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THE MONIST
A QUARTERLY MAGAZINE
DEVOTED TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
VOLUME
CHICAGO
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
LONDON AGENTS
KEG AN PAUL, TRENCH, TROBNEK * CO., LTD.
\
m
COPYRIGHT BY
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING Co.
1910-1911
CONTENTS OF VOLUME XXI.
ARTICLES AND AUTHORS.
PAGE
Affective Tendencies, On the Mnemonic Origin and Nature of. By Eugenio
Rignano 321
Arreat, Lucien. On the Abuses of the Notion of the Unconscious 267
Arrhenius, Svante. Infinity of the Universe 161
Arrhenius, Svante, Comment on His "Infinity of the Universe." By Paul
Carus 285
Becoming ( Poem) . By John Wesley Powell 398
Boodin, John Elof. The Divine Five-Fold Truth, 288; From Pythagoras
to William James, 73.
Borinski, Prof. K., on W. B. Smith's Biblical Criticism 307
Buddhism, Contributions of, to Christianity. By Richard Garbe 509
Buddhist Criticism, Work to be Done in. By Albert J. Edmunds 304
Carus, Paul.
Dr. Epstein on the Tabernacle 633
The Finiteness of the World (Comment on S. Arrhenius) 285
Herder's Poems The Self and Personality 92
The Ideal and Life (Schiller's Poem with Comment) 278
Logic of Lunacy 449
Mach and his Work 19
Max Stirner, the Predecessor of Nietzsche 376
Montgomery's "Revelation of Present Experience" 405
The New Logic and the New Mathematics 630
Rignano's Theory of Acquired Characteristics 432
Celsus on Christianity, The Attack of. By Bernhard Pick 223
Chance, Games of. By Alfred H. Lloyd 296
Chatley, Herbert. On the Magic Circle 137
Christ Myth of Drews, The. By A. Kampmeier 412
Christianity and Its Defenders, Early Attacks on. By Bernhard Pick ... 43
Christianity, The Attack of Celsus on. By Bernhard Pick 223
Christianity, Contributions of Buddhism to. By Richard Garbe 509
Divine Five- Fold Truth, The (With Editorial Comment and Author's
Reply). By John Elof Boodin 288
Drews, The Christ Myth of. By A. Kampmeier 412
Eccentric Literature. By Arthur MacDonald 437
Ecclesiastes, Greek Influence in. By A. H. Godbey 174
iv THE MONIST.
PACE
Edmunds, Albert J. Work to be Done in Buddhist Criticism 304
Epstein, Ephraim M. The Construction of the Tabernacle 567
Epstein, Dr., on the Tabernacle. By Paul Carus 633
Fetish of Originality, The. By Edmund Noble 454
Frierson, L. S. Notes on Pandiagonal and Associated Magic Squares ... 141
Games of Chance. By Alfred H. Lloyd 269
Garbe, Richard. Contributions of Buddhism to Christianity 509
Geometry, Remarks on Dr. Carus's View Concerning (With Editorial
Comment) . By Yoshio Mikami 126
Godbey, A. H. The Greek Influence in Ecclesiastes 174
Greek Influence in Ecclesiastes. By A. H. Godbey 174
Herder, Gottfried. Personality (Poem), 99; The Self (Poem), 104.
Ideal and Life, The. (Schiller's Poem). Tr. by Paul Carus 278
Infinity of the Universe. By Svante Arrhenius 161
James, William, From Protagoras to. By John E. Boodin 73
Josephson, A. G. S. A Philosophical Work of A. Vannerus 475
Josephus and Tacitus on Christ. By A. Kampmeier 109, 124
Josephus and Tacitus on Christ. By William Benjamin Smith 119
Jourdam, Philip E. B. The Philosophy of Mr. B*rtr*nd R*ss*ll, 481;
Some Advances in Logic, 564.
Jourdain, Philip E. B., In Comment on Articles of. By Paul Carus 630
Kampmeier, A. The Christ Myth of Drews, 412; Josephus and Tacitus on
Christ, 109, 124,
Lane, Charles Alva. The Self and Personality. (Poems of Herder with
Editorial Introduction) 93
Langfeld, Herbert S. Titchener's System of Psychology 624
Lloyd, Alfred H. Games of Chance 296
Logic and the New Mathematics, The New. By Paul Carus 630
Logic of Lunacy. By Paul Carus , 449
Logic, Some Advances in. By Philip E. B. Jourdain 564
Lovejoy, Arthur O. Schopenhauer as an Evolutionist 195
Lunacy, The Logic of. By Paul Carus 449
MacDonald, Arthur. Eccentric Literature 437
Mach and His Work, Professor. By Paul Carus 19
Magic Circle, On the. Herbert Chatley 137
Magic Squares, Notes on Pandiagonal and Associated. By L. S. Frierson. 141
Magic Squares, Two More Forms of. By Harry A. Sayles 152
Mathematics, The New Logic and the New. By Paul Carus 630
Mikami, Yoshio. Remarks on Dr. Carus's View Concerning Geometry... 126
Mnemonic Origin and Nature of Affective Tendencies, On the. By Euge-
nio Rignano 321
Monists, General Congress of 307
Montgomery's "Revelation of Present Experience." By Paul Carus 405
Nietzsche, Friedrich, and his Doctrine of Will to Power. By Charles C.
Peters 357
Nietzsche, Max Stirner the Predecessor of. By Paul Carus 376
Noble, Edmund. The Fetish of Originality 454
Originality, The Fetish of. By Edmund Noble 454
Personality. (Herder's Poem) Tr. by C. A. Lane 99
CONTENTS OF VOLUME XXI. V
PAGE
Peters, Charles C. Friedrich Nietzsche and his Doctrine of Will to Power. 357
Philosophical Poems: Personality, by Herder, 99; The Self, by Herder,
104; The Ideal and Life, by Schiller, 278; Becoming, by J. W.
Powell, 398.
Pick, Bernhard. The Attack of Celsus on Christianity, 223; Early At-
tacks on Christianity and its Defenders 43
Powell, John Wesley. Becoming ( Poem) 398
Prince, John D. Seidenadel's Grammar of the Bontoc Igorot Language.. 471
Protagoras to William James, From. By John E. Boodin • 73
Psychology, Titchener's System of. By Herbert S. Langfeld 624
Revelation of Present Experience, The (Montgomery). By Paul Carus. 405
Rignano, Eugenio. On the Mnemonic Origin and Nature of Affective
Tendencies 321
Rignano's Theory of Acquired Characteristics. By Paul Carus 432
Russell, Mr. Bertrand, The Philosophy of. By Philip E. B. Jourdain . . . 481
Salttr, William Mackintire. Schopenhauer's Type of Idealism I
Sayles, Harry A. Two More Forms of Magic Squares 152
Schiller, Friedrich. The Ideal and Life (Poem) 278
Schopenhauer as an Evolutionist. By Arthur O. Lovejoy 195
Schopenhauer's Type of Idealism. By William Mackintire Salter i
Self, The (Herder's Poem). Tr. by C. A. Lane 104
Smith, William Benjamin, Comment on Josephus and Tacitus 119
Smith, William B., Biblical Criticism of. By Prof. K. Borinski 307
Stirner, Max, The Precedessor of Nietzsche. By Paul Carus 376
Tabernacle, The Construction of the. By Ephraim M. Epstein 567
Titchener's System of Psychology. By Herbert S. Langfeld 624
Unconscious, On the Abuses of the Notion of the. By Lucien Arreat . . . 267
Universe, Infinity of the. By Svante Arrhenius 161
World, The Finiteness of the. By Paul Carus 285
BOOK REVIEWS.
Allbutt, Sir Clifford, and Others. Medicine and the Church 478
Bawden, H. Heath. The Principles of Pragmatism 477
Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory 318
Boutroux, Emile. Rudolf Eucken's Kampf um einen neuen Idealismus.. 478
Burali-Forti and Marcolongo. Elements de calcul vectoriel 638
Cassirer, Ernst. Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Phildsophie und Wissen-
schaft der neueren Zeit 639
Deussen, Paul. Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophic mit besonderer
Berucksichtigung der Religionen 479
Dewing, Arthur Stone. Life as Reality 640
Drews, Arthur. The Christ Myth 412
Heymans, G. Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik auf Grundlage der Erfah-
rung 480
Hilprecht Anniversary Volume, The 309
Houssay, Frederic. La morphologic dynamique 640
Jannettaz, E. Les roches et leurs elements mineralogiques 320
Klimke, Fr. Der Monismus und seine philosophischen Grundlagen 470
Lenicque, Henri. Geologic nouvelle 640
VI THE MONIST.
PACK
Losacco, Michele. Razionalismo e misticismo 639
Montgomery, Edmund J. The Revelation of Present Experience 405
Miinsterbtrg, Hugo. Psychotherapy 477
Naber, H. A. Das Problem des Pythagoras 476
Ostwald, Wilhelm. Natural Philosophy 635
Rignano, E. On the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics 432
Seidenadel, C. W. The First Grammar of the Language Spoken by the
Bontoc Igorot 470
Stallo, J. B. Die Begriffe und Theorien der modernen Physik 480
Vailati, G. Scritti 480
Vannerus, Allen. Till det andliga lifvets filosofi 475
VOL. XXI. No. ,. JANUARY, „„.
THE MONIST
A Quarterly Magazine
Devoted to the Philosophy of Science
Founded by EDWARD C. HEGELER.
CONTENTS:
SCHOPENHAUER'S TYPE OF IDEALISM.
WTT.LTAM MACKINTIRE SALTER
PROFESSOR MACH AND His WORK.
EDITOR ................................................................. 19
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY AND ITS DEFENDERS.
BERNHARD PICK .................................................... 43
FROM PROTAGORAS TO WILLIAM JAMES.
JOHN E. BOODIN ....................................................... 73
THE SELF AND PERSONALITY. Poems of Herder translated into English.
CHARLES ALVA LANE ................................................. 92
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
Josephus nnd Tacitus on Christ. A. KAMPMEIER ............................ 109
Comment by William Benjamin Smith ......................................... 1 19
Comments and Addenda by Mr. Kampmeier .................. . ................. 124
Remarks on Dr. Carus's View Concerning Geometry (With Editorial Comment).
YOSHIO MIKAMI ...................................................... 126
On the Magic Circle. HERBERT CHATLEY ................................ 137
Notes on Pandiagonal and Associated Magic Squares. L. S. FRIERSON ....... 141
Two More Forms of Magic Squares. HARRY A. SAYLES ................... 152
Work to be Done in Buddhist Criticism. ALBERT J. EDMUNDS ............. 158
CHICAGO
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
1911
COPYRIGHT BY
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING Co.
1910
I
VOL. XXI. JANUARY, 1911. NO. i.
THE MONIST
SCHOPENHAUER'S TYPE OF IDEALISM.
M
Y object in this paper is to bring out Schopenhauer's
view of the nature of the world of objects. Suppose
that the reader and I are in a university lecture room, what,
we may ask, are the desk, the seats, the floor, the walls and
our own persons as visible objects to one another ? Accord-
ing to Schopenhauer's analysis they are really our sensa-
tions— which, however, we combine and separate, order
and arrange, and so make into the distinct objects before
us. The desk means a certain color, a certain hardness
and smoothness — its outline or form being the spatial line
or lines where these sensations cease. The total ordered
group of sensations we call the desk. It is the same, mutatis
mutandis, with all the objects in the room — even with our
own persons : one hardness, color or combination of colors,
form and outline is a seat, another the floor, another you,
another I and so on.
How then do these objects exist? If they are funda-
mentally our sensations, are they really independent of us,
as in our ordinary mood we think? Are they not rather
our experience — one experience (or set of experiences)
being localized here, another there and so on?
Suppose, however, we were not on hand, and the ex-
perience did not exist, what then? Would the objects be
non-existent ? Of course, ex hypothesi, our persons would
not be here, but how about the desk, the seats, floor and
2 THE MONIST.
walls? Would they be non-existent? This, perhaps in
unduly simple form, is the question of idealism or real-
ism. If one believes that the desk with its color, hard-
ness and outline would exist just as truly with nobody
at hand to experience it as it does with ourselves pres-
ent, he is a realist. If, on the other hand, he holds that
it would not exist under such circumstances, that it is
real only in the experience of you or me or somebody
like us, he is an idealist. Even if the realist concedes
that some of the properties of the desk (its color, for in-
stance, or its hardness) are only our experience, while still
maintaining that something there, however indefinable,
exists independently, he is none the less a realist (though
what may be called a critical one). And the idealist who,
while asserting the experiential nature of all objects, admits
that something must be there which gives rise to or occa-
sions our experience (itself being independent of experi-
ence), is no longer an absolute, but a critical idealist. In
fact, the critical realist and critical idealist may not rad-
ically disagree, their opposed names being simply descrip-
tive of the contrasted points of view from which they set
out. But an absolute realist and an absolute idealist are
antithetical to each other. Yes, a critical realist and an
absolute idealist are radically opposed — and, for that mat-
ter, a critical idealist and an absolute idealist, since to the
absolute idealist anything at all outside experience, even if
it be an x or a question mark, anything non-mental what-
soever, is unreal and absurd.
Now Schopenhauer is an idealist to start with (whether
an absolute one, we shall see later) ; he belongs in general
in the idealistic camp. Objects exist to his mind in relation
to a subject, not outside. Sensation itself, he says, is a
poor thing; and something more than sensibility, namely,
the intellect or understanding, is needed to build up the
world and construct all the definite objects in time and
SCHOPENHAUER S TYPE OF IDEALISM. 3
space that we see. Yet there are no other elements to build
with, no other construction-material, than what sensation
gives us — and sensation apart from a sentient subject,
something that has sensation, is a thing in the air, impos-
sible and unmeaning. Yes, that process of grouping and
locating in a definite space and time which turns the con-
fused mass of sensations into recognizable objects — this
does not make them any more things really independent
of us. The mind groups them and they are grouped to the
mind; the mind locates them and they are located to the
mind. Even when they are connected according to the
law of causality, it is the mind that connects them and they
are connected to the mind. In other words, the whole being
of objects, their sensational substance, and the form we
give them, is relative to ourselves. This, of course, is not
saying that the desk, the seats, the walls here do not exist
outside our bodies. Our bodies are objects like any other
objects ; they are made up of sensations and the form which
the mind gives them, just as the table or the seats are; and
just as the desk is separate from the seats, so is my body
separate from yours. The desk is here when my body is
out of doors, and when my body is gone absolutely, that
of my readers, let me hope, will indefinitely continue.
The idealistic position involves no violence to any of the
distinctions and assertions that common sense makes. Ideal-
ism only says that these objects do not exist outside our
minds, that our own bodies exist only in our own or some-
body's mind — in a word, that they are objects of experi-
ence, not realities outside experience, and that if there were
no experiencing beings or selves, what they would be be-
comes a mystery, if indeed it has any sense to speak of them
at all. What is a pain if there is nobody to feel it, what
is a taste if there is nobody to taste it? Now just that is
the whole perceptible world, including our own persons,
if there is no subject that feels, perceives, experiences them.
4 THE MONIST.
Such is the idealistic view, and of it Schopenhauer is one
of the most pronounced representatives. The whole matter
is so clear to him that he hardly argues about it. "For-
saken of all the gods," he says in the Dissertation,1 is one
who imagines that the perceptible world standing there
outside us is there without our contributing anything to it ;
and that then by means of bare sensation it finds its way
into our heads, where it exists over again just as it does
outside! A world outside consciousness — and then when
consciousness arrives, a second world, entirely separate
from it and yet like it to a hair!2 It seems absurd to
Schopenhauer.
I say he hardly argues about his idealism. It seems
to him simply a matter of careful reflection and clear think-
ing (Selbstbesinnung), He follows Kant's searching anal-
ysis.3 He even goes further than Kant — or at least he
holds to the Kant of the first edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason, and chides him for making concessions to prejudice
and so-called "common sense" in the second, saying that
no one really understands Kant who knows only the second
edition.4 Kein Objekt ohne Subjekt ("No object without
a subject"), he declares. "The world is my idea" is another
way of putting it. For to be an object in relation to a sub-
ject, to be an object of a subject, and to be an idea, are in
essence the same thing, idea (V orstellung) being used here
simply to signify what is ideal or subjective in its nature
as contrasted with something supposed to exist in itself.
All our ideas, says Schopenhauer, are objects of the subject
and all objects of the subject are really our ideas.5 Indeed,
out of relation to a subject, Schopenhauer says, an object
1 Werke (Frauenstadt ed.) Vol. I, "Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des
Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde," p. 80.
• Werke, III, 11.
* Werke, I, "Ueber die vierfache Wurzel etc.," 32.
4 Werke, II, 515-516.
» Werke, I, op. cit., 37.
SCHOPENHAUER S TYPE OF IDEALISM. 5
is schlechthin Nichts, "simply nothing"; when one leaves
this relation out of account, nothing is left; the existence
of the object in itself is an Unding (unmeaning) and van-
ishes.8 So he said in 1813; and thirty years later he de-
clared with equal positiveness, "Never can there be an ab-
solute and purely objective existence, for always and in the
nature of the case an object has its existence in the con-
sciousness of a subject and is really its idea.7
So far does Schopenhauer go in a feeling of this sort,
that the world of objects becomes almost dreamlike to him.
It is real to us, of course, as our dreams are while they last,
but he speaks at times as if it were hardly more real. I
say "almost" and "hardly" and speak with qualification at
this point, for we shall soon see that Schopenhauer did not
hold this dream-view absolutely. Here are instances of
his two sets (divergent sets) of statement:
i. In one passage, after remarking that Kant's argu-
ment proves that things cannot exist independently as they
appear to us, he says the similarity of such a world to a
dream is manifest.8
Again, things in space and time have only "an apparent
dreamlike existence."8 Still again there is, he says, a close
relationship between life and dreams, and no definite line
can be drawn between them.10 In this connection he finds
the Indian sacred books suggestive, and frequently uses the
Hindu expression, "veil of Maja" (illusion) for the world
of perception, indicating thereby his feeling of its more or
less illusory nature. He even says dreams and the objective
world are leaves of one and the same book;11 they are
6Cf. the passage from the first edition of the Dissertation, "Ueber die
vierfache Wurzel etc." (Rudolstadt, 1813), p. 33, cited by J. Volkelt, Arthur
Schopenhauer (3d ed., 1907), pp. 77-78.
1 Werke, III, 6.
' Werke, I, op. cit., 21.
• Werke, II, 214.
" Werke, II, 20-21. Cf. Ill, 4.
u Werke, II, 21.
6 THE MONIST.
poured out of one form (aus einer Form gegossen12) ; the
function of the brain that calls forth the world of dreams
has equal part in putting before us the world of actual ob-
jects.13 He confesses that sometimes, particularly in listen-
ing to music, his fancy plays with the thought that the
lives of all men are only dreams of an eternal Spirit, bad
dreams and good ones, and that death is an awakening —
not our awakening, of course, but His.
2. And now the contrasted passages. In one, he re-
marks in general on our power of distinguishing the real
connections of objects from fancied connections, and real
objects from phantasms, and makes the significant state-
ment that in sleep we can not do this, inasmuch as the brain
is then isolated from the peripheral nervous system (the
outer senses, that is) and does not receive impressions from
without ; hence dreams, where phantasms are taken for real
objects because there are no real objects to compare them
with — and only when we awake, Schopenhauer says, do
we observe our error.14 In another passage Schopenhauer
even argues that if the world were only an unsubstantial
dream or a ghostlike castle in the air, it would not be
worthy of our serious attention.15 Indeed, Schopenhauer's
whole view of the world as ultimately will (which I can
only refer to in this article) rests on the idea that what we
call objects are not merely what we see, not merely these
complexes of sensation that we can handle, arrange and
causally connect, but that they have an inner being of a
totally different character. No one imagines that dream
trees or desks or persons have any such substantial being
lying back of them — not even Schopenhauer. We are
obliged to conclude then that his comparison of life to
M Werke, III, 4.
u Compare this and other quotations in Volkelt, op. cit., 84.
14 Werke, I, op. cit., 89.
"Werke, II, 118.
SCHOPENHAUER S TYPE OF IDEALISM. 7
dreams must be taken with circumspection. The language
he uses is approximate, literary, more or less emotional,
rather than scientific. In a certain respect objects are like
dreams — that is all he really means to say.
For all this Schopenhauer belongs primarily in the ide-
alistic camp. Whatever may be the truth about objects
ultimately, what we are accustomed to call objects, this vivid
world we see and touch and hear and taste and smell, the ob-
jects next at hand and those in farthest space, those that last
for a day and those that last for centuries, objects without
us and our own bodies including our brains and the finest
elements of which they are composed — all these are only
our experience (or somebody's experience, or if not at any
given moment experience then possible experience) and
apart from experience absolutely, they lose all shadow of
meaning — this is his view. I have said he does not argue
about it, i. e., attempt to prove it. Yet certain considera-
tions in its favor he does not fail to advance. For instance,
it was customary among philosophers in his day to regard
space and time as a priori forms of the mind rather than
as self-existent realities, and Schopenhauer does likewise.
All objects that appear in space and time (and practically
all the objects we have been speaking of do) are hence so
far subjective. Further, causality is to Schopenhauer a
priori and subjective. So far then as objects are causally
connected, they become still more subjective. Schopen-
hauer repeatedly argues that the world as we picture it in
space and time and ordered according to the law of causal-
ity, cannot be independently real, for space and time and
causality are only forms of our minds.
Another consideration he urges is that in our experi-
ence of the world we come on the inexplicable and incon-
ceivable. For if our knowledge took hold of things as they
exist in themselves, we should not encounter these mys-
teries— and the fact that we do proves that our knowledge
8 THE MONIST.
is of appearances not realities.16 Still another is that time
of itself produces no physical effect — it is the mere form in
which causes and effects succeed one another. The fact
that it produces nothing, alters nothing, shows that it is
a mere idea of the mind.17 Schopenhauer even uses the
phenomena of clairvoyance, which in general he credited,
as showing the non-reality of time and space. If the future
were really separate from the present, and the distant from
the here, the gulf could not be leaped between them.18 In
these and other ways, convincing and unconvincing, Scho-
penhauer sought to give plausibility to his idealistic view.
But because idealist, is he absolute idealist? The ab-
solute idealist says not only that the things we know are
our experience, but that there are no things outside of ex-
perience (i. e., somebody's, human or non-human), that
existence and experience (actual or possible) are equiva-
lent, or at least strictly correlative, terms.
Schopenhauer uses language almost as sweeping; and
yet puzzled as we may be, and as his commentators have
been, I feel no hesitation in answering the question in sum-
mary fashion: Schopenhauer was not an absolute idealist.
He does, indeed, object to Kant's way of getting at the inde-
pendent realities — i. e., to his using the category of causal-
ity and conceiving them as the causes of our sensations19-
but that there are independent realities he holds as firmly
as Kant did. Schopenhauer is the antithesis of Hegel, and
what is called post-Kantian philosophy generally — the an-
tithesis of philosophers like Bradley and Royce to-day.
They hold that things existing independently of a subject
(some kind of a subject) are an absurdity; he, I might
almost say, makes the supposition of independent, self-
existing things the basis of his philosophy.
16 Werke, III, 217-218.
* Werke, III, 341 ; VI, 41.
18 Werke, VI, 45 J V, 280 f., 282 f., 321.
M Werke, I, op. cit., 81, 83; cf. II, 200, 499, and particularly 516-517.
SCHOPENHAUER S TYPE OF IDEALISM. 9
Let me at once refer to passages. In one he says that
objects in space and time exist only to a subject, because
space and time are the forms of a subject ; but these objects
may have an existence in and for themselves, and for this
they may require no subject.20 In another passage he goes
further and says that a perceived object must have some
manner of existence in itself, for otherwise it would be
merely another's idea and we should have an absolute ideal-
ism which in the end would be theoretic egoism and involve
the falling away of all reality and the reduction of the
world to a mere subjective phantasm.21 The customary
name for theoretic egoism nowadays is "solipsism" — mean-
ing, to put it popularly, that I exist (each one saying this
for himself) and the world is my idea, and there is nothing
beside ; it might be called the theory of "I alone." Schopen-
hauer's point is that if things have no existence indepen-
dent of us, if the world is merely our idea, then we do not
get out of ourselves at all and we are unable to posit even
the existence of other persons aside from their bodies.
No one has argued this with greater force than Ed-
mund Montgomery, a writer well known to the readers of
The Monist.22 Only on premises antagonistic to absolute
idealism, only by supposing that things may exist whether
we experience or think them or not, can we reach other
minds than our own. Your mind does not exist because I
think or perceive it, your feeling does not exist because I
feel it — they exist in themselves, and would whether I or
any one else had experience of them or not. If then I re-
strict myself to what I can experience, if this is all I call
existence, and anything independent of my experience is
an unreality, then you are an unreality to me in your inner
" Werke, III, 6.
11 Werke, III, 216.
** See his Philosophical Problems in the Light of Vital Organization (G.
P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, 1907), chapters V and VI of Part I,
"The Epistemological Dilemma" and "The Epistemological Standpoint."
IO THE MONIST.
being, and we are all (supposing there is an "all") unreal-
ities to one another. In other words, the refusal to credit
the possibility of independent reality (i. e., absolute ideal-
ism) involves logically solipsism. This is Schopenhauer's
contention. And he revolts against such a conclusion as
little less than monstrous. Any one who soberly holds it
he thinks would be a fit subject for a mad-house, and should
be there not so much for argument as for a cure.23
Still another passage. Granting, he says in substance,
that the world as we see and experience it is our idea, we
yet wish to know the significance of the idea. We ask if
it is nothing more than idea (in which case it would be no
better than an unsubstantial dream or a ghostly phantom
and be unworthy of our attention), or, if it is not some-
thing else, something in addition, and if so, what.24 In
the same vein is the remark that if phenomena are not to
be empty phantoms, but to have a meaning, then they
must point to something, be the expression of something
that is not, as they are, merely an idea for a subject,
and so dependent on a subject, but an independent real-
ity.25 Moreover, Schopenhauer felt, as already indicated,
that there is something strange and inexplicable in the
phenomena of the world. The specific nature and man-
ner of working of each particular thing (or at least class
of things) is mysterious; we can only discover the con-
ditions under which a thing acts in the peculiar manner
it does — the time, the place, the antecedent circumstances
— but the ultimate why of the action is undiscoverable.28
It is so with human beings. The motives operating on a
man do not explain his act till we know what sort of a
man he is; and this, his original disposition or character,
* Werke, II, 124. Cf. Volkelt's paragraph on the subject, op. cit., 158.
"Werke, II, 118.
* Werke, II, 142.
"Cf. my article on "Schopenhauer's Contact with Pragmatism" in the
Philosophical Review, March 1910, pp. 140-150.
SCHOPENHAUER S TYPE OF IDEALISM. II
is a mere datum or brute fact. Things are so and so, and
no reasons, ultimately, can be given for them. This un-
accountability and unfathomability of the world, its purely
empirical character, was to Schopenhauer proof that in it
we have something more than merely mental phenomena
which as products of the subject would sooner or later be
intelligible to the subject just as are those other unques-
tioned products, the forms of space and time.27
Once he makes a formal set statement, and I will not
paraphrase but literally translate it: "A thing-in-itself
signifies something present that is independent of our per-
ception and hence that really exists. To Democritus this
was formed matter ; in principle it was the same to Locke ;
to Kant it was x\ to me will."28 He adds, every being
(Wesen) in nature is both phenomenon and a thing-in-
itself29 — i. e., exists in relation to a subject and also inde-
pendently. Anything more precise and definite could
hardly be desired. In the last analysis Schopenhauer is
a realist of the most positive type.
How then can we reconcile the opposite poles of Scho-
penhauer's thought? "No object without a subject," he at
first affirms ; and now, "There are things independent of a
subject." Is it a contradiction? So some critics assert,
for instance Ueberweg,30 — even some not unfriendly ones,
including Volkelt who has written perhaps the best book
on Schopenhauer.31 Nor can we ease our minds by saying
that consistency is not necessary. Emerson called the de-
mand for consistency the hobgoblin of little minds ; but while
"Werke, III, 217-218; cf. II, n6f., 129, 144 ff., i6iff.; IV, "Die beiden
Grundprobleme etc.," 46 f. See Volkelt's admirable statement, op. cit., 158-160.
* Werke, VI, 96.
" Werke, VI, 97.
"Geschichte der Philosophic (4th ed.), Ill, 285 and 290 n. Ueberweg
says that Schopenhauer by his sweeping assertion, Kein Objekt ohne Subjekt,
denies the Transcendentales Objekt or Ding an sich, which Kant allowed.
n Op. cit., 155-156. Cf. Hartmann, Gesammelte Studien und Aufsatze
(Berlin, 1876), 637!, 640 f.; Thilo, Ueber Schopenhauer* ethischen Atheismus,
15 ff. ; Mobius, Ueber Schopenhauer, 57-59.
12 THE MONIST.
this may possibly do for the literary man or the prophet, it
will not do for the philosopher. If he really contradicts him-
self, it is fatal to him, and Schopenhauer recognizes this.
Though he once remarked that pointing out contradictions
is the commonest and most notorious way of refuting an
author,32 and though in contrast with Kant, so scrupulous
or even pedantic in his qualifications and refinements, he
philosophized as Volkelt has said in a royally careless and
straight up and down manner,33 he would haye been the
first to admit that if one said a thing and then denied it
in the same sense, it was the end of him as a thinker. In
interpreting Schopenhauer we have to have a little large-
ness of mind and sympathy, and not be tied down by words.
The key to the understanding of his apparently incon-
sistent view on this subject lies, I am persuaded, in a
double use of the term "objects." Sometimes he uses this
term loosely and popularly, as we all do ; at other times he
uses it strictly and scientifically.34 In one sense anything
is an object that we can talk about at all — a desk, a tree,
a natural force, an ego, an angel, a God, the inhabitants
of Mars, things we know and things we do not know; in
short all sorts of things mixed up together. In another
sense an object is something that we can put clearly and
definitely before the mind — of which we can say, There
it is, look at it ; see its form and outline, notice its character-
istics, a clear, distinct, recognizable, almost sensible thing.
Now many objects in the broad vague sense are not objects
in the special and more precise sense. Try to think of a
natural force, for instance — have you any clear picture be-
fore you? Try to think of an ego or subject — can you
** Grisebach, Schopenhauers Brief e, 135.
* Volkelt, op. cit., 64.
MCf. language about the "Begriff Objekt im eigentlichsten Sinn," "derLeib
selbst nicht eigentlich als Objekt," "jede Erkenntniss eines eigentlichen Ob-
jekts," (Werke, II, 23). Schopenhauer recognizes the obligation of philosophy
"in allem was sie sagt, sensu stricto et proprio wahr zu sein" ; it goes without
saying however that he often uses words loosely.
SCHOPENHAUER S TYPE OF IDEALISM. 13
distinctly conceive of it ? Try to think of the inhabitants of
Mars — have you any real idea of them at all? In other
words, many things we talk about we find are really quite
hazy to us, and this comes pretty near to saying that they
are not objects at all ; they are surmises, vague ideas, and
yet with more or less assurance (according to the particu-
lar case) we may say they have something of reality at-
tached to them. They are not quite nothing, though we
cannot picture them or make a recognizable object out of
them.
Now on analysis we find that the things that do become
real objects to us are chiefly (I do not say, exclusively) of
one class. They are the things made up out of our sensa-
tions— the desks, trees, rivers and lakes, the moon and
stars, our bodies and so on. We can picture them most
definitely. We may believe in the existence of other things
or even be most sure about them — as, for example, that
there is more to us than our bodies, or that another person
is now experiencing a pleasure, or that an animal is run-
ning away in fear ; and yet when we try to put clearly be-
fore us that other more which we are, or make a distinct
object of that pleasure or fear, we find that they more or
less elude us and we say perhaps we cannot make definite
objects of them though we know they are real. That is,
the only things that do become distinct objects to us are the
direct objects of our experience. We see and feel color,
hardness, weight, i. e., the material or physical world
stretching out before us and above us, but we do not see
another person's thought or feel another person's feeling;
we do not even see our own thought or have a sensible ex-
perience of our own inner being and so we cannot even
picture ourselves, not to say others, as we can outer things.
It turns out thus that the objects that are distinct, and
genuinely objects are physical or sensible objects. It is our
height of praise, is it not, to say that something is as plain
14 THE MONIST.
as day, or as evident as the nose on your face. And yet
these physical or sensible objects, being made up of sensa-
tions as they are, are strictly inconceivable apart from a
sentient subject, being indeed simply the experiences of
that subject.
