From this
it was but a step to the theory that Jesus was actually begotten by or
of the Holy Spirit; a notion which the Hellenic mind, accustomed to
the myths of Leda, Anchises, and others, found no difficulty in
entertaining. According to the Gospel of the Hebrews, as cited by
Origen, the Holy Spirit was the mother of Jesus, and Joseph was his
father. But according to the prevailing opinion, as represented in the
first and third synoptists, the relationship was just the other way.
With greater apparent plausibility, the divine aeon was substituted
for the human father, and a myth sprang up, of which the materialistic
details furnished to the opponents of the new religion an opportunity
for making the most gross and exasperating insinuations. The dominance
of this theory marks the era at which our first and third synoptic
gospels were composed,--from sixty to ninety years after the death of
Jesus. In the luxuriant mythologic growth there exhibited, we may yet
trace the various successive phases of Christologic speculation but
imperfectly blended. In "Matthew" and "Luke" we find the original
Messianic theory exemplified in the genealogies of Jesus, in which,
contrary to historic probability (cf. Matt. xxii. 41-46), but in
accordance with a time-honoured tradition, his pedigree is traced back
to David; "Matthew" referring him to the royal line of Judah, while
"Luke" more cautiously has recourse to an assumed younger branch.
Superposed upon this primitive mythologic stratum, we find, in the same
narratives, the account of the descent of the pneuma at the time of
the baptism; and crowning the whole, there are the two accounts of the
nativity which, though conflicting in nearly all their details, agree
in representing the divine pneuma as the father of Jesus. Of these three
stages of Christology, the last becomes entirely irreconcilable with the
first; and nothing can better illustrate the uncritical character of the
synoptists than the fact that the assumed descent of Jesus from David
through his father Joseph is allowed to stand side by side with the
account of the miraculous conception which completely negatives it.
Of this difficulty "Matthew" is quite unconscious, and "Luke," while
vaguely noticing it (iii. 23), proposes no solution, and appears
undisturbed by the contradiction.

Thus far the Christology with which we have been dealing is
predominantly Jewish, though to some extent influenced by Hellenic
conceptions. None of the successive doctrines presented in Paul,
"Matthew," and "Luke" assert or imply the pre-existence of Jesus.
At this early period he was regarded as a human being raised to
participation in certain attributes of divinity; and this was as far as
the dogma could be carried by the Jewish metaphysics. But soon after the
date of our third gospel, a Hellenic system of Christology arose into
prominence, in which the problem was reversed, and Jesus was regarded
as a semi-divine being temporarily lowered to participation in certain
attributes of humanity. For such a doctrine Jewish mythology supplied no
precedents; but the Indo-European mind was familiar with the conception
of deity incarnate in human form, as in the avatars of Vishnu, or
even suffering III the interests of humanity, as in the noble myth of
Prometheus. The elements of Christology pre-existing in the religious
conceptions of Greece, India, and Persia, are too rich and numerous to
be discussed here. A very full account of them is given in Mr. R. W.
Mackay's acute and learned treatise on the "Religious Development of the
Greeks and Hebrews{.}"

It was in Alexandria, where Jewish theology first came into contact with
Hellenic and Oriental ideas, that the way was prepared for the dogma
of Christ's pre-existence. The attempt to rationalize the conception of
deity as embodied in the Jehovah of the Old Testament gave rise to the
class of opinions described as Gnosis, or Gnosticism. The signification
of Gnosis is simply "rationalism,"--the endeavour to harmonize the
materialistic statements of an old mythology with the more advanced
spiritualistic philosophy of the time. The Gnostics rejected the
conception of an anthropomorphic deity who had appeared visibly and
audibly to the patriarchs; and they were the authors of the doctrine,
very widely spread during the second and third centuries, that God could
not in person have been the creator of the world. According to them,
God, as pure spirit, could not act directly upon vile and gross matter.
The difficulty which troubled them was curiously analogous to that
which disturbed the Cartesians and the followers of Leibnitz in the
seventeenth century; how was spirit to act upon matter, without
ceasing, pro tanto, to be spirit? To evade this difficulty, the Gnostics
postulated a series of emanations from God, becoming successively less
and less spiritual and more and more material, until at the lowest end
of the scale was reached the Demiurgus or Jehovah of the Old Testament,
who created the world and appeared, clothed in material form, to the
patriarchs. According to some of the Gnostics this lowest aeon or
emanation was identical with the Jewish Satan, or the Ahriman of the
Persians, who is called "the prince of this world," and the creation of
the world was an essentially evil act. But all did not share in these
extreme opinions. In the prevailing, theory, this last of the divine
emanations was identified with the "Sophia," or personified "Wisdom," of
the Book of Proverbs (viii. 22-30), who is described as present with
God before the foundation of the world. The totality of these aeons
constituted the pleroma, or "fulness of God" (Coloss. i. 20; Eph. i.
23), and in a corollary which bears unmistakable marks of Buddhist
influence, it was argued that, in the final consummation of things,
matter should be eliminated and all spirit reunited with God, from whom
it had primarily flowed.

It was impossible that such views as these should not soon be taken up
and applied to the fluctuating Christology of the time. According to the
"Shepherd of Hermas," an apocalyptic writing nearly contemporary with
the gospel of "Mark," the aeon or son of God who existed previous to
the creation was not the Christ, or the Sophia, but the Pneuma or Holy
Spirit, represented in the Old Testament as the "angel of Jehovah."
Jesus, in reward for his perfect goodness, was admitted to a share in
the privileges of this Pneuma (Reville, p. 39). Here, as M. Reville
observes, though a Gnostic idea is adopted, Jesus is nevertheless viewed
as ascending humanity, and not as descending divinity. The author of the
"Clementine Homilies" advances a step farther, and clearly assumes the
pre-existence of Jesus, who, in his opinion, was the pure, primitive
man, successively incarnate in Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Moses, and finally in the Messiah or Christ. The author protests,
in vehement language, against those Hellenists who, misled by their
polytheistic associations, would elevate Jesus into a god. Nevertheless,
his own hypothesis of pre-existence supplied at once the requisite
fulcrum for those Gnostics who wished to reconcile a strict monotheism
with the ascription of divine attributes to Jesus. Combining with this
notion of pre-existence the pneumatic or spiritual quality attributed
to Jesus in the writings of Paul, the Gnosticizing Christians maintained
that Christ was an aeon or emanation from God, redeeming men from the
consequences entailed by their imprisonment in matter. At this stage
of Christologic speculation appeared the anonymous epistle to the
"Hebrews," and the pseudo-Pauline epistles to the "Colossians,"
"Ephesians," and "Philippians" (A. D. 130). In these epistles, which
originated among the Pauline Christians, the Gnostic theosophy is
skilfully applied to the Pauline conception of the scope and purposes of
Christianity. Jesus is described as the creator of the world (Coloss. i.
16), the visible image of the invisible God, the chief and ruler of the
"throues, dominions, principalities, and powers," into which, in Gnostic
phraseology, the emanations of God were classified. Or, according to
"Colossians" and "Philippians," all the aeons are summed up in him, in
whom dwells the pleroma, or "fulness of God." Thus Jesus is elevated
quite above ordinary humanity, and a close approach is made to ditheism,
although he is still emphatically subordinated to God by being made
the creator of the world,--an office then regarded as incompatible with
absolute divine perfection. In the celebrated passage, "Philippians"
ii. 6-11, the aeon Jesus is described as being the form or visible
manifestation of God, yet as humbling himself by taking on the form or
semblance of humanity, and suffering death, in return for which he is
to be exalted even above the archangels. A similar view is taken in
"Hebrews"; and it is probable that to the growing favour with which
these doctrines were received, we owe the omission of the miraculous
conception from the gospel of "Mark,"--a circumstance which has misled
some critics into assigning to that gospel an earlier date than
to "Matthew" and "Luke." Yet the fact that in this gospel Jesus is
implicitly ranked above the angels (Mark xiii. 32), reveals a later
stage of Christologic doctrine than that reached by the first and third
synoptists; and it is altogether probable that, in accordance with the
noticeable conciliatory disposition of this evangelist, the supernatural
conception is omitted out of deference to the Gnosticizing theories of
"Colossians" and "Philippians," in which this materialistic doctrine
seems to have had no assignable place. In "Philippians" especially, many
expressions seem to verge upon Docetism, the extreme form of Gnosticism,
according to which the human body of Jesus was only a phantom.
Valentinus, who was contemporary with the Pauline writers of the second
century, maintained that Jesus was not born of Mary by any process
of conception, but merely passed through her, as light traverses a
translucent substance. And finally Marcion (A. D. 140) carried the
theory to its extreme limits by declaring that Jesus was the pure Pneuma
or Spirit, who contained nothing in common with carnal humanity.

The pseudo-Pauline writers steered clear of this extravagant doctrine,
which erred by breaking entirely with historic tradition, and was
consequently soon condemned as heretical. Their language, though
unmistakably Gnostic, was sufficiently neutral and indefinite to allow
of their combination with earlier and later expositions of dogma, and
they were therefore eventually received into the canon, where they
exhibit a stage of opinion midway between that of Paul and that of the
fourth gospel.

For the construction of a durable system of Christology, still further
elaboration was necessary. The pre-existence of Jesus, as an emanation
from God, in whom were summed up the attributes of the pleroma or full
scale of Gnostic aeons, was now generally conceded. But the relation of
this pleroqma to the Godhead of which it was the visible manifestation,
needed to be more accurately defined. And here recourse was had to
the conception of the "Logos,"--a notion which Philo had borrowed
from Plato, lending to it a theosophic significance. In the Platonic
metaphysics objective existence was attributed to general terms, the
signs of general notions. Besides each particular man, horse, or tree,
and besides all men, horses, and trees, in the aggregate, there was
supposed to exist an ideal Man, Horse, and Tree. Each particular man,
horse, or tree consisted of abstract existence plus a portion of
the ideal man, horse, or tree. Sokrates, for instance, consisted of
Existence, plus Animality, plus Humanity, plus Sokraticity. The visible
world of particulars thus existed only by virtue of its participation in
the attributes of the ideal world of universals. God created the world
by encumbering each idea with an envelopment or clothing of visible
matter; and since matter is vile or imperfect, all things are more or
less perfect as they partake more or less fully of the idea. The pure
unencumbered idea, the "Idea of ideas," is the Logos, or divine Reason,
which represents the sum-total of the activities which sustain the
world, and serves as a mediator between the absolutely ideal God and
the absolutely non-ideal matter. Here we arrive at a Gnostic conception,
which the Philonists of Alexandria were not slow to appropriate. The
Logos, or divine Reason, was identified with the Sophia, or divine
Wisdom of the Jewish Gnostics, which had dwelt with God before the
creation of the world. By a subtle play upon the double meaning of the
Greek term (logos = "reason" or "word"), a distinction was drawn between
the divine Reason and the divine Word. The former was the archctypal
idea or thought of God, existing from all eternity; the latter was the
external manifestation or realization of that idea which occurred at the
moment of creation, when, according to Genesis, God SPOKE, and the world
was.

In the middle of the second century, this Philonian theory was the one
thing needful to add metaphysical precision to the Gnostic and Pauline
speculations concerning the nature of Jesus. In the writings of Justin
Martyr (A. D. 150-166), Jesus is for the first time identified with the
Philonian Logos or "Word of God." According to Justin, an impassable
abyss exists between the Infinite Deity and the Finite World; the one
cannot act upon the other; pure spirit cannot contaminate itself by
contact with impure matter. To meet this difficulty, God evolves from
himself a secondary God, the Logos,--yet without diminishing himself any
more than a flame is diminished when it gives birth to a second flame.
Thus generated, like light begotten of light (lumen de lumine), the
Logos creates the world, inspires the ancient prophets with their divine
revelations, and finally reveals himself to mankind in the person of
Christ. Yet Justin sedulously guards himself against ditheism, insisting
frequently and emphatically upon the immeasurable inferiority of the
Logos as compared with the actual God (gr o ontws qeos).

We have here reached very nearly the ultimate phase of New Testament
speculation concerning Jesus. The doctrines enunciated by Justin became
eventually, with slight modification, the official doctrines of the
Church; yet before they could thus be received, some further elaboration
was needed. The pre-existing Logos-Christ of Justin was no longer the
human Messiah of the first and third gospels, born of a woman, inspired
by the divine Pneuma, and tempted by the Devil. There was danger
that Christologic speculation might break quite loose from historic
tradition, and pass into the metaphysical extreme of Docetism. Had
this come to pass, there might perhaps have been a fatal schism in the
Church. Tradition still remained Ebionitish; dogma had become decidedly
Gnostic; how were the two to be moulded into harmony with each other?
Such was the problem which presented itself to the author of the fourth
gospel (A. D. 170-180). As M. Reville observes, "if the doctrine of the
Logos were really to be applied to the person of Jesus, it was necessary
to remodel the evangelical history." Tradition must be moulded so as
to fit the dogma, but the dogma must be restrained by tradition from
running into Docetic extravagance. It must be shown historically how
"the Word became flesh" and dwelt on earth (John i. 14), how the deeds
of Jesus of Nazareth were the deeds of the incarnate Logos, in whom was
exhibited the pleroma or fulness of the divine attributes. The author of
the fourth gospel is, like Justin, a Philonian Gnostic; but he differs
from Justin in his bold and skilful treatment of the traditional
materials supplied by the earlier gospels. The process of development in
the theories and purposes of Jesus, which can be traced throughout the
Messianic descriptions of the first gospel, is entirely obliterated
in the fourth. Here Jesus appears at the outset as the creator of the
world, descended from his glory, but destined soon to be reinstated.
The title "Son of Man" has lost its original significance, and become
synonymous with "Son of God." The temptation, the transfiguration, the
scene in Gethsemane, are omitted, and for the latter is substituted a
Philonian prayer. Nevertheless, the author carefully avoids the extremes
of Docetism or ditheism. Not only does he represent the human life
of Jesus as real, and his death as a truly physical death, but he
distinctly asserts the inferiority of the Son to the Father (John xiv.
28). Indeed, as M. Reville well observes, it is part of the very notion
of the Logos that it should be imperfect relatively to the absolute God;
since it is only its relative imperfection which allows it to sustain
relations to the world and to men which are incompatible with absolute
perfection, from the Philonian point of view. The Athanasian doctrine of
the Trinity finds no support in the fourth gospel, any more than in the
earlier books collected in the New Testament.

The fourth gospel completes the speculative revolution by which the
conception of a divine being lowered to humanity was substituted for
that of a human being raised to divinity. We have here travelled a long
distance from the risen Messiah of the genuine Pauline epistles, or
the preacher of righteousness in the first gospel. Yet it does not seem
probable that the Church of the third century was thoroughly aware of
the discrepancy. The authors of the later Christology did not regard
themselves as adding new truths to Christianity, but merely as giving a
fuller and more consistent interpretation to what must have been known
from the outset. They were so completely destitute of the historic
sense, and so strictly confined to the dogmatic point of view, that
they projected their own theories back into the past, and vituperated as
heretics those who adhered to tradition in its earlier and simpler form.
Examples from more recent times are not wanting, which show that we are
dealing here with an inveterate tendency of the human mind. New facts
and new theories are at first condemned as heretical or ridiculous; but
when once firmly established, it is immediately maintained that every
one knew them before. After the Copernican astronomy had won the day,
it was tacitly assumed that the ancient Hebrew astronomy was Copernican,
and the Biblical conception of the universe as a kind of three-story
house was ignored, and has been, except by scholars, quite forgotten.
When the geologic evidence of the earth's immense antiquity could no
longer be gainsaid, it was suddenly ascertained that the Bible had from
the outset asserted that antiquity; and in our own day we have seen
an elegant popular writer perverting the testimony of the rocks and
distorting the Elohistic cosmogony of the Pentateuch, until the twain
have been made to furnish what Bacon long ago described as "a heretical
religion and a false philosophy." Now just as in the popular thought of
the present day the ancient Elohist is accredited with a knowledge of
modern geology and astronomy, so in the opinion of the fourth evangelist
and his contemporaries the doctrine of the Logos-Christ was implicitly
contained in the Old Testament and in the early traditions concerning
Jesus, and needed only to be brought into prominence by a fresh
interpretation. Hence arose the fourth gospel, which was no more a
conscious violation of historic data than Hugh Miller's imaginative
description of the "Mosaic Vision of Creation." Its metaphysical
discourses were readily accepted as equally authentic with the Sermon
on the Mount. Its Philonian doctrines were imputed to Paul and the
apostles, the pseudo-Pauline epistles furnishing the needful texts. The
Ebionites--who were simply Judaizing Christians, holding in nearly its
original form the doctrine of Peter, James, and John--were ejected from
the Church as the most pernicious of heretics; and so completely was
their historic position misunderstood and forgotten, that, in order to
account for their existence, it became necessary to invent an eponymous
heresiarch, Ebion, who was supposed to have led them astray from the
true faith!

The Christology of the fourth gospel is substantially the same as that
which was held in the next two centuries by Tertullian, Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, and Arius. When the doctrine of the Trinity was
first announced by Sabellius (A. D. 250-260), it was formally condemned
as heretical, the Church being not yet quite prepared to receive it.
In 269 the Council of Antioch solemnly declared that the Son was NOT
consubstantial with the Father,--a declaration which, within sixty
years, the Council of Nikaia was destined as solemnly to contradict.
The Trinitarian Christology struggled long for acceptance, and did not
finally win the victory until the end of the fourth century. Yet from
the outset its ultimate victory was hardly doubtful. The peculiar
doctrines of the fourth gospel could retain their integrity only so long
as Gnostic ideas were prevalent. When Gnosticism declined in importance,
and its theories faded out of recollection, its peculiar phraseology
received of necessity a new interpretation. The doctrine that God could
not act directly upon the world sank gradually into oblivion as the
Church grew more and more hostile to the Neo-Platonic philosophy. And
when this theory was once forgotten, it was inevitable that the Logos,
as the creator of the world, should be raised to an equality or identity
with God himself. In the view of the fourth evangelist, the Creator
was necessarily inferior to God; in the view of later ages, the Creator
could be none other than God. And so the very phrases which had most
emphatically asserted the subordination of the Son were afterward
interpreted as asserting his absolute divinity. To the Gnostic formula,
lumen de lumine, was added the Athanasian scholium, Deum verum de Deo
vero; and the Trinitarian dogma of the union of persons in a single
Godhead became thus the only available logical device for preserving the
purity of monotheism.

    February, 1870.




V. A WORD ABOUT MIRACLES. [24]

 [24] These comments on Mr. Henry Rogers's review of M. Renan's
Les Apotres, contained in a letter to Mr. Lewes, were shortly afterwards
published by him in the Fortnightly Review, September 15, 1866.


It is the lot of every book which attempts to treat the origin and
progress of Christianity in a sober and scientific spirit, to meet
with unsparing attacks. Critics in plenty are always to be found, who,
possessed with the idea that the entire significance and value of the
Christian religion are demolished unless we regard it as a sort of
historical monstrosity, are only too eager to subject the offending
work to a scathing scrutiny, displaying withal a modicum of righteous
indignation at the unblushing heresy of the author, not unmixed with
a little scornful pity at his inability to believe very preposterous
stories upon very meagre evidence. "Conservative" polemics of this sort
have doubtless their function. They serve to purge scientific literature
of the awkward and careless statements too often made by writers not
sufficiently instructed or cautious, which in the absence of hostile
criticism might get accepted by the unthinking reader along with the
truths which they accompany. Most scientific and philosophical works
have their defects; and it is fortunate that there is such a thing as
dogmatic ardour in the world, ever sharpening its wits to the utmost,
that it may spy each lurking inaccuracy and ruthlessly drag it to light.
But this useful spirit is wont to lead those who are inspired by it to
shoot beyond the mark, and after pointing out the errors of others,
to commit fresh mistakes of their own. In the skilful criticism of M.
Renan's work on the Apostles, in No. 29 of the "Fortnightly Review"
there is now and then a vulnerable spot through which a controversial
shaft may perhaps be made to pierce.

It may be true that Lord Lyttelton's tract on the Conversion of St.
Paul, as Dr. Johnson and Dr. Rogers have said, has never yet been
refuted; but if I may judge from my own recollection of the work, I
should say that this must be because no competent writer ever thought
it worth his pains to criticize it. Its argument contains about as much
solid consistency as a distended balloon, and collapses as readily at
the first puncture. It attempts to prove, first, that the conversion of
St. Paul cannot be made intelligible except on the assumption that there
was a miracle in the case; and secondly, that if Paul was converted by a
miracle, the truth of Christianity is impregnable. Now, if the first of
these points be established, the demonstration is not yet complete, for
the second point must be proved independently. But if the first point be
overthrown, the second loses its prop, and falls likewise.

Great efforts are therefore made to show that no natural influences
could have intervened to bring about a change in the feelings of
Paul. He was violent, "thorough," unaffected by pity or remorse; and
accordingly he could not have been so completely altered as he was, had
he not actually beheld the risen Christ: such is the argument which Mr.
Rogers deems so conclusive. I do not know that from any of Paul's own
assertions we are entitled to affirm that no shade of remorse had ever
crossed his mind previous to the vision near Damascus. But waiving this
point, I do maintain that, granting Paul's feelings to have been as Mr.
Rogers thinks they were, his conversion is inexplicable, even on the
hypothesis of a miracle. He that is determined not to believe, will not
believe, though one should rise from the dead. To make Paul a believer,
it was not enough that he should meet his Lord face to face he must have
been already prepared to believe. Otherwise he would have easily found
means of explaining the miracle from his own point of view. He would
certainly have attributed it to the wiles of the demon, even as the
Pharisees are said to have done with regard to the miraculous cures
performed by Jesus. A "miraculous" occurrence in those days did not
astonish as it would at present. "Miracles" were rather the order of the
day, and in fact were lavished with such extreme bounty on all hands,
that their convincing power was very slight. Neither side ever thought
of disputing the reality of the miracles supposed to be performed on the
other; but each side considered the miracles of its antagonist to be the
work of diabolic agencies. Such being the case, it is useless to suppose
that Paul could have distinguished between a true and a false miracle,
or that a real miracle could of itself have had any effect in inducing
him to depart from his habitual course of belief and action. As far
as Paul's mental operations were concerned, it could have made no
difference whether he met with his future Master in person, or merely
encountered him in a vision. The sole point to be considered is whether
or not he BELIEVED in the Divine character and authority of the event
which had happened. What the event might have really been was of no
practical consequence to him or to any one else. What he believed it
to be was of the first importance. And since he did believe that he had
been divinely summoned to cease persecuting, and commence preaching the
new faith, it follows that his state of mind must have been more or less
affected by circumstances other than the mere vision. Had he not been
ripe for change, neither shadow nor substance could have changed him.

This view of the case is by no means so extravagant as Mr. Rogers would
have us suppose. There is no reason for believing that Paul's character
was essentially different afterwards from what it had been before.
The very fervour which caused him, as a Pharisee, to exclude all
but orthodox Jews from the hope of salvation, would lead him, as a
Christian, to carry the Christian idea to its extreme development, and
admit all persons whatever to the privileges of the Church. The same
zeal for the truth which had urged him to persecute the Christians unto
the death afterwards led him to spare no toil and shun no danger which
might bring about the triumph of their cause. It must not be forgotten
that the persecutor and the martyr are but one and the same man under
different circumstances. He who is ready to die for his own faith will
sometimes think it fair to make other men die for theirs. Men of
a vehement and fiery temperament, moreover,--such as Paul always
was,--never change their opinions slowly, never rest in philosophic
doubt, never take a middle course. If they leave one extreme for an
instant, they are drawn irresistibly to the other; and usually very
little is needed to work the change. The conversion of Omar is a
striking instance in point, and has been cited by M. Renan himself. The
character of Omar bears a strong likeness to that of Paul. Previous
to his conversion, he was a conscientious and virulent persecutor
of Mohammedanism. [25] After his conversion, he was Mohammed's
most efficient disciple, and it may be safely asserted that for
disinterestedness and self-abnegation he was not inferior to the Apostle
of the Gentiles. The change in his case was, moreover, quite as sudden
and unexpected as it was with Paul; it was neither more nor less
incomprehensible; and if Paul's conversion needs a miracle to explain
it, Omar's must need one likewise. But in truth, there is no difficulty
in the case, save that which stupid dogmatism has created. The
conversions of Paul and Omar are paralleled by innumerable events which
occur in every period of religious or political excitement. Far from
being extraordinary, or inexplicable on natural grounds, such phenomena
are just what might occasionally be looked for.

 [25] Saint-Hilaire: Mahomet et le Coran, p. 109.


But, says Mr. Rogers, "is it possible for a moment to imagine the
doting and dreaming victim of hallucinations (which M. Renan's theory
represents Paul) to be the man whose masculine sense, strong logic,
practical prudence, and high administrative talent appear in the
achievements of his life, and in the Epistles he has left behind him?"
M. Renan's theory does not, however, represent Paul as the "victim of
hallucinations" to a greater degree than Mohammed. The latter, as
every one knows, laboured during much of his life under almost constant
"hallucination"; yet "masculine sense, strong logic," etc., were
qualities quite as conspicuous in him as in St. Paul.

Here, as throughout his essay, Mr. Rogers shows himself totally unable
to comprehend the mental condition of men in past ages. If an Apostle
has a dream or sees a vision, and interprets it according to the ideas
of his time and country, instead of according to the ideas of scientific
England in the nineteenth century Mr. Rogers thinks he must needs be
mad: and when according to the well-known law that mental excitement
is contagious, [26] several persons are said to have concurred in
interpreting some phenomenon supernaturally, Mr. Rogers cannot see why
so many people should all go mad at once! "To go mad," in fact is his
favourite designation for a mental act, which nearly all the human race
have habitually performed in all ages; the act of mistaking subjective
impressions for outward realities. The disposition to regard all strange
phenomena as manifestations of supernatural power was universally
prevalent in the first century of Christianity, and long after. Neither
greatness of intellect nor thoroughness of scepticism gave exemption.
Even Julius Caesar, the greatest practical genius that ever lived,
was somewhat superstitious, despite his atheism and his Vigorous
common-sense. It is too often argued that the prevalence of scepticism
in the Roman Empire must have made men scrupulous about accepting
miracles. By no means. Nothing but physical science ever drives out
miracles: mere doctrinal scepticism is powerless to do it. In the age
of the Apostles, little if any radical distinction was drawn between a
miracle and an ordinary occurrence. No one supposed a miracle to be an
infraction of the laws of nature, for no one had a clear idea that
there were such things as laws of nature. A miracle was simply an
extraordinary act, exhibiting the power of the person who performed it.
Blank, indeed, would the evangelists have looked, had any one told them
what an enormous theory of systematic meddling with nature was destined
to grow out of their beautiful and artless narratives.

 [26] Hecker's Epidemics of the Middle Ages, pp. 87-152.


The incapacity to appreciate this frame of mind renders the current
arguments in behalf of miracles utterly worthless. From the fact that
Celsus and others never denied the reality of the Christian miracles,
it is commonly inferred that those miracles must have actually happened.
The same argument would, however, equally apply to the miracles of
Apollonius and Simon Magus, for the Christians never denied the reality
of these. What these facts really prove is that the state of human
intelligence was as I have just described it: and the inference to be
drawn from them is that no miraculous account emanating from an author
of such a period is worthy of serious attention. When Mr. Rogers
supposes that if the miracles had not really happened they would have
been challenged, he is assuming that a state of mind existed in which
it was possible for miracles to be challenged; and thus commits an
anachronism as monstrous as if he had attributed the knowledge of some
modern invention, such as steamboats, to those early ages.

Mr. Rogers seems to complain of M. Renan for "quietly assuming" that
miracles are invariably to be rejected. Certainly a historian of the
present day who should not make such an assumption would betray his lack
of the proper qualifications for his profession. It is not considered
necessary for every writer to begin his work by setting out to prove the
first principles of historical criticism. They are taken for granted.
And, as M. Renan justly says, a miracle is one of those things which
must be disbelieved until it is proved. The onus probandi lies on
the assertor of a fact which conflicts with universal experience.
Nevertheless, the great number of intelligent persons who, even now,
from dogmatic reasons, accept the New Testament miracles, forbids that
they should be passed over in silence like similar phenomena elsewhere
narrated. But, in the present state of historical science, the arguing
against miracles is, as Colet remarked of his friend Erasmus's warfare
against the Thomists and Scotists of Cambridge, "a contest more
necessary than glorious or difficult." To be satisfactorily established,
a miracle needs at least to be recorded by an eyewitness; and the mental
attainments of the witness need to be thoroughly known besides. Unless
he has a clear conception of the difference between the natural and the
unnatural order of events, his testimony, however unimpeachable on the
score of honesty, is still worthless. To say that this condition was
fulfilled by those who described the New Testament miracles, would be
absurd. And in the face of what German criticism has done for the early
Christian documents, it would be an excess of temerity to assert
that any one of the supernatural accounts contained in them rests on
contemporary authority. Of all history, the miraculous part should be
attested by the strongest testimony, whereas it is invariably
attested by the weakest. And the paucity of miracles wherever we have
contemporary records, as in the case of primitive Islamism, is a most
significant fact.

In attempting to defend his principle of never accepting a miracle,
M. Renan has indeed got into a sorry plight, and Mr. Rogers, in
controverting him, has not greatly helped the matter. By stirring M.
Renan's bemuddled pool, Mr. Rogers has only bemuddled it the more.
Neither of these excellent writers seems to suspect that transmutation
of species, the geologic development of the earth, and other like
phenomena do not present features conflicting with ordinary experience.
Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Darwin would be greatly astonished to be told
that their theories of inorganic and organic evolution involved any
agencies not known to exist in the present course of nature. The great
achievement of these writers has been to show that all past changes of
the earth and its inhabitants are to be explained as resulting from
the continuous action of causes like those now in operation, and that
throughout there has been nothing even faintly resembling a miracle.
M. Renan may feel perfectly safe in extending his principle back to the
beginning of things; and Mr. Rogers's argument, even if valid against M.
Renan, does not help his own case in the least.

On some points, indeed, M. Renan has laid himself open to severe
criticism, and on other points he has furnished good handles for his
orthodox opponents. His views in regard to the authorship of the Fourth
Gospel and the Acts are not likely to be endorsed by many scholars; and
his revival of the rationalistic absurdities of Paulus merits in most
instances all that Mr. Rogers has said about it. As was said at the
outset, orthodox criticisms upon heterodox books are always welcome.
They do excellent service. And with the feeling which impels their
authors to defend their favourite dogmas with every available weapon of
controversy I for one can heartily sympathize. Their zeal in upholding
what they consider the truth is greatly to be respected and admired. But
so much cannot always be said for the mode of argumentation they
adopt, which too often justifies M. Renan's description, when he says,
"Raisonnements triomphants sur des choses que l'adversaire n'a pas
dites, cris de victoire sur des erreurs qu'il n'a pas commises, rien ne
parait deloyal a celui qui croft tenir en main les interets de la verite
absolue."

     August, 1866.




VI. DRAPER ON SCIENCE AND RELIGION. [27]

 [27] History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, by
John William Draper, M. D., LL. D. Fourth edition. New York: D. Appleton
& Co. 1875. 12mo, pp. xxii., 373. (International Scientific Series,
XII.)


Some twelve years ago, Dr. Draper published a bulky volume entitled
"A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe," in which his
professed purpose was to show that nations or races pass through certain
definable epochs of development, analogous to the periods of infancy,
childhood, youth, manhood, and old age in individuals. But while
announced with due formality, the carrying out of the argument was left
for the most part to the headings and running-titles of the several
chapters, while in the text the author peacefully meandered along down
the stream of time, giving us a succession of pleasant though somewhat
threadbare anecdotes, as well as a superabundance of detached and
fragmentary opinions on divers historical events, having apparently
quite forgotten that he had started with a thesis to prove. In the
arrangement of his "running heads," some points were sufficiently
curious to require a word of explanation, as, for example, when the
early ages of Christianity were at one time labelled as an epoch
of progress and at another time as an epoch of decrepitude. But the
argument and the contents never got so far en rapport with each other as
to clear up such points as this. On the contrary, each kept on the even
tenour of its way without much regard to the other. From the titles of
the chapters one was led to expect some comprehensive theory of European
civilization continuously expounded. But the text merely showed a
great quantity of superficial and second-hand information, serving
to illustrate the mental idiosyncrasies of the author. Among these
idiosyncrasies might be noted a very inadequate understanding of the
part played by Rome in the work of civilization, a singular lack of
appreciation of the political and philosophical achievements of Greece
under Athenian leadership, a strong hostility to the Catholic Church,
a curious disposition to overrate semi-barbarous, or abortive
civilizations, such as those of the old Asiatic and native
American communities, at the expense of Europe, and, above all, an
undiscriminating admiration for everything, great or small, that has
ever worn the garb of Islam or been associated with the career of the
Saracens. The discovery that in some respects the Mussulmans of
the Middle Ages were more highly cultivated than their Christian
contemporaries, has made such an impression on Dr. Draper's mind that it
seems to be as hard for him to get rid of it as it was for Mr. Dick to
keep the execution of Charles I. out of his "Memorial." Even in an
essay on the "Civil Policy of America," the turbaned sage figures quite
prominently; and it is needless to add that he reappears, as large as
life, when the subject of discussion is the attitude of science toward
religion.

Speaking briefly with regard to this matter, we may freely admit that
the work done by the Arabs, in scientific inquiry as well as in the
making of events, was very considerable. It was a work, too, the value
of which is not commonly appreciated in the accounts of European history
written for the general reader, and we have no disposition to find fault
with Dr. Draper for describing it with enthusiasm. The philosophers of
Bagdad and Cordova did excellent service in keeping alive the traditions
of Greek physical inquiry at a time when Christian thinkers were too
exclusively occupied with transcendental speculations in theology and
logic. In some departments, as in chemistry and astronomy, they made
original discoveries of considerable value; and if we turn from abstract
knowledge to the arts of life, it cannot be denied that the mediaeval
Mussulmans had reached a higher plane of material comfort than their
Christian contemporaries. In short, the work of all kinds done by these
people would furnish the judicious advocate of the claims of the Semitic
race with materials for a pleasing and instructive picture. Dr. Draper,
however, errs, though no doubt unintentionally, by so presenting the
case as to leave upon the reader's mind the impression that all this
scientific and practical achievement was the work of Islamism, and that
the Mohammedan civilization was of a higher type than the Christian. It
is with an apparent feeling of regret that he looks upon the ousting
of the Moors from dominion in Spain; but this is a mistaken view. As
regards the first point, it is a patent fact that scientific inquiry was
conducted at the cost of as much theological obloquy in the Mohammedan
as in the Christian world. It is true there was more actual tolerance of
heresy on the part of Moslem governments than was customary in Europe in
those days; but this is a superficial fact, which does not indicate any
superiority in Moslem popular sentiment. The caliphate or emirate was
a truly absolute despotism, such as the Papacy has never been, and the
conduct of a sceptical emir in encouraging scientific inquiry goes
but little way toward proving anything like a general prevalence
of tolerance or of free-thinking. And this brings us to the second
point,--that Mohammedan civilization was, on the whole, rather a
skin-deep affair. It was superficial because of that extreme severance
between government and people which has never existed in European
nations within historic times, but which has always existed among the
principal races that have professed Moslemism. Nowhere in the Mohammedan
world has there ever been what we call a national life, and nowhere
do we find in its records any trace of such an intellectual impulse,
thrilling through every fibre of the people and begetting prodigious
achievements in art, poetry, and philosophy, as was awakened in Europe
in the thirteenth century and again in the fifteenth. Under the peculiar
form of unlimited material and spiritual despotism exemplified in the
caliphate, a few men may discover gases or comment on Aristotle, but no
general movement toward political progress or philosophical inquiry
is possible. Such a society is rigid and inorganic at bottom, whatever
scanty signs of flexibility and life it may show at the surface. There
is no better illustration of this, when well considered, than the fact
that Moorish civilization remained, politically and intellectually, a
mere excrescence in Spain, after having been fastened down over half the
country for nearly eight centuries.

But we are in danger of forgetting our main theme, as Dr. Draper seems
to do, while we linger with him over these interesting wayside topics.
We may perhaps be excused, however, if we have not yet made any very
explicit allusion to the "Conflict between Religion and Science,"
because this work seems to be in the main a repetition en petit of the
"Intellectual Development of Europe," and what we have said will apply
as well to one as to the other. In the little book, as in the big one,
we hear a great deal about the Arabs, and something about Columbus and
Galileo, who made men accept sundry truths in the teeth of clerical
opposition; and, as before, we float gently down the current of history
without being over well-informed as to the precise didactic purpose of
our voyage. Here, indeed, even our headings and running-titles do not
materially help us, for though we are supposed to be witnessing,
or mayhap assisting in, a perennial conflict between "science" and
"religion," we are nowhere enlightened as to what the cause or character
of this conflict is, nor are we enabled to get a good look at either of
the parties to the strife. With regard to it "religion" especially are
we left in the dark. What this dreadful thing is towards which "science"
is always playing the part of Herakles towards the Lernaean Hydra, we
are left to gather from the course of the narrative. Yet, in a book with
any valid claim to clearsightedness, one would think such a point as
this ought to receive very explicit preliminary treatment.

The course of the narrative, however, leaves us in little doubt as to
what Dr. Draper means by a conflict between science and religion. When
he enlarges on the trite story of Galileo, and alludes to the more
modern quarrel between the Church and the geologists, and does this
in the belief that he is thereby illustrating an antagonism between
religion and science, it is obvious that he identifies the cause of
the anti-geologists and the persecutors of Galileo with the cause
of religion. The word "religion" is to him a symbol which stands for
unenlightened bigotry or narrow-minded unwillingness to look facts in
the face. Such a conception of religion is common enough, and unhappily
a great deal has been done to strengthen it by the very persons to whom
the interests of religion are presumed to be a professional care. It
is nevertheless a very superficial conception, and no book which is
vitiated by it can have much philosophic value. It is simply the crude
impression which, in minds unaccustomed to analysis, is left by the fact
that theologians and other persons interested in religion are usually
alarmed at new scientific truths, and resist them with emotions so
highly wrought that they are not only incapable of estimating evidence,
but often also have their moral sense impaired, and fight with foul
means when fair ones fail. If we reflect carefully on this class of
phenomena, we shall see that something besides mere pride of opinion is
involved in the struggle. At the bottom of changing theological beliefs
there lies something which men perennially value, and for the sake of
which they cling to the beliefs as long as possible. That which they
value is not itself a matter of belief, but it is a matter of conduct;
it is the searching after goodness,--after a higher life than the mere
satisfaction of individual desires. All animals seek for fulness
of life; but in civilized man this craving has acquired a moral
significance, and has become a spiritual aspiration; and this emotional
tendency, more or less strong in the human race, we call religious
feeling or religion. Viewed in this light, religion is not only
something that mankind is never likely to get rid of, but it is
incomparably the most noble as well as the most useful attribute of
humanity.

