XTbe ©pen Court

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

Dcvotet) to tbe Science ot IRelioion, tbe IReKoton ot Science, ant) tbe
Extension ot tbe IReliaious parliament 1It)ea

Founded by Edward C. Hegeler

VOL. XXXIV (No. 3) MARCH, 1920 NO. 766

CONTENTS:

PAOI

Frontispiece. St. Catharine. Martin Schongauer.

The Puzzle. Fletcher Harper Swift 129

Nietzsche^ France, and England. Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche 147

The Mystery of Evil. (Concluded.) Paul R. Heyl 155

The Antinomy of Freedom and Necessity, and the Problem of Moral Respond

sibility. H. M. Gordin 170

"Joseph of Arimathcea." Wm. Weber 184

5"^ Catharine, Virgin and Martyr. K. M. Langford 187

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VOL. XXXIV (No. 3) MARCH, 1920 NO. 766

Copyright by The Open Court Publishing Company, 1920.

THE PUZZLE.

BY FLETCHER HARPER SWIFT.

IT was spring — it was dawn in the wilderness of the world. The
whole forest thrilled with a happy sweet unrest. Bird song and
voice of brook blended with the anthem of the trees. From the
Mountains of Dawn encircling the wilderness to the dew-mantled
Plain of the Multitude in its midst, beauty and gladness reigned.
Up from brown paths, in violet dells, on gray deserts, hundreds of
gentle flower folk clad in a thousand hues were bursting joyously
into the festive day.

Nowhere did the flowers blossom so sweetly and the brook sing
so merrily as beside the Cottage of Childhood which lay in the
wilderness not far from the edge of the plain. Roses covered its
walls and wove a trembling lattice across the closed shutters. A
bird of golden plumage flew from a white birch by the brook,
hovered a moment in front of the window like a ripple of sunshine,
and poured forth a melody as pure and golden as the dawn. The
roses trembled, the shutters opened, and Youth looked on the world.

It was his world, his alone. The morning sun shone for him ;
the brook laughed and shouted for him ; the trees whispered mystic
philosophies for him. Mountain, plain, and wilderness hushed them-
selves a moment as they beheld him, and then broke forth into a
tumult of joyous song. Never before had such a face gazed on
them. All the hopes, the aspirations, the ideals of the race burned
in those eyes. Strength, faith, confidence, and gladness flowed from
that countenance whose radiance illumined and transfigured all it
touched.

Youth leaned out from the vine-clad casement and gazed and
listened and dreamed. A countless throng was moving across the
Plain of the Multitude. Some proceeded slowly and thoughtfully;
others rushed along with compressed lips and white faces. Some

130 THE OPEN COURT.

sang, some wept. The longer he looked the more Youth yearned
to mingle with the throng, to learn with them the joys of the dazzling
plain, and the secrets of the dark wilderness. He had no ties, no
obligations to hold him, and a voice he could not silence urged him
to hasten forth.

He turned from the window. As he did so his eyes encountered
the treasures of childhood scattered about the room. An irresistible
desire to play with them once more seized him. He closed the
shutters, but the vision of the multitude rose like a mist between
him and his toys, and the voice commanded him to go. With a
sigh he gathered his playthings in his arms and carried them to the
old chest under the window. He bade his treasures one by one
goodbye, laid them away, locked the chest, threw himself upon it
and burst into tears. The bird of golden plumage flew from the
white birch by the brook, flashed by the window like a shaft of sun-
shine, and flew away over the plain singing!

Youth arose from the chest and watched the bird till it dis-
appeared, then tying a few belongings into a bundle, slung it over
his shoulder, stepped forth from the cottage and hastened toward
the plain. Alas, how different it appeared now than when viewed
from the cottage! Then hidden beneath the dews of morning, it
had seemed a veritable cloth of gold. Now the golden mist had
lifted, the gleaming mantle was gone, and a plain stretched out on
every hand, limitless, rock-strewn, desolate. Far away in the red
sun rose the chimneys of the City of Toil, belching forth fumes
and inky smoke. Youth longed to flee the plain and its motley
throng and hasten back whence he had come, but the voice told him
he never could return to the low white cottage, told him he had
crossed its threshold for the first and last time. As he continued
his way many in the hurrying throng paused to gaze at him. Some
looked at him with envy, some with gladness, some with fear. Some
spoke to him with kindness, others with condescension, some with
suspicion, many with scorn. Youth turned inquiringly to an aged
cripple beside whom he was walking: "Who are those who regard
me so hostilely?'"

"The slaves of toil."

"Why do they cast upon me such looks of hatred and fear?"

"They fear your strength ! They fear you come to take their
work from them."

"And who are they who smile at me?"

"Those who have crossed yonder bridge over the Gulf of Want.
They dwell in the Courts of Ease and wander where they will."

THE PUZZLE. 131

"Then I, too, will cross the bridge," cried Youth hastening for-
ward.

As he neared the bridge he halted in surprise. The land beyond
was as lovely as a king's garden. Broad paths bordered with
flowers wound in and out under arching trees. Nightingales sang
in the thickets and fountains played in basins of marble. How
different from the dreary Plain of the Multitude! Many people
were leaving the plain and hurrying toward the bridge. Full of
confidence Youth hastened to the entrance of the bridge. Suddenly
there arose before him three grim wolflike creatures barring his
path and demanding a fabulous toll. Amazed and terrified. Youth
fled to a heap of stones, whence he could view the bridge and its
guardians. He was scarcely seated when a carriage bearing an
aged man and his son approached the bridge and halted at its en-
trance. A servant in costly livery tossed three gleaming coins to
the grim gatekeepers. Each seized a coin and vanished. The gates
of the bridge opened and the carriage rolled across. Throughout
the day many similar scenes were enacted. Whoever came with
rich tribute passed unquestioned, but whoever came empty-handed
was driven away. Some who could not pay slew themselves in the
shadow of the bridge. Many went away reluctantly, heaping threats
and curses upon the guardians of the bridge, upon all who crossed
and even upon life itself.

Weary, hungry, and sick at heart Youth faced the oncoming
night. Whither should he go? How procure food and .shelter?
His eyes fell upon his bundle, his sole possession. The treasures
of childhood must be sold. He named them over one by one, de-
bating which he should sacrifice first, grieving to part with any, but
at the same time thinking with happy anticipation of the repast and
rest they would bring.

At last he untied the bundle: a cry burst from his lips. Of the
treasures of childhood he had placed in it not one was to be found.
In their place appeared a curious collection of small, strange, worth-
less-looking objects of indescribable form and material, and a myste-
rious circle within which they evidently belonged. Youth gazed in
silence at the curious objects before him. After a time he began
placing them upon the circle, trying to fit them into one another as
he had often done with the parts of his jig-saw puzzles to which they
began to bear a striking resemblance. The circle was small but the
pieces were many and the task slow. As Youth moved the parts
about within the circle many still remained mysterious inexplicable
forms, others one by one seemed to take on a strange, symbolic

132 THE OPEN COURT.

semblance of people he had known, or experiences through which
he had passed ; the white cottage, his two little comrades Play and
Tears, the golden bird, the Plain of the Multitude, the three grim
toll-takers — all were represented. Many pieces bore names he had
learned in the Cottage of Childhood and were so easy to place that
he smiled as he fitted them into one another : Religion and Goodness,
Education and Morality, Industry and Wealth, Sloth and Poverty.

"What an easy puzzle," exclaimed Youth, "I shall soon have it
solved."

But ere long he began encountering difficulties, pieces with
names which he had never heard, pieces without names, pieces which
fitted into every other piece within the circle, but which as soon as
placed seemed to throw the entire puzzle into helpless confusion.
Despite these difficulties Youth fancied more than once that he had
solved the puzzle, only to find a moment later that he had failed
utterly. Hour after hour went by. The sun sank, but not until
the moon covered the circle with a white light did Youth realize
how long he had worked in vain. Vexed at his own inability, and
disgusted with the Puzzle, he buried it under the heap of stones and
gave himself up to sleep.

He was awakened at the first streak of day by the three guard-
ians of the bridge who bent over him, demanding tribute.

"Who are you?" asked Youth, "and what right have you to
demand tribute?"

"We are the Three Necessities, masters of all creatures, sole
guardians of the bridge that stretches from the Plain of the Multi-
tude to the Courts of Ease. Every living creature pays us tribute.
Kings and nations bow before us. From this hour until the hour of
thy death we will pursue thee. Every day must thou meet our ex-
actions if thou wilt live. Back to the Desert of Toil. Rest not till
thou findest work, or ere many nights. ..."

"Ere many nights, I will pour rain and cold upon thee, and drain
thee of health and strength," whispered Shelterlessness.

"Ere many nights, I will shoot thee through with arrows of pain,
and let loose a wolf upon thy vitals," hissed Hunger.

"Ere many nights, I will tear thy raiment from thy back and
drive thee naked into the wilderness to herd with beasts," shrieked
Nakedness.

Youth sprang from the ground. Back to the Plain of the Multi-
tude ! There only, in the City of Toil could he hope to find work and
earn the toll demanded by the three Necessities. Yesterday he had
looked with indifference upon the great chimneys belching forth

THE PUZZLE. 133

smoke. He had been amazed at the glances of hostility of the slaves
of toil. He was beginning to nnderstand now. Those unfriendly
faces had been hardened and brutalized by a fear they could never
escape, the fear of being unable to meet the exactions of the Neces-
sities. What wonder that they looked with suspicion upon one who
might deprive them of their work.

It was still early morning when Youth entered the city and
began his quest for work. Hour after hour he went from office to
office and from shop to shop. Wherever he went he was confronted
with the same question, "What canst thou do?" to which he was
forced to give always the same answer: "I am willing to do any-
thing." This reply satisfied no one. Youth listened to one refusal
after another with increasing despair. Why had he not been taught
something really useful during those years at school, something he
could dispose of in the great mart of efficiency and skill ! Late in
the afternoon from the top of a tall tower he looked out over the
city. The sun was setting. The clang of bells and scream of
whistles announced the close of the day's work. Youth saw doors
of factories swing open and beheld the workers pour forth into the
streets. At the base of the tower an old man was crouching, his
hand extended for alms. A great fear came over Youth ! What
if when he grew old, he too must crouch and beg ! What should he
do to-morrow ! Already he could feel the wolf gnawing at his vitals,
and his face blanched at the thought of another day.

Once more he opened his bundle to see if he had not overlooked
something in his excited search, something he could offer for a
night's lodging and a crust of bread. Tears of dismay filled his
eyes. There was nothing, absolutely nothing in the bundle save
the Puzzle. Youth looked at it in astonishment, terror and wonder
mingling. What was this mysterious Puzzle? Why could he not
get rid of it? Had he not buried it under the heap of stones by the
bridge? How had it returned? Were there not more pieces, and
was not the circle larger than the first time he beheld it ? He began
to feel himself under its spell, to feel that although he was utterly
unable to solve it, he would never be able to cease trying. He spread
the Puzzle on the tower wall and set to work. At times he fancied
he had solved it, only to find a moment later that he had left out
certain parts. Nevertheless, he struggled on though growing ever
more weary and heartsick. At length he exclaimed, "Cursed Puzzle,
you were in sooth a fine exchange for the joys of childhood ! Unless
I can find some one to whom I can sell you, naught remains for me
but the desert, the night, and the wolf."

134 THE OPEN COURT.

Emboldened by the fear of three hideous faces which seemed
to follow him everywhere, Youth descended into the city streets.
But it was in vain that he attempted to dispose of his Puzzle.
Nearly all he accosted hurried away. Some glanced at it, but with
indifference. The few who made any reply to his importunities,
said it was an old, old Puzzle, and that no one cared to consider it.

"What shall I do, where shall I go?" cried Youth.

"Into the desert, to herd with Want and Despair," whispered
a voice.

"Alas, merciless toll-men, ye have drained me of strength and
hope, must I now sink to the last estate?" moaned Youth sinking to
the pavement.

"Hast thou asked assistance at the House of Plenty?"

Youth looked up. The aged beggar he had seen asking alms
was bending over him.

"Come," said the beggar assisting Youth to arise. "I will lead
thee to the gates, there thou canst seek the master of the house."

Guided by his aged companion, Youth was soon face to face
with the master: "Buy your Puzzle? Let me see it," said the old
man smiling kindly at Youth.

He glanced at it and quickly covered it. "Lest my son see it,"
he explained. "Never let him see it, never let him know. He would
find little pleasure in the Courts of Ease if he once became interested
in this Puzzle. Promise to keep it from him, never to speak of it
in his presence. If you wish work I will provide it. You shall be
my gatekeeper."

Thus it was that Youth became keeper of the Gates at the
House of Plenty in the City of Toil which lay on the Plain of the
Multitude.

II.

Youth found his new employment interesting. There was
scarcely a moment in the day when some one was not seeking to
enter the gates ; relatives, friends, merchants, scientists, artists, beg-
gars, thieves. Youth quickly learned to distinguish the members
of each class and how to treat them. He was, therefore, successful
in his task. He was also happy, for he no longer feared the three
Necessities. Often at twilight Youth climbed to his lodging over
the gate and looked down upon the City of Toil, wondering, ponder-
ing. Many a passer-by stopped to gaze at him. Surely nothing in
that grim city compared in beauty and loveliness to Youth dreaming
within the Gates of Ease.

THE PUZZLE.

135

One evening as he sat thus pondering, he beheld a countless
horde of beggars coming toward the gates, all he had ever driven
away and many besides. They stretched toward him a thousand
emaciated hands crying: "Feed us, feed us! Every day your master
has set before him more than he can eat. Never in our lives have
we eaten until satisfied. Your master grumbles if the beef is salt,
and flies into a passion if the wine is new. Crusts moistened with
tears are our meat, and wine is as strange to us as kindness."

"Who are you?" demanded Youth.

"The poor of the world."

"Whence do you come?"

"From England. France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Persia.
China. Spain, from every land !"

"How many of you are there?"

"Hundreds of millions."

"My master could not feed such a throng."

"Are we too many? Can no one feed us? Must it ever be
our portion to hunger, to weep, to see our children famish, and our
parents die of want? Then why were we born? Why must we live?"

They moved away into the depths of night, still repeating their
questions of despair. Youth watched them with sickening heart. He
was still gazing after them when suddenly he became aware of
some one standing beside him. Turning, he beheld an old man of
appearance so revolting that Youth shrank from the outstretched
palm.

"Who are you?" asked Youth.

"Poverty."

"What do you wish?"

Poverty made no reply but held out a circular box which Youth
felt unable to refuse. The pauper vanished. Youth opened the
box. It was the Puzzle. Long after he believed himself rid of it
forever, it had again been forced back upon him. He sighed as
he observed that just as it had seemed larger and more difficult
the second time, so now it looked larger, more difficult and more
hopeless than ever before.

He placed the Puzzle on the window ledge. "When will you
cease growing?" he asked, beginning to feel as if the Puzzle were
a living thing. "Why do you come to me? I can never solve you."

He left the window and seated himself on the floor in front
of the hearth. Forthwith on the floor between him and the hearth
appeared the Puzzle, challenging him to the task he had sought to
escape. Youth drew it toward him reluctantly but soon was once

136 THE OPEN COURT.

more attempting to solve it. Of all the troublesome pieces Poverty
was the worst to-night. It slid from one part of the circle to
another. It crowded out Industry, Education, and Morality, which
heretofore had been so easy to place. More than once he tossed
aside one or another perplexing piece. But fling them where he would,
sooner or later they appeared within the circle silently demanding
a place. It was long past midnight when Youth, vexed beyond
endurance, gathered the Puzzle together, hurled it into the fire,
crying, "There is too much to do in this world to waste time on a
puzzle no one can solve."

It was not difficult for Youth to carry out his resolve to waste
no more time on the Puzzle. In fact, it was easier in the House of
Plenty to forget the Puzzle than to find time to think about it.
Every day was crowded with duties and pleasures ; moreover, all
within the house desired his companionship so constantly that had
he had no duties at all, each day would have been entirely filled.

Of all his friends none was so dear to Youth as his master's
only son Fides. Often he left the gates to the care of an under-
servant to roam with Fides through the Gardens of Ease. Fides
was never so happy as when with Youth, and was ever summoning
him to join him in his pastimes. One day, however, when in
obedience to such a summons Youth knocked at his young master's
door, he received no answer. He knocked again. Again no an-
swer. He threw the door open and entered. Fides lay on the floor
as if asleep.

"Fides, Fides, why do you not answer me? Awake ! The world
was never more beautiful : sky, wood, and river call."

Fides remained silent and motionless. Impatient and impetuos
Youth seized his hand but fell back with a cry. The hand was cold
and limp. The sound of Youth's weeping brought the servants, who
bore Fides to a couch and hastened to summon his father. The
master entered followed by friends and servants, and staggered to
the couch. Unable to endure the sight. Youth stole from the room
to his seat within the gates, where he threw himself on his face and
wept till he fell asleep. It was the hour before dawn when he
awoke. A figure he had never seen was standing outside the gates.
From time to time the appearance of the figure changed as different
wayfarers accosted it. One moment it assumed the likeness of a
beautiful woman with arms outstretched ; the next that of a skeleton
with grinning skull, a sickle in one hand and a bell in the other.

"Who art thou?" asked a wan mother carrying in her arms a
suffering child.

THE PUZZLE. . 137

"Death."