Now if we bear all this in mind, I think we have the
key to Schopenhauer's real view. When he says, "No ob-
ject without a subject," he means no object that is really
an object; i. e., that is distinct, that has any clear marks
by which it may be known and recognized; for all such
objects, according to the matter-of-fact constitution of the
human mind, are sensible objects, experiences by the mind
of its own sensations, worked over, classified and connected
according to its own categories. But when on the other
hand he speaks of objects existing independently of a sub-
ject, as he is most certain that there are, he uses the term
"objects" in the other loose, vague, popular sense in which
anything is an object that may be spoken of at all. When
he wants to be precise, he even says distinctly that these
objects should not be called "objects" and he chides Kant
for speaking of things-in-themselves as objects.35 "Ob-
jects" in this precise sense are only objects of knowledge,
things that stand out clearly before us, and the only or at
least chief things that do this are matters of sensible ex-
perience, things that have no meaning or existence apart
from an experiencing subject; but things that stand dimly
in the background, things we cannot make out, things that
cannot be classified and named, or, if so, are little more
than names — these are not objects and can only be called
such owing to our loose and inaccurate habits of speech.
It is true then that the whole world of our positive
definite knowledge, made up, or built up out of our sensible
experiences as it is, has no existence apart from ourselves ;
* IVerke, II, 206; cf. II, 131, "Dieses Ding an sich. . ., welches als solches
nimmermehr Objekt ist, etc." Also II, 143.
SCHOPENHAUER'S TYPE OF IDEALISM. .15
but this is not inconsistent with the admission that some-
thing lying back of this world and hinted at by it, may
exist quite independently of ourselves — only it is not an
object or objects in any intelligible sense of that word.
Hence, "No object without a subject" is true. "There may
be things existing independently of a subject" is also true.
The desk as such, the tree as such, the moon and stars as
such, i. e., these groups of sensible qualities, light, color,
and so on, that we immediately experience, would not exist
were we, or some beings like us, not here; but something
lying back of these qualities, something they point to, some-
thing they signalize,36 may exist and exist just as truly
when we are not here as when we are. This something, or
rather these somethings, may be vague and indefinable;
they may be no objects, and yet they may be real ; they may
even be more real than the sensible qualities in which they
express themselves to us. For these sensible qualities come
and go; they are while we perceive them, and when we
do not perceive them they are not, while the things them-
selves may have a perduring existence. And it may be
added that a dream differs from a reality in this, that a
dream is a set of sensations that "signalize" nothing be-
yond them, while a reality is a set of sensations that point
to something, are an expression or revelation of something.
Both are subjective in one sense of the term, for neither
dream objects nor real objects can exist without a subject
to experience them (hence Schopenhauer's comparison) ;
but the dream object has nothing behind it and the real
object has. Or more briefly, the world, our actual world,
is a dream and has no self-existence; but it is a dream
that means something, and that is not a dream.
An idealist then as to all this world of our knowledge ;
but a realist in the sense of holding to a sphere of existence
beyond the bounds of positive knowledge — that is what
16 This is a term of Edmund Montgomery's.
l6 . THE MONIST.
Schopenhauer seems to me to be. Knowledge, he virtually
says with a great English poet,
"Knowledge is of things we see."
for the a priori forms of knowledge which he recognizes
are formal merely, and give us no concrete content. Knowl-
edge is built up out of sensation — there is no other. All
our conceptions and judgments and reasonings have no
other ultimate material on which to work or out of which
to build. And yet there may be things other than those
we see, and the very seen and seeable things may mean
something, may indicate, point to something, and this some-
thing be more real than anything we know. What that
something may be conjectured to be, is a question that lies
beyond the limits of the present article.
Before closing, however, I may be allowed to say a
word as to an unconsidered factor, a "sleeping partner" in
our problem. We have been considering objects, but what
about the subject that knows objects, i. e., what about our
veritable selves ? To some it may seem as if we know our-
selves, even if we do not know anything else. Have we
not a little world of our own, or at least each his little
world, made up of our thoughts, our feelings, our desires,
our aspirations, our inner efforts and decisions, that in
contrast to the world without, we know perfectly ? Schopen-
hauer, strange to say, doubts it. He is more or less dubious
about a so-called special science of psychology.37 He thinks
a clear vision of our inner life is hard to get. The mind
is of such a nature that it looks without more easily than
within. It is like a telescope, he says. Look out through
it and all is light and clear ; try to look down within it, and
all is dark. Nothing a priori illuminates that night; our
watch-towers throw all their rays outwards.38
Let us restrict our consideration here to the knowing
wCf., e. g., VI, 20; also Frauenstadt's Memorabilien, 562, quoted in R,
Lehmann's Schopenhauer, 171 n.
** Werke, IV, "Die beiden Grundprobleme, etc." 22.
SCHOPENHAUER'S TYPE OF IDEALISM. 17
side of our nature. We all are that — subjects that know.
But for this there would be no knowledge, there would be
no object. Schopenhauer affirms this. He says subject and
object are not the outcome of knowledge, but the condition
of all knowledge. The relation between them is a unique
relation ; it is not a relation of cause and effect, not one of
reason and conclusion, not one covered by any of the forms
of the principle of sufficient reason.39 It is a relation,
rather, that is the condition of the possibility of the prin-
ciple of sufficient reason. This principle applies to objects
and their relation to one another. The mind knows an
object and seeks to explain it, but it does not seek to explain
that which asks for an explanation nor the relation which
it sustains to the object to be explained. In other words
there is no explanation of the subject proper; it lies out
of the region in which the principle of explanation applies.
We simply are subjects — that is all we can say. We cannot
go back of this primal datum. But even if we cannot
explain, can we not know ourselves as subjects, it may be
asked. Schopenhauer is dubious here too. To know our-
selves as subjects, he virtually says, is to make an object
of the subject, to put it there before us, to consider it, to
observe it, to see what it is like. Schopenhauer says that
this is just what we cannot do. We cannot turn back onj
ourselves and make an object of ourselves and look at it]
That thing we make an object is, ipso facto, not the subject
itself, but a mere idea, a mere imperfect hazy, logical
product. The real subject is not there, but the very thing
that is trying to make itself an object — and can't. If it
could and became an object, it would be no longer subject.
Indeed, if it became an object, who or what would see or
perceive the object? It is that which sees, perceives, and
thinks that is the subject, and it is forever a subject. Even
if you could imagine yourself seeing it or thinking it, it
" Werke. II, 16.
l8 THE MONIST.
would really be not what you saw or thought, but you your-
self that were seeing or thinking. In brief, the subject
that knows cannot be the object of knowledge. This is
what Schopenhauer affirms in almost so many words.40
Let me close with an incident from Schopenhauer's
early Dresden days, when he was in travail with the ideas
of his great work, The World as Will and Idea. His friend
Frauenstadt narrates it, and says that at the time there was
something so unusual in Schopenhauer's manner and bear-
ing that one might almost have .thought him out of his
head. Once he was going around in the city hot-house and
became quite lost in the contemplation of the physiognomy
of the plants. Whence came, he was asking himself, their
so different coloring and shapes ? What would this growth
say to him in its form, so individual and peculiar ? What
is the inner subjective being, the central will, that here
in these leaves and these blossoms is coming to expression ?
He perhaps spoke aloud to himself, and in this way as also
by his gesticulations attracted the attention of the keeper
of the hot-house. The keeper was curious as to who this
extraordinary man might be, and asked him the question
as he was going away. Schopenhauer replied, "Yes, now,
if you could tell me who I am, I should owe you many
thanks." And the keeper looked at him, as if he had a
crazy man before him. It was a bit of humor, Schopen-
hauer remarked to Frauenstadt.41
"If you could tell me who I am !" Doubtless Schopen-
hauer had in mind the general puzzle of the human per-
sonality, but perhaps my readers will grant that what this
subject is that is never object, is a part of the puzzle.
WILLIAM MACKINTIRE SALTER.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
*Cf. Werke, I, "Ueber die vierfache Wurzel etc.," 141; II, 5-6; III, 18.
41 This incident as narrated by Frauenstadt is given in Mobius, Schopen-
hauer, pp. 55-56.
PROFESSOR MACH AND HIS WORK.
A MONG modern physicists Prof. Ernst Mach of Vienna
JL~\ holds a prominent place in the esteem of naturalists
and the general public. His success appears to be mainly
due to the simplicity and accuracy with which he presents
his thoughts, and more than any other scientist he has in-
sisted upon the principle of distinguishing between facts
and theories. While he would allow theories to pass as
hypotheses, which means as assumptions that help us to
think facts in an economical way, he would insist that the
facts of existence are the only realities. But the difficulties
which beset such a positivism as he represents consist in the
question, "What are facts?" Professor Mach, in unison
with the majority of philosophers and scientists, accepts
our sensations, so far as I can see, as the data from which
our investigations start. He analyses these sensations and
calls them the elements of the world.
These elements of the world are to him the ultimate
facts of reality; and right here Professor Mach finds
himself in contrast with other physicists, among whom
we will mention Prof. M. Planck who pursues the opposite
way and in his "Analysis of the Data of Experience,"
adopting the current physical and chemical interpretation
of matter as consisting of atoms, looks upon these atoms
as the ultimate indivisible items of existence and considers
them the only real things.
We will here characterize the leading ideas of Profes-
2O THE MONIST.
sor Mach and at the same time acquaint the reader with
the development of his personality, which shall be done
so far as possible in his own words.
We will say at once that Professor Mach's significance
in science as well as in his private life is based on the
straightforwardness of his way of thinking and living.
There is no pretense about him. He does not want to
appear in a wrong light. He does not decorate himself
with the plumes of others and if he exaggerates or goes
too far in any way it is only when describing his own short-
comings. His statements in his scientific expositions are
always plain and this plainness shows in his private life as
a modesty which is the distinctive mark of a truly great
man. It is extremely characteristic of him that the notes
which he kindly furnished to assist us in understanding
his development are almost exclusively a description of
his shortcomings in school, and the disappointments which
his teachers showed while giving him his elementary in-
struction.
We must here bear in mind that most original thinkers
have been poor scholars. At school we are expected to
memorize, and scholars are passed or reprimanded accord-
ing to the faithfulness with which they are able to repeat,
if possible literally, what they have been taught. Thus it
is quite natural that those who attempt to think for them-
selves will not be regarded as shining lights in school, and
yet when the demands of life approach us the question is
not how well we can repeat what others have said, but
how accurately we can think and with what energy we can
attend to our duties. From his childhood Mach was not
intended to excel by memorizing, but even while his teach-
ers reprimanded him for his dullness of mind, he was
thinking for himself, and when he became acquainted with
the actual problems of science he was able, as was none
of his predecessors, to understand the development of scien-
PROFESSOR MACH AND HIS WORK. 21
tific thought and render the methods of scientific progress
intelligible. Most of Mach's works, especially his Science
of Mechanics, are now known as models of clearness and
exactness, and the teachers of his early childhood would
probably be surprised to learn what a genius was hidden
in this slow and dull boy to whom they had given instruc-
tion in the elements of human knowledge.
The first important work upon which Mach's fame
rests, is his History and Root of the Principle of the Con-
servation of Energy, published in 1872, a considerable time
before naturalists had agreed upon the foundation and
explanation of the theory of the conservation of matter
and energy. The term "energy" was not yet fully accepted
in those days, and the title of Mach's book uses in its place
the German word Arbeit, i. e., "work." His greatest book,
The Science of Mechanics, appeared in 1883, and we need
scarcely fear contradiction if we say that it will remain
forever the classical exposition of this important subject.
In 1886 Mach wrote a short work, which however is ex-
tremely interesting and throws much light on his peculiar
way of thinking, under the title Analysis of Sensations,
and this was followed in 1896 by another compendious
work entitled, The Principles of the Theory of Heat.
Having more and more concentrated his attention on
the problem of cognition he finally published his ideas in
their most mature form in 1905, under the title Cognition
and Error. In the meantime Professor Mach had written
a series of articles for various periodicals, among them The
Monist and The Open Court, and the Open Court Publish-
ing Company published a collection of them under the title
Popular Scientific Lectures. This work was soon after-
wards republished in its original German form as Populdr-
wissensch aftliche Vorlesungen.
We here publish a review of Professor Mach's life
based on notes which he himself furnished and one cannot
22 THE MONIST.
help admiring the frankness of this great and famous sci-
entist, as he describes the difficulties which he encountered
in passing through school.
* * *
Ernst Mach was born February 18, 1838, at Turas in
Moravia, and was the son of Johann Mach, at that time
tutor in the family of Baron Breton, and his wife Josephine,
nee Lanhaus. In 1840 his father came into possession of
a rather large farm in Unter-Siebenbrunn in the March-
feld. To this circumstance Ernst Mach owes the fact that
he was able to grow up in the country and to enjoy a happy
childhood. His earliest instruction was received from his
father, and in the year 1847-48 he entered the lowest class
in the school of the Benedictines at Seitenstetten in Lower
Austria. The good fathers found the boy very lacking in
ability but allowed him to pass, advising his father, how-
ever, to have him learn some trade or business; and they
were right. Neither sentences like Initium sapientiae est
timor domini, nor declensions and conjugations had any
inspiration for Mach, and he would never have become
a good memorizer. The only stimulating recitation hour
which he remembers was the lesson in geography. No one
knew, however, that his imagination was constantly en-
gaged with windmills and other machines as well as with
experiments in atmospheric pressure which his father had
shown him with the most simple apparatus, a flower-pot
and tumbler in a tub of water. Had it been known it would
only have injured the dreamy young fellow.
Mach's father was greatly disappointed by his son's
poor success and kept him at home in order to take him
again under his own instruction in the studies of the gym-
nasium, comprising Latin, Greek, history and the elements
of algebra and geometry. Still the pupil showed but little
talent and less interest for the languages, and when some
grammatical rule would not stick he often heard the im-
PROFESSOR MACH AND HIS WORK. 23
patient exclamation, "Norse brains !" or "Head of a Green-
lander!" As soon, however, as the reading of classical
literature began, the study of the ancient languages took
on a more friendly aspect, and the student attained con-
siderable fluency in translation and a ready understanding
of the texts. It was an advantage too that in these home
studies he could read a great deal more than is commonly
studied in public schools. In mathematics and physics
Mach could soon be left to himself because of the great
interest he took in these branches.
Since the morning hours sufficed for study Mach was
able to devote the afternoons to various kinds of work in
the fields, and from this experience he gained a lasting
respect for that part of mankind who live by manual labor.
We must not neglect to mention that the time of Mach's
youth bore a strong reactionary and clerical complexion
after the overthrow of the revolution in 1848. For this
reason the boy, who had grown up in a liberal family, be-
sought his father to let him learn the trade of cabinet
making so that he might eventually emigrate to America.
His wish was granted. For more than two years two full
days in the week were devoted to this employment under
the guidance of a skilled mechanic in a neighboring town.
This period too Mach holds in grateful remembrance, and
many an experience gained while thus working in wood
proved very useful to him in his later vocation. He re-
members with pleasure the agreeable feeling with which,
when physically wearied in the evening, he would sit on
the fragrant woodpile and at his leisure construct pictures
of future machines, air-ships and the like. From this ex-
perience the thinker learned how much he owed to the
laborer.
Mach's father was especially conversant with Latin
literature and history and was at the same time an excellent
story teller. Although he had never had a profoundly
24 THE MONIST.
scientific education he could be very stimulating to the
children, because of his love for nature which he was fond
of observing, and especially because of the anecdotes he
could tell about Archimedes and other ancient investiga-
tors, after Vitruvius, Plutarch, and others. The flora and
especially the splendid fauna of insects did their share to
induce the boys to make collections and to take pleasure
in the different forms and their comparison. Guests sel-
dom came to Siebenbrunn, but on summer Sunday after-
noons almost all the larger children of the village, both
boys and girls, would come to gather around Mach's father
in the garden and learn the nurture of fruit-trees, grafting
etc., which instruction was delightfully sweetened by the
enjoyment of the fruit itself. Otherwise the young Mach's
intercourse was limited to his father, mother, and two
younger sisters, so that there could be no question of social
pampering nor did he acquire the art of being bored.
At the age of fifteen, after passing the entrance exam-
ination, Mach entered the sixth class of the public Piarist
gymnasium in Kremsier, Moravia. He did not get along
very well at the start because he lacked the cleverness and
cunning prevalent in schools, and these had first to be ac-
quired. In general the teachers were not especially schol-
arly, but certain ones of them Mach remembers with pleas-
ure, esteem and particular gratitude.
An especially amiable man was F. X. Wessely, the
instructor in natural history, who not only was filled with
zeal for his specialty, but knew how to communicate this
enthusiasm to his pupils as well. He taught them the
theory of Lamarck, and also the Kant-Laplace cosmogony,
without losing any words over the incompatibility of these
teachings with the Bible. Mach remained in connection
with him until he died at an advanced age only a few years
ago.
The teacher of physics was a remarkable didactician,
PROFESSOR MACH AND HIS WORK. 25
who knew how to rouse the interest for his subject to the
highest pitch, but unfortunately was too impatient to be a
good instructor. To the teacher of Greek, F. M., an enthu-
siast for Greek culture, who saw, or at least wished to
show, only its bright side and who was a worshiper of
Greek grammar, Mach remained permanently indebted
for the forbearance which made this subject endurable
to him. Mach who had no interest for dynasties and his-
tories of war and at the same time possessed a very bad
memory, did not get along well with his teacher of history.
But while his teacher gave tests from the dry chronology
of Piitz, he would also read by the hour from large volumes
of history and original sources, so that the students did not
receive the impression that the spiritual and secular rulers
of the world had performed only such duties as were osten-
sibly assigned to them by God and had had only the wel-
fare of their subjects at heart. In the higher classes the
pupils had occasion to learn also of such occurrences as
are brought to the knowledge of the public in Max Kem-
merich's Kulturkuriosa which served to throw light on the
whole course of history.
Although as a whole the system was reactionary-cler-
ical, yet there were men enough there in whom the traces
of the liberal influence of Emperor Joseph II had not passed
by without leaving an effect, and who interpreted in this
spirit their calling as teachers. The only unpleasant de-
tails were the rituals, the everlasting religious exercises,
which accomplished a result exactly opposite to that de-
sired. When Mach protested to his father with regard
to these things and complained about them, he only re-
ceived the answer, "If you had grown up under the Chutch-
kas or the Samojeds you would have to stand things much
worse." Perhaps such an education even accomplishes
some good. Sometime later in his life (1898) when on a
journey through Tyrol, Mach overheard one of his trav-
26 THE MONIST.
eling companions, an elderly officer, give the following
answer to a question about the particular architecture of
some church : "I'm sure I don't know ; I don't go to church
any more. I had enough of compulsory mass and religious
exercises in the Gymnasium." On the whole Mach's at-
tainments in this school must be looked upon as but very
ordinary, — probably chiefly because he did not receive the
call to his life's vocation here, for that had already been
determined before he entered this school.
Mach was finally graduated from the Kremsier gym-
nasium, and he could not help considering it an especial
piece of luck because of his bad memory and the custom at
that time to make the tests include every conceivable detail.
His good fortune was illustrated by the fact that at the
same time the boy who was first or second in the class was
prevented by the chairman of the commission, the so-called
school councilor, from passing, probably because that gen-
tleman suffered from an attack of Csesaromania. The
poor fellow, to be sure, was not a shining light but so in-
dustrious and conscientious that he would certainly have
filled a place creditably in any walk of life. Those who
failed to graduate were at that time admitted to the study
of theology, and while pursuing this course Mach's un-
fortunate schoolmate died.
At the age of seventeen Mach matriculated at the Uni-
versity of Vienna in order to devote himself to the study of
mathematics and physics. Count Leo Thun, the minister
of instruction, had, to be sure, introduced many reforms
into the university by appointing to its faculty many schol-
ars of a high grade, and yet the departments of mathe-
matics and physics were hardly touched by this change.
At first indeed the new era of liberalism in instruction
seemed only to have the result of entirely neglecting the
needs of beginners. Students were obliged to gain the in-
dispensable knowledge of differential and integral calculus
PROFESSOR MACH AND HIS WORK. 27
by themselves in order to be able to understand the lec-
tures offered in the courses of the university.
Of these lectures the addresses of Von Ettingshausen
on mathematical physics certainly did not deserve the in-
solent and highhanded judgment with which they were
branded in a lecture by Liebig, who was not even well
posted in this department. It is true that Ettingshausen
was not a creative genius in his line to any important ex-
tent, but such investigators were rare enough even in Ger-
many at that time, the French being then still in the lead
in scientific work. Petzval was a highly talented teacher
of mathematics, somewhat indolent and rather unapproach-
able ; he is known for the reforms he has worked in photo-
graphic optics. Stimulating too were the lectures of young
Professor Grailich whose career at the university, however,
was early terminated by his death. Ettingshausen was
also director of the Physical Institute, the first institution
of its kind, at least at that time, in Austria and Germany.
While at the university, Mach succeeded in bringing
to completion his first modest work which was an apparatus
that he had himself designed and for the most part con-
structed and which was followed by several other similar
tasks. In January, 1860, Mach took the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy according to the somewhat medieval custom
of the time which required the applicant to pass three tests
in several subjects of two hours each, insisting upon a
mere diversified smattering which was at the same time
compatible with great ignorance. Because of his slender
means Mach was now compelled to renounce his ardent
wish to take advantage of the instruction of F. Neumann
in Konigsberg, and instead he was obliged to consider how
to gain his own livelihood by giving private lessons.
However, under these discouraging circumstances he
was bold enough to qualify as a private decent in physics
without knowing how he was to live the following year.
28 THE MONIST.
Indeed at this juncture it was indispensable for him to
earn money by private lectures on mathematics, Fechner's
psychophysics and Helmholtz's tone sensations as well as
by ordinary tutoring, in order to make both ends meet.
Naturally in this way valuable time was lost which might
have been spent on study for himself and in his own par-
ticular work. Still Mach's lectures soon attracted a num-
ber of select hearers who afterwards became famous. By
his intercourse with the two important physiologists of
Vienna, E. Briicke and C. Ludwig, Mach gained an in-
sight into the scientific life of Germany and came also upon
a line of work which he could follow with some success
without any particular scientific equipment. This was the
domain of the physiology of the senses which gradually
led him to his critical researches in the theory of cognition.
By a happy accident Mach was appointed in 1864 to fill
the vacancy in the chair of mathematics in the then some-
what neglected University of Gratz at a salary of ten hun-
dred and fifty gulden. This appointment came just as his
strength was about to fail him, but he now soon recov-
ered when thus relieved from actual want and privation.
Three years later he became professor of physics at the
University of Prague, which offered him also the oppor-
tunity to invest in more extensive equipment for experi-
mental work. His remuneration of 1300 gulden gave him
courage to marry Luise Marussig, with whom he had be-
come acquainted as an orphan in Gratz. Now he lived
in the most modest manner, obtained a circle of zealous
pupils and from 1868 to 1881 saw his family of four sons
and one daughter grow up about him. In the meantime
he had lost his mother in 1868 and his father in 1880, who
had bought property in Carniola, and as a consequence of
a series of especially bad harvests had remained burdened
with cares to the end of his life.
Mach too endured a period of great anxiety when in
PROFESSOR MACH AND HIS WORK. 2Q
1880 the attendance at the German university at Prague
fell off greatly because of the establishment of the Bohe-
mian university there, and his own income was correspond-
ingly diminished. Then he endeavored to repair the loss
by special technical work. In fact in a few weeks he earned
about as much as a year's salary but realized at the same
time that this manner of living could not be combined with
scientific work. The money he had made, however, made
it possible for him to attend a congress of electricians at
Paris in 1881 which was of so great an advantage to him
by the increased inspiration it gave him, the new personal
acquaintances he formed and the additional employment
obtained through them, that his financial situation was
greatly improved in the following years.
By this time Mach had obtained sufficient leisure to
prepare for publication his critical studies in the theory
of cognition. In 1883 he published his Mechanics1 and
soon afterwards his Analysis of the Sensations.2 Perhaps
he placed too high a value upon the importance of these
works, for he was so unwilling to be turned aside from
them that in order to remain in his present position he
determined to reject an advantageous call to Munich. Since
his studies in the theory of cognition were now greatly
interrupted by many experiments, even though the number
of young people taking part in the latter was constantly
increasing, Mach accepted an invitation of the University
of Vienna in 1895 to take the chair of philosophy which
made it possible for him to give his exclusive attention to
his critique of cognition. Shortly before this he suffered
1 The full title was Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwickelung historisch-kritisch
dargestellt. English translation by T. J. McCormack, The Science of Mech-
anics : A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development, Chicago, Open
Court Pub. Co., 3d ed. 1907.
1 Beitrage zur Analyse der Empfindungen. Engl. ed., Contributions to the
Analysis of the Sensations, transl. by C. M. Williams. Chicago, Open Court
Publishing Co., 1897.
3O THE MONIST.
the loss of a talented son who ended his life by suicide
after a fine promotion in Gottingen.
Mach's Principles of the Theory of Heat* which deals
essentially with the critique of cognition was published
in 1896. During the preparation of a corresponding work
upon optics (1898) Mach suffered a stroke of apoplexy
which crippled him permanently without however destroy-
ing consciousness or memory. His capacity for work was
so diminished for a few years that he could accomplish
nothing except new editions of earlier writings. A portion
of the lectures held by Mach at Vienna in 1895 were not
published until 1905 when they appeared under the title
Cognition and Error.*
The principles which Professor Mach followed in ex-
plaining the progress of science have been laid down in
a recent article of his which appeared under the title "My
Leading Thoughts."5 Remembering what Professor Mach
said of his life when he worked on a farm and passed
through a period of apprenticeship as a cabinet maker,
we can well understand that he saw in science only a pro-
duct of the division of labor. Science appeared in the
course of human evolution because it was needed for eco-
nomical reasons, and the methods of science themselves
must be economical. Thus Mach arrived at the conclusion
that the method of science consists in an economy of
thought. Science is a survival of the fittest, and those scien-
tific theories survive which are best adapted to facts; our
thoughts are an adaptation of thinking to facts and also
of thought to thought. Professor Mach says:
"When in the beginning of my educational work as
*Die Principle*, der Wdrmelehre. English translation in preparation.
4 Erkenntnis und Irrtunt.
* Die Leitgedanken meiner naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnislehre und
ihre Aufnahme durch die Zeitgenossen. Published in Scientia, Vol. VII
(1910) No. XIV, 2.
PROFESSOR MACH AND HIS WORK. 3 1
private decent of physics in 1861 I began to pay attention
to the labors of investigators to whom I had occasion to
refer, I recognized that the salient characteristic of their
procedure lay in the choice of the simplest, most econom-
ical, most direct means to attain the end desired. Through
my intercourse in 1864 with the political economist E.
Hermann, who, according to his specialty, sought to trace
out the economical element in every kind of occupation,
I became accustomed to designate the intellectual activity
of the investigator as economical. This becomes apparent
in the simplest instances. Every abstract comprehensive
expression of the behavior of facts, every substitution of
a numerical table by a formula or rule of construction,
the law by which it was compiled, every explanation of a
new fact by one that is better known, may be regarded as
rendering an economical service. The farther we analyze
in detail scientific method — its systematic, organizing, sim-
plifying and logico-mathematical arrangements — the more
we recognize scientific procedure as economical."
Starting from the economical standpoint, Mach was
well prepared to understand the progress of science, which
is an advance from complicated explanations to more and
more simple ones, as for instance Kepler's laws were re-
placed by a single formula of Newton, which expresses
them all in the equation
d*r mm1
As economists teach that the wealth of nations is in-
creased by economy, so Professor Mach sees the cause of
scientific progress in an economy of thought, an idea which
was foreshadowed by Adam Smith. Mach has worked
out and exemplified this idea in many of its details and
made it a cornerstone of his conception of science.
He felt isolated in his mode of thinking for a long
32 THE MONIST.
time, but gradually he found straws in the wind which
indicated that similar views began to prevail in other quar-
ters. As such he mentions the conception of Avenarius's
"Philosophy as a Mode of Thinking the World According
to the Principle of the Least Effort" ( 1876) ; also Petzoldt's
"Introduction to the Philosophy of Pure Experience"
( 1900) ; Schuppe's "Logic of the Theory of Cognition"
( 1878) ; and W. J. M. Rankine's "Outlines of the Science
of Energetics" (1855), which latter work is also a prede-
cessor of Ostwald's "Energetics." Professor Hertz once
said that Maxwell's theory consisted practically of Max-
well's equations; and finally P. Duhem in his "Physical
Theory" quietly surrendered the old metaphysical stand-
point.
Professor Mach's lifework is that of a scientist who
has paid special attention to scientific method. He is not
a philosopher, as he himself has frequently stated. He is
a scientist who feels the need of comparing his science with
other sciences and becomes conscious of the nature of the
method in his work. If such is philosophy he ought to be
called a philosopher and we would be the last to begrudge
him the name; nevertheless we would not classify him as
a typical philosopher, for he halts at the place where a
philosopher ought to begin work. He discovers the prin-
ciple of an economy of thought and the mode of action
which science instinctively pursues wherever scientists
work. Nowhere in his writings has he attempted to in-
vestigate the nature of this principle, which he would have
done if he were a philosopher in the common acceptance
of the word.
In further explanation of Mach's theory we would say
that a philosophical explanation of his principle of economy
can be given and is to be found in the nature of the purely
formal sciences. We have set forth our explanation of the
significance of the purely formal sciences in other articles
PROFESSOR MACH AND HIS WORK. 33
and do not propose to repeat ourselves. We will only say
that the dissatisfaction which Professor Planck experiences
in reading Professor Mach's works is caused perhaps to
a great extent by Professor Mach's unwillingness to enter
into any investigation of the nature of generalities of any
kind, be they theories, generalizations or the conception of
units. The fact is that this is not a shortcoming of Mach's
as much as an unwillingness to work in a definite field
where he feels uneasy. As soon as Professor Mach loses
the solid ground of concrete facts he feels the thin air of
abstraction, and he has a deep seated prejudice against
anything that is not tangible or sensible. Generally speak-
ing, theories become inaccessible to sense perception. Thus
the scientific concept of a kinetic physical world such as is
constructed in the theory of atoms, is to him a respectable
hypothesis, nothing more; and he refuses to accept Pro-
fessor Planck's idea that these atoms are the only true
realities.
We will not enter at present into an exposition of these
two contrasts, but will only say that Professor Planck did
not understand Mach and rather hastily called him "a false
prophet," in response to which Professor Mach has most
emphatically protested against dogmatism in science, say-
ing : "We can see that the physicists are on the surest road
to becoming a church, and are already appropriating all the
customary means to this end. To this I simply answer : 'If
belief in the reality of atoms is so essential for you I hereby
abandon the physicists' manner of thought (Planck, p. 31),
I will be no regular physicist (ibid., p. 33), I will renounce
all scientific recognition (ibid., p. 35) ; in short the com-
munion of the faithful I will decline with best thanks. For
dearer to me is freedom of thought.' '
A few quotations will characterize Professor Mach's
view in his own words. He says :
"We have colors, sounds, pressures, and so forth (A
34
THE MONIST.
BC . . . ) , which as simplest component parts, make up the
world. In addition thereto, percepts (resolvable into afiy. . .) ,
feelings, and so forth, more or less composite. How a/3y. . .
differ from ABC... I will not define here, for I do not
know exactly. It is enough for the time being that they
do differ from A B C . . . , as the latter do from one another.
And let us now leave afty. . . entirely out of account and
put ourselves in a time and state in which there are only
ABC. Now I say, that if I see a tree with green leaves
(A), with a hard (B), gray (C) trunk, that ABC are
elements of the world. I say elements — and not sensations,
also not notions — because it is not my purpose at this place
to arrive at either a psychological or a physiological or a
physical theory, but to proceed descriptively." (Monist, I,
394).
"For us, therefore, the world does not consist of mys-
terious entities, which by their interaction with another
equally mysterious entity, the ego, produce sensations,
which alone are accessible. For us, colors, sounds, spaces,
times, . . . are the ultimate elements, whose given connec-
tion it is our business to investigate . . .
"Science always takes its origin in the adaptation of
thought to some definite field of experience. The results
of the adaptation are thought-elements, which are able to
represent the field. The outcome, of course, is different,
according to the character and extent of the province sur-
veyed. If the province of experience in question is en-
larged, or if several provinces heretofore disconnected are
united, the traditional, familiar thought-elements no longer
suffice for the extended province. In the struggle of ac-
quired habit with the effort after adaptation, problems
arise, which disappear when the adaptation is perfected,
to make room for others which have arisen in the interim. . .
"If we regard sensations, in the sense above defined,
as the elements of the world, the problems referred to are
PROFESSOR MACH AND HIS WORK. 35
practically disposed of, and the first and most important
adaptation effected" (Anal, of the Sensations, 23-25).
Professor Mach's principle which we heartily endorse
is "to proceed descriptively," and we must distinguish be-
tween facts and theories. The question is only, What are
facts ?