Now, this emotional prompting toward completeness of life requires, of
course, that conduct should be guided, as far as possible, in accordance
with a true theory of the relations of man to the world in which he
lives. Hence, at any given era the religious feeling will always be
found enlisted in behalf of some theory of the universe. At any time,
whatever may be their shortcomings in practice, religious men will aim
at doing right according to their conceptions of the order of the
world. If men's conceptions of the order of nature remained constant, no
apparent conflict between their religious feelings and their knowledge
need ever arise. But with the first advance in our knowledge of nature
the case is altered. New and strange theories are naturally regarded
with fear and dislike by persons who have always been accustomed to
find the sanction and justification of their emotional prompting toward
righteousness in old familiar theories which the new ones are seeking to
supplant. Such persons oppose the new doctrine because their engrained
mental habits compel them to believe that its establishment will in some
way lower men's standard of life, and make them less careful of their
spiritual welfare. This is the case, at all events, when theologians
oppose scientific conclusions on religious grounds, and not simply from
mental dulness or rigidity. And, in so far as it is religious feeling
which thus prompts resistance to scientific innovation, it may be said,
with some appearance of truth, that there is a conflict between religion
and science.

But there must always be two parties to a quarrel, and our statement
has to be modified as soon as we consider what the scientific innovator
impugns. It is not the emotional prompting toward righteousness, it
is not the yearning to live im Guten, Ganzen, Wahren, that he seeks to
weaken; quite likely he has all this as much at heart as the theologian
who vituperates him. Nor is it true that his discoveries, in spite of
him, tend to destroy this all-important mental attitude. It would be
ridiculous to say that the fate of religious feeling is really involved
in the fate of grotesque cosmogonies and theosophies framed in the
infancy of men's knowledge of nature; for history shows us quite the
contrary. Religious feeling has survived the heliocentric theory and
the discoveries of geologists; and it will be none the worse for the
establishment of Darwinism. It is the merest truism to say that religion
strikes its roots deeper down into human nature than speculative
opinion, and is accordingly independent of any particular set of
beliefs. Since, then, the scientific innovator does not, either
voluntarily or involuntarily, attack religion, it follows that there
can be no such "conflict" as that of which Dr. Draper has undertaken to
write the history. The real contest is between one phase of science
and another; between the more-crude knowledge of yesterday and the
less-crude knowledge of to-day. The contest, indeed, as presented in
history, is simply the measure of the difficulty which men find in
exchanging old views for new ones. All along, the practical question has
been, whether we should passively acquiesce in the crude generalizations
of our ancestors or venture actively to revise them. But as for the
religious sentiment, the perennial struggle in which it has been engaged
has not been with scientific inquiry, but with the selfish propensities
whose tendency is to make men lead the lives of brutes.

The time is at hand when the interests of religion can no longer be
supposed to be subserved by obstinate adherence to crude speculations
bequeathed to us from pre-scientific antiquity. One good result of the
doctrine of evolution, which is now gaining sway in all departments of
thought, is the lesson that all our opinions must be held subject
to continual revision, and that with none of them can our religious
interests be regarded as irretrievably implicated. To any one who
has once learned this lesson, a book like Dr. Draper's can be neither
interesting nor useful. He who has not learned it can derive little
benefit from a work which in its very title keeps open an old and
baneful source of error and confusion.

      November. 1875.




VII. NATHAN THE WISE. [28]

 [28] Nathan the Wise: A Dramatic Poem, by Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing. Translated by Ellen Frothingham. Preceded by a brief account
of the poet and his works, and followed by an essay on the poem by Kuno
Fischer. Second edition. New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1868.

Le Christianisme Moderne, etude sur Lessing. Par Ernest Fontanes. Paris:
Bailliere. 1867.

The fame of Lessing is steadily growing. Year by year he is valued more
highly, and valued by a greater number of people. And he is destined,
like his master and forerunner Spinoza, to receive a yet larger share of
men's reverence and gratitude when the philosophic spirit which he lived
to illustrate shall have become in some measure the general possession
of the civilized part of mankind. In his own day, Lessing, though widely
known and greatly admired, was little understood or appreciated. He was
known to be a learned antiquarian, a terrible controversialist, and an
incomparable writer. He was regarded as a brilliant ornament to Germany;
and a paltry Duke of Brunswick thought a few hundred thalers well spent
in securing the glory of having such a man to reside at his provincial
court. But the majority of Lessing's contemporaries understood him as
little perhaps as did the Duke of Brunswick. If anything were needed to
prove this, it would be the uproar which was made over the publication
of the "Wolfenbuttel Fragments," and the curious exegesis which was
applied to the poem of "Nathan" on its first appearance. In order to
understand the true character of this great poem, and of Lessing's
religious opinions as embodied in it, it will be necessary first to
consider the memorable theological controversy which preceded it.

During Lessing's residence at Hamburg, he had come into possession of
a most important manuscript, written by Hermann Samuel Reimarus, a
professor of Oriental languages, and bearing the title of an "Apology
for the Rational Worshippers of God." Struck with the rigorous logic
displayed in its arguments, and with the quiet dignity of its style,
while yet unable to accept its most general conclusions, Lessing
resolved to publish the manuscript, accompanying it with his own
comments and strictures. Accordingly in 1774, availing himself of the
freedom from censorship enjoyed by publications drawn from manuscripts
deposited in the Ducal Library at Wolfenbuttel, of which he was
librarian, Lessing published the first portion of this work, under the
title of "Fragments drawn from the Papers of an Anonymous Writer."
This first Fragment, on the "Toleration of Deists," awakened but little
opposition; for the eighteenth century, though intolerant enough, did
not parade its bigotry, but rather saw fit to disclaim it. A hundred
years before, Rutherford, in his "Free Disputation," had declared
"toleration of alle religions to bee not farre removed from blasphemie."
Intolerance was then a thing to be proud of, but in Lessing's time some
progress had been achieved, and men began to think it a good thing to
seem tolerant. The succeeding Fragments were to test this liberality
and reveal the flimsiness of the stuff of which it was made. When the
unknown disputant began to declare "the impossibility of a revelation
upon which all men can rest a solid faith," and when he began to
criticize the evidences of Christ's resurrection, such a storm burst out
in the theological world of Germany as had not been witnessed since
the time of Luther. The recent Colenso controversy in England was but
a gentle breeze compared to it. Press and pulpit swarmed with
"refutations," in which weakness of argument and scantiness of erudition
were compensated by strength of acrimony and unscrupulousness of
slander. Pamphlets and sermons, says M. Fontanes, "were multiplied, to
denounce the impious blasphemer, who, destitute alike of shame and of
courage, had sheltered himself behind a paltry fiction, in order to let
loose upon society an evil spirit of unbelief." But Lessing's artifice
had been intended to screen the memory of Reimarus, rather than his
own reputation. He was not the man to quail before any amount of human
opposition; and it was when the tempest of invective was just at its
height that he published the last and boldest Fragment of all,--on "the
Designs of Jesus and his Disciples."

The publication of these Fragments led to a mighty controversy. The most
eminent, both for uncompromising zeal and for worldly position, of those
who had attacked Lessing, was Melchior Goetze, "pastor primarius" at the
Hamburg Cathedral. Though his name is now remembered only because of
his connection with Lessing, Goetze was not destitute of learning and
ability. He was a collector of rare books, an amateur in numismatics,
and an antiquarian of the narrow-minded sort. Lessing had known him
while at Hamburg, and had visited him so constantly as to draw forth
from his friends malicious insinuations as to the excellence of
the pastor's white wine. Doubtless Lessing, as a wise man, was not
insensible to the attractions of good Moselle; but that which he chiefly
liked in this theologian was his logical and rigorously consistent turn
of mind. "He always," says M. Fontanes, "cherished a holy horror of
loose, inconsequent thinkers; and the man of the past, the inexorable
guardian of tradition, appeared to him far more worthy of respect than
the heterodox innovator who stops in mid-course, and is faithful neither
to reason nor to faith."

But when Lessing published these unhallowed Fragments, the hour of
conflict had sounded, and Goetze cast himself into the arena with a
boldness and impetuosity which Lessing, in his artistic capacity, could
not fail to admire. He spared no possible means of reducing his enemy to
submission. He aroused against him all the constituted authorities,
the consistories, and even the Aulic Council of the Empire, and he
even succeeded in drawing along with him the chief of contemporary
rationalists, Semler, who so far forgot himself as to declare that
Lessing, for what he had done, deserved to be sent to the madhouse. But
with all Goetze's orthodox valour, he was no match for the antagonist
whom he had excited to activity. The great critic replied with pamphlet
after pamphlet, invincible in logic and erudition, sparkling with wit,
and irritating in their utter coolness. Such pamphlets had not been seen
since Pascal published the "Provincial Letters." Goetze found that
he had taken up arms against a master in the arts of controversy, and
before long he became well aware that he was worsted. Having brought
the case before the Aulic Council, which consisted in great part of
Catholics, the stout pastor, forgetting that judgment had not yet been
rendered, allowed himself to proclaim that all who do not recognize
the Bible as the only source of Christianity are not fit to be called
Christians at all. Lessing was not slow to profit by this unlucky
declaration. Questioned, with all manner of ferocious vituperation, by
Goetze, as to what sort of Christianity might have existed prior to
and independently of the New Testament canon, Lessing imperturbably
answered: "By the Christian religion I mean all the confessions of faith
contained in the collection of creeds of the first four centuries of the
Christian Church, including, if you wish it, the so-called creed of
the apostles, as well as the creed of Athanasius. The content of these
confessions is called by the earlier Fathers the regula fidei, or rule
of faith. This rule of faith is not drawn from the writings of the New
Testament. It existed before any of the books in the New Testament were
written. It sufficed not only for the first Christians of the age of the
apostles, but for their descendants during four centuries. And it is,
therefore, the veritable foundation upon which the Church of Christ is
built; a foundation not based upon Scripture." Thus, by a master-stroke,
Lessing secured the adherence of the Catholics constituting a majority
of the Aulic Council of the Empire. Like Paul before him, he divided the
Sanhedrim. So that Goetze, foiled in his attempts at using violence, and
disconcerted by the patristic learning of one whom he had taken to be a
mere connoisseur in art and writer of plays for the theatre, concluded
that discretion was the surest kind of valour, and desisted from further
attacks.

Lessing's triumph came opportunely; for already the ministry of
Brunswick had not only confiscated the Fragments, but had prohibited
him from publishing anything more on the subject without first obtaining
express authority to do so. His last replies to Goetze were published
at Hamburg; and as he held himself in readiness to depart from
Wolfenbuttel, he wrote to several friends that he had conceived the
design of a drama, with which he would tear the theologians in pieces
more than with a dozen Fragments. "I will try and see," said he, "if
they will let me preach in peace from my old pulpit, the theatre." In
this way originated "Nathan the Wise." But it in no way answered to the
expectations either of Lessing's friends or of his enemies. Both the one
and the other expected to see the controversy with Goetze carried on,
developed, and generalized in the poem. They looked for a satirical
comedy, in which orthodoxy should be held up for scathing ridicule, or
at least for a direful tragedy, the moral of which, like that of the
great poem of Lucretius, should be

          "Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum."

Had Lessing produced such a poem, he would doubtless have gratified
his free-thinking friends and wreaked due literary vengeance upon
his theological persecutors. He would, perhaps, have given articulate
expression to the radicalism of his own time, and, like Voltaire, might
have constituted himself the leader of the age, the incarnation of its
most conspicuous tendencies. But Lessing did nothing of the kind; and
the expectations formed of him by friends and enemies alike show how
little he was understood by either. "Nathan the Wise" was, as we shall
see, in the eighteenth century an entirely new phenomenon; and its
author was the pioneer of a quite new religious philosophy.

Reimarus, the able author of the Fragments, in his attack upon the
evidences of revealed religion, had taken the same ground as Voltaire
and the old English deists. And when we have said this, we have
sufficiently defined his position, for the tenets of the deists are at
the present day pretty well known, and are, moreover, of very little
vital importance, having long since been supplanted by a more just
and comprehensive philosophy. Reimarus accepted neither miracles nor
revelation; but in accordance with the rudimentary state of criticism in
his time, he admitted the historical character of the earliest Christian
records, and was thus driven to the conclusion that those writings must
have been fraudulently composed. How such a set of impostors as the
apostles must on this hypothesis have been, should have succeeded in
inspiring large numbers of their contemporaries with higher and grander
religious notions than had ever before been conceived; how they should
have laid the foundations of a theological system destined to hold
together the most enlightened and progressive portion of human society
for seventeen or eighteen centuries,--does not seem to have entered his
mind. Against such attacks as this, orthodoxy was comparatively safe;
for whatever doubt might be thrown upon some of its leading dogmas,
the system as a whole was more consistent and rational than any of
the theories which were endeavouring to supplant it. And the fact that
nearly all the great thinkers of the eighteenth century adopted this
deistic hypothesis, shows, more than anything else, the crudeness of
their psychological knowledge, and their utter lack of what is called
"the historical sense."

Lessing at once saw the weak point in Reimarus's argument, but his
method of disposing of it differed signally from that adopted by his
orthodox contemporaries. The more advanced German theologians of that
day, while accepting the New Testament records as literally historical,
were disposed to rationalize the accounts of miracles contained in them,
in such a way as to get rid of any presumed infractions of the laws of
nature. This method of exegesis, which reached its perfection in Paulus,
is too well known to need describing. Its unsatisfactory character was
clearly shown, thirty years ago, by Strauss, and it is now generally
abandoned, though some traces of it may still be seen in the recent
works of Renan. Lessing steadily avoided this method of interpretation.
He had studied Spinoza to some purpose, and the outlines of Biblical
criticism laid down by that remarkable thinker Lessing developed into
a system wonderfully like that now adopted by the Tubingen school. The
cardinal results which Baur has reached within the past generation were
nearly all hinted at by Lessing, in his commentaries on the Fragments.
The distinction between the first three, or synoptic gospels, and the
fourth, the later age of the fourth, and the method of composition of
the first three, from earlier documents and from oral tradition, are
all clearly laid down by him. The distinct points of view from which
the four accounts were composed, are also indicated,--the Judaizing
disposition of "Matthew," the Pauline sympathies of "Luke," the
compromising or Petrine tendencies of "Mark," and the advanced Hellenic
character of "John." Those best acquainted with the results of modern
criticism in Germany will perhaps be most surprised at finding such
speculations in a book written many years before either Strauss or Baur
were born.

But such results, as might have been expected, did not satisfy the
pastor Goetze or the public which sympathized with him. The valiant
pastor unhesitatingly declared that he read the objections which
Lessing opposed to the Fragmentist with more horror and disgust than
the Fragments themselves; and in the teeth of the printed comments
he declared that the editor was craftily upholding his author in his
deistical assault upon Christian theology. The accusation was unjust,
because untrue. There could be no genuine cooperation between a mere
iconoclast like Reimarus, and a constructive critic like Lessing. But
the confusion was not an unnatural one on Goetze's part, and I cannot
agree with M. Fontanes in taking it as convincing proof of the pastor's
wrong-headed perversity. It appears to me that Goetze interpreted
Lessing's position quite as accurately as M. Fontanes. The latter
writer thinks that Lessing was a Christian of the liberal school since
represented by Theodore Parker in this country and by M. Reville in
France; that his real object was to defend and strengthen the Christian
religion by relieving it of those peculiar doctrines which to the
freethinkers of his time were a stumbling-block and an offence. And, in
spite of Lessing's own declarations, he endeavours to show that he was
an ordinary theist,--a follower of Leibnitz rather than of Spinoza. But
I do not think he has made out his case. Lessing's own confession to
Jacobi is unequivocal enough, and cannot well be argued away. In that
remarkable conversation, held toward the close of his life, he indicates
clearly enough that his faith was neither that of the ordinary theist,
the atheist, nor the pantheist, but that his religious theory of the
universe was identical with that suggested by Spinoza, adopted by
Goethe, and recently elaborated in the first part of the "First
Principles" of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Moreover, while Lessing cannot be
considered an antagonist of Christianity, neither did he assume the
attitude of a defender. He remained outside the theological arena;
looking at theological questions from the point of view of a layman, or
rather, as M. Cherbuliez has happily expressed it, of a Pagan. His mind
was of decidedly antique structure. He had the virtues of paganism:
its sanity, its calmness, and its probity; but of the tenderness of
Christianity, and its quenchless aspirations after an indefinable ideal,
of that feeling which has incarnated itself in Gothic cathedrals, masses
and oratorios, he exhibited but scanty traces. His intellect was above
all things self-consistent and incorruptible. He had that imperial
good-sense which might have formed the ideal alike of Horace and of
Epictetus. No clandestine preference for certain conclusions could make
his reason swerve from the straight paths of logic. And he examined and
rejected the conclusions of Reimarus in the same imperturbable spirit
with which he examined and rejected the current theories of the French
classic drama.

Such a man can have had but little in common with a preacher like
Theodore Parker, or with a writer like M. Fontanes, whose whole book is
a noble specimen of lofty Christian eloquence. His attribute was light,
not warmth. He scrutinized, but did not attack or defend. He recognized
the transcendent merits of the Christian faith, but made no attempt to
reinstate it where it had seemed to suffer shock. It was therefore with
the surest of instincts, with that same instinct of self-preservation
which had once led the Church to anathematize Galileo, that Goetze.
proclaimed Lessing a more dangerous foe to orthodoxy than the deists
who had preceded him. Controversy, he doubtless thought, may be kept
up indefinitely, and blows given and returned forever; but before the
steady gaze of that scrutinizing eye which one of us shall find himself
able to stand erect? It has become fashionable to heap blame and
ridicule upon those who violently defend an antiquated order of things;
and Goetze has received at the hands of posterity his full share of
abuse. His wrath contrasted unfavourably with Lessing's calmness; and it
was his misfortune to have taken up arms against an opponent who always
knew how to keep the laugh upon his own side. For my own part I am
constrained to admire the militant pastor, as Lessing himself admired
him. From an artistic point of view he is not an uninteresting figure
to contemplate. And although his attempts to awaken persecution were
reprehensible, yet his ardour in defending what he believed to be vital
truth is none the less to be respected. He had the acuteness to see that
Lessing's refutation of deism did not make him a Christian, while the
new views proposed as a substitute for those of Reimarus were such as
Goetze and his age could in no wise comprehend.

Lessing's own views of dogmatic religion are to be found in his work
entitled, "The Education of the Human Race." These views have since so
far become the veriest commonplaces of criticism, that one can hardly
realize that, only ninety years ago, they should have been regarded as
dangerous paradoxes. They may be summed up in the statement that all
great religions are good in their time and place; that, "as there is
a soul of goodness in things evil, so also there is a soul of truth
in things erroneous." According to Lessing, the successive phases of
religious belief constitute epochs in the mental evolution of the human
race. So that the crudest forms of theology, even fetishism, now to
all appearance so utterly revolting, and polytheism, so completely
inadequate, have once been the best, the natural and inevitable results
of man's reasoning powers and appliances for attaining truth. The
mere fact that a system of religious thought has received the willing
allegiance of large masses of men shows that it must have supplied some
consciously felt want, some moral or intellectual craving. And the
mere fact that knowledge and morality are progressive implies that each
successive system may in due course of time be essentially modified or
finally supplanted. The absence of any reference to a future state of
retribution, in the Pentateuch and generally in the sacred writings
of the Jews, and the continual appeal to hopes and fears of a worldly
character, have been pronounced by deists an irremediable defect in
the Jewish religion. It is precisely this, however, says Lessing, which
constitutes one of its signal excellences. "That thy days may be long
in the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee," was an appeal which the
uncivilized Jew could understand, and which could arouse him to action;
while the need of a future world, to rectify the injustices of this, not
yet being felt, the doctrine would have been of but little service.
But in later Hebrew literature, many magnificent passages revealed the
despair felt by prophet and thinker over the insoluble problem presented
by the evil fate of the good and the triumphant success of the wicked;
and a solution was sought in the doctrine of a Messianic kingdom, until
Christianity with its proclamation of a future life set the
question entirely aside. By its appeal to what has been aptly termed
"other-worldliness," Christianity immeasurably intensified human
responsibility, besides rendering clearer its nature and limits. But
according to Lessing, yet another step remains to be taken; and here we
come upon the gulf which separates him from men of the stamp of
Theodore Parker. For, says Lessing, the appeal to unearthly rewards
and punishments is after all an appeal to our lower feelings;
other-worldliness is but a refined selfishness; and we are to cherish
virtue for its own sake not because it will lead us to heaven. Here is
the grand principle of Stoicism. Lessing believed, with Mr. Mill, that
the less we think about getting rewarded either on earth or in heaven
the better. He was cast in the same heroic mould as Muhamad Efendi, who
when led to the stake exclaimed: "Though I have no hope of recompense
hereafter, yet the love of truth constraineth me to die in its defence!"

With the truth or completeness of these views of Lessing we are not here
concerned; our business being not to expound our own opinions, but
to indicate as clearly as possible Lessing's position. Those who are
familiar with the general philosophical spirit of the present age,
as represented by writers otherwise so different as Littre and
Sainte-Beuve, will best appreciate the power and originality of these
speculations. Coming in the last century, amid the crudities of deism,
they made a well-defined epoch. They inaugurated the historical method
of criticism, and they robbed the spirit of intolerance of its only
philosophical excuse for existing. Hitherto the orthodox had been
intolerant toward the philosophers because they considered them
heretics; and the philosophers had been intolerant toward the orthodox
because they considered them fools. To Voltaire it naturally seemed
that a man who could believe in the reality of miracles must be what in
French is expressively termed a sot. But henceforth, to the disciple of
Lessing, men of all shade of opinion were but the representatives
and exponents of different phases in the general evolution of human
intelligence, not necessarily to be disliked or despised if they did not
happen to represent the maturest phase.

Religion, therefore, from this point of view, becomes clearly demarcated
from theology. It consists no longer in the mental assent to certain
prescribed formulas, but in the moral obedience to the great rule of
life; the great commandment laid down and illustrated by the Founder
of the Christian religion, and concerning which the profoundest modern
philosophy informs us that the extent to which a society has learned
to conform to it is the test and gauge of the progress in civilization
which that society has achieved. The command "to love one another," to
check the barbarous impulses inherited from the pre-social state, while
giving free play to the beneficent impulses needful for the ultimate
attainment of social equilibrium,--or as Tennyson phrases it, to "move
upward, working out the beast, and letting the ape and tiger die,"--was,
in Lessing's view, the task set before us by religion. The true
religious feeling was thus, in his opinion, what the author of "Ecce
Homo" has finely termed "the enthusiasm of humanity." And we shall find
no better language than that of the writer just mentioned, in which to
describe Lessing's conception of faith:--

"He who, when goodness is impressively put before him, exhibits an
instinctive loyalty to it, starts forward to take its side, trusts
himself to it, such a man has faith, and the root of the matter is
in such a man. He may have habits of vice, but the loyal and faithful
instinct in him will place him above many that practice virtue. He may
be rude in thought and character, but he will unconsciously gravitate
toward what is right. Other virtues can scarcely thrive without a fine
natural organization and a happy training. But the most neglected and
ungifted of men may make a beginning with faith. Other virtues want
civilization, a certain amount of knowledge, a few books; but in
half-brutal countenances faith will light up a glimmer of nobleness.
The savage, who can do little else, can wonder and worship and
enthusiastically obey. He who cannot know what is right can know that
some one else knows; he who has no law may still have a master; he who
is incapable of justice may be capable of fidelity; he who understands
little may have his sins forgiven because he loves much."

Such was Lessing's religion, so far as it can be ascertained from the
fragmentary writings which he has left on the subject. Undoubtedly it
lacked completeness. The opinions which we have here set down, though
constituting something more than a mere theory of morality, certainly
do not constitute a complete theory of religion. Our valiant knight has
examined but one side of the shield,--the bright side, turned toward us,
whose marvellous inscriptions the human reason can by dint of unwearied
effort decipher. But the dark side, looking out upon infinity, and
covered with hieroglyphics the meaning of which we can never know,
he has quite forgotten to consider. Yet it is this side which genuine
religious feeling ever seeks to contemplate. It is the consciousness
that there is about us an omnipresent Power, in which we live and move
and have our being, eternally manifesting itself throughout the whole
range of natural phenomena, which has ever disposed men to be religious,
and lured them on in the vain effort to construct adequate theological
systems. We may, getting rid of the last traces of fetishism, eliminate
arbitrary volition as much as we will or can. But there still remains
the consciousness of a divine Life in the universe, of a Power which is
beyond and above our comprehension, whose goings out and comings in no
man can follow. The more we know, the more we reach out for that which
we cannot know. And who can realize this so vividly as the scientific
philosopher? For our knowledge being, according to the familiar
comparison, like a brilliant sphere, the more we increase it the greater
becomes the number of peripheral points at which we are confronted
by the impenetrable darkness beyond. I believe that this restless
yearning,--vague enough in the description, yet recognizable by all who,
communing with themselves or with nature, have felt it,--this constant
seeking for what cannot be found, this persistent knocking at gates
which, when opened, but reveal others yet to be passed, constitutes an
element which no adequate theory of religion can overlook. But of this
we find nothing in Lessing. With him all is sunny, serene, and pagan.
Not the dim aisle of a vast cathedral, but the symmetrical portico of an
antique temple, is the worshipping-place into which he would lead us.

But if Lessing's theology must be considered imperfect, it is none the
less admirable as far as it goes. With its peculiar doctrines of love
and faith, it teaches a morality far higher than any that Puritanism
ever dreamed of. And with its theory of development it cuts away every
possible logical basis for intolerance. It is this theology to which
Lessing has given concrete expression in his immortal poem of "Nathan."

The central idea of "Nathan" was suggested to Lessing by Boccaccio's
story of "The Three Rings," which is supposed to have had a Jewish
origin. Saladin, pretending to be inspired by a sudden, imperious whim,
such as is "not unbecoming in a Sultan," demands that Nathan shall
answer him on the spur of the moment which of the three great religions
then known--Judaism, Mohammedanism, Christianity--is adjudged by reason
to be the true one. For a moment the philosopher is in a quandary. If he
does not pronounce in favour of his own religion, Judaism, he stultifies
himself; but if he does not award the precedence to Mohammedanism, he
will apparently insult his sovereign. With true Oriental tact he escapes
from the dilemma by means of a parable. There was once a man, says
Nathan, who possessed a ring of inestimable value. Not only was the
stone which it contained incomparably fine, but it possessed the
marvellous property of rendering its owner agreeable both to God and to
men. The old man bequeathed this ring to that one of his sons whom he
loved the most; and the son, in turn, made a similar disposition of
it. So that, passing from hand to hand, the ring finally came into the
possession of a father who loved his three sons equally well. Unto which
one should he leave it? To get rid of the perplexity, he had two other
rings made by a jeweller, exactly like the original, and to each of his
three sons he bequeathed one. Each then thinking that he had obtained
the true talisman, they began violently to quarrel, and after long
contention agreed to carry their dispute before the judge. But the judge
said: "Quarrelsome fellows! You are all three of you cheated cheats.
Your three rings are alike counterfeit. For the genuine ring is lost,
and to conceal the loss, your father had made these three substitutes."
At this unexpected denouement the Sultan breaks out in exclamations of
delight; and it is interesting to learn that when the play was brought
upon the stage at Constantinople a few years ago, the Turkish audience
was similarly affected. There is in the story that quiet, stealthy
humour which is characteristic of many mediaeval apologues, and in which
Lessing himself loved to deal. It is humour of the kind which hits
the mark, and reveals the truth. In a note upon this passage, Lessing
himself said: "The opinion of Nathan upon all positive religions has for
a long time been my own." Let him who has the genuine ring show it by
making himself loved of God and man. This is the central idea of the
poem. It is wholly unlike the iconoclasm of the deists, and, coming in
the eighteenth century, it was like a veritable evangel.

"Nathan" was not brought out until three years after Lessing's death,
and it kept possession of the stage for but a short time. In a dramatic
point of view, it has hardly any merits. Whatever plot there is in it is
weak and improbable. The decisive incidents seem to be brought in like
the deus ex machina of the later Greek drama. There is no movement,
no action, no development. The characters are poetically but not
dramatically conceived. Considered as a tragedy, "Nathan" would be weak;
considered as a comedy, it would be heavy. With full knowledge of these
circumstances, Lessing called it not a drama, but a dramatic poem; and
he might have called it still more accurately a didactic poem, for
the only feature which it has in common with the drama is that the
personages use the oratio directa.

"Nathan" is a didactic poem: it is not a mere philosophic treatise
written in verse, like the fragments of Xenophanes. Its lessons are
conveyed concretely and not abstractly; and its characters are not mere
lay figures, but living poetical conceptions. Considered as a poem among
classic German poems, it must rank next to, though immeasurably below,
Goethe's "Faust."

There are two contrasted kinds of genius, the poetical and the
philosophical; or, to speak yet more generally, the artistic and the
critical. The former is distinguished by a concrete, the latter by an
abstract, imagination. The former sees things synthetically, in
all their natural complexity; the latter pulls things to pieces
analytically, and scrutinizes their relations. The former sees a tree
in all its glory, where the latter sees an exogen with a pair of
cotyledons. The former sees wholes, where the latter sees aggregates.

Corresponding with these two kinds of genius there are two classes of
artistic productions. When the critical genius writes a poem or a
novel, he constructs his plot and his characters in conformity to
some prearranged theory, or with a view to illustrate some favourite
doctrine. When he paints a picture, he first thinks how certain
persons would look under certain given circumstances, and paints them
accordingly. When he writes a piece of music, he first decides that
this phrase expresses joy, and that phrase disappointment, and the other
phrase disgust, and he composes accordingly. We therefore say ordinarily
that he does not create, but only constructs and combines. It is far
different with the artistic genius, who, without stopping to think,
sees the picture and hears the symphony with the eyes and ears of
imagination, and paints and plays merely what he has seen and heard.
When Dante, in imagination, arrived at the lowest circle of hell, where
traitors like Judas and Brutus are punished, he came upon a terrible
frozen lake, which, he says,--

     "Ever makes me shudder at the sight of frozen pools."

I have always considered this line a marvellous instance of the
intensity of Dante's imagination. It shows, too, how Dante composed
his poem. He did not take counsel of himself and say: "Go to, let us
describe the traitors frozen up to their necks in a dismal lake, for
that will be most terrible." But the picture of the lake, in all its
iciness, with the haggard faces staring out from its glassy crust, came
unbidden before his mind with such intense reality that, for the rest
of his life, he could not look at a frozen pool without a shudder of
horror. He described it exactly as he saw it; and his description makes
us shudder who read it after all the centuries that have intervened.
So Michael Angelo, a kindred genius, did not keep cutting and chipping
away, thinking how Moses ought to look, and what sort of a nose he
ought to have, and in what position his head might best rest upon his
shoulders. But, he looked at the rectangular block of Carrara marble,
and beholding Moses grand and lifelike within it, knocked away the
environing stone, that others also might see the mighty figure. And so
Beethoven, an artist of the same colossal order, wrote out for us those
mysterious harmonies which his ear had for the first time heard; and
which, in his mournful old age, it heard none the less plainly because
of its complete physical deafness. And in this way Shakespeare wrote
his "Othello"; spinning out no abstract thoughts about jealousy and its
fearful effects upon a proud and ardent nature, but revealing to us
the living concrete man, as his imperial imagination had spontaneously
fashioned him.

Modern psychology has demonstrated that this is the way in which the
creative artistic imagination proceeds. It has proved that a vast
portion of all our thinking goes on unconsciously; and that the results
may arise into consciousness piecemeal and gradually, checking each
other as they come; or that they may come all at once, with all the
completeness and definiteness of perceptions presented from without. The
former is the case with the critical, and the latter with the artistic
intellect. And this we recognize imperfectly when we talk of a genius
being "inspired." All of us probably have these two kinds of imagination
to a certain extent. It is only given to a few supremely endowed persons
like Goethe to possess them both to an eminent degree. Perhaps of no
other man can it be said that he was a poet of the first order, and as
great a critic as poet.

It is therefore apt to be a barren criticism which studies the works of
creative geniuses in order to ascertain what theory lies beneath them.
How many systems of philosophy, how many subtle speculations, have we
not seen fathered upon Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Goethe! Yet
their works are, in a certain sense, greater than any systems. They
partake of the infinite complexity and variety of nature, and no more
than nature itself can they be narrowed down to the limits of a precise
formula.

Lessing was wont to disclaim the title of poet; but, as Goethe said,
his immortal works refute him. He had not only poetical, but dramatic
genius; and his "Emilia Galotti" has kept the stage until to-day.
Nevertheless, he knew well what he meant when he said that he was more
of a critic than a poet. His genius was mainly of the critical order;
and his great work, "Nathan the Wise," was certainly constructed rather
than created. It was intended to convey a doctrine, and was carefully
shaped for the purpose. And when we have pronounced it the greatest of
all poems that have been written for a set purpose, and admit of being
expressed in a definite formula, we have classified it with sufficient
accuracy.

For an analysis of the characters in the poem, nothing can be better
than the essay by Kuno Fischer, appended to the present volume. The
work of translation has been admirably done; and thanks are due to Miss
Frothingham for her reproduction of this beautiful poem.

      June, 1868.




VIII. HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES. [29]

 [29] Historical Difficulties and Contested Events. By Octave
Delepierre, LL. D., F. S. A., Secretary of Legation to the King of the
Belgians. 8vo. London: Murray. 1868.


History, says Sainte-Beuve, is in great part a set of fables which
people agree to believe in. And, on reading books like the present,
one certainly needs a good deal of that discipline acquired by long
familiarity with vexed historical questions, in order to check the
disposition to accept the great critic's ironical remark in sober
earnest. Much of what is currently accredited as authentic history is in
fact a mixture of flattery and calumny, myth and fable. Yet in this set
of fables, whatever may have been the case in past times, people will
no longer agree to believe. During the present century the criticism
of recorded events has gone far toward assuming the developed and
systematized aspect of a science, and canons of belief have been
established, which it is not safe to disregard. Great occurrences,
such as the Trojan War and the Siege of Thebes, not long ago faithfully
described by all historians of Greece, have been found to be part of
the common mythical heritage of the Aryan nations. Achilleus and Helena,
Oidipous and Iokasta, Oinone and Paris, have been discovered in India
and again in Scandinavia, and so on, until their nonentity has become
the legitimate inference from their very ubiquity. Legislators
like Romulus and Numa, inventors like Kadmos, have evaporated
into etymologies. Whole legions of heroes, dynasties of kings, and
adulteresses as many as Dante saw borne on the whirlwind, have vanished
from the face of history, and terrible has been the havoc in the opening
pages of our chronological tables. Nor is it primitive history alone
which has been thus metamorphosed. Characters unduly exalted or defamed
by party spirit are daily being set before us in their true, or at least
in a truer, light. What Mr. Froude has done for Henry VIII. we know; and
he might have done more if he had not tried to do so much. Humpbacked
Richard turns out to have been one of the handsomest kings that ever sat
on the throne of England. Edward I., in his dealings with Scotland, is
seen to have been scrupulously just; while the dignity of the patriot
hero Wallace has been somewhat impaired. Elizabeth is proved to have
befriended the false Mary Stuart much longer than was consistent with
her personal safety. Eloquent Cicero has been held up as an object of
contempt; and even weighty Tacitus has been said to owe much of his
reputation to his ability to give false testimony with a grave face.
It has lately been suspected that gloomy Tiberius, apart from his
gloominess, may have been rather a good fellow; not so licentious
as puritanical, not cruel so much as exceptionally merciful,--a rare
general, a sagacious statesman, and popular to boot with all his
subjects save the malignant oligarchy which he consistently snubbed, and
which took revenge on him by writing his life. And, to crown all, even
Catiline, abuser of our patience, seducer of vestal nuns, and drinker
of children's blood,--whose very name suggests murder, incest, and
robbery,--even Catiline has found an able defender in Professor Beesly.
It is claimed that Catiline was a man of great abilities and average
good character, a well-calumniated leader of the Marian party which
Caesar afterwards led to victory, and that his famous plot for burning
Rome never existed save in the unscrupulous Ciceronian fancy. And those
who think it easy to refute these conclusions of Professor Beesly
had better set to work and try it. Such are a few of the surprising
questions opened by recent historical research; and in the face of them
the public is quite excusable if it declares itself at a loss what to
believe.

These, however, are cases in which criticism has at least made some
show of ascertaining the truth and detecting the causes of the prevalent
misconception. That men like Catiline and Tiberius should have had their
characters blackened is quite easily explicable. President Johnson
would have little better chance of obtaining justice at the hands of
posterity, if the most widely read history of his administration should
happen to be written by a radical member of the Rump Congress. But the
cases which Mr. Delepierre invites us to contemplate are of a different
character. They come neither under the head of myths nor under that of
misrepresentations. Some of them are truly vexed questions which it
may perhaps always be impossible satisfactorily to solve. Others may
be dealt with more easily, but afford no clew to the origin of
the popularly received error. Let us briefly examine a few of Mr.
Delepierre's "difficulties." And first, because simplest, we will take
the case of the Alexandrian Library.