"Where dost thou dwell?"

"In the silent isle, surrounded by gentle cypresses, where pain,
poverty, and separation never come," answered the figure becoming
very beautiful.

"Take me and my child to your abode."

"Not thee, only thy child."

"No, no!" cried the mother, but it was too late; already the
skeleton arms held the child. The mother sank upon her knees
moaning. "Thou canst, thou wilt give me back my child."

Death made no reply, but pointed toward the city. Youth
looked and beheld a great procession moving slowly through the
streets. A specter bearing a scythe was the leader. Behind him
followed a never-ending train of torch-bearers, bands of music,
biers, pall-bearers, and mourners. On the first bier lay Fides, on the
next the child Death had seized. Farther on appeared a magnificent
pall, beneath it a king ; farther on still a form mighty even in death,
a worker. Still they came, men, women, and children of every age,
rank, and condition, prostrate on the chariots of death. The longer
Youth looked the more perplexed he became. It seemed to him
as if the strongest, the best loved, the most needed of every land
were being borne away forever, leaving behind the weak, the use-
less, the unloved. Hour after hour, as silent and motionless as one
of the statues by the gate, he watched the grim procession. Con-
templating the world's grief, he seemed to have turned to stone.
At last the terrible vision was swallowed up in darkness of night,
and Youth awoke from its spell to find himself alone with the
Puzzle and Death.

"Thou must solve it," whispered Death.

"I cannot," answered Youth in a voice so like Death's own that
its accents appalled him.

Forthwith through the mist over the city, as if in answer to
a summons, called an enticing voice, "If thou canst not solve it,
forget it."

Youth turned from Death. The mist lifted and the vision of
the city burst upon him. Never before had it seemed beautiful,
inviting, but to-night lights blazed everywhere, and music floated on
the wind.

"Is that the city I have viewed so often with pity and scorn?"
asked Youth.

"Yes," answered the voice, "it is the City of Toil, but to-night
is held the fete of Passion and Forgetfulness."

138 THE OPEN COURT.

"Can I forget the Puzzle there?"
' "Thou canst forget everything."

Without further questioning, without once looking back, Youth
fled the Puzzle and the vision of Death and hastened into the city.
Gay throngs were wandering through the streets. The air was filled
with laughter and merry song. Presently Youth joined himself to a
company with whom he proceeded to the entrance of a great hall. He
was about to enter when a vision rose before him : the little white cot-
tage he had left so long ago seemed to stand between him and the flar-
ing portal. A child with tears in his eyes looked out from the vine-clad
casement, and the golden bird lay dead. While Youth hesitated,
alluring voices called to him and Passion and Forgetfulness issued
from the hall, threw their arms around him, took his hands in theirs
and led him in.

"Who are you, beautiful ones, and why are you masked?" asked
Youth.

"I am thine unknown self," whispered Passion.

"1 am thy soul's last remedy," whispered Forgetfulness.

"Let me see your faces," cried Youth.

"Behold mine!" said Forgetfulness.

"Beautiful!" cried Youth attempting to embrace her.

"Not yet," cried Forgetfulness, "thou must embrace my sister
first."

Youth turned to Passion, "Pray, lift thy mask."

"I cannot till thou hast embraced me."

"Nay, first grant me one glimpse of thy lovely countenance."

"Embrace me," urged Passion, seizing his hands and drawing
him toward her. "Embrace me and I will reveal to thee the mys-
teries of the ancients, the mysteries of thine own nature. Embrace
me and I will show thee the paths of life and joy."

"Thou fillest me with a strength I have never known," cried
Youth. "Thou has charged me with life. I will lift thy mask!"

. "Thou canst not, not though thou hadst the strength of Hercules
and Atlas. None save yonder three can, but ask them not."

"Who are they?"

"Dost thou not know them?"

"One I know, one is Death."

"He is my master."

"Who are the other two?"

"Disease and Heredity, my children."

"They are all three hideous."

"Yes, to unaccustomed eyes, but abide with me and thou wilt

THE PUZZLE. 139

soon learn to view them with as much indifference as thou viewest
Poverty from the Gates of Plenty."

"I fear them not. Thou hast made me a man. Bid them lift
thy mask."

Passion signaled. Straightway, Death, Heredity, and Disease
came forward and lifted her mask. A cry of horror broke from
the lips of Youth. Was that flayed countenance the face he had all
but caressed! Filled with terror and revulsion he fled toward the
door.

"Thou wilt come again," cried Passion, springing after him.

"Thou wilt need me and return," called Forgetfulness.

"Remember me, I am thine unknown self," pleaded Passion.

Youth hurried into the street, heedless whither he went. Lone-
liness and Despair stalked beside him, urging him back to the
specter of his avowed unknown self which followed close be-
hind. Voices he had never heard called to him ; doors he had never
seen opened before him. He dared not pause, he dared not enter,
for in every voice and in every form he recognized that self which
he was seeking to flee.

III.

After hours of fruitless wandering Youth found himself before
the entrance of a great edifice. Through the gleaming windows he
beheld men working at desks and tables.

"What temple is this?" he asked of the keeper of the gate.

"The Temple of Learning," replied the gatekeeper.

"Who are those working at this late hour?"

"The Priests of Learning, the Puzzle-Workers ; by night they
work at the puzzles and by day they teach others to solve them."

"Will they teach me how to solve my puzzle?"

"Surely," answered the keeper of the gate, "and they will pro-
vide thee with means to satisfy the three Necessities."

"They know the three Necessities?"

"They know all things, the three Necessities, Poverty, Heredity,
the Self, Disease, and Death. These are the puzzles they profess.
Enter and thou shalt become a novice in their Temple, a disciple in
the Circle of Puzzle-Workers."

Youth followed the keeper of the gate into the temple where
he was provided with refreshment and lodging.

Not until the next morning did he begin to appreciate how
beautiful were his surroundings. A hundred marble temples greeted
his eyes, beyond them verdant fields through which a stream of

140 THE OPEN COURT.

deepest azure wound. A chime of bells awoke him from his reverie
and reminded him that his purpose here was not to dream but to
sit at the feet of the Puzzle- Workers. Ere long he joined himself
to a throng of novices streaming into one of the temples, in which
sat renowned priests of learning.

Thus Youth began anew his ardent quest. Amid these beautiful
surroundings he continued year after year listening to discourses in
the various temples, ever seeking, ever hoping to learn the solution
of the Puzzle, but each year he realized more fully that the Priests
of Learning were not endeavoring to solve the Puzzle. Each one
of them with whom he talked frankly confessed that he was con-
cerned with only one part or segment of it. Moreover, it gradually
dawned on Youth that they did not know the real solution even to
the fragmentary puzzles they professed. They loved large words
and opinions of men long dead. When they discussed the most vital
things they talked so long of what had once been that little time
was left to discuss what now was. Some of their disciples went to
sleep while listening, some played at games, others read papers or
books. Those who wished to become Priests of Learning themselves
learned the discourses by heart, fancying that in so doing they were
accumulating puzzles and solutions enough to last them for the re.st
of their lives. But though the Priests of Learning proved to have no
solution, and though Youth despised some of them for their bigotry
and conceit, yet some of them delighted him by their brilliant dis-
courses, others by their personal charm, some by their sympathy.
Many of them he loved, perhaps because they were the only men
whom he had ever found seriously devoting themselves to the Puzzle.
Be that as it may, at the completion of his novitiate Youth departed
from the Temple of Learning with regret and with a deep love for
its altars, its groves, and its priests.

Upon leaving the Temple of Learning, Youth resolved to visit
the Temple of Religion, whose priests he had heard professed a
solution to. the Puzzle. He was welcomed by the Priests of Religion
even more joyously than he had been by the Priests of Learning.
They talked most eloquently about the Puzzle, and were confident
that they alone knew how to solve it. They examined Youth care-
fully as to his private life and motives. At length, satisfied with
respect to his purpose, ability, and preparation, they led him to the
High Priest in the inner temple.

The High Priest spread out the Puzzle and proceeded to cover
the larger portion of the circle with a black cloth.

"The key to the solution lies in this piece," he said, drawing

THE PUZZLE. 141

forth one marked "The Heart of Man." "As soon as this can be
rightly moulded and fixed all the other parts — Poverty, Injustice,
War, Crime, Selfishness and the rest — will arrange themselves."

Thereupon he began twisting, pinching, and crushing the piece
he had selected. "It may be necessary to break it," he said. At
last he appeared satisfied and laid the "Heart of Man" on the
visible segment of the circle. It did not remain in place, however,
until he had completely surrounded it by a number of sharp-toothed
pieces among which were Fear, Pain, and Punishment.

The High Priest turned to Youth for some expression of satis-
faction, but Youth was gazing at a number of pieces which the High
Priest had ignored. Injustice, Poverty, Crime, Selfishness, Igno-
rance, Heredity and many others were sliding across the circle, dri-
ving their points into the "Heart of Man," crowding it out of place
and changing it back to its previous distorted condition. Youth
waited in silence, expecting every moment that the Priest would
observe what was happening, and would remedy it. But the Priest
sat with a beatific smile upon his face, murmuring, "How marvel-
ous is the Puzzle ! How beautiful its solution !"

It pained Youth to dispel his dream, for he was a charming man,
and very gentle, but at last Youth could endure it no longer and
called the solver's attention to what was taking place. With an im-
patient gesture, the High Priest gathered together the troublesome
pieces and pushed them under the black cloth which at the outset he
had fastened over the greater part of the Puzzle. This done, he
relapsed into his former state of sweet content, his face wreathed in
the same beatific smile.

Youth now observed for the first time that the covered segment
of the circle was inscribed : "Segment of Mysteries, Life After
Death," and the smaller visible segment, "The Present Life."

Turning to the High Priest he remarked, "Your method of solv-
ing the Puzzle seems to be to thrust Poverty, Injustice and all the
other troublesome pieces into the 'Segment of Mysteries.' "

"Yes."

"But they are already appearing in 'The Present Life' as dis-
ordered as ever."

"That does not affect the solution. It is impossible to establish
order among them in 'The Present Life,' nor ought we to desire to
entirely get rid of them. It is they which keep in place the 'Heart of
Man.' I consign them to the Segment of Mysteries because they
belong to that part of the Puzzle which will be worked out in the
Life after Death."

142 THE OPEN COURT.

As Youth listened to this explanation he became convinced that
the High Priest had no solution satisfactory to him ; his was an after-
death solution. Such a specious promise of a solution in a future
life relieved the Slaves of Toil and the Princes of Ease alike of all
responsibility of solving the Puzzle in the present life. At first he
had believed that Religion was doing much toward effecting a solu-
tion, but now this faith was tottering. He even began to wonder
whether Religion was not directly responsible both for the general
belief that the Puzzle never could be solved in this life, and for the
universal practice of devising and accepting temporary expedients
instead of courageously demanding and working toward something
that promised a final solution.

Disappointed but not despairing, Youth departed from the
Temple of Religion and made his way to the Temple of Law. Over
the door in great letters of stone was carved the word "JUSTICE."
"Not in learning, not in religion, not in making over the heart of
man, but in justice lies the solution," quoth Youth as he entered.

Within the vestibule appeared a statue of Justice holding in one
hand a pair of golden balances and in the other a book of the law.
The champions of Justice, the law-makers, were at work when Youth
passed into the inner temple, eager to observe how laws were made
and how justice was projected into the actions and customs of men.
Youth had expected to find here the wisest of men devoting all of
their time and energies to problems of justice and law. Instead, he
found men grievously ignorant, men who had not the faintest con-
ception of justice, men who were unable to discuss any topic what-
ever without losing all self-control and substituting invidious per-
sonalities for arguments. Some of them walked in the outer cor-
ridors, others read or joked, some dozed, some slept, while their
sacred duties were turned over to hirelings. Youth looked in vain
for any sign of Justice. She had been driven into the outer courts
long ago. Ignorance, Prejudice, Favoritism, Indifference, and Greed,
their faces covered with masks bearing her likeness, occupied her
seats and her altars.

Puzzle in hand, Youth passed from one body of law-makers to
another. Though greatly disheartened, he was resolved not to leave
the Temple of Law without attempting to discover whether the solu-
tion of which he had heard so much was to be learned here. At
length he came upon a small group sitting somewhat apart whose
appearance and bearing inspired him with confidencfe and hope.

"Tell us what brings thee here and in what way we can serve
thee?" asked one who seemed to be the leader.

THE PUZZLE. 143

Thus encouraged, Youth spread out the Puzzle before them
saying: "Creators of Law and Guardians of Justice, if ye will only
reveal unto me how Justice may be put and kept in place, the other
parts will, I am confident, arrange themselves."

The law-makers showed a deep interest in the Puzzle. They
agreed with Youth that if Justice could be given its right place the
other pieces would arrange themselves. However, they made no
essay to place it, and when Youth besought them to undertake the
task, they replied: "We deal in laws, not justice here."

Youth left the Temple of Law and wandered forth into the
city.

"Not in the heart of man, not in religion, learning or law is
the solution to be found," he murmured. "Alas, if I could only
forget this Puzzle, but I never can!"

IV.

There had been a time, a brief period, when Youth had imagined
that he was the only one seriously interested in the Puzzle. But
that was long, long ago. Gradually he had come to realize that
every age and every race had been brought face to face with it and
had striven to solve it. The multitude had ceased long ago to believe
that it could be solved. Again and again had he heard from others
the exclamation he had uttered once himself : "There is too much to
do in this world to waste time on a puzzle no one can solve."

Youth stood alone on the Mountains of Dawn and looked out
over the Wilderness of the World. A great fear came over him —
What if the multitude were right, what if the Puzzle never could
be solved ! Once more he resolved to forget it, to lose it, to rid
himself of it forever. But his efiforts were in vain. Sometimes he
would awaken in the night to find it lying beside him. Sometimes
it would appear to him in the blaze of noon, sometimes in the soft
glow of sunset, most often when he was worn, lonely, and dis-
couraged. Often weary with unavailing efforts he would gaze far
across the Plain of the Multitude through the mists toward the little
white cottage he had left so long ago. It made Youth sad to behold
it, but it was a sadness not without hope. Sometimes after gazing thus
he would stretch himself in the shadow of a tree or rock and try to
fall asleep, hoping if only in dreams to pass within those white walls.
He longed to hear again the song of the golden bird and to see
golden visions.

One evening as he lay thus, looking across the plain toward the
Cottage of Childhood, he fell asleep and dreamed. Once more it

144 THE OPEN COURT.

was spring in the Wilderness of the World. Once more he leaned
out from the vine-clad casement and gazed out on the Plain of the
Multitude. Even while he looked he beheld the nations of the earth
assembling on the limitless plain. From the four quarters of the
earth they came and encamped in the center of the plain. In the
midst of the encampment appeared a vast table about which were
gathered representatives of every tribe and nation of the world,
each with a puzzle before him. A voice cried, "Let him who can
solve the Puzzle appear."

Forthwith a great number from every tribe and nation pre-
sented themselves. One after another tried and failed. Many of
them asserted and believed they had solved it, but all who looked with
clear unprejudiced eyes could see they had done nothing except
arrange the pieces according to some fantastic plan pleasing to their
own thoughts and fancies. No sooner had the last of these dreamers
or fanatics attempted and failed, than a great strife arose in the
encampment between the Slaves of Toil and the Princes of Ease.
Each side accused the other of preventing the solution. The Princes
of Ease aided by troops of hired soldiers drove the Slaves of Toil
from the plateau back to the City of Toil, where they remained
for many years. At the end of this time nothing was to be seen
in the City of Toil save machines. Even the Slaves of Toil had
become machines or parts of machines. Sometimes the machines
spoke, sometimes they wept, sometimes they cried to Youth to per-
form "the great miracle" and change them back into men.

But Youth was helpless ; . moreover, Labor itself had become
such a hideous thing that Youth's thought was to flee from it and
gain an abode within the luxurious Courts of Ease.

At last the Great Miracle came, not quickly but gradually. One
by one, the machines became transformed into men, women, and
children, beings of mien so terrible that Youth trembled and hid
his face.

"Behold, what creatures your machines have made us!" they
cried as they swept down upon the Courts of Ease pillaging, plun-
dering, devastating.

A great darkness fell upon the earth while the machine-men
ruled and terrorized every land. At last there came a voice through
the darkness: "Let Mother Earth appear."

Straightway from behind the Mountains of Dawn came a beau-
tiful woman with an infant at her breast and carrying a basket filled
with flowers, fruits, and grains.

THE PUZZLE. 145

"Mother Earth," asked the voice, "hast thou not enough for
all thy children?"

"More than enough," answered Mother Earth. "In every part
of my dominion I have priceless ores and minerals that have never
been mined, forests and quarries that have never been entered, vast
fields given over to the pleasures of the Princes of Ease, that cry
for sowing and harvest."

"How long then must the millions of the earth toil and yet
want ?"

"As long as my treasures are usurped by the few and kept from
the many."

"Canst thou then solve the Puzzle?"

"No, but I can direct the solution. Let every man join his
Puzzle with that of his tribe or nation."

Many refused to do this.

"Then we must wait," said Mother Earth sadly, and they waited
many years. At the end of this time all who refused to obey the
command of Mother Earth had perished.

"Let the Five Continents and the Isles of the Sea assemble to
the solution of the Puzzle," cried IMother Earth.