Professor Mach insists that the only realities are the
elements of the world. Even the unity with which these
sensations fuse into things is suspected by Mach. He has
acquainted himself with Kant's idea of the thing-in-itself
and has come to the conclusion that there is no sense in
accepting a thing-in-itself, but in the thing-in-itself he re-
jects the reality of these unities of the elements of sensa-
tion which we call things. To think of a non-sensual bond
of the elements in the form of a substratum of their quality
and in the form of a substance of the body in the old philo-
sophical sense is excluded, and so he speaks of this idea
as being due purely to poetic imagination.
Here Mach goes too far. While we ourselves would
reject most emphatically the assumption of things-in-them-
selves, we are not prepared to deny the reality of things;
or in other words we would recognize that a group of ele-
ments of existence (and it is here indifferent whether we
say of reality or of sensation) are compounded into unities
which constitute the thing. These unities are not mere
fictions, they are realities, for the very way in which unities
combine actually makes new things. A watch becomes a
watch when the works are so constructed that its wheels
move and its hands point out the time. The bond which
interconnects the parts of the watch is not indifferent but
the mode of the composition of the parts is essential, and
either does or does not produce a new unity which we call
a thing. Aside from the reality of its parts their interaction
constitutes what we call a watch. If a certain number of
elements into which Mach analyses his sensation are com-
36 THE MONIST.
bined in what we call the sensation of a thing, an actual
unity is produced which we will call the object of percep-
tion, and this unity is not due, as Mach seems to say, to
our own poetic imagination, but we are confronted with a
unity which is the result of a definite cooperation, and there
is a good reason for assuming that the unities of perception
are founded in the nature of things. The combined parts
of a tree constitute an organism which is more than merely
the sum total of all its elements. The same is true of other
non-sensual unities, as well as of generalities.
It seems to us that the primitive realities are the things
with which we become acquainted. They are the given
facts, and we call them the data of experience. What
Mach calls the elements of existence are not so primitive
as he seems to assume. His elements are really the result
of an analysis; they are of an artificial nature and can
exist only in the mind of a highly trained scientist like
Professor Mach. If they were truly elements in the sense
of ultimate realities, or what we call data of experience,
they would be more obvious to the unsophisticated ob-
server, to the child, to the peasant, to the unschooled, but
we would look in vain for any clear conception of these
elements. The naive observer of life knows only of whole
things and of their several activities, not of their ingre-
dients or elements. And the reason is obvious when we
understand that the unities of things are as such actual-
ities, and these actualities affect man's senses and become
the objects of his observation.
We must assume that the sense impressions of a baby
are not distinct elements such as hardness, whiteness or
greenness, sweet or sour tastes, definite notes or distinct
sounds, etc., but a chaotic mass of feelings, a kaleidoscopic
blur from which certain groups gradually and clearly rise.
Things and persons are such groups. They consist of ele-
ments of sensation, but the groups themselves are heeded
PROFESSOR MACH AND HIS WORK. 37
and not their several elements. These groups are con-
stants, i. e., combinations which are stable, and the unity
of a group of sensations is conditioned by the unity of
things themselves.
These unities are made by nature, they are founded
upon the existence of unities in the objective conditions
of the world ; they are not purely mind-made nor are they
artificial. The mental image of a cat exists prior to the
distinct notions of the several sensory elements of which a
cat-perception is composed, and we have no doubt that what
an animal sees is a thing, but not the sense elements into
which the physiological psychologist can analyze it.
Mach is a representative of the old nominalistic school.
According to its principles things are mere names, and the
further application of this appears in their conception of
the nonexistence of generalizations. Nominalists treat ab-
stract ideas as inventions of a purely subjective nature.
The generalizations of what we call natural laws are not
mere fictions, but they represent general features in the
world of reality which though they are in no definite place
can be traced wherever the conditions are fulfilled. The
laws of nature in their perfected shape are not mere the-
ories, but uniformities, and by uniformities we understand
descriptions of fact — not of concrete facts in a compact
existence, but generalized formulas of the essential fea-
tures of certain phenomena, which summarize the essen-
tials that determine certain results.
Accordingly the picture of the world which science aims
at is not a mere illusion but aspires to the actualization of
a predetermined ideal, which would be a description of the
characteristic features of the constitution of the world.
What Professor Mach calls "elements of the world"
we call "data of experience," and whatever we are com-
pelled to grant existence independently from our thought
we call fact. The data of experience are facts, but in addi-
38 THE MONIST.
tion there are other facts with which we become acquainted
by inference and we see no fault in assuming them to be
as real as the data of experience.
Our point of view is different from Mach's, but, like
himself, we see no harm in approaching a problem from dif-
ferent standpoints, yet we wish that Mach had in his own
way gone one step further in the work of explaining the na-
ture of science, by pointing out why an economy of thought
is possible. This would have led him to the conclusion which
we have offered in what may be called the philosophy of
form. The formal sciences are different from the sciences
of experience in this important point, that they are sys-
tematic, and the systematic nature of the formal sciences
makes it possible to systematize thought. The sameness
of form as form under different conditions makes it possible
to think of different things of the same shape as types, and
thus logic can classify things always according to their
forms as genera and species. If experience could not be
treated by the formal sciences, they would present a chaos
of detailed items which would never allow us to reduce
them to order. It is obvious therefore that the formal sci-
ences alone offer us the methods through which an economy
of thought is possible.
We do not wish to exaggerate the difference between
Professor Mach's views and our own. We will therefore
state that Professor Mach also insists on the significance
of form, but he speaks of it as the functional dependence
of the sense elements upon one another (funktionelle Ab-
hdngigkeit der sinnlichen Element e von einander) . How-
ever, we believe that our thoughts are on converging lines.
We have no right to criticize Professor Mach for not hav-
ing followed out a problem which he had not proposed to
himself, and at the same time, we feel the injustice of those
of his critics who would demand of him that he should use
PROFESSOR MACH AND HIS WORK. 39
the same expressions as are commonly in use among phys-
icists.
Professor Mach is right that physics is only one mode of
picturing the world, and the physical world-picture does
not exhaust the nature of being. There are other points
of view which can be taken. The psychical facts are not
less true and the bio-economical mode of viewing the world
is certainly as much justified as the physical theory.
It is the duty of philosophy to bear all this in mind.
The scientific conception is of crucial importance, but the
religious, the poetic, the artistic, the emotional aspects have
rights of their own and it would be an indication of narrow-
mindedness not to allow them their right of existence. If
they in their turn raise the claim of exclusiveness and if
the church attempts to curb science or free scientific in-
quiry, we complain about intolerance; should science now
walk in the footsteps of the old dogmatism?
We can live in peace with every point of view if we
proceed descriptively, and while we state facts we need
not be inhospitable to theory. It may sometimes be difficult
to draw the line between facts and theory, but it is possible,
and problems of this nature can be settled.
The truth is that science as well as religion passes
through a period of myth formation which is quite natural
in so far as man fills out the gaps of his knowledge in the
most plausible way, according to the then obtaining con-
ditions of the state of his mind. The fictions which we thus
introduce into science by analogy, or as helps to think the
unknown in terms of the known, may be wrong or, as is
mostly the case, only partly right, but they serve a good
purpose as approximations to the truth. Beyond them
looms the ideal of all science which is a generalization of
descriptions of fact — or of features of factual reality in the
shape of accurate formulas.
We are not blind followers of Professor Mach, but we
4O THE MONIST.
see that he has promoted the scientific comprehension of
the nature of scientific method as few others have done in
the history of science. For generations to come his works
will remain classical instances of the genuine spirit of sci-
ence, exemplifying the attempt at an accurate description
of facts — in the search for truth.
There is one peculiarity about Professor Mach's writ-
ings. He appeals most powerfully to a certain type of
thinkers who distrust theory and wish to remain in contact
with facts. Among these readers are not only naturalists
and inventors, but also people who have not passed through
the mill of academic or scientific training. Of the former
class I recall the high esteem with which Nicola Tesla
spoke of Mach, and of the latter I will mention a remark-
able Scotch workman, John Glen of Glasgow, with whom
I have been in correspondence. Mr. Glen is typical of
that class of men who naturally find in Mach a source of
inspiration, and though he is unusual in his attainments,
acquired by his own efforts while living on the returns of
manual labor, I am sure that there are many more real
thinkers scattered among the working classes of all coun-
tries.
Mr. Glen takes an interest in the problems of life, the
soul and kindred subjects. He has familiarized himself
with standard books and expresses his views thus:
"The history of metaphysical psychologies or philos-
ophies is merely one long sorrowful sequence of credulities
dogmatically imposed upon the world's unwary, and when
I reflect on the public boastfulness of the latter (the mun-
dane gods) and their relative capacities to think, I am
impelled to say that they have not yet begun to think of
thinking. They can not distinguish between an artful as-
sertion and a demonstration. In short, these types of men
are the sports of a derelict brain afloat on an ocean of
memories dangling in imagination."
PROFESSOR MACH AND HIS WORK. 4!
It speaks well for Mach that a man of this type, a self-
trained thinker of independent judgment, who does not
accept traditional theories on authority, finds himself in-
debted to Mach's works, his Aanalysis of the Sensations,
and especially to the Science of Mechanics, and agrees with
the view of a friend who speaks of Mach as "a philosoph-
ical landmark."
There is an individualistic tendency now current in the
world of science and philosophy ; it is a reaction to both the
absolutism in philosophy which reached its climax in Hegel,
and the materialistic dogmatism of science which is most
drastically represented in Karl Vogt and Biichner, while
it found its best and most dignified exponent in Haeckel.
Both contrasts are wrong. They are formulations of an
exaggerated objective philosophy and the opposition to it
shows itself most potent in the individualistic upheaval of
pragmatism with its denial of "truth" in the singular and
its advocacy of "truths" in the plural. But pragmatism is
only a symptom of a movement that has spread over a wide
circle of thinkers in France and Germany who are not di-
rectly allied to it. Mach is not, properly speaking, a prag-
matist, but he prepared the movement and belongs to it;
indeed he is its most important pioneer on account of the
sober and truly scientific character of his work. It is true
he is not typical of pragmatism itself because he does not
go to extremes as did William James. The pathological
feature is absent in him, but for that reason he is greater
than his successors and by his methods we gain a vantage
ground for scientific work. He does not block our path
by erroneous theories, and his individualistic tendency is
due to the fact that he fights shy of metaphysical theories.
Yet even from individualistic principles we can reach a
conception of truth in the singular, or, to put it more guard-
edly, of system in the bewildering details of scientific in-
quiry.
42 THE MONIST.
Mach is an individualist but he keeps within bounds,
he does not fly off in a tangent when he hesitates to assume
the metaphysical arguments for an objectivism of theories,
and so there is naught of pluralism in him, naught of sub-
jectivism, naught of a denial of truth in the singular. We
have no right to blame him if he only tentatively and almost
timidly outlines the presence of a oneness, not as an ob-
jective fact, but as an efficient factor in this world in which
economy can accomplish such wonderful results not only
in the domain of industry and commerce, but also in science.
Mach knows very well that economy is due to systematizing,
and systematizing presupposes the possibility of system.
Mach has been very instructive to me because he is so
cautious. I shall be the last to reproach him for limiting
his work to the field which has proved fittest for his talents,
his interests and the history of his scientific development.
I hope that I have taken the step for the omission of which
he has been blamed and decried as a wrong prophet. I
would scarcely have been able to accomplish the work he
did, and if my work will help to complete his, I shall feel
happy and be proud that I could cooperate with a man of
his significance.
Let me add that Mach is not only great as a scientist,
but also as a man, and I wish that other scientists would
imitate his unpretentious habits and the breadth of his
mind in not refusing to learn from others and to acknowl-
edge their merits even if they were his inferiors in schol-
arship and training.
EDITOR.
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY AND ITS
DEFENDERS.
SO long as Christianity was regarded by the Romans
as a mere sect of Judaism, it shared the hatred and
contempt, indeed, but also the legal protection bestowed
on that religion. But as soon as Christianity claimed
to be a new religion, claiming universal validity and ac-
ceptance, it was set down as unlawful and treasonable,
a religio illicita, whose adherents have no right to exist,
or as Tertullian puts it, "non licet vos esse" The Chris-
tians were then made responsible for everything. The
wildest tales were believed. The Christians were charged
with preaching in their assemblies all acts of abominations,
even incest and cannibalism; priests, jugglers, artificers,
merchants and others kindled the fanaticism and indig-
nation of the mob against the new religion because it inter-
fered with their mercenary practices.
It is difficult to estimate the number of Christians in
the Roman Empire in the first two centuries. It may per-
haps be a rhetorical exaggeration when Justin writes in
the middle of the second century : "There is not one single
race of men, whether barbarians or Greeks, or whatever
they may be called, nomads or vagrants, or herdsmen
living in tents, among whom prayers and giving of thanks
are not offered through the name of the crucified Jesus" ;*
or when Tertullian writes at the end of the century : "We
1 Dialogue with Trypho, ch. CXVII.
44 THE MONIST.
are but of yesterday, and we have filled every place among
you, — cities, islands, fortresses, towns, market-places, the
very camp, tribes, companies, senate, forum, — we have left
nothing to you but the temples of your gods."2 But there
can be no doubt that the number of Christians must have
been large enough to attract attention; they were even
found in old Roman families.
By the edict of Claudius (41-54) in the year 53, the
Jews were banished from Rome. As the Christians were
confounded with the Jews, they too were included in this
edict. Suetonius tells us3 that Claudius expelled the Jews
from Rome because they were constantly raising tumults
impulsore Chresto, "under the instigation of Chrestos."
It is very probable that in this impulsor Chrestus* is pre-
served a dim reminiscence of the fact that Christianity,
then finding an entrance into Rome and dividing the Jew-
ish population of Rome into two parties as was often the
case in other places, gave an impulse to those disturbances
which determined the emperor to issue his edict. Here,
however, Christianity still appears quite under the um-
braculum of the Jewish religion, as a religio licita, a pro-
tection which of course could only extend as far for the
Christians as it was granted to the Jews.
In the reign of Nero (54-68) the Christians are for the
first time introduced into history in a manner worthy of
them. When, as Tacitus tells us, the great conflagration
under Nero5 had destroyed the greatest part of the city of
Rome, and popular report pointed persistently to Nero as
the incendiary, he sought to meet these rumors by casting
the blame upon others, and inflicting the most extreme
'Apology, ch. XXXVII.
1 Vita Claudii, ch. XXV. Among those expelled by the edict of Claudius
were Aquila and Priscilla, the friends of Paul.
4 The heathens used to say Chrestus instead of Christus (Tertullian, Apol.
ch. III).
6 Annales, XV, 44.
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 45
punishments on those whom the people called Christians,6
and hated on account of their "infamous acts." In derision
they were sewed up in the skins of wild beasts, torn to
pieces by dogs, nailed to the cross, or being dressed in
clothes that were prepared with inflammable material, were
doomed to death by fire, to serve as an illumination at
night.7 They were held convicted, as Tacitus says, not
so much because the charge laid against them of being the
authors of the conflagration had proved to be well founded,
as on account of their general hatred of the human race.8
And their odium humani generis was a disposition so hos-
tile to all other men that those who had dealings with them
were justified in disregarding all those observances by
which men are generally bound in dealing with each other.
'They are thus marked off," Baur remarks, "as a class of
men who had only to thank themselves and their entire
want of all humane culture and disposition, if all considera-
tions of humanity were put out of court in dealing with
them.
This, then, was the view taken of the Christians by the
Roman public of that age, and hence the subdere reos (i. e.,
those falsely charged with the guilt) that we read of was
tolerated; the matter was considered to be perfectly reg-
ular. Even Tacitus takes this view of the transactions;
he says not a word to indicate disapproval of these atroci-
ties: on the contrary, the expressions he uses in reference
to Christianity show clearly enough that he considered the
procedure against them to be sufficiently justified ."
Tertullian (who died about 220) thus alludes to the
Neronian persecution: "This name of ours took its rise
8 "Quos per flogitia invisos vulgus Christianas adpellabat."
7 Juvenal (Sat. I, 155 f.) who probably was an eye witness, describes how,
"At the stake they shine,
Who stand with throat transfixed and smoke and burn."
*"Haud perinde in crimine incendii, quam odio humani generis comricti
sunt."
46 THE MONIST.
in the reign of Augustus; under Tiberius it was taught
with all clearness and publicity; under Nero it was ruth-
lessly condemned (sub Nerone damnatio invaluit), and you
may weigh its worth and character even from the person
of its persecutor. If that prince was a pious man, then
the Christians are impious ; if he was just, if he was pure,
then the Christians are unjust and impure; if he was not
a public enemy, we are enemies of our country : what sort
of men we are, our persecutor himself shows, since he of
course punished what produced hostility to himself. Now,
although every other institution which existed under Nero
has been destroyed, yet this of ours has firmly remained —
righteous, it would seem, as being unlike the author [of
its persecution]."9
"This was the first of the persecutions, the fiery portal
as it were, through which the Christians entered the arena
in which they were now called to strive, to bleed, to die
for their faith during two and a half centuries. This
first persecution was no carefully planned attempt to sup-
press Christianity, founded upon civil or religious policy,
but only a cruel outburst of hatred, which Nero turned
to account in his own interest. Heathenism had not as
yet learned to understand Christianity at all. It appeared
to the heathen as something entirely strange, utterly op-
posed to every existing and traditional belief, and the Chris-
tians were regarded as men who, since they hated every-
thing human, deserved nothing but hatred in return. There-
fore, in dealing with them anything was permissible, and
all considerations of humanity might be set aside. Now
Christians might learn what awaited them. Heathenism
had openly declared by action that Christianity was not
to be tolerated, that it was to be annihilated as inhuman,
hostile to the human race. Now, too, might the heathen
know what they had to expect from the Christians. In
• Ad Notiones, I, 7.
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 47
patient silence they endured all. The heroic age of the
Christian church had begun, a heroism not of action, but
of a suffering mightier than all deeds" (Uhlhorn).
Nero's successors, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, followed
one another in rapid succession. The latter was taken out
of a dog's kennel in Rome while drunk, dragged through
the streets, and shamefully put to death. Vespasian, in the
year 69, was universally proclaimed emperor, and restored
order and prosperity.
His son, Titus, who ten years after became emperor
and highly distinguished himself by his mildness and phi-
lanthropy,10 then undertook the prosecution of the Jewish
war, and becoming the instrument in the hand of God,
destroyed the holy city and the temple. The Christians of
Jerusalem, remembering the Lord's admonition, forsook
the doomed city in good time and fled to the town of Pella,
where King Herod Agrippa II, before whom Paul once
stood, opened to them a safe asylum. The destruction of
Jerusalem was the greatest calamity of Judaism, but a
great benefit to Christianity. The rupture between syna-
gogue and church was now also outwardly consummated
by the thunderbolt of divine omnipotence. Henceforth the
heathen could no longer look upon Christianity as a mere
sect of Judaism, but must regard and treat it as a new,
peculiar religion.
Under the suspicious and tyrannical Domitian (81-96),
accustomed to call himself and to be called "Lord and
God,"11 Christianity was again made the object of direct
attack. The charge now brought against the Christians
was that of atheism; an inference from their refusal to
pay honor to the gods of Rome. Under this accusation
Flavins Clemens, the emperor's uncle, is said to have suf-
" The people called him Amor et Deliciae generis humani.
u Suetonius, Domit. 13, says : "With equal arrogance, when he dictated the
form of a letter to be used by his procurators, he began it thus : 'Our Lord and
God commands so and so.' "
48 THE MONIST.
fered martyrdom, while Domitilla, the wife of Clemens,
was banished on a similar charge to the island of Panda-
teria, near Naples.12 Eusebius13 also relates that Domitian,
apprehensive of the appearance of a "Son of David" as
a rival claimant to the throne, caused rigorous inquiries
to be made in Palestine, which led to the apprehension of
the grandsons of Jude the Lord's brother (Mark vi. 3).
The simplicity, however, of their garb and- demeanor, and
the marks of labor on their horny hands, convinced the
tyrant that he had nothing to fear from them, and he ac-
cordingly dismissed them with contempt. Domitian is also
said to have banished the apostle John to Patmos, where he
beheld the visions of the Apocalypse.14
Domitian's successor, the humane and justice-loving
Nerva (96-98), recalled the banished, and refused to treat
the confession of Christianity as a political crime, though
he did not recognize the new religion as a religio licita.
Under his successor Trajan (98-117), Christianity was
forbidden. Of famous martyrs we mention Symeon, bishop
of Jerusalem, who, like his predecessor James,15 a kinsman
of Jesus, was accused by fanatical Jews, and crucified A. D.
107, at the age of a hundred and twenty years.16 In the
same year (or according to others in 115), the distinguished
bishop Ignatius of Antioch was condemned to death, trans-
ported to Rome, and thrown before wild beasts in the Colos-
seum. Trajan, wholly ignorant of the nature of Christian-
ity, was the first formally to pronounce it a proscribed re-
ligion, as it had been all along in fact. He revised the rigid
"Dion Cassius (in the abridgment of Xiphilinus) Hist. Rom. 67, 14, in
Preuschen, Analecta, p. 131.
u Hist. Eccles., Ill, 19, 20.
"Some think that John was banished under Nero. The Syriac version
of the Apocalypse refers the banishment of John to the days of Nero.
18 His martyrdom is described by Hegesippus in Eusebius, Hist. Eccles.,
II, 23 ; see also Josephus, Ant. XX, 9, I.
"Eusebius, loc. cit., Ill, 32.
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 49
laws against all secret societies or prohibited clubs,17 and
these laws were so framed as to include the Christian com-
munity in their operation. The celebrated correspondence18
between the Emperor and Pliny the younger, who was gov-
ernor of Bithynia in Asia Minor between 109-111, must be
inserted here, both as throwing light upon the Roman pol-
icy, and as affording an instructive picture of the early
churches.
Pliny to Trajan.
"It is with me, sir, an established custom to refer to you all
matters on which I am in doubt. For who is better able either to
direct my scruples or to instruct my ignorance?
"I have never been present at trials of Christians, and con-
sequently do not know for what reasons, or how far, punishment
is usually inflicted or inquiry made in their case. Nor have my hesi-
tations been slight as to whether any distinction of age should be
made, or persons however tender in years should be viewed as
differing in no respect from the full-grown ; whether pardon should
be accorded for repentance, or he who has once been a Christian
should gain nothing by having ceased to be one; whether the very-
profession itself, if unattended by crime, or else the crimes neces-
sarily attaching to the profession, should be made subject of punish-
ment.
"Meanwhile, in the case of those who have been brought before
me in the character of Christians, my course has been as follows:
I put it to themselves whether they were or were not Christians.
To such as professed that they were, I put the inquiry a second and
a third time, threatening them with the supreme penalty. Those
who persisted I ordered to execution. For, indeed, I could not
doubt, whatever might be the nature of that which they professed,
that their pertinacity, at any rate, and inflexible obstinacy, ought to
be punished. There were others afflicted with like madness, with
regard to whom, as they were Roman citizens, I made a memoran-
dum that they were to be sent for judgment to Rome. Soon, the
"The Roman sodalities or colleges were festive clubs or lodges. But on
account of the political and revolutionary ends which they pursued, Julius
Caesar had already dissolved them (Suetonius, Div. Julius, 42). The same was
done by Augustus (Suetonius, Diy. Aug., 32). Compare Mommsen, De col-
legiis et sodaliciis Romanorum, Kiel, 1843.
18 For the text and literature, see Preuschen, pp. 14 ff.
5O THE MONIST.
very handling of this matter causing, as often happens, the area of
the charge to spread, many fresh examples occurred. An anonymous
paper was put forth, containing the names of many persons. Those
who denied that they either were or had been Christians, upon their
calling on the gods after me, and upon their offering wine and
incense before your statue, which for this purpose I had ordered
to be introduced in company with the images of the gods, moreover,
upon their reviling Christ — none of which things it is said can such
as are really and truly Christians be compelled to do — these I
deemed it proper to dismiss. Others named by the informer ad-
mitted that they were Christians, and then shortly afterwards denied
it, adding that they had been Christians, but had ceased to be so,
some three years, some many years, more than one of them as much
as twenty years, before. All these, too, not only honored your im-
age and the effigies of the gods, but also reviled Christ. They af-
firmed, however, that this had been the sum, whether of their crime
or their delusion: They had been in the habit of meeting together
on a stated day before sunrise, and of offering in turns a form of
invocation to Christ, as to a god ; also of binding themselves by an
oath, not for any guilty purpose, but not to commit thefts, or rob-
beries, or adulteries, not to break their word, not to repudiate de-
posits when called upon ; these ceremonies having been gone through,
they had been in the habit of separating, and again meeting together
for the purpose of taking food — food, that is, of an ordinary and
innocent kind. They had, however, ceased from doing even this
after my edict, in which, following your orders, I had forbidden
the existence of fraternities. This made me think it all the more
necessary to inquire, even by torture, of two maid servants, who
were styled deaconesses, what the truth was. I could discover noth-
ing else than a vicious and extravagant superstition, and so, having
postponed the inquiry, I have had recourse to your counsels. Indeed,
the matter seemed to me a proper one for consultation, chiefly on
account of the number of persons imperilled. For many of all ages
and all ranks, aye, and of both sexes, are being called, and will be
called, into danger. Nor are cities only permeated by the contagion
of this superstition, but villages and country parts as well ; yet it
seems possible to stop it and cure it. It is in truth sufficiently evident
that the temples, which were almost entirely deserted, have begun
to be frequented, that the customary religious rites which had long
been interrupted are being resumed, and that there is a sale for the
food of sacrificial beasts, for which hitherto very few buyers indeed
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 5 1
could be found. From all this it is easy to form an opinion as to the
great number of persons who may be reclaimed, if only room be
granted for penitence."
The reply of the Emperor was as follows :
Trajan to Pliny.
"You have followed the right mode of procedure, my dear
Secundus, in investigating the cases of those who had been brought
before you as Christians. For, indeed, it is not possible to establish
any universal rule, possessing as it were a fixed form. These people
should not be searched for; if they are informed against and con-
victed they should be punished ; yet, so that he who shall deny being
a Christian, and shall make this plain in action, that is, by worship-
ing our gods, even though suspected on account of his past conduct,
shall obtain pardon by his penitence. Anonymous information, how-
ever, ought not to be allowed a standing in any kind of charge; a
course which would not only form the worst of precedents, but
which is not in accordance with the spirit of our time."19
In fact the edict of Trajan marks an epoch in history,
because it formally and absolutely denies to Christianity
for the first time a legitimate existence in the Roman state.
The Christians could remain in peace so long as no accuser
came forward. No wonder therefore that Tertullian ex-
claimed : "What a self-contradictory sentence ! He forbids
their being sought out, as if they were innocent, and com-
mands that they be punished as if they were guilty."20
The rescript of Trajan continued under the following
emperors to be the legal rule for the treatment of the Chris-
tians. To be a Christian was clearly designated as a crime
that must be suppressed. As the number of the Christians
increased the hatred of the heathen population towards
them rose also, and it happened more and more frequently
that Christians were accused and executed for no reason
but the Christian name. There was no possible relief
against so unrighteous a procedure, until the time should
M Pliny, Epist., X, 97, 98. See Neumann, Der romische Staat, pp. 18-26.
*Apol.fll.
52 THE MONIST.
come when the whole view taken of Christianity in the
Roman empire would undergo an essential change.
As at this time the Christians had among them men
of sufficient culture and learning to plead the cause of
Christianity, an effort was made in that direction in the
period immediately after Trajan's edict. Defensive writ-
ings known as "apologies" were addressed to the emperors,
the governors of the provinces, and to the great public
in general. Whatever effect they may have had other-
wise, they certainly had no effect upon those whom they
were intended to influence.
Trajan's successor, Hadrian (117-138), was indifferent
to Christianity because of his ignorance of it.21 It is true
that he directed the Asiatic proconsul Minucius Fundanus to
check the popular fury against the Christians, and to pun-
ish only those who should be, by an orderly judicial process,
convicted of transgression of the laws, while at the same
time he ordered that "obstinacy" on the part of the Chris-
tians, i. e., a firm adherence to their profession, should be
punished. Hadrian's rescript as preserved by Justin and
Eusebius22 reads thus:
"Hadrian to Minucius Fundanus.
"I have received a letter written to me by the illustrious Serenius
Granianus, whom you have succeeded. I desire the matter not to be
passed over without being examined into, so that these men may
not be harassed nor opportunity of malicious proceedings be offered
to informers. If, therefore, the people of the province can clearly
and legally bring their charges against Christians so as to answer
before the tribunal, let them take this course only, and not proceed
by importunate demands and mere outcries. For it is better, if any
bring an accusation and prove anything to have been done contrary
to the laws, to determine them according to the nature of the crime ;
* How little this emperor knew of Christianity is evident from a remark
of his in a letter to his brother-in-law Servianus, that "worshipers of Serapis
are Christians, and these are devoted to Serapis, who call themselves Christ's
bishops." For the text of this letter see Preuschen, loc. cit., p. 19.
*Apol, I, 69; Eusebius, Eccl. Hist., IV, 9.
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 53
but if the charge be only calumny, take care to punish the author
of it as it deserves."28
Conscientious governors, says Uhlhorn, acted hence-
forth on this rescript. And yet Antoninus Pius had to
issue new rescripts of like tenor. There arose in Greece
a severe persecution in which Publius, the bishop of Athens,
lost his life.24 The Emperor sent rescripts to Larissa and
to Thessalonica, in which he forbade the introduction of
new measures in the treatment of the Christians, and
ordered that the limits prescribed by Trajan's edict should
be strictly observed. And in all probability this was gen-
erally done in the time of Antoninus Pius. But we will
not anticipate.
In the reign of Hadrian, the Jews, led by the pseudo-
Messiah Bar-Cochab, persecuted all the Christians who
would not join them in the insurrection. The outcome
of this rebellion need not be narrated. Unable to persecute
any further, the Jews circulated horrible calumnies on
Jesus and his followers. "You," says Justin,25 addressing
the Jews, "have sent chosen and ordained men throughout
all the world to proclaim that a godless and lawless heresy
has sprung from one Jesus, a Galilean deceiver, whom we
crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the
tomb,26 where he was laid when unfastened from the cross,
* The genuineness of this rescript has been doubted by different scholars
who considered it to be a Christian fiction. Uhlhorn considers it genuine.
Keim, Rom und das Christentum, pp. 552 f., thinks that this rescript was com-
posed by a Christian of Asia Minor, between 140-150 A. D. Baur also looks
upon it as a Christian invention.
* Eusebius, loc, cit., IV, 23.
"Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 108, 133.
"* Here we have the origin of what has been called the "theory of fraud"
of the resurrection of Jesus. It was invented by the Jewish priests who cruci-
fied the Lord, and knew it to be false (Matt, xxvii. 62-66, xxviii. 12-15). The
lie was repeated and believed, like many other lies, by credulous infidels, first
by malignant Jews at the time of Justin Martyr, then by Celsus, who learned
it from them, but wavered between it and the vision-theory, and it was re-
newed in the eighteenth century by Reimarus in the Wolfenbiittel Fragments.
Strauss formerly defended the vision-theory, but at the close of his life, when
he exchanged his idealism and pantheism for materialism and atheism, he
seems to have relapsed into this disgraceful theory of fraud; for in his Old
54 THE MONIST.
and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from
the dead and ascended to heaven. Moreover, you accuse
him of having taught those godless, lawless, and unholy
doctrines which you mention to the condemnation of those
who confess him to be the Christ, and a teacher from, and
Son of, God."
In the reign of Hadrian the long succession of "apol-
ogies" took its rise, indicating a very bitter public senti-
ment against the Christians, and a critical condition of the
church. The writers of these "apologies" known as "apol-
ogists" had not only to refute the charges and slanders
of Jews and Gentiles, but they also endeavored to vindicate
the truths of the Gospel, and attacked the vices and errors
of idolatry.27
The reign of Antoninus Pius (138-161) was for the
most part a time of peace and toleration. The only recorded
martyrdom under his rule, in the very year of his accession,
is that of Telephorus, bishop of Rome.28 Otherwise the
church was protected by the emperor.29 About the tenth
year of his reign Justin Martyr laid before Antoninus Pius
his First Apology "in behalf of those of all nations who are
now unjustly hated and wantonly abused; I myself," he
adds, "being one of them." In reply to this treatise of
Justin, a rescript is said to have been issued by the em-
peror to the Assembly of Asia* to the effect that "the
Christians should not be molested unless they made at-
tempts against the government."3 But the gravest doubts
and New Faith (1873) he was not ashamed to call the resurrection of Christ
"a world-historical humbug."
* See the next section.
18 According to Uhlhorn he was martyred A. D. 135 or 137.
28 According to Baur "the Christians suffered harsher oppressions than
under Hadrian.
* Koivbv rijs 'Afflat.