Every one has heard how Amrou, after his conquest of Egypt, sent to
Caliph Omar to know what should be done with the Alexandrian Library.
"If the books agree with the Koran," said the Caliph, "they are
superfluous; if they contradict it, they are damnable; in either case,
destroy them." So the books were taken and used to light the fires which
heated water for the baths; and so vast was the number that, used in
this way, they lasted six months! All this happened because John the
Grammarian was over-anxious enough to request that the books might be
preserved, and thus drew Amrou's attention to them. Great has been the
obloquy poured upon Omar for this piece of vandalism, and loud has
been the mourning over the treasures of ancient science and literature
supposed to have been irrecoverably lost in this ignominious
conflagration Theologians, Catholic and Protestant, have been fond of
quoting it as an instance of the hostility of Mahometanism to knowledge,
and we have even heard an edifying sermon preached about it. On seeing
the story put to such uses, one feels sometimes like using the ad
hominem argument, and quoting the wholesale destruction of pagan
libraries under Valens, the burning of books by the Latin stormers of
Constantinople, the alleged annihilation of 100,000 volumes by Genoese
crusaders at Tripoli, the book-burning exploits of Torquemada, the
bonfire of 80,000 valuable Arabic manuscripts, lighted up in the square
of Granada by order of Cardinal Ximenes, and the irreparable cremation
of Aztec writings by the first Christian bishops of Mexico. These
examples, with perhaps others which do not now occur to us, might be
applied in just though ungentle retort by Mahometan doctors. Yet the
most direct rejoinder would probably not occur to them: the Alexandrian
Library was NOT destroyed by the orders of Omar, and the whole story is
a figment!

The very pithiness of it, so characteristic of the excellent but bigoted
Omar, is enough to cast suspicion upon it. De Quincey tells us that "if
a saying has a proverbial fame, the probability is that it was never
said." How many amusing stories stand a chance of going down
to posterity as the inventions of President Lincoln, of which,
nevertheless, he is doubtless wholly innocent! How characteristic was
Caesar's reply to the frightened pilot! Yet in all probability Caesar
never made it.

Now for the evidence. Alexandria was captured by Armrou in 640. The
story of the burning of the library occurs for the first time in the
works of Abulpharagius, who flourished in 1264. Six hundred years had
elapsed. It is as if a story about the crusades of Louis IX. were to be
found for the first time in the writings of Mr. Bancroft. The Byzantine
historians were furiously angry with the Saracens; why did they, one
and all, neglect to mention such an outrageous piece of vandalism? Their
silence must be considered quite conclusive. Moreover we know "that the
caliphs had forbidden under severe penalties the destruction" of Jewish
and Christian books, a circumstance wholly inconsistent with this famous
story. And finally, what a mediaeval recklessness of dates is shown
in lugging into the story John the Grammarian, who was dead and in his
grave when Alexandria was taken by Amrou!

But the chief item of proof remains to be mentioned. The Saracens did
not burn the library, because there was no library there for them to
burn! It had been destroyed just two hundred and fifty years before by a
rabble of monks, incited by the patriarch Theophilus, who saw in such
a vast collection of pagan literature a perpetual insult and menace
to religion. In the year 390 this turbulent bigot sacked the temple of
Serapis, where the books were kept, and drove out the philosophers who
lodged there. Of this violent deed we have contemporary evidence, for
Orosius tells us that less than fifteen years afterwards, while passing
through Alexandria, he saw the empty shelves. This fact disposes of the
story.

Passing from Egypt to France, and from the seventh century to the
fifteenth, we meet with a much more difficult problem. That Jeanne d'Arc
was burnt at the stake, at Rouen, on the 30th of May, 1431, and her
bones and ashes thrown into the Seine, is generally supposed to be as
indisputable as any event in modern history. Such is, however, hardly
the case. Plausible evidence has been brought to prove that Jeanne d'Arc
was never burnt at the stake, but lived to a ripe age, and was even
happily married to a nobleman of high rank and reputation. We shall
abridge Mr. Delepierre's statement of this curious case.

In the archives of Metz, Father Vignier discovered the following
remarkable entry: "In the year 1436, Messire Phlin Marcou was Sheriff
of Metz, and on the 20th day of May of the aforesaid year came the maid
Jeanne, who had been in France, to La Grange of Ormes, near St. Prive,
and was taken there to confer with any one of the sieurs of Metz, and
she called herself Claude; and on the same day there came to see her
there her two brothers, one of whom was a knight, and was called Messire
Pierre, and the other 'petit Jehan,' a squire, and they thought that she
had been burnt, but as soon as they saw her they recognized her and she
them. And on Monday, the 21st day of the said month, they took their
sister with them to Boquelon, and the sieur Nicole, being a knight,
gave her a stout stallion of the value of thirty francs, and a pair of
saddle-cloths; the sieur Aubert Boulle, a riding-hood, the sieur Nicole
Groguet, a sword; and the said maiden mounted the said horse nimbly, and
said several things to the sieur Nicole by which he well understood that
it was she who had been in France; and she was recognized by many tokens
to be the maid Jeanne of France who escorted King Charles to Rheims,
and several declared that she had been burnt in Normandy, and she spoke
mostly in parables. She afterwards returned to the town of Marnelle for
the feast of Pentecost, and remained there about three weeks, and then
set off to go to Notre Dame d'Alliance. And when she wished to leave,
several of Metz went to see her at the said Marnelle and gave her
several jewels, and they knew well that she was the maid Jeanne of
France; and she then went to Erlon, in the Duchy of Luxembourg, where
she was thronged,.... and there was solemnized the marriage of Monsieur
de Hermoise, knight, and the said maid Jeanne, and afterwards the said
sieur Hermoise, with his wife, the Maid, came to live at Metz, in the
house the said sieur had, opposite St. Seglenne, and remained there
until it pleased them to depart."

This is surprising enough; but more remains behind. Dining shortly
afterwards with M. des Armoises, member of one of the oldest families in
Lorraine, Father Vignier was invited to look over the family archives,
that he might satisfy his curiosity regarding certain ancestors of his
host. And on looking over the family register, what was his astonishment
at finding a contract of marriage between Robert des Armoises, Knight,
and Jeanne d'Arcy, the so-called Maid of Orleans!

In 1740, some time after these occurrences, there was found, in the town
hall of Orleans, a bill of one Jacques l'Argentier, of the year 1436, in
which mention is made of a small sum paid for refreshments furnished
to a messenger who had brought letters from the Maid of Orleans, and of
twelve livres given to Jean du Lis, brother of Jeanne d'Arc, to help
him pay the expenses of his journey back to his sister. Then come two
charges which we shall translate literally. "To the sieur de Lis, 18th
October, 1436, for a journey which he made through the said city while
on his way to the Maid, who was then at Erlon in Luxembourg, and for
carrying letters from Jeanne the Maid to the King at Loicher, where he
was then staying, six livres." And again: "To Renard Brune, 25th July,
1435, at evening, for paying the hire of a messenger who was carrying
letters from Jeanne the Maid, and was on his way to William Beliers,
bailiff of Troyes, two livres."

As no doubt has been thrown upon the genuineness of these documents, it
must be considered established that in 1436, five years after the public
execution at Rouen, a young woman, believed to be the real Jeanne d'Arc,
was alive in Lorraine and was married to a M. Hermoises or Armoises. She
may, of course, have been an impostor; but in this case it is difficult
to believe that her brothers, Jean and Pierre, and the people of
Lorraine, where she was well known, would not have detected the
imposture at once. And that Jean du Lis, during a familiar intercourse
of at least several months, as indicated in the above extracts, should
have continued to mistake a stranger for his own sister, with whom he
had lived from childhood, seems a very absurd supposition. Nor is it
likely that an impostor would have exposed herself to such a formidable
test. If it had been a bold charlatan who, taking advantage of the
quite general belief, to which we have ample testimony, that there was
something more in the execution at Rouen than was allowed to come to the
surface, had resolved to usurp for herself the honours due to the woman
who had saved France, she would hardly have gone at the outset to a part
of the country where the real Maid had spent nearly all her life. Her
instant detection and exposure, perhaps a disgraceful punishment, would
have been inevitable. But if this person were the real Jeanne, escaped
from prison or returning from an exile dictated by prudence, what should
she have done but go straightway to the haunts of her childhood, where
she might meet once more her own friends and family?

But the account does not end here. M. Wallon, in his elaborate history
of Jeanne d'Arc, states that in 1436 the supposed Maid visited France,
and appears to have met some of the men-at-arms with whom she had
fought. In 1439 she came to Orleans, for in the accounts of the town we
read, "July 28, for ten pints of wine presented to Jeanne des Armoises,
14 sous." And on the day of her departure, the citizens of Orleans, by a
special decree of the town-council, presented her with 210 livres, "for
the services which she had rendered to the said city during the siege."
At the same time the annual ceremonies for the repose of her soul were,
quite naturally, suppressed. Now we may ask if it is at all probable
that the people of Orleans, who, ten years before, during the siege,
must have seen the Maid day after day, and to whom her whole appearance
must have been perfectly familiar, would have been likely to show such
attentions as these to an impostor? "In 1440," says Mr. Delepierre, "the
people so firmly believed that Jeanne d'Arc was still alive, and that
another had been sacrificed in her place, that an adventuress who
endeavoured to pass herself off as the Maid of Orleans was ordered by
the government to be exposed before the public on the marble stone of
the palace hall, in order to prove that she was an impostor. Why
were not such measures taken against the real Maid of Orleans, who is
mentioned in so many public documents, and who took no pains to hide
herself?"

There is yet another document bearing on this case, drawn from the
accounts of the auditor of the Orleans estate, in the year 1444, which
we will here translate. "An island on the River Loire is restored to
Pierre du Lis, knight, 'on account of the supplication of the said
Pierre, alleging that for the acquittal of his debt of loyalty toward
our Lord the King and M. the Duke of Orleans, he left his country to
come to the service of the King and M. the Duke, accompanied by his
sister, Jeanne the Maid, with whom, down to the time of her departure,
and since, unto the present time, he has exposed his body and goods in
the said service, and in the King's wars, both in resisting the former
enemies of the kingdom who were besieging the town of Orleans, and since
then in divers enterprises,' &c., &c." Upon this Mr. Delepierre justly
remarks that the brother might have presented his claims in a much
stronger light, "if in 1444, instead of saying 'up to the time of
her departure,' he had brought forward the martyrdom of his sister, as
having been the means of saving France from the yoke of England." The
expression here cited and italicized in the above translation, may
indeed be held to refer delicately to her death, but the particular
French phrase employed, "jusques a son absentement," apparently excludes
such an interpretation. The expression, on the other hand, might well
refer to Jeanne's departure for Lorraine, and her marriage, after which
there is no evidence that she returned to France, except for brief
visits. Thus a notable amount of evidence goes to show that Jeanne was
not put to death in 1431, as usually supposed, but was alive, married,
and flourishing in 1444. Upon this supposition, certain alleged
difficulties in the traditional account are easily disposed of. Mr.
Delepierre urges upon the testimony of Perceval de Cagny, that at the
execution in Rouen "the victim's face was covered when walking to the
stake, while at the same time a spot had been chosen for the execution
that permitted the populace to have a good view. Why this contradiction?
A place is chosen to enable the people to see everything, but the victim
is carefully hidden from their sight." Whether otherwise explicable or
not, this fact is certainly consistent with the hypothesis that
some other victim was secretly substituted for Jeanne by the English
authorities.

We have thus far contented ourselves with presenting and re-enforcing
Mr. Delepierre's statement of the case. It is now time to interpose a
little criticism. We must examine our data somewhat more closely, for
vagueness of conception allows a latitude to belief which accuracy of
conception considerably restricts.

On the hypothesis of her survival, where was Jeanne, and what was she
doing all the time from her capture before Compiegne, May 24, 1430,
until her appearance at Metz, May 20, 1436? Mr. Delepierre reminds us
that the Duke of Bedford, regent of France for the English king, died
in 1435, and "that most probably Jeanne d'Arc was released from prison
after this event." Now this supposition lands us in a fatally absurd
conclusion. We are, in fact, asked to believe that the English, while
holding Jeanne fast in their clutches, gratuitously went through the
horrid farce of burning some one else in her stead; and that, after
having thus inexplicably behaved, they further stultified themselves by
letting her go scot-free, that their foolishness might be duly exposed
and confuted. Such a theory is childish. If Jeanne d'Arc ever survived
the 30th May, 1431, it was because she escaped from prison and succeeded
in hiding herself until safer times. When could she have done this? In a
sortie from Compiegne, May 24, 1430, she was thrown from her horse by a
Picard archer and taken prisoner by the Bastard of Vendome, who sold her
to John of Luxembourg. John kept her in close custody at Beaulieu until
August. While there, she made two attempts to escape; first, apparently,
by running out through a door, when she was at once caught by the
guards; secondly, by jumping from a high window, when the shock of
the fall was so great that she lay insensible on the ground until
discovered. She was then removed to Beaurevoir, where she remained until
the beginning of November. By this time, Philip "the Good," Duke of
Burgundy, had made up his mind to sell her to the English for 10,000
francs; and Jeanne was accordingly taken to Arras, and thence to Cotoy,
where she was delivered to the English by Philip's officers. So far,
all is clear; but here it may be asked, WAS she really delivered to the
English, or did Philip, pocketing his 10,000 francs, cheat and defraud
his allies with a counterfeit Jeanne? Such crooked dealing would have
been in perfect keeping with his character. Though a far more agreeable
and gentlemanly person, he was almost as consummate and artistic a
rascal as his great-great-great-grandson and namesake, Philip II. of
Spain. His duplicity was so unfathomable and his policy so obscure,
that it would be hardly safe to affirm a priori that he might not, for
reasons best known to himself, have played a double game with his friend
the Duke of Bedford. On this hypothesis, he would of course keep
Jeanne in close custody so long as there was any reason for keeping his
treachery secret. But in 1436, after the death of Bedford and the final
expulsion of the English from France, no harm could come from setting
her at liberty.

But as soon as we cease to reason a priori, this is seen to be, after
all, a lame hypothesis. No one can read the trial of Jeanne at Rouen,
the questions that were put to her and the answers which she made,
without being convinced that we are here dealing with the genuine Maid
and not with a substitute. The first step of a counterfeit Jeanne would
have naturally been to save herself from the flames by revealing her
true character. Moreover, among the multitudes who saw her during her
cruel trial, it is not likely that none were acquainted with the true
Jeanne's voice and features. We must therefore conclude that Jeanne
d'Arc was really consigned to the tender mercies of the English. About
the 21st of November she was taken on horseback, strongly guarded, from
Cotoy to Rouen, where the trial began January 9, 1431. On the 21st of
February she appeared before the court; on the 13th of March she was
examined in the prison by an inquisitor; and on May 24, the Thursday
after Pentecost, upon a scaffold conspicuously placed in the Cemetery of
St. Ouen, she publicly recanted, abjuring her "heresies" and asking the
Church's pardon for her "witchcraft." We may be sure that the Church
dignitaries would not knowingly have made such public display of a
counterfeit Jeanne; nor could they well have been deceived themselves
under such circumstances. It may indeed be said, to exhaust all possible
suppositions, that a young girl wonderfully similar in feature and voice
to Jeanne d'Arc was palmed off upon the English by Duke Philip, and
afterwards, on her trial, comported herself like the Maid, trusting
in this recantation to effect her release. But we consider such an
hypothesis extremely far-fetched, nor does it accord with the events
which immediately followed. It seems hardly questionable that it was the
real Jeanne who publicly recanted on the 24th of May. This was only six
days before the execution. Four days after, on Monday the 28th, it was
reported that Jeanne had relapsed, that she had, in defiance of the
Church's prohibition, clothed herself in male attire, which had been
left in a convenient place by the authorities, expressly to test her
sincerity. On the next day but one, the woman purporting to be the Maid
of Orleans was led out, with her face carefully covered, and burnt at
the stake.

Here is the first combination of circumstances which bears a suspicious
look. It disposes of our Burgundy hypothesis, for a false Jeanne, after
recanting to secure her safety, would never have stultified herself by
such a barefaced relapse. But the true Jeanne, after recanting, might
certainly have escaped. Some compassionate guard, who before would have
scrupled to assist her while under the ban of the Church, might have
deemed himself excusable for lending her his aid after she had been
absolved. Postulating, then, that Jeanne escaped from Rouen between
the 24th and the 28th, how shall we explain what happened immediately
afterward?

The English feared Jeanne d'Arc as much as they hated her. She had, by
her mere presence at the head of the French army, turned their apparent
triumph into ignominious defeat. In those days the true psychological
explanation of such an event was by no means obvious. While the French
attributed the result to celestial interposition in their behalf, the
English, equally ready to admit its supernatural character, considered
the powers of hell rather than those of heaven to have been the prime
instigators. In their eyes Jeanne was a witch, and it was at least their
cue to exhibit her as such. They might have put her to death when she
first reached Rouen. Some persons, indeed, went so far as to advise that
she should be sewed up in a sack and thrown at once into the Seine; but
this was not what the authorities wanted. The whole elaborate trial, and
the extorted recantation, were devised for the purpose of demonstrating
her to be a witch, and thus destroying her credit with the common
people. That they intended afterwards to burn her cannot for an instant
be doubted; that was the only fit consummation for their evil work.

Now when, at the end of the week after Pentecost, the bishops and
inquisitors at Rouen learned, to their dismay, that their victim had
escaped, what were they to do? Confess that they had been foiled, and
create a panic in the army by the news that their dreaded enemy was at
liberty? Or boldly carry out their purposes by a fictitious execution,
trusting in the authority which official statements always carry, and
shrewdly foreseeing that, after her recantation, the disgraced Maid
would no more venture to claim for herself the leadership of the French
forces? Clearly, the latter would have been the wiser course. We may
assume, then, that, by the afternoon of the 28th, the story of the
relapse was promulgated, as a suitable preparation for what was to come;
and that on the 30th the poor creature who had been hastily chosen to
figure as the condemned Maid was led out, with face closely veiled, to
perish by a slow fire in the old market-place. Meanwhile the true Jeanne
would have made her way, doubtless, in what to her was the effectual
disguise of a woman's apparel, to some obscure place of safety, outside
of doubtful France and treacherous Burgundy, perhaps in Alsace or the
Vosges. Here she would remain, until the final expulsion of the English
and the conclusion of a treaty of peace in 1436 made it safe for her to
show herself; when she would naturally return to Lorraine to seek her
family.

The comparative obscurity in which she must have remained for the rest
of her life, otherwise quite inexplicable on any hypothesis of
her survival, is in harmony with the above-given explanation. The
ingratitude of King Charles towards the heroine who had won him his
crown is the subject of common historical remark. M. Wallon insists upon
the circumstance that, after her capture at Compiegne, no attempts were
made by the French Court to ransom her or to liberate her by a bold coup
de main. And when, at Rouen, she appealed in the name of the Church to
the Pope to grant her a fair trial, not a single letter was written by
the Archbishop of Rheims, High Chancellor of France, to his suffragan,
the Bishop of Beauvais, demanding cognizance of the proceedings. Nor did
the King make any appeal to the Pope, to prevent the consummation of the
judicial murder. The Maid was deliberately left to her fate. It is upon
her enemies at court, La Tremouille and Regnault de Chartres, that we
must lay part of the blame for this wicked negligence. But it is also
probable that the King, and especially his clerical advisers, were at
times almost disposed to acquiesce in the theory of Jeanne's witchcraft.
Admire her as they might, they could not help feeling that in her whole
behaviour there was something uncanny; and, after having reaped the
benefits of her assistance, they were content to let her shift for
herself. This affords the clew to the King's inconsistencies. It may
be thought sufficient to explain the fact that Jeanne is said to have
received public testimonials at Orleans, while we have no reason to
suppose that she visited Paris. It may help to dispose of the objection
that she virtually disappears from history after the date of the tragedy
at Rouen.

Nevertheless, this last objection is a weighty one, and cannot easily
be got rid of. It appears to me utterly incredible that, if Jeanne d'Arc
had really survived, we should find no further mention of her than
such as haply occurs in one or two town-records and dilapidated
account-books. If she was alive in 1436, and corresponding with the
King, some of her friends at court must have got an inkling of the
true state of things. Why did they not parade their knowledge, to the
manifest discomfiture of La Tremouille and his company? Or why did not
Pierre du Lis cause it to be proclaimed that the English were liars, his
sister being safely housed in Metz?

In the mere interests of historical criticism, we have said all that we
could in behalf of Mr. Delepierre's hypothesis. But as to the facts upon
which it rests, we may remark, in the first place, that the surname Arc
or "Bow" was not uncommon in those days, while the Christian name Jeanne
was and now is the very commonest of French names. There might have been
a hundred Jeanne d'Arcs, all definable as pucelle or maid, just as we
say "spinster": we even read of one in the time of the Revolution. We
have, therefore, no doubt that Robert des Hermoises married a Jeanne
d'Arc, who may also have been a maid of Orleans; but this does not prove
her to have been the historic Jeanne. Secondly, as to the covering of
the face, we may mention the fact, hitherto withheld, that it was by no
means an uncommon circumstance: the victims of the Spanish Inquisition
were usually led to the stake with veiled faces. Thirdly, the phrase
"jusques a son absentement" is hopelessly ambiguous, and may as well
refer to Pierre du Lis himself as to his sister.

These brief considerations seem to knock away all the main props of Mr.
Delepierre's hypothesis, save that furnished by the apparent testimony
of Jeanne's brothers, given at second hand in the Metz archives. And
those who are familiar with the phenomena of mediaeval delusions will
be unwilling to draw too hasty an inference from this alone. From
the Emperor Nero to Don Sebastian of Portugal, there have been many
instances of the supposed reappearance of persons generally believed to
be dead. For my own part, therefore, I am by no means inclined to adopt
the hypothesis of Jeanne's survival, although I have endeavoured to give
it tangible shape and plausible consistency. But the fact that so much
can be said in behalf of a theory running counter not only to universal
tradition, but also to such a vast body of contemporaneous testimony,
should teach us to be circumspect in holding our opinions, and
charitable in our treatment of those who dissent from them. For those
who can discover in the historian Renan and the critic Strauss nothing
but the malevolence of incredulity, the case of Jeanne d'Arc, duly
contemplated, may serve as a wholesome lesson.

We have devoted so much space to this problem, by far the most
considerable of those treated in Mr. Delepierre's book, that we have
hardly room for any of the others. But a false legend concerning Solomon
de Caus, the supposed original inventor of the steam-engine, is so
instructive that we must give a brief account of it.

In 1834 "there appeared in the Musee des Familles a letter from the
celebrated Marion Delorme, supposed to have been written on the 3d
February, 1641, to her lover Cinq-Mars." In this letter it is stated
that De Caus came four years ago [1637] from Normandy, to inform the
King concerning a marvellous invention which he had made, being nothing
less than the application of steam to the propulsion of carriages. "The
Cardinal [Richelieu] dismissed this fool without giving him a hearing."
But De Caus, nowise discouraged, followed close upon the autocrat's
heels wherever he went, and so teased him, that the Cardinal, out of
patience, sent him off to a madhouse, where he passed the remainder
of his days behind a grated window, proclaiming his invention to the
passengers in the street, and calling upon them to release him. Marion
gives a graphic account of her visit, accompanied by the famous Lord
Worcester, to the asylum at Bicetre, where they saw De Caus at his
window; and Worcester, in whose mind the conception of the steam-engine
was already taking shape, informed her that the raving prisoner was
not a madman, but a genius. A great stir was made by this letter. The
anecdote was copied into standard works, and represented in engravings.
Yet it was a complete hoax. De Caus was not only never confined in a
madhouse, but he was architect to Louis XIII. up to the time of his
death, in 1630, just eleven years BEFORE Marion Delorme was said to have
seen him at his grated window!

"On tracing this hoax to its source," says Mr. Delepierre, "we find
that M. Henri Berthoud, a literary man of some repute, and a constant
contributor to the Musee des Familles, confesses that the letter
attributed to Marion was in fact written by himself. The editor of this
journal had requested Gavarni to furnish him with a drawing for a tale
in which a madman was introduced looking through the bars of his cell.
The drawing was executed and engraved, but arrived too late; and the
tale, which could not wait, appeared without the illustration. However,
as the wood-engraving was effective, and, moreover, was paid for, the
editor was unwilling that it should be useless. Berthoud was, therefore,
commissioned to look for a subject and to invent a story to which the
engraving might be applied. Strangely enough, the world refused to
believe in M. Berthoud's confession, so great a hold had the anecdote
taken on the public mind; and a Paris newspaper went so far even as to
declare that the original autograph of this letter was to be seen in a
library in Normandy! M. Berthoud wrote again, denying its existence, and
offered a million francs to any one who would produce the said letter."

From this we may learn two lessons, the first being that utterly
baseless but plausible stories may arise in queer ways. In the above
case, the most far-fetched hypothesis to account for the origin of the
legend could hardly have been as apparently improbable as the reality.
Secondly, we may learn that if a myth once gets into the popular
mind, it is next to impossible to get it out again. In the Castle of
Heidelberg there is a portrait of De Caus, and a folio volume of his
works, accompanied by a note, in which this letter of Marion Delorme is
unsuspectingly cited as genuine. And only three years ago, at a public
banquet at Limoges, a well-known French Senator and man of letters
made a speech, in which he retailed the story of the madhouse for the
edification of his hearers. Truly a popular error has as many lives as
a cat; it comes walking in long after you have imagined it effectually
strangled.

In conclusion, we may remark that Mr. Delepierre does very scant justice
to many of the interesting questions which he discusses. It is to be
regretted that he has not thought it worth while to argue his points
more thoroughly, and that he has not been more careful in making
statements of fact. He sometimes makes strange blunders, the worst of
which, perhaps, is contained in his article on Petrarch and Laura. He
thinks Laura was merely a poetical allegory, and such was the case, he
goes on to say, "with Dante himself, whose Beatrice was a child who died
at nine years of age." Dante's Beatrice died on the 9th of June, 1290,
at the age of twenty-four, having been the wife of Simone dei Bardi
rather more than three years.

     October, 1868.




IX. THE FAMINE OF 1770 IN BENGAL. [30]

 [30] The Annals of Rural Bengal. By W. W. Hunter. Vol. I. The
Ethnical Frontier of Lower Bengal, with the Ancient Principalities of
Beerbhoom and Bishenpore. Second Edition. New York: Leypoldt and Holt.
1868. 8vo., pp. xvi., 475.

No intelligent reader can advance fifty pages in this volume without
becoming aware that he has got hold of a very remarkable book. Mr.
Hunter's style, to begin with, is such as is written only by men of
large calibre and high culture. No words are wasted. The narrative flows
calmly and powerfully along, like a geometrical demonstration, omitting
nothing which is significant, admitting nothing which is irrelevant,
glowing with all the warmth of rich imagination and sympathetic genius,
yet never allowing any overt manifestation of feeling, ever concealing
the author's personality beneath the unswerving exposition of the
subject-matter. That highest art, which conceals art, Mr. Hunter appears
to have learned well. With him, the curtain is the picture.

Such a style as this would suffice to make any book interesting, in
spite of the remoteness of the subject. But the "Annals of Rural
Bengal" do not concern us so remotely as one might at first imagine.
The phenomena of the moral and industrial growth or stagnation of a
highly-endowed people must ever possess the interest of fascination for
those who take heed of the maxim that "history is philosophy teaching
by example." National prosperity depends upon circumstances sufficiently
general to make the experience of one country of great value to another,
though ignorant Bourbon dynasties and Rump Congresses refuse to learn
the lesson. It is of the intimate every-day life of rural Bengal that
Mr. Hunter treats. He does not, like old historians, try our patience
with a bead-roll of names that have earned no just title to remembrance,
or dazzle us with a bountiful display of "barbaric pearls and gold," or
lead us in the gondolas of Buddhist kings down sacred rivers, amid
"a summer fanned with spice"; but he describes the labours and the
sufferings, the mishaps and the good fortune, of thirty millions of
people, who, however dusky may be their hue, tanned by the tropical suns
of fifty centuries, are nevertheless members of the imperial Aryan race,
descended from the cool highlands eastward of the Caspian, where, long
before the beginning of recorded history, their ancestors and those of
the Anglo-American were indistinguishably united in the same primitive
community.

The narrative portion of the present volume is concerned mainly with
the social and economical disorganization wrought by the great famine
of 1770, and with the attempts of the English government to remedy the
same. The remainder of the book is occupied with inquiries into the
ethnic character of the population of Bengal, and particularly with an
exposition of the peculiarities of the language, religion, customs, and
institutions of the Santals, or hill-tribes of Beerbhoom. A few remarks
on the first of these topics may not be uninteresting.

Throughout the entire course of recorded European history, from the
remote times of which the Homeric poems preserve the dim tradition down
to the present moment, there has occurred no calamity at once so sudden
and of such appalling magnitude as the famine which in the spring and
summer of 1770 nearly exterminated the ancient civilization of Bengal.
It presents that aspect of preternatural vastness which characterizes
the continent of Asia and all that concerns it. The Black Death of the
fourteenth century was, perhaps, the most fearful visitation which has
ever afflicted the Western world. But in the concentrated misery which
it occasioned the Bengal famine surpassed it, even as the Himalayas
dwarf by comparison the highest peaks of Switzerland. It is, moreover,
the key to the history of Bengal during the next forty years; and as
such, merits, from an economical point of view, closer attention than it
has hitherto received.

Lower Bengal gathers in three harvests each year; in the spring, in the
early autumn, and in December, the last being the great rice-crop, the
harvest on which the sustenance of the people depends. Through the year
1769 there was great scarcity, owing to the partial failure of the crops
of 1768, but the spring rains appeared to promise relief, and in spite
of the warning appeals of provincial officers, the government was slow
to take alarm, and continued rigorously to enforce the land-tax. But in
September the rains suddenly ceased. Throughout the autumn there ruled a
parching drought; and the rice-fields, according to the description of
a native superintendent of Bishenpore, "became like fields of dried
straw." Nevertheless, the government at Calcutta made--with one
lamentable exception, hereafter to be noticed--no legislative attempt
to meet the consequences of this dangerous condition of things. The
administration of local affairs was still, at that date, intrusted to
native officials. The whole internal regulation was in the hands of the
famous Muhamad Reza Ehan. Hindu or Mussulman assessors pried into every
barn and shrewdly estimated the probable dimensions of the crops on
every field; and the courts, as well as the police, were still in
native hands. "These men," says our author, "knew the country, its
capabilities, its average yield, and its average requirements, with an
accuracy that the most painstaking English official can seldom hope to
attain to. They had a strong interest in representing things to be worse
than they were; for the more intense the scarcity, the greater the merit
in collecting the land-tax. Every consultation is filled with their
apprehensions and highly-coloured accounts of the public distress; but
it does not appear that the conviction entered the minds of the Council
during the previous winter months, that the question was not so much one
of revenue as of depopulation." In fact, the local officers had cried
"Wolf!" too often. Government was slow to believe them, and announced
that nothing better could be expected than the adoption of a generous
policy toward those landholders whom the loss of harvest had rendered
unable to pay their land-tax. But very few indulgences were granted,
and the tax was not diminished, but on the contrary was, in the month
of April, 1770, increased by ten per cent for the following year. The
character of the Bengali people must also be taken into the account in
explaining this strange action on the part of the government.

"From the first appearance of Lower Bengal in history, its inhabitants
have been reticent, self-contained, distrustful of foreign observation,
in a degree without parallel among other equally civilized nations. The
cause of this taciturnity will afterwards be clearly explained; but no
one who is acquainted either with the past experiences or the present
condition of the people can be ignorant of its results. Local officials
may write alarming reports, but their apprehensions seem to be
contradicted by the apparent quiet that prevails. Outward, palpable
proofs of suffering are often wholly wanting; and even when, as in 1770,
such proofs abound, there is generally no lack of evidence on the other
side. The Bengali bears existence with a composure that neither accident
nor chance can ruffle. He becomes silently rich or uncomplainingly poor.
The emotional part of his nature is in strict subjection, his resentment
enduring but unspoken, his gratitude of the sort that silently descends
from generation to generation. The passion for privacy reaches its
climax in the domestic relations. An outer apartment, in even the
humblest households, is set apart for strangers and the transaction
of business, but everything behind it is a mystery. The most intimate
friend does not venture to make those commonplace kindly inquiries about
a neighbour's wife or daughter which European courtesy demands from mere
acquaintances. This family privacy is maintained at any price. During
the famine of 1866 it was found impossible to render public charity
available to the female members of the respectable classes, and many a
rural household starved slowly to death without uttering a complaint or
making a sign.

"All through the stifling summer of 1770 the people went on dying. The
husbandmen sold their cattle; they sold their implements of agriculture;
they devoured their seed-grain; they sold their sons and daughters, till
at length no buyer of children could be found; they ate the leaves of
trees and the grass of the field; and in June, 1770, the Resident at the
Durbar affirmed that the living were feeding on the dead. Day and night
a torrent of famished and disease-stricken wretches poured into the
great cities. At an early period of the year pestilence had broken out.
In March we find small-pox at Moorshedabad, where it glided through
the vice-regal mutes, and cut off the Prince Syfut in his palace. The
streets were blocked up with promiscuous heaps of the dying and dead.
Interment could not do its work quick enough; even the dogs and jackals,
the public scavengers of the East, became unable to accomplish their
revolting work, and the multitude of mangled and festering corpses at
length threatened the existence of the citizens..... In 1770, the rainy
season brought relief, and before the end of September the province
reaped an abundant harvest. But the relief came too late to avert
depopulation. Starving and shelterless crowds crawled despairingly
from one deserted village to another in a vain search for food, or a
resting-place in which to hide themselves from the rain. The epidemics
incident to the season were thus spread over the whole country; and,
until the close of the year, disease continued so prevalent as to form
a subject of communication from the government in Bengal to the Court
of Directors. Millions of famished wretches died in the struggle to live
through the few intervening weeks that separated them from the harvest,
their last gaze being probably fixed on the densely-covered fields that
would ripen only a little too late for them..... Three months later,
another bountiful harvest, the great rice-crop of the year, was gathered
in. Abundance returned to Bengal as suddenly as famine had swooped down
upon it, and in reading some of the manuscript records of December it
is difficult to realize that the scenes of the preceding ten months have
not been hideous phantasmagoria or a long, troubled dream. On Christmas
eve, the Council in Calcutta wrote home to the Court of Directors that
the scarcity had entirely ceased, and, incredible as it may seem, that
unusual plenty had returned..... So generous had been the harvest that
the government proposed at once to lay in its military stores for the
ensuing year, and expected to obtain them at a very cheap rate."

Such sudden transitions from the depths of misery to the most exuberant
plenty are by no means rare in the history of Asia, where the various
centres of civilization are, in an economical sense, so isolated
from each other that the welfare of the population is nearly always
absolutely dependent on the irregular: and apparently capricious bounty
of nature. For the three years following the dreadful misery above
described, harvests of unprecedented abundance were gathered in. Yet how
inadequate they were to repair the fearful damage wrought by six months
of starvation, the history of the next quarter of a century too plainly
reveals. "Plenty had indeed returned," says our annalist, "but it
had returned to a silent and deserted province." The extent of the
depopulation is to our Western imaginations almost incredible. During
those six months of horror, more than TEN MILLIONS of people had
perished! It was as if the entire population of our three or four
largest States--man, woman, and child--were to be utterly swept away
between now and next August, leaving the region between the Hudson and
Lake Michigan as quiet and deathlike as the buried streets of Pompeii.
Yet the estimate is based upon most accurate and trustworthy official
returns; and Mr. Hunter may well say that "it represents an aggregate
of individual suffering which no European nation has been called upon to
contemplate within historic times."

This unparalleled calamity struck down impartially the rich and the
poor. The old, aristocratic families of Lower Bengal were irretrievably
ruined. The Rajah of Burdwan, whose possessions were so vast that,
travel as far as he would, he always slept under a roof of his own and
within his own jurisdiction, died in such indigence that his son had to
melt down the family plate and beg a loan from the government in order
to discharge his father's funeral expenses. And our author gives other
similar instances. The wealthy natives who were appointed to assess and
collect the internal revenue, being unable to raise the sums required
by the government, were in many cases imprisoned, or their estates were
confiscated and re-let in order to discharge the debt.

For fifteen years the depopulation went on increasing. The children in
a community, requiring most nourishment to sustain their activity, are
those who soonest succumb to famine. "Until 1785," says our author,
"the old died off without there being any rising generation to step into
their places." From lack of cultivators, one third of the surface of
Bengal fell out of tillage and became waste land. The landed proprietors
began each "to entice away the tenants of his neighbour, by offering
protection against judicial proceedings, and farms at very low rents."
The disputes and deadly feuds which arose from this practice were,
perhaps, the least fatal of the evil results which flowed from it. For
the competition went on until, the tenants obtaining their holdings at
half-rates, the resident cultivators--who had once been the wealthiest
farmers in the country--were no longer able to complete on such terms.
They began to sell, lease, or desert their property, migrating to less
afflicted regions, or flying to the hills on the frontier to adopt a
savage life. But, in a climate like that of Northeastern India, it takes
but little time to transform a tract of untilled land into formidable
wilderness. When the functions of society are impeded, nature is swift
to assert its claims. And accordingly, in 1789, "Lord Cornwallis after
three years' vigilant inquiry, pronounced one third of the company's
territories in Bengal to be a jungle, inhabited only by wild beasts."

On the Western frontier of Beerbhoom the state of affairs was, perhaps,
most calamitous. In 1776, four acres out of every seven remained
untilled. Though in earlier times this district had been a favourite
highway for armies, by the year 1780 it had become an almost impassable
jungle. A small company of Sepoys, which in that year by heroic
exertions forced its way through, was obliged to traverse 120 miles of
trackless forest, swarming with tigers and black shaggy bears. In 1789
this jungle "continued so dense as to shut off all communication between
the two most important towns, and to cause the mails to be carried by a
circuit of fifty miles through another district."

Such a state of things it is difficult for us to realize; but the
monotonous tale of disaster and suffering is not yet complete. Beerbhoom
was, to all intents and purposes, given over to tigers. "A belt
of jungle, filled with wild beasts, formed round each village." At
nightfall the hungry animals made their dreaded incursions carrying away
cattle, and even women and children, and devouring them. "The official
records frequently speak of the mail-bag being carried off by wild
beasts." So great was the damage done by these depredations, that "the
company offered a reward for each tiger's head, sufficient to maintain a
peasant's family in comfort for three months; an item of expenditure it
deemed so necessary, that, when under extraordinary pressure it had to
suspend all payments, the tiger-money and diet allowance for prisoners
were the sole exceptions to the rule." Still more formidable foes were
found in the herds of wild elephants, which came trooping along in the
rear of the devastation caused by the famine. In the course of a few
years fifty-six villages were reported as destroyed by elephants, and as
having lapsed into jungle in consequence; "and an official return states
that forty market-towns throughout the district had been deserted from
the same cause. In many parts of the country the peasantry did not dare
to sleep in their houses, lest they should be buried beneath them during
the night." These terrible beasts continued to infest the province as
late as 1810.