The Five Continents and the Isles of the Sea gathered on the
Plateau with their puzzles before them.

"Harken now. Continents and Isles of the Sea." cried Mother
Earth. "Your puzzles are one puzzle and the solution is one solu-
tion. The solution of one is possible only through the solution of
all. As long as Indifference forms a part of one. Greed will form
a part of all. As long as Greed continues in one, Oppression,
Injustice, Hatred, Ignorance, Poverty, and Crime will continue in
all. As long as Ignorance, Injustice, and Hatred appear in one,
War and Want will appear in all. Not till ye see your puzzles as
one puzzle, and not till ye unite to solve it as one will it begin to
be solved."

Mother Earth ceased. The Five Continents and the Isles of
the Sea seemed to be holding a council. Then they began joining
their Puzzles, now exchanging pieces, now pausing to consult. In
twenty years the Puzzle was nearly solved, and at the end of thirty
years, it was completely solved. Youth looked in vain for Greed,
Injustice, War, Intemperance, Ignorance, Poverty, Crime and all
the other pieces which had made the solution impossible. They had
vanished, and in their places were Justice, Brotherhood, Cooperation,
Generosity, Nobility, Plenty, Happiness, and Peace.

Mother Earth rejoiced at the sight of the Puzzle solved, and

146 THE OPEN COURT,

the Five Continents and the Isles of the Sea sang for joy. Youth
awoke from his dream, filled with joy and hope, only to find himself
once more gazing upon the dark Plain of the Multitude. But even
as he gazed a voice that resounded around the earth called from the
Mountains of Dawn : "Despair not, O Youth, the Puzzle shall be
solved ! And in that day there shall be one government upon the
earth and one people ; and there shall be one aim, manhood ; and
there shall be no more poverty, no more injustice, no more war, no
more disease, no more fear, and even death shall be beautiful."

NIETZSCHE, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND.

BY ELIZABETH FOERSTER-NIETZSCHE.

Translated from the manuscript by Caroline V. Kerr. Cf. the article "A Visit
to Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche" in our last issue.

THE distinguished philologist Friedrich Ritschl once said to my
brother: "We German intellectuals have always had a genuine
fondness for France, but it is an unfortunate love and will ever
remain so. Do what we will, the French will never understand us,
nor reciprocate our feelings. Despite the infamous calumnies writ-
ten about us in France [Ritschl here referred to the press campaign
during the Franco-Prussian War] Germans of the intellectual class
will retain their affection for the French, even though the German
nation as a whole continues to regard France as its arch-enemy."

My brother was among these literary Francomaniacs who fell
under the spell of French belles-lettres and philosophical literature
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and he was so strongly
imbued with the French spirit that his own philosophical concepts,
according to Ritschl, were like "the writings of a French romancer."

One of my brother's fondest dreams was to make a long stay
in Paris with his friend Rohde, and there is a pleasant passage in
one of his letters referring to this plan. He writes, "I can picture
to myself a couple of philosophic flaneurs with serious eyes and
smiling lips, strolling through the boulevards and becoming well-
known figvires in the museums and libraries, in the Closerie des Lilas
and in the cool recesses of Notre Dame."

But nothing came of this plan, owing to the fact that Nietzsche
had barely finished his studies when he was called to the faculty of
the University of Basle (1869) and was still there when the war
came to destroy at one rude blow his French affinities.

My brother was a passionate patriot, and Richard Wagner was
wont to compare him to one of the famous Liitzow Brigade of 1813.

148 rilE OPEN COURT.

He was determined to join the ranks of the German army as a volun-
teer and to this end presented a request to the Swiss government.
But to preserve the nation's strict neutrality, the Swiss government
.resolved to grant leave of absence to the German professors in its
employ only on the condition that they would not enlist for active
service.

Greatly depressed because he was not allowed to join the active
ranks, Nietzsche went to Erlangen to take a course of training as a
field-nurse. While there he wrote to our mother, "Our national
civilization is at stake, and no sacrifice could be too great to defend
it. These accursed French tigers !...." And after learning what
actual warfare meant he wrote, "There is such a thing as bravery,
genuine German courage, which is an essentially different quality
from the clan of our pitiable neighbors." His feeling against France
was strengthened by cruel practices with which he became acquainted
in his work as a field-nurse. These experiences must have been of
a very painful character, as he always begged his friends not to
question him about them. But eventually he came to the conclusion
that an entire nation should not be held responsible for the deeds
of some cruel and inflamed individuals. Gradually his sympathies
swung back to his first love, France, the more as he began to view
with growing distrust the new Germany, and he often sighed for
the days when Germany was not yet politically united, and for her
former virtues.

In one of his letters of that time he writes, "The German is
wonderful as a soldier and greatly to be admired as a scholar and
scientist, but otherwise he is only moderately admirable."

About this time, a spirit of literary self-glorification, not at all
justified by actual conditions, began to make itself manifest in
Germany, and as Nietzsche understood by culture the unity of
artistic style in all manifestations of national life, he believed that
this could only be found in France, where tradition and national
spirit combined to produce such conditions.

I should not like to be misunderstood on this point ; it was not
the France of the nineteenth century that my brother prized, as he
always spoke with indignation of the "democratic clamor" of mod-
ern France. It was the France of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, her profoundly passionate genius, her refined literary in-
genuity, that commanded his admiration. He adored Montaigne,
of whom he once said, "That such a man has lived and written,
can only increase our desire to live and labor." If he regarded
Montaigne as, in a certain sense, the founder of French intellectual

NIETZSCHE, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND.

149

aristocracy, Pascal was to him the embodiment of the deep, pas-
sionate forces of his century. He often said that he loved Pascal
as he would a brother, and felt closely akin to him in spirit. Vol-
taire, whom he always called a" grand-seigneur oi intellect," he prized
as the last great dramatist. It was to Voltaire that the first edition
of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches was dedicated. It is necessary
to explain, however, that this dedication was occasioned by the
hundredth anniversary of Voltaire's death, and not by any great
affection my brother entertained for the philosopher. A letter writ-
ten in June, 1878, contains a passage which throws light upon the
deep and tragic meaning which Nietzsche attributed to this dedi-
cation :

"To me there has always been a terrifying symbol in the fate
of this man, about whom, even after a hundred years, it is impossible
to get an unbiased judgment; it is toward the emancipators of in-
tellect that the world is most implacable in its hatred and most indis-
criminating in its love."

Nietzsche always insisted that the "modern French idea" of the
eighteenth century was of English origin, and regarded it as a
complete perversion of French intellect and intuition. He always
was hostile to Rousseau, although in his youth he was a passionate
admirer of the picture of oppressed mankind as drawn by this
French writer. "In every socialistic upheaval, it is ever the man
Rousseau who is moving like the hidden forces imprisoned under
Mt. Etna. When oppressed and half crushed by the arrogant caste
spirit and merciless wealth of the world, when perverted by the
priesthood and humiliated by the ridiculous laws of conduct estab-
lished by convention — man turns to nature in his hour of need, and
is suddenly made to realize that she is as remote as was ever an
Epicurean god. It is because man, himself, has sunk so deep in the
chaos of an unnatural world that his prayers never reach nature's
sanctuary."

Later in his life my brother conceived a great antipathy to
Rousseau because, as he said, "Rousseau remained a plebeian and
raised the mobile vulgus to the dignity of the goddess of Justice,"
He also believed that it was Rousseau who sowed the seeds of the
French Revolution, thereby destroying the old aristocratic France.

Despite my brother's abhorrence of the great French Revolu-
tion, he entertained the greatest admiration for Napoleon, who, he
said, restored his faith in the tremendous power of the individual,
that is to say, in his own doctrine of the Herrenmoral. He always
emphasized the fact that Napoleon was not French but Corsican,

150 THE OPEN COURT.

and spoke of him as "the condottiere as a genius in the grand
style." Like Napoleon, Nietzsche had a strong aversion to Madame
de Stael, whom he pronounced "an unsexed woman, who had the
audacity to recommend the Germans to the sympathy of Europe as
gentle, good-hearted, weak-willed literary blockheads." Nietzsche
himself could be very severe in his criticisms of Germany and the
Germans, but he boiled with indignation when such criticism came
from a foreign source.

Irrespective of political transitions from republic to empire and
back again, the France of the nineteenth century was unsympathetic
to him, but he was broad-minded enough to admit that French in-
tellect deepened after tlic war of 1870-71. "France is still the seat
of intellectual culture and the great school of literary taste, but one
must know where to look for these qualities. Those who belong to
this France hold themselves aloof ; they are few in number, and
among them are persons who are unsteady on their legs — fatalists,
engloomed souls, diseased minds, fragile and over-sensitive spirits,
who feel the need of shunning the glaring light of the every-day
world. But one thing they all possess in common, and that is the
ability to close their ears to the insane stupidity and clamorous
gabble of the democratic bourgeoisie."

Only a very few of the Frenchmen then considered leaders of
thought excited Nietzsche's admiration : Renan he pronounced "a
sweetish bonbon" ; Sainte-Beuve was "a disappointed poet who
smacked of soul-snuffling, and would only too gladly have concealed
from the world the fact that he possessed neither stability of will
nor of philosophy — and was lacking in artihus et litteris, which is
not surprising in view of the shortcomings just mentioned" ; for
Victor Hugo he coined the phrase, "Pharus standing on the shore
of the ocean of nonsense" ; George Sand was lactea uhertas, the
milch cow with a beautiful soul ; les f reres de Goncourt were "the
two Ajaxes in battle with Homer, set to music by Offenbach" ; "the
joy in evil smells," was the aphorism he coined for Zola.

In his judgment of Flaubert and Baudelaire, Nietzsche was
more lenient. "Flaubert, owing to his strength of character, was
able to endure lack of success and loneliness (unusual qualities
among Frenchmen) and occupies a preeminent place in the field
of romantic esthetics and style." Of Baudelaire, the pessimist,
Nietzsche wrote, "He belongs to that almost incredible species of
literary amphibian, which is equally German and Parisian in spirit;
there is something in his poetry which in Germany is called 'senti-
ment' or 'infinite melody,' in less elegant phraseology, we sometimes

NIETZSCHE, FR.\NCE, AND ENGLAND.

151

call it the 'moral blues' [Katsenjainmer] ; for the rest, Baudelaire
has a very decided, if somewhat decadent taste, and with this he
tyrannizes over the irresolute souls of his time." Merimee was char-
acterized as a "genuine, if not a particularly rich nature, living in
spurious surroundings, but enough of an optimist to play his part in
the comedy without becoming nauseated."

My brother always entertained the greatest reverence for Taine,
whom he regarded as the foremost historian of Europe, a scholar
whose courage and will-power never succumbed to the fatalistic
pressure of learning.

With the exception of Brandes, Taine was the only European
scholar of note who wrote words of recognition and appreciation to
my brother ; I am always moved when I read the following passage
in my brother's note-book, which undoubtedly refers to Taine, al-
though his name is not mentioned : "There really exist in France, at
present an understanding and an appreciation of those rare and
rarely satisfied souls, w^iose outlook on life is too broad to admit of
any petty patriotism, but who understand how to love the south even
though they be from the north, or the north even though they be
from the south."

Toward other French historians my brother was more critical,
reproaching them with having elbowed their way into the souls of
men in whose class and company they did not belong. "For example,
what has such a perspiring plebeian as Michelet to do with Napoleon,
quite irrespective of the fact as to whether he hated him or loved
him ? The single fact that he shouts and rants is sufficient to bar him
from the company of a Napoleon." And then : "What had the
elegant, mediocre Thiers to do with this same Napoleon ? He creates
a laugh, this little man, when with the gesture of a wise judge, he
admires Napoleon and compares him to C?esar, Hannibal, and Fred-
erick the Great. . . .Personally, I rank an historian much higher who
has the courage to admit that certain ground is too sacred for his
feet."

It will be seen that my brother had a wide range of affinities for
modern French literature. Shortly before his last illness, he spoke to
me of French writers whom he particularly enjoyed. Among these
were Paul Bourget, Pierre Loti, Gyp, Meilhac, Anatole France, Jules
Lemaitre, and Guy de Maupassant, the latter "a pronounced Latin
who makes an especial appeal to me." Up to the time of his mental
paralysis, Nietzsche always turned to French books in his moments
of leisure, saying that he found solace in the deep sense of style
combined with the "grace of saneness" [Grasie der A^uchternheit].

152 THE OPEN COURT.

He could not find sufficient words to praise the psychology of the
French intellectuals, and he considered German psychologists not
measuring up to French standards. Half ironically he once said:
"Two centuries of psychological and artistic discipline, my gentle-
men of Germany. But you will never catch up with them!" Had
my brother lived to witness the development of German psycho-
logical work of the past twenty years, he would uncjuestionably have
revoked this statement.

After I had married and gone to live in Paraguay, he wrote
to me: "Now that you and Gersdorfif [one of his best friends] have
both run away and left me, I find my only i-ecreation in French
books. On the whole, I cling to my old friends which we once
enjoyed together; only a few new acquaintances have been added
to the list, among them Galiani and Taine, whom, however, you
will only appreciate after you have become a skeptical old woman."

French literary circles, on the other hand, had shown a marked
interest in Nietzsche, and by 1905, his complete works had appeared
in a French translation. However, it is very much to be deplored
that my brother's admirers in France did not bring any more search-
ing criticism to bear upon the French edition, as they would have
found that the translators had taken unpardonable liberties with the
spirit of the text, and had, consciously or unconsciously, created an
impression of unwarranted chauvinism on the part of my brother
when comparing France and Germany. But as the translators had
been awarded prizes by the French Academy, their work was nat-
urally not questioned.

My brother's antipathy to England and the English was as
marked as his predilection for the French, despite the fact that
Shakespeare and Lord Byron were the literary gods of his school
days and commanded his allegiance throughout life. The one Shake-
spearean character which he loved and admired above all others was
Julius Caesar, and only a few days before his mental paralysis he
wrote: 'T can find no higher formula for Shakespeare than that
he was able to conceive a man of the type of Caesar, to whose tragic
friendship with Brutus the dramatist's finest tragedy was dedicated.
.... Independence of soul is here emphasized ; if one loves freedom,
one must be able to sacrifice his dearest friend, even though this
friend be the most splendid specimen of manhood, an ornament to
society, and an unparalleled genius. No sacrifice can be deemed too
great if the freedom of a great soul is threatened by friendship.
Shakespeare must have felt this, as the manner in which he exalts

NIETZSCHE, FRi\NCE, AND ENGLAND.

153

Caesar forms the highest tribute he could have paid to Brutus. First
he raises the inner conflict in the soul of Brutus to a supreme
tragedy, and then portrays the tremendous soul-power by which he
was enabled to break the bonds which bound him to Csesar."

My brother always believed that in his Julius Cccsar the poet
had placed on record documentary evidence of some obscure ex-
perience or unknown adventure in his own life, and if I remember
rightly, it was just this tragedy that confirmed my brother in his
belief that the poet whom the world knows as Shakespeare was none
other than Lord Bacon.

Nietzsche often criticized the lack of moderation in Shakespeare,
on this point agreeing with Byron who once said, "I consider Shake-
speare the worst possible model of style, notwithstanding the fact
that he is a most extraordinary poet."

To my brother's mind, Byron only lacked thirty years of ex-
perience to have become the greatest of modern dramatists. Like
Goethe, he admired the boldness and grandeur of Byron's life and
works, finding in Manfred the nearest approach to his own philosophic
ideals. It was in his early Byronic rhapsodies that Nietzsche first
made use of the expression "Superman" (a term belonging to
Goethe by right of priority) which indicates the original significance
attached by Nietzsche to this much-interpreted word.

Another of his prime favorites was Sir Walter Scott, whom
he called the "English Homer," by reason of his spirited description
of England's past, and his tendency to glorify the valorous deeds
and heroic achievements of his countrymen. In the course of time
I read aloud to my brother sixteen of the Waverley Novels, besides
many works of Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot, but he was
never carried away by the pictures of English life as there por-
trayed. Nietzsche always felt the discordant note in the English
national character, and was unpleasantly affected by the intellectual
cumbrousness, the religious insincerity, and the lack of genuine
artistic perceptions. He often said that the English had no music
in their souls, and complained that "the most highly cultivated Eng-
lishman was totally lacking in rhythm, both in his soul-vibrations
and in his physical movements."

I don't remember ever hearing my brother agree with English
sentiment on any subject whatsoever; the only thing arousing his
admiration being the recognition English scholars accorded one
another even when of diametrically opposed opinion. This mani-
festation of good-will and broad-mindedness, he regarded as some-
thing quite unique and exemplary. If I should attempt to single

154 THE OPEN COURT.

out the one quality which repelled Nietzsche in the English character,
I should say it was cant, which he often said was the inborn vice
of the English. He found this spirit of cant even in the writings
of English philosophers, and despite his high opinion of such men
as Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer, he had but an
ill-concealed contempt for what he called their utilitarian spirit and
their utter lack of an ideal.

He did not regard the English as a race of philosophers, and
although he had words of genuine appreciation for Locke and
Hume, and in certain points admitted them to be in the right as
opposed to Kant, his estimate of English philosophy on the whole
might be summed up in what he once said of Carlyle : "What is
lacking and always has been lacking in England, was well known to
that half actor and rhetorician, the harebrained Carlyle, who by
means of passionate gestures and grimaces endeavored to conceal
from the world what he realized to be his own inherent lack, namely,
a genuine depth of intellectual insight— in other words, of philos-
ophy."