80 Eusebius, IV, 13; Justin, Apol., I, 70. In Eusebius it is an edict of
Marcus A.urelius, although Eusebius says immediately before, chap. 12, that
it was the emperor to whom Justin addressed his Apology, i. e., Antoninus
Pius. Moreover, what Eusebius says at the end of chap. 13 of the confirmatory
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 55
have been raised respecting the authenticity of this docu-
ment which we here give for the benefit of the student:
"I was of the opinion that the gods would take care that such
people [the Christians] should not remain hidden, for they would
punish much more, if they could, those who will not worship them.
You torment them and accuse them as if they were atheists in their
way of thinking, and you reproach them with other things which
we cannot prove. It can only be advantageous to them if they are
seen to die for that which is laid to their charge ; when they prefer
giving up their bodies to doing what you require of them, they con-
quer us. It is unkind to remind you of the earthquakes which have
happened and still happen. Compared with the Christians you lose
your courage in such circumstances; they have far more confidence
in God than you. At such a time you appear to know nothing of the
gods, you neglect the sacrifices, you do not know how to worship
God, and therefore you are envious of those who worship him, and
persecute them to death. Concerning these people some governors
of provinces wrote to my divine father, and he replied to them that
they should leave these people in peace if they do not attempt any-
thing against the dominion of the Romans. And many have sent
reports about them to me, and I also have answered in accordance
with my father's opinion. If any one has a complaint to bring against
any of these people as such [as a Christian] the accused person is
to be discharged even if it is shown that he is what is said, but the
accuser is to be punished."31
•
"Every word of this," says Baur," betrays the Chris-
tian writer, who makes the emperor give the heathens a
lecture, while, with regard to the Christians, he speaks in
exact accordance with the wishes of the Christians as to the
way in which they would desire to be judged and dealt
with by the Roman authorities. The emperor ends, in
testimony of the bishop Melito of Sardis cannt refer to this edict as an edict
of Marcus Aurelius ; for had Melito known of such a document he could not
have omitted to mention it in his Apology ; cf. Euseb. IV, 26. This accordingly
can only refer to the missives to Larissa, etc. The alleged edict arose, no
doubt, under Marcus Aurelius, but was imputed to Antoninus Pius, in order
to increase its influence by giving it the authority of the earlier emperor
(Baur).
81 Scholars like Neander, Baur, Uhlhorn, Schaff reject this edict as spur-
ious, though it is defended by Wieseler.
56 THE MONIST.
fact, with issuing commands exactly contrary to those of
the edict of Trajan."
Marcus Aurelius (161-180), the philosophic moralist,
the patron of the stoics, the pupil of Pronto of Cirta, an
opponent of the Christians, on whom he charged incestuous
banquets,32 had no sympathy with Christianity, and prob-
ably regarded it as an absurd and fanatical superstition.
His religion was a fatalistic pantheism. Nature was his
God. "Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmo-
nious to thee, O Universe ! Nothing for me is too early or
too late, which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit
to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature ! From thee are
all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return."
In proud resignation to the decisions of fate he sought his
peace. "Willingly give thyself up to Clotho, allowing her
to spin thy thread into whatever things she pleases." Mar-
cus Aurelius believed that he could realize his moral ideal
by his own power. He believed in himself and indeed in
himself alone. "It is sufficient to attend to the daimon
within, and to reverence him sincerely." A man who took
this attitude could only reject the story of the cross, the
gospel of grace for sinners. Marcus Aurelius,33 says Uhl-
horn, "was far too much of a slave to his philosophic the-
ories, far too thoroughly steeped in the prejudices of the
schools, to be able to give a hearing to the artless message
of salvation. He was far too proud and cold to receive
from the Christians' joy in their faith, any other impres-
sion than that of fanaticism. In his "Meditations"34 he
alludes only once to the Christians and this with scorn,
tracing their whole enthusiasm for martyrdom to "sheer
obstinacy" and love for theatrical display. "The soul,"
w He is referred to by Minucius Felix in the Octavius, ch. IX and XXXI.
M On Marcus Aurelius see Farrar, Seekers After God, pp. 235 ff. ; Schaff,
tory of the Christian Church, II, p. 325 ff.
** English translation by Geo. Long, revised ed., London, 1880.
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 57
he says, "when it must depart from the body, should be
ready to be extinguished, to be dispersed, or to subsist a
while longer with the body. But this readiness must pro-
ceed from its own judgment, and not from mere obstinacy,
as with the Christians ; it must be arrived at with reflection
and dignity, so that you could even convince another with-
out declamation."35 How far above the Christian martyrs,
this emperor evidently thought himself ! Of what led them
to death, he had no conception. He can hardly have known
more of Christianity than what was conveyed to him by
hearsay, and what Pronto, his teacher and friend, may
have told him of it.
It is significant for the position of Marcus Aurelius,
that Pronto, the rhetorician, the author of the first contro-
versial work directed against Christianity of which we
have any knowledge,36 was so intimate with him. During
the first years of the reign of Marcus Aurelius the Chris-
tians' position remained the same as before. Trajan's reg-
ulations were still the standard for all proceedings against
them, except that the many calamities which had come
upon the Empire had excited the fanaticism of the heathen
to greater fierceness, and the authorities offered less re-
sistance to the demands of the people. A persecution
flamed up with peculiar fury in Asia Minor, and in it Poly-
carp, the venerable bishop of Smyrna, suffered martyrdom.
When asked to swear by the genius of the emperor, Poly-
carp answered : "Eighty and six years have I served Christ,
and he has never done me a wrong. How can I blaspheme
him, my King, who has saved me?" And having prayed:
"Lord God Almighty, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, I
praise Thee that Thou hast judged me worthy of this day
and of this hour, to participate in the number of Thy wit-
* Meditations, XI, 3.
* It was soon cast into the shade by the treatise of Celsus.
58 THE MONIST.
nesses and in the cup of Thy Christ/' he was consumed by
the flames. This took place April 6 A. D. i66.37
Another prominent martyr of this time was Justin Martyr.
When he wrote his second Apology, he was already aware
of what awaited him. He narrates the executions of sev-
eral Christians, which had given the occasion for the Apol-
ogy, and then adds : "I too expect to be taken in their snares
and impaled." He knew, says Uhlhorn, that the philos-
opher Crescens longed to be revenged upon him and had
daily before his eyes proofs of how easy it was to procure
the death of a Christian. Crescens denounced him, and
with several other Christians he was brought before Junius
Rusticus, the prefect of the city. Justin quietly explained
who he was, and what was his occupation, that he had
himself sought and found the truth, and that now when
any one came to him he communicated to him the teach-
ings of the truth. "Art thou not then a Christian ?" asked
the prefect, and Justin replied: "Yes; I am a Christian."
Together with others, Justin was beheaded with the axe.
But worse things were yet to come. The emperor had
issued a rescript which went far beyond the regulations
of Trajan. Melito of Sardis calls it barbarously cruel.
"What has never before happened," writes Melito, "the
race of the pious is now persecuted in Asia by new edicts.
The shameless informers, greedy of the property of others,
plunder, as they find in the edicts the occasion to do so.
the innocent by day and night." Melito doubts whether
a righteous emperor could ever ordain anything so unjust,
but says that if this decree and this new edict, which should
not have been passed as it is even against hostile barbar-
ians, does proceed from the emperor himself, they entreat
him the more earnestly not to give them up to be thus pub-
87 There is a difference of opinion among scholars as to the date of Poly-
carp's martyrdom. Schaff, Renan, Ewald, Lipsius, Zalm, Harnack and others
assign it to the reign of Antoninus Pius in 155. Wieseler, Keim, Uhlhorn and
others favor the old date (166-167), which rests on the authority of Eusebius
and Jerome.
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 59
licly plundered.38 This is just the period of the first great
Christian persecutions which were conducted by the Roman
state authorities. The first fell upon the church at Smyrna
in the year 167, the second ten years afterwards upon the
Gallic churches at Lugdunum and Vienna. The most dis-
tinguished victim of this Gallic persecution was Pothinus,
the bishop of Lyons, a man over ninety years old.39
The persecution extended throughout the entire em-
pire, an early prelude of the subsequent general persecu-
tions. "The demon [of the Christians]/' Celsus exultingly
asserts, "is not only reviled, but banished from every land
and sea, and those who, like images, are consecrated to
him are bound and led to punishment and impaled (or
crucified), whilst the demon — or, as you call him, the Son
of God — takes no vengeance on the evil doer." Celsus
saw in this the fulfilment of the saying of Apollo's priest :
"The mills of the gods grind slowly," and he scornfully
points to the fate of the worshipers of the one God. "They
[the Jews] instead of being masters of the whole world,
are left with not so much as a patch of ground or a hearth ;
and of you [the Christians] one or two may be wandering
in secret, but they are being sought out to be punished
with death."40 But in all his exultation at the destruction
of the Christians, Celsus must still have felt that this per-
secution had not exterminated them, and would not do so.
Otherwise why did he choose just this time to make a
written attack on them ? For, in all probability, the famous,
or rather infamous, treatise which he published under the
title "A True Discourse," belongs to this very time.
THE APOLOGISTS.
From the beginning Christianity bore within itself the
consciousness of possessing a power which should over-
u Eusebius, IV, 26.
"For the narrative of this fiery trial see Eusebius, V, i, 2.
* Origen against Celsus, VIII, 39, 40, 69.
6O THE MONIST.
come the world. The words of Jesus, "Ye are the salt of
the earth," "ye are the light of the world," were the guid-
ing thought by which the Christians were inspired from the
beginning, and which made them conscious that they were
the soul of the world, and that they alone had a future to
look forward to. Where there are men who in this way
feel themselves to be the soul of the world, the time is in-
disputably approaching when the reins of the government
of the world will fall unasked into their hands.
But before things had advanced so far, much repug-
nance, detestation, hatred and enmity against Christianity
had to be overcome. But still it was successful, though all
that it had to oppose to the whole might of heathenism,
was simply the word, the testimony of Christ. To this
must be added the life, love and suffering of the early
Christians, which made an impression upon the heathen,
and thus many a soul among them thirsting for truth, many
a seeker after wisdom in the schools of the philosophers,
in the temples of gods the most diverse, or in Jewish houses
of prayer, found here the deepest longing satisfied. The
time had come when not only — to use the words of Celsus
— "wool-workers, cobblers, leather-dressers, the most illit-
erate and vulgar of mankind, were zealous preachers of the
gospels," but also the cultured and learned, and from the
ranks of the latter came those men who wrote treatises or
apologies in defence of the new religion, to which they have
been converted, and from their writings they obtained the
name of "apologists." The Christian apologetic literature
called forth in the second century, was a "vindication of
Christianity by the pen, against the Jewish zealot, the
Grecian philosopher, and the Roman statesman. The Chris-
tians were indeed from the first 'ready always to give an
answer to every man that asked them a reason of the hope
that was in them.' But when heathenism took the field
against them not only with fire and sword, but with argu-
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 6l
ment and slander besides, they had to add to their simple
practical testimony a theoretical self-defence" (Schaff).
The earliest of these apologists1 are Quadratus and
Aristides, who wrote against the heathen, and Aristo of
Pella, who wrote against the Jews, all in the reign of Had-
rian (117-137). As to Quadratus, his "Apology" is lost.
All we know of him is a quotation from Eusebius who says :
"Quadratus addressed a discourse to Aelius Hadrian, as an
apology for the religion that we profess, because certain
malicious persons attempted to harass our brethren." As
to Aristides of Athens, his "Apology" mentioned by Euse-
bius, was looked upon as hopelessly lost, but has recently
been recovered. The apology contains "first, a declaration
of the nature of the true God; then a scathing exposure,
by way of contrast, of heathen mythological systems ; and
lastly, a vivid and beautiful delineation of the Christian
character, with an appeal to calumniators and persecutors,
drawn from the coming judgment." Some scholars think
that the original was offered to the emperor Antoninus
Pius (138-161).
Aristo of Pella seems to have been the earliest Christian
participant in the literary conflict with Judaism. Between
135 and 175 he published a small treatise entitled "A Dis-
putation between Jason and Papiscus concerning Christ."
In this work Jason, a Jewish Christian, proved so con-
clusively the fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies in Jesus
of Nazareth that his opponent, the Jew Papiscus, begged to
be baptized. Celsus cites the work in his treatise against
the Christians, written about 178.
Justin the Philosopher and Martyr.
"The most eminent among the Greek apologists of the
second century is Flavius Justinus, surnamed 'Philosopher
1 On these and the other apologists see Ehrhard, Die altchristliche Littera-
tur, vol. I, 1900, pp. 198 f. ; Bardenhewer, Patrology, St. Louis, Mo., 1908,
pp. 44 ff. ; also Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. II, 1883.
62 THE MONIST.
and Martyr/ He is the typical apologist, who devoted his
whole life to the defence of Christianity at a time when it
was most assailed, and he sealed his testimony with his
blood. He is also the first Christian philosopher or the
first philosophic theologian. His writings were well known
to Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome and
Photius, and the most important of them have been pre-
served to this day" (Schaff). He was one of those seekers
after truth who found his deepest longing satisfied in the
church. He tells us of his fruitless wanderings through
the school of the philosophers in search of certainty and
peace of mind. A stoic under whose instruction he first
placed himself, asserted that the sure knowledge of God,
which Justin chiefly longed for was a subordinate question
of philosophical speculation. A peripatetic, of whom he
next inquired, demanded, after a few days, as of primary
importance, that he should settle the fee. This repelled
Justin, and he went to a Pythagorean who dismissed him
immediately because he had no knowledge of music, geom-
etry and astronomy, an acquaintance with which, the Pyth-
agorean declared, was pre-requisite to the study of philos-
ophy, since they are the means by which the soul absorbed
in earthly things may be purified. Justin then turned to a
Platonist and supposed that he had reached the goal, for
his teacher introduced him to the Platonic doctrine of ideas,
and the pupil already dreamed that he had become a sage
and was near to the vision of Deity. Then, walking alone
one day on the shore of the sea, he met an old man, a mature
Christian, and fell into conversation with him on divine
things. The venerable man showed him that God can be
perceived only by a mind sanctified by the spirit of God,
and so affected him that all at once his proud dream of
knowledge vanished. The old man, seeing his consterna-
tion, pointed him to the divine Word as the source of all
true knowledge of God, and began to tell him of Christ.
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 63
Following these hints, Justin found in Christianity that
sure knowledge of God which he had sought for in vain
in the different schools of philosophers. Thus the enthu-
siastic Platonist became a believing Christian.2
Justin is the author of two "Apologies" against the
heathen, and of a "Dialogue with Trypho the Jew." The
"First Apology," which is the longer, is addressed to the
emperor Antoninus Pius (137-161), and is especially valu-
able for the account it gives of the doctrines, ritual, and
life of the early churches.3 It "vindicates the Christians
from the charge of atheism and immorality. "We who
formerly delighted in fornication," says he, "now strive
for purity. We who used magical arts, have dedicated
ourselves to the good and eternal God. We who have
loved the acquisition of wealth more than all else, now bring
what we have into a common stock, and give to every one
in need. We who hated and destroyed one another, and
on account of their different manners would not receive
into our houses men of a different tribe, now, since the
coming of Christ, live familiarly with them. We pray for
our enemies, we endeavor to persuade those who hate us
unjustly to live conformably to the beautiful precepts of
Christ to the end that they may become partakers with us
of the same joyful hope of a reward from God, the Ruler
of all."4
The "Second Apology" is chiefly an appeal against the
calumnies of the cynic philosopher Crescens, and the con-
sequent persecution to which Christians were exposed. In
both apologies Justin shows how large a place was occupied
in his thoughts by the "demons," as the deceivers of man-
* Justin Martyr, Dialogues, ch. II, 8. Archbishop Trench has reproduced
the story of Justin's conversion in thoughtful poetry, in Poems, London, 1865,
p. 140.
1 For a description of a Sunday service see ch. 65, 67.
*ch. 63.
64 THE MONIST.
kind. The second was fatal to Justin himself, Crescens in
revenge pursuing the Christian philosopher to his death.
The "Dialogue with Trypho the Jew" is a work of
Platonic cast. It is here that Justin gives the well-known
narrative of his own conversion. It is more than twice as
large as both "Apologies," and is a vindication of Chris-
tianity from Moses and the prophets against the objections
of the Jews. The disputation lasted two days. Trypho
was not a fanatical Pharisee but a tolerant and courteous
Jew, who evasively confessed at last that he had been much
instructed, and asked Justin to come again, and to remem-
ber him as a friend.
Tatian the Assyrian.
This disciple of Justin Martyr, living from no to 172
A.D.,was the author of an apologetic work addressed "To
the Greeks" and written in the reign of Marcus Aurelius,
probably in Rome. He vindicates Christianity as the "phi-
losophy of the barbarians," and exposes the contradictions,
absurdities, and immoralities of the Greek mythology from
actual knowledge and with much spirit and acuteness, but
with vehement contempt and bitterness. He proves that
the teachings of Moses and the Old Testament comprise
an older as well as a purer doctrine. All that was true,
he maintains, in ancient philosophy, was derived from "bar-
barians" to whom God revealed Himself.
Miltiades.
Miltiades was a contemporary of Tatian and perhaps
also a disciple of Justin. He defended the Christian truth
against pagans, Jews and heretics, but all his writings
are lost.
Apollinaris.
Claudius Apollinaris was bishop of Hieropolis in the
reign of Marcus Aurelius, to whom he presented a "De-
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 65
fence of the Christian Faith," apparently in 172. But this
as well as his other writings have perished.
Melito.
Melito, bishop of Sardis in Lydia, was a prolific author.
He wrote an "Apology," which he presented to Marcus
Aurelius. In it Melito reminds the emperor and the Ro-
mans that the appearance of Christianity in the world was
contemporary with the reign of Emperor Augustus, which
was so great an epoch in history. At that time, he says,
the Roman Empire reached the highest point of its prosper-
ity, and since then both have been together in the world
to their mutual advantage. "The philosophy which we
profess," says Melito, "first flourished indeed among the
barbarians, but afterwards, when it grew up also among
the nations under your government, under the glorious
reign of Augustus, your ancestor, it became to your ad-
ministration an auspicious blessing. For since that time
the Roman power has grown in greatness and splendor,
and to it you have become the desired successor; and will
continue to be, together with your son, if you preserve that
philosophy which has been nurtured with the empire, which
commenced its existence with Augustus, and which your
ancestors also did honor with other religions. One of the
greatest evidences that our doctrine flourished to the ad-
vantage of a reign so happily begun, is this, that nothing
disastrous has occurred to the empire, since the reign of
Augustus ; on the contrary, all things have proceeded splen-
didly and gloriously according to the wishes of all."5
Athenagoras.
He was "a Christian philosopher of Athens," during
the reign of Marcus Aurelius. He addressed an "Apology"
or "Intercession in behalf of the Christians" to the em-
' Eusebius, IV, 26.
66 THE MONIST.
perors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. In a style of
great elegance, Athenagoras meets and refutes the current
accusations against the Christians, those of atheism, Thy-
estean banquets (cannibalism), Oedipodean connections
(incest), and effectually retorts the charge of absurdity
upon the traditions of heathenism.
Minucius Felix.
Marcus Minucius Felix belongs to that class of con-
verts who brought the rich stores of classical culture to the
service of Christianity. We have from him an apology of
Christianity in the form of a dialogue under the title Oc-
tavius. Together with his friend Octavius Januarius, who
like himself had been converted from heathen error to the
Christian truth, the author makes an excursion from Rome
to the sea-bath at Ostia. There they meet on a promenade
along the beach with Caecilius Natalis, another friend of
Minucius, but still a heathen, and, as appears from his
reasoning, a philosopher of the skeptical school of the New
Academy. Sitting down, the two friends begin, at the
suggestion of Csecilius, to discuss the religious question of
the day. Minucius sitting between them is to act as um-
pire (chap. 1-4).
Caecilius speaks first in defence of the heathen, and in
opposition to the Christian religion. "He represents in his
views," says Uhlhorn, "a class of persons, large then as
always, who have a certain measure of culture and yet are
incapable of any profound knowledge, and touch the subject
of religion only on the surface. Conservative in their dis-
position, they adhere to the faith in which they are born
neither from choice nor from inclination, but from decorum
and love of quiet. They regard it as a mark of good breed-
ing not to dispute much upon such a topic. They are
neither dreamers nor mystics. On the contrary they are
somewhat skeptical, and rather inclined to ridicule religious
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 67
beliefs. Yet they are unwilling to see the old traditions
disturbed, are easily inflamed against religious innovaters,
and are credulous of every absurdity which is reported
about them.
Nothing in Christianity more excites the anger of Cae-
cilius than its claim to be in possession of assured truth.
While he admits that we know nothing with certainty, yet
he thinks "the tradition of the fathers the most venerable
and the best guide to truth" (ch. 5). Wherefore the re-
ligion which they have handed down is to be followed,
without dispute. The depressed condition of the Christians
makes him ridicule their God. "Where is the God," asks
Caecilius, "that can help those who come to life again, while
he does nothing for the living ? Do not the Romans govern
and reign without your God ? Do they not enjoy the whole
world and rule over you? The greatest and best portion
of you are the prey of want and cold, are naked and hungry.
Your God suffers this and seems not to know it. Either he
can not, or will not, help his own: thus he is either weak
or unjust" (ch. 12). Csecilius objects to the religion of
the Christians, that it has no temples, nor altars, nor im-
ages. "What absurdities," exclaims he (ch. 10), "do these
Christians invent ! Of the God whom they can neither show
nor see they recount that he is everywhere present, that he
comes and goes, that he knows and judges the actions of
men, their words, and even their secret thoughts. They
make him out to be a spy, a troublesome policeman, who
is always in motion. How can he attend to every particular
when he is occupied with the whole? Or, how can he be
sufficient for the whole, when he is engaged with particu-
lars?" (ch. 10).
In the eyes of Csecilius the Christians appeared to be
godless, to be atheists. But more than this. He repeats
the lies of secret crimes, as promiscuous incest and the
murder of innocent children, and quotes as authority for
68 THE MONIST.
these slanders the celebrated orator Pronto. "The story
about the initiation of novices," Caecilius narrates, "is as
much to be detested as it is well known. An infant covered
over with meal, that it may deceive the unwary, is placed
before the neophytes. This infant is slain by the young
pupil, with dark and secret wounds, he being urged on as
if to harmless blows on the surface of the meal. Thirstily
— O horror! — they lick up its blood; eagerly they divide
its limbs; by this victim they are pledged together; with
this consciousness of wickedness they are covenanted to
mutual silence." After the feast, it is further related, when
they are intoxicated, a dog that has been tied to the chan-
delier is provoked to jump by throwing a morsel, so that
by the leap he extinguishes the light, and in the darkness
thus occasioned deeds of the most abominable lust are com-
mitted and the wildest orgies are celebrated (ch. 9).
To the pagan Caecilius, the Christians are a "reprobate,
unlawful, desperate faction," who had conspired against
all that is good and beautiful, a "people skulking and shun-
ning the light, silent in public, but garrulous in corners.
They despise the temples as charnel-houses, they abhor the
gods, they laugh at sacred things; wretched, they pity, if
they are allowed, the priests; half naked themselves, they
disdain honors and purple robes. In their wondrous folly
and incredible audacity they despise present torments,
though they dread those which are uncertain and future;
and, while they fear to die after death, they do not fear to
die for the present. So does a deceitful hope, the consola-
tion of a revival, soothe their fear" (ch. 8). Csecilius pities
the Christians for their austere habits and their aversion
to the theater, banquets and other innocent enjoyments
(ch. 12).
Octavius follows closely the arguments of Caecilius,
makes a drastic expose of the follies of polytheism and
refutes the usual anti-Christian calumnies, closing with a
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 69
touching portrait of the faith and life of the Christians
(ch. 16-38). No arbiter's judgment is needed as Caecilius
admits his defeat.
The Epistle to Diognetus.
We have spoken of the consciousness which filled the
Christians that they are the soul of the world. Among
the apologists of the second century there is no one in
whom this feeling was more alive, or by whom it was ex-
pressed with greater energy and beauty than the unknown
author of the "Epistle to Diognetus." After depicting in
sharp antitheses the peculiar enigmatical life of the Chris-
tians, contrasting in so many points with the whole of
their surroundings, he sums up his description of them
in the statement: "In a word, the Christians are in the
world what the soul is in the body/' As the passage is too
beautiful to omit we give it in full : "The Christians are not
distinguished from other men by country, by language, nor
by civil institutions, for they neither dwell in cities by
themselves, nor use a peculiar tongue, nor lead a singular
mode of life. They dwell in Grecian or barbarian cities,
as the case may be ; they follow the ways of the country in
dress, food, and the other affairs of life. Yet they present
a wonderful and confessedly paradoxical course of con-
duct. They dwell in their own native lands, but as stran-
gers. They take part in all things as citizens; and they
suffer all things as foreigners. Every foreign country is
a fatherland to them, and every land of their birth as a
land of strangers. They marry, as do others ; they beget
children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They
have a common table, but not a common bed. They are
in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass
their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They
obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the
laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted
70 THE MONIST.
by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put
to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make
many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound
in all ; they are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor
are glorified. They are spoken evil of, and yet are justi-
fied; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and
repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are pun-
ished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if
quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jews as for-
eigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who
hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.
"To sum up all in one word — what the soul is in the
body, that are Christians in the world. The soul is dif-
fused through all the members of the body and Christians
are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul
dwells in the body, yet is not of the body; and so the
Christians dwell in the world, yet are not of the world.
The soul, invisible, keeps watch in the visible body ; so also
the Christians are known indeed to be in the world, but
their godliness remains invisible. The flesh hates the
soul, and wars against it, though itself suffering no in-
jury, because it is prevented from enjoying pleasures;
the world also hates the Christians, though in nowise in-
jured, because they abjure pleasures. The soul loves the
flesh that hates it, and [loves also] the members ; Christians
likewise love those that hate them. The soul is imprisoned
in the body, yet preserves that very body ; so the Christians
are confined in the world as in a prison, and yet they are
the preservers of the world. The immortal soul dwells in a
mortal tabernacle; so the Christians dwell as sojourners
in corruptible [bodies], looking for an incorruptible dwel-
ling in the heavens. The soul, when but ill-provided with
food and drink, becomes better ; in like manner, the Chris-
tians, though subjected day by day to punishment, increase
the more in number. God has assigned them this illustrious
EARLY ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. Jl
position, which it were unlawful for them to forsake" (ch.
5 and 6). 6
Leaving aside the question of authorship which re-
mains unanswered to this day, we will state that the Diog-
netus to whom this letter is addressed, was an inquiring
heathen of high social position and culture, who desired
information concerning the origin and nature of the re-
ligion of the Christians, and the secret of their contempt
of the world, their courage in death, their brotherly love,
and the reason of the late origin of this new fashion, so
different from the gods of the Greeks and the superstition
of the Jews. A stoic philosopher of this name instructed
Marcus Aurelius. Perhaps he taught him also to despise
the Christian martyrs, and to trace their heroic courage
to sheer obstinacy. It is quite probable that our Diognetus
was identical with the imperial tutor who expressed the
desire to know what enabled these Christians "to despise
the world and to make light of death."7
The epistle is an answer to the question of this noble
heathen. "It is a brief but masterly vindication of Chris-
tian life and doctrine from actual experience. It is evi-
dently the product of a man of genius, fine taste and clas-
sical culture. It excels in fresh enthusiasm of faith, rich-
ness of thought, and elegance of style, and is altogether
one of the most beautiful memorials of Christian antiquity,
unsurpassed and hardly equaled by any genuine work of
the Apostolic Fathers."
Assuming with Lightfoot, Schaff and Bardenhewer the
identity of the recipient of this epistle with that of the
preceptor of Marcus Aurelius; assuming with Keim the
year 177 as the date of composition, may we not go a step
6 The only codex of this epistle definitely known was the Strassburg Codex
of the thirteenth century, which was destroyed in the accidental fire at Strass-
burg during the siege of 1870,
7 Comp. £/>. and Diog., cap. i, with Aurelius, Medit., IX, 3 (his only allu-
sion to Christianity).
72 THE MONIST.
further and assume that the work of Celsus was meant
to counteract the influence which the "Epistle to Diog-
netus" might produce? The very title of Celsus's work,
"A True Word," is in itself suggestive. He alone claims to
give a "true" discourse. "I know all. We have it all out
of your own books, we need no further witnesses. You
have killed yourselves with your own sword ;"8 such is the
boast of Celsus, the Platonist.
BERNHARD PICK.
NEWARK, NEW JERSEY.
"Origen, Against Celsus, I, 12; II, 74.
FROM PROTAGORAS TO WILLIAM JAMES.
NOW that the big heart is still and the voice of the
Master is silent — the Master who since the death of
the great Socrates himself is unsurpassed in the philosophic
inspiration he imparted to the youth of his age — friendship
and justice alike require that we shall give such nurture
and correction to his favorite child as loyalty to the past
and the needs of the future may dictate. Let us try to
examine briefly the significance of the doctrine of prag-
matism and then redefine it in terms of our own insight.
I.
It is a long stretch historically from Protagoras to
William James. Yet critics have not been slow in point-
ing out the similarity between the doctrine of the founder
of ancient humanism and the pragmatic movement of to-
day. In this the critics have spoken truer than they knew.
For historical research has now made clear that Protagoras
was no subjectivist, as was so long supposed from a mis-
interpretation of Plato, but a genuine empiricist. I agree
in the main with Gomperz's results in his treatment of
Protagoras.1 But I believe that these results, with proper
interpretation, can be derived from Plato, especially the
Theaetetus, which Gomperz discards. This incidentally
throws valuable light on the Protagorean authorship of the
anonymous work entitled "The Art." On the basis of this
new interpretation of Protagoras, we may indeed adopt the
first sentence of Protagoras's work on truth as a fair
1 Greek Thinkers, Vol. I, 438-475-
74 THE MONIST.
epitome of modern pragmatism: "Man is the measure of
all things, of those which are that they are and of those
which are not that they are not." Or to use Goethe's para-
phrase: "We may watch nature, measure her, reckon her,
weigh her, etc. as we will. It is yet but our measure and
weight, since man is the measure of things."
It is a commonplace now that human nature must be the
starting point for all our theories concerning reality. We can
only speak of those things as existent that make a difference
to human nature, either directly as immediate experience or
indirectly as assumptions needed to account for such im-
mediate experience as our perception with its microscopes
and telescopes furnishes us. If things make no difference
directly or indirectly, perceptually or conceptually, to hu-
man nature, they are mere fictions, belong in a world of
centaurs and mermaids. At any rate we cannot say whether
they are or are not.
And what is true in regard to the existence of things
holds equally in regard to their properties and values.
These, too, must be regarded as included in Protagoras's
thesis, for the doctrine of the functional relation of qual-
ities and values to human nature is distinctly attributed to
Protagoras in the dialogue by that name. The doctrine of
the relativity of values Protagoras inherited from Herac-
litus, who showed that values depend upon the relation of
the object to the specific will, whether that of ass, or ox,
or fish, or hog, or surgeon. "Asses would rather have
straw than gold.2" Relativity of values to the will does not
mean subjectivity of values. We can predict values for
definite wills. We know what the ox and ass want, under
definite conditions. We must judge the values and proper-
ties of things, as well as their existence, from the differ-
ences they make to human nature in varying contexts.
Things are colored, extended, sweet or bitter; they are
1 See Fragments 51-58, Burnet, Early Greek Philosophers, p. 137.
FROM PROTAGORAS TO WILLIAM JAMES. 75
pleasant or unpleasant, beautiful or ugly, because they be-
long in a context with conscious human nature. Things or
individuals have those properties that we must acknowl-
edge in order to adjust ourselves to our environment or
realize our purposes. To speak of a property that makes
no difference directly or indirectly to human nature, is to
mistake fancy for reality. There is no property in the
abstract, no good in general. In this Socrates and Pro-
tagoras agree.
So far modern pragmatism and Protagoras are at one.
They are at one, too, in applying this criterion to all types
of existence, physical or psychological, natural or super-
natural. Knowledge everywhere must be based upon evi-
dence as furnished through human experience. "In respect
to the gods," says Protagoras, "I am unable to know either
that they are or that they are not, for there are many
obstacles to such knowledge, above all the obscurity of the
matter and the life of man, in that it is so short." We must
know the existence and properties of the supernatural as
we know nature — by evidence. To be sure, in our con-
ception of experience as race experience we are able to
eke out somewhat further the evidence that Protagoras
found insufficient in individual experience. Individual ex-
perience is supplemented by further historic experience in
trying out the hypothesis. But human nature still remains
the measure.