But society during these dark days had even worse enemies than tigers
and elephants. The barbarous highlanders, of a lower type of mankind,
nourishing for forty centuries a hatred of their Hindu supplanters, like
that which the Apache bears against the white frontiersman, seized the
occasion to renew their inroads upon the lowland country. Year by year
they descended from their mountain fastnesses, plundering and burning.
Many noble Hindu families, ousted by the tax-collectors from their
estates, began to seek subsistence from robbery. Others, consulting
their selfish interests amid the general distress, "found it more
profitable to shelter banditti on their estates, levying blackmail from
the surrounding villages as the price of immunity from depredation, and
sharing in the plunder of such as would not come to terms. Their country
houses were robber strongholds, and the early English administrators of
Bengal have left it on record that a gang-robbery never occurred without
a landed proprietor being at the bottom of it." The peasants were not
slow to follow suit, and those who were robbed of their winter's store
had no alternative left but to become robbers themselves. The thieveries
of the Fakeers, or religious mendicants, and the bold, though stealthy
attacks of Thugs and Dacoits--members of Masonic brotherhoods, which at
all times have lived by robbery and assassination--added to the general
turmoil. In the cold weather of 1772 the province was ravaged far and
wide by bands of armed freebooters, fifty thousand strong; and to such
a pass did things arrive that the regular forces sent by Warren Hastings
to preserve order were twice disastrously routed; while, in Mr. Hunter's
graphic language, "villages high up the Ganges lived by housebreaking in
Calcutta." In English mansions "it was the invariable practice for the
porter to shut the outer door at the commencement of each meal, and not
to open it till the butler brought him word that the plate was safely
locked up." And for a long time nearly all traffic ceased upon the
imperial roads.

This state of things, which amounted to chronic civil war, induced
Lord Cornwallis in 1788 to place the province under the direct military
control of an English officer. The administration of Mr. Keating--the
first hardy gentleman to whom this arduous office was assigned--is
minutely described by our author. For our present purpose it is enough
to note that two years of severe campaigning, attended and followed by
relentless punishment of all transgressors, was required to put an end
to the disorders.

Such was the appalling misery, throughout a community of thirty million
persons, occasioned by the failure of the winter rice-crop in 1769.
In abridging Mr. Hunter's account we have adhered as closely to our
original as possible, but he who would obtain adequate knowledge of
this tale of woe must seek it in the ever memorable description of the
historian himself. The first question which naturally occurs to the
reader--though, as Mr. Hunter observes, it would have been one of
the last to occur to the Oriental mind--is, Who was to blame? To
what culpable negligence was it due that such a dire calamity was not
foreseen, and at least partially warded off? We shall find reason to
believe that it could not have been adequately foreseen, and that
no legislative measures could in that state of society have entirely
prevented it. Yet it will appear that the government, with the best of
intentions, did all in its power to make matters worse; and that to its
blundering ignorance the distress which followed is largely due.

The first duty incumbent upon the government in a case like that of
the failure of the winter rice-crop of 1769, was to do away with all
hindrance to the importation of food into the province. One chief cause
of the far-reaching distress wrought by great Asiatic famines has been
the almost complete commercial isolation of Asiatic communities. In the
Middle Ages the European communities were also, though to a far less
extent, isolated from each other, and in those days periods of famine
were comparatively frequent and severe. And one of the chief causes
which now render the occurrence of a famine on a great scale almost
impossible in any part of the civilized world is the increased
commercial solidarity of civilized nations. Increased facility of
distribution has operated no less effectively than improved methods of
production.

Now, in 1770 the province of Lower Bengal was in a state of almost
complete commercial isolation from other communities. Importation of
food on an adequate scale was hardly possible. "A single fact speaks
volumes as to the isolation of each district. An abundant harvest, we
are repeatedly told, was as disastrous to the revenues as a bad one;
for, when a large quantity of grain had to be carried to market, the
cost of carriage swallowed up the price obtained. Indeed, even if the
means of intercommunication and transport had rendered importation
practicable, the province had at that time no money to give in exchange
for food. Not only had its various divisions a separate currency which
would pass nowhere else except at a ruinous exchange, but in that
unfortunate year Bengal seems to have been utterly drained of its
specie..... The absence of the means of importation was the more to
be deplored, as the neighbouring districts could easily have supplied
grain. In the southeast a fair harvest had been reaped, except, in
circumscribed spots; and we are assured that, during the famine, this
part of Bengal was enabled to export without having to complain of any
deficiency in consequence..... INDEED, NO MATTER HOW LOCAL A FAMINE
MIGHT BE IN THE LAST CENTURY, THE EFFECTS WERE EQUALLY DISASTROUS.
Sylhet, a district in the northeast of Bengal, had reaped unusually
plentiful harvests in 1780 and 1781, but the next crop was destroyed by
a local inundation, and, notwithstanding the facilities for importation
afforded by water-carriage, one third of the people died."

Here we have a vivid representation of the economic condition of a
society which, however highly civilized in many important respects,
still retained, at the epoch treated of, its aboriginal type of
organization. Here we see each community brought face to face with the
impossible task of supplying, unaided, the deficiencies of nature. We
see one petty district a prey to the most frightful destitution, even
while profuse plenty reigns in the districts round about it. We find an
almost complete absence of the commercial machinery which, by enabling
the starving region to be fed out of the surplus of more favoured
localities, has in the most advanced countries rendered a great famine
practically impossible.

Now this state of things the government of 1770 was indeed powerless to
remedy. Legislative power and wisdom could not anticipate the invention
of railroads; nor could it introduce throughout the length and breadth
of Bengal a system of coaches, canals, and caravans; nor could it all at
once do away with the time-honoured brigandage, which increased the cost
of transport by decreasing the security of it; nor could it in a
trice remove the curse of a heterogeneous coinage. None, save those
uninstructed agitators who believe that governments can make water run
up-hill, would be disposed to find fault with the authorities in Bengal
for failing to cope with these difficulties. But what we are to
blame them for--though it was an error of the judgment and not of the
intentions--is their mischievous interference with the natural course of
trade, by which, instead of helping matters, they but added another
to the many powerful causes which were conspiring to bring about the
economic ruin of Bengal. We refer to the act which in 1770 prohibited
under penalties all speculation in rice.

This disastrous piece of legislation was due to the universal prevalence
of a prejudice from which so-called enlightened communities are not yet
wholly free. It is even now customary to heap abuse upon those persons
who in a season of scarcity, when prices are rapidly rising, buy up the
"necessaries of life," thereby still increasing for a time the cost of
living. Such persons are commonly assailed with specious generalities to
the effect that they are enemies of society. People whose only ideas
are "moral ideas" regard them as heartless sharpers who fatten upon the
misery of their fellow-creatures. And it is sometimes hinted that such
"practices" ought to be stopped by legislation.

Now, so far is this prejudice, which is a very old one, from being
justified by facts, that, instead of being an evil, speculation in
breadstuffs and other necessaries is one of the chief agencies by which
in modern times and civilized countries a real famine is rendered almost
impossible. This natural monopoly operates in two ways. In the first
place, by raising prices, it checks consumption, putting every one
on shorter allowance until the season of scarcity is over, and thus
prevents the scarcity from growing into famine. In the second place, by
raising prices, it stimulates importation from those localities where
abundance reigns and prices are low. It thus in the long run does much
to equalize the pressure of a time of dearth and diminish those extreme
oscillations of prices which interfere with the even, healthy course of
trade. A government which, in a season of high prices, does anything to
check such speculation, acts about as sagely as the skipper of a wrecked
vessel who should refuse to put his crew upon half rations.

The turning-point of the great Dutch Revolution, so far as it concerned
the provinces which now constitute Belgium, was the famous siege and
capture of Antwerp by Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma. The siege was a
long one, and the resistance obstinate, and the city would probably
not have been captured if famine had not come to the assistance of the
besiegers. It is interesting, therefore, to inquire what steps the civic
authorities had taken to prevent such a calamity. They knew that the
struggle before them was likely to be the life-and-death struggle of
the Southern Netherlands; they knew that there was risk of their being
surrounded so that relief from without would be impossible; they knew
that their assailant was one of the most astute and unconquerable of
men, by far the greatest general of the sixteenth century. Therefore
they proceeded to do just what our Republican Congress, under such
circumstances, would probably have done, and just what the New York
Tribune, if it had existed in those days, would have advised them to
do. Finding that sundry speculators were accumulating and hoarding up
provisions in anticipation of a season of high prices, they hastily
decided, first of all to put a stop to such "selfish iniquity." In their
eyes the great thing to be done was to make things cheap. They therefore
affixed a very low maximum price to everything which could be eaten, and
prescribed severe penalties for all who should attempt to take more than
the sum by law decreed. If a baker refused to sell his bread for a price
which would have been adequate only in a time of great plenty, his shop
was to be broken open, and his loaves distributed among the populace.
The consequences of this idiotic policy were twofold.

In the first place, the enforced lowness of prices prevented any
breadstuffs or other provisions from being brought into the city. It was
a long time before Farnese succeeded in so blockading the Scheldt as
to prevent ships laden with eatables from coming in below. Corn and
preserved meats might have been hurried by thousands of tons into the
beleaguered city. Friendly Dutch vessels, freighted with abundance, were
waiting at the mouth of the river. But all to no purpose. No merchant
would expose his valuable ship, with its cargo, to the risk of being
sunk by Farnese's batteries, merely for the sake of finding a market no
better than a hundred others which could be entered without incurring
danger. No doubt if the merchants of Holland had followed out the maxim
Vivre pour autrui, they would have braved ruin and destruction rather
than behold their neighbours of Antwerp enslaved. No doubt if they could
have risen to a broad philosophic view of the future interests of the
Netherlands, they would have seen that Antwerp must be saved, no matter
if some of them were to lose money by it. But men do not yet sacrifice
themselves for their fellows, nor do they as a rule look far beyond the
present moment and its emergencies. And the business of government is to
legislate for men as they are, not as it is supposed they ought to be.
If provisions had brought a high price in Antwerp, they would have been
carried thither. As it was, the city, by its own stupidity, blockaded
itself far more effectually than Farnese could have done it.

In the second place, the enforced lowness of prices prevented any
general retrenchment on the part of the citizens. Nobody felt it
necessary to economize. Every one bought as much bread, and ate it as
freely, as if the government by insuring its cheapness had insured its
abundance. So the city lived in high spirits and in gleeful defiance of
its besiegers, until all at once provisions gave out, and the government
had to step in again to palliate the distress which it had wrought. It
constituted itself quartermaster-general to the community, and doled
out stinted rations alike to rich and poor, with that stern democratic
impartiality peculiar to times of mortal peril. But this served only,
like most artificial palliatives, to lengthen out the misery. At the
time of the surrender, not a loaf of bread could be obtained for love or
money.

In this way a bungling act of legislation helped to decide for the worse
a campaign which involved the territorial integrity and future welfare
of what might have become a great nation performing a valuable function
in the system of European communities.

The striking character of this instructive example must be our excuse
for presenting it at such length. At the beginning of the famine in
Bengal the authorities legislated in very much the same spirit as the
burghers who had to defend Antwerp against Parma.

"By interdicting what it was pleased to term the monopoly of grain,
it prevented prices from rising at once to their natural rates. The
Province had a certain amount of food in it, and this food had to last
about nine months. Private enterprise if left to itself would have
stored up the general supply at the harvest, with a view to realizing
a larger profit at a later period in the scarcity. Prices would in
consequence have immediately risen, compelling the population to reduce
their consumption from the very beginning of the dearth. The general
stock would thus have been husbanded, and the pressure equally spread
over the whole nine months, instead of being concentrated upon the last
six. The price of grain, in place of promptly rising to three half-pence
a pound as in 1865-66, continued at three farthings during the earlier
months of the famine. During the latter ones it advanced to twopence,
and in certain localities reached fourpence."

The course taken by the great famine of 1866 well illustrates the
above views. This famine, also, was caused by the total failure of the
December rice-crop, and it was brought to a close by an abundant harvest
in the succeeding year.

"Even as regards the maximum price reached, the analogy holds good,
in each case rice having risen in general to nearly twopence, and in
particular places to fourpence, a pound; and in each the quoted rates
being for a brief period in several isolated localities merely nominal,
no food existing in the market, and money altogether losing its
interchangeable value. In both the people endured silently to the end,
with a fortitude that casual observers of a different temperament and
widely dissimilar race may easily mistake for apathy, but which those
who lived among the sufferers are unable to distinguish from qualities
that generally pass under a more honourable name. During 1866, when the
famine was severest, I superintended public instruction throughout the
southwestern division of Lower Bengal, including Orissa. The subordinate
native officers, about eight hundred in number, behaved with a
steadiness, and when called upon, with a self-abnegation, beyond praise.
Many of them ruined their health. The touching scenes of self-sacrifice
and humble heroism which I witnessed among the poor villagers on my
tours of inspection will remain in my memory till my latest day."

But to meet the famine of 1866 Bengal was equipped with railroads and
canals, and better than all, with an intelligent government. Far from
trying to check speculation, as in 1770, the government did all in its
power to stimulate it. In the earlier famine one could hardly engage
in the grain trade without becoming amenable to the law. "In 1866
respectable men in vast numbers went into the trade; for government, by
publishing weekly returns of the rates in every district, rendered the
traffic both easy and safe. Every one knew where to buy grain cheapest,
and where to sell it dearest, and food was accordingly brought from
the districts that could best spare it, and carried to those which most
urgently needed it. Not only were prices equalized so far as possible
throughout the stricken parts, but the publicity given to the high rates
in Lower Bengal induced large shipments from the upper provinces, and
the chief seat of the trade became unable to afford accommodation for
landing the vast stores of grain brought down the river. Rice poured
into the affected districts from all parts,--railways, canals, and roads
vigorously doing their duty."

The result of this wise policy was that scarcity was heightened into
famine only in one remote corner of Bengal. Orissa was commercially
isolated in 1866, as the whole country had been in 1770. "As far back as
the records extend, Orissa has produced more grain than it can use. It
is an exporting, not an importing province, sending away its surplus
grain by sea, and neither requiring nor seeking any communication with
Lower Bengal by land." Long after the rest of the province had begun to
prepare for a year of famine, Orissa kept on exporting. In March, when
the alarm was first raised, the southwest monsoon had set in, rendering
the harbours inaccessible. Thus the district was isolated. It was
no longer possible to apply the wholesome policy which was operating
throughout the rest of the country. The doomed population of Orissa,
like passengers in a ship without provisions, were called upon to suffer
the extremities of famine; and in the course of the spring and summer of
1866, some seven hundred thousand people perished.

     January, 1869.




X. SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS. [31]

 [31] History of the United Netherlands: from the Death of William
the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce, 1609. By John Lothrop Motley, D.
C. L. In four volumes. Vols. III. and IV. New York. 1868.


Tandem fit surculus arbor: the twig which Mr. Motley in his earlier
volumes has described as slowly putting forth its leaves and rootless,
while painfully struggling for existence in a hostile soil, has at last
grown into a mighty tree of liberty, drawing sustenance from all
lands, and protecting all civilized peoples with its pleasant shade.
We congratulate Mr. Motley upon the successful completion of the second
portion of his great work; and we think that the Netherlanders of our
time have reason to be grateful to the writer who has so faithfully and
eloquently told the story of their country's fearful struggle against
civil and ecclesiastical tyranny, and its manifold contributions to the
advancement of European civilization.

Mr. Motley has been fortunate in his selection of a subject upon which
to write. Probably no century of modern times lends itself to the
purposes of the descriptive historian so well as the sixteenth. While on
the one hand the problems which it presents are sufficiently near for
us to understand them without too great an effort of the imagination, on
the other hand they are sufficiently remote for us to study them without
passionate and warping prejudice. The contest between Catholicism and
the reformed religion--between ecclesiastical autocracy and the right of
private investigation--has become a thing of the past, and constitutes
a closed chapter in human history. The epoch which begins where Mr.
Motley's history is designed to close--at the peace of Westphalia--is
far more complicated. Since the middle of the seventeenth century a
double movement has been going on in religion and philosophy, society
and politics,--a movement of destruction typified by Voltaire and
Rousseau, and a constructive movement represented by Diderot and
Lessing. We are still living in the midst of this great epoch: the
questions which it presents are liable to disturb our prejudices as well
as to stimulate our reason; the results to which it must sooner or
later attain can now be only partially foreseen; and even its present
tendencies are generally misunderstood, and in many quarters wholly
ignored. With the sixteenth century, as we have said, the case is far
different. The historical problem is far less complex. The issues at
stake are comparatively simple, and the historian has before him a
straightforward story.

From the dramatic, or rather from the epic, point of view, the sixteenth
century is pre-eminent. The essentially transitional character of modern
history since the breaking up of the papal and feudal systems is at no
period more distinctly marked. In traversing the sixteenth century we
realize that we have fairly got out of one state of things and into
another. At the outset, events like the challenge of Barletta may make
us doubt whether we have yet quite left behind the Middle Ages. The
belief in the central position of the earth is still universal, and the
belief in its rotundity not yet, until the voyage of Magellan, generally
accepted. We find England--owing partly to the introduction of gunpowder
and the consequent disuse of archery, partly to the results of the
recent integration of France under Louis XI.--fallen back from the
high relative position which it had occupied under the rule of
the Plantagenets; and its policy still directed in accordance with
reminiscences of Agincourt, and garnet, and Burgundian alliances. We
find France just beginning her ill-fated career of intervention in the
affairs of Italy; and Spain, with her Moors finally vanquished and a new
world beyond the ocean just added to her domain, rapidly developing
into the greatest empire which had been seen since the days of the first
Caesars. But at the close of the century we find feudal life in castles
changed into modern life in towns; chivalric defiances exchanged for
over-subtle diplomacy; Maurices instead of Bayards; a Henry IV. instead
of a Gaston de Foix. We find the old theory of man's central position in
the universe--the foundation of the doctrine of final causes and of the
whole theological method of interpreting nature--finally overthrown
by Copernicus. Instead of the circumnavigability of the earth, the
discovery of a Northwest passage--as instanced by the heroic voyage of
Barendz, so nobly described by Mr. Motley--is now the chief geographical
problem. East India Companies, in place of petty guilds of weavers and
bakers, bear witness to the vast commercial progress. We find England,
fresh from her stupendous victory over the whole power of Spain, again
in the front rank of nations; France, under the most astute of modern
sovereigns, taking her place for a time as the political leader of the
civilized world; Spain, with her evil schemes baffled in every quarter,
sinking into that terrible death-like lethargy, from which she has
hardly yet awakened, and which must needs call forth our pity, though it
is but the deserved retribution for her past behaviour. While the little
realm of the Netherlands, filched and cozened from the unfortunate
Jacqueline by the "good" Duke of Burgundy, carried over to Austria as
the marriage-portion of Lady Mary, sent down to Spain as the personal
inheritance of the "prudent" Philip, and by him intolerably tormented
with an Inquisition, a Blood-Council, and a Duke of Alva, has after a
forty years' war of independence taken its position for a time as the
greatest of commercial nations, with the most formidable navy and one of
the best disciplined armies yet seen upon the earth.

But the central phenomenon of the sixteenth century is the culmination
of the Protestant movement in its decisive proclamation by Luther. For
nearly three hundred years already the power of the Church had been
declining, and its function as a civilizing agency had been growing
more and more obsolete. The first great blow at its supremacy had been
directed with partial success in the thirteenth century by the Emperor
Frederick II. Coincident with this attack from without, we find a
reformation begun within, as exemplified in the Dominican and Franciscan
movements. The second great blow was aimed by Philip IV. of France, and
this time it struck with terrible force. The removal of the Papacy to
Avignon, in 1305, was the virtual though unrecognized abdication of its
beneficent supremacy. Bereft of its dignity and independence, from
that time forth it ceased to be the defender of national unity against
baronial anarchy, of popular rights against monarchical usurpation, and
became a formidable instrument of despotism and oppression. Through
the vicissitudes of the great schism in the fourteenth century, and the
refractory councils in the fifteenth, its position became rapidly more
and more retrograde and demoralized. And when, in 1530, it joined
its forces with those of Charles V., in crushing the liberties of the
worthiest of mediaeval republics, it became evident that the cause of
freedom and progress must henceforth be intrusted to some more faithful
champion. The revolt of Northern Europe, led by Luther and Henry VIII.
was but the articulate announcement of this altered state of affairs.
So long as the Roman Church had been felt to be the enemy of tyrannical
monarchs and the steadfast friend of the people, its encroachments, as
represented by men like Dunstan and Becket, were regarded with popular
favour. The strength of the Church lay ever in its democratic instincts;
and when these were found to have abandoned it, the indignant protest of
Luther sufficed to tear away half of Europe from its allegiance.

By the end of the sixteenth century, we find the territorial struggle
between the Church and the reformed religion substantially decided.
Protestantism and Catholicism occupied then the same respective areas
which they now occupy. Since 1600 there has been no instance of a nation
passing from one form of worship to the other; and in all probability
there never will be. Since the wholesale dissolution of religious
beliefs wrought in the last century, the whole issue between Romanism
and Protestantism, regarded as dogmatic systems, is practically dead. M.
Renan is giving expression to an almost self-evident truth, when he says
that religious development is no longer to proceed by way of sectarian
proselytism, but by way of harmonious internal development. The contest
is no longer between one theology and another, but it is between
the theological and the scientific methods of interpreting natural
phenomena. The sixteenth century has to us therefore the interest
belonging to a rounded and completed tale. It contains within itself
substantially the entire history of the final stage of the theological
reformation.

This great period falls naturally into two divisions, the first
corresponding very nearly with the reigns of Charles V. and Henry VIII.,
and the second with the age of Philip II. and Elizabeth. The first of
these periods was filled with the skirmishes which were to open the
great battle of the Reformation. At first the strength and extent of the
new revolution were not altogether apparent. While the Inquisition was
vigorously crushing out the first symptoms of disaffection in Spain, it
at one time seemed as if the Reformers were about to gain the whole of
the Empire, besides acquiring an excellent foothold in France. Again,
while England was wavering between the old and the new faith, the last
hopes of the Reform in Germany seemed likely to be destroyed by the
military genius of Charles. But in Maurice, the red-bearded hero of
Saxony, Charles found more than his match. The picture of the rapid
and desperate march of Maurice upon Innspruck, and of the great Emperor
flying for his life at the very hour of his imagined triumph, has still
for us an intenser interest than almost any other scene of that age; for
it was the event which proved that Protestantism was not a mere local
insurrection which a monarch like Charles could easily put down, but a
gigantic revolution against which all the powers in the world might well
strive in vain.

With the abdication of Charles in 1556 the new period may be said
to begin, and it is here that Mr. Motley's history commences. Events
crowded thick and fast. In 1556 Philip II., a prince bred and educated
for the distinct purpose of suppressing heresy, succeeded to the rule
of the most powerful empire which had been seen since the days of the
Antonines. In the previous year a new era had begun at the court of
Rome. The old race of pagan pontiffs, the Borgias, the Farneses, and the
Medicis, had come to an end, and the papal throne was occupied by the
puritanical Caraffa, as violent a fanatic as Robespierre, and a foe of
freedom as uncompromising as Philip II. himself. Under his auspices
took place the great reform in the Church signalized by the rise of the
Jesuits, as the reform in the thirteenth century had been attended
by the rise of the Cordeliers and Dominicans. His name should not be
forgotten, for it is mainly owing to the policy inaugurated by him that
Catholicism was enabled to hold its ground as well as it did. In 1557
the next year, the strength of France was broken at St. Quentin, and
Spain was left with her hands free to deal with the Protestant powers.
In 1558, by the accession of Elizabeth, England became committed to the
cause of Reform. In 1559 the stormy administration of Margaret began in
the Netherlands. In 1560 the Scotch nobles achieved the destruction of
Catholicism in North Britain. By this time every nation except France,
had taken sides in the conflict which was to last, with hardly any
cessation, during two generations.

Mr. Motley, therefore, in describing the rise and progress of the united
republic of the Netherlands, is writing not Dutch but European history.
On his pages France, Spain, and England make almost as large a figure as
Holland itself. He is writing the history of the Reformation during its
concluding epoch, and he chooses the Netherlands as his main subject,
because during that period the Netherlands were the centre of the
movement. They constituted the great bulwark of freedom, and upon the
success or failure of their cause the future prospect of Europe and of
mankind depended. Spain and the Netherlands, Philip II. and William the
Silent, were the two leading antagonists and were felt to be such by
the other nations and rulers that came to mingle in the strife. It is
therefore a stupid criticism which we have seen made upon Mr. Motley,
that, having brought his narrative down to the truce of 1609, he ought,
instead of describing the Thirty Years' War, to keep on with Dutch
history, and pourtray the wars against Cromwell and Charles II., and the
struggle of the second William of Orange against Louis XIV. By so doing
he would only violate the unity of his narrative. The wars of the Dutch
against England and France belong to an entirely different epoch in
European history,--a modern epoch, in which political and commercial
interests were of prime importance, and theological interests distinctly
subsidiary. The natural terminus of Mr. Motley's work is the Peace
of Westphalia. After bringing down his history to the time when the
independence of the Netherlands was virtually acknowledged, after
describing the principal stages of the struggle against Catholicism and
universal monarchy, as carried on in the first generation by Elizabeth
and William, and in the second by Maurice and Henry, he will naturally
go on to treat of the epilogue as conducted by Richelieu and Gustavus,
ending in the final cessation of religious wars throughout Europe.

The conflict in the Netherlands was indeed far more than a mere
religious struggle. In its course was distinctly brought into prominence
the fact which we have above signalized, that since the Roman Church had
abandoned the liberties of the people they had found a new defender in
the reformed religion. The Dutch rebellion is peculiarly interesting,
because it was a revolt not merely against the Inquisition, but also
against the temporal sovereignty of Philip. Besides changing their
religion, the sturdy Netherlanders saw fit to throw off the sway of
their legitimate ruler, and to proclaim the thrice heretical doctrine
of the sovereignty of the people. In this one respect their views were
decidedly more modern than those of Elizabeth and Henry IV. These great
monarchs apparently neither understood nor relished the republican
theories of the Hollanders; though it is hardly necessary for Mr. Motley
to sneer at them quite so often because they were not to an impossible
degree in advance of their age. The proclamation of a republic in the
Netherlands marked of itself the beginning of a new era,--an era when
flourishing communities of men were no longer to be bought and sold,
transferred and bequeathed like real estate and chattels, but were to
have and maintain the right of choosing with whom and under whom they
should transact their affairs. The interminable negotiations for a
truce, which fill nearly one third of Mr. Motley's concluding volume,
exhibit with striking distinctness the difference between the old and
new points of view. Here again we think Mr. Motley errs slightly, in
calling too much attention to the prevaricating diplomacy of the Spanish
court, and too little to its manifest inability to comprehend the
demands of the Netherlanders. How should statesmen brought up under
Philip II. and kept under the eye of the Inquisition be expected to
understand a claim for liberty originating in the rights of the common
people and not in the gracious benevolence or intelligent policy of the
King? The very idea must have been practically inconceivable by them.
Accordingly, they strove by every available device of chicanery to
wheedle the Netherlanders into accepting their independence as a gift
from the King of Spain. But to such a piece of self-stultification the
clear-sighted Dutchmen could by no persuasion be brought to consent.
Their independence, they argued, was not the King's to give. They had
won it from him and his father, in a war of forty years, during which
they had suffered atrocious miseries, and all that the King of Spain
could do was to acknowledge it as their right, and cease to molest them
in future. Over this point, so simple to us but knotty enough in those
days, the commissioners wrangled for nearly two years. And when the
Spanish government, unable to carry on the war any longer without risk
of utter bankruptcy, and daily crippled in its resources by the attacks
of the Dutch navy, grudgingly a reed to a truce upon the Netherlanders'
terms, it virtually acknowledged its own defeat and the downfall of the
principles for which it had so obstinately fought. By the truce of
1609 the republican principle was admitted by the most despotic of
governments.

Here was the first great triumph of republicanism over monarchy; and it
was not long in bearing fruits. For the Dutch revolution, the settlement
of America by English Puritans, the great rebellion of the Commons, the
Revolution of 1688, the revolt of the American Colonies, and the general
overthrow of feudalism in 1789, are but successive acts in the same
drama William the Silent was the worthy forerunner of Cromwell and
Washington; and but for the victory which he won, during his life and
after his untimely death, the subsequent triumphs of civil liberty might
have been long, postponed.

Over the sublime figure of William--saevis tranquillus in undis--we
should be glad to dwell, but we are not reviewing the "Rise of the Dutch
Republic," and in Mr. Motley's present volumes the hero of toleration
appears no longer. His antagonist, however,--the Philip whom God for
some inscrutable purpose permitted to afflict Europe during a reign of
forty-two years,--accompanies us nearly to the end of the present work,
dying just in time for the historian to sum up the case against him,
and pronounce final judgment. For the memory of Philip II. Mr. Motley
cherishes no weak pity. He rarely alludes to him without commenting upon
his total depravity, and he dismisses him with the remark that "if
there are vices--as possibly there are--from which he was exempt, it
is because it is not permitted to human nature to attain perfection in
evil." The verdict is none the less just because of its conciseness. If
there ever was a strife between Hercules and Cacus, between Ormuzd and
Ahriman, between the Power of Light and the Power of Darkness, it
was certainly the strife between the Prince of Orange and the Spanish
Monarch. They are contrasted like the light and shade in one of Dore's
pictures. And yet it is perhaps unnecessary for Mr. Motley to say that
if Philip had been alive when Spinola won for him the great victory of
Ostend, "he would have felt it his duty to make immediate arrangements
for poisoning him." Doubtless the imputation is sufficiently justified
by what we know of Philip; but it is uncalled for. We do not care to
hear about what the despot might have done. We know what he did do, and
the record is sufficiently damning. There is no harm in our giving the
Devil his due, or as Llorente wittily says, "Il ne faut pas calomnier
meme l'Inquisition."

Philip inherited all his father's bad qualities, without any of his good
ones; and so it is much easier to judge him than his father. Charles,
indeed, is one of those characters whom one hardly knows whether to love
or hate, to admire or despise. He had much bad blood in him. Charles the
Bold and Ferdinand of Aragon were not grandparents to be proud of. Yet
with all this he inherited from his grandmother Isabella much that one
can like, and his face, as preserved by Titian, in spite of its frowning
brow and thick Burgundian lip, is rather prepossessing, while the face
of Philip is simply odious. In intellect he must probably be called
great, though his policy often betrayed the pettiness of selfishness.
If, in comparison with the mediaeval emperor whose fame he envied, he
may justly be called Charles the Little, he may still, when compared to
a more modern emulator of Charlemagne,--the first of the Bonapartes,--be
considered great and enlightened. If he could lie and cheat more
consummately than any contemporary monarch, not excepting his rival,
Francis, he could still be grandly magnanimous, while the generosity of
Francis flowed only from the shallow surface of a maudlin good-nature.
He spoke many languages and had the tastes of a scholar, while his son
had only the inclinations of an unfeeling pedagogue. He had an inkling
of urbanity, and could in a measure become all things to all men, while
Philip could never show himself except as a gloomy, impracticable bigot.
It is for some such reasons as these, I suppose, that Mr. Buckle--no
friend to despots--speaks well of Charles, and that Mr. Froude is moved
to tell the following anecdote: While standing by the grave of Luther,
and musing over the strange career of the giant monk whose teachings had
gone so far to wreck his most cherished schemes and render his life a
failure, some fanatical bystander advised the Emperor to have the body
taken up and burned in the market-place. "There was nothing," says Mr.
Froude, "unusual in the proposal; it was the common practice of the
Catholic Church with the remains of heretics, who were held unworthy
to be left in repose in hallowed ground. There was scarcely, perhaps
another Catholic prince who would have hesitated to comply. But Charles
was one of nature's gentlemen. He answered, 'I war not with the dead.'"
Mr. Motley takes a less charitable view of the great Emperor. His
generous indignation against all persecutors makes him severe; and in
one of his earlier volumes, while speaking of the famous edicts for the
suppression of heresy in the Netherlands, he somewhere uses the word
"murder." Without attempting to palliate the crime of persecution, I
doubt if it is quite fair to Charles to call him a murderer. We must not
forget that persecution, now rightly deemed an atrocious crime, was once
really considered by some people a sacred duty; that it was none other
than the compassionate Isabella who established the Spanish Inquisition;
and that the "bloody" Mary Tudor was a woman who would not wilfully have
done wrong. With the progress of civilization the time will doubtless
come when warfare, having ceased to be necessary, will be thought highly
criminal; yet it will not then be fair to hold Marlborough or Wellington
accountable for the lives lost in their great battles. We still live in
an age when war is, to the imagination of some persons, surrounded with
false glories; and the greatest of modern generals [32] has still many
undiscriminating admirers. Yet the day is no less certainly at hand
when the edicts of Charles V. will be deemed a more pardonable offence
against humanity than the wanton march to Moscow.

 [32] This was written before the deeds of Moltke had eclipsed
those of Napoleon.


Philip II. was different from his father in capacity as a drudging
clerk, like Boutwell, is different from a brilliant financier like
Gladstone. In organization he differed from him as a boor differs from a
gentleman. He seemed made of a coarser clay. The difference between
them is well indicated by their tastes at the table. Both were terrible
gluttons, a fact which puritanic criticism might set down as equally
to the discredit of each of them. But even in intemperance there are
degrees of refinement, and the impartial critic of life and manners will
no doubt say that if one must get drunk, let it be on Chateau Margaux
rather than on commissary whiskey. Pickled partridges, plump capons,
syrups of fruits, delicate pastry, and rare fish went to make up the
diet of Charles in his last days at Yuste. But the beastly Philip would
make himself sick with a surfeit of underdone pork.

Whatever may be said of the father, we can hardly go far wrong in
ascribing the instincts of a murderer to the son. He not only
burned heretics, but he burned them with an air of enjoyment and
self-complacency. His nuptials with Elizabeth of France were celebrated
by a vast auto-da-fe. He studied murder as a fine art, and was as
skilful in private assassinations as Cellini was in engraving on gems.
The secret execution of Montigny, never brought to light until the
present century, was a veritable chef d'oeuvre of this sort. The
cases of Escobedo and Antonio Perez may also be cited in point. Dark
suspicions hung around the premature death of Don John of Austria, his
too brilliant and popular half-brother. He planned the murder of William
the Silent, and rewarded the assassin with an annuity furnished by
the revenues of the victim's confiscated estates. He kept a staff of
ruffians constantly in service for the purpose of taking off Elizabeth,
Henry IV., Prince Maurice, Olden-Barneveldt, and St. Aldegonde. He
instructed Alva to execute sentence of death upon the whole population
of the Netherlands. He is partly responsible for the martyrdoms of
Ridley and Latimer, and the judicial murder of Cranmer. He first
conceived the idea of the wholesale massacre of St. Bartholomew,
many years before Catharine de' Medici carried it into operation. His
ingratitude was as dangerous as his revengeful fanaticism. Those who
had best served his interests were the least likely to escape the
consequences of his jealousy. He destroyed Egmont, who had won for him
the splendid victories of St. Quentin and Gravelines; and "with minute
and artistic treachery" he plotted "the disgrace and ruin" of Farnese,
"the man who was his near blood-relation, and who had served him most
faithfully from earliest youth." Contemporary opinion even held him
accountable for the obscure deaths of his wife Elizabeth and his son
Carlos; but M. Gachard has shown that this suspicion is unfounded.
Philip appears perhaps to better advantage in his domestic than in his
political relations. Yet he was addicted to vulgar and miscellaneous
incontinence; toward the close of his life he seriously contemplated
marrying his own daughter Isabella; and he ended by taking for his
fourth wife his niece, Anne of Austria, who became the mother of his
half-idiotic son and successor. We know of no royal family, unless it
may be the Claudians of Rome, in which the transmission of moral and
intellectual qualities is more thoroughly illustrated than in this
Burgundian race which for two centuries held the sceptre of Spain. The
son Philip and the grandmother Isabella are both needful in order to
comprehend the strange mixture of good and evil in Charles. But the
descendants of Philip--two generations of idiocy, and a third of
utter impotence--are a sufficient commentary upon the organization and
character of their progenitor.

Such was the man who for two generations had been considered the bulwark
of the Catholic Church; who, having been at the bottom of nearly all the
villany that had been wrought in Europe for half a century, was yet
able to declare upon his death-bed that "in all his life he had never
consciously done wrong to any one." At a ripe old age he died of a
fearful disease. Under the influence of a typhus fever, supervening upon
gout, he had begun to decompose while yet alive. "His sufferings," says
Mr. Motley, "were horrible, but no saint could have manifested in
them more gentle resignation or angelic patience. He moralized on the
condition to which the greatest princes might thus be brought at last by
the hand of God, and bade the Prince observe well his father's present
condition, in order that when he too should be laid thus low, he might
likewise be sustained by a conscience void of offence." What more is
needed to complete the disgusting picture? Philip was fanatical up to
the point where fanaticism borders upon hypocrisy. He was possessed with
a "great moral idea," the idea of making Catholicism the ruler of the
world, that he might be the ruler of Catholicism. Why, it may be said,
shall the charge of fanaticism be allowed to absolve Isabella and
extenuate the guilt of Charles, while it only strengthens the case
against Philip? Because Isabella persecuted heretics in order to save
their souls from a worse fate, while Philip burnt them in order to
get them out of his way. Isabella would perhaps have gone to the stake
herself, if thereby she might have put an end to heresy. Philip would
have seen every soul in Europe consigned to eternal perdition before he
would have yielded up an iota of his claims to universal dominion.
He could send Alva to browbeat the Pope, as well as to oppress the
Netherlanders. He could compass the destruction of the orthodox Egmont
and Farnese, as well as of the heretical William. His unctuous piety
only adds to the abhorrence with which we regard him; and his humility
in face of death is neither better nor worse than the assumed humility
which had become second nature to Uriah Heep. In short, take him for
all in all, he was probably the most loathsome character in all European
history. He has frequently been called, by Protestant historians,
an incarnate devil; but we do not think that Mephistopheles would
acknowledge him. He should rather be classed among those creatures
described by Dante as "a Dio spiacenti ed ai nemici sui."