Nietzsche feared that the influence of English philosophy with
its plebeian tendencies and intellectual mediocrity — as he expressed
it: "the influence of England's small-mindedness [Kleingeisterei]" — ■
might some day prove a real danger to the whole of Europe. "One
should not lose sight of the fact," he wrote, "that England's utili-
tarian spirit has already depreciated European intellect, in fact,
reduced it to the lowest level."

THE MYSTERY OF EVIL.

BY PAUL R. HEYL.

XVII. ATHEISM AT ITS BEST.

"If in this life only/' says St. Paul, "we have hope in Christ
we are of all men most miserable."

There was once a man whose life ran counter to this text at
every point ; yet he certainly did not consider himself to be pitied,
and was of all men most cheerful. ' The lesson of his life is a lesson
of fidelity to one's convictions, the bitter along with the sweet ; it
is a lesson of unconquerable courage and good cheer.

William Kingdon Clifford was a graduate of Trinity College,
Cambridge, and was regarded as one of the most brilliant mathe-
maticians of his day. He died in 1879, at the age of thirty-four.
The last two or three years of his life were years of physical weak-
ness and a general collapse of his whole system. When a youth,
Clifford was an ardent High Churchman, but passed through his
season of doubt as so many of us do. Charles Kingsley, when a
young man, had the same experience, and came out of it more
orthodox than ever ; but alas ! for poor, affectionate Clifford ! He
emerged stripped of every vestige of his former faith. No God
to love and lean upon in time of trouble ; none but creatures of
clay to love him in return. A passage in one of his essays gives
us a glimpse of the utter melancholy into which he was for a time
thrown. Speaking of theistic faith, he says :

"We have parted from it since with such searching trouble as
only cradle-faiths can cause. We have seen the spring sun shine
out of an empty heaven to light up a soulless earth ; we have felt
with utter loneliness that the Great Companion is dead. Our chil-
dren, it may be hoped, will know that sorrow only by the reflex
light of a wondering compassion."^"

And then the courage and good cheer of the man reasserted
themselves. Listen to him again:

20 Clifford, "The Influence upon Morality of a Decline in Religious Be-
lief" : Lectures and EssaySj Vol. II, p. 247.

156 THE OPEN COURT.

"It is a very serious thing to consider that not only the earth
itself and all that beautiful face of nature we see, but also the living
things upon it. and all the consciousness of man, and the ideas
of society which have grown up upon its surface must come to an
end. We who hold that belief must just face the fact and make the
best of it ; and I think we are helped in this by the words of that
Tew philosopher, who was himself a worthy crown to the splendid
achievements of his race in the cause of progress during the Middle
Ages, Benedict Spinoza. He said: 'The free man thinks of nothing
so little as of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death
but of life.' Our interest lies with so much of the past as may serve
to guide our actions in the present, and to intensify our pious
allegiance to the fathers who have gone before us and the brethren
who are with us ; and our interest lies with so much of the future
as we may hope will be appreciably affected by our good actions now.
Beyond that, as it seems to me, we do not know, and we ought not
to care. Do I seem to say: 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
we die ?' Far from it ; on the contrary I say : 'Let us take hands
and help, for this day we are alive together.' "-^

Nor was this merely a ghastly attempt to smile. Those who
knew Clifford personally and are best qualified to speak tell us
differently. Says Sir Frederick Pollock :

"It was far from him to grudge to any man or woman the hope
or comfort that may be found in sincere expectation of a better life
to come. But let this be set down and remembered, plainly and
openly, for the instruction and rebuke of those who fancy that their
dogmas have a monopoly of happiness, and will not face the fact
that there are true men, aye, and women, to whom the dignity of
manhood and the fellowship of this life, undazzled by the magic of
any revelation, unholpen of any promise holding out aught as higher
or more enduring than the fruition of human love and the fulfilment
of human duties, are sufficient to bear the weight of both life and
death. Here was a man who utterly dismissed from his thought
as being unprofitable, or worse, all speculations on a future or un-
seen world ; a man to whom life was holy and precious, a thing not
to be despised, but used with joy fulness ; a soul full of life and light,
ever longing for activity, ever counting what was achieved as not
worthy to be reckoned in comparison with what was left to do.
And this is the witness of his ending, that as never man loved life
more, so never man feared death less. He fulfilled well and truly

-1 Clifford, "The First and Last Catastrophe" : Lectures and Essays, Vol,
I, p. 225.

THE MYSTERY OF EVIL. 157

that great saying of Spinoza, often in his mind and on his lips:
'A free man thinks of nothing so little as of death.' "-^

XVIII. BEYOND THE ATHEISTIC POSITION.

Voltaire spoke from a deep knowledge of the human heart
when he said that if there were no God it would be necessary to
invent one. It must be admitted that the road of the atheist is no
easy one to travel. Strong man that Clifford was, by his own con-
fession his loss of faith shook him to the foundation. G. J. Romanes
bears testimony to the same thing:

"When at times I think, as think at times I must, of the ap-
palling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which once
was mine and the lonely mystery of existence as I now find it, at
such times I shall feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of
which my nature is susceptible.""^

The difificulty is great, but greater for him who has once known
theistic faith than for him who has nothing to unlearn. Neverthe-
less, with or without this background there is something lacking
in the atheistic position, a certain absence of purpose in the Cosmos,
an utter irrationality of structure in which our rational instincts
feel strangely out of place. Hence the profound wisdom of Vol-
taire.

But what then? Are we to turn to the only other logical alter-
native? It is the face of a Gorgon; upon it no man may look and
preserve his soul alive ; while atheism, though it leads one by a hard
and lonely path indeed, has been followed with courage and good
cheer. And if we cannot do likewise, is it not a fair inference that
the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings?
Have not generations of heredity under an artificial stimulus had
their effect in rendering us incapable of coping with reality? Must
we not, as Clifford said, face the fact and make the best of it?

Or are we to abandon logic as a product of the hypertrophied
intellect, and seek refuge in sentiment, surrendering to imperious
human need? Many, \ery many do so, and are swept along by the
swelling, thrilling, lulling tide of religious emotion. But there are
those who cannot go this way. To them logic is duty and sentiment
pleasure. There is a picture which I have seen somewhere ; I think
it is called ''The Eve of St. Bartholomew." It represents a young
Catholic girl trying to fasten upon the breast of her Huguenot lover
a token which will preserve his life. He knows, as well as she, the

22 Introduction to Clifford's Lectures and Essays.

23 Physicus (G. J. Romanes), A Candid Examination of Theism^ p. 114.

158 THE OPEN COURT.

danger that threatens him, and the potency of the token to protect
him ; but his hand stays hers, and his eyes meet hers with a look that
says:

"I could not love thee, dear, so much.
Loved I not honor more."

It is to such unfortunates that I speak ; to those who know the ■
appeal of religious emotion, but feel it forever denied them; who
feel the incompleteness of atheism and the need of something more
than it can supply. What is there beyond the atheistic position?
Not of man's invention ; we are asking for bread, not a stone ; but
is there no indication in nature of that for which sentiment yearns?
If nature is soulless, if her wonderfully complex body has no spirit,
then at least may we not look forward to a time when this shall no
longer be?

XIX. THE BODY OF THE COSMOS.

Of what does this soulless body of nature consist? To the
superficial view, to the unaided eye, there is the earth with all the
varied flora and fauna that inhabit its surface. There are the moon
and the sun and the other planets of our system. There are, too,
the stars, suns in themselves, possibly with planetary families, and
(who knows?) perchance with sentient, rational beings inhabiting
certain favored ones among these satellites. Calling the telescope
to our aid, the macrocosm is revealed to us ; stars, nebulas, star
clusters, and again stars, nebulas and clusters, reaching to distances
so remote that mind falters in the conception ; separated, star from
star, by great gulfs of space, adequately measurable only in terms
of the years required for light to traverse them ; yet across these
stupendous distances the faint, persistent pull of gravitation is
doubtless felt and reciprocated.

The microscope reveals to us the microcosm in its upper stages.
Tiny living creatures of a single cell only ; smallest of all, so in-
timately bound up with man's welfare. And at the very verge of
the power of the microscope we begin to see the peculiar Brownian
movements of minute suspended particles in a liquid, movements
we know to be caused by the jostling and collision of the still smaller
and more rapidly moving molecules. And with the eye of reason
we have learned to see these molecules made up of atoms, and the
atoms of electrons, the latter arranged (most wonderful of all!)
after the manner of a planetary system; for from electron to star
the architecture of the Cosmos is after the same pattern.

Passing upward from the electron to the atom, the molecule,

THE MYSTERY OF EVIL. 159

the cell and living creatures of many cells, v^e progress by steps of
increasing complexity and specialization, until when we reach the
earth itself with its variegated surface, and the living creatures
that inhabit it, we have presented to our vision an organism which
by its relatively high development and complex structure may be
regarded as a temporary stopping-point ; for no sooner do we pass
to ultraterrestrial nature than we return at once to the simple
structure of the atom, on an immense scale, it is true, but simple
beyond all comparison with that which we have just left; and as
far as our vision can reach throughout the macrocosm the same
simplicity prevails. A faint tendency toward specialization may be
recognized in certain star groups, which form with their putative
satellites a common family ; but the telescope reveals to us in the
macrocosm nothing of a greater degree of complexity than the
analogue of a chemical molecule. If there be indeed a cosmical
analogue of the cell it so utterly transcends our outlook that it is
beyond profitable speculation.

I have said that the terrestrial organism may be regarded as
a temporary stopping-place. Its evolution is undoubtedly far from
finished. It is only within the "wonderful century" that it has
developed a nervous system, which of late years even shows signs of
eliminating its wire-nerves without hindrance to its function. Ig-
norance and superstition still coexist side by side with the greatest
enlightenment ; preventable disease still flourishes ; international law
is still in its incipience. But inchoate as it is, there is nothing within
our ken in all nature with which it may be compared.

Whither, then, should the lonely soul, in quest of a companion
soul in nature, direct its search? To those spiritually barren, if
physically grand and imposing regions of space where it will find
nothing nearer its own development than a cosmical molecule? As
well may it seek kinship and spiritual sympathy in the microcosm,
among those molecules and structural units of whose combinations
it is itself the climax. Rather, since the human soul itself is found
in its perfection only as the flower of the most complicated and
specialized organism, let it seek a kindred soul in nature where
nature exhibits its fullest and most intricate evolution. Here, if
anywhere, must it hope to find the object of its search.

XX. A WORD OF CAUTION.

A word of warning may not be out of place here. In its quest
for evidences of a soul in nature let not the human soul expect too
much. The soul of man is itself the product of ages of slow and

160 THE OPEN COURT.

painful progress, a progress sometimes halted and even turned
backward for centuries, and long was that earlier time that elapsed
before its bodily tenement was fit to receive it. Even to-day its
development is far from complete. And so, in examining the body
of nature in search of a soul, we must not look for more than its
bodily development will warrant.

In the first place, we notice that that portion of nature which
is organized and developed to the highest degree, as far as our
ability to observe goes, is of limited extent ; a thin veneer on the
surface of a large, soulless ball. Moreover, this layer is by no means
uniformly distributed. If we were to find, in examining a certain
living creature, that portions of its tissue were not reached by either
the circulatory or nervous system, we should not expect to find
much of interest in these parts. As a promising field for study we
should rather choose those parts which exhibit a higher grade of
development. And so we find it in the body of nature. The poet
may take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part
of the sea, but the philosopher will say that the poet finds there
only that which he took with him. The most highly developed por-
tion of nature's body is at present but a thin veneer applied here
and there in irregular patches on the surface of the earth. Its
activities may extend a mile or so below the surface and a few
miles above ; beyond these limits we pass abruptly to a region of
development incomparably simpler.

In the second place, this optimum region is comparatively new,
measured in cosmical units of time. History calls a thing old if it
dates back to a period five or six thousand years before our day;
geology counts years not in thousands but in millions ; and cosmol-
ogy goes still farther. The age of man on the earth has of late years
become ascertainable to a fair degree of approximation. There were
inhabitants in the Nile valley who were sufficiently developed to
understand the burning of brick and pottery at a time which may
be as much as 16,000 years ago.-* The splendid wall-paintings in
the caves of the Pyrenees are believed to be over 15,000 years old.-^
The complex civilization of Assyria, with its priests, bankers, and

2* Records of the height of the annual Nile flood are available as far back
as the XXVth Dynasty (700 B. C). From these it appears that the Nile has
been silting up its bed at the rate of 4^4 inches per century on an average.
Numerous borings to a depth of 60 feet in the alluvium of the Nile valley
have shown the presence of burnt brick and pottery down to the lowest levels.
The period of 16,000 years indicated by this is as likely to be longer as to be
shorter, on physical considerations. See Enc. Brit., 11th edition, Vol. XIX,
p. 696a; and Vol. II, p. 115b.

25 Osborn, Men of the Old Stone Age, pp. 18, 414f.

THE MYSTERY OF EVIL.

161

merchants, and other institutions famiUar to us, is now known to
reach back to a time at least 6000 years ago, and such degrees of
skill and social complexity were not reached in a day. The years
of homo sapiens are to be measured not by thousands but by tens
of thousands.

But such periods are as nothing in cosmology. Some half
century ago Lord Kelvin, on the basis of certain physical laws of
the conduction of heat, stated that the period of time that had
elapsed since the earth's crust had solidified was not more than
400 million years, and might be as short as twenty millions. The
biologists protested against being limited to what they deemed too
short a time for organic evolution, but Kelvin was inexorable.
Since the discovery of radio-active bodies certain of Kelvin's funda-
mental postulates have had to be seriously modified, and biologists
have, as far as this argument is concerned, been given practically
as much time as they desired. In comparison with such lengths of
time a few tens of thousands of years are inconsiderable. Any-
thing approachiwg a fit physical setting for a cosmical soul is of
extremely recent origin, and such a soul may therefore be expected
to be still primitive in its development.

In this region, limited in space, and of recent origin, we must
hope to find, if anywhere, evidence of a cosmic soul.

XXI. THE COSMIC SOUL.

In gathering, scrutinizing, and appraising the evidence in the
case it will be difficult for the human mind to act impartially. Not
that it is likely to claim too much credit ; the error is apt to be
the other way. Through modesty the human soul will rather dis-
claim credit which is properly due. And in the quest for traces of
a cosmic soul we cannot set aside the human soul. It is in itself
the flower of nature, the climax of evolution, the heir of all the
ages, and among the phenomena which it exhibits we are most
likely to find a hint of what we are seeking.

I have said advisedly, among the phenomena — for there is much
which the mind of man shares in common with the lower order of
creation, and much also of which man has reason to feel ashamed.
There is nothing characteristically human, for instance, about the
instinct of self-preservation, or the emotions of jealousy, fear or
anger. Even the higher quality of permanent attachment for a
spouse is found in the birds, and the beginnings of maternal affec-
tion are to be seen in the cow and other animals. But there is to
be found in man a group of mental characteristics which rather

162 THE OPEN COURT.

sharply divide themselves from the others, inasmuch as they oppose
rather than assist man in attaining harmony with his environment,
and have sufificient vitality to shape the environment to their stand-
ards.

Certain of these qualities we have already had occasion to dis-
cuss. We have seen how, in various ways, the ancient way of
nature grates upon the sensibilities of this new-comer, man ; how his
sense of pity interferes to prevent the weaker from being trampled
underfoot; how his sense of justice cries out at the sight of the suffer-
ing of the innocent ; how his sense of beauty and even decency is
ofifended by the loathsome parasites that infest creation ; how a sense
of shame, peculiar to him alone, loads upon him an extra burden in
the struggle for existence. In all these cases, the recognition by man
of the fact that these instincts or mental attitudes are at odds with
nature, instead of causing him to abandon or modify them only
causes him to grapple them to his soul with hoops of steel. There
is that in man which commands allegiance before natural law.
There is that within him which "cries to nature for bread and re-
ceives a stone. There is that within him which half recognizes,
half hesitates to believe its own superiority. And for all this he
is not without precedent.

The first manifestations of life on our earth, simple as they
may have been, were undoubtedly as great an innovation upon the
established order of nature, as much an exotic and transcendental
phenomenon, as completely at odds with the usual course of their
environment as is any modern soul wrung by the mystery of evil.
Feeble must have been life's first beginnings ; many incipient sparks
of life must have flickered fruitlessly out; but chance and a kindlier
environment preserved others, and the flame grew, slowly at first,
doubtless, but with ever-increasing rapidity, until it flowered in the
human soul. And here, among man's highest psychic phenomena,
he who hath eyes may see the beginning of a new thing, as wonderful
as the beginning of life itself, and destined doubtless to modify as
profoundly the environment into which it is injected.

How powerful, for instance, is the appeal to human idealism,
as illustrated in the founding and early growth of Christianity. I
speak as one who rejects utterly the miraculous in the Christian
legend, and speak to those who presumably do likewise. A cardinal
feature of early Christianity was its appeal to the idealistic as
opposed to the materialistic. "Go and sell all that thou hast, and
give to the poor, and come and follow me." "It is easier for a
camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to

THE MYSTERY OF EVIL.