We know, too, that what differences shall exist for us
vary vastly with the efficiency of our tools, perceptual
and conceptual. The rings of Saturn or the properties of
radium only make a difference to human nature with im-
proved tools, not only in the way of telescopes and micro-
scopes, but in the way of scientific conceptions. Considering
the limitations of our powers of perception as compared
with the complexity of the objects, this leaves sufficient
room for scientific agnosticism. This agnosticism, how-
7O THE MONIST.
ever, is one of degree, not of kind. To the extent that we
know the properties of things, we must believe that they
are such as we must take them. To say, then, that all
we know must be known from the difference it makes to hu-
man experience must be accepted as an evident, even if
tautological, truism. Tautology it seemed even to Aris-
totle. But, if it is logical tautology, it marks, both in an-
cient and modern times, decidedly a new psychological step
in the development of human consciousness, a step so strik-
ing that its recent re-discovery has been well-nigh epoch-
making.
ii.
But, if human nature is to be taken as the starting
point and measure, we must first of all define human nature.
Here again the problem is old, and we must strive to learn
from the past. Not to orient ourselves with reference to
the past is to talk like drunken men or men suddenly awake.
A great deal of confusion and misunderstanding could have
been obviated in the recent pragmatic discussion and a
great deal of energy economized on both sides, if those
taking part in it had taken pains to read Plato's Theaetetus.
If things exist and are what they are because of the
differences they make to human nature, then what is hu-
man nature or in wrhat respect must they make a difference ?
Protagoras in setting the new program, so revolutionary
in philosophic investigation, failed, so far as we know, to
define human nature. This failure has probably a twofold
root. One root is the inadequacy of his psychological tools.
Thought and perception were not as yet clearly differen-
tiated. This we can see from the fragments of Empedocles.
Thought and perception here alike depend upon effluences
and the action of like upon like. The concept has not yet
been discovered. This is the immortal contribution of Soc-
rates and Plato. It is this lack of distinction that Plato
FROM PROTAGORAS TO WILLIAM JAMES. 77
feels when he says in the Theaetetus that "perception and
sight and knowledge are supposed to be the same."
But another, and still more significant reason, we find
in the problem which Protagoras sets himself. We learn
from Porphyry that Protagoras in his great work on
"Truth" directed his shafts against the Eleatics.3 In other
words, the bitter struggle of Protagoras, as of his modern
successors, was with the intellectualists. Only the Eleatics
were no milk and water intellectualists. They had the cour-
age of their convictions. In Parmenides, the venerable
founder of the school, they had their unequivocal platform :
"For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can
be." Thought coerces being. Zeno had riddled the world
of perception with his brilliant dialectic, and Melissos had
drawn the consequences of the logic of his predecessors:
"Wherefore it ensueth that we neither see nor know the
many." It was this arrogant confidence in a priori thought
and contempt for sense that Protagoras set himself to
refute.
We cannot wonder, then, that Protagoras seemed to
his critics to neglect thought and to place a one-sided em-
phasis upon the immediate. Here again history has re-
peated itself. But it seems less of an omission when we
remember that there was no need of emphasizing the im-
portance of thought so far as the Eleatic intellectualists
were concerned. Knowledge, Protagoras insists, must pro-
ceed from evidence. It cannot be produced in vacuo by
means of mere logical consistency. The criterion of reality
must lie in the consequences in the way of immediate sense
experience. Knowledge rests, in the last analysis, upon
perception.
For, with the key furnished by Porphyry, we can see
the import of the quotations given by Plato in the Theae-
tetus. The homo mensura tenet, which Plato quotes, means
* Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, Vol. I, p. 450.
78 THE MONIST.
that if facts make a sensible difference to human nature,
they must be existent, and must be what they seem to be,
for the non-existent cannot make any difference to human
nature. And again we read: "As Protagoras says: 'To
myself I am judge of what is and what is not to me' ' —the
most unsophisticated can trust his senses. No need of an
Eleatic to tell us. And finally : "His words are : 'To whom
a thing seems, that which seems is' ;" or, in Hegel's phrase,
"The essence must appear." Unless the real can appear
in experience and be taken at its face value, not as a lying
universe, science is impossible. And in this appearance,
so far as knowledge is concerned, human nature is a neces-
sary reagent. Such seems to me the meaning of Protag-
oras. Such is the meaning of modern pragmatism.
Perhaps the best commentary on Protagoras is his
own countryman and contemporary, Empedocles, who,
with a similar motive, was combating the Eleatics: "Go
to now, consider with all thy powers in what way each thing
is clear. Hold nothing that thou seest in greater credit
than what thou hearest, nor value thy resounding ear
above the clear instructions of thy tongue ; and do not with-
hold thy confidence in any of the other bodily parts by
which there is an opening for understanding, but consider
everything in the way it is clear."4 Thus must we put
nature upon the rack. This is Empedocles's plea for sense
evidence ; and his belief in the dependence of this sense evi-
dence, both as to kind and to range, upon the conditions
of the human body — its substances and pores, did not make
him a subjectivist.
Plato's interest, in the Theaetetus, is not in Protag-
oras's own meaning, but in the psychological and logical
consequences which seem to him to be involved — quite un-
suspected, as he admits, by Protagoras himself and his
disciples. Thus Plato hopes to point a moral to the sub-
4 Lines 20-24, Burnet's translation.
FROM PROTAGORAS TO WILLIAM JAMES. 79
jectivism in his own day. To make short work of his op-
ponents, Plato groups together several doctrines, the homo
mensura doctrine of Protagoras, the later doctrine of The-
aetetus that knowledge is perception, and the flux theory
of the later Heracliteans, all of which Plato gives the
brand of relativism, thus producing confusion in the mind
of his successors. And here too history has repeated itself
in the hopeless jungle of doctrines to which the term prag-
matism has been applied by its critics.
Plato's interpretation of human nature, when he sets
himself to "understand" Protagoras is surprisingly indi-
vidualistic. "Man" must mean "men." He then proceeds
to draw the consequences of such an individualistic inter-
pretation. Protagoras, like the early Fichte, had failed
to define his ego. He had not been forced like Kant,
through a long discussion, to have recourse to "conscious-
ness in general." It was simply natural for him, coming
before the individualistic period, and with the spirit of the
natural scientists still upon him, to assume human nature
to be one : or, as we learn from the dialogue "Protagoras,"
to regard man as primarily institutional.
But man as man does not have perceptions. So Plato
argues. Seeming must always be individual seeming. So
many men, so many seemings. If that is the case, the
truth of the seeming is not guaranteed by the individual
seemings, whether of man or of tadpole, but is the result
of a constitution presupposed in the seemings and only
to be arrived at by conceptual construction.
If Protagoras failed to define man, he also failed, ac-
cording to Plato, to define seeming. Scrutiny will show
that not all immediate experience is to be equally trusted
or to be regarded as equally valid. There are illusions of
perception. Immediate perception, therefore, cannot be
trusted indiscriminately as evidence of reality. So Plato
makes the later relativism do service against the common
8O •*" THE MONIST.
sense theory of Protagoras. But pathological cases should
not make us discredit perception altogether. In thinking,
too, we have error — fallacious and insane thinking. But
should we, therefore, discredit all thinking? Plato by his
brilliant undiscriminating criticism of perception paves the
way for skepticism altogether. While illusions mean a
wrong assimilation of a present sense quality with a com-
plex of sense qualities as experienced in the past, this does
not prove that we have any other way of ascertaining the
conjunctions of qualities except by sense-experience. Seem-
ing must here correct seeming, through further experience.
Thought can only furnish a systematic method of proce-
dure, not the actual conjunctions.
Memory and expectancy, Plato further contends, point
to a constitution which cannot be expressed in terms of
immediate seeming. Insofar as we imply these, we have
transcended mere perception. But while this is true, are
not memory and expectancy after all built upon seeming —
the reoccurrence of an identical content which suggests
its own previous context ? And does not the value of mem-
ory lie in enabling us to draw upon the conjunctions of past
seemings in order to meet future seemings?
If you take our feelings of value instead of our per-
ceptions, here too, Plato argues, we cannot speak of meas-
ure or validity, so long as we remain on the plain of mere
immediacy. A dog-faced baboon has the same claim as
Protagoras so far as immediate feelings are concerned.
But we must not forget that the role of thinking must lie
in finding and weighing the implied presuppositions in our
immediate sense of values ; and that all it can give us, here
too, is systematic procedure. It does not create its data
in the case of value any more than in the case of sense
qualities.
Thus Plato argues in his own matchless and onesided
way, that on the plain of immediacy there can be no ques-
FROM PROTAGORAS TO WILLIAM JAMES. 8l
tion of truth or falsity. As seemings they equally exist.
The problem of validity arises only with conceptual defi-
nition, systematic thinking. He must be a wise man that
is to be the measure. Truth cannot be decided on the
ground of seeming or duration, but on the ground of its
rational coherency. If Plato shows at the end of the The-
aetetus that his abstract definition of truth is circular, this
confession of logical failure is inevitable, on the intellec-
tualist basis, i. e., so long as we try to define truth in
strictly formal terms. The difficulty can only be overcome
when we state truth pragmatically, that is to say, in terms
of procedure or leading.
The individualism, which Plato falls into in criticizing
Protagoras, would make all knowledge impossible. It can
be turned against thought as well as perception. Thinking, as
well as perception, must be the reaction of individual human
nature. The individual errs in inference as well as percep-
tual judgment. Individual thinking must be corrected, as
must illusory perception, in the course of future experience,
individual and social. In our finite experience, knowledge
is a piecemeal affair and seeming must correct and supple-
ment seeming. Absolute truth is for us a limit. Our faith
must be a faith in the leading of the seemings, even though
we never should arrive. Plato, in his new enthusiasm,
exaggerated the concept, as much as Protagoras exag-
gerated perception. The concept is a splendid tool, but its
value lies in its anticipation of reality as sensed and felt,
as concrete and individual. Plato, the absolutist, by failing
to recognize this fact plays into the hands of the skeptic.
Plato sometimes narrowly escapes giving us the whole
truth. In the Symposium and Phaedrus he arrives at the
concept of beauty by discovering the common beauty in
many instances, "going from one to two and from two to
all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, from
fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he ar
82 THE MONIST.
rives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows
what the essence of beauty is." In other places he employs
the method of limits ; and again that of mystical apprecia-
tion. But the beauties of earth, the immediate facts, are
only stepping-stones, the first rungs of the Jacob's ladder
which, once ascended, the soul is satisfied and does not need
to redescend to test the concept with reference to the facts ?
Even when it is forced to redescend, as in the case of rulers
serving apprenticeship in the world of shadows, it is only
to mark the deviations from the Idea, not to verify it. At
least such seems Plato's attitude in the Republic, Sympo-
sium and the Phaedo.
What misled Plato, apart from his poetic bent of mind,
was his passionate interest in one group of concepts, viz.,
the normative concepts, which he confused with the class
concepts which he also regarded as Ideas. In the case of
the normative ideals or limits, it does seem as though they
must be primarily a priori — only elicited by the midwife
experience. For without our ideal demands or instincts
for meaning and beauty, we would not seek for meaning,
for unity, or for order within the chaotic world of the
immediate. This formal interest came to dominate largely
the ancient world through the influence of Plato and the
new ethical and religious spirit of the age.
In Protagoras and Plato we have the two poles of the
problem of knowledge. It is the merit of Protagoras to
have shown that there can be no knowledge without the
evidence of immediate experience. What seems must be,
or science is impossible. It is the merit of Plato to have
shown that there can be no knowledge without systematic
thinking. Without concepts sensation is blind. Protag-
oras may have over-emphasized the place of sense per-
ception in investigation. Plato slighted the perpetual data
and was inclined to let the mill of reason grind in vacuo.
Each developed his brilliant half-truth as a corrective to
FROM PROTAGORAS TO WILLIAM JAMES. 83
the prevailing tendency of the age, Protagoras in oppo-
sition to the apriorism of the Eleatics, Plato against the
immediatism of Aristippus. If they did not emphasize the
other side it was for the reason that it is not necessary to
carry coals to Newcastle. By such zig-zag the history of
thought progresses.
in.
It remained for modern science, in its brilliant history,
to show the importance of both hypothesis and immediacy.
Data become science only when illuminated by thinking
or hypothesis. Science is the constructive or systematic
functioning of human nature, not mere perceptual con-
tinuity with its environment. It is the purpose of science
to construct or build out, on the basis of past experience,
a conceptual net-work or differentiation of purposes to
meet the variety of properties and changes in the environ-
ment. The equivalents furnished by our scientific system
may be artificial enough, tools merely for our anticipation
and mastery of the processes, as in the physical sciences;
or they may be of a piece with the world with which they
deal and lead to understanding and appreciation, as in
social relations; but in any case our ideal construction
must be verified with reference to the ongoing of experi-
ence.
To be sure this building out of immediacy has been
recognized in natural science primarily. And here we have
lagged behind the Greeks. The immediacy of perception,
bound up with the specific energies of the senses, is the only
immediacy adequately taken account of by modern science.
The other type of immediacy, that of feeling and will-
attitudes, involving physiologically, beside the specific cer-
ebral tendencies, the more diffuse changes of the motor,
sympathetic and vascular systems, has been largely ig-
nored. Yet the values of objects must be regarded as
84 THE MONIST.
equally significant with their properties. If the sense qual-
ities are functional relations of human nature to its ob-
jects, so also are values. Objects no more have qualities
in the abstract than values, and by value I mean the satis-
faction which objects can furnish to our will as contrasted
with the sense differences which they can make. If the
world of properties is capable of being taken in an orderly
way, so also is the world of values. And the later Sophists
were quite right in saying that if one is subjective, so is the
other. What we must recognize is that if, by means of
hypothesis and experiment, we can build out the immediacy
of sense qualities into an objective world, we can just as
surely build out an objective world of worth from the
immediacy of our longings and demands with their implied
formal presuppositions. The immediacy of feeling, too, has
cognitive significance and can be made to yield, with free-
dom and intelligence of development, an objective order
of worth, as surely as natural science, out of the immediacy
of sense, can build the order of nature. This has been and
is being done in the esthetic and religious development of
the race. The pragmatic method applies to religion as
much as to science; and though one life is too short to
know much either about nature or the gods, the experience
of the race must supplement and correct the experience of
the individual. The solidarity of the race is presupposed
in either case.
We may define pragmatism as scientific method con-
scious of its own procedure. The scientist has not always
known what he was about. Sometimes he has emphasized
the essentially innate nature of truth with Descartes and
his followers. Sometimes he has demanded pure percep-
tions and a tabula rasa. Even when he has furnished good
canons of procedure, he has not always been awake to what
he has been doing. Pragmatism is not the invention of a
new method; it does not furnish any new hypothesis; but
FROM PROTAGORAS TO WILLIAM JAMES. 85
it insists that the scientific spirit of tentative hypothesis
and verification shall dominate all our investigation, not
only naturalistic, but philosophic as well. We must shear
the luxuriance of imagination to fit the facts. Life must
be given to winged thought by touching the earth of evi-
dence again. And unless the hypothesis, however ingeni-
ous, helps us to anticipate and control, or understand and
appreciate, the onrushing stream of human experience, it
is not science but fiction, no matter how internally consis-
tent it may be. The Newtonian equations, the religious
beliefs, must terminate in the intended facts. Failing this,
ideal construction must set to work afresh, until at least
greater approximation is reached. An hypothesis, whether
of atoms or morals, God or devil, is true because it works.
We do not wonder over the disappointment at this lack
of novelty of the pragmatic method. No doubt Dr. Paul
Carus expresses a general feeling when he says : "If prag-
matism, as commonly understood, were truly nothing but
another name for 'scientific method,' it would not have
anything new to offer."1 But what the critic forgets is
that pragmatism is the baptism of a new consciousness
as to the meaning of science. It makes definite and articu-
late what was only implied before. Few great reforma-
tions have been original, to any great extent, in their intel-
lectual content. Their originality has lain mostly in the
simplicity and directness of their aim — the clearness and
intensity of their emphasis. And there is a good deal of
difference between the common talk of agreement, begotten
between intellectual sleeping and waking, and the clear
consciousness of what the agreement of an idea with its
object means — the termination or leading of an idea into
its intended facts. It emphasizes negatively that there is
no other criterion of validity, beside conduct ; that mystical
feeling, however subjectively satisfactory, must, in order
' Monist, Oct. 1910, p. 615.
86 THE MONIST.
to be proven true, submit to the test of the procedure of
experience; and that no a priori conviction, no dogmatic
insistence upon the inconceivability of the contrary, can
have anything more than subjective significance, unless
it terminates in the systematic experience of the individual
and the race. They are no substitutes, in any case, for
investigation and have, as feelings, attached to all sorts
of ideas. We have but a single criterion of truth — the
procedure of experience.
Does truth, as thus conceived, seem transient, provi-
sional and pluralistic? This is only because we have be-
come intellectually honest — conscious of our poverty. Truth
has just as much unity and constancy as its use in experi-
ence indicates. Grand assumptions about it, do not in-
crease either its permanency or reality. Its permanency
and adequacy to reality must be tested by our ability to take
reality that way. Its leading, so far as real, is not arbi-
trary but due to its seizing upon the real characteristics of
its intended object, whether eternal or transient.
If pragmatism is essentially the scientific spirit, there
is always need of a renaissance of the pragmatic conscious-
ness in science. The authority of great names — the Ar-
chimedeses and Aristotles and Newtons; the impressive-
ness of tradition and technique, are too apt to overshadow
the real, inductive spirit. We read facts out of court, or
at least refuse to investigate, because the facts or alleged
facts are supposed to be contrary to "laws," the only status
of which is that of generalizations from facts. How great
a role the a priori inconceivable, as we are pleased to
call our intellectual prejudices, still plays in science! If
it is no longer the inconceivability of the antipodes, it
is the inconceivability of action at a distance, the in-
conceivability of mind influencing body, etc. When shall
we learn that the bt:st test of whether a fact can hap-
pen is whether it doe* happen and that it is the province
FROM PROTAGORAS TO WILLIAM JAMES. 87
x
of reason not to prescribe the conditions, but to discover
the conditions under which events happen? If our intel-
lectual models make our procedure impossible, we must
revise the models. If this is difficult in science, how much
more in religious and legal practice. What a reform in
science, law and religion alike, if we once had the courage
to drop hypotheses which make no difference to our proce-
dure. The value of conceptual technique is precisely to
furnish such leading as will terminate in the facts. If it
substitutes an abstract model for the facts, it should not
be for the sake of hypostatizing the model, but for the
sake of better anticipating the facts.
IV.
In its general emphasis, as well as in its thesis, modern
pragmatism follows closely its ancient forebear. The scope
of hypothesis or creative imagination has been largely neg-
lected by modern pragmatists, as it was by Protagoras of
old, and for similar polemic reasons. It is obviously so
neglected in the thesis that truth consists in its conse-
quences. It would be at least equally true to say that truth
consists in hypothesis or in certain instinctive demands
for unity and simplicity, for without either there could be
no such thing as truth. We should be simply staring at
things. We must not neglect the creative factor in knowl-
edge— the building out by constructive imagination, as
prompted by certain fundamental instincts, beyond the im-
mediate, beyond sensations and feelings. It is true that
this building out must be supported in the end by evidence,
by consequences of immediate experience, but it is also
true that without this building out of creative imagination,
we would remain hopelessly swamped in the slush of sub-
jectivism. On the other hand, mere hypothesis, while it
may have its subjective value, cannot by itself give us ob-
jective truth. It must be tested by evidence, as well as by
88 THE MONIST.
the subjective satisfaction which it gives. And pragmatism
has done well to insist upon this truth, as against the sub-
jective imagination of such philosophies as Hegelianism.
In two important respects modern pragmatism has the
advantage over ancient. One is in its superior psycholog-
ical tools. It has shown more clearly than before, espe-
cially through William James, the teleological nature of
the thought process, its connective value in the flow of
experience, how ideas lean on facts and how facts are
organized by means of ideas. The other advantage of
modern pragmatism is its evolutionary and racial con-
sciousness. To a large extent it is the outgrowth of the
Darwinian spirit. It is a theory of the survival of hypoth-
eses— those surviving which fit experience. But a theory
of elimination, important as it is, cannot by itself account
for knowledge, any more than the doctrine of the survival
of the fittest can account for life. The variations them-
selves must be understood through their structural con-
tinuity with the past. In the case of knowledge this con-
tinuity becomes an instinctive or "physical heritage" in
the form of certain demands, tendencies or needs. And it
also becomes a psychological continuity or an imitative de-
pendence upon the institutional life of the race, the "social
heritage." The ideal variations or purposes must find their
explanation in this twofold background, i. e., the biological
tendencies as becoming conscious of themselves in attempt-
ing to assimilate the social heritage, and use it in the ser-
vice of the ever new problems of life. From this process
emerge the new purposes, guesses or hypotheses. These
ideal constructions or demands must be tried out with ref-
erence to further experience ; and those will survive which
afford an advantage in meeting the intended object. More
than one hypothesis may work for the time being; and at
a certain stage of development a cruder hypothesis may
work better than a conceptually more perfect one. The
FROM PROTAGORAS TO WILLIAM JAMES. 89
crude four elements of Empedocles seemed to work better
for the time being than the ingenious hypothesis of Anax-
agoras or even than the atomic theory of Democritus.
The axiom of an eye for an eye and anthropomorphic gods
worked better at a certain stage of development than the
golden rule and spiritual theism. In the long run, how-
ever, the workability of an hypothesis must mean corre-
spondence with the reality which it intends — the seizing
upon its identities for the guidance of conduct.
Beliefs, instinctive or articulate, are the grist which
the pragmatic mill must grind or else grind itself. Human
nature, conditioned as it is by its biological and social back-
ground, constructs its belief-worlds to supplement its inner
needs. It is this impulse to create belief-worlds which has*
made religion advance by ever new variations and elimina-
tions from fetichism and nature-worship to ethical mono-
theism ; which has made science advance from the hypoth-
esis of Thales that all is water, to our modern complex
physical and chemical theories. These belief-worlds are
not only thrown about us by ourselves, in our individual
capacity, to be cozy in our world. They are first of all
thrown about us by the race which wraps us snugly in the
swaddling clothes of its own making. Else we would all
start naked, to cover ourselves with fig leaves. Every sci-
entist would be a Thales. It is only in the course of indi-
vidual experience, if at all, that we make the old thought-
clothes correspond with the new individual' preferences.
v.
Knowledge, we have seen, must mean the differences
that stimuli make to reflective human nature. All ex-
perience must be assessed from the reflective level — must
issue in articulate judgments, if we are to have truth.
Perhaps we may, in the light of the preceding discussion,
venture to offer the following, tentative definition of truth :
9O THE MONIST.
Truth consists in the differences which objects make to the
reflective conduct of human nature, as in its evolutionary
process, it attempts to control and understand its world.
This definition of truth recognizes the contribution of both
the empiricists and rationalists, Protagoras and Plato.
Both hypothesis and evidence, reflection and immediacy,
are necessary to truth. It recognizes, moreover, the fini-
tude of truth as an adjustment to an infinite process.
Past misunderstandings, however, lead me to think that
the pragmatic doctrine of truth needs more explicit defi-
nition at two points. One has to do with the significance
of the term conduct, the other has to do with the relation
of pragmatism to nominalism.
First a word as regards the significance of the term
conduct. My own conception of pragmatism is that its
definition of truth in terms of conduct is fundamental. In
this sense it is a "practical" theory of truth. It has to do
with the procedure of thought, the control of our ideas in
relation to an intended object. But here there has been
considerable confusion. The original use of the term prag-
matism by C. S. Peirce had to do with laboratory conduct
specifically — the procedure in the experimental verification
of an hypothesis. In James, Schiller and Dewey the em-
phasis has been on biological conduct — the attainment of
certain goods on the part of the organism. No doubt truth
is tested in part by this ability to control the environment
for our specific purposes. But truth needs not be practical
or instrumental in this external sense. Its leading may
be of a formal kind, as in mathematical procedure. Its
aim, too, may be that of understanding and sympathy,
rather than use, as in our striving to know other egos. I
have used conduct in a wider sense — including the con-
duct of the understanding as well as biological conduct.8
'Journ. of Philosophy, "What Pragmatism Is and Is Not," Vol. VI, pp.
627 and 628.
FROM PROTAGORAS TO WILLIAM JAMES. 9 1
Truth must be measured in terms of the reflective proce-
dure of our entire human nature in realizing its tendencies,
formal or practical. It still remains true, on this more in-
clusive definition, that the truth of an idea consists in its
leading, its ability to guide in the direction of its intended
object, whether a chemical compound or an algebraic root.
Thus taken, the term pragmatism will be true both to its
Greek derivation and to all the requirements of logic. The
rules that the will must acknowledge as governing this
procedure of truth, I have discussed elsewhere.7
As regards the relation of pragmatism to nominalism,
there has been considerable wobbling between the definition
of truth in terms of leading on the one hand, and in terms
of particulars on the other. I believe these to be incom-
patible definitions. If truth consists in the sum of par-
ticulars, there can be no leading. A photographic or
cinematographic copy would be quite useless for purposes
of conduct. But truth can never lie in the sum of par-
ticulars or their mere external association. Who wants
to count the sands on the seashore or the leaves of the
trees ? It would be quite worthless, even if not practically
impossible. The leading is made possible by the thread
of identity — the ability to substitute certain constant char-
acteristics for the motley world of facts and changes and
thus to manipulate it in the service of our purposes. From
the taint of mediaeval nominalism, deliver us.8 With such
an understanding as regards the meaning of pragmatism,
it ought to proceed more efficiently on its career of simpli-
fying and unlocking the problems of life, theoretical and
practical.
JOHN E. BOODIN.
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS.
* See Phil. Rev., "The Nature of Truth," Vol. XIX, 395-417-
*In this I am happy to find myself in agreement with my friend, Dr.
Horace Meyer Kallen. (See Journ. of Philosophy, "The Affiliations of Prag-
matism," Vol. VI, pp. 657 and 658.)
THE SELF AND PERSONALITY.
TWO PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS BY GOTTFRIED HERDER, TRANS-
LATED BY CHARLES ALVA LANE, WITH AN
INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR.
OTTFRIED Herder, one of the great classical poets
of Germany and a personal friend of Goethe, has
left us two poems which belong to the class of philosophical
literature in which he treats the problem of man and the
significance of life. Like all philosophical poetry they have
not found a large circle of readers and, so far as we know,
have never been translated into English or any other lan-
guage. Yet they deserve to be known and ought to be-
come accessible in a worthy and readable version to the
English speaking world. It is for this reason that Mr.
Charles Alva Lane has rendered these two poems into Eng-
lish blank verse which is the meter of the original.
Herder was a theologian and, not without the influence
of Goethe, had been appointed general superintendent of
the Protestant churches of the allied Thuringian duchies.
He was liberal in his theology, and it speaks well of the
times that a man of his breadth could hold so prominent
a place in the church.
In one of his best known books1 Herder outlined the
theory of evolution and applied it especially to history in
showing that the development of mankind is subject to
law, and that progress is noticeable in a higher and ever
higher actualization of the human race.
1 Ideen sur Geschichte der Menschheit.
THE SELF AND PERSONALITY. 93
In the two philosophical poems before us Herder in-
sists that there are two aspects in man's destiny. In one
sense man is eternal and even divine. He is like unto God
himself, who in man has become incarnate, he the Creator,
in one of his creatures. But on the other hand man's life
is transient and he himself is like the worm that is trodden
under foot. While man ought to be conscious of the dignity
of his divine nature, he ought at the same time to repu-
diate that portion of his being which is accidental, tempo-
rary and unworthy of preservation.
In dealing with a problem of this kind it is of great im-
portance to use the proper words for that which is divine
in man in distinction to man's lower nature, and we believe
that in dealing with this subject Herder has been unfor-
tunate in the choice of his terms. In one poem he speaks
of "self" as that which is eternal, which represents man's
high and noble being and which ought to be regarded with
reverence and respect; in the other poem he denounces
that which is perishable and transient as man's "personal-
ity." So Herder comes to the conclusion that man ought
to relinquish all interest in his personality and cling to
self as being the spark of his divinity. The self is to him
the deity that shapes man's being; it is the factor which
produces all that is good and noble and worthy of preser-
vation in the continued life of mankind, while his personal-
ity should be abandoned to death.
Now it seems to us that what makes man a rational
being in contrast to the brutes is exactly his personality.
Man becomes a person by dint of his reason, for by per-
sonality we understand an individuality endowed with the
superior qualities of manhood. Animals, hay even plants
and other objects of nature, are called individuals in so far
as they are particular things which possess an existence
of their own. But the particular thing, the individual,
changes into a person as soon as it becomes a rational
94 THE MONIST.
being which can be held responsible for its actions. Per-
sonality accordingly is the expression of man's divinity.
It denotes that quality in him which makes him divine,
which liberates him from the bondage of natural law and
endows him with the highest perfection in the range of
creation, making him master of his own destiny. He can
choose and direct, he can foresee events, and can modify
the course of nature according to his needs. He traces
law in the phenomena of his experience, and can recog-
nize single happenings as instances of universal laws. This
recognition of law is an echo of the divine destiny that
governs the world, and in this sense every rational crea-
ture, every living being whom we signify by the word
"person" bears the stamp of divinity. Accordingly we
would prefer to call that which represents the divine in
man, his personality. Those features which make him a
person characterize him as being made in the image of
God. They prove his superiority over brute nature and
are the factors of his life which are cherished even after
death and are preserved in memory from generation to
generation. They are what Herder thus defines in his
poem:
"What lives of us in other hearts again
Our truest and our deepest being is."
The term "self" is different. By it we understand a
particular existence which insists on its individuality and
such insistence is called selfish. It is exactly this selfish-
ness which man must overcome in order to bring out the
noble and lasting character of his personality. So far as
a personality is merely an individual existence it has no
worth, it is a self of material concreteness ; while personal-
ity, that feature of the individual which changes it into
a person, is exactly what makes the individual understand
the significance of law. It is that which causes him to
THE SELF AND PERSONALITY. 95
see the universal in the particular and the everlasting type
in single instances. This faculty, in one word called rea-
son, not only endows man with intellectuality but in addi-
tion enables him to follow his conscience, that divine guide
pointing out a higher course of conduct, in common par-
lance called moral or religious, and herein we find a reali-
zation of the divine in nature. It would therefore have
been preferable if Herder had reversed his terms and had
spoken of "the self" as the thing to be abandoned, and of
"personality" as that which man ought to develop and
cherish.
Herder's choice of terms appears at first sight acciden-
tal and we may understand by "self" what we would have
denoted as personality and vice versa. But on close in-
spection we notice that this difference in terms indicates a
difference in the philosophical explanation of man's nature.
We must remember that Herder was still a theologian and
though he was liberal, though his God was no longer the
God of the Middle Ages but a philosophical conception of
the divinity of the universe, he yet applies to God the human
attributes of consciousness, and his argument is that the
world would be a chaos, a play of blind forces, unless, like
man, it were directed and governed by an all-conscious-
ness.
Here, in our opinion, Herder's philosophical conception
fails, and here the argument of his poems is therefore dis-
appointing. He does not see that the underlying truth re-
mains the same if he only grants that man's personality
is the echo of the divinity of the universe. In man the
law-ordained character of the universe reveals itself and
accordingly the world is not a congeries of matter and a
play of blind forces but a law-ordained whole, a cosmos.
In a way we concede that the world is a congeries of mat-
ter and a play of blind forces, but a most significant feature
of this stupendous mass of matter and energy consists in
96 THE MONIST.
its being subject to law. This law which governs the world
exhibits a definite character, causing all its commotion to
be possessed of a definite direction tending toward an un-
equivocal aim; and this aim, we may fairly well assume,
must be the same everywhere as we find it to be here on
earth. It is the self-realization of reason, of moral aspira-
tions, a tendency to eradicate evil and let good will pre-
vail. Life everywhere is a struggle, but the dignity of the
struggle consists in the fact that there are ideals, the ideals
of goodness, of truth, and of beauty, and that there is also
the endeavor to realize them without regard to selfish ends.
It is true enough that man is an incarnation of the
divinity of the universe, but that the universe should be
a self like man, that the universe should be an ego, pos-
sessed of an ego-consciousness, is an assumption which
has no warrant before the tribunal of scientific thought.
If Herder assumes an all-consciousness, we can simply
point out that his logical deduction is a mistake, a non
sequitur. The underlying truth of his two poems, how-
ever, that man though transient reflects the eternal, re-
mains untouched
It is true enough that the large masses of mankind are
not philosophical and personify their conception of God.
They can not think of him as a potent factor in the world
and in the life of man except under the figure of a human
personality, a powerful king or a kind-hearted father, and
this conception is as legitimate as any poetical representa-
tion of abstract ideas. The truth therefore which Herder's
poems bring out need not be discountenanced on account
of his anthropomorphic God-conception. It remains true
that the power that sways the universe is not blind force
but a cosmic norm which gives a definite character to all
that is.
We take a great interest in Herder's poems on the self
and on personality, because he touches upon the deepest
THE SELF AND PERSONALITY. 97
problem of man's existence and in a certain sense solves it
correctly. If the old theological God-conception still clings
to him it does not spoil the beauty of the poems, and though
he employs the terms "self" and "personality" where we
would have preferred him to reverse them, his use may
be tolerated if we consider the meaning which he bears in
mind.