The abdication of Charles V. left Philip ruler over wider dominions than
had ever before been brought together under the sway of one man. In his
own right Philip was master not only of Spain, but of the Netherlands,
Franche Comte, Lombardy, Naples, and Sicily, with the whole of North and
South America; besides which he was married to the Queen of England. In
the course of his reign he became possessed of Portugal, with all its
vast domains in the East Indies. His revenues were greater than those of
any other contemporary monarch; his navy was considered invincible, and
his army was the best disciplined in Europe. All these great advantages
he was destined to throw to the winds. In the strife for universal
monarchy, in the mad endeavour to subject England, Scotland, and
France to his own dominion and the tyranny of the Inquisition, besides
re-conquering the Netherlands, all his vast resources were wasted. The
Dutch war alone, like a bottomless pit, absorbed all that he could pour
into it. Long before the war was over, or showed signs of drawing to an
end, his revenues were wasted, and his troops in Flanders were mutinous
for want of pay. He had to rely upon energetic viceroys like Farnese and
the Spinolas to furnish funds out of their own pockets. Finally, he was
obliged to repudiate all his debts; and when he died the Spanish empire
was in such a beggarly condition that it quaked at every approach of a
hostile Dutch fleet. Such a result is not evidence of a statesmanlike
ability; but Philip's fanatical selfishness was incompatible with
statesmanship. He never could be made to believe that his projects had
suffered defeat. No sooner had the Invincible Armada been sent to the
bottom by the guns of the English fleet and the gales of the German
Ocean, than he sent orders to Farnese to invade England at once with the
land force under his command! He thought to obtain Scotland, when, after
the death of Mary, it had passed under the undisputed control of the
Protestant noblemen. He dreamed of securing for his family the crown of
France, even after Henry, with free consent of the Pope, had made his
triumphal entry into Paris. He asserted complete and entire sovereignty
over the Netherlands, even after Prince Maurice had won back from him
the last square foot of Dutch territory. Such obstinacy as this can
only be called fatuity. If Philip had lived in Pagan times, he would
doubtless, like Caligula, have demanded recognition of his own divinity.

The miserable condition of the Spanish people under this terrible reign,
and the causes of their subsequent degeneracy, have been well treated by
Mr. Motley. The causes of the failure of Spanish civilization are partly
social and partly economical; and they had been operating for eight
hundred years when Philip succeeded to the throne. The Moorish conquest
in 711 had practically isolated Spain from the rest of Europe. In the
Crusades she took no part, and reaped none of the signal advantages
resulting from that great movement. Her whole energies were directed
toward throwing off the yoke of her civilized but "unbelieving"
oppressors. For a longer time than has now elapsed since the Norman
Conquest of England, the entire Gothic population of Spain was engaged
in unceasing religious and patriotic warfare. The unlimited power thus
acquired by an unscrupulous clergy, and the spirit of uncompromising
bigotry thus imparted to the whole nation, are in this way readily
accounted for. But in spite of this, the affairs of Spain at the
accession of Charles V. were not in an unpromising condition. The
Spanish Visigoths had been the least barbarous of the Teutonic
settlers within the limits of the Empire; their civil institutions were
excellent; their cities had obtained municipal liberties at an earlier
date than those of England; and their Parliaments indulged in a liberty
of speech which would have seemed extravagant even to De Montfort. So
late as the time of Ferdinand, the Spaniards were still justly proud of
their freedom; and the chivalrous ambition which inspired the marvellous
expedition of Cortes to Mexico, and covered the soil of Italy with
Spanish armies, was probably in the main a healthy one. But the forces
of Spanish freedom were united at too late an epoch; in 1492, the power
of despotism was already in the ascendant. In England the case was
different. The barons were enabled to combine and wrest permanent
privileges from the crown, at a time when feudalism was strong. But the
Spanish communes waited for combined action until feudalism had become
weak, and modern despotism, with its standing armies and its control of
the spiritual power, was arrayed in the ranks against them. The War of
the Communes, early in the reign of Charles V., irrevocably decided the
case in favour of despotism, and from that date the internal decline of
Spain may be said to have begun.

But the triumphant consolidation of the spiritual and temporal powers of
despotism, and the abnormal development of loyalty and bigotry, were not
the only evil results of the chronic struggle in which Spain had been
engaged. For many centuries, while Christian Spain had been but a fringe
of debatable border-land on the skirts of the Moorish kingdom,
perpetual guerilla warfare had rendered consecutive labour difficult or
impracticable; and the physical configuration of the country contributed
in bringing about this result. To plunder the Moors across the border
was easier than to till the ground at home. Then as the Spaniards,
exemplifying the military superiority of the feudal over the sultanic
form of social organization, proceeded steadily to recover dominion over
the land, the industrious Moors, instead of migrating backward before
the advance of their conquerors, remained at home and submitted to them.
Thus Spanish society became compounded of two distinct castes,--the
Moorish Spaniards, who were skilled labourers, and the Gothic Spaniards,
by whom all labour, crude or skilful, was deemed the stigma of a
conquered race, and unworthy the attention of respectable people. As Mr.
Motley concisely says:--

"The highest industrial and scientific civilization that had been
exhibited upon Spanish territory was that of Moors and Jews. When in
the course of time those races had been subjugated, massacred, or driven
into exile, not only was Spain deprived of its highest intellectual
culture and its most productive labour, but intelligence, science, and
industry were accounted degrading, because the mark of inferior and
detested peoples."

This is the key to the whole subsequent history of Spain. Bigotry,
loyalty, and consecrated idleness are the three factors which have
made that great country what it is to-day,--the most backward region in
Europe. In view of the circumstances just narrated, it is not surprising
to learn that in Philip II.'s time a vast portion of the real estate of
the country was held by the Church in mortmain; that forty-nine noble
families owned all the rest; that all great estates were held in tail;
and that the property of the aristocracy and the clergy was completely
exempt from taxation. Thus the accumulation and the diffusion of capital
were alike prevented; and the few possessors of property wasted it
in unproductive expenditure. Hence the fundamental error of Spanish
political economy, that wealth is represented solely by the precious
metals; an error which well enough explains the total failure, in spite
of her magnificent opportunities, of Spain's attempts to colonize the
New World. Such was the frightful condition of Spanish society under
Philip II.; and as if this state of things were not bad enough, the next
king, Philip III., at the instigation of the clergy, decided to drive
into banishment the only class of productive labourers yet remaining in
the country. In 1610, this stupendous crime and blunder--unparalleled
even in Spanish history--was perpetrated. The entire Moorish population
were expelled from their homes and driven into the deserts of Africa.
For the awful consequences of this mad action no remedy was possible. No
system of native industry could be created on demand, to take the place
of that which had been thus wantonly crushed forever. From this epoch
dates the social ruin of Spain. In less than a century her people were
riotous with famine; and every sequestered glen and mountain pathway
throughout the country had become a lurking-place for robbers. Whoever
would duly realize to what a lamentable condition this beautiful
peninsula had in the seventeenth century been reduced, let him study
the immortal pages of Lesage. He will learn afresh the lesson, not yet
sufficiently regarded in the discussion of social problems, that the
laws of nature cannot be violated without entailing a penalty fearful
in proportion to the extent of the violation. But let him carefully
remember also that the Spaniards are not and never have been a
despicable people. If Spain has produced one of the lowest characters
in history, she has also produced one of the highest. That man was every
inch a Spaniard who, maimed, diseased, and poor, broken down by long
captivity, and harassed by malignant persecution, lived nevertheless
a life of grandeur and beauty fit to be a pattern for coming
generations,--the author of a book which has had a wider fame than any
other in the whole range of secular literature, and which for delicate
humour, exquisite pathos, and deep ethical sentiment, remains to-day
without a peer or a rival. If Philip II. was a Spaniard, so, too, was
Cervantes.

Spain could not be free, for she violated every condition by which
freedom is secured to a people. "Acuteness of intellect, wealth of
imagination, heroic qualities of heart and hand and brain, rarely
surpassed in any race and manifested on a thousand battle-fields, and in
the triumphs of a magnificent and most original literature, had not been
able to save a whole nation from the disasters and the degradation which
the mere words Philip II. and the Holy Inquisition suggest to every
educated mind." Nor could Spain possibly become rich, for, as Mr. Motley
continues, "nearly every law, according to which the prosperity of a
country becomes progressive, was habitually violated." On turning to
the Netherlands we find the most complete contrast, both in historical
conditions and in social results; and the success of the Netherlands in
their long struggle becomes easily intelligible. The Dutch and Flemish
provinces had formed a part of the renovated Roman Empire of Charles
the Great and the Othos. Taking advantage of the perennial contest for
supremacy between the popes and the Roman emperors, the constituent
baronies and municipalities of the Empire succeeded in acquiring and
maintaining a practical though unrecognized independence; and this is
the original reason why Italy and Germany, unlike the three western
European communities, have remained fragmentary until our own time.
By reason of the practical freedom of action thus secured, the Italian
civic republics, the Hanse towns, and the cities of Holland and
Flanders, were enabled gradually to develop a vast commerce. The
outlying position of the Netherlands, remote from the imperial
authorities, and on the direct line of commerce between Italy and
England, was another and a peculiar advantage. Throughout the Middle
Ages the Flemish and Dutch cities were of considerable political
importance, and in the fifteenth century the Netherland provinces were
the most highly civilized portion of Europe north of the Alps. For
several generations they had enjoyed, and had known how to maintain,
civic liberties, and when Charles and Philip attempted to fasten upon
them their "peculiar institution," the Spanish Inquisition, they were
ripe for political as well as theological revolt. Natural laws were
found to operate on the Rhine as well as on the Tagus, and at the end of
the great war of independence, Holland was not only better equipped than
Spain for a European conflict, but was rapidly ousting her from the East
Indian countries which she had in vain attempted to colonize.

But if we were to take up all the interesting and instructive themes
suggested by Mr. Motley's work, we should never come to an end. We
must pass over the exciting events narrated in these last volumes;
the victory of Nieuport, the siege of Ostend, the marvellous career of
Maurice, the surprising exploits of Spinola. We have attempted not so
much to describe Mr. Motley's book as to indulge in sundry reflections
suggested by the perusal of it. But we cannot close without some remarks
upon a great man, whose character Mr. Motley seems to have somewhat
misconceived.

If Mr. Motley exhibits any serious fault, it is perhaps the natural
tendency to TAKE SIDES in the events which he is describing, which
sometimes operates as a drawback to complete and thoroughgoing
criticism. With every intention to do justice to the Catholics, Mr.
Motley still writes as a Protestant, viewing all questions from the
Protestant side. He praises and condemns like a very fair-minded
Huguenot, but still like a Huguenot. It is for this reason that he
fails to interpret correctly the very complex character of Henry IV.,
regarding him as a sort of selfish renegade whom he cannot quite forgive
for accepting the crown of France at the hands of the Pope. Now this
very action of Henry, in the eye of an impartial criticism, must seem to
be one of his chief claims to the admiration and gratitude of posterity.
Henry was more than a mere Huguenot: he was a far-seeing statesman. He
saw clearly what no ruler before him, save William the Silent, had
even dimly discerned, that not Catholicism and not Protestantism,
but absolute spiritual freedom was the true end to be aimed at by a
righteous leader of opinion. It was as a Catholic sovereign that he
could be most useful even to his Huguenot subjects; and he shaped
his course accordingly. It was as an orthodox sovereign, holding his
position by the general consent of Europe, that he could best subserve
the interests of universal toleration. This principle he embodied in his
admirable edict of Nantes. What a Huguenot prince might have done, may
be seen from the shameful way in which the French Calvinists abused
the favour which Henry--and Richelieu afterwards--accorded to them.
Remembering how Calvin himself "dragooned" Geneva, let us be thankful
for the fortune which, in one of the most critical periods of history,
raised to the highest position in Christendom a man who was something
more than a sectarian.

With this brief criticism, we must regretfully take leave of Mr.
Motley's work. Much more remains to be said about a historical treatise
which is, on the whole, the most valuable and important one yet produced
by an American; but we have already exceeded our limits. We trust that
our author will be as successful in the future as he has been in the
past; and that we shall soon have an opportunity of welcoming the first
instalment of his "History of the Thirty Years' War."

     March, 1868.




XI. LONGFELLOW'S DANTE. [33]

 [33] The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow. 3 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867.

THE task of a translator is a thankless one at best. Be he never so
skilful and accurate, be he never so amply endowed with the divine
qualifications of the poet, it is still questionable if he can ever
succeed in saying satisfactorily with new words that which has once been
inimitably said--said for all time--with the old words. "Psychologically,
there is perhaps nothing more complex than an elaborate poem. The
sources of its effect upon our minds may be likened to a system of
forces which is in the highest degree unstable; and the slightest
displacement of phrases, by disturbing the delicate rhythmical
equilibrium of the whole, must inevitably awaken a jarring sensation."
Matthew Arnold has given us an excellent series of lectures upon
translating Homer, in which he doubtless succeeds in showing that some
methods of translation are preferable to others, but in which he proves
nothing so forcibly as that the simplicity and grace, the rapidity,
dignity, and fire, of Homer are quite incommunicable, save by the very
words in which they first found expression. And what is thus said of
Homer will apply to Dante with perhaps even greater force. With nearly
all of Homer's grandeur and rapidity, though not with nearly all
his simplicity, the poem of Dante manifests a peculiar intensity of
subjective feeling which was foreign to the age of Homer, as indeed to
all pre-Christian antiquity. But concerning this we need not dilate,
as it has often been duly remarked upon, and notably by Carlyle, in
his "Lectures on Hero-Worship." Who that has once heard the wail of
unutterable despair sounding in the line

          "Ahi, dura terra, perche non t' apristi?"

can rest satisfied with the interpretation

          "Ah, obdurate earth, wherefore didst thou not open?"

yet this rendering is literally exact.

A second obstacle, hardly less formidable, hardly less fatal to a
satisfactory translation, is presented by the highly complicated system
of triple rhyme upon which Dante's poem is constructed. This, which must
ever be a stumbling-block to the translator, seems rarely to interfere
with the free and graceful movement of the original work. The mighty
thought of the master felt no impediment from the elaborate artistic
panoply which must needs obstruct and harass the interpretation of the
disciple. Dante's terza rima is a bow of Odysseus which weaker mortals
cannot bend with any amount of tugging, and which Mr. Longfellow has
judiciously refrained from trying to bend. Yet no one can fail to remark
the prodigious loss entailed by this necessary sacrifice of one of the
most striking characteristics of the original poem. Let any one who has
duly reflected upon the strange and subtle effect produced on him by
the peculiar rhyme of Tennyson's "In Memoriam," endeavour to realize the
very different effect which would be produced if the verses were to
be alternated or coupled in successive pairs, or if rhyme were to be
abandoned for blank verse. The exquisite melody of the poem would be
silenced. The rhyme-system of the "Divine Comedy" refuses equally to be
tampered with or ignored. Its effect upon the ear and the mind is quite
as remarkable as that of the rhyme-system of "In Memoriam"; and the
impossibility of reproducing it is one good reason why Dante must always
suffer even more from translation than most poets.

Something, too, must be said of the difficulties inevitably arising from
the diverse structure and genius of the Italian and English languages.
None will deny that many of them are insurmountable. Take the third line
of the first canto,--

          "Che la diritta via era smarrita,"

which Mr. Longfellow translates

          "For the straightforward pathway had been lost."

Perhaps there is no better word than "lost" by which to translate
smarrita in this place; yet the two words are far from equivalent
in force. About the word smarrita there is thrown a wide penumbra of
meaning which does not belong to the word lost. [35] By its diffuse
connotations the word smarrita calls up in our minds an adequate picture
of the bewilderment and perplexity of one who is lost in a trackless
forest. The high-road with out, beaten hard by incessant overpassing
of men and beasts and wheeled vehicles, gradually becomes metamorphosed
into the shady lane, where grass sprouts up rankly between the ruts,
where bushes encroach upon the roadside, where fallen trunks now and
then intercept the traveller; and this in turn is lost in crooked
by-ways, amid brambles and underbrush and tangled vines, growing
fantastically athwart the path, shooting up on all sides of the
bewildered wanderer, and rendering advance and retreat alike hopeless.
No one who in childhood has wandered alone in the woods can help feeling
all this suggested by the word smarrita in this passage. How bald
in comparison is the word lost, which might equally be applied to a
pathway, a reputation, and a pocket-book! [36] The English is no doubt
the most copious and variously expressive of all living languages, yet
I doubt if it can furnish any word capable by itself of calling up the
complex images here suggested by smarrita. [37] And this is but one
example, out of many that might be cited, in which the lack of exact
parallelism between the two languages employed causes every translation
to suffer.

 [35] See Diez, Romance Dictionary, s. v. "Marrir."

 [36] On literally retranslating lost into Italian, we should get
the quite different word perduta.

 [37] The more flexible method of Dr. Parsons leads to a more
satisfactory but still inadequate result:--

    "Half-way on our life's Journey, in a wood,
      From the right path I found myself astray."


All these, however, are difficulties which lie in the nature of
things,--difficulties for which the translator is not responsible; of
which he must try to make the best that can be made, but which he can
never expect wholly to surmount. We have now to inquire whether there
are not other difficulties, avoidable by one method of translation,
though not by another; and in criticizing Mr. Longfellow, we
have chiefly to ask whether he has chosen the best method of
translation,--that which most surely and readily awakens in the reader's
mind the ideas and feelings awakened by the original.

The translator of a poem may proceed upon either of two distinct
principles. In the first case, he may render the text of his original
into English, line for line and word for word, preserving as far as
possible its exact verbal sequences, and translating each individual
word into an English word as nearly as possible equivalent in its
etymological force. In the second case, disregarding mere syntactic and
etymologic equivalence, his aim will be to reproduce the inner meaning
and power of the original, so far as the constitutional difference of
the two languages will permit him.

It is the first of these methods that Mr. Longfellow has followed in his
translation of Dante. Fidelity to the text of the original has been his
guiding principle; and every one must admit that, in carrying out that
principle, he has achieved a degree of success alike delightful and
surprising. The method of literal translation is not likely to receive
any more splendid illustration. It is indeed put to the test in such
a way that the shortcomings now to be noticed bear not upon Mr.
Longfellow's own style of work so much as upon the method itself with
which they are necessarily implicated. These defects are, first, the
too frequent use of syntactic inversion, and secondly, the too manifest
preference extended to words of Romanic over words of Saxon origin.

To illustrate the first point, let me give a few examples. In Canto I.
we have:--

     "So bitter is it, death is little more;
      But of the good to treat which there I found,
      Speak will I of the other things I saw there";

which is thus rendered by Mr. Cary,--

     "Which to remember only, my dismay
      Renews, in bitterness not far from death.
      Yet to discourse of what there good befell,
      All else will I relate discovered there";

and by Dr. Parsons,--

     "Its very thought is almost death to me;
      Yet, having found some good there, I will tell
      Of other things which there I chanced to see." [38]

 [38] "Tanto e amara, che poco e piu morte:
      Ma per trattar del teen ch' i' vi trovai,
      Diro dell' altre Bose, ch' io v' ho scorte."

Inferno, I. 7-10.


Again in Canto X. we find:--

     "Their cemetery have upon this side
      With Epicurus all his followers,
      Who with the body mortal make the soul";--

an inversion which is perhaps not more unidiomatic than Mr. Cary's,--

     "The cemetery on this part obtain
      With Epicurus all his followers,
      Who with the body make the spirit die";

but which is advantageously avoided by Mr. Wright,--

     "Here Epicurus hath his fiery tomb,
      And with him all his followers, who maintain
      That soul and body share one common doom";

and is still better rendered by Dr. Parsons,--

     "Here in their cemetery on this side,
      With his whole sect, is Epicurus pent,
      Who thought the spirit with its body died." [39]

 [39] "Suo cimitero da questa parte hanno
      Con Epieuro tutti i suoi seguaci,
      Che l'anima col corpo morta fanno."
     Inferno, X. 13-15.

And here my eyes, reverting to the end of Canto IX.,

fall upon a similar contrast between Mr. Longfellow's lines,--

     "For flames between the sepulchres were scattered,
      By which they so intensely heated were,
      That iron more so asks not any art,"--

and those of Dr. Parsons,--

     "For here mid sepulchres were sprinkled fires,
      Wherewith the enkindled tombs all-burning gleamed;
      Metal more fiercely hot no art requires." [40]

 [40] "Che tra gli avelli flamme erano sparte,
      Per le quali eran si del tutto accesi,
      Che ferro piu non chiede verun' arte."
      Inferno, IX. 118-120.

Does it not seem that in all these cases Mr. Longfellow, and to a
slightly less extent Mr. Cary, by their strict adherence to the letter,
transgress the ordinary rules of English construction; and that Dr.
Parsons, by his comparative freedom of movement, produces better
poetry as well as better English? In the last example especially, Mr.
Longfellow's inversions are so violent that to a reader ignorant of the
original Italian, his sentence might be hardly intelligible. In Italian
such inversions are permissible; in English they are not; and Mr.
Longfellow, by transplanting them into English, sacrifices the spirit
to the letter, and creates an obscurity in the translation where all is
lucidity in the original. Does not this show that the theory of absolute
literality, in the case of two languages so widely different as English
and Italian, is not the true one?

Secondly, Mr. Longfellow's theory of translation leads him in most
cases to choose words of Romanic origin in preference to those of Saxon
descent, and in many cases to choose an unfamiliar instead of a familiar
Romanic word, because the former happens to be etymologically identical
with the word in the original. Let me cite as an example the opening of
Canto III.:--

     "Per me si va nella eitti dolente,
      Per me si va nell' eterno dolore,
      Per me si va tra la perduta gente."

Here are three lines which, in their matchless simplicity and grandeur,
might well excite despair in the breast of any translator. Let us
contrast Mr. Longfellow's version.--

     "Through me the way is to the city dolent;
      Through me the way is to eternal dole;
      Through me the way among the people lost,"--

with that of Dr. Parsons,--,

     "Through me you reach the city of despair;
      Through me eternal wretchedness ye find;
      Through me among perdition's race ye fare."

I do not think any one will deny that Dr. Parsons's version, while far
more remote than Mr. Longfellow's from the diction of the original, is
somewhat nearer its spirit. It remains to seek the explanation of this
phenomenon. It remains to be seen why words the exact counterpart of
Dante's are unfit to call up in our minds the feelings which Dante's own
words call up in the mind of an Italian. And this inquiry leads to
some general considerations respecting the relation of English to other
European languages.

Every one is aware that French poetry, as compared with German poetry,
seems to the English reader very tame and insipid; but the cause of this
fact is by no means so apparent as the fact itself. That the poetry of
Germany is actually and intrinsically superior to that of France, may
readily be admitted; but this is not enough to account for all the
circumstances of the case. It does not explain why some of the very
passages in Corneille and Racine, which to us appear dull and prosaic,
are to the Frenchman's apprehension instinct with poetic fervour. It
does not explain the undoubted fact that we, who speak English, are
prone to underrate French poetry, while we are equally disposed to
render to German poetry even more than its due share of merit. The
reason is to be sought in the verbal associations established in
our minds by the peculiar composition of the English language. Our
vocabulary is chiefly made up on the one hand of indigenous Saxon words,
and on the other hand of words derived from Latin or French. It is
mostly words of the first class that we learn in childhood, and that are
associated with our homeliest and deepest emotions; while words of the
second class--usually acquired somewhat later in life and employed in
sedate abstract discourse--have an intellectual rather than an emotional
function to fulfil. Their original significations, the physical
metaphors involved in them, which are perhaps still somewhat apparent to
the Frenchman, are to us wholly non-existent. Nothing but the derivative
or metaphysical signification remains. No physical image of a man
stepping over a boundary is presented to our minds by the word
transgress, nor in using the word comprehension do we picture to
ourselves any manual act of grasping. It is to this double structure
of the English language that it owes its superiority over every other
tongue, ancient or modern, for philosophical and scientific purposes.
Albeit there are numerous exceptions, it may still be safely said, in
a general way, that we possess and habitually use two kinds of
language,--one that is physical, for our ordinary purposes, and one that
is metaphysical, for purposes of abstract reasoning and discussion. We
do not say like the Germans, that we "begripe" (begreifen) an idea, but
we say that we "conceive" it. We use a word which once had the very same
material meaning as begreifen, but which has in our language utterly
lost it. We are accordingly able to carry on philosophical inquiries
by means of words which are nearly or quite free from those shadows
of original concrete meaning which, in German, too often obscure the
acquired abstract signification. Whoever has dealt in English and German
metaphysics will not fail to recognize the prodigious superiority of
English in force and perspicuity, arising mainly from the causes here
stated. But while this homogeneity of structure in German injures it for
philosophical purposes, it is the very thing which makes it so excellent
as an organ for poetical expression, in the opinion of those who speak
English. German being nearly allied to Anglo-Saxon, not only do its
simple words strike us with all the force of our own homely Saxon terms,
but its compounds also, preserving their physical significations
almost unimpaired, call up in our minds concrete images of the greatest
definiteness and liveliness. It is thus that German seems to us
pre-eminently a poetical language, and it is thus that we are naturally
inclined to overrate rather than to depreciate the poetry that is
written in it.

With regard to French, the case is just the reverse. The Frenchman has
no Saxon words, but he has, on the other hand, an indigenous stock of
Latin words, which he learns in early childhood, which give outlet
to his most intimate feelings, and which retain to some extent their
primitive concrete picturesqueness. They are to him just as good as our
Saxon words are to us. Though cold and merely intellectual to us, they
are to him warm with emotion; and this is one reason why we cannot do
justice to his poetry, or appreciate it as he appreciates it. To make
this perfectly clear, let us take two or three lines from Shakespeare:--

     "Blow, blow, thou winter wind!
      Thou art not so unkind
      As man's ingratitude,
      Thy tooth is not so keen," etc., etc.;

which I have somewhere seen thus rendered into French:

     "Souffle, souffle, vent d'hiver!
      Tu n'es pas si cruel
      Que l'ingratitude de l'homme.
      Ta dent n'est pas si penetrante," etc., etc.

Why are we inclined to laugh as we read this? Because it excites in us
an undercurrent of consciousness which, if put into words, might run
something like this:--

     "Insufflate, insufflate, wind hibernal!
      Thou art not so cruel
      As human ingratitude.
      Thy dentition is not so penetrating," etc., etc.

No such effect would be produced upon a Frenchman. The translation would
strike him as excellent, which it really is. The last line in particular
would seem poetical to us, did we not happen to have in our language
words closely akin to dent and penetrante, and familiarly employed in
senses that are not poetical.

Applying these considerations to Mr. Longfellow's choice of words in his
translation of Dante, we see at once the unsoundness of the principle
that Italian words should be rendered by their Romanic equivalents
in English. Words that are etymologically identical with those in the
original are often, for that very reason, the worst words that could be
used. They are harsh and foreign to the English ear, however homelike
and musical they may be to the ear of an Italian. Their connotations are
unlike in the two languages; and the translation which is made literally
exact by using them is at the same time made actually inaccurate, or at
least inadequate. Dole and dolent are doubtless the exact counterparts
of dolore and dolente, so far as mere etymology can go. But when we
consider the effect that is to be produced upon the mind of the reader,
wretchedness and despairing are fat better equivalents. The former may
compel our intellectual assent, but the latter awaken our emotional
sympathy.

Doubtless by long familiarity with the Romanic languages, the scholar
becomes to a great degree emancipated from the conditions imposed upon
him by the peculiar composition of his native English. The concrete
significance of the Romanic words becomes apparent to him, and they
acquire energy and vitality. The expression dolent may thus satisfy the
student familiar with Italian, because it calls up in his mind, through
the medium of its equivalent dolente, the same associations which the
latter calls up in the mind of the Italian himself. [41] But this power
of appreciating thoroughly the beauties of a foreign tongue is in the
last degree an acquired taste,--as much so as the taste for olives and
kirschenwasser to the carnal palate. It is only by long and profound
study that we can thus temporarily vest ourselves, so to speak, with
a French or Italian consciousness in exchange for our English one. The
literary epicure may keenly relish such epithets as dolent; but the
common English reader, who loves plain fare, can hardly fail to be
startled by it. To him it savours of the grotesque; and if there is any
one thing especially to be avoided in the interpretation of Dante, it is
grotesqueness.

 [41] A consummate Italian scholar, the delicacy of whose taste is
questioned by no one, and whose knowledge of Dante's diction is probably
not inferior to Mr. Longfellow's, has told me that he regards the
expression as a noble and effective one, full of dignity and solemnity.


Those who have read over Dante without reading into him, and those who
have derived their impressions of his poem from M. Dore's memorable
illustrations, will here probably demur. What! Dante not grotesque! That
tunnel-shaped structure of the infernal pit; Minos passing sentence on
the damned by coiling his tail; Charon beating the lagging shades with
his oar; Antaios picking up the poets with his fingers and lowering them
in the hollow of his hand into the Ninth Circle; Satan crunching in his
monstrous jaws the arch-traitors, Judas, Brutus and Cassius; Ugolino
appeasing his famine upon the tough nape of Ruggieri; Bertrand de Born
looking (if I may be allowed the expression) at his own dissevered head;
the robbers exchanging form with serpents; the whole demoniac troop of
Malebolge,--are not all these things grotesque beyond everything else
in poetry? To us, nurtured in this scientific nineteenth century, they
doubtless seem so; and by Leigh Hunt, who had the eighteenth-century way
of appreciating other ages than his own, they were uniformly treated
as such. To us they are at first sight grotesque, because they are no
longer real to us. We have ceased to believe in such things, and they no
longer awaken any feeling akin to terror. But in the thirteenth century,
in the minds of Dante and his readers, they were living, terrible
realities. That Dante believed literally in all this unearthly world,
and described it with such wonderful minuteness because he believed
in it, admits of little doubt. As he walked the streets of Verona the
people whispered, "See, there is the man who has been in hell!" Truly,
he had been in hell, and described it as he had seen it, with the keen
eyes of imagination and faith. With all its weird unearthliness, there
is hardly another book in the whole range of human literature which is
marked with such unswerving veracity as the "Divine Comedy." Nothing
is there set down arbitrarily, out of wanton caprice or for the sake of
poetic effect, but because to Dante's imagination it had so imposingly
shown itself that he could not but describe it as he saw it. In reading
his cantos we forget the poet, and have before us only the veracious
traveller in strange realms, from whom the shrewdest cross-examination
can elicit but one consistent account. To his mind, and to the
mediaeval mind generally, this outer kingdom, with its wards of Despair,
Expiation, and Beatitude, was as real as the Holy Roman Empire itself.
Its extraordinary phenomena were not to be looked on with critical eyes
and called grotesque, but were to be seen with eyes of faith, and to be
worshipped, loved, or shuddered at. Rightly viewed, therefore, the poem
of Dante is not grotesque, but unspeakably awful and solemn; and the
statement is justified that all grotesqueness and bizarrerie in its
interpretation is to be sedulously avoided.

Therefore, while acknowledging the accuracy with which Mr. Longfellow
has kept pace with his original through line after line, following the
"footing of its feet," according to the motto quoted on his title-page,
I cannot but think that his accuracy would have been of a somewhat
higher kind if he had now and then allowed himself a little more liberty
of choice between English and Romanic words and idioms.

A few examples will perhaps serve to strengthen as well as to elucidate
still further this position.

"Inferno," Canto III., line 22, according to Longfellow:--

     "There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud
      Resounded through the air without a star,
      Whence I at the beginning wept thereat."

According to Cary:--

     "Here sighs, with lamentations and loud moans
      Resounded through the air pierced by no star,
      That e'en I wept at entering."

According to Parsons:--

     "Mid sighs, laments, and hollow howls of woe,
      Which, loud resounding through the starless air,
      Forced tears of pity from mine eyes at first." [42]

 [42] "Quivi sospiri, pianti ed alti guai
      Risonavan per l' ner senza stelle,
      Perch' io al cominciar ne lagrimai."

Canto V., line 84:--

     LONGFELLOW.--"Fly through the air by their volition borne."
     CARY.--"Cleave the air, wafted by their will along."
     PARSONS.--"Sped ever onward by their wish alone." [43]

 [43] "Volan per l' aer dal voler portate."


Canto XVII., line 42:--

     LONGFELLOW.--"That he concede to us his stalwart shoulders."
     CARY--"That to us he may vouchsafe
           The aid of his strong shoulders."
     PARSONS.--"And ask for us his shoulders' strong support." [44]

 [44] "Che ne conceda i suoi omeri forti."


Canto XVII., line 25:--

     LONGFELLOW.--
     "His tail was wholly quivering in the void,
                Contorting upwards the envenomed fork
                That in the guise of scorpion armed its point."
     CARY.--
     "In the void
     Glancing, his tail upturned its venomous fork,
     With sting like scorpions armed."

     PARSONS.--"In the void chasm his trembling tail he showed,
     As up the envenomed, forked point he swung,      Which, as in
     scorpions, armed its tapering end." [45]

 [45] "Nel vano tutta sue coda guizzava,
  Torcendo in su la venenosa forca,
  Che, a guisa di scorpion, la punta armava."

Canto V., line 51:--

     LONGFELLOW.--"People whom the black air so castigates.
     CARY.--"By the black air so scourged." [46]

 [46] "Genti che l' aura nera si gastiga."

Line 136:--

     LONGFELLOW.--"Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating."
     CARY.--"My lips all trembling kissed." [47]

 [47] "La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante."

"Purgatorio," Canto XV., line 139:--

     LONGFELLOW.--
     "We passed along, athwart the twilight peering
      Forward as far as ever eye could stretch
      Against the sunbeams serotine and lucent." [48]

 [48] "Noi andavam per lo vespero attenti
  Oltre, quanto potean gli occhi allungarsi,
  Contra i raggi serotini e lucenti."


Mr. Cary's "bright vespertine ray" is only a trifle better; but Mr.
Wright's "splendour of the evening ray" is, in its simplicity, far
preferable.

Canto XXXI., line 131:--

     LONGFELLOW.--"Did the other three advance Singing to their
     angelic saraband."

     CARY.--"To their own carol on they came Dancing, in festive ring
     angelical "

     WRIGHT.--"And songs accompanied their angel dance."


Here Mr. Longfellow has apparently followed the authority of the Crusca,
reading

          "Cantando al loro angelico carribo,"

and translating carribo by saraband, a kind of Moorish dance. The best
manuscripts, however, sanction M. Witte's reading:--

          "Danzando al loro angelico carribo."

If this be correct, carribo cannot signify "a dance," but rather "the
song which accompanies the dance"; and the true sense of the passage
will have been best rendered by Mr. Cary. [49]

 [49] See Blanc, Vocabolario Dantesco, s. v. "caribo."


Whenever Mr. Longfellow's translation is kept free from oddities of
diction and construction, it is very animated and vigorous. Nothing can
be finer than his rendering of "Purgatorio," Canto VI., lines 97-117:--

 "O German Albert! who abandonest
      Her that has grown recalcitrant and savage,
      And oughtest to bestride her saddle-bow,

 May a just judgment from the stars down fall
      Upon thy blood, and be it new and open,
      That thy successor may have fear thereof:

 Because thy father and thyself have suffered,
      By greed of those transalpine lands distrained,
      The garden of the empire to be waste.

 Come and behold Montecchi and Cappelletti,
      Monaldi and Filippeschi, careless man!
      Those sad already, and these doubt-depressed!

 Come, cruel one! come and behold the oppression
      Of thy nobility, and cure their wounds,
      And thou shalt see how safe  [?] is Santafiore.

 Come and behold thy Rome that is lamenting,
      Widowed, alone, and day and night exclaims
      'My Caesar, why hast thou forsaken me?'

 Come and behold how loving are the people;
      And if for us no pity moveth thee,
      Come and be made ashamed of thy renown." [50]

 [50] "O Alberto Tedesco, che abbandoni
      Costei ch' e fatta indomita e selvaggia,
      E dovresti inforcar li suoi arcioni,

 Giusto gindizio dalle stelle caggia
      Sopra il tuo sangue, e sia nuovo ed aperto,
      Tal che il tuo successor temenza n' aggia:
  Cheavete tu e il tuo padre sofferto,
      Per cupidigia di costa distretti,
      Che il giardin dell' imperio sia diserto.

 Vieni a veder Montecchi e Cappelletti,
      Monaldi e Filippeschi, uom senza cura:
      Color gia tristi, e questi con sospetti.
  Vien, crudel, vieni, e vedi la pressura
      De' tuoi gentili, e cure lor magagne,
      E vedrai Santafior com' e oscura  [secura?].
  Vieni a veder la tua Roma che piagne,
      Vedova e sola, e di e notte chiama:
      Cesare mio, perche non m' accompagne?
  Vieni a veder la gente quanto s' ama;
      E se nulla di noi pieta ti move,
      A vergognar ti vien della tua fama."



So, too, Canto III., lines 79-84:--

     "As sheep come issuing forth from out the fold
      By ones, and twos, and threes, and the others stand
Timidly holding down their eyes and nostrils,

 And what the foremost does the others do
      Huddling themselves against her if she stop,
      Simple and quiet, and the wherefore know not." [51]

 [51] "Come le pecorelle escon del chiuso
      Ad una, a due, a tre, e l' altre stanno
      Timidette atterrando l' occhio e il muso;

 E cio che fa la prima, e l' altre sanno,
      Addossandosi a lei s' ella s' arresta,
      Semplici e quete, e lo 'mperche non sanno."


Francesca's exclamation to Dante is thus rendered by Mr. Longfellow:--

     "And she to me: There is no greater sorrow
      Than to be mindful of the happy time
      In misery." [52]

 [52] "Ed ella a me: Nessun maggior dolore
  Che ricordarsi del tempo felice  Nella miseria."
Inferno, V. 121-123.