163

enter the Kingdom of God." Jesus and his Httle company of dis-
ciples actually lived from day to day by the charity of the sym-
pathetic.-" Prudence, forethought, the economic virtues in general,
were actually frowned upon. "For after all these things do the
Gentiles seek." Here we have an appeal directly counter to material
self-interest ; but this is not all. The founder of Christianity even
went farther, and set himself in opposition to the physical instinct
of self-preservation. "But I say unto you that ye resist not evil."
What chance, judging from all analogy of the lower orders of nature,
would such a doctrine have of survival and self-perpetuation?-^

It is of no consequence to the present argument that during the
ages after the death of its founder the Christian Church did not
always despise force or riches in its efforts to extend itself. The
point is its ability to have made a start at all from this basis. There
were, of course, other factors operating, such as the constant pres-
entation of the doctrine of immortality ; and we must remember
that everything took place in a dense haze of superstition, similar
to those mists which overhang, and foster the teeming tropical vege-
tation. But by far the largest factor in the success of early Chris-
tianity was the idealism of its founder. No other appeal than the
idealistic can so inspire love, reverence, and devotion in the disciple,
or so nerve the martyr. "The things that are not seen are eternal."

In more modern times we have again seen the strength of the
appeal to idealism. The early years of the American Civil War,
marked as they were by Confederate successes, were trying times to
the Federal Government. There was a steadily increasing danger
that England's material needs and interests would lead her to take
the step of recognizing the Confederacy. With profound insight
Lincoln decided to appeal to the idealistic as against the materialistic,
and raised the issue of Emancipation. England, desperately as she
needed cotton, was proud of the fact that she had, years before,
been the second European power to abolish her slave trade.-^ She
could not resist the appeal, and the question of intervention on the
South's behalf was settled in the negative.

Our own people also felt the force of the appeal : "Choose you
this day whom ye will serve." Wavering hearts were encouraged.
The fortune of war began to turn. The year of the Emancipation

28 Matt. X. 9-11 ; John xii. 6.

27 Mather, "Parables from Paleontology," Atlantic Monthly, July, 1918,
especially Sect. 4, p. 39.

28 Denmark abolished her slave trade in 1802, and Great Britain in 1808.

164 THE OPEN COURT.

Proclamation saw the high tide of the Confederacy. The war had
become a crnsade.

"But what is this?" says the theist. 'In your search for what
you call a cosmic soul you have come upon God Himself. It was
the Divine element in Christianity that gave it its power over en-
trenched paganism ; it is from God that these ideals come, so oppo-
site to the natural mind ; it is by God's help that the righteous cause
triumphs."

Well and good, if you will have it so ; but remember that every
argument for God is subject to the red net io ad absitrdjim of the
Argument from Design. Admitted, if you please, that there is a
God; but what kind of a God? Taking the good and the evil to-
gether in nature, as we have seen, the only logical theistic position
is to recognize a God without benevolence.

The whole aspect of the case is changed if we do not postulate
a Divine origin for human idealism. Instead of regarding it as a
revelation of the Perfect to His own imperfect creatures, if we
consider it as marking a successful step in the struggle of the
imperfect toward higher things, the difficulty disappears. In no
measure is the soul of man responsible for the established order of
the universe. He may be benevolent, but he is not omnipotent.

In this new thing, manifesting itself in and through man,
slowly beginning to be, this transcendental exotic, this "hyper-
trophied intelligence," if you will, we may fairly recognize the
rudiment of a Cosmic Soul ; cosmic because its outlook and activity
are not limited to the immediate interests of the particular organ-
ism through which it makes its appearance, but are of a catholic
vision and sympathy commensurate to the Cosmos itself ; a soul,
because if anything ever deserved the appellation spiritual with all
that it connotes, surely this is worthy. It is not much ; I have shown
that we cannot as yet expect much. It by no means measures up to
the exacting standard which man requires of his God. It never
can be omnipotent, but it holds within it a splendid promise. And
the most exquisite thing in this connection is man's unconsciousness
of the part that is given him to play, like Moses of old, who wist
not that his face shone.

But there have been those who have realized this. Olive
Schreiner, in her "Dream in a Ruined Chapel," has beautifully set
forth the conception of a Cosmic Soul, clothed with the outward
attributes of time and space and circumstance whereby the indi-
vidual life is marked off from the life of the whole.-" The German

29 Ralph Iron (Olive Schreiner), Dreams, p. 71.

THE MYSTERY OF EVIL.

165

philosopher Feuerbach'*'- was also aware of man's intimate connection
with the Cosmic Soul, but. like Royce, went to the extreme of apotheo-
sizing man. God, he held, is nothing else than man ; He is the out-
ward projection of man's inward nature. Swinburne, too, sings of
"The great god, Man, which is God."-''^ And Clifford, in one of
his essays, says :

"For after all, such a helper of men, outside of humanity, the
truth will not allow us to see. The dim and shadowy outlines of
the superhuman deity fade slowly away from us ; and as the mist
of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater
clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure — of Him who
made all Gods, and shall unmake them. From the dim dawn of
history, and from the inmost depths of every soul, the face of our
father Man looks out upon us with the fire of eternal youth in his
eyes, and says : 'Before Jehovah was, I am.' "^-

XXII. THE DESTINY OF MAN.

So great a thing as the beginning of a Cosmic Soul cannot take
place without leaving some impress, slight as it may be at the start,
upon that portion of the Cosmos where it first sees the light. New
as it is, the Cosmic Soul has already left its mark on nature. The
wolf (or something which differed from him only in the pupil of
the eye)^^ has become a dog, and, incidentally, the only living
species which appreciates man at his true value ; the long-horned
lean steer of the plains has become unrecognizable as the solid,
beef-yielding animal of the ranches ; even the cactus has become
edible. Nature's perennial waste of spring freshets and summer
droughts is at the beginning of its end; for at the headwaters of
our great rivers vast reservoirs impound the melting snows of
Minnesota or the rains of Abyssinia, holding them against a time
of need, that the Father of Waters or the beneficent Nile may run
unvexed to the sea in bountiful yet gentle measure. The desert

3" Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentunis (translated by George Eliot,
The Essence of Christianity) : "In religion man contemplates his own latent
nature" (p. 33) ; "God is nothing else than the nature of man purified" (p. 181) ;
"The beginning, middle, and end of religion is man" (p. 184). Also Enc.
Brit., 11th edition, Vol. X, p. 302d.

3^ Swinburne, "To Walt Whitman in America," in Songs Before Sunrise :

"The soul that is substance of nations,
Reincarnate with fresh generations,
The great god Man, which is God."

32 Clifford, "The Ethics of Religion" : Lectures and Essays, Vol. II, p. 243.

33 Enc. Brit., Vol. VIII, p. 374b.

166 THE OPEN COURT.

has been brought under cultivation, and the pestilential tropical
jungle has been made healthier than many an old established city
of the temperate zone. Much has been done to bring the environ-
ment into harmony with the spirit, but much more yet remains to be
accomplished.

"And what then?'' says the pessimist. "Cui bonof Man is not
immortal, either in the individual or the race. The earth will not
always be habitable ; even the sun is doomed to ultimate extinction.
All nature is like a mighty clock, steadily running down. What shall
it profit us if we build and plant and water?"

Here we encounter another of the characteristic qualities of the
Cosmic Soul : hope, incentive to effort, apparently without reason.

"Such splendid purpose in his eyes ;
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies."

For the pessimist is right this far: nature if left to itself, is des-
tined to a veritable G otter dammerung , a Twilight of the Gods.

No physical principle is better established than that of the
dissipation of energy. According to it, all the different forms in
which the energy of the universe manifests itself are convertible
one into another, but not with equal facility. Heat is regarded as
the lowest form of energy, because all other forms of energy can
be completely converted into heat, but the conversion of heat into
these other forms takes place only partially. The net result of the
continual transformation of energy that is going on throughout the
universe is that the proportion of energy which becomes unavailable
in forms other than heat is continually increasing. Eventually all
other forms of energy will have become converted into heat.

Moreover, heat, like water, naturally runs downhill ; that is, a
difference of temperature tends to equalize itself. Hot bodies cool
off, warming up their surroundings until the temperatures are equal.
Eventually, therefore, all nature will come to the same level of
temperature.

Now, it is not possible by any means at our disposal to recon-
vert heat into other forms of energy unless it exists at different
temperatures, just as it is not possible to obtain work from water,
no matter how much there is of it, unless some is at a higher level
than the surrounding objects. Hence nature, having run down to
a dead level of temperature everywhere must, according to its own
laws, remain in that condition forever. Having reached this per-
manent state the universe will be like a mighty pool of Bethesda,
awaiting some influence from without to trouble its waters, to dis-

THE MYSTERY OF EVIL.

167

turb once more the level of its enormous store of useless energy
and render it again available.

"If left to itself — according to its own laws." Very true; such
is the inevitable destiny of a soulless world.

Here we come to a strange and wonderful thing ; for it was
pointed out years ago by Clerk Maxwell that it lies within the power
of intelligence, even though for the present in theory only, to inter-
pose, to change the current of nature, to turn its mighty mechanism
backward, to rewind the clock, by actually causing heat to run uphill.
His conception of "sorting demons" is well worth the study necessary
to appreciate it. He points out how, without the expenditure of any
work, an intelligence provided with a sufficiently delicate touch and
powerful vision could raise the temperature of one half of a mass
of gas by withdrawing heat from the other half ; a thing up to the
present time totally against experience. Such a proceeding as Max-
well suggests is impossible to us at present only because our facul-
ties are too gross to permit of our carrying out the delicate sorting
of single molecules necessary to accomplish this end ; but he would
be bold indeed who would deny the possibility of our ever achieving
a touch and vision adequate to this purpose."^ Since Maxwell's day,

^* Maxwell appears to have first published his suggestion of "sorting
demons" in his Theory of Heat, p. 328 (1875 edition), under the caption: "On
the Limitation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics." See also Garnett
and Larmor, Enc. Brit., Uth edition, Vol. IX, p. 401b.

In a gas at what we consider uniform temperature all the molecules have
not exactly the same velocity, their velocities being grouped about a mean
value according to a distribution closely resembling the well-known probabil-
ity curve. This is a condition of stable equilibrium, to which every other
distribution of velocities must in time revert, due to the interchange of veloc-
ities by oblique collisions at all possible angles. The whole matter hinges
upon the stability of this system of non-uniform velocities. If we in any way
remove the most rapidly moving molecules, others with speeds nearly as great
will shortly replace them, and the whole set will again assume the stable dis-
tribution about a mean value slightly less than before. Similarly, the removal
of the slower molecules will result in a rearrangement of velocities about a
slightly greater mean.

Maxwell imagined such a gas divided into two parts, A and B, by a par-
tition containing a great many small, massless doors, each in charge of an
intelligence, or a "demon," as he called it, with instructions to open his door
whenever he saw one of the more rapidly moving molecules in A headed his
way, and to keep it closed against the slower ones. Similarly, he was in-
structed to allow to pass from B into A only the slower molecules. Thus, the
original set of molecules would, without the expenditure of any work, be sifted
into two classes, the rapid ones finding themselves in B and the slower one.s
in A, the temperature of the portion B rising, and that of A falling. The
restorative action would again produce molecules in A nearly as fast, and in
B nearly as slow as those which had been lost, and the process is capable of
limited repetition, ceasing to be useful when the most rapid of the slow mole-
cules are equal to the slowest of the fast molecules.

The temperatures of the two portions of gas may now be allowed to adjust
themselves to a level in the usual fashion, a certain amount of work being
recovered in the process, and the sorting repeated. In this way the tempera-
ture of the gas as a whole may be depressed to any desired point.

168 THE OPEN COURT.

a long step has been taken in this very direction. It is now possible
for us to count singly bodies much smaller than the average gas
molecule, and even to see their single impacts against a phosphorescent
screen."^ All this in one generation ; what may we not yet accom-
plish ?

Maxwell's proposed sorting of molecules is unique in the domain
of physics in that it is the first case known where natural law
is exhibited as a respecter of persons, having a mode of operation
applicable to non-intelligent matter, but reversible under the guid-
ance and control of intelligence. It is not metaphysical, but as
legitimate a deduction from the molecular structure of a gas as
any of the better-known physical principles. It is full of sugges-
tion, of inspiration. Shall we learn, ere the coal-beds are exhausted,
to draw energy from the atmosphere until it is cooled below the
temperature of the ocean, when a mighty store of energy will at
once become available for our use? Shall the down slope of nature's
curve, through human interference, turn upward again? And what
if, as the curve nears its summit, some great catastrophe, some
celestial collision, should suddenly extinguish all intelligence on the
earth, and the dissipation of energy should again prevail, until,
eons after, some new race of sentient beings may speculate on
origins and destinies and perchance discover anew the way to apply
the brakes and reverse the power?

It is a solemn thing to consider that there is developing in nature,
in and through ourselves, an intelligence of such mighty possibili-
ties ; rudimentary as yet and feeble, but of rich promise ; painfully
out of joint with much of its environment (as the cynic points out)
like the Ugly Duckling, yet destined to master this environment
and impose its ideals upon it. What though it may be ages yet before
this promise shall be fulfilled, before the ugly duckling shall become
a swan? Have we not, in this precious possession of which each
one of us holds a share in trust, an incentive to right living, to high
thinking far more worthy of our devotion than any selfish salvation
of the individual soul? What though we shall never live to see the
final victory? Like Siineon in the temple we may say: "Lord, now
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace — for mine eyes have seen
thy salvation."

We have gone beyond the atheistic position. We have seen the
body of the Cosmos, like some mighty machine, wound up and set
going ages since, by whom we know not. What has become of its

35 Rutherford and Geiger, Proc. Roy. Soc, 1908, 81A, pp. 141, 163. Also
Crookes, ibid., 1903, 71, p. 405.

THE MYSTERY OF EVIL.

169

Creator, if it ever had one, we cannot tell. Perhaps he is talking or
pursuing, or he is in a journey; or peradventure he sleepeth and
must be awaked. In the absence of any intelligent control this ma-
chine, like a great clock, is steadily and relentlessly, after its own
laws, running down ; and with each hour it strikes a different scene
presents itself. There was that matin hour when the morning stars
sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy ; there is now
the high noon of life and activity and pleasure and pain ; and there
is coming that vesper hour of twilight, that Gdtterddmmerung, when
the restless waves of energy shall have quieted down to a dead, dark
level forever. And into this machine, in the full stir of its activity,
there comes a new thing, an exotic, a transcendent influence, a Soul.
Lonely, ill at ease, out of joint with its surroundings, shocked and
horrified by much of what it finds about it, its plight is pitiable. "I
am a little soul, dragging about a corpse." Man himself, in and
through whom it makes its first appearance, fights it with tooth and
nail, rack and fagot, slander and venom, ostracism and starvation,
bullet and poison gas. And the wonder of it — for the feeble thing
still lives !

It lives and grows. It is beginning to be conscious of its own
powers. It is optimistic ; it is fearless ; it is developing. Let none
set metes and bounds for it. It may yet turn the ebbing tide of
nature, and stay the coming of the twilight hour ; for Gdtterddm-
merung is ages away, eons away; there is time. It may yet (who
knows?), as its own nervous system is beginning to do, shake off
the limitations of matter only to function the more freely and fully.
The little soul, now chained to a corpse, may yet be set free. The
Cosmos, so long soulless, may yet redeem itself, and possess a con-
trolling soul worthy of its splendid body ; for it doth not yet appear
what we shall be.

THE ANTINOMY OF FREEDOM AND NECESSITY

AND THE PROBLEM OF MORAL

RESPONSIBILITY/

BY H. M. GORDIN.

AS is well known to students of philosophy, the free-will problem,
- or Kant's third antinomy, consists in the following: The law
of causation is, so far as our experience goes, so universal that it is
utterly unreasonable to exempt human activity from its control.
On the other hand, there are several arguments which, it is claimed,
prove or favor the doctrine that within certain limitations a freeman
is free of the inexorability of this law. While this subject has been
discussed by numerous writers, I am not familiar with any book or
paper where all the arguments of the libertarians are successfully
answered. Most probably none exists, as otherwise modern erudite
writers, e. g., the author of the article on free will in the Encyclo-
pcsdia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. XXVIII, p. 654, and the author of
the article on the same subject in the Encyclopccdia of Religion and
Ethics, Vol. VI, pp. 124-127, would not defend the doctrine of liber-
tarianism. I shall therefore answer the arguments of the liber-
tarians in what I consider a perfectly convincing manner, and show
that the doctrine of determinism is in accord with facts, while that
of libertarianism is not, unless the latter defines freedom of the will
or freedom of choice so as to agree with facts, when it becomes
identical with determinism. I shall further show that determinism
allows the freeman acting within the range of his possibilities all
the freedom of action and choice he can possibly wish to possess, and
that this amount of freedom is, within this range, so great that it is
perfectly inconceivable how it could be greater.

Let us first state the arguments of the libertarians.

1 The material of this article will be incorporated in a book on Science,
Truth, Religion and Ethics which I am preparing for publication.