Mr. Charles Alva Lane has translated the poems so
as to render a faithful version of the original. He has
not attempted to change the meaning or even the words of
the poet, and we leave it to our readers to judge of the
beauty of these verses, together with their shortcomings.
May they enjoy the presentation of these religio-philo-
sophical thoughts in the way the German poet presented
them, not as we might wish that he had done. Even with
what we deem to be shortcomings, they are beautiful
enough and worthy of careful study.
* * *
We will add a few words in comment on the meter,
which is classical but is commonly called blank verse. In
our present neglect of classical traditions the nature of
blank verse is commonly misunderstood. Some text-books
on the rules of versification go so far as to call them iambic
pentameters, their authors being ignorant of the fact that
iambic pentameters would consist of lines twice as long as
these. The truth is they are iambic trimeters, but being
cataleptic consist of only five iambi.
Classical prosody is by its very nature of a musical
character. It does not know of rhyme, and the beauty of
the verse is due to the rhythm of long and short syllables.
The term meter corresponds to what in music is called a
bar, and a foot is the ultimate unit of rhythm. In dactylic
and anapestic meters a foot happens to be a meter, but in
the iambic rhythm two feet constitute one meter, and so
iambic pentameters wouW consist of twice five iambi. Be
9o THE MONIST.
ing accustomed to the fact that dactylic hexameters consist
of six dactylic feet, our authors of metrical text-books have
made the wrong conclusion that five iambic feet ought to
be called iambic pentameters, and they are at the same time
ignorant of the general principles in the classical system of
metrics.
Another point of importance is the fact frequently over-
looked that verses are separated by a musical pause or
rest, enabling the reader to let the metrical form stand
out boldly so that the ear may easily catch the musical
sound of the verse. For this reason the dactylic hexameter
is stunted at the end by having the last meter mutilated,
as the final syllable is cut off, or rather replaced, by what
in music is called a rest, equivalent to a short syllable.
In the iambic trimeter the last foot is omitted and in the
terminology of classical prosody such a line is called cata-
leptic. An iambic trimeter accordingly takes the time of
three iambic meters equal to six iambi, of which, however,
the last one is either mutilated or entirely omitted, which
means that it is replaced by a musical rest equivalent to
either a full iambus or one long syllable. A schedule of the
verse accordingly would be
- I i ° O
We mark the rest for a long syllable by a large zero,
and for a short syllable by a small zero, and we will say
that the last long syllable is always replaced by a rest, and
the last short syllable may be replaced by a rest or it may
be preserved. In English, which abounds in monosyllables,
it is easier to end a verse in an accented syllable, and so
it has become habitual to avoid unaccented syllables at the
end. This habit has produced the impression that to have
blank verse consist of five iambi plus an unaccented syllable
is a poetic license, but the truth is, as may be seen from our
explanation, that this unaccented syllable is perfectly legit-
THE SELF AND PERSONALITY. 99
imate, as is also evinced by the fact that it does not disturb
the euphony of the verse.
PERSONALITY.1
Would'st thou, O Friend, to halcyon peace attain ?
Flee then thy haunting Personality!
With traitor-dreams it woos and slays the hope ;
The heart and soul it narrows, and with cares
Discomforteth. With poison-fires it burns
The blood, and e'en the toiling breath it steals,
Till all the ways of life are choked and vain.
Declare, what is this Personality?—
When in the Mother-womb of parents twain
An alien Life came and was thee, plant-like,
On strange soil nourished, thoughtless didst thou hang,
And grow through inchoate life to human child.
Beholding not the world, it recked of thee,
And all its light burned round, thee to inform.
Her breath and kisses drinking, thou wert yet,
For helpless seasons of thy mother part,
And on her ministrant and cradling breast
Thou learnedst how the tools of Sense to ply.
But slowly from the mother-functions loosed,
The world's wierd pageantry upon thee wrought,
And in its own unresting image made
A Soul of thee — a thing of myriad moods
And ever-changing imagery of thought.
How grows the child? The foot and hand aspire;
The ear and eye, change-hungry, ever mould
1 An effort has been made throughout this translation to follow with fidel-
ity the thought and even the verbal forms of our author; but in several in-
stances valid considerations have prompted slight variances from the text.
There is in German a certain directness of expression that would subject
a literal rendering to a charge of verbal severity. German words have a
wider range of mental connotations than have those of our more copious Eng-
lish tongue. Some latitude of expression is therefore essential to a faithful
TOO THE MONIST.
Their melting forms of sight and sound. And so
Through boyhood, youth and manhood's stern estate
Thou passest on to gray senility.
In youth what lingers of the weanling's mood?
In boyhood's bounding pulse what token hints
The feebleness of age? Change creeps on change;
The body ever moulds itself anew,
And thou art even with thyself deceived
Until the mirror's message yields the truth.
In youth dost hunger for thy mother's breast?
When love upon thy burning heart hath seized,
Do bride and sister seem alike to thee?
And when the dream of honor drives thee forth
Desirest thou again the swaddling clothes ?
Tastes now the sugar-plum as when, a child,
Thy palate welcomed its sweet ravishment?
Doth now the inner world, emotion-swept,
The airy phantasies that flit and charm,
The wide world's fronting problems seem the same
As erstwhile to thy childhood's prismy eyes?
Be thou a man ! Life is a restless stream
Of ever-changing forms: Wave driveth wave
In serried tides that rise and sink and rise,
One stream, but not the same beyond the span
A melting moment fills, and not the same
At any place, nor in its mingling drops
From fountain to the welcome of the sea.
Shall such an unsubstantial phantasy
Foundation serve for duty and for hope,
And all the weal and woe that make thy life?
Upon a shadow wilt thou be established?
transcription of the thought; but the tendency to this indulgence has here been
restrained even to the sacrifice, at times, of poetic effects.
THE SELF AND PERSONALITY. IOI
Unto a frenzied image shall thy thoughts,
Thy glorious energies, and all the wealth
Of life's wide purposes devoted be?
Be thou a man ! Nay, thou art not thine own :
Unto the great good All belongest thou.
From this thou hast received and borrowest yet.
Not only must thou unto it release
The things that individualize thy life,
But e'en thyself, thyself. For lo, a child,
A child eternal on the mother-breast,
Lulled by the beatings of her heart, thou liest.
Wert thou dissevered from all living things,
And from the life of generations flown,
Whence thou thy being and thy mould receivedst —
What then wert thou? No ego,2 but a thing
Insentient, lost, ungathered from the surge
Of toiling elements. Each drop of life's
Fine essence; every corpuscle within
The blood ; the flashing thoughts of heart and soul ;
The deeds, resolves, the customs, and the play
Of life's ineffable activities,
Whose weird machinery thou knowest not;
Each utterance of lip, each subtle change
That giveth speech to features of the face,
Is but an alien token loaned to thee
By generous pasts for life's swift uses now.
So ever changed and ever changing wends
The bearer of unowned possessions through
The world. Discarding customs as a garb,
Anon he changeth speech, opinions, modes,
By restless marching of the years constrained,
Or by the mighty Mother's promptings moved.
1 The original here reads simply Kein Ich.
IO2 THE MONIST.
What thought of thy ten thousand is thine own?
The kingdom of the genii, though one
And indivisible, an Ocean-world,
In stream and drop is flowing into thee,
Thine inmost being's character to form.
What of thy myriad feelings is thine own?
Necessity and love, and custom's sway,
And deeds of others echoed in thine acts,
And time and space, the bitterness of grief,
The burden of thy loneliness — lo, these
Have fashioned it, delivering to thee,
That so thy spirit's moulding-glue may catch
And model it anew to something great,
Yea, e'en into the good, the better All.
Thither is urging each desire, and thither
Doth every impulse of the soul constrain;
Each wish and yearning hath it for a goal;
The living fountains of activity,
The spirit's prying quests and haunting dreams,
The bridal-passion and the mother-love
Well ever thitherward. Thus from the germ
The bud unfoldeth to the fragrant bloom,
And, still a-yearn, strives upward into wealth
Of myriad fruits. And ever, evermore
The wide Becoming of the eternal All
Supplieth air and sun, and night and day:
The ego dies that so the whole may be.
And what is that which thou with thy poor I
Would'st to the future leave? Thy name, forsooth?
Ah, though thou Raphael wert, in Raphael's work,
I fain forget the man, and raptured cry
With Art's glad voice: "An angel painted it."
Thine ego? Thinkest thou, Posterity
Will long hold memory of thee? Thy name?
THE SELF AND PERSONALITY. IO3
With ever-lessening voice, a few brief years
May echo it with that of Mavius
And Bavus, Stax and Nero-Herostrat.3
Nay, only in the Open of thy life,
When all unmindful of the narrow self,
Thy soul can find its immortality;
For then thou livest in a thousand souls,
And in a myriad hearts thy heart doth beat.
Eternal then, Omnipotent thou art,
A god, and like a god, invisible,
Sunk in the potency of nameless life.4
Yea, what it toucheth Personality
Doth blight, obliterating from thy work
The virtue of the eternal Genius
And benison of immortality.
So let us then in working and in willing
The potent promptings of the ego hush,
That so the better Thou and He and We
And Ye and They may moderate its sway,
And from its thralldom manumission win.
Of all things be our chiefest duty this :
Forgetfulness of self. So prospereth
Our work, and sweet each deed will be
* Mavius and Bavius were characters probably first introduced in some
Roman comedy. The names became synonyms of the Poetaster. Virgil so
uses them in his third Eclogue, and they are mentioned by Pope in the Pro-
logue to his Satires. Giffqrd used the title "Baviad" for his Lampoon on the
Delia Crustan School of Literature.
After the destruction of the Temple of Ephesus by Herostratus laws were
enacted prohibiting the mention of his name, the avowed object of his vandal-
ism having been that of securing notoriety. The name Nero brands him as
incendiary owing to the tradition that Nero set fire to Rome so that he might
see how Troy would look in flames.
* Unsichtbar-namenlos : a free rendering is here presented. Perhaps the
author had reference to the custom which obtained among Oriental religionists
of coining the name of the Deity into unpronounceable forms, as in the Hebraic
tetragrammaton JHVH, that so they might "let sacred silence meditate the
theme."
IO4 THE MONIST.
To dull the glamour of unworthy pride,
And free, omnipotent, eternal make us.
Amid the spirit's aspirations lost,
Where living gulfs are throbbing with the joy
Of cosmic Choral Song, oh, be our soul
A dulcet note to swell the harmony!
Our heart a living wheel in nature's work!
When life at last shall lower its flickering torch,
And I the world with hungry questionings probe
And keen desires, the self shall not concern.
What gift will then my guardian genius grant?
Childhood? Or youth? Or even snowy age?
Their bloom hath faded, and I gladly drink
The Lethean cup. Then my Elysium
Shall no dead vision of misfortune mar,
Nor memory disturb of service vain.
Unto the gods I dedicate myself,
As Decius did, with gratitude profound
And confidence that knows no plummet's touch;
For lo, how richly doth the bounteous All reward-
The teeming and rejuvenating All!
Verily nothing less should I return
Than that which nature dowered me withal —
My poor, unworthy Personality.
THE SELF.
Forget thine ego, but thy self lose never.
From out the treasury of Godhood's heart
No gift more precious than thy self can come.
What thou receivest from the Mother-breast,
The throbbing bosom of the Universe —
The restless elements aflow in thee,
Air, aliment, the urging energy,
THE SELF AND PERSONALITY.
Form, thought and phantasy, are not thy self.
Thy self is what from these thou didst create,
What thou did'st fashion, hast been and now art.
Thou art thine own creator, thine own work.
Not what thou seest (animals observe) ;
Not what thou hearest (brutes can likewise hear) ;
Not what thou learnest, (ravens also learn),
But what, perceiving, thou dost understand;
The power that in thee works, the inner seer
Who from the past divineth what shall be;
The organizer, who from chaos spins
The pattern of the raveling universe
Into the tapestries of mind and sense.
This art thou, even as 'tis likewise God.
"The Godhood?" Verily! for fancy thou1
The chaos of the Universe sans soul
And purposeless; wherein no being bides
Who to himself and all things else is Law!
Conceive the ineffable insanity
That then would guide the reeling worlds! Adown
This barren chaos that itself knows not
Cast thou thyself! Would'st thou be then a self?
Back into thyself? Within the luminous
Seclusion of awareness there abides t
A potent proof of an All-Consciousness.
Lapse backward: be an animal; the sense
Of human selfhood lose, and wonderest thou,
O fool, that thus thou losest Godhood too?
"The harmony of being!" — An empty word
To him who heareth not aright! Give ear
passage recalls that wonderful dream of Jean Paul Richter which
constitutes the first Blumenstuck of his Siebenkas.
IO6 THE MONIST.
Unto the deep recesses of the soul,
And lo, from out the Silences thy heart
Will utter forth the word, choiring with all
The world of Him, the highest Self, the mind,
The soul, the essence of all beings, God !
So let it be! Within thine inmost soul
Build thou a temple to divinity,
And thence shall issue life's rich- benisons :
Yea, thence shall whisper evermore that voice
Wrhose truth is Nature's self. Avouch thou then
The message, and henceforth become its priest.
At holiest altar serve it, that so be
Thou honorest thyself, attaining thus
Unto thy being's apotheosis.
The hateful image which thou, shuddering,
Beholdest in the mirror of thy life,
The Fury that to envy prompteth thee
And hatred and vain pride ; who dispossessed
Thy soul of treasures dearest unto it ;
Who locked thee as with iron from the sway
Of every tender impulse of the heart —
Lo, she is not thyself ! Nay, unto thee
She serveth as the subtlest enemy
To rob thee of thy very self ! Behold,
Hath she not barred thee from thy greatest joy,
Thy work? Opposed she not thy vanity
With vainer pride, which, overwhelming thee,
Embittered, so that all life's precious fruit
With poison reeked instead of odors sweet?
Yea, from thyself she parted thee, and graved
An image false to woo thee from without.
And seeking this, and loving it alone,
O foolish soul, thou, thou hast lost thyself!
THE SELF AND PERSONALITY.
Deceived Narcissus, art thou then but that
At which thou smilest in the fountain's depth?
The thing thou seest in the mirror's flash,
And e'en cajolest in thine echoed voice?
Alas, is then thy shadow more than thou?
And wonderest thou, who on the poison fumes
Dost live of thine own breath when other mouths
Return it unto thee — dost wonder then
That thou a shadow hast become, a spring
Dried up, a sepulcher of what thou wast,
A puppet, playing vainly with thyself?
Losing thy self what dost remain to thee?
What lives of us in other hearts again,
Our truest and our deepest being is.
That which doth make us kin to all the world,
That bringeth peace amid the storm and stress,
Wooing forgetfulness of evil things,
And toward the foolish pleading charity —
This is the Over-soul, the greater Self.
Deep in the heart, unprompted from without,
A power there is whose urge is heavenward.
It spreadeth out our wings upon the storm
As peacefully as on the brooding-nest.
Yea, reveling in this power which, at rest,
Yet acheth with the will to dare and do,
We mount forever upward, glad and free,
Rejoicing that our vision doth anon
The goal descry where ends the pilgrimage.
Who is it? A supreme and sovereign Self.
Who beareth thousands in his loving breast,
And pitieth their infirmities; who turneth
IO8 THE MONIST.
To light their darkness, bearing in himself
The rule that measureth all blessedness:
"What thou would'st not have hap to thee. that do
Thou not to others; what thou would'st, do first." —
Who is this human god, the motive and
The power that doth within thee nobly will
And do? A Self omnipotently good.
Talent is not the man. The spider weaves;
The wasp and bee can build, for e'en in these
Is Art's fine instinct bred. The singer's heart
May not be throbbing in the tender song,
Nor what the player plays be inly felt.
The coward slinks, a shadow, through the world;
The fool his substance wastes; the sycophant
Seeks empty paths his flattery opes to him;
The weakling trembles, dying many deaths.
But who's immortal? T'is a deathless Self.
Ambrosia, fruit of immortality,
And fadeless wreaths of amaranthine blooms,
Lo, these are token and reward of Man's
Divine endeavor, plied in termless toil,
By Good-will prompted and th'impelling Voice
That will not to the clay-world say, "Thou art
My sire" ; nor to the worms, nor to decay,
"Ye are my brothers, sisters, mother !" Nay, but calm
Before the abyss that yawns, the heaven that spreads,
It saith : "What in me dies, is not my Self !
What in me lives — the quick within the soul,
The eternal — knoweth not the touch of death.
CHARLES ALVA LANE.
ALLIANCE, OHIO.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
JOSEPHUS AND TACITUS ON CHRIST.
It is to be regretted that the Josephus passage on Christ is de-
fended anew as genuine by Chwolson. Its clumsy character and the
fact that it is not cited by Origen, who moreover declares that
Josephus was no Christian, is enough to stamp it as interpolated;
and it has long been considered as such by all unprejudiced readers.
In regard to the passage on James, however, we ought not be
too quick to declare it likewise an interpolation.
The passage does not stand in brackets, as being spurious, as
Prof. W. B. Smith says.1 At least not in one of the latest critical
editions of Josephus by S. A. Naber, 1892, ("post I. Bekkerum"
as the title-page reads, an editor mentioned by Dr. Smith). In
this edition the Christ passage is distinctly bracketed but not the
James passage.
Further if the James passage is not genuine, what do the words
"and some others" following it mean? The sentence containing
the passage says that the high priest Ananus brought before the
synedrium the brother of Jesus called Christ, whose name was
James "and some others"2 accusing them of transgressing the law,
and condemning them to be stoned. The words "and some others"
surely imply that in the foregoing words there was a reference to
certain distinct persons. There surely was not a blank before "and
some others."
Origen does not cite the passage, and what he cites from
Josephus is nowhere to be found in the text. Still when he cites
Josephus in his loose way, probably not having a copy of Josephus
with him at the time, he must have had in his mind a recollec-
tion that Josephus had somewhere mentioned James the brother
of Jesus as having been stoned by the Jews. From having this
1 See "The Silence of Josephus and Tacitus" in The Monist for October.
* Kal rivas Mpovt.
HO THE MONIST.
fact in his mind Origen made the assertion that Josephus had
ascribed the destruction of Jerusalem to the murder of James. The
fact is that Josephus in his Bellum Judaicum several times ascribed
the destruction of the city to the wicked deeds of the zealots, murder-
ing such men as Zacharias, the son of Baruch, very probably the
same one mentioned in Matt, xxiii. 35, and others. From these
different elements Origen constructed his very loose reference to
Josephus.
Another point in connection with the James passage is the fol-
lowing. If this passage is a Christian interpolation, we ought to
expect that the interpolator would have brought the death of James
more in accordance with the lengthy account of that fact as given
by the early church historian Hegesippus (died 180). We should
expect that the interpolator would not have contented himself with
the few words about James in that passage, while the Christ passage
is quite an extended affair. According to Josephus the death of
James is the result of a premeditated legal trial brought about by
the Sadduceic high priest Ananus ; according to Hegesippus it is
the result of a sudden outburst of fanatical scribes and Pharisees
and their followers among the people without any preceding legal
trial whatever (Hist. Eccl. Euseb., II, 25).
But even if this James passage proved to be an interpolation,
are we bound to pin our conviction that Jesus was historical and
had brothers as other human beings, on such writers as Josephus?
Do the writers of the New Testament count for nothing in this
question, when Paul speaks of the married brothers of Jesus and
the oldest gospel, Mark, mentions James, Joses, Judas and Simon
as his brothers and besides sisters (Mark vi. 3)? Dr. Smith gets
around the term "brothers" by declaring them only spiritual broth-
ers of Jesus. According to him the nonsense comes out that it was
the spiritual mother and brothers of Jesus who came to take him
home (Mark iii. 21 and 31). For what reason then did Jesus say:
"Who is my brother, and mother and sister etc." (verse 33), if
those coming to take him home were not his real mother and broth-
ers? The words of Jesus would have been no contrasting words
at all but pure nonsense. Professor Smith says that Jerome gives
the right opinion of James the brother of Jesus. Does he not know
that at the time of Jerome, and as early as that of Origen, in order
to make Mary a perpetual virgin, James and the other brothers of
Jesus were against all sound exegesis declared to be children of
Joseph from a previous marriage?
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. Ill
In order to defend his idea that spiritual brothers of Jesus were
meant, Dr. Smith treats the text of i Cor. ix. 5 with the most un-
excusable arbitrariness combined with the utmost disregard of New
Testament Greek. He says there were two classes of "Messianists,"
spiritual brothers of Jesus and those of Kephas. Now it does not
read in Greek Kepha3 but Kephas.* If brothers of Kephas had been
meant the genitive form Kepha would have been used and not the
nominative form Kephas. Throughout the New Testament all He-
brew proper nouns ending in as have the genitive singular in a.
(Compare Winer, N. T. Grammar, §8). We have here a warning
example of what twistings the New Testament text has to suffer
in order to substantiate a preconceived theory; as also of what im-
portance it is not to overlook the minutest distinction in grammat-
ical forms. Such little matters can upset a whole elaborate theory.
No commentator has till now understood this passage in any other
way than that Paul spoke of the married brothers of the Lord and
the married Kephas, who, as we also know from the gospels, had
a mother-in-law. Does not the verse distinctly read: "Have we
no authority to lead about a sister, a wife as the rest of the apostles
and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas"? Why then this whole
unjustifiable talk of Dr. Smith and his bold assertion that "it is
never hinted that James was really consanguineous with Jesus?"
What else did the second gospel mean when mentioning James in
company with the other brothers of Jesus?
In this connection I will also add that if, as Dr. Smith asserts,
the James passage is wanting in some Josephus manuscripts, and
Hilgenfeld thought it was expunged from Christian manuscripts
of Josephus, perhaps Hilgenfeld is not so entirely off the track after
all, for to the believers in the perpetual virginity of Mary the least
thought that Jesus had real brothers was blasphemy. To such be-
lievers the James passage, written by a Jew who did not accept
Christianity, speaking of a real brother of Christ might have ap-
peared as a dangerous misleading passage. Let me say that in the
above mentioned edition of Josephus I can find nowhere in the
critical notes any mention of manuscripts in which the James passage
is wanting. But to repeat again, even if this passage should be an
interpolation, we are not in any way bound at all to base our con-
viction that Jesus was historical on Josephus.
More importance is attached to the silence of Josephus on Jesus
112 THE MONIST.
than is necessary. In his history of the Jewish people written for
pagans he had very little cause to mention the obscure Jewish teacher
Jesus whose public career perhaps hardly lasted a year, and it is
even quite accidentally that he comes to speak about John the Bap-
tist and his death in Ant. XVIII, 5. 2 in connection with a defeat of
Herod Antipas, looked upon by the people as a punishment for
killing John. "Presumably," says Dr. Wernle,5 "Josephus too well
knew that in the same way Christians looked upon the destruction
of Jerusalem as a divine retribution for the execution of Jesus ; he
surely did not wish to please the Christians by placing the fate of
Jesus in these political connections. We do not perfectly know
the motives of his silence. It would only be a proof against the
existence of Jesus, if not Josephus, but an exact, strict chronicler
had in this way passed by Jesus."
In regard to the Tacitus passage Dr. Smith forgets entirely
that it is copied by Sulpicius Severus (end of the fourth century)
almost verbally in connection with Nero's persecutions. Severus in
his history, when speaking of this persecution, uses the following
words, with which compare the Tacitus passage given in full by
Dr. Smith.
"Neque ulla re Nero efficiebat, quin ab eo jussum incendium
putaretur. Igitur vertit invidiam in Christianos, actaeque in in-
noxios crudelissimae quaestiones ; quin et novae mortes excogitatae
ut ferarum tergis, contecti laniatu canum interirent. Multi crucibus
affixi aut flamma usti, plerique in id reservati, ut cum defecisset dies,
in usum nocturni luminis urerentur" (Chron., II, 29).
In order that Professor Smith may not suspect that the Tacitean
passage was doctored by means of that of Severus, as he seems to
make Poggio Bracciolini responsible for the passage, I will here
give another passage from Severus, copied from Tacitus, which is
in nowise whatever connected with the Christ passage of Tacitus.
Severus when speaking of the criminal and obscene festivities given
by Nero (before the fire) uses the following words:
"Ad notasse contentus sum hunc eo processisse ut Pythagorae
cuidam in modum solemniorum conjugiorum nuberet; inditumque
imperatori flammeum, dos et genialis torus et faces nuptiales, cuncta
denique quae vel in femina non sine verecundia conspiciuntur spec-
tata" (Chron., II, 28, 2).
* In The Sources of the Life of Jesus.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
With this compare the following from Tacitus (Annal, XV,
37):
"Ipse per licita atque inlicita foedatus nihil flagitii reliquerat
quo corruptior ageret, nisi paucos post dies uni ex illo contamina-
torum grege (nomen Pythagorae fuit) in modum solemnium con-
jugiorum denupsisset. Inditum imperatori flammeum, visi auspices,
dos et genialis torus et faces nuptiales, cuncta denique spectata, quae
etiam in femina nox operit."
As said, Severus copies Annals, XV, 44, only in regard to the
persecution. He had no reason in his work for Christian readers
to cite Tacitus as authority for the historicity of Jesus, nor had any
of the Christian apologists in their apologies to the Roman govern-
ment any reason to cite Tacitus or Josephus or other profane writers
for the historicity of Jesus. This was with Christians a settled fact.
I say this because nowadays there are some who insist that Christian
writers must have cited non-Christian writers in regard to the exist-
ence of Jesus, otherwise Jesus was not historical, or the respective
passages are all forged. The same pertains to the persecution under
Nero. The demand is made that under all circumstances early Chris-
tian writers must have cited Tacitus with regard to the Neronian
persecution otherwise it is not historical or the account of it in
Tacitus is forged.
People making such demands forget: (i) that Tacitus on ac-
count of his peculiar and very difficult style was very little read
even in antiquity. Vopiscus (about 300 A. D.) says that the em-
peror Tacitus, a namesake of the historian, ordered that the works
of Tacitus, the historian of emperors, should be placed in libraries,
in order that they should not be lost (Vita Tac. imp., X, 3) ; (2) that
the traditions of early Christianity (oral and written) with regard
to the execution of Jesus under Pontius Pilate and the Neronian
persecution demand as fair treatment as that of profane writers.
From whatever of the many early opposing Christian sects the
traditions may be derived, they are unanimous with regard to both
facts. Concerning the Christian tradition that Jesus was executed
under Pilate I will not lose any words. With reference to the
persecution under Nero I will ask : Is it right to assume, when Melito
(170 A. D.) and Tertullian refer directly in their apologies to a
persecution under Nero, that it has no basis? Shall the correspond-
ence between Paul and Seneca of the fourth century count for
nothing? The spuriousness of this correspondence does not affect
the tradition it gives that Christians and Jews were punished as in-
114 THE MONIST.
cendiaries by Nero. Is it right to slight such early Christian writings
as the Apocalypse of John and the letter of Clemens Romanus of
the end of the first and the beginning of the second century, who,
though not speaking directly of a persecution under Nero, never-
theless speak of persecutions and special ones too? Clemens Ro-
manus devotes a long paragraph to the Christian "heroes of the
recent past," as he expresses himself, under which he enumerates
Peter6 and Paul and "a great number of chosen ones" (among them
women) who suffered "atrocious and impious treatment" and "mani-
fold indignities and tortures" and thus became "glorious examples
in our midst." This Clemens writes from Rome to the Corinthians
(Clem. Rom., V-VI). The seer in the Apocalypse (xx. 4) sees "the
souls of those who had been beheaded on account of the profession
of Jesus and on account of the word of God, and who had not bowed
down to the beast nor to his image, and had not taken his sign on
their foreheads and their hands. And they lived and reigned with
Christ 1000 years." And who is the beast? Nero as signified by the
number 666,7 and by the words8 "who was and is not and is about to
rise again," referring to the belief current among the people that
Nero, who was believed to have fled to the Parthians, was still alive.
Concerning Christians in Rome in the sixties of the first cen-
tury and the possibility of their persecution by Nero, must be noted :
(i) that Paul in his letter to the Philippians written about the year
63 from Rome, sends greetings "from the household of Caesar,"
probably inferior servants; (2) the connection of Poppaea (the last
wife of Nero, kicked to death by him in 65, about a year before the
conflagration) with Jews. She interceded, according to Josephus,
for the Jewish high priest and other Jewish authorities in a dispute
between them and the procurator Festus. Josephus further relates
in his autobiography how he obtained favors for accused priests
through Aliturus, a Jewish actor, much beloved by Nero. Is it
not possible, then, that Nero should have known of Christians, and
could not intrigues have happened against them in his own palace
when the Roman people, according to Tacitus, suspected Nero of
having caused the great fire himself? In order to divert this sus-
'The apocryphal "Ascension of Isaiah" (2d century) mentions the death
of one of the twelve apostles by Nero. — The great enemy of Christianity,
Porphyry (3d century), also speaks of the crucifixion of Peter, cited by Har-
nack in Die Mission der Urkirche.
T Compare my article "The Number of the Beast," Open Court, April,
1909.
"Rev. xvii.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 1 15
picion from his person to the Christians, as Tacitus says, may not
Jewish intriguing in his own neighborhood have combined?
The relations between the Jews and the Christians were very
strained in Rome according to the last chapter of the Acts and the
letter to the Philippians. Besides this, the Christians were a very
suitable class to fix upon as incendiaries, since they talked so much
about the great final world-conflagration. And if the wrath of the
people had once been directed by Nero against the Christians it
may well have happened that Christians and Jews were indiscrim-
inately punished as incendiaries, as the spurious correspondence
between Seneca and Paul says. The harsh judgment which Tacitus
passes on the "Christian superstition," which some consider as a
sign of Christian interpolation is not any worse than that which
he passes on the Jews and their proselytism in his Histories (V, 5),
where he says : "Every vile person, after spurning the religion of his
fathers brings to Jerusalem tribute and gifts, for which reason Jew-
ish affairs have grown ; and because they have a stubborn faith
among themselves, they are ready for sympathy (among themselves),
but towards all strangers they have a hostile hatred." The possi-
bility of a persecution of Christians, the offshoots of Judaism, under
Nero, I think ought not to be denied by any one who is acquainted
with the Roman persecutions of the Jews and adherents of other
foreign religions in those days.
If the Christ passage in the Annals was forged earlier or at the
time of the rediscovery of the Annals in the first quarter of the
fifteenth century, as some contend and to which Dr. Smith also
seems to be inclined, I would like to ask what object the forger
could have had. To prove the existence of Jesus, either in the first
centuries or in the Middle Ages or at the beginning of the modern
period? As far as I know, the existence of the person of Jesus
was doubted neither in antiquity nor in the Middle Ages nor at
the beginning of modern times. The doubts about Jesus in all the
periods mentioned concerned rather more the theological dogmas
about him.
The Tacitean passage says not a word about what Jesus taught
or did, or what his followers thought about him. It simply makes
the very general statement that Christ was the founder of the Chris-
tian "superstition." The case is quite Different with the interpolated
passage in Josephus. That passage is one with a definitely dogmatic
import speaking of what Christ was and going into minute details.
The interpolation is so clumsy, and for that reason so comparatively
Il6 THE MONIST.
harmless, that one is inclined to think some Christian inserted it
originally in a marginal note to fill out the gap he thought he dis-
covered in the history of Pilate. Such interpolations are numerous
in ancient times and in Greek and Roman writers who have nothing
whatever to do with Christianity. Originally written in the margin,
they were inserted in the text by a later transcriber. But the keen
eyes of critics have generally detected the foreign material, for the
reason that it usually does not fit in with the context.
It is entirely different with the Tacitus passage. It fits in per-
fectly naturally in the context. Every reader of Tacitus has thought
so thus far. Dr. Smith labors greatly to the contrary of course.
Because that cunning interpolator has forged this passage into the
context in order to prove the historical existence of Jesus, fore-
seeing the hot dispute in our times on that question. In order to cut
off the suspicion once for all that the Tacitus passage was forged
at the time of the rediscovery of the Annals, let me say that it stands
in all existing manuscripts, the Medicean as well as other manu-
scripts not related to the Medicean. This on the authority of Four-
neaux. (H. Fourneaux, The Annals of Tacitus, Oxford, 1896,
Latin Ed. In the critical preface of Vol. II and notes on passage.)