This is admirable,--full of the true poetic glow, which would have been
utterly quenched if some Romanic equivalent of dolore had been used
instead of our good Saxon sorrow. [53] So, too, the "Paradiso," Canto
I., line 100:--

     "Whereupon she, after a pitying sigh,
      Her eyes directed toward me with that look
      A mother casts on a delirious child." [54]

 [53] Yet admirable as it is, I am not quite sure that Dr.
Parsons, by taking further liberty with the original, has not surpassed
it:--

    "And she to me: The mightiest of all woes
      Is in the midst of misery to be cursed
      With bliss remembered."

 [54] "Ond' ella, appresso d'un pio sospiro,
  Gli occhi drizzo ver me con quel sembiante,
  Che madre fa sopra figlinol deliro."


And, finally, the beginning of the eighth canto of the "Purgatorio":--

     "'T was now the hour that turneth back desire
      In those who sail the sea, and melts the heart,
      The day they've said to their sweet friends farewell;
  And the new pilgrim penetrates with love,
      If he doth hear from far away a bell
      That seemeth to deplore the dying day." [55]

 [55] "Era gia l' ora che volge il disio
      Ai naviganti, e intenerisce il core
      Lo di ch' hen detto ai dolci amici addio;
  E che lo nuovo peregrin d' amore
      Punge, se ode squilla di lontano,
      Che paia il giorno pianger che si more."

This passage affords an excellent example of what the method of literal
translation can do at its best. Except in the second line, where "those
who sail the sea" is wisely preferred to any Romanic equivalent of
naviganti the version is utterly literal; as literal as the one the
school-boy makes, when he opens his Virgil at the Fourth Eclogue,
and lumberingly reads, "Sicilian Muses, let us sing things a little
greater." But there is nothing clumsy, nothing which smacks of the
recitation-room, in these lines of Mr. Longfellow. For easy grace and
exquisite beauty it would be difficult to surpass them. They may well
bear comparison with the beautiful lines into which Lord Byron has
rendered the same thought:--

     "Soft hour which wakes the wish, and melts the heart,
          Of those who sail the seas, on the first day
      When they from their sweet friends are torn apart;
          Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way,
      As the far bell of vesper makes him start,
          Seeming to weep the dying day's decay.
      Is this a fancy which our reason scorns?
      Ah, surely nothing dies but something mourns!" [56]

 [56] Don Juan, III. 108.

Setting aside the concluding sentimental generalization,--which is much
more Byronic than Dantesque,--one hardly knows which version to call
more truly poetical; but for a faithful rendering of the original
conception one can hardly hesitate to give the palm to Mr. Longfellow.

Thus we see what may be achieved by the most highly gifted of
translators who contents himself with passively reproducing the diction
of his original, who constitutes himself, as it were, a conduit through
which the meaning of the original may flow. Where the differences
inherent in the languages employed do not intervene to alloy the result,
the stream of the original may, as in the verses just cited, come out
pure and unweakened. Too often, however, such is the subtle chemistry of
thought, it will come out diminished in its integrity, or will appear,
bereft of its primitive properties as a mere element in some new
combination. Our channel is a trifle too alkaline perhaps; and that the
transferred material may preserve its pleasant sharpness, we may need
to throw in a little extra acid. Too often the mere differences between
English and Italian prevent Dante's expressions from coming out in Mr.
Longfellow's version so pure and unimpaired as in the instance just
cited. But these differences cannot be ignored. They lie deep in the
very structure of human speech, and are narrowly implicated with equally
profound nuances in the composition of human thought. The causes which
make dolente a solemn word to the Italian ear, and dolent a queer word
to the English ear, are causes which have been slowly operating ever
since the Italian and the Teuton parted company on their way from
Central Asia. They have brought about a state of things which no cunning
of the translator can essentially alter, but to the emergencies of which
he must graciously conform his proceedings. Here, then, is the sole
point on which we disagree with Mr. Longfellow, the sole reason we have
for thinking that he has not attained the fullest possible measure of
success. Not that he has made a "realistic" translation,--so far we
conceive him to be entirely right; but that, by dint of pushing sheer
literalism beyond its proper limits, he has too often failed to be truly
realistic. Let us here explain what is meant by realistic translation.

Every thoroughly conceived and adequately executed translation of
an ancient author must be founded upon some conscious theory or some
unconscious instinct of literary criticism. As is the critical spirit of
an age, so among other things will be its translations. Now the critical
spirit of every age previous to our own has been characterized by its
inability to appreciate sympathetically the spirit of past and bygone
times. In the seventeenth century criticism made idols of its ancient
models; it acknowledged no serious imperfections in them; it set them
up as exemplars for the present and all future times to copy. Let the
genial Epicurean henceforth write like Horace, let the epic narrator
imitate the supreme elegance of Virgil,--that was the conspicuous idea,
the conspicuous error, of seventeenth-century criticism. It overlooked
the differences between one age and another. Conversely, when it brought
Roman patricians and Greek oligarchs on to the stage, it made them
behave like French courtiers or Castilian grandees or English peers.
When it had to deal with ancient heroes, it clothed them in the garb
and imputed to them the sentiments of knights-errant. Then came the
revolutionary criticism of the eighteenth century, which assumed that
everything old was wrong, while everything new was right. It recognized
crudely the differences between one age and another, but it had a way
of looking down upon all ages except the present. This intolerance shown
toward the past was indeed a measure of the crudeness with which it was
comprehended. Because Mohammed, if he had done what he did, in France
and in the eighteenth century, would have been called an impostor,
Voltaire, the great mouthpiece and representative of this style of
criticism, portrays him as an impostor. Recognition of the fact that
different ages are different, together with inability to perceive that
they ought to be different, that their differences lie in the nature of
progress,--this was the prominent characteristic of eighteenth-century
criticism. Of all the great men of that century, Lessing was perhaps the
only one who outgrew this narrow critical habit.

Now nineteenth-century criticism not only knows that in no preceding age
have men thought and behaved as they now think and behave, but it also
understands that old-fashioned thinking and behaviour was in its way
just as natural and sensible as that which is now new-fashioned. It does
not flippantly sneer at an ancient custom because we no longer cherish
it; but with an enlightened regard for everything human, it inquires
into its origin, traces its effects, and endeavours to explain its
decay. It is slow to characterize Mohammed as an impostor, because it
has come to feel that Arabia in the seventh century is one thing and
Europe in the nineteenth another. It is scrupulous about branding
Caesar as an usurper, because it has discovered that what Mr. Mill calls
republican liberty and what Cicero called republican liberty are widely
different notions. It does not tell us to bow down before Lucretius
and Virgil as unapproachable models, while lamenting our own hopeless
inferiority; nor does it tell us to set them down as half-skilled
apprentices, while congratulating ourselves on our own comfortable
superiority; but it tells us to study them as the exponents of an age
forever gone, from which we have still many lessons to learn, though
we no longer think as it thought or feel as it felt. The eighteenth
century, as represented by the characteristic passage from Voltaire,
cited by Mr. Longfellow, failed utterly to understand Dante. To the
minds of Voltaire and his contemporaries the great mediaeval poet was
little else than a Titanic monstrosity,--a maniac, whose ravings found
rhythmical expression; his poem a grotesque medley, wherein a few
beautiful verses were buried under the weight of whole cantos of
nonsensical scholastic quibbling. This view, somewhat softened, we
find also in Leigh Hunt, whose whole account of Dante is an excellent
specimen of this sort of criticism. Mr. Hunt's fine moral nature was
shocked and horrified by the terrible punishments described in the
"Inferno." He did not duly consider that in Dante's time these fearful
things were an indispensable part of every man's theory of the world;
and, blinded by his kindly prejudices, he does not seem to have
perceived that Dante, in accepting eternal torments as part and parcel
of the system of nature, was nevertheless, in describing them, inspired
with that ineffable tenderness of pity which, in the episodes of
Francesca and of Brunetto Latini, has melted the hearts of men in past
times, and will continue to do so in times to come. "Infinite pity,
yet infinite rigour of law! It is so Nature is made: it is so Dante
discerned that she was made." [57] This remark of the great seer of our
time is what the eighteenth century could in no wise comprehend. The men
of that day failed to appreciate Dante, just as they were oppressed or
disgusted at the sight of Gothic architecture; just as they pronounced
the scholastic philosophy an unmeaning jargon; just as they considered
mediaeval Christianity a gigantic system of charlatanry, and were wont
unreservedly to characterize the Papacy as a blighting despotism. In
our time cultivated men think differently. We have learned that the
interminable hair-splitting of Aquinas and Abelard has added precision
to modern thinking. [58] We do not curse Gregory VII. and Innocent III.
as enemies of the human race, but revere them as benefactors. We can
spare a morsel of hearty admiration for Becket, however strongly we may
sympathize with the stalwart king who did penance for his foul murder;
and we can appreciate Dante's poor opinion of Philip the Fair no less
than his denunciation of Boniface VIII. The contemplation of Gothic
architecture, as we stand entranced in the sublime cathedrals of York
or Rouen, awakens in our breasts a genuine response to the mighty
aspirations which thus became incarnate in enduring stone. And the
poem of Dante--which has been well likened to a great cathedral--we
reverently accept, with all its quaint carvings and hieroglyphic
symbols, as the authentic utterance of feelings which still exist,
though they no longer choose the same form of expression.

 [57] Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship, p. 84.

 [58] See my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. I. p. 123.


A century ago, therefore, a translation of Dante such as Mr.
Longfellow's would have been impossible. The criticism of that time
was in no mood for realistic reproductions of the antique. It either
superciliously neglected the antique, or else dressed it up to suit
its own notions of propriety. It was not like a seven-league boot which
could fit everybody, but it was like a Procrustes-bed which everybody
must be made to fit. Its great exponent was not a Sainte-Beuve, but a
Boileau. Its typical sample of a reproduction of the antique was Pope's
translation of the Iliad. That book, we presume, everybody has read;
and many of those who have read it know that, though an excellent and
spirited poem, it is no more Homer than the age of Queen Anne was the
age of Peisistratos. Of the translations of Dante made during this
period, the chief was unquestionably Mr. Cary's. [59] For a man born and
brought up in the most unpoetical of centuries, Mr. Cary certainly made
a very good poem, though not so good as Pope's. But it fell far short
of being a reproduction of Dante. The eighteenth-century note rings out
loudly on every page of it. Like much other poetry of the time, it
is laboured and artificial. Its sentences are often involved and
occasionally obscure. Take, for instance, Canto IV. 25-36 of the
"Paradiso":

 [59] This work comes at the end of the eighteenth-century period,
as Pope's translation of Homer comes at the beginning.

     "These are the questions which they will
      Urge equally; and therefore I the first
      Of that will treat which hath the more of gall.
      Of seraphim he who is most enskied,
      Moses, and Samuel, and either John,
      Choose which thou wilt, nor even Mary's self,
      Have not in any other heaven their seats,
      Than have those spirits which so late thou saw'st;
      Nor more or fewer years exist; but all
      Make the first circle beauteous, diversely
      Partaking of sweet life, as more or less
      Afflation of eternal bliss pervades them."


Here Mr. Cary not only fails to catch Dante's grand style; he does
not even write a style at all. It is too constrained and awkward to be
dignified, and dignity is an indispensable element of style. Without
dignity we may write clearly, or nervously, or racily, but we have
not attained to a style. This is the second shortcoming of Mr. Cary's
translation. Like Pope's, it fails to catch the grand style of its
original. Unlike Pope's, it frequently fails to exhibit any style.

It is hardly necessary to spend much time in proving that Mr.
Longfellow's version is far superior to Mr. Cary's. It is usually easy
and flowing, and save in the occasional use of violent inversions,
always dignified. Sometimes, as in the episode of Ugolino, it even rises
to something like the grandeur of the original:

     "When he had said this, with his eyes distorted,
      The wretched skull resumed he with his teeth,
      Which, as a dog's, upon the bone were strong." [60]

 [60] "Quand' ebbe detto cio, eon gli occhi torti
  Riprese il teschio misero coi denti,
  Che furo all' osso, come d'un can, forti."
   Inferno, XXXIII. 76.


That is in the grand style, and so is the following, which describes
those sinners locked in the frozen lake below Malebolge:--

     "Weeping itself there does not let them weep,
      And grief that finds a barrier in the eyes
      Turns itself inward to increase the anguish. [61]

 [61] "Lo pianto stesso li pianger non lascia,
  E il duol, che trova in sugli occhi rintoppo,
  Si volve in entro a far crescer l' ambascia."
 Inferno, XXXIII. 94.


And the exclamation of one of these poor "wretches of the frozen crust"
is an exclamation that Shakespeare might have written:--

     "Lift from mine eyes the rigid veils, that I
      May vent the sorrow which impregns my heart." [62]

 [62] "Levatemi dal viso i duri veli,
  Si ch' io sfoghi il dolor che il cor m' impregna."
                Ib. 112.


There is nothing in Mr. Cary's translation which can stand a comparison
with that. The eighteenth century could not translate like that.
For here at last we have a real reproduction of the antique. In the
Shakespearian ring of these lines we recognize the authentic rendering
of the tones of the only man since the Christian era who could speak
like Shakespeare.

In this way Mr. Longfellow's translation is, to an eminent degree,
realistic. It is a work conceived and executed in entire accordance
with the spirit of our time. Mr. Longfellow has set about making a
reconstructive translation, and he has succeeded in the attempt. In view
of what he has done, no one can ever wish to see the old methods of
Pope and Cary again resorted to. It is only where he fails to be truly
realistic that he comes short of success. And, as already hinted, it
is oftenest through sheer excess of LITERALISM that he ceases to be
realistic, and departs from the spirit of his author instead of coming
nearer to it. In the "Paradiso," Canto X. 1-6, his method leads him into
awkwardness:--

     "Looking into His Son with all the love
      Which each of them eternally breathes forth,
      The primal and unutterable Power
      Whate'er before the mind or eye revolves
      With so much order made, there can be none
      Who this beholds without enjoying Him."


This seems clumsy and halting, yet it is an extremely literal paraphrase
of a graceful and flowing original:--

     "Guardando nel suo figlio con l' amore
           Che l' uno e l' altro eternalmente spire,
           Lo primo ed ineffabile Valore,
      Quanto per mente o per loco si gira
           Con tanto ordine fe', ch' esser non puote
           Senza gustar di lui ehi cio rimira "

Now to turn a graceful and flowing sentence into one that is clumsy
and halting is certainly not to reproduce it, no matter how exactly the
separate words are rendered, or how closely the syntactic constructions
match each other. And this consideration seems conclusive as against
the adequacy of the literalist method. That method is inadequate, not
because it is too REALISTIC, but because it runs continual risk of being
too VERBALISTIC. It has recently been applied to the translation of
Dante by Mr. Rossetti, and it has sometimes led him to write curious
verses. For instance, he makes Francesca say to Dante,--

     "O gracious and benignant ANIMAL!"

for

     "O animal grazioso e benigno!"

Mr. Longfellow's good taste has prevented his doing anything like this,
yet Mr. Rossetti's extravagance is due to an unswerving adherence to the
very rules by which Mr. Longfellow has been guided.

Good taste and poetic genius are, however, better than the best of
rules, and so, after all said and done, we can only conclude that Mr.
Longfellow has given us a great and noble work not likely soon to
be equalled. Leopardi somewhere, in speaking of the early Italian
translators of the classics and their well-earned popularity, says, who
knows but Caro will live in men's remembrance as long as Virgil? "La
belie destinee," adds Sainte-Beuve, "de ne pouvoir plus mourir, sinon
avec un immortel!" Apart from Mr. Longfellow's other titles to undying
fame, such a destiny is surely marked out for him, and throughout the
English portions of the world his name will always be associated with
that of the great Florentine.

     June, 1867.




XII. PAINE'S "ST. PETER."

For music-lovers in America the great event of the season has been the
performance of Mr. Paine's oratorio, "St. Peter," at Portland, June 3.
This event is important, not only as the first appearance of an
American oratorio, but also as the first direct proof we have had of the
existence of creative musical genius in this country. For Mr. Paine's
Mass in D--a work which was brought out with great success several years
ago in Berlin--has, for some reason or other, never been performed here.
And, with the exception of Mr. Paine, we know of no American hitherto
who has shown either the genius or the culture requisite for writing
music in the grand style, although there is some of the Kapellmeister
music, written by our leading organists and choristers, which deserves
honourable mention. Concerning the rank likely to be assigned by
posterity to "St. Peter," it would be foolish now to speculate; and
it would be equally unwise to bring it into direct comparison with
masterpieces like the "Messiah," "Elijah," and "St. Paul," the greatness
of which has been so long acknowledged. Longer familiarity with the work
is needed before such comparisons, always of somewhat doubtful value,
can be profitably undertaken. But it must at least be said, as the net
result of our impressions derived both from previous study of the score
and from hearing, the performance at Portland, that Mr. Paine's oratorio
has fairly earned for itself the right to be judged by the same high
standard which we apply to these noble works of Mendelssohn and Handel.

In our limited space we can give only the briefest description of
the general structure of the work. The founding of Christianity, as
illustrated in four principal scenes of the life of St. Peter, supplies
the material for the dramatic development of the subject. The overture,
beginning with an adagio movement in B-flat minor, gives expression
to the vague yearnings of that time of doubt and hesitancy when the
"oracles were dumb," and the dawning of a new era of stronger and
diviner faith was matter of presentiment rather than of definite hope or
expectation. Though the tonality is at first firmly established, yet
as the movement becomes more agitated, the final tendency of the
modulations also becomes uncertain, and for a few bars it would seem as
if the key of F-sharp minor might be the point of destination. But after
a short melody by the wind instruments, accompanied by a rapid upward
movement of strings, the dominant chord of C major asserts itself, being
repeated, with sundry inversions, through a dozen bars, and leading
directly into the triumphant and majestic chorus, "The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The second subject,
introduced by the word "repent" descending through the interval of a
diminished seventh and contrasted with the florid counterpoint of the
phrase, "and believe the glad tidings of God," is a masterpiece of
contrapuntal writing, and, if performed by a choir of three or four
hundred voices, would produce an overpowering effect. The divine call
of Simon Peter and his brethren is next described in a tenor recitative;
and the acceptance of the glad tidings is expressed in an aria, "The
spirit of the Lord is upon me," which, by an original but appropriate
conception, is given to the soprano voice. In the next number, the
disciples are dramatically represented by twelve basses and tenors,
singing in four-part harmony, and alternating or combining with the full
chorus in description of the aims of the new religion. The poem ends
with the choral, "How lovely shines the Morning Star!" Then follows the
sublime scene from Matthew xvi. 14-18, where Peter declares his
master to be "the Christ, the Son of the living God,"--one of the most
impressive scenes, we have always thought, in the gospel history, and
here not inadequately treated. The feeling of mysterious and awful
grandeur awakened by Peter's bold exclamation, "Thou art the Christ," is
powerfully rendered by the entrance of the trombones upon the inverted
subdominant triad of C-sharp minor, and their pause upon the dominant of
the same key. Throughout this scene the characteristic contrast between
the ardent vigour of Peter and the sweet serenity of Jesus is well
delineated in the music. After Peter's stirring aria, "My heart is
glad," the dramatic climax is reached in the C-major chorus, "The Church
is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets."

The second scene is carried out to somewhat greater length,
corresponding nearly to the last half of the first part of "Elijah,"
from the point where the challenge is given to the prophets of Baal.
In the opening passages of mingled recitative and arioso, Peter is
forewarned that he shall deny his Master, and his half-indignant
remonstrance is sustained, with added emphasis, by the voices of the
twelve disciples, pitched a fourth higher. Then Judas comes, with
a great multitude, and Jesus is carried before the high-priest. The
beautiful F-minor chorus, "We hid our faces from him," furnishes the
musical comment upon the statement that "the disciples all forsook him
and fled." We hardly dare to give full expression to our feelings about
this chorus (which during the past month has been continually singing
itself over and over again in our recollection), lest it should be
supposed that our enthusiasm has got the better of our sober judgment.
The second theme, "He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, yet
he opened not his mouth," is quite Handel-like in the simplicity and
massiveness of its magnificent harmonic progressions. With the scene
of the denial, for which we are thus prepared, the dramatic movement
becomes exceedingly rapid, and the rendering of the events in the
high-priest's hall--Peter's bass recitative alternating its craven
protestations with the clamorous agitato chorus of the servants--is
stirring in the extreme. The contralto aria describing the Lord's
turning and looking upon Peter is followed by the orchestra with a
lament in B-flat minor, introducing the bass aria of the repentant and
remorse-stricken disciple, "O God, my God, forsake me not." As the last
strains of the lamentation die away, a choir of angels is heard, of
sopranos and contraltos divided, singing, "Remember from whence thou
art fallen," to an accompaniment of harps. The second theme, "He that
overcometh shall receive a crown of life," is introduced in full chorus,
in a cheering allegro movement, preparing the way for a climax higher
than any yet reached in the course of the work. This climax--delayed
for a few moments by an andante aria for a contralto voice, "The Lord is
faithful and righteous"--at last bursts upon us with a superb crescendo
of strings, and the words, "Awake, thou that sleepest, arise from the
dead, and Christ shall give thee light." This chorus, which for
reasons presently to be given was heard at considerable disadvantage at
Portland, contains some of the best fugue-writing in the work, and is
especially rich and powerful in its instrumentation.

The second part of the oratorio begins with the crucifixion and
ascension of Jesus. Here we must note especially the deeply pathetic
opening chorus, "The Son of Man was delivered into the hands of sinful
men," the joyous allegro, "And on the third day he rose again," the
choral, "Jesus, my Redeemer, lives," and the quartet, "Feed the flock
of God," commenting upon the command of Jesus, "Feed my lambs." This
quartet has all the heavenly sweetness of Handel's "He shall feed
his flock," which it suggests by similarity of subject, though not by
similarity of treatment; but in a certain quality of inwardness, or
religious meditativeness, it reminds one more of Mr. Paine's favourite
master, Bach. The choral, like the one in the first part and the one
which follows the scene of Pentecost, is taken from the Lutheran
Choral Book, and arranged with original harmony and instrumentation, in
accordance with the custom of Bach, Mendelssohn, and other composers,
"of introducing into their sacred compositions the old popular choral
melodies which are the peculiar offspring of a religious age." Thus the
noblest choral ever written, the "Sleepers, wake," in "St. Paul," was
composed in 1604 by Praetorius, the harmonization and accompaniment only
being the work of Mendelssohn.

In "St. Peter," as in "Elijah," the second part, while forming the true
musical climax of the oratorio, admits of a briefer description than
the first part. The wave of emotion answering to the sensuously dramatic
element having partly spent itself, the wave of lyric emotion gathers
fresh strength, and one feels that one has reached the height of
spiritual exaltation, while, nevertheless, there is not so much which
one can describe to others who may not happen to have gone through with
the same experience. Something of the same feeling one gets in studying
Dante's "Paradiso," after finishing the preceding divisions of his poem:
there is less which can be pictured to the eye of sense, or left to
be supplied by the concrete imagination. Nevertheless, in the scene
of Pentecost, which follows that of the Ascension, there is no lack of
dramatic vividness. Indeed, there is nothing in the work more striking
than the orchestration of the introductory tenor recitative, the
mysterious chorus, "The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire,"
or the amazed query which follows, "Behold, are not all these who speak
Galileans? and how is it that we every one hear them in our own tongue
wherein we were born?" We have heard the opinion expressed that Mr.
Paine's oratorio must be lacking in originality, since it suggests such
strong reminiscences of "St. Paul." Now, this suggestion, it seems to
us, is due partly to the similarity of the subjects, independently of
any likeness in the modes of treatment, and partly, perhaps, to the fact
that Mr. Paine, as well as Mendelssohn, has been a devoted student of
Bach, whose characteristics are so strong that they may well have left
their mark upon the works of both composers. But especially it would
seem that there is some real, though very general resemblance between
this colloquial chorus, "Behold," etc., and some choruses in "St. Paul,"
as, for example Nos. 29 and 36-38. In the same way the scene in the
high-priest's hall might distantly suggest either of these passages, or
others in "Elijah;" These resemblances, however, are very superficial,
pertaining not to the musical but to the dramatic treatment of
situations which are generically similar in so far, and only in so far,
as they represent conversational passages between an apostle or prophet
and an ignorant multitude, whether amazed or hostile, under the sway of
violent excitement. As regards the musical elaboration of these terse
and striking alternations of chorus and recitative, its originality can
be questioned only after we have decided to refer all originality on
such matters to Bach, or, indeed, even behind him, into the Middle Ages.

After the preaching of Peter, and the sweet contralto aria, "As for
man, his days are as grass," the culmination of this scene comes in the
D-major chorus, "This is the witness of God." What follows, beginning
with the choral, "Praise to the Father," is to be regarded as an
epilogue or peroration to the whole work. It is in accordance with
a sound tradition that the grand sacred drama of an oratorio should
conclude with a lyric outburst of thanksgiving, a psalm of praise to the
Giver of every good and perfect gift. Thus, after Peter's labours
are ended in the aria, "Now as ye were redeemed," in which the twelve
disciples and the full chorus join, a duet for tenor and soprano, "Sing
unto God," brings us to the grand final chorus in C major, "Great and
marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty."

The cadence of this concluding chorus reminds us that one of the
noteworthy points in the oratorio is the character of its cadences.
The cadence prepared by the 6/4 chord, now become so hackneyed from its
perpetual and wearisome repetition in popular church music, seems to be
especially disliked by Mr. Paine, as it occurs but once or twice in the
course of the work. In the great choruses the cadence is usually reached
either by a pedal on the tonic, as in the chorus, "Awake, thou that
sleepest," or by a pedal on the dominant culminating in a chord of the
major ninth, as in the final chorus; or there is a plagal cadence, as in
the first chorus of the second part; or, if the 6/4 chord is introduced,
as it is in the chorus, "He that overcometh," its ordinary effect is
covered and obscured by the movement of the divided sopranos. We do not
remember noticing anywhere such a decided use of the 6/4 chord as is
made, for example, by Mendelssohn, in "Thanks be to God," or in the
final chorus of "St. Paul." Perhaps if we were to confess our lingering
fondness for the cadence prepared by the 6/4 chord, when not too
frequently introduced, it might only show that we retain a liking for
New England "psalm-tunes"; but it does seem to us that a sense of final
repose, of entire cessation of movement, is more effectually secured
by this cadence than by any other. Yet while the 6/4 cadence most
completely expresses finality and rest, it would seem that the plagal
and other cadences above enumerated as preferred by Mr. Paine have a
certain sort of superiority by reason of the very incompleteness with
which they express finality. There is no sense of finality whatever
about the Phrygian cadence; it leaves the mind occupied with the feeling
of a boundless region beyond, into which one would fain penetrate; and
for this reason it has, in sacred music, a great value. Something of
the same feeling, too, attaches to those cadences in which an unexpected
major third usurps the place of the minor which the ear was expecting,
as in the "Incarnatus" of Mozart's "Twelfth Mass," or in Bach's sublime
"Prelude," Part I., No. 22 of the "Well-tempered Clavichord." In a less
degree, an analogous effect was produced upon us by the cadence with a
pedal on the tonic in the choruses, "The Church is built," and "Awake,
thou that sleepest." On these considerations it may become intelligible
that to some hearers Mr. Paine's cadences have seemed unsatisfactory,
their ears having missed the positive categorical assertion of finality
which the 6/4 cadence alone can give. To go further into this subject
would take us far beyond our limits.

The pleasant little town of Portland has reason to congratulate
itself, first, on being the birthplace of such a composer as Mr. Paine;
secondly, on having been the place where the first great work of America
in the domain of music was brought out; and thirdly, on possessing
what is probably the most thoroughly disciplined choral society in this
country. Our New York friends, after their recent experiences, will
perhaps be slow to believe us when we say that the Portland choir sang
this new work even better, in many respects, than the Handel and Haydn
Society sing the old and familiar "Elijah"; but it is true. In their
command of the pianissimo and the gradual crescendo, and in the
precision of their attack, the Portland singers can easily teach the
Handel and Haydn a quarter's lessons. And, besides all this, they know
how to preserve their equanimity under the gravest persecutions of the
orchestra; keeping the even tenour of their way where a less disciplined
choir, incited by the excessive blare of the trombones and the undue
scraping of the second violins, would be likely to lose its presence of
mind and break out into an untimely fortissimo.

No doubt it is easier to achieve perfect chorus-singing with a choir of
one hundred and twenty-five voices than with a choir of six hundred.
But this diminutive size, which was an advantage so far as concerned the
technical excellence of the Portland choir, was decidedly a disadvantage
so far as concerned the proper rendering of the more massive choruses in
"St. Peter." All the greatest choruses--such as Nos. 1, 8, 19, 20, 28,
35, and 39--were seriously impaired in the rendering by the lack of
massiveness in the voices. For example, the grand chorus, "Awake, thou
that sleepest," begins with a rapid crescendo of strings, introducing
the full chorus on the word "Awake," upon the dominant triad of D major;
and after a couple of beats the voices are reinforced by the trombones,
producing the most tremendous effect possible in such a crescendo.
Unfortunately, however, the brass asserted itself at this point so much
more emphatically than the voices that the effect was almost to disjoin
the latter portion of the chord from its beginning, and thus to
dwarf the utterance of the word "Awake." To us this effect was very
disagreeable; and it was obviously contrary to the effect intended by
the composer. But with a weight of four or five hundred voices, the
effect would be entirely different. Instead of entering upon the scene
as intruders, the mighty trombones would only serve to swell and enrich
the ponderous chord which opens this noble chorus. Given greater weight
only, and the performance of the admirable Portland choir would have
left nothing to be desired.

We cannot speak with so much satisfaction of the performance of the
orchestra. The instrumentation of "St. Peter" is remarkably fine. But
this instrumentation was rather clumsily rendered by the orchestra,
whose doings constituted the least enjoyable part of the performance.
There was too much blare of brass, whine of hautboy, and scraping of
strings. But in condonation of this serious defect, one must admit that
the requisite amount of rehearsal is out of the question when one's
choir is in Portland and one's orchestra in Boston; besides which the
parts had been inaccurately copied. For a moment, at the beginning of
the orchestral lament, there was risk of disaster, the wind instruments
failing to come in at the right time, when Mr. Paine, with fortunate
presence of mind, stopped the players, and the movement was begun over
again,--the whole occurring so quickly and quietly as hardly to attract
attention.

In conclusion we would say a few words suggested by a recent critical
notice of Mr. Paine's work in the "Nation." While acknowledging the
importance of the publication of this oratorio, as an event in the
art-history of America, the writer betrays manifest disappointment that
this work should not rather have been a symphony, [63] and thus have
belonged to what he calls the "domain of absolute music." Now with
regard to the assumption that the oratorio is not so high a form of
music as the symphony, or, in other words, that vocal music in general
is artistically inferior to instrumental music, we may observe, first,
that Ambros and Dommer--two of the most profound musical critics now
living--do not sustain it. It is Beanquier, we think, who suggests that
instrumental music should rank above vocal, because it is "pure
music," bereft of the fictitious aids of language and of the emotional
associations which are grouped about the peculiar timbre of the human
voice. [64] At first the suggestion seems plausible; but on analogous
grounds we might set the piano above the orchestra, because the piano
gives us pure harmony and counterpoint, without the adventitious aid of
variety in timbre. And it is indeed true that, for some such reason as
this, musicians delight in piano-sonatas, which are above all things
tedious and unintelligible to the mind untrained in music. Nevertheless,
in spite of its great and peculiar prerogatives, it would be absurd
to prefer the piano to the orchestra; and there is a kindred absurdity
involved in setting the orchestra above that mighty union of orchestra,
organ, and voices which we get in the oratorio. When the reason alleged
for ranking the symphony above the oratorio leads us likewise to rank
the sonata above the symphony, we seem to have reached a reductio ad
absurdum.

 [63] Now within two years, Mr. Paine's C-minor symphony has
followed the completion of his oratorio.

 [64] These peculiar associations are no doubt what is chiefly
enjoyed in music, antecedent to a properly musical culture. Persons of
slight acquaintance with music invariably prefer the voice to the piano.


Rightly considered, the question between vocal and instrumental music
amounts to this, What does music express? This is a great psychological
question, and we have not now the space or the leisure requisite for
discussing it, even in the most summary way. We will say, however, that
we do not see how music can in any way express ideas, or anything but
moods or emotional states to which the ideas given in language may add
determination and precision. The pure symphony gives utterance to moods,
and will be a satisfactory work of art or not, according as the composer
has been actuated by a legitimate sequence of emotional states, like
Beethoven, or by a desire to produce novel and startling effects, like
Liszt. But the danger in purely instrumental music is that it may run
riot in the extravagant utterance of emotional states which are not
properly concatenated by any normal sequence of ideas associated with
them. This is sometimes exemplified in the most modern instrumental
music.

Now, as in real life our sequent clusters of emotional states are in
general determined by their association with our sequent groups of
intellectual ideas, it would seem that music, regarded as an exponent of
psychical life, reaches its fullest expressiveness when the sequence of
the moods which it incarnates in sound is determined by some sequence
of ideas, such as is furnished by the words of a libretto. Not that the
words should have predominance over the music, or even coequal sway with
it, but that they should serve to give direction to the succession of
feelings expressed by the music. "Lift up your heads" and "Hallelujah"
do not owe their glory to the text, but to that tremendous energy
of rhythmic and contrapuntal progression which the text serves to
concentrate and justify. When precision and definiteness of direction
are thus added to the powerful physical means of expression which we get
in the combination of chorus, orchestra, and organ, we have attained
the greatest sureness as well as the greatest wealth of musical
expressiveness. And thus we may see the reasonableness of Dommer's
opinion that in order to restrain instrumental music from ruining itself
by meaningless extravagance, it is desirable that there should be
a renaissance of vocal music, such as it was in the golden age of
Palestrina and Orlando Lasso.

We are not inclined to deny that in structural beauty--in the
symmetrical disposition and elaboration of musical themes--the symphony
has the advantage. The words, which in the oratorio serve to give
definite direction to the currents of emotion, may also sometimes
hamper the free development of the pure musical conception, just as in
psychical life the obtrusive entrance of ideas linked by association may
hinder the full fruition of some emotional state. Nevertheless, in spite
of this possible drawback, it may be doubted if the higher forms
of polyphonic composition fall so very far short of the symphony in
capability of giving full elaboration to the musical idea. The practical
testimony of Beethoven, in his Ninth Symphony, is decidedly adverse to
any such supposition.

But to pursue this interesting question would carry us far beyond our
limits. Whatever may be the decision as to the respective claims of
vocal and instrumental music, we have every reason for welcoming the
appearance, in our own country, of an original work in the highest
form of vocal music. It is to be hoped that we shall often have the
opportunity to "hear with our ears" this interesting work; for as a rule
great musical compositions are peculiarly unfortunate among works of
art, in being known at first hand by comparatively few persons. In this
way is rendered possible that pretentious kind of dilettante criticism
which is so common in musical matters, and which is often positively
injurious, as substituting a factitious public opinion for one that is
genuine. We hope that the favour with which the new oratorio has already
been received will encourage the author to pursue the enviable career
upon which he has entered. Even restricting ourselves to vocal music,
there is still a broad field left open for original work. The secular
cantata--attempted in recent times by Schumann, as well as by English
composers of smaller calibre--is a very high form of vocal music; and
if founded on an adequate libretto, dealing with some supremely grand
or tragical situation, is capable of being carried to an unprecedented
height of musical elaboration. Here is an opportunity for original
achievement, of which it is to be hoped that some gifted and
well-trained composer, like the author of "St. Peter," may find it worth
while to avail himself.

 June, 1873.




XIII. A PHILOSOPHY OF ART. [65]

 [65] The Philosophy of Art. By H. Taine. New York: Leypoldt &
Holt. 1867.

We are glad of a chance to introduce to our readers one of the works
of a great writer. Though not yet [66] widely known in this country, M.
Taine has obtained a very high reputation in Europe. He is still quite
a young man, but is nevertheless the author of nineteen goodly volumes,
witty, acute, and learned; and already he is often ranked with Renan,
Littre, and Sainte-Beuve, the greatest living French writers.

 [66] That is, in 1868.


Hippolyte Adolphe Taine was born at Vouziers, among the grand forests
of Ardennes, in 1828, and is therefore about forty years old. His family
was simple in habits and tastes, and entertained a steadfast belief
in culture, along with the possession of a fair amount of it. His
grandfather was sub-prefect at Rocroi, in 1814 and 1815, under the first
restoration of the Bourbons. His father, a lawyer by profession, was the
first instructor of his son, and taught him Latin, and from an uncle,
who had been in America, he learned English, while still a mere child.
Having gone to Paris with his mother in 1842, he began his studies
at the College Bourbon and in 1848 was promoted to the ecole Normale.
Weiss, About, and Prevost-Paradol were his contemporaries at this
institution. At that time great liberty was enjoyed in regard to
the order and the details of the exercises; so that Taine, with his
surprising rapidity, would do in one week the work laid out for a month,
and would spend the remainder of the time in private reading. In 1851
he left college, and after two or three unsatisfactory attempts at
teaching, in Paris and in the provinces, he settled down at Paris as a
private student. He gave himself the very best elementary preparation
which a literary man can have,--a thorough course in mathematics and the
physical sciences. His studies in anatomy and physiology were especially
elaborate and minute. He attended the School of Medicine as regularly as
if he expected to make his daily bread in the profession. In this way,
when at the age of twenty-five he began to write books, M. Taine was a
really educated man; and his books show it. The day is past when a man
could write securely, with a knowledge of the classics alone. We doubt
if a philosophical critic is perfectly educated for his task, unless he
can read, for instance, Donaldson's "New Cratylus" on the one hand, and
Rokitansky's "Pathological Anatomy" on the other, for the sheer pleasure
of the thing. At any rate, it was an education of this sort which M.
Taine, at the outset of his literary career, had secured. By this solid
discipline of mathematics, chemistry, and medicine, M. Taine became
that which above all things he now is,--a man possessed of a central
philosophy, of an exact, categorical, well-defined system, which
accompanies and supports him in his most distant literary excursions.
He does not keep throwing out ideas at random, like too many literary
critics, but attaches all his criticisms to a common fundamental
principle; in short, he is not a dilettante, but a savant.

His treatise on La Fontaine, in 1853, attracted much attention, both the
style and the matter being singularly fresh and original. He has since
republished it, with alterations which serve to show that he can be
docile toward intelligent criticisms. About the same time he prepared
for the French Academy his work upon the historian Livy, which was
crowned in 1855. Suffering then from overwork, he was obliged to make
a short journey to the Pyrenees, which he has since described in a
charming little volume, illustrated by Dore.