THE ANTINOMY OF FREEDOM AND NECESSITY. 171

1. The freeman is capable of doing the reverse of what he is
imputed to be compelled to do. This may be illustrated by the
following example: Suppose that a libertarian starts to travel east
in order to get some particular thing. He will, of course, claim that
nothing compels him to go in that direction. Now, let a determinist
remind him of the fact that his going east is not free of causation
because the attraction of the thing he is after actually compels him
to go there. The traveler can prove his independence by turning on
his heels, and go west. As a freeman, he certainly can do that. Since
there can be no better proof by which a freeman may prove his
freedom from compulsion than doing the opposite of what he is
claimed to be compelled to do, the traveler's ability to reverse his
decision ought, it is claimed, to be accepted as conclusive for prov-
ing that his acts are free of the restraints of causality.

2. In his voluntary activity, man, it is asserted, is perfectly
unconscious of any force compelling him to act in a particular
manner. If causality regulated his actions he certainly ought to be
conscious of its power.

3. The doctrine of determinism is said to be degrading and
depressing, converting even a freeman into a slave of an inexorable
law, since he must do what the latter compels him to do. It is further
claimed that, if determinism be true, man cannot have the slightest
influence on the course of events, every event being predetermined
by immutable antecedent causes.

4. If determinism were true, moral responsibility, it is claimed,
would lose its significance, since no one could feel remorse for the
committal of a wrong if he admitted that, owing to causality, he
could not have acted otherwise. The libertarian further asserts
that the State would have no justification for punishing criminals,
and that the improvement of man's moral character would be im-
possible if all human acts were predetermined by immutable causes.

Before answering these arguments, let us examine the nature
of the acts that are involved in the controversy between the liber-
tarians and the determinists. It is self-evident that acts which are
beyond the ability of the actor to perform and acts which are com-
mitted unconsciously must be ruled out of our discussion : the
former he, of course, never commits, and in committing the latter
he cannot be said freely to choose his actions. Another category
of acts that must be excluded are those which are involuntary,
defining by this term acts which are imposed on one by an irresis-
tible power and are condemned by the judgment of the actor, such
as the unwillingly performed acts of a slave. Still another category

172 THE OPEN COURT.

of acts that are not involved in the controversy are those which,
like the preceding, are condemned by one's own judgment, and
which are therefore never committed by an intelligent person unless
he is under the influence of intoxicants, or in a fit of overwhelming
passion when his mind is in a state of almost complete aberration,
or when he acts under the influence of irresistible cravings or habits
from which he would like to but has no will-power to break away.
The acts of this category, too, are involuntary and obviously not
causeless, the impulses to commit them being certain peculiarities
in the nervous system of the actor. Hence even the libertarian
must admit that they are not the results of free choices, but the
inexorable consequence of forces over which the actor has little or
no control.

The only acts that are involved in the controversy under dis-
cussion are therefore those which are voluntary, defining by this
term acts which are not forced on the actor by an external master
or an irresistible craving, passion, or habit, and are approved or at
least not condemned by his own judgment. It is these that the liber-
tarian claims are free of the restraints of causation.

The next step is to state clearly the claim of the determinist,
and to show that it is in accord with facts. The claim consists in
that voluntary acts are caused by desires, and that the choices be-
tween different voluntary acts are caused by the most approved
and strongest of the desires, though the latter are not intense enough
to be such irresistible cravings as to make the acts involuntary.
The desires involved may be for the acts themselves or for their
direct or indirect results, but desires there must be, and, when
choice is exercised, they must be stronger and more approved than
the desires for any other acts or their results that are appropriate
to the occasion. In accord with this claim, when in respect to a
given act a freeman says, I hate to but will none the less commit
it, what he means is that he hates the act but likes its results, and
likes them more than he likes any other suitable act or its results.

The correctness of this claim is proved by the most reliable
method we have at our disposal, and that is, by interrogating the
actor committing a voluntary act. Our traveler, for instance, will
admit that, in accord with the claim of the determinist, he goes
east because he desires a certain thing which he cannot get at home,
that when he reverses his action he does so because the argument
of the determinist created in him a new desire — the desire to con-
fute his opponent — and that this desire is stronger and more ap-
proved than that for the thing he started out to get. In fact, should

THE ANTINOMY OF FREEDOM AND NECESSITY. 173

the thino^ in the east happen to be to him of exceptional vakie, he
will admit that he would brush aside his adversary and continue
his journey eastward, telling the determinist that his desire for
the thing there, while not an irresistible craving, is nevertheless so
strong that he would not stop to bother about philosophical an-
tinomies at that moment, and that he would discuss the matter with
him at some more opportune time. Similarly, the voluntary act of
a patient taking bitter and ill-smelling medicine is caused by his
desire to improve his health, and this desire obviously is stronger
and more approved than that for taking something pleasant that
might either harm him or do him no good. In the same way, the
average volunteer who is willing to sacrifice his life in defense of
his fatherland will tell you that his desire to do his duty to his
country is stronger and more approved than that for staying at
home while his native land is being attacked by a foe, that he
prefers the moral exaltation and the short life of a hero to the des-
picable and universally reprobated though longer life of a slacker.

So much for the causality of the voluntary acts themselves. As
to desires and the choices between them, they, too, are not causeless,
their causes being in most cases perfectly well known. Thus, his
desire for going east the traveler will doubtless ascribe to the fact
that the thing there will satisfy certain of his wants, and when he
goes back on his original decision, he will admit that his desire
to refute the claim of the determinist is caused by a feeling of
pride in the correctness of his views on the free-will problem, as
well as by a feeling of contrariness, or combativeness, and that the
combined effect of these feelings is stronger than the feeling creat-
ing in him the desire for the thing in the east. The desire of the
patient for improving his health obviously is due to his sense of
self-perservation which under ordinary conditions creates excep-
tionally strong and approved desires for taking and doing things
promoting our well-being, even when they are in themselves dis-
agreeable. Finally, the desire of the volunteer to do his duty is
the result of his moral sense which in the moral man creates power-
ful and highly approved desires to be moral.

If desires be pursued still further backward, it will be found
that even the causes of their causes are, at least in some cases, well
known. Thus, the causal series involved in the act of going to

dinner is as follows : act of going desire for food feeling

of hunger certain changes in certain sensory nerves with-
holding nourishment from the cells of our bodies. That is about
as far as we need go, since the terms of the series lying beyond the

174 THE OPEN COURT.

withholding of nourishment vary from case to case, and are of
no importance in our discussion. But even when we cannot go as
far as in this case, there is no reason for assuming that the series
comes to a stop where we are compelled to stop, because a similar
state of affairs is met with in the examination of every natural
phenomenon without exception. Proceeding backward along the
series of successive causes of any observed occurrence, we neces-
sarily arrive at a term whose antecedents are unknown, but that
does not prove that no antecedents exist. The fact that diligent
research frequently discovers hitherto unknown causes justifies the
assumption that the chain of causality is infinite. The only legiti-
mate alternatives to this assumption are that the chain ends in a
property that is as inherent in the last term as it is inherent in
human intelligence that two and two must equal four, or else that
it ends in a causa finalis, according to whichever assumption one
prefers. Thus, the moral sense may be as inherent in the moral
man as are his feelings of shame, sympathy, regret, and love of
music, or may be due to some antecedent causes. When the free-
will problem reaches this point, the determinist has already proved
his thesis, because all he claims is that human activity is as subject
to causality as the rest of the world with which we are familiar.

Why our consciousness or mind or ego or soul or whatever be the
name of the human vis vitae interprets changes in our nervous
system as feelings, and why these create desires, are perfectly idle
questions. Operations of this sort are essential attributes of con-
scious life; in their absence one is dead or at least unconscious.
Why feelings and desires have certain particular forms, i. e., why
they are so and so, and not otherwise, is also an idle question, be-
cause since they must have some form, one form is, in the absence
of further light on the subject, as reasonable as another. As to
their general uniformity for a given person, this is obviously due to
his general make-up which is to a large extent constant throughout
his life, and in so far as it is not constant, his feelings and desires
really vary with his conditions and advancing age. Still more idle is
the question why our reasoning faculty operates in such a manner as
to approve or condemn certain desires. It must operate according
to definite fixed rules of human logic, and must make use of the
memory of past events and of the probability that, owing to the in-
exorability of causation, certain pleasant or unpleasant, moral or
immoral, consequences are more liable to be the results of certain
actions than certain other consequences. It must therefore work in
a more or less definite manner, and its working in a certain particu-

THE ANTINOMY OF FREEDOM AND NECESSITY. 175

lar manner is due to the structure of one's brain and to the numer-
ous factors constituting one's personality.

That human activity is subject to causaHty is further proved by
the fact that, as indicated above, one's acts vary in a more or less
definite manner v^ith one's age, sex, nationality, inherited character-
istics, education, surroundings, etc. A complete knowledge of all
of the numerous and complex factors influencing the desires of a
given person would doubtless enable a psychologist to read his mind
and foretell his actions under given conditions. To a considerable
extent this ability is really possessed by many people having had
much worldly experience and thus gained a good "knowledge of
men." This would be perfectly impossible if desires, choices, and
acts were causeless and therefore unpredictable.

Another proof is that when one of the terms in the series of
successive causes of an act is inhibited, all the subsequent terms
drop out. When the feeling of hunger is destroyed by a sudden
shock of fright or bad news the desire for food vanishes, and the
act of going to dinner is stopped. When a moral person who is on
the point of committing an act approved or not condemned by his
judgment, hears or reads arguments which prove that under the
given conditions the act would be immoral, his desire for commit-
ting it is overcome by a more approved and stronger desire to be
moral, and the act is not committed. When a nerve-center is seri-
ously injured, all the feelings, desires, and actions controlled by it
disappear.

Having shown that all human activity is controlled by causality,
so that the first argument of the libertarians is untenable, it is easy
to show that the second argument also is untenable. In his voluntary
activity man is unconscious of any external authority and of irre-
sistible condemned cravings driving him to action because such
authority and such cravings are by definition absent from such
activity, but he is fully conscious of the force of his strongest
desires and of the logicity of the strongest arguments approving
them, or of the absence of arguments condemning them. When
hungry we are conscious of a powerful desire for food and of the
cogent argument that if we want to live we must eat, and that
under ordinary conditions we have a moral right to eat. And when
our sound judgment tells us that, owing to our corpulency, it would
be better for us to omit a meal, or that for moral reasons it would
be preferable to give it to a starving person, there immediately
arises in our consciousness a strong and approved desire to follow
the counsel of our reason, and we are again fully conscious of the

176 THE OPEN COURT.

new desire and of the soundness of our judgment. In our daily
conscious life we are frequently confronted with several conflicting
desires, moral, immoral, and amoral, and with reasoning arguments
advising different choices. Particularly when the voluntar}^ actions
involved are of special importance do we feel that we are thrown
upon our own resources ; we hesitate, compare, sift, and argue with
ourselves before making up our minds how to act. During this
interval of time, which sometimes is of considerable duration, we
are fully conscious of an inner struggle for supremacy between
different desires and different processes of argumentation. Until
we reach a decision we are particularly impressed with our freedom
of choice between different desires because we are in the midst of
a confusion which we may bring to order any way we like, and
because we do not yet know which of our desires and judgments
will come out victorious. The inexorable necessity of following the
strongest desire and worthiest motive is thus hidden because we
do not yet know which is the strongest and worthiest. When,
however, we reach a conclusion and finally decide upon a definite
mode of action, we are perfectly conscious of the fact that our action
corresponds with that desire for it which during the inner fight has
become stronger than the rest and has received the support of the
best arguments. At that moment we become extremely conscious
of the necessity of causality because in committing a voluntary
act under these conditions we know full well why we are doing
it as well as what we are doing. It is only in performing routine
work that a man is not fully conscious of the fact that his acts
are compelled by his desires and judgments, but this is so because
such work meets with no resistance from within or without. No-
body interferes with it, and the actor feels no strong desires for
refraining from doing it. It is performed in a mechanical way
requiring little attention. The moment, however, some remark,
thought or external phenomenon causes him to conceive a desire
for doing something else, he feels the necessity of making a choice,
and when he makes it he feels that his choice is the inexorable result
of his strongest desire and strongest argument. Hence the second
argument of the libertarian is, like the first, contrary to facts.

In order to answer the third argument, let us examine the
nature of the compulsion causality imposes on the freeman. Since
this compulsion amounts to nothing more than that in performing
a voluntary act he must follow his own most approved and strongest
desire which he loves to satisfy anyway, the law of causation is
in this case entirely deprived of its sting of tyranny. It is perfectly

THE ANTINOMY OF FREEDOM AND NECESSITY. 177

clear that when a person' has a strong and approved or at least not
condemned desire to commit an act he would commit it with no
greater zeal even if the desire for it dropped into his heart out of
the blue sky without any cause whatsoever, or if he manufactured
it himself es niJiilo. If a man be asked what sort of freedom of
action he would like to have as far as his possibilities go, he would
certainly want no other variety than freedom to satisfy his strongest,
approved, or at least uncondemned desires without the interference
of irresistible undesirable forces. This degree of freedom deter-
minism allows the voluntarily acting freeman ; this degree of free-
dom is all he wants for his voluntary acts, and this degree of free-
dom is so great that, within the limits of what the freeman can do.
it is inconceivable how it could be greater. Our traveler, for in-
stance, goes east when he himself likes the thing there more than
to confute his opponent, and he can and does reverse his original
decision when the claim of his adversary rouses in him a stronger
liking for maintaining the doctrine of his independence. He cannot
do both things simultaneously : he must and, as a rule, likes to do
either one or the other thing, and he actually acts as he likes to act.
As far as the act of going in some particular direction is concerned,
there can be no greater freedom of choice than is possessed by the
freeman. Hence the doctrine of determinism bestows upon the
freeman so much freedom that, barring impossibilities, there is
nothing left for the libertarian to give him.

To claim, as the libertarian in his third argurrient does, that
in his voluntary activity man must feel depressed by the necessity
of following his own strongest desires is as absurd as to claim that a
ma» who is hungry and freezing, and who does not want to let
himself starve or freeze to death, but longs for a good meal and a
warm bed. would feel depressed if his friend picked him up on the
street and forcibly placed him in a well-provisioned palatial resi-
dence where he may eat and drink and do anything he likes and
can. Furthermore, since even the strongest desires for voluntary
acts are not so irresistible as to become overpowering cravings, the
fact that such acts are forced by causality is less burdensome than
the act of the man forcibly placing his starving and freezing friend
in the house of plenty. Thus, in going east our traveler is not
driven by an irresistible craving, since in that case his act would
not be voluntary. Some particular occurrence or some cogent
argument might create in him a stronger and more approved desire
to go in some other direction, or stay where he is, and determinism
permits him to do that. Similarly, the volunteer, who is making

178 THE OPEN COURT.

preparations for going to the front in order to do his duty to his
country, usually is not driven by the whip of an irresistible craving,
because in that case his act would not be voluntary and would
therefore not be moral at all, for an act committed under the in-
fluence of an irresistible force of any kind is no more moral than
one committed per order of the chief of police. The democratic
volunteer may, for instance, all at once become convinced, rightly
or wrongly, that his country has become an autocratic tyranny
that does not deserve to be defended. He would then change his
action and stay at home.

If man has some reason to be dissatisfied it is not because his
voluntary activity is forced on him by the necessity of following
his own desires and judgments which have their immutable causes,
but because the range of this sort of activity is not as wide as he
would like it to be, i. e., because his possibilities are limited, since
he is often the slave of his own passions or of somebody else's will,
while in some cases his freedom of choice is limited to choosing
the lesser of two evils. In other words, it is only in respect to
acts that even the libertarian admits to be compulsory that man
may feel depressed. The question whether it is prudent and
justifiable for the man of our enlightened age to shed, tears over
what he cannot do instead of enjoying what he can do and has
already done, I shall discuss on another occasion. Here it may
suffice to point out that man's ability to perform voluntary acts
should be to him a source of great satisfaction, since such acts
imply the possession of a reasoning faculty which is far superior
to that of every known creature, and to which he owes his civili-
zation. A being devoid of this faculty is incapable of voluntary
activity, all his acts being committed without deliberation, as direct
results of his immediate impulses. The educated freeman should
therefore not feel depressed and degraded but delighted by, and
proud of, his ability and necessity to hesitate and deliberate and
approve before acting. Our feelings, like our children, frequently
bring us sorrow as well as joy; our reasoning faculty is our best
friend and most reliable guardian. It is not the causality of our
voluntary activity, but that of the physical phenomena and our own
carelessness that sometimes bring us in trouble and may therefore
cause a depression of our spirits. When a man gets hurt by falling
out of a window, he may feel dissatisfied with his carelessness and
the law of gravity, but when he voluntarily constructs a chute and
slides down in order to escape from fire, he is mighty glad that this
same law enables him to save his life by carrying out his voluntary

THE ANTINOMY OF FREEDOM AND NECESSITY. 179

act, that his approved desire prompts him to carry it out, and that
his reasoning faculty enables him to construct such an appliance.

As to influencing the course of events, it is a fact that man
does have strong desires to improve himself and the conditions
of life on his little planet, and that nature does not interfere in his
activity as long as he obeys her laws. She even allows him to pit
them against each other any way he likes, thus letting herself be
subdued to his needs. In the course of his evolution, man's desires
have multiplied, and just because he is compelled to find ways and
means for satisfying them he has changed and is constantly changing
the face of the earth and the institutions of society. This is an
undeniable fact, and whether one believes in libertarianism or de-
terminism, it is a cheerful fact.