I do not lay much weight on the matter of the Tacitean style
of the disputed passage. Nevertheless the interpolator, if such he
was, is not only to be congratulated for the miraculous foresight
of the coming dispute centuries later on the existence of Jesus, but
also on his masterful imitation of the real Tacitus. He was cer-
tainly unique. Still he has betrayed himself, according to Professor
Smith, who otherwise admits the masterful imitation of Tacitus on
the part of the alleged interpolator, by saying humani generis instead
of generis humani. Now Tacitus may have simply placed the ad-
jective before the noun in this case to give emphasis just as he does
in other cases, of which Dr. Smith gives examples. If Tacitus says
in Histories, V, 5, of the Jews that they "had a hostile hatred to
all others,"9 may he not in this passage, by placing humani before
generis, intend to say that the Christians were not convicted only of
their hatred towards the Roman race or any other race (Romanum
genus and Grajum genus etc., occur often in Roman writers, Cicero
and others) but towards the (whole) human race? In the concise
and obscure style of Tacitus a single word sometimes gives effect
to a sentence and if the meaning of the word is missed, the sense
of the writer is not reached. "A disagreeable hiatus," as Dr. Smith
* Adversus omnes alias hostile odium.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS
says, is no more to be found in the phrase odio humani generis
than in the phrase cited by him from the life of Agricola by Tacitus
generis humani aboleri.
In connection With the Christ passage in Tacitus, Professor
Smith refers to the words of Suetonius on the persecution of Chris-
tians under Nero and to the Pliny-Trajan correspondence. Of the
former he says, "The sentences of Suetonius may be genuine, but
they attest nothing strictly relevant"; of the latter, "Like may be
said of the Pliny-Trajan correspondence." Is that so? Is the
attestation of the account of Tacitus on the persecution of the
Christians under Nero by another profane writer not of any rel-
evancy? Are the words of Suetonius in the life of Nero, "The
Christians, a people of a new and wicked superstition were afflicted
with punishment," not of any importance when the question of a
persecution of Christians under Nero is discussed? Is the Pliny-
Trajan correspondence not of any relevancy regarding a "pure-
human founder of Christianity," to use the words of Dr. Smith,
when Pliny says in his letter to Trajan that the Christians he had
under torture confessed that in their assemblies "they spoke in turn
a liturgy to Christ as if a god."10 Do the words "to Christ as if a
god" not imply a deification of Jesus? I can't understand it other-
wise. I doubt whether the thesis of Dr. Smith that "extant profane
literature is silent concerning the life, career and death of a pure-
human founder of Christianity" is "fully proved," as he says, by
him. I have had the impression several times that Dr. Smith is
stronger in his assertions than in his proofs.
It is good for the question of the existence of Jesus to be dis-
cussed from all sides in order to get at the truth. But let it be done
with a calm balancing of all facts and not by assertions alone.
I would ask those who deny the historical existence of Jesus to
be more modest and tolerant towards the "liberal critics" in this
question, whom I have seen called "stupid" in print by adherents of
Drews and others taking a similar position and whom Dr. Smith
also calls "much higher than deep."
Those who make such a noise about the new discovery of Drews,
Kalthoff and others, forget or do not know that all this has happened
before. David Strauss was surely one of the most radical critics
in regard to the person of Jesus. And just as the liberal opponents
of Drews are now being ridiculed, so this radical critic was treated
with supercilious contempt by Bruno Bauer, as being comparatively
" "Carmenque Christo quasi deo dicere secum in vicem."
Il8 THE MONIST.
orthodox and a merely apologetic writer. Bruno Bauer considered
that he himself had reached a far higher elevation and had settled
once for all the problem of Christianity and Jesus. A forerunner of
Drews and others he denied that the gospels had any historical basis
whatever, but claimed they were simply the product of the human
self-consciousness. He denied the authenticity of all the Pauline
epistles and considered them written in the second century. This was
sixty years ago. Finally he broke entirely with his former friends,
the liberals, by writing a pamphlet against the emancipation of the
Jews! I imagine that I hear great rejoicing in the ranks of ortho-
doxy. They will cite the words of Jesus: "If a house be divided
against itself that house will not stand." They will triumphantly
say: "Just see how these infidels call each other names and rage
against each other. This is our gain and will strengthen our cause
the more."
The extreme hypercritical views of Drews and others will hurt
the cause of liberal thought more than anything else. The liberal
part of the clergy in Germany has for some years been publishing
a series of pamphlets under the title "Religio-historical Books for
the People" in which they unhesitatingly give the scientific results
of free research concerning the origins of Christianity, its evolution,
higher criticism, etc. All these studies are based on searching but
calm unprejudiced historical and scientific investigation. These
books of enlightenment have had an enormous sale in Germany.
The orthodox party became so alarmed that they published a counter-
series.
Now come Drews and others in Germany the best allies of
the orthodox party. The opinions of Drews will scare away those
who perhaps would have been won over to the liberal side. Ex-
treme views generally hurt any cause more than they help it. On
the other hand these extreme views are picked up with avidity by
those who look upon Christianity and religion altogether not as an
evolution but as a long series of priestly knavery and religious graft
without any redeeming feature. If the historical existence of Jesus
is absolutely denied, if every passage in profane writers concerning
the existence of Jesus is declared as interpolated, this is water upon
the mill of those who say, as one said to me in a public discussion,
"When the time came that the Christians had control of every copy
of every book that existed in the Roman empire, they made Josephus
and every other historian say anything they thought of interest to
the church." There is an impression among certain quarters that
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS 119
the Christian clergy did not occupy itself with anything else but the
falsification of profane writers. But this is not all. In 1878 Mr.
Stuart Ross declared the whole Annals of Tacitus forged. After
him the Frenchman Hochard rejected not only the Annals but all the
works of Tacitus, the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan
and the passage in Suetonius concerning the persecution of Chris-
itans under Nero. The climax was reached by K. T. Bellairs who
in a pamphlet entitled: "Is Christianity a Forgery; Is English His-
tory a Fraud?"11 declared all classical literature, Josephus and the
Bible as works made up towards the end of the Middle Ages by
monks, and that "there is not a historical or Christian authority
that can date prior to about 400 years ago" ! ! ! I could give some
more such edifying statements from these quarters but will refrain.
I am sorry to see Dr. Smith somewhat in the company of such
men as Ross and Hochard though he is not quite bold enough to
follow them fully. It is a dangerous, risky proceeding when build-
ing up theories, to leave the solid ground of facts and to build only
on pure abstractions; such structures may be sometime consigned
to the lumber-room of curiosities in the history of research just as
it has happened with the theory of Dr. Bruno Bauer.
A. KAMPMEIER.
IOWA CITY.
COMMENT BY WILLIAM BENJAMIN SMITH.
To the foregoing criticism no extended reply seems needed.
On the main points at issue the reader may be left to form his own
judgment. Some minor matters may be noticed.
i. Imprimis let it be said that none of the things Dr. Kamp-
meier thinks were forgotten were really forgotten ; they were all
in mind, but were omitted (along with certain lines of Juvenal) as
not worth mention. Since representative critics laid no stress on
them, it seemed needless to introduce them into an article already
prolonged to double the desirable length. Why mention Sulpicius
Severus, who died A. D. 425, who has not "copied almost verbally"
from Tacitus, whose statement so far as we know is not copied at
all? The agreements in several phrases do seem to indicate some
relation between the two passages, but what relation cannot be made
out. To me it seems far more likely that the Sulpician passage is
the elder, merely elaborated in the Tacitean. Or the two may have
"London, W. Stuart & Co., 41 Farrington St, the same firm publishing
works of Ross.
I2O THE MONIST.
a common unknown origin. Surely no proof is given that Sulpicius
derived from Tacitus. — The words of Clemens Romanus were quoted
so far as they bore on the matter in hand. His vague remarks about
"a great multitude of elect" who had "furnished us with a most
excellent example,"1 and his unintelligible (perhaps interpolated)
phrases about "the Danaids and Dirkai" were omitted as affording
no basis for any argument. So too the correspondence of Paul and
Seneca, dating from the fourth century, though held genuine by
Jerome — surely no one will summon it to witness for a Neronian
Tacitean persecution. When all the older witnesses are dumb, will
you break silence with words not uttered till nearly 300 years after
the event in question? Will you establish by an obscure chronicler
of to-day some all-important feature of the London fire of 1666,
some supreme dramatic moment unattested by Pepys or any other
authority? Such is not the method of historical criticism.
2. In saying the passage concerning James in Josephus (Ant.,
XX, 9, i ) had been "bracketed," I may have had in mind a footnote
in McGiffert's Eusebius, p. 127, where all the words in question are
actually bracketed ; it is not easy to say positively, for my own words
were written nearly six years ago ; nor is it necessary. To "bracket"
is used figuratively for to "regard as spurious," since an editor or
critic sometimes actually brackets suspected passages; and that the
words in question, including Kal and erepous, are strongly suspected
by impartial critics is perfectly well known. Schiirer (The Jewish
People etc.) says, "There is considerable ground, however, for the
suspicion of Christian interpolation" (p. 186), and again, "which
is open to the suspicion of interpolation" (p. 187), and again, "the
genuineness of this passage is also very seriously disputed" (p. 149).
Volkmar, maintaining the genuineness (Jesus Naz., p. 347), admits
that "even Credner," followed by Rothe, "thought he must regard
it as Christian interpolation." Enough ; that the passage has been
suspected and even rejected is certain.
3. What Dr. K. would regard as "nonsense" may be calmly
affirmed: that the mother and brethren of Mark iii. 31, who "stand
without," symbolize the Jews in their rejection of the Jesus-cult.
It is not strange that such metaphors should be used in different
senses at different times and by different writers.
4. The combination, "Brothers of Kephas," is not indeed war-
ranted by i Cor. ix. 5, where every one must read, be he Greek or
* "Magno exemplo fuerunt nobis" — so reads the versio antiquissima, edited
by Germanus Morin (1894).
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 121
English, "and Kephas," not "and of Kephas." The invocation of
Winer was not necessary. The obvious criticism of the language
occurred to me before any one else had made it, but not when I
was in position to correct the expression. The peccant phrase had
been incautiously adopted from I know not where nor whom, as
preferable to the awkward "those of Kephas" (which it was my
wont to use) suggested by the words "but I of Kephas" quoted from
i Cor. i. 12, which evidently formed the real basis, solid and suffi-
cient, for the notion of such a group of Messianists. Even granted,
however, the full force of Dr. K's linguistic stricture, it remains
without any logical virtue whatever ; for the existence of such a
group as "those of Kephas" (who said "I am of Kephas") is
proved, and "the brethren of the Lord" still remain the same as
in Matt, xxviii. 10, 16, namely, disciples. The imagination of any
"twisting of the New Testament text" seems excited. In an un-
important obiter dictum, it is not very strange if the phraseology
should be hasty and inaccurate.
5. As to the "number of the beast," 666 (or 616), the brilliant
interpretations of Fritzsche and others had their day of fascination,
but it is past ; no less an authority than Gunkel declares "die zeit-
geschichtliche Erkldrung ist bankerott" ; at least, one can hardly
build on it.
6. As set forth in the article, it can scarcely have been "that
Christians and-Jews were indiscriminately punished as incendiaries"
(Kampmeier), else Josephus would have mentioned it. Neither was
the notion of "the great final world-conflagration" peculiar or even
proper to the Christians, but borrowed from the Stoics, whose tech-
nical term therefor was ekpyrosis.
6. It is a good many years since attention was emphatically
called to the supposed testimony of that notable mosaic, the "Ascen-
sion of Isaiah," to the supposed martyrdom of Peter under Nero,
which Dr. K. mentions in a footnote. Without discussing the
"Beliar" of this "Ascension," it may be enough to quote the very
recent judgment of Weinel, the fiercest foe of Der vorchristliche
Jcsns, (Hennecke's Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, p. 205) : "It
were indeed most highly interesting, if we had here an oldest witness
of the martyrdom of Peter in Rome : but that cannot be made cer-
tain."
7. The all-important, indeed the decisive moment in the whole
matter, which was perhaps not sufficiently stressed in the original
article and cannot be stressed too strongly, is this: It is not denied
122 THE MONIST.
that Nero may have persecuted Christians, may even have executed
some, possibly Paul or Peter or both. On this point we have no
decisive evidence. The writer has no interest of any kind in ques-
tioning over-strictly the supposed testimonies to a Neronian persecu-
tion. It is the Tacitean persecution described in the famous 44th
chapter that is called in question as admittedly inexplicable and not
only unsupported by testimony but virtually excluded by unbroken
silence in every quarter, even where its fame would have resounded
loudest and longest. Here is the nerve of the matter. It is vain to
pile up hints of a mere Neronian persecution, even were they wholly
unambiguous and not so hopelessly equivocal ; all such are irrelevant.
It is the Tacitean persecution that calls for verification, and none is
forthcoming. When the skull of a man is broken, it is idle to fix
attention on a fracture of his arm. Now since it is not pretended
that Tacitus invented the story in question, in discrediting the authen-
ticity we also discredit the genuineness, as it stands. What may
have lain at its base, it is needless to conjecture. That this Tacitean
account can hardly be accepted at its face value seems to be growing
clearer to the liberal critical consciousness. Witness the recent work
of Geffcken, Aus der Werdezeit des Christentums.
8. Since one apocryphal document (Ascension of Isaiah) has
been called to the stand, it may be well to admit some others. In
the "Martyrdom of St. Paul" (Lipsius, Acta Apocrypha, I, 102-117),
referred by Zahn to A. D. 150-180, we find the Apostle executed
by Nero in the midst of a fierce persecution at Rome, which how-
ever is wholly unrelated to the conflagration; the Tacitean passage
and motive are not only not mentioned, they are plainly excluded.
Of course the whole story is fiction, but if the 44th chapter or any
tradition consistent with that chapter had been known to the apoc-
ryphist, it is hardly possible that he would have unnecessarily con-
tradicted it by necessary implication. Again, in the Acts of Peter
(Lipsius, A. A., I, 45-103), according to Schmidt dating from A. D.
200-210, we find this pillar apostle also executed under Nero but
by the prefect Agrippa and for personal reasons, his preaching hav-
ing alienated many wives and concubines from their husbands and
lords.2 Thereupon Nero is angry, having wished to punish Peter
still more severely, refuses to speak with Agrippa, and meditates
the extermination of all the brethren discipled by Peter, but is dis-
suaded by a vision and remains satisfied with the sole sacrifice of
* Is this an echo of the words of Clemens Romanus : "Zeal hath alienated
wives from husbands" (VI) ?
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 123
the apostle. Here again the Tacitean account, along with any simi-
lar tradition, is positively excluded. To be sure, this martyrdom is
imaginary, at least in its details, but the mere imagination shows
convincingly that the great Neronian persecution in connection with
the conflagration, as detailed in the 44th chapter, had no place in
the Christian consciousness of that author and hence of that era.
When we turn to the Acts of John, we see how eager these roman-
cers were to attach their fancies to historical facts. Had any such
attachment been possible in the case of the martyrdoms of Paul and
Peter, it would have been eagerly effected. The complete absence
of this Tacitean persecution from attested Christian consciousness,
in which it would have rooted itself ineradicably, cannot be under-
stood without impugning the actuality of the persecution itself.
9. Finally the whole story presents all the hall-marks of a fic-
tion, of a gradual growth in the Christian mind. The nearer we
approach the event in question, the vaguer and dimmer it becomes.
As we touch it, lo! it dissolves into air. For one hundred years
after its supposed occurrence, the mighty persecution is not men-
tioned. The earliest Christian writers, those who would certainly
have had a personal or next to personal knowledge of the alleged
execution (of the Christians as incendiaries), betray no consciousness
that any thing of the kind had ever taken place. They speak fluently
about the sufferings and martyrdoms of their brethren. Some allu-
sions to the alleged Neronian holocaust lay directly across their path ;
why do they all avoid it"? In the second century the notion of Nero
as persecutor begins to present itself more and more frequently, and
details of his cruelty multiply more and more. Still there is no hint
of any Tacitean persecution, of any connection with the great con-
flagration ; on the contrary, such a connection is by implication em-
phatically excluded. At length in the 4th century it is suggested,
in a fabricated correspondence, that Christians and Jews had been
punished as incendiaries. At last in the 5th century we read the
details in the terse Sulpicius, "the Christian Sallust." In the famous
44th chapter of the Annals of Tacitus we find still greater elaboration.
The suggestion seems irresistible that the chapter represents an
advanced stage of a process that had been slowly at work for hun-
dreds of years. Are not such evolutions familiar to the student of
history ? Does he hesitate to recognize them when much less clearly
revealed in profane records? Do not precedents for such interpola-
tions abound? Was there not the strongest motive and even temp-
tation to give historic color to the whole Christian doctrine; espe-
124 THE MONIST.
daily to its central concept, the Jesus? Does not even Tertullian
(in the passage quoted in The Monist, p. 531) dare to represent
Tiberius as convinced by "intelligence from Syria Palestine"? Does
not Justin (A. I, 35, 48) still earlier appeal to a fictive official report
of the trial of Jesus ?x In fact, unless I widely err, this strain towards
historization, especially in the Western church, has been the main
determinant of old Christian literature and dogma.
10. In conclusion, a few minima. Dr. K. does not like a certain
parenthesis of mine "(who are much higher than deep)," which he
thinks offensive to "higher critics." Now I yield to no one in genuine
admiration of these critics and would be the last to violate propriety
in speech about them. But such disquisition is at best exceeding
dry, even repellent, and in mercy to the reader it seemed admissible
to interject an occasional bit of good-natured humor. However, if
yielding to such rare impulse to lay aside high seriousness for the
moment seems likely to wound any one's feelings, I shall firmly
resist it and make my discourse as solemn and severe as the sternest
could desire.
As to the great harm which Dr. K. fears the new notions may do
liberal criticism, it may be suggested that criticism was made for the
truth and not the truth for criticism. If the liberal contentions are
sound, no form nor fashion of research can really harm them ; if un-
sound, no amount of homage or advocacy can ultimately save them.
Instead of lumping the investigations of Bauer, Kalthoff, and
many others with my own, it would seem juster to distinguish things
that differ. Dr. K. should know from careful reading (which may
often check cavils that careless reading has started) that neither in
method nor in spirit nor in results is there any such likeness as would
justify such classification, which not even German critics would
employ or approve.
COMMENTS AND ADDENDA BY MR. KAMPMEIER.
1. The weight of the Sulpician passage on the festivities of
Nero has been entirely overlooked. If this passage (though not
dealing with the persecution) was taken almost verbatim from Taci-
tus, why can't the passage on the persecution be a copy from him?
I beg to compare both passages closely.
2. That part of the Clemens passage speaking of women mar-
tyrs reads : "On account of zeal women were persecuted, who, Dan-
1 tK T&v M Hovriov HiXdrov yevofj^vuv &KTWI>.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 125
aids and Dirkae, suffering horrible and impious treatment, arrived
at the goal of the race of faith and obtained glorious honor, though
being weak in body." I simply left out the two words, for the omis-
sion of which I am criticized, because I did not wish to go into un-
important detail, as I only cited the Clemens passage very generally
anyway. I am now sorry for not having given it fully; it would
have strengthened my position the more. The two words perhaps
refer to a peculiar treatment some women suffered in the persecution
mentioned by Clemens.
3. In the James passage not only the disputed words must be
taken into consideration, but the whole passage following, which
states that James and others were accused and stoned by Ananus
as "breakers of the law," and that the most equitable of the citizens,
disliking what was done, protested through King Agrippa (the per-
sonal friend of Josephus) against the procedure of the high priest
before the new Roman governor Albinus. Schiirer only suspects
the James passage because Josephus otherwise is silent on Chris-
tianity. But this is no valid reason.
4. Dr. Smith does not notice that by now saying the mother and
brethren of Mark iii. 31, "standing without," symbolize the Jews in
their rejection of the Jesus cult he entangles himself more and more,
since in his previous article he spoke of the brothers of Jesus and
Cephas as only spiritual brothers.
5. In regard to the number 666 I do not see any necessity of
receding yet from the zeitgeschichtliche position. As long as the
Jewish and Christian Sibyllines are full of instances in which histor-
ical persons are designated by numbers, I cling to the position that
666 can likewise denote an historical person. Book XIV of the Sibyl-
lines designates a whole row of Roman emperors by numbers. Does
Gunkel really declare "die zeitgeschichtliche Erklarung bankerott" in
every detail? According to his article (Monist, April 19x53) he of
course leads much of the language of Revelation back to primitive
myths, in which I fully agree with him, but does this exclude any
reference to contemporary history? There is repeated reference to
Rome, "the great city" in chaps, xiii-xviii. In xvii. 9 Rome is desig-
nated as sitting on seven hills, and then follows the mention of seven
kings, one of which, says the seer, will be the beast, "that was, and
is not, even he is the eighth."
6. The passage in Ascensio Jesajae says: "Beliar, the great
prince, the king of this world, will appear in the form of a man,
an unjust king, a matricide. [Nero is repeatedly referred to in the
126 THE MONIST.
Sibyllines as matricide] who will persecute the plantation, which the
twelve apostles of the beloved have planted and of the twelve one
will be given into his hands." I hope Dr. Smith will not deny the great
prevalence of the Nero-redivivus legend in early Christian circles.
7. Furneaux aptly remarks that the statement of Suetonius con-
cerning the punishment of Christians occurs among a whole list of
police regulations for which Nero is commended. This may account
for the short wording.
8. As the tilt between Dr. S. and myself may fall into the hands
of some who know me personally, I will say that I lay no claim to
either a Ph. or D.D., for which my opponent erroneously assumes
me. A. K.
REMARKS ON DR. CARUS'S VIEW CONCERNING GE-
OMETRY.
In an interesting essay published in The Monist of January,
1910, Dr. Carus has attempted to explain the nature of mathe-
matical thought. Putting aside other points, he has mainly endeav-
ored therein to establish "the foundation of geometry without re-
sorting to axioms," which we could not but receive with hearty
approval and close attention, because hitherto we have been com-
pelled to proceed with some set or other of axioms, or rather as-
sumptions, as we prefer to call them. If we could ever do away
with them, how glad we would be ! Nothing else in the domain of
mathematics, — nay of any subject in the entire scope of science,
could ever afford greater satisfaction to our esthetic requirements
by which we are seeking simplicity in our scientific thought. But
the case is not simple. We must first enter into a critical examina-
tion before we can give assent or dissent to this enticing view of
Dr. Carus.
On page 50 of his article we read : "If my conception of mathe-
matics is true we do not need in geometry a certain number of primi-
tive ideas supposed incapable of definition, and a certain number of
primitive propositions or axioms, supposed to be incapable of proof."
All this would be very well if it were really true as Dr. Carus
maintains. In his Conclusion he feels confident that he has "fur-
nished a conception which satisfies all demands and will be con-
ceivable for all practical purposes," and further that "in the main
(his) solution is on the right track." But in spite of all he has
said we are compelled to doubt whether he is certainly right. Mathe-
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. I2/
maticians who are interested in the philosophical considerations of
their subject would perhaps not be readily persuaded that their theo-
retical demands have been satisfied by this conception thus promi-
nently set forth by a celebrated philosopher.
If Dr. Carus desires to do away with all axioms, he must base
his considerations upon something, or however gifted he be in the
art of thinking, he could not build his castle entirely in the air.
Thus a cornerstone of his construction lies in his conception of
motion. On pp. 37-38 he says:
"We cancel in thought everything particular which comprises
all things concrete, be they of matter or energy, and retain only
our mental faculty of doing something, including a field of action
implied by the possibility of moving about."
Here Dr. Carus has unconsciously introduced an assumption
or assumptions. Does he not assume "the possibility of moving
about"? The form of his assumption becomes exceedingly clear
when he says : "We can move in any direction and everywhere with-
out end" (pp. 39-40). Moreover this statement is not a single as-
sumption only, but it contains a group of assumptions.
Of the numerous assumptions Dr. Carus has tacitly made in the
course of his argument, we shall content ourselves to point out a
single one. He says on page 40, that "we can draw straight lines
in different directions." It is clear that this statement implies an
assumption. We shall not speak of various primitive ideas em-
ployed by Dr. Carus, that appear to us to be incapable of definition,
and stated without any attempt at description.
"Mathematics is a creation of pure thought," Dr. Carus rightly
remarks (p. 34). "We do not find a plane anywhere in actual life,
we construct it; and in the same sense straight lines and right
angles are the products of our construction" (p. 41). All these
statements recommend themselves to us as very just, but Dr. Carus
does not seem to be always considering geometry in such a purely
a priori way. In his opinion, "motion is indispensable for any space
conception" (p. 72). But what is motion as he conceives it? Does
it not seem to be more "concrete" than to be a "pure thought"? It
may well answer for the orientation of our conception of a physio-
logical space ; it is nevertheless not always necessary for our purely
mental construction of mathematical space, as we can see in the
different systems actually established by various mathematicians.
He says further (p. 74) that "after all, our notion of space is
ultimately based on the self -observation of our own motion; (and)
128 THE MONIST.
without motion no space-conception." This may be very true, and
we are highly interested with the deep significance of the statement.
But it applies only when we have to investigate the origin of our
space-conception; it is not positively necessary in our a priori con-
struction of any system of geometry. At any rate the idea of motion
need not be very conspicuous in such a construction. His statement
is of profound significance only with reference to the statement:
"Our notion of space is ultimately based on our senses. Without
senses no space-conception."
Despite all that, however, Dr. Cams maintains (p. 74), "Pure
mathematics does not depend upon the senses but is the product of
the mind." If this is so, will it not be possible for us also to form
our purely formal conception of space in our mind without re-
sorting to any notion of motion, however conspicuously the latter
may have contributed in originating the notion of space in the more
or less physiological ground of the formation? This is certainly
the reason why motion has not played a conspicuous part in the
construction of the now existing systems of geometry.
It is true, that Dr. Carus does not refer to real motion, for on
pages 71-72 he says, "This general idea of motion.... is not real
motion, but the thought of motion." But it is very doubtful whether
we are able to conceive lines, angles, triangles etc., as "the purely
a priori constructions of it."
Notwithstanding all that he has said, I cannot help wondering,
if he were not thinking in a more or less "concrete" manner, not in
"pure thought" only? His notion is true perhaps "only so far as
our physiological space-conception is concerned." In any case Dr.
Carus is unknowingly prepossessed of a conception of space in a
way analogous to the Euclidean system, which is endowed with
something of objective concreteness. We shall hear what he him-
self says (p. 75) :
"We are not able to visualize some of the non-Euclidean spaces,
which means we cannot form definite sense-perceptions of them."
Here it appears he is assuming that Euclidean space has been
ratified by our senses. Further he says on page 74:
"If rational beings, differing from ourselves, have developed
on other planets, they might have different notions of physiological
space than we have, but they would have the same logic, the same
arithmetic, the same geometry, and all the complications derived
therefrom."
It is very strange that Dr. Carus should consider there ought
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 129
to be only one geometry, whereas we have various systems. We who
inhabit the surface of one and the same planet have already con-
structed different geometries, and so why should there not be a
possibility of the inhabitants of other heavenly bodies constructing
other systems than one of those common among us ? There may be
beings who have attained a much higher degree of evolution than
we; their mental faculties may transcend ours in an incredible
degree of perfection. Are we not then utterly incapable of even
imagining what kind of space-conception they may have formed?
Dr. Carus's position is too dogmatic when he uses such a statement
as that above quoted.
As to arithmetic, there may be various systems, such as those,
for instance, where the laws of association or commutation do not
hold.
Dr. Carus says on page 46:
"But if space is a scope of motion, I cannot think of a space
that is limited. Spherical space ought to be conceived as possessed
of a spherical drift, but for that it ought to be infinite. If it is not
infinite, I would ask the question, what is outside?"
Here the Euclidean space is most evidently predominating in the
mind of the author, and in consequence he proves to be prejudiced
in his considerations. A finite space is only finite; there need be
nothing which would involve any conception requiring us to think
of what is outside. If we could think of what is outside a finite
space, the space would not be finite. Being prepossessed with the
conception of the infinite Euclidean space in his mind he is little
entitled, it appears, to truly conceive the intrinsic significance of a
finite space.
If Dr. Carus says on page 49, "since. . . .there are no points,
lines, surfaces, planes, etc., in the objective world, it is obviously
impossible to test the truth of Euclidean propositions by actual
measurement," this would lead theoretically to the conclusion that
any geometrical systems ever conceived in pure thought are all
correct in their a priori significance. But if we were to consider
space as finite and that the length of a whole straight line were not
greater than the circumference of the earth's equator, for instance,
although this might be logically very correct, it would never answer
for practical purposes. If however geometrical systems are con-
structed to suit the demands of our actual life, we must make a
selection as to the best system or systems that would be most con-
venient for our practical or concrete life. As a matter of course
I3O THE MONIST.
pure mathematics has little or nothing to do with these things ; but
in order to secure the concrete application of geometrical systems
we must first apply the a posteriori judgment of experience. Noth-
ing obliges us to conclude that geometry is inapplicable to concrete
purposes, because no such things as points, etc., are found in the
actual world.
If the geometrical space be "a universe of pure thought" and yet
"a model" serving "for any possible formation, fictitious or real,"
it would be only too evident that a model could be tested as to
whether it would answer our purpose or not.
Dr. Cams condemns the tendency which he calls" experimental-
ism" met with in some mathematicians, who have raised questions
such as these : 'Will not a straight line finally, after billions of miles,
.... return into itself ?' or, .... 'Are the opposite angles in a paral-
lelogram really equal?' or.... 'Is space Euclidean or non-Euclid-
ean?'. ..." (pp. 34-35). Dr. Carus takes all these as proving "that
those who propose them .... do not understand anything of the
foundations of mathematics" (p. 35). But here Dr. Carus, it seems,
has confounded theoretical considerations with the practical appli-
cations of the theories. Some mathematicians, like Poincare, think
that every geometrical system has a significance for us, while others,
among whom I may mention L. Harzer, believe otherwise, imagin-
ing that actual or objective space may be really limited. Which
way of thinking is the better of the two, is a subject which we are
not yet able to decide. When I speak in this way, Dr. Carus and
his disciples may count me among those who do not understand the
foundations of mathematics. I may well be among them; but in
my opinion the question lies altogether outside of the domain of
pure mathematics and only concerns the practical side of life. A
logical construction and its practical application must not be con-
founded in any case.
For Dr. Carus "both objective existence and our thought. . .will
be analogous" (p. 39), if consistency dominate both. This is cer-
tainly the positivist's view and can exercise little authority over
those who are not upholders of the positivistic principles. There
is consistency between objectivity and our thought, because the
former is systematized by the latter. It is therefore not proper to
conclude that both are analogous because consistency governs both.
It is very natural that Dr. Carus who is a positivistic philosopher
should consider "the formal laws of the universe" as "a part of
objective reality." But formal laws have no further significance for
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 131
us than as they are developed in our subjectivity. The idea is as
absurd as if we should say that the number three is a part of a
group of three persons. Three is not in any way comparable with
three persons.
Dr. Carus is very right when he says (p. 63) :
"The problems concerning the foundations of geometry and of
mathematics in general are by no means so definitely settled that
one solution may be said to have acquired the concensus of the
competent, and for this reason I feel that a little mutual charity is
quite commendable."
Thus, if I may differ somewhat in opinion from Dr. Carus, I
must openly beg his charity for advocating my own views against
him. I may have been led to these discussions "by an enthusiasm
as strong as the zeal of religious devotees which. . . .has a humorous
aspect," but I am of the firm belief that they will perchance "serve
to widen the horizon of his views," although not endowed with the
positive power of "reversing, antiquating or abolishing the assured
accomplishment" of Dr. Carus.
With us it is never "strange that the nature of man's rationality
is by no means universally recognized." It seems very natural that
"opinions vary greatly concerning its foundation and its origin."
We are quite satisfied with the coexistence of various different sys-
tems, and so we shall be always happy to receive varying criticisms.
YOSHIO MIKAMI.
OHARA IN KAZUSA, JAPAN, March, 2, 1910.
EDITORIAL COMMENT.
On a first perusal of Mr. Yoshio Mikami's criticism of my views
concerning the foundations of geometry, I thought that no reply
would be needed for any one who has read my main expositions of
the problem, the article in question as well as my books Kant's Pro-
legomena and The Foundations of Mathematics. But I am anxious
to let every criticism receive consideration, and so I take pleasure
in publishing Mr. Mikami's remarks. Since, however, many of our
readers have not read the writings under discussion, I will briefly
point out why Mr. Mikami's arguments fail to apply to my position.
It is true enough that I propose to lay the foundation of geom-
etry without having recourse to axioms. However I have not for
that reason, as Mr. Mikami says, "unconsciously introduced an as-
sumption or assumptions," but I build all the formal sciences upon
the facts of our own existence. In doing so I simply follow the
132 THE MONIST.
genetic process of mathematical conceptions. Mathematical concep-
tions did not originate through assumptions or arbitrarily invented
axioms but like the idea of numbers they are due to abstraction, and
they originated naturally in the course of the evolution of the human
mind at a certain period when man was ready for them.