His subsequent works are a treatise on the French philosophers of
the present century, in which the vapid charlatanism of M. Cousin is
satisfactorily dealt with; a history of English literature in five
volumes; a humorous book on Paris; three volumes upon the general theory
of art; and two volumes of travels in Italy; besides a considerable
collection of historical and critical essays. We think that several
of these works would be interesting to the American public, and might
profitably be translated.

Some three or four years ago, M. Taine was appointed Professor in the
ecole des Beaux Arts, and we suppose his journey to Italy must have been
undertaken partly with a view to qualify himself for his new position.
He visited the four cities which may be considered the artistic centres
of Italy,--Rome, Naples, Florence, and Venice,--and a large part of his
account of his journey is taken up with descriptions and criticisms of
pictures, statues, and buildings.

This is a department of criticism which, we may as well frankly
acknowledge, is far better appreciated on the continent of Europe than
in England or America. Over the English race there passed, about two
centuries ago, a deluge of Puritanism, which for a time almost drowned
out its artistic tastes and propensities. The Puritan movement, in
proportion to its success, was nearly as destructive to art in the West,
as Mohammedanism had long before been in the East. In its intense and
one-sided regard for morality, Puritanism not only relegated the love
for beauty to an inferior place, but contemned and spat upon it, as
something sinful and degrading. Hence, the utter architectural impotence
which characterizes the Americans and the modern English; and hence the
bewildered ignorant way in which we ordinarily contemplate pictures
and statues. For two centuries we have been removed from an artistic
environment, and consequently can with difficulty enter into the
feelings of those who have all this time been nurtured in love for art,
and belief in art for its own sake. These peculiarities, as Mr. Mill has
ably pointed out, have entered deep into our ethnic character. Even in
pure morals there is a radical difference between the Englishman and
the inhabitant of the continent of Europe. The Englishman follows virtue
from a sense of duty, the Frenchman from an emotional aspiration toward
the beautiful The one admires a noble action because it is right, the
other because it is attractive. And this difference underlies the moral
judgments upon men and events which are to be found respectively in
English and in continental literature. By keeping it constantly in view,
we shall be enabled to understand many things which might otherwise
surprise us in the writings of French authors.

We are now slowly outgrowing the extravagances of Puritanism. It has
given us an earnestness and sobriety of character, to which much of our
real greatness is owing, both here and in the mother country. It has
made us stronger and steadier, but it has at the same time narrowed
us in many respects, and rendered our lives incomplete. This
incompleteness, entailed by Puritanism, we are gradually getting rid
of; and we are learning to admire and respect many things upon which
Puritanism set its mark of contempt. We are beginning, for instance, to
recognize the transcendent merits of that great civilizing agency, the
drama; we no longer think it necessary that our temples for worshipping
God should be constructed like hideous barracks; we are gradually
permitting our choirs to discard the droning and sentimental modern
"psalm-tune" for the inspiring harmonies of Beethoven and Mozart; and we
admit the classical picture and the undraped statue to a high place
in our esteem. Yet with all this it will probably be some time before
genuine art ceases to be an exotic among us, and becomes a plant of
unhindered native growth. It will be some time before we cease to regard
pictures and statues as a higher species of upholstery, and place them
in the same category with poems and dramas, duly reverencing them as
authentic revelations of the beauty which is to be found in nature. It
will be some time before we realize that art is a thing to be studied,
as well as literature, and before we can be quite reconciled to the
familiar way in which a Frenchman quotes a picture as we would quote a
poem or novel.

Artistic genius, as M. Taine has shown, is something which will develop
itself only under peculiar social circumstances; and, therefore, if we
have not art, we can perhaps only wait for it, trusting that when the
time comes it will arise among us. But without originating, we may at
least intelligently appreciate. The nature of a work of art, and the
mode in which it is produced, are subjects well worthy of careful study.
Architecture and music, poetry, painting and sculpture, have in times
past constituted a vast portion of human activity; and without knowing
something of the philosophy of art, we need not hope to understand
thoroughly the philosophy of history.

In entering upon the study of art in general, one may find many
suggestive hints in the little books of M. Taine, reprinted from the
lectures which he has been delivering at the ecole des Beaux Arts. The
first, on the Philosophy of Art, designated at the head of this paper,
is already accessible to the American reader; and translations of the
others are probably soon to follow. We shall for the present give a mere
synopsis of M. Taine's general views.

And first it must be determined what a work of art is. Leaving for a
while music and architecture out of consideration, it will be admitted
that poetry, painting, and sculpture have one obvious character in
common: they are arts of IMITATION. This, says Taine, appears at first
sight to be their essential character. It would appear that their great
object is to IMITATE as closely as possible. It is obvious that a statue
is intended to imitate a living man, that a picture is designed to
represent real persons in real attitudes, or the interior of a house, or
a landscape, such as it exists in nature. And it is no less clear that
a novel or drama endeavours to represent with accuracy real characters,
actions, and words, giving as precise and faithful an image of them as
possible. And when the imitation is incomplete, we say to the painter,
"Your people are too largely proportioned, and the colour of your trees
is false"; we tell the sculptor that his leg or arm is incorrectly
modelled; and we say to the dramatist, "Never has a man felt or thought
as your hero is supposed to have felt and thought."

This truth, moreover, is seen both in the careers of individual
artists, and in the general history of art. According to Taine, the
life of an artist may generally be divided into two parts. In the
first period, that of natural growth, he studies nature anxiously and
minutely, he keeps the objects themselves before his eyes, and strives
to represent them with scrupulous fidelity. But when the time for mental
growth ends, as it does with every man, and the crystallization of ideas
and impressions commences, then the mind of the artist is no longer
so susceptible to new impressions from without. He begins to nourish
himself from his own substance. He abandons the living model, and
with recipes which he has gathered in the course of his experience, he
proceeds to construct a drama or novel, a picture or statue. Now, the
first period, says Taine, is that of genuine art; the second is that of
mannerism. Our author cites the case of Michael Angelo, a man who was
one of the most colossal embodiments of physical and mental energy that
the world has ever seen. In Michael Angelo's case, the period of growth,
of genuine art, may be said to have lasted until after his sixtieth
year. But look, says Taine, at the works which he executed in his old
age; consider the Conversion of St. Paul, and the Last Judgment, painted
when he was nearly seventy. Even those who are not connoisseurs can see
that these frescos are painted by rule, that the artist, having stocked
his memory with a certain set of forms, is making use of them to
fill out his tableau; that he wantonly multiplies queer attitudes and
ingenious foreshortenings; that the lively invention, the grand
outburst of feeling, the perfect truth, by which his earlier works are
distinguished, have disappeared; and that, if he is still superior
to all others, he is nevertheless inferior to himself. The careers of
Scott, of Goethe, and of Voltaire will furnish parallel examples. In
every school of art, too, the flourishing period is followed by one of
decline; and in every case the decline is due to a failure to imitate
the living models. In painting, we have the exaggerated foreshorteners
and muscle-makers who copied Michael Angelo; the lovers of theatrical
decorations who succeeded Titian and Giorgione and the degenerate
boudoir-painters who followed Claucle and Poussin. In literature, we
have the versifiers, epigrammatists, and rhetors of the Latin decadence;
the sensual and declamatory dramatists who represent the last stages
of old English comedy; and the makers of sonnets and madrigals, or
conceited euphemists of the Gongora school, in the decline of Italian
and Spanish poetry. Briefly it may be said, that the masters copy
nature and the pupils copy the masters. In this way are explained the
constantly recurring phenomena of decline in art, and thus, also, it
is seen that art is perfect in proportion as it successfully imitates
nature.

But we are not to conclude that absolute imitation is the sole and
entire object of art. Were this the case, the finest works would be
those which most minutely correspond to their external prototypes. In
sculpture, a mould taken from the living features is that which gives
the most faithful representation of the model; but a well-moulded
bust is far from being equal to a good statue. Photography is in
many respects more accurate than painting; but no one would rank a
photograph, however exquisitely executed, with an original picture. And
finally, if exact imitation were the supreme object of art, the best
tragedy, the best comedy, and the best drama would be a stenographic
report of the proceedings in a court of justice, in a family gathering,
in a popular meeting, in the Rump Congress. Even the works of artists
are not rated in proportion to their minute exactness. Neither in
painting nor in any other art do we give the precedence to that which
deceives the eye simply. Every one remembers how Zeuxis was said to have
painted grapes so faithfully that the birds came and pecked at them;
and how, Parrhasios, his rival, surpassed even this feat by painting a
curtain so natural in its appearance that Zeuxis asked him to pull it
aside and show the picture behind it. All this is not art, but mere
knack and trickery. Perhaps no painter was ever so minute as Denner.
It used to take him four years to make one portrait. He would omit
nothing,--neither the bluish lines made by the veins under the skin, nor
the little black points scattered over the nose, nor the bright spots
in the eye where neighbouring objects are reflected; the head seems to
start out from the canvas, it is so like flesh and blood. Yet who cares
for Denner's portraits? And who would not give ten times as much for one
which Van Dyck or Tintoretto might have painted in a few hours? So in
the churches of Naples and Spain we find statues coloured and draped,
saints clothed in real coats, with their skin yellow and bloodless,
their hands bleeding, and their feet bruised; and beside them Madonnas
in royal habiliments, in gala dresses of lustrous silk, adorned with
diadems, precious necklaces, bright ribbons, and elegant laces, with
their cheeks rosy, their eyes brilliant, their eyelashes sweeping. And
by this excess of literal imitation, there is awakened a feeling, not of
pleasure, but always of repugnance, often of disgust, and sometimes of
horror So in literature, the ancient Greek theatre, and the best Spanish
and English dramatists, alter on purpose the natural current of human
speech, and make their characters talk under all the restraints of rhyme
and rhythm. But we pronounce this departure from literal truth a merit
and not a defect. We consider Goethe's second "Iphigenie," written in
verse, far preferable to the first one written in prose; nay, it is the
rhythm or metre itself which communicates to the work its incomparable
beauty. In a review of Longfellow's "Dante," published last year, we
argued this very point in one of its special applications; the artist
must copy his original, but he must not copy it too literally.

What then must he copy? He must copy, says Taine, the mutual relations
and interdependences of the parts of his model. And more than this,
he must render the essential characteristic of the object--that
characteristic upon which all the minor qualities depend--as salient
and conspicuous as possible. He must put into the background the
traits which conceal it, and bring into the foreground the traits which
manifest it. If he is sculpturing a group like the Laocoon, he must
strike upon the supreme moment, that in which the whole tragedy reveals
itself, and he must pass over those insignificant details of position
and movement which serve only to distract our attention and weaken our
emotions by dividing them. If he is writing a drama, he must not attempt
to give us the complete biography of his character; he must depict only
those situations which stand in direct subordination to the grand climax
or denoument. As a final result, therefore. Taine concludes that a work
of art is a concrete representation of the relations existing between
the parts of an object, with the intent to bring the essential or
dominating character thereof into prominence.

We should overrun our limits if we were to follow out the admirable
discussion in which M. Taine extends this definition to architecture
and music. These closely allied arts are distinguished from poetry,
painting, and sculpture, by appealing far less directly to the
intelligence, and far more exclusively to the emotions. Yet these arts
likewise aim, by bringing into prominence certain relations of symmetry
in form as perceived by the eye, or in aerial vibrations as perceived by
the ear, to excite in us the states of feeling with which these species
of symmetry are by subtle laws of association connected. They, too,
imitate, not literally, but under the guidance of a predominating
sentiment or emotion, relations which really exist among the phenomena
of nature. And here, too, we estimate excellence, not in proportion to
the direct, but to the indirect imitation. A Gothic cathedral is not,
as has been supposed, directly imitated from the towering vegetation of
Northern forests; but it may well be the expression of the dim sentiment
of an unseen, all-pervading Power, generated by centuries of primeval
life amid such forests. So the sounds which in a symphony of Beethoven
are woven into a web of such amazing complexity may exist in different
combinations in nature; but when a musician steps out of his way to
imitate the crowing of cocks or the roar of the tempest, we regard
his achievement merely as a graceful conceit. Art is, therefore, an
imitation of nature; but it is an intellectual and not a mechanical
imitation; and the performances of the camera and the music-box are
not to be classed with those of the violinist's bow or the sculptor's
chisel.

And lastly, in distinguishing art from science, Taine remarks, that
in disengaging from their complexity the causes which are at work in
nature, and the fundamental laws according to which they work, science
describes them in abstract formulas conveyed in technical language. But
art reveals these operative causes and these dominant laws, not in arid
definitions, inaccessible to most people, intelligible only to specially
instructed men, but in a concrete symbol, addressing itself not only to
the understanding, but still more to the sentiments of the ordinary man.
Art has, therefore, this peculiarity, that it is at once elevated and
popular, that it manifests that which is often most recondite, and that
it manifests it to all.

Having determined what a work of art is, our author goes on to study
the social conditions under which works of art are produced; and he
concludes that the general character of a work of art is determined
by the state of intellect and morals in the society in which it is
executed. There is, in fact, a sort of moral temperature which acts
upon mental development much as physical temperature acts upon organic
development. The condition of society does not produce the artist's
talent; but it assists or checks its efforts to display itself; it
decides whether or not it shall be successful And it exerts a "natural
selection" between different kinds of talents, stimulating some and
starving others. To make this perfectly clear, we will cite at some
length Taine's brilliant illustration.

The case chosen for illustration is a very simple one,--that of a state
of society in which one of the predominant feelings is melancholy. This
is not an arbitrary supposition, for such a time has occurred more than
once in human history; in Asia, in the sixth century before Christ, and
especially in Europe, from the fourth to the tenth centuries of our
era. To produce such a state of feeling, five or six generations of
decadence, accompanied with diminution of population, foreign invasions,
famines, pestilences, and increasing difficulty in procuring the
necessaries of life, are amply sufficient. It then happens that men lose
courage and hope, and consider life an evil. Now, admitting that among
the artists who live in such a time, there are likely to be the same
relative numbers of melancholy, joyous, or indifferent temperaments
as at other times, let us see how they will be affected by reigning
circumstances.

Let us first remember, says Taine, that the evils which depress the
public will also depress the artist. His risks are no less than those of
less gifted people. He is liable to suffer from plague or famine, to
be ruined by unfair taxation or conscription, or to see his children
massacred and his wife led into captivity by barbarians. And if these
ills do not reach him personally, he must at least behold those around
him affected by them. In this way, if he is joyous by temperament, he
must inevitably become less joyous; if he is melancholy, he must become
more melancholy.

Secondly, having been reared among melancholy contemporaries, his
education will have exerted upon him a corresponding influence. The
prevailing religious doctrine, accommodated to the state of affairs,
will tell him that the earth is a place of exile, life an evil, gayety
a snare, and his most profitable occupation will be to get ready to
die. Philosophy, constructing its system of morals in conformity to the
existing phenomena of decadence, will tell him that he had better never
have been born. Daily conversation will inform him of horrible events,
of the devastation of a province, the sack of a town by the Goths, the
oppression of the neighbouring peasants by the imperial tax-collectors,
or the civil war that has just burst out between half a dozen pretenders
to the throne. As he travels about, he beholds signs of mourning and
despair, crowds of beggars, people dying of hunger, a broken bridge
which no one is mending, an abandoned suburb which is going to ruin,
fields choked with weeds, the blackened walls of burned houses. Such
sights and impressions, repeated from childhood to old age (and we must
remember that this has actually been the state of things in what are now
the fairest parts of the globe), cannot fail to deepen whatever elements
of melancholy there may be already in the artist's disposition.

The operation of all these causes will be enhanced by that very
peculiarity of the artist which constitutes his talent. For, according
to the definitions above given, that which makes him an artist is his
capacity for seizing upon the essential characteristics and the salient
traits of surrounding objects and events. Other men see things in part
fragmentarily; he catches the spirit of the ensemble. And in this way
he will very likely exaggerate in his works the general average of
contemporary feeling.

Lastly, our author reminds us that a man who writes or paints does not
remain alone before his easel or his writing-desk. He goes out, looks
about him, receives suggestions from friends, from rivals, from books,
and works of art whenever accessible, and hears the criticisms of the
public upon his own productions and those of his contemporaries. In
order to succeed, he must not only satisfy to some extent the popular
taste, but he must feel that the public is in sympathy with him. If in
this period of social decadence and gloom he endeavours to represent
gay, brilliant, or triumphant ideas, he will find himself left to his
own resources; and, as Taine rightly says, the power of an isolated man
is always insignificant. His work will be likely to be mediocre. If
he attempts to write like Rabelais or paint like Rubens, he will get
neither assistance nor sympathy from a public which prefers the pictures
of Rembrandt, the melodies of Chopin, and the poetry of Heine.

Having thus explained his position by this extreme instance, signified
for the sake of clearness, Taine goes on to apply such general
considerations to four historic epochs, taken in all their complexity.
He discusses the aspect presented by art in ancient Greece, in the
feudal and Catholic Middle Ages, in the centralized monarchies of the
seventeenth century, and in the scientific, industrial democracy
in which we now live. Out of these we shall select, as perhaps the
simplest, the case of ancient Greece, still following our author
closely, though necessarily omitting many interesting details.

The ancient Greeks, observes Taine, understood life in a new and
original manner. Their energies were neither absorbed by a great
religious conception, as in the case of the Hindus and Egyptians, nor
by a vast social organization, as in the case of the Assyrians and
Persians, nor by a purely industrial and commercial regime, as in the
case of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians. Instead of a theocracy or a
rigid system of castes, instead of a monarchy with a hierarchy of civil
officials, the men of this race invented a peculiar institution, the
City, each city giving rise to others like itself, and from colony
to colony reproducing itself indefinitely. A single Greek city, for
instance, Miletos, produced three hundred other cities, colonizing with
them the entire coast of the Black Sea. Each city was substantially
self-ruling; and the idea of a coalescence of several cities into a
nation was one which the Greek mind rarely conceived, and never was able
to put into operation.

In these cities, labour was for the most part carried on by slaves.
In Athens there were four or five for each citizen, and in places like
Korinth and Aigina the slave population is said to have numbered four
or five hundred thousand. Besides, the Greek citizen had little need of
personal service. He lived out of doors, and, like most Southern people,
was comparatively abstemious in his habits. His dinners were slight, his
clothing was simple, his house was scantily furnished, being intended
chiefly for a den to sleep in.

Serving neither king nor priest, the citizen was free and sovereign in
his own city. He elected his own magistrates, and might himself serve
as city-ruler, as juror, or as judge. Representation was unknown.
Legislation was carried on by all the citizens assembled in mass.
Therefore politics and war were the sole or chief employments of the
citizen. War, indeed, came in for no slight share of his attention. For
society was not so well protected as in these modern days. Most of these
Greek cities, scattered over the coasts of the Aigeian, the Black
Sea, and the Mediterranean, were surrounded by tribes of barbarians,
Scythians, Gauls Spaniards, and Africans. The citizen must therefore
keep on his guard, like the Englishman of to-day in New Zealand, or
like the inhabitant of a Massachusetts town in the seventeenth century.
Otherwise Gauls Samnites, or Bithynians, as savage as North American
Indians, would be sure to encamp upon the blackened ruins of his town.
Moreover, the Greek cities had their quarrels with each other, and their
laws of war were very barbarous. A conquered city was liable to be razed
to the ground, its male inhabitants put to the sword, its women sold as
slaves. Under such circumstances, according to Taine's happy expression,
a citizen must be a politician and warrior, on pain of death. And not
only fear, but ambition also tended to make him so. For each city strove
to subject or to humiliate its neighbours, to acquire tribute, or to
exact homage from its rivals. Thus the citizen passed his life in
the public square, discussing alliances, treaties, and constitutions,
hearing speeches, or speaking himself, and finally going aboard of his
ship to fight his neighbour Greeks, or to sail against Egypt or Persia.

War (and politics as subsidiary to it) was then the chief pursuit of
life. But as there was no organized industry, so there were no machines
of warfare. All fighting was done hand to hand. Therefore, the great
thing in preparing for war was not to transform the soldiers into
precisely-acting automata, as in a modern army, but to make each
separate soldier as vigorous and active as possible. The leading object
of Greek education was to make men physically perfect. In this respect,
Sparta may be taken as the typical Greek community, for nowhere else was
physical development so entirely made the great end of social life. In
these matters Sparta was always regarded by the other cities as taking
the lead,--as having attained the ideal after which all alike were
striving. Now Sparta, situated in the midst of a numerous conquered
population of Messenians and Helots, was partly a great gymnasium and
partly a perpetual camp. Her citizens were always in training. The
entire social constitution of Sparta was shaped with a view to the
breeding and bringing up of a strong and beautiful race. Feeble or
ill-formed infants were put to death. The age at which citizens might
marry was prescribed by law; and the State paired off men and women as
the modern breeder pairs off horses, with a sole view to the excellence
of the off-spring. A wife was not a helpmate, but a bearer of athletes.
Women boxed, wrestled, and raced; a circumstance referred to in the
following passage of Aristophanes, as rendered by Mr. Felton:--


                    LYSISTRATA.

      Hail! Lampito, dearest of Lakonian women.
      How shines thy beauty, O my sweetest friend!
      How fair thy colour, full of life thy frame!
      Why, thou couldst choke a bull.

                           LAMPITO.
                   Yes, by the Twain;
     For I do practice the gymnastic art,
     And, leaping, strike my backbone with my heels.

                        LYSISTRATA.
     In sooth, thy bust is lovely to behold.


The young men lived together, like soldiers in a camp. They ate
out-of-doors, at a public table. Their fare was as simple as that of a
modern university boat-crew before a race. They slept in the open
air, and spent their waking hours in wrestling, boxing, running races,
throwing quoits, and engaging in mock battles. This was the way in which
the Spartans lived; and though no other city carried this discipline to
such an extent, yet in all a very large portion of the citizen's life
was spent in making himself hardy and robust.

The ideal man, in the eyes of a Greek, was, therefore not the
contemplative or delicately susceptible thinker but the naked athlete,
with firm flesh and swelling muscles. Most of their barbarian neighbours
were ashamed to be seen undressed, but the Greeks seem to have felt
little embarrassment in appearing naked in public. Their gymnastic
habits entirely transformed their sense of shame. Their Olympic
and other public games were a triumphant display of naked physical
perfection. Young men of the noblest families and from the farthest
Greek colonies came to them, and wrestled and ran, undraped, before
countless multitudes of admiring spectators. Note, too, as significant,
that the Greek era began with the Olympic games, and that time was
reckoned by the intervals between them; as well as the fact that the
grandest lyric poetry of antiquity was written in celebration of these
gymnastic contests. The victor in the foot-race gave his name to
the current Olympiad; and on reaching home, was received by his
fellow-citizens as if he had been a general returning from a successful
campaign. To be the most beautiful man in Greece was in the eyes of
a Greek the height of human felicity; and with the Greeks, beauty
necessarily included strength. So ardently did this gifted people admire
corporeal perfection that they actually worshipped it. According to
Herodotos, a young Sicilian was deified on account of his beauty, and
after his death altars were raised to him. The vast intellectual power
of Plato and Sokrates did not prevent them from sharing this universal
enthusiasm. Poets like Sophokles, and statesmen like Alexander, thought
it not beneath their dignity to engage publicly in gymnastic sports.

Their conceptions of divinity were framed in accordance with these
general habits. Though sometimes, as in the case of Hephaistos, the
exigencies of the particular myth required the deity to be physically
imperfect, yet ordinarily the Greek god was simply an immortal man,
complete in strength and beauty. The deity was not invested with the
human form as a mere symbol. They could conceive no loftier way of
representing him. The grandest statue, expressing most adequately the
calmness of absolutely unfettered strength, might well, in their eyes,
be a veritable portrait of divinity. To a Greek, beauty of form was
a consecrated thing. More than once a culprit got off with his life
because it would have been thought sacrilegious to put an end to such
a symmetrical creature. And for a similar reason, the Greeks, though
perhaps not more humane than the Europeans of the Middle Ages, rarely
allowed the human body to be mutilated or tortured. The condemned
criminal must be marred as little as possible; and he was, therefore,
quietly poisoned, instead of being hung, beheaded, or broken on the
wheel.

Is not the unapproachable excellence of Greek statuary--that art never
since equalled, and most likely, from the absence of the needful social
stimulus, destined never to be equalled--already sufficiently
explained? Consider, says our author, the nature of the Greek sculptor's
preparation. These men have observed the human body naked and in
movement, in the bath and the gymnasium, in sacred dances and public
games. They have noted those forms and attitudes in which are revealed
vigour, health, and activity. And during three or four hundred years
they have thus modified, corrected and developed their notions of
corporeal beauty. There is, therefore, nothing surprising in the fact
that Greek sculpture finally arrived at the ideal model, the perfect
type, as it was, of the human body. Our highest notions of physical
beauty, down to the present day, have been bequeathed to us by the
Greeks. The earliest modern sculptors who abandoned the bony, hideous,
starveling figures of the monkish Middle Ages, learned their first
lessons in better things from Greek bas-reliefs. And if, to-day,
forgetting our half-developed bodies, inefficiently nourished, because
of our excessive brain-work, and with their muscles weak and flabby from
want of strenuous exercise, we wish to contemplate the human form in its
grandest perfection, we must go to Hellenic art for our models.

The Greeks were, in the highest sense of the word, an intellectual race;
but they never allowed the mind to tyrannize over the body. Spiritual
perfection, accompanied by corporeal feebleness, was the invention of
asceticism; and the Greeks were never ascetics. Diogenes might scorn
superfluous luxuries, but if he ever rolled and tumbled his tub about as
Rabelais says he did, it is clear that the victory of spirit over body
formed no part of his theory of things. Such an idea would have been
incomprehensible to a Greek in Plato's time. Their consciences were not
over active. They were not burdened with a sense of sinfulness. Their
aspirations were decidedly finite; and they believed in securing the
maximum completeness of this terrestrial life. Consequently they never
set the physical below the intellectual. To return to our author, they
never, in their statues, subordinated symmetry to expression, the body
to the head. They were interested not only in the prominence of the
brows, the width of the forehead, and the curvature of the lips, but
quite as much in the massiveness of the chest, the compactness of the
thighs, and the solidity of the arms and legs. Not only the face, but
the whole body, had for them its physiognomy. They left picturesqueness
to the painter, and dramatic fervour to the poet; and keeping strictly
before their eyes the narrow but exalted problem of representing the
beauty of symmetry, they filled their sanctuaries and public places with
those grand motionless people of brass, gold, ivory, copper, and marble,
in whom humanity recognizes its highest artistic types. Statuary was
the central art of Greece. No other art was so popular, or so completely
expressed the national life. The number of statues was enormous. In
later days, when Rome had spoiled the Greek world of its treasures, the
Imperial City possessed a population of statues almost equal in number
to its population of human beings. And at the present day, after all the
destructive accidents of so many intervening centuries, it is estimated
that more than sixty thousand statues have been obtained from Rome and
its suburbs alone.

In citing this admirable exposition as a specimen of M. Taine's method
of dealing with his subject, we have refrained from disturbing the
pellucid current of thought by criticisms of our own. We think the
foregoing explanation correct enough, so far as it goes, though it deals
with the merest rudiments of the subject, and really does nothing toward
elucidating the deeper mysteries of artistic production. For this there
is needed a profounder psychology than M. Taine's. But whether his
theory of art be adequate or not, there can be but one opinion as to the
brilliant eloquence with which it is set forth.      June, 1868.




XIV. ATHENIAN AND AMERICAN LIFE.

IN a very interesting essay on British and Foreign Characteristics,
published a few years ago, Mr. W. R. Greg quotes the famous letter of
the Turkish cadi to Mr. Layard, with the comment that "it contains the
germ and element of a wisdom to which our busy and bustling existence is
a stranger"; and he uses it as a text for an instructive sermon on the
"gospel of leisure." He urges, with justice, that the too eager and
restless modern man, absorbed in problems of industrial development, may
learn a wholesome lesson from the contemplation of his Oriental brother,
who cares not to say, "Behold, this star spinneth round that star, and
this other star with a tail cometh and goeth in so many years"; who
aspires not after a "double stomach," nor hopes to attain to Paradise by
"seeking with his eyes." If any one may be thought to stand in need of
some such lesson, it is the American of to-day. Just as far as the Turk
carries his apathy to excess, does the American carry to excess his
restlessness. But just because the incurious idleness of the Turk is
excessive, so as to be detrimental to completeness of living, it
is unfit to supply us with the hints we need concerning the causes,
character, and effects of our over-activity. A sermon of leisure, if it
is to be of practical use to us, must not be a sermon of laziness. The
Oriental state of mind is incompatible with progressive improvement of
any sort, physical, intellectual, or moral. It is one of the phenomena
attendant upon the arrival of a community at a stationary condition
before it has acquired a complex civilization. And it appears
serviceable rather as a background upon which to exhibit in relief our
modern turmoil, than by reason of any lesson which it is itself
likely to convey. Let us in preference study one of the most eminently
progressive of all the communities that have existed. Let us take an
example quite different from any that can be drawn from Oriental
life, but almost equally contrasted with any that can be found among
ourselves; and let us, with the aid of it, examine the respective
effects of leisure and of hurry upon the culture of the community.

What do modern critics mean by the "healthy completeness" of ancient
life, which they are so fond of contrasting with the "heated,"
"discontented," or imperfect and one-sided existence of modern
communities? Is this a mere set of phrases, suited to some imaginary
want of the literary critic, but answering to nothing real? Are they to
be summarily disposed of as resting upon some tacit assumption of that
old-grannyism which delights in asseverating that times are not what
they used to be? Is the contrast an imaginary one, due to the softened,
cheerful light with which we are wont to contemplate classic antiquity
through the charmed medium of its incomparable literature? Or is it a
real contrast, worthy of the attention and analysis of the historical
inquirer? The answer to these queries will lead us far into the
discussion of the subject which we have propounded, and we shall best
reach it by considering some aspects of the social condition of ancient
Greece. The lessons to be learned from that wonderful country are not
yet exhausted Each time that we return to that richest of historic
mines, and delve faithfully and carefully, we shall be sure to dig up
some jewel worth carrying away.

And in considering ancient Greece, we shall do well to confine our
attention, for the sake of definiteness of conception, to a single
city. Comparatively homogeneous as Greek civilization was, there was
nevertheless a great deal of difference between the social circumstances
of sundry of its civic communities. What was true of Athens was
frequently not true of Sparta or Thebes, and general assertions about
ancient Greece are often likely to be collect only in a loose and
general way. In speaking, therefore, of Greece, I must be understood
in the main as referring to Athens, the eye and light of Greece, the
nucleus and centre of Hellenic culture.

Let us note first that Athens was a large city surrounded by pleasant
village-suburbs,--the demes of Attika,--very much as Boston is closely
girdled by rural places like Brookline, Jamaica Plain, and the rest,
village after village rather thickly covering a circuit of from ten
to twenty miles' radius. The population of Athens with its suburbs may
perhaps have exceeded half a million; but the number of adult freemen
bearing arms did not exceed twenty-five thousand. [67] For every one
of these freemen there were four or five slaves; not ignorant, degraded
labourers, belonging to an inferior type of humanity, and bearing the
marks of a lower caste in their very personal formation and in the
colour of their skin, like our lately-enslaved negroes; but intelligent,
skilled labourers, belonging usually to the Hellenic, and at any rate
to the Aryan race, as fair and perhaps as handsome as their masters, and
not subjected to especial ignominy or hardship. These slaves, of whom
there were at least one hundred thousand adult males, relieved the
twenty-five thousand freemen of nearly all the severe drudgery of life;
and the result was an amount of leisure perhaps never since known on an
equal scale in history.

 [67] See Herod. V. 97; Aristoph. Ekkl. 432; Thukyd. II. 13;
Plutarch, Perikl. 37.


The relations of master and slave in ancient Athens constituted, of
course, a very different phenomenon from anything which the history of
our own Southern States has to offer us. Our Southern slaveholders lived
in an age of industrial development; they were money-makers: they had
their full share of business in managing the operations for which their
labourers supplied the crude physical force. It was not so in Athens.
The era of civilization founded upon organized industry had not begun;
money-making had not come to be, with the Greeks, the one all-important
end of life; and mere subsistence, which is now difficult, was then
easy. The Athenian lived in a mild, genial, healthy climate, in a
country which has always been notable for the activity and longevity
of its inhabitants. He was frugal in his habits,--a wine-drinker and
an eater of meat, but rarely addicted to gluttony or intemperance. His
dress was inexpensive, for the Greek climate made but little protection
necessary, and the gymnastic habits of the Greeks led them to esteem
more highly the beauty of the body than that of its covering. His house
was simple, not being intended for social purposes, while of what we
should call home-life the Greeks had none. The house was a shelter at
night, a place where the frugal meal might be taken, a place where the
wife might stay, and look after the household slaves or attend to the
children. And this brings us to another notable feature of Athenian
life. The wife having no position in society, being nothing, indeed,
but a sort of household utensil, how greatly was life simplified! What a
door for expenditure was there, as yet securely closed, and which no one
had thought of opening! No milliner's or dressmaker's bills, no evening
parties, no Protean fashions, no elegant furniture, no imperious
necessity for Kleanthes to outshine Kleon, no coaches, no Chateau
Margaux, no journeys to Arkadia in the summer! In such a state of
society, as one may easily see, the labour of one man would support half
a dozen. It cost the Athenian but a few cents daily to live, and even
these few cents might be earned by his slaves. We need not, therefore,
be surprised to learn that in ancient Athens there were no paupers or
beggars. There might be poverty, but indigence was unknown; and because
of the absence of fashion, style, and display, even poverty entailed
no uncomfortable loss of social position. The Athenians valued wealth
highly, no doubt, as a source of contributions to public festivals and
to the necessities of the state. But as far as the circumstances of
daily life go, the difference between the rich man and the poor man was
immeasurably less than in any modern community, and the incentives to
the acquirement of wealth were, as a consequence, comparatively slight.

I do not mean to say that the Athenians did not engage in business.
Their city was a commercial city, and their ships covered the
Mediterranean. They had agencies and factories at Marseilles, on the
remote coasts of Spain, and along the shores of the Black Sea. They
were in many respects the greatest commercial people of antiquity,
and doubtless knew, as well as other people, the keen delights of
acquisition. But my point is, that with them the acquiring of property
had not become the chief or only end of life. Production was carried
on almost entirely by slave-labour; interchange of commodities was the
business of the masters, and commerce was in those days simple. Banks,
insurance companies, brokers' boards,--all these complex instruments
of Mammon were as yet unthought of. There was no Wall Street in
ancient Athens; there were no great failures, no commercial panics,
no over-issues of stock. Commerce, in short, was a quite subordinate
matter, and the art of money-making was in its infancy.

The twenty-five thousand Athenian freemen thus enjoyed, on the whole,
more undisturbed leisure, more freedom from petty harassing cares,
than any other community known to history. Nowhere else can we find,
on careful study, so little of the hurry and anxiety which destroys the
even tenour of modern life,--nowhere else so few of the circumstances
which tend to make men insane, inebriate, or phthisical, or prematurely
old.

This being granted, it remains only to state and illustrate the obverse
fact. It is not only true that Athens has produced and educated a
relatively larger number of men of the highest calibre and most complete
culture than any other community of like dimensions which has ever
existed; but it is also true that there has been no other community, of
which the members have, as a general rule, been so highly cultivated,
or have attained individually such completeness of life. In proof of
the first assertion it will be enough to mention such names as those of
Solon, Themistokles, Perikles, and Demosthenes; Isokrates and Lysias;
Aristophanes and Menander; Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides; Pheidias
and Praxiteles; Sokrates and Plato; Thukydides and Xenophon: remembering
that these men, distinguished for such different kinds of achievement,
but like each other in consummateness of culture, were all produced
within one town in the course of three centuries. At no other time and
place in human history has there been even an approach to such a fact as
this.

My other assertion, about the general culture of the community in which
such men were reared, will need a more detailed explanation. When I say
that the Athenian public was, on the whole, the most highly cultivated
public that has ever existed, I refer of course to something more than
what is now known as literary culture. Of this there was relatively
little in the days of Athenian greatness; and this was because there was
not yet need for it or room for it. Greece did not until a later time
begin to produce scholars and savants; for the function of scholarship
does not begin until there has been an accumulation of bygone literature
to be interpreted for the benefit of those who live in a later time.
Grecian greatness was already becoming a thing of the past, when
scholarship and literary culture of the modern type began at Rome and
Alexandria. The culture of the ancient Athenians was largely derived
from direct intercourse with facts of nature and of life, and with the
thoughts of rich and powerful minds orally expressed. The value of this
must not be underrated. We moderns are accustomed to get so large a
portion of our knowledge and of our theories of life out of books,
our taste and judgment are so largely educated by intercourse with the
printed page, that we are apt to confound culture with book-knowledge;
we are apt to forget the innumerable ways in which the highest
intellectual faculties may be disciplined without the aid of literature.
We must study antiquity to realize how thoroughly this could be done.
But even in our day, how much more fruitful is the direct influence of
an original mind over us, in the rare cases when it can be enjoyed, than
any indirect influence which the same mind may exert through the
medium of printed books! What fellow of a college, placed amid the most
abundant and efficient implements of study, ever gets such a stimulus to
the highest and richest intellectual life as was afforded to Eckermann
by his daily intercourse with Goethe? The breadth of culture and the
perfection of training exhibited by John Stuart Mill need not surprise
us when we recollect that his earlier days were spent in the society of
James Mill and Jeremy Bentham. And the remarkable extent of view, the
command of facts, and the astonishing productiveness of such modern
Frenchmen as Sainte-Beuve and Littre become explicable when we reflect
upon the circumstance that so many able and brilliant men are collected
in one city, where their minds may continually and directly react upon
each other. It is from the lack of such personal stimulus that it is
difficult or indeed wellnigh impossible, even for those whose resources
are such as to give them an extensive command of books, to keep up to
the highest level of contemporary culture while living in a village or
provincial town. And it is mainly because of the personal stimulus
which it affords to its students, that a great university, as a seat of
culture, is immeasurably superior to a small one.