It is true that the law of causation makes all future events,
including those in which man takes part, predetermined by the past
and the present, so that a being knowing all the causes which have
operated and are operating in the world could foretell the course
of all events to come. But such a being would also know that the
human race is an integral part of the world, and that in following our
desires and judgments we are influencing the course of events in
accord with the law of causation. This again is a fact, a part of
the scheme of the constantly changing world. What difference
would it make to us if some being knew beforehand what sorts of
desires we and our successors were going to have, what kinds of
acts we and they will be compelled by causality to perform, and
what part our activity will play in shaping historical events? A
mother usually knows what her child will want on opening its eyes
in the morning, but that does not prevent the child from actually
shaping her actions by demanding and getting what it wants, and
from enjoying the feeling that it is the pet and lord of the house-
hold. I know that my neighbor, who is very fond of music, is
going to attend the opera next season. Does my knowledge en-
croach upon his freedom of action? Moreover, even if man himself
had a complete knowledge of the future he would not lose his
freedom of action and choice because he would then have strong
desires to mould his activity accordingly. That this is so is proved
by the fact that we feel and enjoy our freedom and deliberately
follow our approved desires even when we have known to a cer-
tainty what they were going to be. We plan our theater parties
days or weeks ahead, the details of our vacations months ahead,
and the careers of our children years ahead, and at the time of
realizing our plans we enjoy them in perfect freedom and with

180 THE OPEN COURT.

as much delight as if they were created on the spur of the moment.
In fact, we Hke nothing better than that our plans should not, on
account of some outside interference, miscarry, though we know
that they have been determined long ago.

It follows from our discussion that there is not the slightest
contradiction between freedom and necessity. Freedom means free-
dom from external powers and disapproved irresistible cravings,
which characterizes voluntary acts and gives the freeman the op-
portunity to act according to his own wishes and judgments. In
this respect the freeman has freedom of choice. Necessity, on the
other hand, means that voluntary acts are the immutable results
of the most approved and strongest desires. In this respect man
is compelled to choose. The inexorability of this necessity consists
in that it is perfectly inconceivable why a freeman should not
realize his voluntary acts. He loves to commit such acts, it is
within his power to commit them, and his best friend and guardian
■ — his own reason — approves or at least does not condemn their
committal. Why, in the name of common sense, should he not
commit them? Kant's third antinomy is therefore a pure fiction
without foundation in reality.

Before answering the fourth argument of the libertarians, let
us inquire into the meaning of their claims. If the doctrine of
libertarianism claims for the freeman nothing more than freedom
to act according to his own desires and judgments which, as shown
above, are subject to causality, it is identical with determinism.
If this doctrine claims that voluntary acts are free of the restraints
of causality, it is contrary to facts. Moreover, this sort of freedom
most probably does not exist anywhere in the world as we know
it, and even assuming that it does exist in respect to some particular
phenomenon, it obviously is not this sort that is involved in volun-
tary activity. A body moving about unconsciously and without any
cause whatsoever, constantly or every once in a while changing the
direction and rate of its motion for no reason and to no purpose,
and having nothing to say about anything pertaining to its migra-
tions, would exhibit an example of a causeless phenomenon. A
freeman does not resemble such a stupid errant body, he would
hate the purposeless freedom it possesses, and his voluntary acts,
being conscious, desired, examined by his own judgment, and di-
rected toward definite aims, are entirely dififerent from its aimless
peregrinations.

If the libertarian means that in advising particular choices
man's reasoning faculty is not guided by causal necessities, but is

THE ANTINOMY OF FREEDOM AND NECESSITY. 181

merely telling the freeman that he must act thus and so without point-
ing out to him the inexorable consequences \yhich, owing to causal-
ity, will probably or certainly follow his actions, the claim is self-
cojitradictory, because an agency acting in this manner would not
be a reasoning entity. By its very definition the reasoning faculty
must make use of logical arguments whose very essence consists
in that certain acts will serve as inexorable causes of certain pleas-
ant or impleasant, moral or immoral, consequences, thus creating
strong desires for obtaining or avoiding the latter.

If libcrtarianism means that man possesses an entity called
will, or what Bergson calls elan vital, which produces impulses
that have no causes or have causes incomprehensible to our in-
tellect, and delivers categorical imperatives without regard to our
reasoning faculty, the claim is again contrary to facts, since, as was
shown above, the causes of our desires or impulses usually are
well known and are subjected to the judgment of our reason before
they are allowed to serve as motives for voluntary acts. Moreover,
such an entity, even if it were guided b}'' some mysterious causes,
would have to be placed at the beginning of causal series as a
causa finalis. But it Avas already pointed out that the assumption
of the existence of final causes does n.ot violate the doctrine of
determinism. Finally, if man' possessed such an irraiional entity,
only the insane, the stupid, and little children would obey its des-
potic and unexplained commands ; the sane and educated freeman.
who loves his independence and prides himself on the possession
of much intelligence, would certainly consult and obey his reasoning
faculty before committing a voluntary act. The voice of the irra-
tional entity would therefore be a cry in the wilderness without any
influence on the voluntary activity of the intelligent freeman. Hence
libcrtarianism is either identical with determinism, merely applying
to that phase of voluntary activity which makes it possible for the
freeman to follow his own strongest desires and best arguments,
or is a false theory that should be discarded.

We shall now attack the problem of moral responsibility. In
addition to implying sormdness of mind, the term, moral responsi-
bility is usually given two meanings: (1) that of accountability for
harm one has already done, and (2) that of obligation to do no harm
in the future. From a practical point of view, the second is much
more important than the first, since it is much more important to
prevent future harm than merely to find out why harm was done.
The libertarian holds sane people responsible for their acts in both
of the above senses, while the determinist holds them responsible

182 THE OPEN COURT.

only in the second meaning of the term. The former assumes that
they could have acted otherwise than they did, while the latter
asserts that the fact that they have acted in a particular manner
proves, that, taking into consideration all the factors which have
influenced their past conduct, such as heredity, conditions, personal
idiosyncrasies, etc., they could not have acted otherwise. In the
light of the arguments of this paper, the view of the libertarian is
untenable. But even assuming, for the sake of argument, that a
criminal could have acted' differently, his treatment by the State
would be the same. When the harm of one's past act is rectifiable,
it will be rectified even if it was committed against or without one's
volition. Stolen goods will be returned to their owners even when
one was compelled by somebody else to steal, or when they were
stolen by a somnambulist. When the harm is irremediable, no
amount of punishment will remedy it. Revenge as justification for
punishment is nowadays considered unworthy of a moral and civi-
lized State.

As to future acts, it is clear that when a past act is not followed
by consequences disagreeable to the actor he and others will most
probably repeat it when circumstances are propitious, but when it
brings dire results they will create in him and others new and strong
desires that may overcome their desire for repeating it or doing
anything like it. This is one of the two justifications the community
has for punishing crimes committed by people in a state of perfect
sanity, the other being the sense of self-protection, since crimes are
detrimental to the welfare of the community. Since the knowledge
of the certainty of punishment for misbehavior exercises a salubrious
influence on prospective criminals, creating in them strong desires
for staying on the path of righteousness, . punishment for crimes
must be inflicted in order to prove this certainty, though we know
that a past act could not have been avoided. The claim that the
doctrine of determinism deprives the State of all justification of
punishing criminals is therefore erroneous.

Equally erroneous are the other claims of the fourth argument.
The claim that determinism deprives moral obligation of its signifi-
cance is without foundation because the moral person feels the
necessity of satisfying the demands of his moral sense, and he
also feels his ability to decide in most cases which acts are moral
and which immoral. Admitting this, he thereby admits his respon-
sibility for whatever he intends to do, and actually tries to be moral.
This is all we can expect him to do, and this is all we want by
holding him responsible, and as long as he does try to be moral,

THE ANTINOMY OF FREEDOM AND NECESSITY. 183

he feels himself and others consider him responsible for his present
and future conduct. When, however, an act has past out of his
control by having been carried away into the past by the irrever-
sible flow of time, no one can claim that he could have acted other-
wise, though, as said above, he must be punished for having acted
immorally. Responsibility and punishment are therefore perfectly
compatible with the doctrine of determinism.

Remorse for the committal of wrong acts is felt only by the
moral libertarian, and even he soon comes to see the utter useless-
ness of crying over spilt milk. With the moral determinist remorse
is a feeling of sincere regret for a deplorable though unavoidable
past occurrence, and with him, too, the feeling is the deeper the
greater the harm resulting from the act. Since the attention of
most people is concentrated chiefly on the present and the future,
since they feel the freedom of acting according to their own desires
and judgments, and since they are not philosophers analyzing the
forces underlying and determining their activity, the doctrine of
determinism is either unknown or does not appeal to them. Be-
lieving that they could have changed their actions, they readily
fall prey to the feeling of remorse. In so far as influencing future
conduct is concerned, the regret of the determinist is as efficacious
as the remorse of the libertarian.

As to the improvement of man's moral character, the State has
the ability of instructing the young citizen in the principles of
ethics, thus developing and strengthening his moral sense, in addi-
tion to frequently drawing his attention to the fact that, even from
a purely practical point of view, moral conduct is preferable to
immoral, because, as a rule, wrong doing brings woe, ostracism,
and punishment to the wrong-doer. The State has therefore the
power to mould the character of the citizen to a considerable extent,
to create in him strong desires for moral behavior, thus contributing
to making a moral man of a young person who, left to himself,
might grow up to be a scoundrel. The doctrine of determinism
does not prevent the State from doing so, since the acts are yet to
be performed, and can therefore be influenced. Determinism merely
claims that when the State does so it is forced by a sense of duty
to its citizens. Sound moral education, punishment for, and public
disapproval of, immorality have in the past contributed to the evo-
lution of moral man from the amoral savage, and the application
of these factors in the future will contribute to the further progress
of our race along ethical lines.

MISCELLANEOUS.

JOSEPH OF ARIMATH.EA.

Mr. A. Kampmeier is entitled to my sincere thanks for his lexicographic
note on "Joseph of Arimathjea" in The Open Court of last December. He com-
pels me to discuss at greater length the meaning of the proper name Arimathsea
in our Gospels, which I am inclined to think cannot be determined by apply-
ing to the lexicon alone.

As soon as I became convinced of the unhistorical cliaracter of the Joseph
of Arimath?ea pericope, the question arose whether that account was altogether
legendary or based to some extent, at least, upon facts. I preferred to recog-
nize in Joseph a real person who has been instrumental in securing a burial
for Jesus. The pericope is clearly of Palestinian origin and, therefore, belongs
to the first centur}'. I doubt whether at that time a Palestinian Christian could
and would invent the name of the man who buried Jesus.

Arimathrea is unquestionably the name of the place from which Joseph had
come to Jerusalem. , But it is well-nigh impossible to locate it in Palestine.
For, on the one hand, it was not customary for Jews to modify their personal
name by the name of their home town, notwithstanding the case of Jesus. The
latter was called apparently Jesus of Nazareth first by his enemies who, in
doing so, attempted to ridicule, his messianic claims. "Can any good thing
come out of Nazareth?" (John i. 46). On the other hand, the Old Testament
mentions not less than five different places which went by the name of Ramah.
Thus, Arimathsea, if intended to denote one of them, would have been a very
unsatisfactory 'way of identifying a person.

These premises suggested to me Joseph of Arimathrea may have been the
official agent of the high priest in his dealings with Pontius Pilate. That idea
is not a mere guess. For the high priests actually employed such diplomatic
representatives. We read Acts xxiv. If: "After five days the high priest Ana-
nias came down with certain elders, and with an orator, one Tertullus ; and
they informed the governor against Paul. And when he was called, Tertullus
began to accuse him." Tertullus is evidently a Roman name ; but the bearer
of that name must have been a Jew by birth and by religion. Otherwise he
could not have been affiliated with the high priest. As a native of Rome, he
had adopted a Roman name. Jews even at that time liked to bear a name of
the people among whom they lived. That is proved by the Apostle Paul, whose
Jewish name was Saul, while outside of Palestine he called himself Paul.

But it miglit be objected: Why should the priests of Jerusalem need the
services of a middleman who commanded the language of Rome? For the
governors of the eastern provinces spoke Greek. That question overlooks in

]\riSCELLANEOUS. 185

the first place the fact tliat there are always two, if not more, parties to any
business transaction. In the given instance, the two parties were the Roman
governor and the high priest. Assuming Pontius Pilate to have been a Greek
scholar, we must in addition prove that the high priest or his associates spoke
that language.

As a matter of fact, during that period, a person speaking Greek could
travel as far as India and find everywhere people with whom he could con-
verse and do business in Greek. For Alexander the Great and his successors
had taken care to establish at all points of strategic and commercial importance
Greek colonies. But those colonies never succeeded in supplanting the lan-
guages of the conquered nations. Wherever a country has been conquered by
a foreign race, the population belonging to the soil, if sufficiently numerous,
has always retained its language even if the invader represented a much
higher civilization.

In the case of the Jews in Palestine, the inborn resistance of the people
against the exchange of their native tongue for Greek was strengthened by
their religion. The superiorit}' of their religion as well as their less laudable
religious prejudices rendered them inaccessible to Greek influences. One might
indeed imagine the priests, who formed the Jewish aristocracy, to have been
more open-minded and accessible to Greek culture. They enjoj^ed leisure and
wealth. But these two factors alone have never been the cause of literary
activit}' and achievements. Moreover, the servants of the temple were always
dependent for their income upon the good will of their co-religionists. This
forced them to foster the most conservative tendencies of their countrymen.
Gentile learning would have discredited the priests in the eyes of the whole
populace.

The Jews of the dia.'^pora occupied, of course, an exceptional position
They had no choice, but had to learn and use the language of the people
among whom thej^ had settled and among whom they were compelled to make
their living. But the Jewish synagogue had taken care of them. Their chil-
dren were instructed in the sacred language of their fathers. They expressed
their religious thought in Plebrew. When they came to Jerusalem, they did
not desire the priests to address them in Greek but to listen to the speech of
the patriarchs, of Moses, and of the prophets. And the self-interest of the
priests demanded that such feelings should be praised and confirmed ratlier
than weakened by any compromises with the heathen world. For such weighty
reasons the priests at Jerusalem from the highest to the lowest were innocent
of the knowledge of any foreign language. Hebrew was quite good enough
for them.

Yet Pilate b}"- chance was familiar v.'ith Greek, and therefore th.e priests
did not need the services of a Latin Hebrew interpreter but only of a man
who commanded Hebrew and Greek. As a matter of fact, Greek became the
language of the Roman Empire after the capital had been removed to Con-
stantinople. But before that time, the official language of the empire was
Latin ; and no man could expect to become governor of any province simply
because he happened to know the language spoken in that province. All the
high offices at the disposal of the government went to friends and favorites
of the emperor, and these favored men were expected to return as millionaires
from their provinces. Of Pilate we know that "the unusual length of time
during which he held office was, in accordance with the policy of Tiberius,

186

THE OPEN COURT.

based on the opinion that governors who had already enriched themselves,
would be better for the people than new ones whose avarice was yet unsatis-
fied" {Diet, of the Bible). Thus our information about him being very scanty,
we cannot ascribe linguistic accomplishments to him which he needed neither
at home nor in his province.

But all members of the better class of Romans are supposed to have
spoken Greek as well as Latin. If that were so, how could we account for the
total extinction of all knowledge of Greek at Rome and in Italy after the
separation from the eastern provinces? Even the Church had forgotten
Greek; and it was not until the age of the Renaissance that Greek literature,
including the New Testament writings, etc., became accessible to the Western
theologians. As a matter of fact, the average Roman was fully conscious of
belonging to a race of world-conquerors. There was no incentive for under-
going the hard grind of mastering any foreign language. If anybody wanted
to enjoy his intercourse and conversation, he had to do it through the medium
of Latin. Only people of literary gifts and ambitions would study Greek. It
was fashionable to send the boys to Greek teachers. But the fruits of such
an instruction cannot have been superior to the results achieved in our colleges
in their foreign language departments. The Epigrams of Martial show that
clearly enough. Among his 1534 epigrams, there are just six in which a few
Greek words are used. The famous Sixth Satire of Juvenal bears wntness
to the same effect. The poet attacks among others a lady who likes to speak
Greek. He says of her : "Omnia Graece, quum sit turpe magis nostris nescire
Latine" (verses 184f), and: "Non est hie sermo pudicus in vetula" (verses
193f). If a Roman of great literary ability thought so about Greek, how much
more would the average Roman politician spurn the very thought of acquiring
a knowledge of Greek to be enabled to govern any province!

But does not the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans demonstrate how well
known Greek was at Rome? That letter proves only two things. First, St.
Paul could not write an epistle in Latin. Second, among the early Christians at
Rome were people who understood Greek. Rome under the emperors was in
many respects similar to our big American cities. It attracted constantly new
immigrants from all parts of the world. They came there as prisoners of war,
as slaves, as adventurers, and merchants. All those new arrivals acquired as
soon as possible such a knowledge of Latin as they needed for their work and
business ; but they retained the knowledge of their mother tongue as a matter
of course. Their children born and raised within the walls of Rome, however,
would grow up as full-fledged Romans, speaking by preference the Roman
language. They would imbibe the pride of Rome and despise even the lan-
guage of their parents. Thus, the Christian church at Rome spoke Greek
only during the short, transitory period from the first to the second generation.