Nevertheless, the small community in any age possesses one signal
advantage over the large one, in its greater simplicity of life and its
consequent relative leisure. It was the prerogative of ancient Athens
that it united the advantages of the large to those of the small
community. In relative simplicity of life it was not unlike the modern
village, while at the same time it was the metropolis where the foremost
minds of the time were enabled to react directly upon one another.
In yet another respect these opposite advantages were combined. The
twenty-five thousand free inhabitants might perhaps all know something
of each other. In this respect Athens was doubtless much like a New
England country town, with the all-important difference that the sordid
tone due to continual struggle for money was absent. It was like the
small town in the chance which it afforded for publicity and community
of pursuits among its inhabitants. Continuous and unrestrained social
intercourse was accordingly a distinctive feature of Athenian life.
And, as already hinted, this intercourse did not consist in evening
flirtations, with the eating of indigestible food at unseasonable hours,
and the dancing of "the German." It was carried on out-of-doors in
the brightest sunlight; it brooked no effeminacy; its amusements were
athletic games, or dramatic entertainments, such as have hardly since
been equalled. Its arena was a town whose streets were filled with
statues and adorned with buildings, merely to behold which was in itself
an education. The participators in it were not men with minds so dwarfed
by exclusive devotion to special pursuits that after "talking shop" they
could find nothing else save wine and cookery to converse about. They
were men with minds fresh and open for the discussion of topics which
are not for a day only.

A man like Sokrates, living in such a community, did not need to write
down his wisdom. He had no such vast public as the modern philosopher
has to reach. He could hail any one he happened to pass in the street,
begin an argument with him forthwith, and set a whole crowd thinking
and inquiring about subjects the mere contemplation of which would raise
them for the moment above matters of transient concern. For more
than half a century any citizen might have gratis the benefit of oral
instruction from such a man as he. And I sometimes think, by the way,
that--curtailed as it is to literary proportions in the dialogues of
Plato, bereft of all that personal potency which it had when it flowed,
instinct with earnestness, from the lips of the teacher--even to this
day the wit of man has perhaps devised no better general gymnastics for
the understanding than the Sokratic dialectic. I am far from saying that
all Athens listened to Sokrates or understood him: had it been so, the
caricature of Aristophanes would have been pointless, and the sublime
yet mournful trilogy of dialogues which pourtray the closing scenes of
the greatest life of antiquity would never have been written. But the
mere fact that such a man lived and taught in the way that he did
goes far in proof of the deep culture of the Athenian public. Further
confirmation is to be found in the fact that such tragedies as the
Antigone, the Oidipous, and the Prometheus were written to suit the
popular taste of the time; not to be read by literary people, or to be
performed before select audiences such as in our day listen to Ristori
or Janauschek, but to hold spell-bound that vast concourse of all kinds
of people which assembled at the Dionysiac festivals.

Still further proof is furnished by the exquisite literary perfection
of Greek writings. One of the common arguments in favour of the study
of Greek at the present day is based upon the opinion that in the best
works extant in that language the art of literary expression has reached
wellnigh absolute perfection. I fully concur in this opinion, so far
as to doubt if even the greatest modern writers, even a Pascal or a
Voltaire, can fairly sustain a comparison with such Athenians as Plato
or Lysias. This excellence of the ancient books is in part immediately
due to the fact that they were not written in a hurry, or amid the
anxieties of an over-busy existence; but it is in greater part due to
the indirect consequences of a leisurely life. These books were written
for a public which knew well how to appreciate the finer beauties of
expression; and, what is still more to the point, their authors lived
in a community where an elegant style was habitual. Before a matchless
style can be written, there must be a good style "in the air," as the
French say. Probably the most finished talking and writing of modern
times has been done in and about the French court in the seventeenth
century; and it is accordingly there that we find men like Pascal and
Bossuet writing a prose which for precision, purity, and dignity has
never since been surpassed. It is thus that the unapproachable literary
excellence of ancient Greek books speaks for the genuine culture of the
people who were expected to read them, or to hear them read. For one of
the surest indices of true culture, whether professedly literary or not,
is the power to express one's self in precise, rhythmical, and dignified
language. We hardly need a better evidence than this of the superiority
of the ancient community in the general elevation of its tastes and
perceptions. Recollecting how Herodotos read his history at the Olympic
games, let us try to imagine even so picturesque a writer as Mr. Parkman
reading a few chapters of his "Jesuits in North America" before the
spectators assembled at the Jerome Park races, and we shall the better
realize how deep-seated was Hellenic culture.

As yet, however, I have referred to but one side of Athenian life.
Though "seekers after wisdom," the cultivated people of Athens did not
spend all their valuable leisure in dialectics or in connoisseurship.
They were not a set of dilettanti or dreamy philosophers, and they were
far from subordinating the material side of life to the intellectual.
Also, though they dealt not in money-making after the eager fashion of
modern men, they had still concerns of immediate practical interest with
which to busy themselves. Each one of these twenty-five thousand free
Athenians was not only a free voter, but an office-holder, a legislator,
a judge. They did not control the government through a representative
body, but they were themselves the government. They were, one and all,
in turn liable to be called upon to make laws, and to execute them after
they were made, as well as to administer justice in civil and criminal
suits. The affairs and interests, not only of their own city, but of a
score or two of scattered dependencies, were more or less closely to be
looked after by them. It lay with them to declare war, to carry it on
after declaring it, and to pay the expenses of it. Actually and not by
deputy they administered the government of their own city, both in its
local and in its imperial relations. All this implies a more thorough,
more constant, and more vital political training than that which is
implied by the modern duties of casting a ballot and serving on a jury.
The life of the Athenian was emphatically a political life. From early
manhood onward, it was part of his duty to hear legal questions argued
by powerful advocates, and to utter a decision upon law and fact; or to
mix in debate upon questions of public policy, arguing, listening, and
pondering. It is customary to compare the political talent of the Greeks
unfavourably with that displayed by the Romans, and I have no wish to
dispute this estimate. But on a careful study it will appear that the
Athenians, at least, in a higher degree than any other community of
ancient times, exhibited parliamentary tact, or the ability to sit still
while both sides of a question are getting discussed,--that sort of
political talent for which the English races are distinguished, and to
the lack of which so many of the political failures of the French are
egregiously due. One would suppose that a judicature of the whole town
would be likely to execute a sorry parody of justice; yet justice was
by no means ill-administered at Athens. Even the most unfortunate and
disgraceful scenes,--as where the proposed massacre of the Mytilenaians
was discussed, and where summary retribution was dealt out to the
generals who had neglected their duty at Arginusai,--even these scenes
furnish, when thoroughly examined, as by Mr. Grote, only the more
convincing proof that the Athenian was usually swayed by sound reason
and good sense to an extraordinary degree. All great points in fact,
were settled rather by sober appeals to reason than by intrigue or
lobbying; and one cannot help thinking that an Athenian of the time
of Perikles would have regarded with pitying contempt the trick of the
"previous question." And this explains the undoubted pre-eminence
of Athenian oratory. This accounts for the fact that we find in the
forensic annals of a single city, and within the compass of a single
century, such names as Lysias, Isokrates, Andokides, Hypereides,
Aischines, and Demosthenes. The art of oratory, like the art of
sculpture, shone forth more brilliantly then than ever since, because
then the conditions favouring its development were more perfectly
combined than they have since been. Now, a condition of society in
which the multitude can always be made to stand quietly and listen to a
logical discourse is a condition of high culture. Readers of Xenophon's
Anabasis will remember the frequency of the speeches in that charming
book. Whenever some terrible emergency arose, or some alarming quarrel
or disheartening panic occurred, in the course of the retreat of the
Ten Thousand, an oration from one of the commanders--not a demagogue's
appeal to the lower passions, but a calm exposition of circumstances
addressed to the sober judgment--usually sufficed to set all things in
order. To my mind this is one of the most impressive historical lessons
conveyed in Xenophon's book. And this peculiar kind of self-control,
indicative of intellectual sobriety and high moral training, which was
more or less characteristic of all Greeks, was especially characteristic
of the Athenians.

These illustrations will, I hope, suffice to show that there is nothing
extravagant in the high estimate which I have made of Athenian culture.
I have barely indicated the causes of this singular perfection of
individual training in the social circumstances amid which the Athenians
lived. I have alleged it as an instance of what may be accomplished by
a well-directed leisure and in the absence or very scanty development of
such a complex industrial life as that which surrounds us to-day. But I
have not yet quite done with the Athenians. Before leaving this part of
the subject, I must mention one further circumstance which tends to
make ancient life appear in our eyes more sunny and healthy and less
distressed, than the life of modern times. And in this instance, too,
though we are not dealing with any immediate or remote effects of
leisureliness, we still have to note the peculiar advantage gained by
the absence of a great complexity of interests in the ancient community.

With respect to religion, the Athenians were peculiarly situated. They
had for the most part outgrown the primitive terrorism of fetishistic
belief. Save in cases of public distress, as in the mutilation of the
Hermai, or in the refusal of Nikias to retreat from Syracuse because of
an eclipse of the moon, they were no longer, like savages, afraid of the
dark. Their keen aesthetic sense had prevailed to turn the horrors of
a primeval nature-worship into beauties. Their springs and groves were
peopled by their fancy with naiads and dryads, not with trolls and
grotesque goblins. Their feelings toward the unseen powers at work
about them were in the main pleasant; as witness the little story about
Pheidippides meeting the god Pan as he was making with hot haste toward
Sparta to announce the arrival of the Persians. Now, while this original
source of mental discomfort, which afflicts the uncivilized man, had
ceased materially to affect the Athenians, they on the other hand
lived at a time when the vague sense of sin and self-reproof which was
characteristic of the early ages of Christianity, had not yet invaded
society. The vast complication of life brought about by the extension of
the Roman Empire led to a great development of human sympathies,
unknown in earlier times, and called forth unquiet yearnings, desire for
amelioration, a sense of short-coming, and a morbid self-consciousness.
It is accordingly under Roman sway that we first come across characters
approximating to the modern type, like Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and
Marcus Aurelius. It is then that we find the idea of social progress
first clearly expressed, that we discover some glimmerings of a
conscious philanthropy, and that we detect the earliest symptoms of that
unhealthy tendency to subordinate too entirely the physical to the moral
life, which reached its culmination in the Middle Ages. In the palmy
days of the Athenians it was different. When we hint that they were not
consciously philanthropists, we do not mean that they were not humane;
when we accredit them with no idea of progress, we do not forget how
much they did to render both the idea and the reality possible; when we
say that they had not a distressing sense of spiritual unworthiness, we
do not mean that they had no conscience. We mean that their moral and
religious life sat easily on them, like their own graceful drapery,--did
not gall and worry them, like the hair-cloth garment of the monk. They
were free from that dark conception of a devil which lent terror to
life in the Middle Ages; and the morbid self-consciousness which led
mediaeval women to immure themselves in convents would have been to an
Athenian quite inexplicable. They had, in short, an open and childlike
conception of religion; and, as such, it was a sunny conception. Any one
who will take the trouble to compare an idyl of Theokritos with a modern
pastoral, or the poem of Kleanthes with a modern hymn, or the Aphrodite
of Melos with a modern Madonna, will realize most effectually what I
mean.

And, finally, the religion of the Athenians was in the main symbolized
in a fluctuating mythology, and had never been hardened into dogmas. The
Athenian was subject to no priest, nor was he obliged to pin his faith
to any formulated creed. His hospitable polytheism left little room
for theological persecution, and none for any heresy short of virtual
atheism. The feverish doubts which rack the modern mind left him
undisturbed. Though he might sink to any depth of scepticism in
philosophy, yet the eternal welfare of his soul was not supposed to hang
upon the issue of his doubts. Accordingly Athenian society was not
only characterized in the main by freedom of opinion, in spite of the
exceptional cases of Anaxagoras and Sokrates; but there was also none of
that Gothic gloom with which the deep-seated Christian sense of infinite
responsibility for opinion has saddened modern religious life.

In these reflections I have wandered a little way from my principal
theme, in order more fully to show why the old Greek life impresses us
as so cheerful. Returning now to the keynote with which we started,
let us state succinctly the net result of what has been said about the
Athenians. As a people we have seen that they enjoyed an unparalleled
amount of leisure, living through life with but little turmoil and
clatter. Their life was more spontaneous and unrestrained, less
rigorously marked out by uncontrollable circumstances, than the life
of moderns. They did not run so much in grooves. And along with this
we have seen reason to believe that they were the most profoundly
cultivated of all peoples; that a larger proportion of men lived
complete, well-rounded, harmonious lives in ancient Athens than in
any other known community. Keen, nimble-minded, and self-possessed;
audacious speculators, but temperate and averse to extravagance;
emotionally healthy, and endowed with an unequalled sense of beauty and
propriety; how admirable and wonderful they seem when looked at across
the gulf of ages intervening,--and what a priceless possession to
humanity, of what noble augury for the distant future, is the fact that
such a society has once existed!

The lesson to be drawn from the study of this antique life will impress
itself more deeply upon us after we have briefly contemplated the
striking contrast to it which is afforded by the phase of civilization
amid which we live to-day. Ever since Greek civilization was merged
in Roman imperialism, there has been a slowly growing tendency toward
complexity of social life,--toward the widening of sympathies, the
multiplying of interests, the increase of the number of things to
be done. Through the later Middle Ages, after Roman civilization had
absorbed and disciplined the incoming barbarism which had threatened to
destroy it, there was a steadily increasing complication of society, a
multiplication of the wants of life, and a consequent enhancement of the
difficulty of self-maintenance. The ultimate causes of this phenomenon
lie so far beneath the surface that they could be satisfactorily
discussed only in a technical essay on the evolution of society. It will
be enough for us here to observe that the great geographical discoveries
of the sixteenth century and the somewhat later achievements of physical
science have, during the past two hundred years, aided powerfully
in determining the entrance of the Western world upon an industrial
epoch,--an epoch which has for its final object the complete subjection
of the powers of nature to purposes of individual comfort and happiness.
We have now to trace some of the effects of this lately-begun industrial
development upon social life and individual culture. And as we studied
the leisureliness of antiquity where its effects were most conspicuous,
in the city of Athens, we shall now do well to study the opposite
characteristics of modern society where they are most conspicuously
exemplified, in our own country. The attributes of American life which
it will be necessary to signalize will be seen to be only the attributes
of modern life in their most exaggerated phase.

To begin with, in studying the United States, we are no longer dealing
with a single city, or with small groups of cities. The city as a
political unit, in the antique sense, has never existed among us, and
indeed can hardly be said now to exist anywhere. The modern city is
hardly more than a great emporium of trade, or a place where large
numbers of people find it convenient to live huddled together; not a
sacred fatherland to which its inhabitants owe their highest allegiance,
and by the requirements of which their political activity is limited.
What strikes us here is that our modern life is diffused or spread out,
not concentrated like the ancient civic life. If the Athenian had been
the member of an integral community, comprising all peninsular Greece
and the mainland of Asia Minor, he could not have taken life so easily
as he did.

Now our country is not only a very large one, but compared to its vast
territorial extent it contains a very small population. If we go on
increasing at the present rate, so that a century hence we number four
or five hundred millions, our country will be hardly more crowded than
China is to-day. Or if our whole population were now to be brought east
of Niagara Falls, and confined on the south by the Potomac, we should
still have as much elbow-room as they have in France. Political
economists can show the effects of this high ratio of land to
inhabitants, in increasing wages, raising the interest of money, and
stimulating production. We are thus living amid circumstances which
are goading the industrial activity characteristic of the last two
centuries, and notably of the English race, into an almost feverish
energy. The vast extent of our unwrought territory is constantly
draining fresh life from our older districts, to aid in the
establishment of new frontier communities of a somewhat lower or less
highly organized type. And these younger communities, daily springing
up, are constantly striving to take on the higher structure,--to
become as highly civilized and to enjoy as many of the prerogatives of
civilization as the rest. All this calls forth an enormous quantity
of activity, and causes American life to assume the aspect of a
life-and-death struggle for mastery over the material forces of that
part of the earth's surface upon which it thrives.

It is thus that we are traversing what may properly be called the
BARBAROUS epoch of our history,--the epoch at which the predominant
intellectual activity is employed in achievements which are mainly of a
material character. Military barbarism, or the inability of communities
to live together without frequent warfare, has been nearly outgrown
by the whole Western world. Private wars, long since made everywhere
illegal, have nearly ceased; and public wars, once continual, have
become infrequent. But industrial barbarism, by which I mean the
inability of a community to direct a portion of its time to purposes of
spiritual life, after providing for its physical maintenance,--this
kind of barbarism the modern world has by no means outgrown. To-day, the
great work of life is to live; while the amount of labour consumed
in living has throughout the present century been rapidly increasing.
Nearly the whole of this American community toils from youth to old
age in merely procuring the means for satisfying the transient wants of
life. Our time and energies, our spirit and buoyancy, are quite used up
in what is called "getting on."

Another point of difference between the structure of American and of
Athenian society must not be left out of the account. The time has gone
by in which the energies of a hundred thousand men and women could be
employed in ministering to the individual perfection of twenty-five
thousand. Slavery, in the antique sense,--an absolute command of brain
as well as of muscle, a slave-system of skilled labour,--we have never
had. In our day it is for each man to earn his own bread; so that the
struggle for existence has become universal. The work of one class does
not furnish leisure for another class. The exceptional circumstances
which freed the Athenian from industrial barbarism, and enabled him to
become the great teacher and model of culture for the human race, have
disappeared forever.

Then the general standard of comfortable living, as already hinted, has
been greatly raised, and is still rising. What would have satisfied the
ancient would seem to us like penury. We have a domestic life of which
the Greek knew nothing. We live during a large part of the year in the
house. Our social life goes on under the roof. Our houses are not mere
places for eating and sleeping, like the houses of the ancients. It
therefore costs us a large amount of toil to get what is called shelter
for our heads. The sum which a young married man, in "good society,"
has to pay for his house and the furniture contained in it, would have
enabled an Athenian to live in princely leisure from youth to old age.
The sum which he has to pay out each year, to meet the complicated
expense of living in such a house, would have more than sufficed to
bring up an Athenian family. If worthy Strepsiades could have got an
Asmodean glimpse of Fifth Avenue, or even of some unpretending street in
Cambridge, he might have gone back to his aristocratic wife a sadder but
a more contented man.

Wealth--or at least what would until lately have been called wealth--has
become essential to comfort; while the opportunities for acquiring
it have in recent times been immensely multiplied. To get money is,
therefore, the chief end of life in our time and country. "Success
in life" has become synonymous with "becoming wealthy." A man who is
successful in what he undertakes is a man who makes his employment
pay him in money. Our normal type of character is that of the shrewd,
circumspect business man; as in the Middle Ages it was that of the hardy
warrior. And as in those days when fighting was a constant necessity,
and when the only honourable way for a gentleman of high rank to
make money was by freebooting, fighting came to be regarded as an end
desirable in itself; so in these days the mere effort to accumulate has
become a source of enjoyment rather than a means to it. The same truth
is to be witnessed in aberrant types of character. The infatuated
speculator and the close-fisted millionaire are our substitutes for the
mediaeval berserkir,--the man who loved the pell-mell of a contest so
well that he would make war on his neighbour, just to keep his hand in.
In like manner, while such crimes as murder and violent robbery have
diminished in frequency during the past century, on the other hand such
crimes as embezzlement, gambling in stocks, adulteration of goods, and
using of false weights and measures, have probably increased. If Dick
Turpin were now to be brought back to life, he would find the New York
Custom-House a more congenial and profitable working-place than the
king's highway.

The result of this universal quest for money is that we are always in a
hurry. Our lives pass by in a whirl. It is all labour and no fruition.
We work till we are weary; we carry our work home with us; it haunts our
evenings, and disturbs our sleep as well as our digestion. Our minds are
so burdened with it that our conversation, when serious, can dwell upon
little else. If we step into a railway-car, or the smoking-room of
a hotel, or any other place where a dozen or two of men are gathered
together, we shall hear them talking of stocks, of investments, of
commercial paper, as if there were really nothing in this universe worth
thinking of, save only the interchange of dollars and commodities. So
constant and unremitted is our forced application, that our minds are
dwarfed for everything except the prosecution of the one universal
pursuit.

Are we now prepared for the completing of the contrast? Must we say
that, as Athens was the most leisurely and the United States is the
most hurried community known in history, so the Americans are, as a
consequence of their hurry, lacking in thoroughness of culture? Or,
since it is difficult to bring our modern culture directly into contrast
with that of an ancient community, let me state the case after a
different but equivalent fashion. Since the United States present
only an exaggerated type of the modern industrial community, since the
turmoil of incessant money-getting, which affects all modern communities
in large measure, affects us most seriously of all, shall it be
said that we are, on the whole, less highly cultivated than our
contemporaries in Western Europe? To a certain extent we must confess
that this is the case. In the higher culture--in the culture of the
whole man, according to the antique idea--we are undoubtedly behind all
other nations with which it would be fair to compare ourselves. It
will not do to decide a question like this merely by counting literary
celebrities, although even thus we should by no means get a verdict in
our favour. Since the beginning of this century, England has produced
as many great writers and thinkers as France or Germany; yet the general
status of culture in England is said--perhaps with truth--to be lower
than it is in these countries. It is said that the average Englishman is
less ready than the average German or Frenchman to sympathize with ideas
which have no obvious market-value. Yet in England there is an amount of
high culture among those not professionally scholars, which it would
be vain to seek among ourselves. The purposes of my argument, however,
require that the comparison should be made between our own country and
Western Europe in general. Compare, then, our best magazines--not solely
with regard to their intrinsic excellence, but also with regard to the
way in which they are sustained--with the Revue des Deux Mondes or the
Journal des Debats. Or compare our leading politicians with men like
Gladstone, Disraeli, or Sir G. C. Lewis; or even with such men as
Brougham or Thiers. Or compare the slovenly style of our newspaper
articles, I will not say with the exquisite prose of the lamented
Prevost-Paradol, but with the ordinary prose of the French or English
newspaper. But a far better illustration--for it goes down to the root
of things--is suggested by the recent work of Matthew Arnold on the
schools of the continent of Europe. The country of our time where
the general culture is unquestionably the highest is Prussia. Now, in
Prussia, they are able to have a Minister of Education, who is a member
of the Cabinet. They are sure that this minister will not appoint or
remove even an assistant professor for political reasons. Only once,
as Arnold tells us, has such a thing been done; and then public opinion
expressed itself in such an emphatic tone of disapproval that the
displaced teacher was instantly appointed to another position. Nothing
of this sort, says Arnold, could have occurred in England; but still
less could it occur in America. Had we such an educational system,
there would presently be an "Education Ring" to control it. Nor can this
difference be ascribed to the less eager political activity of Germany.
The Prussian state of things would have been possible in ancient Athens,
where political life was as absorbing and nearly as turbulent as in the
United States. The difference is due to our lack of faith in culture, a
lack of faith in that of which we have not had adequate experience.

We lack culture because we live in a hurry, and because our attention is
given up to pursuits which call into activity and develop but one side
of us. On the one hand contemplate Sokrates quietly entertaining a crowd
in the Athenian market-place, and on the other hand consider Broadway
with its eternal clatter, and its throngs of hurrying people elbowing
and treading on each other's heels, and you will get a lively notion of
the difference between the extreme phases of ancient and modern life. By
the time we have thus rushed through our day, we have no strength left
to devote to things spiritual. To-day finds us no nearer fruition than
yesterday. And if perhaps the time at last arrives when fruition is
practicable, our minds have run so long in the ruts that they cannot be
twisted out.

As it is impossible for any person living in a given state of society
to keep himself exempt from its influences, detrimental as well as
beneficial, we find that even those who strive to make a literary
occupation subservient to purposes of culture are not, save in rare
cases, spared by the general turmoil. Those who have at once the
ability, the taste, and the wealth needful for training themselves to
the accomplishment of some many-sided and permanent work are of course
very few. Nor have our universities yet provided themselves with the
means for securing to literary talent the leisure which is essential
to complete mental development, or to a high order of productiveness.
Although in most industrial enterprises we know how to work together so
successfully, in literature we have as yet no co-operation. We have not
only no Paris, but we have not even a Tubingen, a Leipsic, or a Jena, or
anything corresponding to the fellowships in the English universities.
Our literary workers have no choice but to fall into the ranks, and
make merchandise of their half-formed ideas. They must work without
co-operation, they must write in a hurry, and they must write for those
who have no leisure for aught but hasty and superficial reading.

Bursting boilers and custom-house frauds may have at first sight nothing
to do with each other or with my subject. It is indisputable, however,
that the horrible massacres perpetrated every few weeks or mouths by our
common carriers, and the disgraceful peculation in which we allow
our public servants to indulge with hardly ever an effective word of
protest, are alike to be ascribed to the same causes which interfere
with our higher culture. It is by no means a mere accidental coincidence
that for every dollar stolen by government officials in Prussia, at
least fifty or a hundred are stolen in the United States. This does not
show that the Germans are our superiors in average honesty, but it
shows that they are our superiors in thoroughness. It is with them an
imperative demand that any official whatever shall be qualified for his
post; a principle of public economy which in our country is not simply
ignored in practice, but often openly laughed at. But in a country where
high intelligence and thorough training are imperatively demanded, it
follows of necessity that these qualifications must insure for their
possessors a permanent career in which the temptations to malfeasance or
dishonesty are reduced to the minimum. On the other hand, in a country
where intelligence and training have no surety that they are to
carry the day against stupidity and inefficiency, the incentives to
dishonourable conduct are overpowering. The result in our own political
life is that the best men are driven in disgust from politics, and thus
one of the noblest fields for the culture of the whole man is given
over to be worked by swindlers and charlatans. To an Athenian such a
severance of the highest culture from political life would have been
utterly inconceivable. Obviously the deepest explanation of all this
lies in our lack of belief in the necessity for high and thorough
training. We do not value culture enough to keep it in our employ or to
pay it for its services; and what is this short-sighted negligence but
the outcome of the universal shiftlessness begotten of the habit of
doing everything in a hurry? On every hand we may see the fruits of
this shiftlessness, from buildings that tumble in, switches that are
misplaced, furnaces that are ill-protected, fire-brigades that are
without discipline, up to unauthorized meddlings with the currency, and
revenue laws which defeat their own purpose.

I said above that the attributes of American life which we should find
it necessary for our purpose to signalize are simply the attributes
of modern life in their most exaggerated phase. Is there not a certain
sense in which all modern handiwork is hastily and imperfectly done?
To begin with common household arts, does not every one know that old
things are more durable than new things? Our grandfathers wore better
shoes than we wear, because there was leisure enough to cure the leather
properly. In old times a chair was made of seasoned wood, and its joints
carefully fitted; its maker had leisure to see that it was well put
together. Now a thousand are turned off at once by machinery, out of
green wood, and, with their backs glued on, are hurried off to their
evil fate,--destined to drop in pieces if they happen to stand near the
fireplace, and liable to collapse under the weight of a heavy man.
Some of us still preserve, as heirlooms, old tables and bedsteads of
Cromwellian times: in the twenty-first century what will have become of
our machine-made bedsteads and tables?

Perhaps it may seem odd to talk about tanning and joinery in connection
with culture, but indeed there is a subtle bond of union holding
together all these things. Any phase of life can be understood only by
associating with it some different phase. Sokrates himself has taught us
how the homely things illustrate the grand things. If we turn to the art
of musical composition and inquire into some of the differences between
our recent music and that of Handel's time, we shall alight upon the
very criticism which Mr. Mill somewhere makes in comparing ancient with
modern literature: the substance has improved, but the form has in
some respects deteriorated. The modern music expresses the results of a
richer and more varied emotional experience, and in wealth of harmonic
resources, to say nothing of increased skill in orchestration, it is
notably superior to the old music. Along with this advance, however,
there is a perceptible falling off in symmetry and completeness of
design, and in what I would call spontaneousness of composition. I
believe that this is because modern composers, as a rule, do not drudge
patiently enough upon counterpoint. They do not get that absolute
mastery over technical difficulties of figuration which was the great
secret of the incredible facility and spontaneity of composition
displayed by Handel and Bach. Among recent musicians Mendelssohn is the
most thoroughly disciplined in the elements of counterpoint; and it is
this perfect mastery of the technique of his art which has enabled him
to outrank Schubert and Schumann, neither of whom would one venture to
pronounce inferior to him in native wealth of musical ideas. May we
not partly attribute to rudimentary deficiency in counterpoint the
irregularity of structure which so often disfigures the works of the
great Wagner and the lesser Liszt, and which the more ardent admirers of
these composers are inclined to regard as a symptom of progress?

I am told that a similar illustration might be drawn from the modern
history of painting; that, however noble the conceptions of the great
painters of the present century, there are none who have gained such a
complete mastery over the technicalities of drawing and the handling of
the brush as was required in the times of Raphael, Titian, and Rubens.
But on this point I can only speak from hearsay, and am quite willing
to end here my series of illustrations, fearing that I may already
have been wrongly set down as a lavulator temporis acti. Not the idle
praising of times gone by, but the getting a lesson from them which may
be of use to us, has been my object. And I believe enough has been said
to show that the great complexity of modern life, with its multiplicity
of demands upon our energy, has got us into a state of chronic hurry,
the results of which are everywhere to be seen in the shape of less
thorough workmanship and less rounded culture.

For one moment let me stop to note a further source of the relative
imperfection of modern culture, which is best illustrated in the case of
literature. I allude to the immense, unorganized mass of literature in
all departments, representing the accumulated acquisitions of past ages,
which must form the basis of our own achievement, but with which our
present methods of education seem inadequate to deal properly. Speaking
roughly, modern literature may be said to be getting into the state
which Roman jurisprudence was in before it was reformed by Justinian.
Philosophic criticism has not yet reached the point at which it may
serve as a natural codifier. We must read laboriously and expend a
disproportionate amount of time and pains in winnowing the chaff from
the wheat. This tends to make us "digs" or literary drudges; but I
doubt if the "dig" is a thoroughly developed man. Goethe, with all his
boundless knowledge, his universal curiosity, and his admirable capacity
for work, was not a "dig." But this matter can only be hinted at: it is
too large to be well discussed at the fag end of an essay while other
points are pressing for consideration.

A state of chronic hurry not only directly hinders the performance of
thorough work, but it has an indirect tendency to blunt the enjoyment of
life. Let us consider for a moment one of the psychological consequences
entailed by the strain of a too complex and rapid activity. Every one
must have observed that in going off for a vacation of two or three
weeks, or in getting freed in any way from the ruts of every-day life,
time slackens its gait somewhat, and the events which occur are apt
a few years later to cover a disproportionately large area in our
recollections. This is because the human organism is a natural timepiece
in which the ticks are conscious sensations. The greater the number of
sensations which occupy the foreground of consciousness during the day,
the longer the day seems in the retrospect. But the various groups of
sensations which accompany our daily work tend to become automatic from
continual repetition, and to sink into the background of consciousness;
and in a very complex and busied life the number of sensations or states
of consciousness which can struggle up to the front and get attended to,
is comparatively small It is thus that the days seem so short when we
are busy about every-day matters, and that they get blurred together,
and as it were individually annihilated in recollection. When we travel,
a comparatively large number of fresh sensations occupy attention, there
is a maximum of consciousness, and a distinct image is left to loom up
in memory. For the same reason the weeks and years are much longer to
the child than to the grown man. The life is simpler and less hurried,
so that there is time to attend to a great many sensations. Now this
fact lies at the bottom of that keen enjoyment of existence which is the
prerogative of childhood and early youth. The day is not rushed through
by the automatic discharge of certain psychical functions, but each
sensation stays long enough to make itself recognized. Now when once we
understand the psychology of this matter, it becomes evident that the
same contrast that holds between the child and the man must hold also
between the ancient and the modern. The number of elements entering into
ancient life were so few relatively, that there must have been far
more than there is now of that intense realization of life which we can
observe in children and remember of our own childhood. Space permitting,
it would be easy to show from Greek literature how intense was this
realization of life. But my point will already have been sufficiently
apprehended. Already we cannot fail to see how difficult it is to get
more than a minimum of conscious fruition out of a too complex and rapid
activity.

One other point is worth noticing before we close. How is this turmoil
of modern existence impressing itself upon the physical constitutions
of modern men and women? When an individual man engages in furious
productive activity, his friends warn him that he will break down. Does
the collective man of our time need some such friendly warning? Let
us first get a hint from what foreigners think of us ultra-modernized
Americans. Wandering journalists, of an ethnological turn of mind,
who visit these shores, profess to be struck with the slenderness,
the apparent lack of toughness, the dyspeptic look, of the American
physique. And from such observations it has been seriously argued that
the stalwart English race is suffering inevitable degeneracy in this
foreign climate. I have even seen it doubted whether a race of men can
ever become thoroughly naturalized in a locality to which it is not
indigenous. To such vagaries it is a sufficient answer that the English
are no more indigenous to England than to America. They are indigenous
to Central Asia, and as they have survived the first transplantation,
they may be safely counted on to survive the second. A more careful
survey will teach us that the slow alteration of physique which is
going on in this country is only an exaggeration of that which modern
civilization is tending to bring about everywhere. It is caused by the
premature and excessive strain upon the mental powers requisite to meet
the emergencies of our complex life. The progress of events has thrown
the work of sustaining life so largely upon the brain that we are
beginning to sacrifice the physical to the intellectual. We are growing
spirituelle in appearance at the expense of robustness. Compare any
typical Greek face, with its firm muscles, its symmetry of feature, and
its serenity of expression, to a typical modern portrait, with its more
delicate contour, its exaggerated forehead, its thoughtful, perhaps
jaded look. Or consider in what respects the grand faces of the
Plantagenet monarchs differ from the refined countenances of the leading
English statesmen of to-day. Or again, consider the familiar pictures of
the Oxford and Harvard crews which rowed a race on the Thames in 1869,
and observe how much less youthful are the faces of the Americans. By
contrast they almost look careworn. The summing up of countless such
facts is that modern civilization is making us nervous. Our most
formidable diseases are of nervous origin. We seem to have got rid of
the mediaeval plague and many of its typhoid congeners; but instead
we have an increased amount of insanity, methomania, consumption,
dyspepsia, and paralysis. In this fact it is plainly written that we are
suffering physically from the over-work and over-excitement entailed by
excessive hurry.

In view of these various but nearly related points of difference between
ancient and modern life as studied in their extreme manifestations, it
cannot be denied that while we have gained much, we have also lost a
good deal that is valuable, in our progress. We cannot but suspect that
we are not in all points more highly favoured than the ancients. And it
becomes probable that Athens, at all events, which I have chosen as my
example, may have exhibited an adumbration of a state of things which,
for the world at large, is still in the future,--still to be remotely
hoped for. The rich complexity of modern social achievement is attained
at the cost of individual many-sidedness. As Tennyson puts it, "The
individual withers and the world is more and more." Yet the individual
does not exist for the sake of society, as the positivists would have us
believe, but society exists for the sake of the individual. And the test
of complete social life is the opportunity which it affords for complete
individual life. Tried by this test, our contemporary civilization
will appear seriously defective,--excellent only as a preparation for
something better.

This is the true light in which to regard it. This incessant turmoil,
this rage for accumulation of wealth, this crowding, jostling, and
trampling upon one another, cannot be regarded as permanent, or
as anything more than the accompaniment of a transitional stage of
civilization. There must be a limit to the extent to which the standard
of comfortable living can be raised. The industrial organization of
society, which is now but beginning, must culminate in a state of things
in which the means of expense will exceed the demand for expense, in
which the human race will have some surplus capital. The incessant
manual labour which the ancients relegated to slaves will in course
of time be more and more largely performed by inanimate machinery.
Unskilled labour will for the most part disappear. Skilled labour will
consist in the guiding of implements contrived with versatile cunning
for the relief of human nerve and muscle. Ultimately there will be
no unsettled land to fill, no frontier life, no savage races to be
assimilated or extirpated, no extensive migration. Thus life will again
become comparatively stationary. The chances for making great fortunes
quickly will be diminished, while the facilities for acquiring a
competence by steady labour will be increased. When every one is able
to reach the normal standard of comfortable living, we must suppose
that the exaggerated appetite for wealth and display will gradually
disappear. We shall be more easily satisfied, and thus enjoy more
leisure. It may be that there will ultimately exist, over the civilized
world, conditions as favourable to the complete fruition of life as
those which formerly existed within the narrow circuit of Attika;
save that the part once played by enslaved human brain and muscle will
finally be played by the enslaved forces of insentient nature. Society
will at last bear the test of providing for the complete development of
its individual members.

So, at least, we may hope; such is the probability which the progress of
events, when carefully questioned, sketches out for us. "Need we fear,"
asks Mr. Greg, "that the world would stagnate under such a change?
Need we guard ourselves against the misconstruction of being held to
recommend a life of complacent and inglorious inaction? We think not. We
would only substitute a nobler for a meaner strife,--a rational for an
excessive toil,--an enjoyment that springs from serenity, for one that
springs from excitement only..... To each time its own preacher, to each
excess its own counteraction. In an age of dissipation, languor, and
stagnation, we should join with Mr. Carlyle in preaching the 'Evangel
of Work,' and say with him, 'Blessed is the man who has found his
work,--let him ask no other blessedness.' In an age of strenuous,
frenzied,.... and often utterly irrational and objectless exertion,
we join Mr. Mill in preaching the milder and more needed 'Evangel of
Leisure.'"

Bearing all these things in mind, we may understand the remark of
the supremely cultivated Goethe, when asked who were his masters: Die
Griechen, die Griechen, und immer die Griechen. We may appreciate the
significance of Mr. Mill's argument in favour of the study of antiquity,
that it preserves the tradition of an era of individual completeness.
There is a disposition growing among us to remodel our methods of
education in conformity with the temporary requirements of the age
in which we live. In this endeavour there is much that is wise and
practical; but in so far as it tends to the neglect of antiquity, I
cannot think it well-timed. Our education should not only enhance the
value of what we possess; is should also supply the consciousness of
what we lack. And while, for generations to come, we pass toilfully
through an era of exorbitant industrialism, some fragment of our time
will not be misspent in keeping alive the tradition of a state of things
which was once briefly enjoyed by a little community, but which, in the
distant future, will, as it is hoped, become the permanent possession of
all mankind.

January, 1873.





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