For all these reasons, we may assume confidently that Pontius Pilate did
not speak Greek. But even if he was able to use it, he would not have done
so in official business. The majesty of Rome and his own dignity insisted that
all affairs of state should be transacted in Latin. If the high priest had any
complaint to make or favor to ask, he had to do so in Latin. That rule held
good all over the Roman world. It was the conquered nation which had to
address the victor in his language, not the victor's task to learn the tongue of
the conquered nation. In accordance with that rule the sons of vanquished
kings and chieftains were taken to Rome to be given a Roman education before

MISCELLANEOUS 187

they were permitted to return to their native land and enter upon their in-
heritance. The rulers allied with Rome were eager to send their children to
the imperial city for the same purpose. Herod the Great spoke in all probabil-
ity Latin. Else he would hardly have been a friend of Augustus. Of his sons
we know for sure that they all studied at Rome. One of them, Antipater the
son of Salome, had become so proficient in Latin that he afterward pleaded
his own cause before the emperor while Archelaos employed Nicolaos as his
attorney (Jos., Ant., XVII, 9, 5f).

In view of these facts, we cannot escape the conclusion that Joseph of
Arimathaea, because he went to Pilate and asked him a favor, must have
spoken Latin. This conclusion compels us to look more closely at the possible
meaning of Arimathaea. For Ramah in Palestine, whichsoever of the five
places going by that name it might have been, is out of the question as the seat
of a school for Latin.

There is no room for doubt as to the meaning ascribed to the word by
the original translator from Aramaic into Greek. He was sure it denoted a
town in Palestine. For, otherwise, he would have given us the Greek name
of the city. But if Ramah and Roma were both written with Hebrew letters,
the two words would spell alike RMH. For at the age of Christ, vowels were
not indicated in Hebrew words by special signs ; and the final H simply indi-
cates the feminine gender. In the Aramaic period, Rama had become Rima.
Still, if the scriptio dcfectiva was used, the two names Rama, or Rima, and
Roma would be spelled alike. But even if, according to the scriptio plena,
the I in Rima was expressed by the Hebrew letter Yodh and the O in Roma
by Waw, there was a fair chance of mistaking the one word for the other,
for the head of both letters is the same. They differ only in the length of
their necks. Both are slender and straight. If the manuscript had suffered
much or if the neck of the Waw had been only a faint line from the beginning,
the word intended to signify Roma could easily be read to denote Rima. The
very word Romah is, by the way, a Hebrew word, used in Mic. ii. 3 as an
adverb. It means "pride," or "haughtiness." That such a meaning would
appeal to the Jews as a proper expression of the character of Rome is super-
fluous to state.

Consequently, in spite of Mr. Kampmeier's kind information, I have to
repeat here what I suggested in my paper of last October. Arimathaea, for
general reasons, must be and, on lexicological considerations, may be accepted
as the Aramaic form of the name of the ancient mistress of the world.

Wm. Weber.

ST. CATHARINE OF ALEXANDRIA, VIRGIN AND MARTYR.i
[our frontispiece.]

St. Catharine of Alexandria, Virgin and Martyr, was the daughter of a
rich and noble chieftain who lived toward the end of the third century and was
believed by some to have been the son of the Emperor Constantine. He was
King of Armenia and by his marriage with a princess of Cyprus became king
of that island, and founded the city of Fama Costa, now called Famagosta.

After the marriage a baby girl was born to them, who as she grew became

1 Transcribed for The Open Court almost word for word from an ancient
manuscript in the British Museum, by Katharine M. Langford. With some
additions from the Abbotsford edition of the Life of St. Katharine.

188

THE OPEN COURT.

exceeding fair and of a wondrous intellect. Her form and face were equally
beautiful, and her intelligence was so far above the average in things natural
as well as spiritual, that the learned men to whom her father intrusted her
education were astounded and oftentimes puzzled by her wisdom and under-
standing.

Left an orplian at an 'early age, she managed her household and heritage
with marvelous skill, and the chief men of the kingdom begged to be allowed
to call a parliament at which she was to preside. Gaining her consent they
proceeded to do so, and when they were assembled they implored their beloved
queen to select a spouse that she might be married, and so hand down to
posterity her beauty and her talents.

Catharine, whose character was pure and whose abilities as high as her
fate was tragic and melancholy, had constantly dreamt of finding a kindred
soul with high spiritual instincts, with whom her own might be linked, and
she dreaded soiling her purity by allowing others to choose for her or being
forced into an uncongenial union.

At some distance from the city there lived in the wilderness an aged
anchorite, Adrian by name, to whom Our Lady appeared in a vision, and she
told him to go to the palace, and search for the Queen Catharine and bring
her back with him, for she desired that she should he married to her Son, the
Christ Himself, for love of whom she had so often refused the love of many
earthly kings. Adrian, to whom the Avay was entireW unknown, was miracu-
lously guided to the palace, and when there he followed from one apartment
to another, until he found the Queen alone in her rooin.

Catharine, who was greatly surprised when he told his mission, consented
to return with him. As they journeji-ed and drew near the place where his
cell should have been, Adrian could see it nowhere, but suddenly as in a
vision there rose before him a wondrous mystical temple, and standing in the
midst was the Queen of Heaven, Our Lady herself surrounded by a glorious
company of angels.

She commanded Adrian to come forth and bring with him his beautiful
companion, upon whom she gazed with love and admiration, and told her
tliat she .should be married to the Blessed Christ Himself, but that first she
must be baptized. Removing Catharine's garment she bade Adrian come for-
ward, who for the time seemed stricken with blindness, and perform the
sacred rite, but to retain the name of Catharine. The baptism over, Adrian
regained his sight and then Our Lady conducted the young Queen into the
choir, and presented her to her Blessed Son.

This beautiful King embraced her saying: "I take thee Catharine to my
Spouse, promising truly never to forsake thee while thy life lasts, and after
this life T shall bring thee to an endless life where thou shalt dwell with me
in bliss forever." With this He put a ring on her finger and bade Adrian don
his vestments and celebrate the mass, as belongeth to the custom of weddings.
After the ceremony Catharine fell into a swoon and woke to find herself in
the hermit's cell, and would have thought it all a dream if she had not found
the ring on her finger.

Soon after this event arose the persecution of St. Cath.arine which ended
in her martyrdom.

Constantine and Maxence were, upon a time, as in the Emperor's place
highest in Rome, and a war broke out between them. Maxence fled to Alexan-

MISCELLANEOUS. 189

dria — Constantine pursued b'ut remained in Illyria. The former made himself
King of Alexandria, whicli was subject to Rome as was ahnost all the rest
of tlie world, and began to persecute the Holy Church and all Christians like
a niad-'wolf and drew many to heathenism, some by large gifts and diverse
rewards, some through terror of his awful threats, and lastly some with severe
torments and bodily pain.

Catharine, hearing of the horrors of the idolatry that were being carried
on, was so indignant that she almost went mad, and felt it her bounden duty
to protest openly before the cruel tyrant. She therefore went boldly into his
presence and addressed him thus :

"Greeting O Emperor, would well become thee for thy high station, if thou
gavest this, which thou dost to devils that destroy thee, both in body and soul,
and all that pursue the same course — if thou payedst and gavest this, I say,
to His honor, who made thee and all the world, and didst rule by His wisdom
all that is made — I would greet thee O King, if thou understbodst that
He alone is to be praised through whom and under whom all kings rule. Nor
may anything withstand His will, though He has much forbearance.

"This Heavenly Lord loveth true faith and neither blood nor bone of
innocent cattle, but that man keep and reverence His sanctifying behest. Nor
is there anything by which the great folly of man more displeases Him than
that the creature, man, whom He made and to whom He gave the faculty of
distinguishing both good and evil by reason of wisdom, should become so
irrational through the accursed peril, that he pays worship which He owes to
God, to senseless things that the Fiend dwells in, and that he honors and
reveres a visible creature, bloodless, boneless, and limbs without life, as he
should honor the Creator Himself of himself and all things, who is the In-
visible God.

"The Fiend that inventeth every evil among all crooked crafts, with none
catcheth he more crafty, froward men, nor leadeth them to unbelief than in
that he maketh men who ought to know well that they are begotten, born, and
brought forth through the Heavenly Father, to make such idols of wood or
of stone, or through greater folly of gold or silver, and give them diverse
names of sun or moon, or wind, or of w^ood, or of water and revere and wor-
ship them as if they were God."

When she had finished, the Emperor was greatly indignant, and caused
her to be thrown into prison and severely punished, and he then issued a
command that fifty of the wisest men, gathered from all parts of the country,
who had never yet been defeated in argument, should assemble and confute
the young queen, which if they failed to do they were at once to be put to
death.

Catharine on hearing that she was to be brought up before kings and
rulers for the sake of her Lord and Saviour, offered up the following beautiful
prayer :

"Christ. God, Thou Son of God — svvreet, compassionate Jesus, of all odors
sweetest. Thou Almighty God, Thy Father's Wisdom, Thou that didst teach
Thy disciples, that they should neither be confounded nor afraid of torment
nor any worldly tribulation — but warnedst them well how men would afflict
and drag them unlawfully, and didst comfort them so that it was easy for them
to endure all that men did to them and all that they suffered, for Thy dear
love, precious Lord, and Thyself didst say: 'When they deliver you up, take

190

THE OPEN COURT.

no thought how or what ye shall say, for it shall be given you in that same
hour what ye shall speak, for it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your
Father that speaketh in you' — Lord abide with me and keep that which thou
didst promise us, and put O Jesu such sayings in my mouth to-morrow and
give such power and strength to my words, that they who are come against thy
dear name to oppose me to my face with their worldly prudence may be over-
ruled by Thy wisdom, and by Thy great prophecy master them, so that they
may be totally checked and silenced or be converted to Thee, and worship
Thy name, who with God the Father, and with the Holy Ghost ever livest in
the world of all worlds eternally."

When she had finished praying, an angel, by some said to have been the
Archangel Michael, appeared to her, strengthening her.

The next day, when called before the assembled court, she went saying:
"I am determined to know none save Jesus Christ, my Lord and my Beloved,
and I will destroy the wisdom of these worldly men, and reject the under-
standing of the worldly wise."

When she entered, all refused to speak until she had spoken, and she set
forth the great Doctrine of the Incarnation in His twofold nature of the
God-Man with great clearness, and when her opponents argued that it was
impossible for God to die or for man to triumph over death she proved so
conclusively that it was God in His humanity that died and God in His divin-
ity who triumphed over death, that they were one and all converted and de-
clared that they were willing to suffer martyrdom for the faith which she had
expounded with such skill, and begged that they might be baptized.

The Emperor ordered them all to be burned, and their hands and feet
being dislocated and bound together thej'- were consigned to the flames, Catha-
rine meanwhile assuring them that baptism by water was not needed since
they were to be baptized with fire and the Spirit, and cheering them with the
hope of the glorious eternity where she hoped soon to join them. Christians
came by night and buried them, on November 13, A. D. 307.

The Emperor then sent for Catharine and used every inducement to win
her for himself, promising her power, wealth, position, even the half of his
throne, if she would renounce her faith. Nothing, however, would move her,
and he commanded that she should be stripped and scourged. The fair form
and face were horribly disfigured and she was cast into the torture-house for
twelve days without food, the Emperor meanwhile commanding Cursates,
known as "the Devil's herald," to invent a fresh torture for her at the end
of that time ; and to him is attributed the invention of the diabolical wheel
known as "catharine-wheel."

It consisted of four wheels, the spokes and felloes of which were to be
driven through with iron goads, so that the spikes and iron prongs so sharp
and so strong might pierce through and project far on the other side. Two
wheels turned either contrary to each other, and yet both one way, and the
other two turned one way also but contrary to the former, so that when the
first two would cast upward whatever thing they caught, the other two would
draw it and dash it downward. So frightful was the contrivance that horror
seized every one when he looked upon it.

While the wheel was in the making Catharine was made to sit by and
watch, that the dismal sounds might cause her to cease her follies or else
be torn to pieces by it. She in spite of all remained firm: and amid crowds

MISCELLANEOUS. 191

the fair maiden was placed to be torn and piteously rent if she would not
listen or obey. But she lifted up her eyes and cried to Heaven full loudly
with her heart, but with still voice :

"Almighty God, manifest now Thy power, and do honor to Thy high name,
Heavenly Lord, and in order to confirm those in the true faith who are con-
verted unto Thee and that Maxene and all his party may be confounded, smite
sharply upon it that all the four wheels may be shattered to pieces."

This" was hardly said when an angel came with wonderful flight, flying
downward and drove straight down toward it like a thunderclap and struck
it such a blow that it began to rattle and to cleave asunder, to burst and to
break as if it had been brittle glass, both the wood and the iron, and to dart
forth whizzing the fragments among the crowd with such force that full 4999
of that accursed folk were slain. There one might have heard the heathen
hounds yell and cry on every side. The Christians laughed for gladness and
praised the Saviour who helpeth His people everywhere.

The Emperor was completely baffled, and his wife who watched from
afar adressed him saying:

"Wretched man that thou art, wherefore wilt thou wrestle with the
World's Ruler? What madness maketh thee, thou bitter baleful beast, war
against Him who created thee and all earthly things? Be now convinced,
and acknowledge from what thou hast seen, how mighty and how powerful,
how high and how holy is the God of this Christian whom she worships.
How vengefully will He, all-incensed, avenge Himself on thee. O wretch !
who hast scattered with a stroke, and destroyed on thy account to-day so
many thousands."

INIany, moreover, of the heathen people who had rushed to see the sight,
when they saw the wonder and heard the Empress's words, all at once turned
and cried out;

"Truly, very worthy and deserving of all worship is the maiden's God and
the Christ the Son of God, and Him we know and acknowledge as Lord, and
great Saviour from henceforth, and thy vile idols are all accursed for they
can neither help themselves nor those who serve them."

Maxence, hearing his wife's words and seeing the effect they had on the
people, ordered her to be put to death with the most cruel torture, both breasts
being torn away to the bone, and he commanded that Catharine should be
beheaded.

She, when brought forth, begged of the executioner a few moments for
prayer, and lifting up her eyes to Heaven, said :

"Lord, Light and Life of all true believers, mild Jesu who art Thyself the
reward of maidens, praised and exalted be Thou, great Saviour, and I thank
Thee Lord, that Thou hast permitted me and wouldest that I should be in the
number of Thy w^omen. Lord, be gracious to me now, and grant me what
I desire.

"I request by Thee this boon, that all those who mention my pain and my
suffering unto Thee, dear Lord, and invoke me when they are about to endure
the struggle of death, or whensoever they do this in need or in trouble. Thou
listen to them speedily O Heavenly Saviour !

"Make flee from them all war and want, and unseasonable storms, hunger,
and every heat that depresses and harms them. Lo! I abide here the bite of
the sword's edge, let him who puts me to death do all that he may, let him

192 THE OPEN COURT.

take wliat he can take — the Hfe of my body, I send my soul to the Saviour
in Heaven. Command that it be placed by Thy holy angels in the Heavenly
Company among Thy maidens."

She had no sooner spoken than there came a voice descending from Heaven :

"Come my dearly beloved, come, my spouse, most beloved of women.
Behold the Gate of Eternal Life awaits thee fully opened. The abode of
every joy expecteth and longeth for thy coming — Lo ! all the Assembly of
Virgins and the Company of Heaven are coming to Jiieet thee with the crown
of victory.

"Come now and doubt nothing in regard to all that thou hast prayed for.
All those who think of thee and of thy passion inwardty in their heart, how
thou enduredst death, at every time when they shall invoke thee with love and
true faith, I promise them help speedily from Heaven."

She at these words, .stretched forth her snow-white neck and said to the
executioner: "Jesus Christ, my Life, my Beloved and my Lord hath called
me to Him. Now then quickly perform that which is commanded thee," and
as she bade him he lifted up the baleful sword and struck off her head.

In the same place, instantly two miracles were performed. One of them
was, that there sprang out with the stroke, milk mingled with blood, to bear
witness of her pure virginity; the other — that angels descended from Heaven
and carried her up on high and bore away her body and buried it on Mt.
Sinai, a twenty-nine days' journey from where Moses received the Law.
Pilgrims say that the Lord worketh there many miracles past recount, the
greatest that a stream of oil ever flows from her small bones which have a
healing power wherever they go.

She died Friday, November 25, A. D. 307.

St. Catharine was excellent and miraculous in five things :
L Wisdom — having a full knowledge of all that was excellent and mirac-
ulous.
H. Knowledge of herself, and power of self-government as well as of the

people and realms she had under her.
HL The wisdom which learns of God by contemplation and by knowledge

of the mysteries of the faith.
IV. She had a knowledge of the world, knowing its wretchedness and sin-
fulness, despising its wealth and pleasures, preferring the love of ever-
lasting life and God Himself.
V. She was long-suffering and patient, and she maintained her chastity
under the most trying and difficult circumstances ; she had a keen sense
of justice.

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AN ETHICAL SYSTEM

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EDUCATION IN ANCIENT ISRAEL

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The Rival Philosophies

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Now the Church Has Taken

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Do you know why nine out o»
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— So long as half the children
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— So long as China has only
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cur shores threatens the prob-
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— Half the world is illiterate
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— Over one million people have
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— 100,000 destitute children must now be
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Essays on Numbers. By Richard Dede-
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