We cannot construct anything from nothing. The idea of build-
ing mathematics on emptiness is unjustified, but I claim that the
method as well as a field of action were procured together with its
definite purpose at the time of its origin by the needs of the situa-
tion. And it is rather strange that this simplest method of investi-
gating the genesis of mathematics has not yet been attempted for
laying its philosophical foundation. Here Mr. Mikami has utterly
failed to understand my position, and I wonder that he criticised
me so boldly while he is unfamiliar with the most important argu-
ments which I have tried to impress upon my readers.
The domain of mathematics is a field of anyness, and so long
as Mr. Mikami omits the very mention of this conception, he will
be incapable of understanding, let alone criticizing, my position.
The very word "anyness" throws a flood of light upon the problem
and helps us to solve it. As soon as man learns to speak, he can
discriminate between concrete and abstract things. He generalizes
and speaks of qualities which do not exist by themselves, and when
he comes to generalize the purely formal aspects of experience he
creates notions which do not apply to one concrete object alone but
to any object, and thus acquire a universal significance. This pos-
sibility of thinking in terms of anyness is the foundation of all
science and especially of the formal sciences.
Bodily forms are concrete, but pure forms are of an abstract
nature ; they are mental constructions. Pure form is purely rela-
tional ; it is a matter of arrangement, either succession or juxta-
position, and contains nothing which can be expressed in terms either
of matter or energy.
The idea of form has been ultimately derived from experience,
for there is nothing in the world of our senses which is not some-
how endowed with form, and he who speaks of objects as being
devoid of form denies the most obvious facts of our experience.
Experience furnishes the data of all our knowledge, and these
data can be analyzed into the sense elements of feelings and their
forms. The generalization of the idea of form leads to one very
peculiar result, which is, that the constructions we make apply gen-
erally for any case of the same kind. The reason is simple enough.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 133
Form is the most abstract quality which is common to all things,
and so we characterize the purely formal as anyness. But there
is another point to be noted. When dealing with sense experience
we have always before us concrete and isolated cases, but in making
constructions of pure form we can exhaust all possibilities and so
we can be systematic. Instead of observing isolated cases we can
formulate a general law, which means a description of the essential
features of all possible cases. Here lies the significance of the
purely formal sciences, and this is the reason why the nature of
form is the fundamental problem of science and philosophy. The
purely formal sciences furnish us with a general scheme excluding
impossibilities, and are of such a nature as to permit us to arrange
all possible cases systematically. If formal thought were not capable
of furnishing such a priori systems, science would be impossible.
We have seen that the idea of anyness originated by abstrac-
tion, by dropping all features of concreteness, and we know that
primitive man began purely formal operations, such as counting, by
creating a system of reference in units. He counted heads of cattle
on his fingers and he interrelated the objects to be counted with his
names of units or with some mnemotechnic help which served him
as an abacus. We cannot doubt that man originally used his fingers
as a system of reference, though the essential things were not his con-
crete fingers but the idea of units which the fingers represented.
Accordingly arithmetic and in the same way geometry did not
originate from nothing, but through abstraction by omitting those
features of experience which at the moment were not wanted for
the purpose of understanding a certain situation.
The mode of creating such systems of anyness is due to man's
mental activity from which, however, anything concrete, be it matter
or energy, has been excluded. In arithmetic this pure activity is
a progress from point to point, thereby creating discrete units ; in
geometry, however, we trace continuous paths of our motion called
lines. We start with our ability to do certain things; we limit our
activity to the abstract field of anyness and then we proceed to make
constructions of pure form. No assumptions nor axioms are needed,
except the principle of consistency. And we may create the condi-
tions as we please. We may build up a system of numerals or the
plane of Euclidean geometry. We may think of any lines of the
same size as equal, or we may also consider direction and treat lines
as vectors.
In one sense anyness is nothing. It is a state of being devoid
134 THE MONIST.
of anything definite and concrete, but it is not, for that reason, ab-
solutely nothing. The field of anyness possesses definite positive
qualities, among which most significant is the quality of the absence
of all peculiarity, which means that the same action taken now and
here is the same as if taken at any other time or in any other place.
The field of operation is throughout the same, and so constructions
are different only if they have been made different. In arithmetic
a unit is a unit whenever or wherever it is posited, and in geometry
progress can be made in any direction and without any limitation,
but the same figure will always be the same.
Note that the principle of action without further limitation in-
volves the highly important concept of infinitude. The idea of a
progress from unit to unit implies that wherever I stop I might con-
tinue, and there is a possibility of progressing to further units be-
yond any stopping place. It is strange that the idea of infinitude
has been a stumbling block to the minds of many thinkers, profound
as well as shallow, mystics as well as scientists, but I wish to say
here that from my standpoint infinitude is the simpler concept, and
finiteness a more complicated idea. The field of action without fur-
ther limitation is a primitive idea in the fundamentals of mathe-
matics, and so any kind of field of a priori activity will be infinite
unless by a special assumption a limit is imposed upon the activity
with which we start. However, we do not get rid of infinitude,
even if we limit our field of operation and make it finite in one way
or another, because the very idea of a limit is a boundary which
implies a cis and a trans. If there is a boundary we postulate a
beyond. Mr. Mikami does not recognize the logical necessity of
this statement, for he speaks of spherical space, and complains that
I introduce into my notion of spherical space the idea of Euclidean
space with its infinitely straight line. But such is not the case. I
only introduce a logical principle, for even if we have a spherical
space we would have to determine the radius of the sphere, and here
again we would have the choice of a radius from the infinitely small
to the infinitely great, and a sphere of the radius of the infinitely
great would again restore infinitude to its proper birthplace. If,
however, we assume a spherical space of a definite radius, we have
a very concrete case, and have left the field of anyness, which ac-
cording to my conception of the foundations of mathematics is the
fundamental idea without which we will be bewildered by a tangle.
Not having familiarized himself with my views of anyness,
Mr. Mikami does not understand that our space-conception may
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 135
be ultimately based on experience, while in spite of it the construc-
tion of mathematical space is a priori and purely formal. He sees
a contradiction in the two statements, "without motion no space-
conception" and "pure mathematics does not depend upon the
senses." Mr. Mikami declares that the former statement is tanta-
mount to saying that "our notion of space is ultimately based upon
our senses." Does he deny that we can make abstractions? I grant
that in reality we can not produce "whiteness" as a thing by itself,
or "motion-in-itself," a change of place without moving objects
and devoid of energy. But in thought we can create such abstract
ideas, and I claim that the whole field of mathematics is such an
abstract conception which does not exist in objective reality; it
is purely mental. Being a construction which purposely omits every-
thing concrete, mathematics is devoid of sense elements. Expe-
rience, as I understand the word, consists of sense perceptions, and
sense perceptions contain both elements, the sensual and the formal.
By omitting the sensual we retain the idea of pure form, and so all
systems of pure form are products of the mind, and are constructed
by means of abstractions ultimately derived from experience.
Kant's transcendentalism is based on the argument that mathe-
matical constructions are a priori, and so, Kant claims, they can not
have been deduced from experience. He insists that they are the
condition of all experiences, for experience becomes only possible by
relying upon the purely formal sciences, including pure natural
science which is based on the conception of causality. I can not
look for causes or the effects of causes, unless I have in my mind
the idea of the law of causation. These conditions of all experience
Kant calls transcendental, and transcendental ideas, such as logic,
arithmetic, geometry, or in a word reason, as well as the conceptions
of time and space form the constitution of the human mind ; but how
mind originates Kant has never investigated.
I find fault with Kant's use of the term "experience" which
he mostly restricts to the idea of sense experience but sometimes
employs in the broader meaning of sense experience as guided by
logic and other principles of formal thought. Mathematics has
nothing to do with experience in the narrower sense, but the means
of its construction have been derived by abstraction from experience
in the broader sense. Accordingly my propositions do not involve
a contradiction as Kantians would be inclined to think and as Mr.
Mikami actually declares.
There is another point on which my view differs from that of
136 THE MONIST.
Kant. It is what he calls idealism, but which is truly subjectivism.
The domain of the mind is the realm of ideas, and so Kant con-
cludes that time and space and reason (or in a word all branches
of formal thought) are ideal, and he uses the term in contrast to
real or objective. In truth he identifies the term "ideal" with "sub-
jective," and thus he claims that forms appertain to the mind and not
to the objective world. Here lies the fallacy of Kant. We must
consider that there is no subject in itself. Every thinking subject
is a concrete and real body moving about as an object in the ob-
jective world. A thinker considered as a subject is only the inner
aspect of an objective personality, and this objective personality is
as much a part and parcel of the objective world as any other object.
The experience of a subject is due to the objective contact of a
thinking being, and this contact is experienced, not in pure sub-
jectivity but by its bodily and objective sense organs.
The experiences of a thinker are first of all part and parcel of
his objective body as it moves and is moved about, as it pushes and
is pushed, as it is exposed to objective contact, mechanical as well
as chemical or electric, and otherwise in its relation in the objective
world. Form accordingly, with its quality of relationship, of juxta-
position, of difference of structure, etc., is a feature of the objective
world and the idea of form is its representation in the domain of
subjectivity. Accordingly the evidence that form is purely subjec-
tive is not forthcoming and stands in contradiction to what we
know about the nature of form. If form were purely subjective,
we would be compelled to deny objectivity altogether.
The abstractions from which the purely formal sciences have
been created have been derived from experience, and since at the
same time the formal sciences serve a practical purpose, we must
assume that the objective world contains features which somehow
correspond to its fundamental conceptions. This is certainly borne
out by experience, for the formal sciences are the most indispensable
part of our cognition. Without them man would not be a rational
being.
We have repeatedly insisted upon the truth that all mathematical
sciences, logic as well as arithmetic, are ideal in the sense that they
are mental constructions. There are no logarithms in the objective
world, but only in our mind, and the same is true of our idea of
purely formal motion. There are no numbers running about in the
starry heavens nor in the world of chemical atoms. Nevertheless the
objective world is so constructed that by counting and measuring
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 137
we can acquire an insight into its constitution. We can determine
magnitudes, distances and other properties of objects, and that is
all that is needed.
Human reason exists as reason only in the human brain, but
there are features in the objective world which make it possible
that the theorems of reason assist us in comprehending the con-
ditions of things. This objective counterpart of human reason has
been characterized as the cosmic world order. The Germans call
it Gesetsmassigkeit, a word which we have translated by "lawdom,"
meaning a state which admits of a description in so-called laws of
nature. Mathematics more than any other science, helps us to
understand this lawdom of the objective world, and although mathe-
matical conceptions are purely mental, although there are no trigo-
nometrical ideas, no sines nor cosines, no algebraic formulas extant
in the objective world, the theorems of mathematics, being con-
structed in the field of anyness, help us to understand any anal-
ogous products ; and also to render possible thereby a comprehension
of this real world of ours.
ON THE MAGIC CIRCLE.
In the author's article on "Mediaeval Occultism" (The Monist,
XVIII, 510) a suggestion was made to the effect that the magic
circle which forms an integral part of all thaumaturgic ritual served
to define or limit the magical environment. Further consideration
on this matter combined with a study of Buddhist and Chinese
occultism has led the author to extend the use of this circle to a
considerable extent.
It has long been recognized among anthropologists that temples
as the residences of supernal powers represent in miniature the uni-
verse, and it is not difficult to show that the circle, with two per-
pendicular diameters oriented, is also a very widely used symbol
for the universe, so that the magus operates as it were within a
universe of his own creation. This then is the thesis of the present
article, and it may be defined more generally as follows:
"The magic circle is an essential feature of magical operations,
and expresses symbolically the universe. Within this circle the
magus by the processes of ritual evokes supernatural powers (as he
conceives them to be) with a space relation to the corresponding
positions in the physical universe and the ideal universe of occult!
philosophy.
138 THE MONIST.
In order to prove this statement it will be necessary to show
that there is some certain relation between the circle, the real uni-
verse and the ideal universe of the magicians.
That there is a relation between the circle and the real universe
follows immediately from the orientation. This feature is essential
to the construction of the magic circle1 and the cardinal points were
marked by censers, lines and magical texts. There is an immediate
analogy in the orientation of the Gilgals or Cromlechs of the Stone
Age (as instanced at Avebury, Stonehenge and Karnak), the Baby-
lonian Ziggurats, the Egyptian and Greek temples and Catholic
churches.
The next and more important link in the chain is the establish-
ment of a space relation between the real and the ideal universes.
In early times the ideal universe was necessarily indistinguishable
from the real, so that in the Babylonian and Egyptian cosmogonies
the gods or spirits have a definite space relationship. To put it
somewhat crudely, they were more or less defined by spherical co-
ordinates ! As beliefs developed together with practical experience,
the ideal universe became independent of the real but nevertheless
coexistent with it in space and occupying much the same position
as in the primitive scheme. The process would seem to be analogous
to that by which we conceive a man's body being inhabited by an
ideal soul which coincides more or less exactly with that body in its
space relations.
It may seem somewhat superfluous to attempt here to prove this
space relationship of the occult world, since so much research has
already been done in this direction and the idea is of itself acceptable,
but there is a further wish on the author's part not only to prove
this but also to exhibit this proof in relation to the main question of
the discussion, i. e., the magic circle.
In at least four distinct cases in ancient thought is there to be
found a connection between the apparent rotation of the heavens
about the earth and the psychical and physical conditions of man.
Among the Egyptians2 the soul of man is likened to the Sun which
rises in the East as Ptah from the land of the shades (Amentet)
culminates in the south as the omnipotent Ra, dies in the west as
Osiris, and passing through the underworld, completes the cycle.
The identity of the dead with Osiris in the "Book of the Dead" is
1 See the Clavicula Salomonis, the Grimorium -verum, or the Pentameron
of Peter d'Abano on this point.
1 Wallis Budge, The Mummy, Guide to the First and Second Egyptian
Rooms, British Museum, and The Gods of Egypt.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. I3Q
even more complete than that of the Christian with Christ, and the
Egyptian name of the book may be translated as "Coming1 forth as
Horus" without philological violence. The ideal universe then cor-
responds to the ecliptic in the year or the hour-circle in the day, and
the heavenly beings with whom man has to do are located along that
circle. The meridian passes through the Elysian fields in the south
(in north latitudes) and through the abode of Death in the north.
In early times doubtless this idea would be accentuated by travelers'
reports of the cold of the north and the tropical luxuriance of the
south.
The second is that of China. In the third chapter of the Chou
Yih (Yih Ching} are given the famous "Eight Trigrams of Fu-
Hsi"3 and also his diagrams of the Sixty-Four Kwa. Both diagrams
are arranged in a circle with Chien, the uncombined Yang (male
principle), in the south,4 and Kwun, the uncombined Yin (female
principle), in the north. The intermediate values of the Kwa Yao
(combinations of the Yin and Yang in groups of six) occupy posi-
tions round the circle roughly corresponding to their contents of
Yin or Yang, i. e., those mostly Yin are towards the north and those
mostly Yang towards the south. Although there is no mention of
a circular motion (the Yih or change being supposed in creation
to have proceeded by ramification like the Darwinian genealogical
tree) the use of these circles and the name of Tai Yang (Great
Yang) which is colloquially given to the Sun would imply that the
Ch'i (Breath of the Universe) sweeps round the circle however the
elements of the circle may have been produced. It may be noticed
here that the legendary history of the Egyptian gods also proceeds
on lines of biogenesis so that the two systems are quite analogous.
The third is the Buddhistic Wheel of Life.6 This represents
the universe as an ever revolving wheel in the clutches of the Beast
of Desire (a tortoise in the Tibeto-Chinese diagrams).6 At the
hub are the three symbolical animals representing Ignorance, Lust
and Anger, and in the six panels of the wheel are the various con-
ditions of the universe. At the left above the horizontal spoke we
*See Dr. Carus, "Chinese Occultism," Monist, XV, 500; 2ist, 24th and 25th
pages of the Chinese version.
4 At the top of the diagrams because the Chinese compass points south.
5 See Waddell's Buddhism in Thibet. There is description of it also in
Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim.
"This beast would seem to resemble the tortoise on whose back Fu-Hsi
discerns the diagrams. See also Dr. Carus on P'an Ku in the article above
referred to.
I4O THE MONIST.
have the Human World, above this Heaven (the culmination), then
descent through the realms of the Demi-Gods to the two Hells, and
finally through the realm of the Tormented Spirits back to the
Human world. The twelve Nidanas or links in the chain of causal-
ity (psychical) surround the wheel and are regarded as the source
of its motion. It is to be presumed that the wheel revolves with
regard to the man, or else we must consider the wheel as stationary
and the soul revolving in it. Here again we have a solar analogy
since the soul is born into human life on the horizontal line (the
horizon), rises to the gods (in the zenith, or meridian altitude),
dies on the horizon (corresponding to the west), descends to the
hells (in the Nadir or meridian depression) and comes back to
earth again. There may perhaps be some analogy in the traditional
descent of Christ into hell whence he ascended to earth, and then to
heaven.
The fourth is the astrological scheme. The Schema Coeli or
figure of the heavens (commonly called the horoscope, i. e., a view
of the heavens at a certain hour) is certainly very ancient. It is,
the author believes, referred to in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos and may
possibly be derived from Egyptian astronomy.7 Until recent years
a square form was used for the table, but Lieutenant Morrison
("Zadkiel") introduced a circular form which more nearly cor-
responds to the astronomical measurements employed.
The astrologers divide the celestial sphere into twelve equal
lunes which are defined by a series of twelve equal sectors on the
prime vertical, the eastern horizontal being used as the origin and
the angles measured anti-clockwise looking south (i. e., reverse to
the earth's rotation and in the same direction as the motion of the
planets in the ecliptic). These lunes are called the Houses, and each
is given by the astrologers a particular relation to temporal affairs
which are influenced correspondingly when the planets are situated
therein. The ascendent or first house (just below the eastern hori-
zon) is called that of Life, and the seventh (just above the western
horizon), that of death. The fourth house (next to the meridian)
is associated with the highest honors, and the opposite one, the tenth
(next to the meridian below the horizon), with misfortunes. Here
there is a perfect analogy between the motions of the celestial bodies
and the ideal universe of man, and the grounds for the beliefs of the
astrologers are identical with those for all forms of sympathetic
7 See a very ingenious speculation of the late R. A. Proctor as to the
astronomical use of the Great Pyramid in an early volume of Knowledge.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
magic. The mediaeval sorcerers undoubtedly drew much of their
ritual from astrological sources, although the use of circles is not
necessarily derived directly therefrom.8
These references should suffice to establish the connection be-
tween the oriented circle and the universe, and it only remains to
show that the circle was knowingly employed in this sense, to com-
pletely prove the thesis.
In the text-books of mediaeval magic there will frequently be
found instructions to invoke from each quarter of the compass, or
again to call certain spirits from a given direction. Such rules
occur in the Clavicula, but in the absence of references the author
cannot recollect the locus, nor can he give the names of other books
although such instructions certainly appear in them.
The practice of the "eastward position" in churches, however,
is alone sufficient to show that there is a traditional association of
ideas of the kind sought. The practice of ceremonial processions
with the Sun, such as is frequently to be observed in Catholic ser-
vices, is an additional demonstration. If, however, we proceed further
we shall only be retracing the ground which has been already cov-
ered by students of heliolatry.
HERBERT CHATLEY.
IMPERIAL COLLEGE, TANG SHAN, CHIH-LI, NORTH CHINA.
NOTES ON PANDIAGONAL AND ASSOCIATED MAGIC
SQUARES.
The reader's attention is invited to the plan of a magic square
of the thirteenth order shown in Fig. I which is original with the
writer. It is composed of four magic squares of the fourth order,
two of the fifth order, two of the seventh order, two of the ninth
order, one of the eleventh order and finally the total square of the
thirteenth order, thus making twelve perfect magics in one, several
of which have cell numbers in common with each other.
To construct this square it became necessary to take the arith-
metical series i, 2, 3.... 169 and resolve it into different series
capable of making the sub-squares. A close study of the con-
stitution of all these squares became a prerequisite, and the fol-
lowing observations are in a large part the fruit of the effort to
accomplish the square shown. This article is intended however
to cover more particularly the constitution of squares of the fifth
8 Note a mention of magic circles in Cicero, De Divinatione.
142
THE MONIST.
order. The results naturally apply in a large degree to all magic
squares, but especially to those of uneven orders.
It has of course been long known that magic squares can be
built with series other than the natural series I, 2, 3. ... n2, but the
perplexing fact was discovered, that although a magic square might
result from one set of numbers when arranged by some rule, yet
when put together by another method the construction would fail
to give magic results, although the second rule would work all right
with another series. It therefore became apparent that these rules
were in a way only accidentally right. With the view of explaining
Fig. i.
these puzzling facts, we will endeavor to analyze the magic square
and discover, if possible, its raison d'etre.
The simplest, and therefore what may be termed a "primitive"
square, is one in which a single number is so disposed that every
column contains this number once and only once. Such a square
is shown in Fig. 2, which is only one of many other arrangements
by which the same result will follow. In this square every column
has the same summation (a) and it is therefore, in a limited sense,
a magic square.
Our next observation is that the empty cells of this figure may
be filled with other quantities, resulting, under proper arrangement,
in a square whose every column will still have a constant summa-
tion. Such a square is shown in Fig. 3 in which every column sums
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
143
a-\-b + c-\-d-\-g, each quantity appearing once and only once
in each row, column, and diagonal. These squares however have
the fatal defect of duplicate numbers, which can not be tolerated.
This defect can be removed by constructing another primitive square,
of five other numbers (Fig. 4), superimposing one square upon the
Fig. 2.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 4-
other, and adding together the numbers thus brought together.
This idea is De la Hire's theory, and it lies at the very foundation
of magical science. If however we add a to x in one cell and in
another cell add them together again, duplicate numbers will still
result, but this can be obviated by making the geometrical pattern
in one square the reverse of the same pattern in the other square.
This idea is illustrated in Figs. 3 and 4, wherein the positions of
a and v are reversed. Hence, in the addition of cell numbers in
two such squares a series of diverse numbers must result. These
series are necessarily magical because the resulting square is so.
We can now lay down the first law regarding the constitution of
magical series, viz., A magic series is made by the addition, term to
term, of x quantities to x other quantities.
As an example, let us take five quantities, a, b, c, d and g, and
add them successively to five other quantities x, y, s, t and v, and
we have the series:
a -f x
c + x
d + x
This series, with any values given to the respective symbols, will
produce magic squares if properly arranged. It is therefore a
universal series, being convertible into any other possible series.
We will now study this series, to discover its peculiar proper-
ties if we can, so that hereafter it may be possible at a glance to
a + y
a + s
a + t
a + v
b + y
b + s
b + t
b + v
c + y
c + s
c + t
C + V
d + y
d + s
d + t
d + v
g + y
g+.*
g + *
g + v
144 THE MONIST.
determine whether or not a given set of values can produce mag-
ical results. First, there will be found in this series a property
which may be laid down as a law, viz. :
There is a constant difference between the homologous num-
bers of any two rows or columns, whether adjacent to each other
or not. For example, between the members of the first row and the
corresponding members of the second row there is always the con-
stant difference of a — b. Also between the third and fourth rows
there is a constant difference c — d, and between the second and
third columns we find the constant difference y — s etc., etc. Second,
it will be seen that any column can occupy any vertical position in
the system and that any row could exchange place with any other
row. (As any column could therefore occupy any of five positions
in the system, in the arrangement of columns we see a total of
5X4X3X2X1 = 120 choices.
Also we see a choice of 120 in the rows, and these two factors
indicate a total of 14,400 different arrangements of the 25 numbers
and a similar number of variants in the resulting squares, to which
point we will revert later on.)
This uniformity of difference between homologous numbers of
any two rows, or columns, appears to be the only essential quality
of a magical series. It will be further seen that this must neces-
sarily be so, because of the process by which the series is made, i. e.,
the successive addition of the terms of one series to those of the
other series.
As the next step we will take two series of five numbers each,
and, with these quantities we will construct the square shown in
Fig. 5 which combines the two primitives, Figs. 3 and 4.
By observation we see that this is a "pure" square, i. e., in no
row, column, or diagonal is any quantity repeated or lacking. Be-
cause any value may be assigned to each of the ten symbols used,
it will be seen that this species of square depends for its peculiar
properties upon the geometrical arrangement of its members and not
on their arithmetical values ; also that the five numbers represented
by the symbols a, b, c, d, g, need not bear any special ratio to each
other, and the same heterogeneity may obtain between the numbers
represented by x, y, s, t, v.
There is however another species of magic square which is
termed "associated" or "regular," and which has the property that
the sum of any two diametrically opposite numbers equals twice
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
145
the contents of the central cell. If we suppose Fig. 5 to be such
a square we at once obtain the following equations:
(2)
(3)
(4)
(d + f) + (d -f v) = 2d + 2y
= 2y
= 2y
= 2d
= 2d
Hence it is evident that if we are to have an associated square,
the element d must be an arithmetical mean between the quantities
c and g and also between a and b. Also, y must be a mean between
x and s, and between t and z/. It therefore follows that an associated
square can only be made when the proper arithmetical relations
exist between the numbers used, while the construction of a con-
tinuous or pandiagonal square depends upon the method of ar-
rangement of the numbers.
220
,3?
//j
'7
67
/07
Fig. 5
Fig. 6.
Fig. 7.
The proper relations are embraced in the above outline, i. e.,
that the central term of each of the five (or x) quantities shall be
a mean between the diametrically opposite pair. For example,
1.4.9.14.17, or 1.2.3.4.5, or 1.2.10.18.19, or 1.10.11.12.21
are all series which, when combined with similar series, will yield
magical series from which associated magic squares may be con-
structed.
The failure to appreciate this distinction between pandiagonal
and associated squares is responsible for much confusion that exists,
and because the natural series 1.2.3.4. .. .w2 happens, as it were,
accidentally to be such a series as will yield associated squares, em-
pirical rules have been evolved for the production of squares which
are only applicable to such a series, and which consequently fail
when another series is used. For example, the old time Indian
rule of regular diagonal progression when applied to a certain class
of series will yield magic results, but when applied to another class
of series it fails utterly!
146 THE MONIST.
As an example in point, the following series, which is composed
of prime numbers, will yield the continuous or nasik magic square
shown in Fig. 6, but a square made from the same numbers ar-
ranged according to the old Indian rule is not magic in its diagonals
as shown in Fig. 7.
i 7 37 67 73
17 23 53 83 89
101 107 137 167 173
157 163 193 223 229
191 197 227 257 263
The fundamentally partial rules, given by some authors, have
elevated the central row of the proposed numbers into a sort of
axis on which they propose to build. This central row of the series
is thrown by their rules into one or the other diagonal of the com-
pleted square. The fact that this central row adds to the correct
summation is, as before stated, simply an accident accruing to the
normal series. The central row does not sum correctly in many
magical series, and rules which throw this row into a diagonal are
therefore incompetent to take care of such series.
Returning to the general square, Fig. 5, it will be seen that
because each row, column and diagonal contains every one of the
ten quantities composing the series, the sum of these ten quantities
equals the summation of the square. Hence it is easy to make a
square whose summation shall be any desired amount, and also at
the same time to make the square contain certain predetermined
numbers.
For example, suppose it is desired to make a square whose
summation shall be 666, and which shall likewise contain the num-
bers 6, in, 3 and 222. To solve this problem, two sets of five
numbers each must be selected, the sum of the two sets being 666,
and the sums of some members in pairs being the special numbers
wished. The two series of five numbers each in this case may be
3 o
6 108
20 2l6
50 loo
loo 63
179 + 487 = 666
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
147
from which by regular process we derive the magic square series
50
3
in
219
103
66
6
114
222
106
69
2O
128
236
1 2O
83
266
150
IOO
208
316
2OO
containing the four predetermined numbers. The resulting magic
square is shown in Fig. 8, the summation of which is 666 and which
is continuous or pandiagonal. As many as eight predetermined num-
bers can be made to appear together with a predetermined sum-
mation, in a square of the fifth order, but in this case duplicate
numbers can hardly be avoided if the numbers are selected at ran-
J
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69
20
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Fig. 8.
Fig. 9-
Fig. 10.
dom. We may go still further and force four predetermined num-
bers into four certain cells of any chosen column or row as per fol-
lowing example:
A certain person was born on the ist day of the 8th month,
was married at the age of 19, had 15 children and is now 102 years
old. Make a pandiagonal square whose S = 102 and in which
numbers I, 8, 15, 19 shall occupy the first, third, fourth and fifth
cells of the upper row.
Referring to the universal square given in Fig. 5,
Let a = o
c = 3
x = i
s ~ — • t»
t = 6
v =13
These eight quantities sum 43, so that the other pair (b and y)
must sum 59, (43 + 59^^102). Making therefore & = 2O and
y = 39, and replacing these values in Fig. 5, we get the desired
square shown in Fig. 9.
148
THE MONIST.
As previously shown, continuous squares are dependent on the
geometrical placing of the numbers, while associated squares depend
also upon the arithmetical qualities of the numbers used. In this
connection it may be of interest to note that a square of third order
can not be made continuous, but must be associated ; a square of the
fourth order may be made either continuous or associated, but can
not combine these qualities ; in a square of the fifth order both qual-
ities may belong to the same square. As shown in my article in The
Monist for July, 1909, very many continuous or nasik squares of
the fifth order may be constructed, and it will now be proven that
associated nasik squares of this order can only be made in fewer
numbers.
In a continuous or "pure" square each number of the sub-series
must appear once and only once in each row, column, and diagonal
(broken or entire). Drawing a square, Fig. 10, and placing in it
t
V
JC
y
3
X.
y
3
t
y
s
t
V
X
y
If
X
y
s
t
y
3
t
V
JC
Fig. ii.
Fig. 12.
Fig-
an element x as shown, the cells in which this element can not then
be placed are marked with circles. In the second row only two cells
are found vacant, thus giving only two choices, indicating two
forms of the square. Drawing now another square, Fig. u, and
filling its first row with five numbers, represented by the symbols
t, v, x, y and s, and choosing one of the two permissible cells for x in
the second row, it will be seen that there can be but two variants
when once the first row is filled, the contents of every cell in the
square being forced as soon as the choice between the two cells in
the second row is made for x. For the other subsidiary square,
Fig. 12, with numbers represented by the symbols a, b, c, d and g,
there is no choice, except in the filling of the first row. If this row
is filled, for example, as shown in Fig. 12, all the other cells in this
square must be filled in the manner shown in order that it may fit
Fig. ii.
Now, therefore, taking the five symbols x, y, s, t, v, any one
of them may be placed in the first cell of the first line of Fig. n.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 149
For the second cell there will remain a choice of four symbols, for
the third cell three, for the fourth cell two, for the fifth cell no
choice, and finally in the second line there will be a choice of two
cells. In the second subsidiary there will be, as before, a choice of
five, four, three and finally two, and no choice in the second row.
Collecting these choices we have (5x4x3x2x2) X (5X4X3X2)
= 28,800, so that exactly 28,800 continuous or nasik squares of the
fifth order may be made from any series derived from ten numbers.
Only one-eighth of these, or 3600, will be really diverse since any
square shows eight manifestations by turning and reflection.
The question now arises, how many of these 3600 diverse nasik
squares are also associated ? To determine this query, let us take the
regular series 1.2.3 25 made from the ten numbers
II345
o 5 10 15 20
Making the first subsidiary square with the numbers 1.2.3.4.5,
(Fig. 13) as the square is to be associated, the central cell must
contain the number 3. Selecting the upward left-hand diagonal to
work on, we can place either i, 2, 4 or 5 in the next upward cell of
this diagonal (a choice of four). Choosing 4, we must then write
2 in its associated cell. For the upper corner cell there remains
a choice of two numbers, I and 5. Selecting i, the location of 5
is forced. Next, by inspection it will be seen that the number i
may be placed in either of the cells marked n , giving two choices.
Selecting the upper cell, every remaining cell in the square becomes
forced. For this square we have therefore only
4x2x2=16 choices.
For the second subsidiary square Fig. 14 the number 10 must
occupy the central cell. In the left-hand upper diagonal adjacent
cell we can place either o, 5, 15 or 20 (four choices). Selecting
o for this cell, 20 becomes fixed in the cell associated with that con-
taining o. In the upper left-hand corner cell we can place either
5 or 15 (two choices). Selecting 15, 5 becomes fixed. Now we
can not in this square have any further choices, because all other
i5's must be located as shown, and so with all the rest of the num-
bers, as may be easily verified. The total number of choices in this
square are therefore 4x2 = 8, and for both of the two subsidiaries,
16x8=128. Furthermore, as we have seen that each square has
eight manifestations, there are really only 12% = 16 different plans
THE MONIST
of squares of this order which combine the associated and nasik
features.
If a continuous square is expanded indefinitely, any square
block of twenty-five figures will be magic. Hence, with any given
square, twenty-five squares may be made, only one of which can be
associated. There are therefore 16x25 = 400 variants which can
be made according to the above plan. We have however just now
shown that there are 3600 different plans of continuous squares of
this order. Hence it is seen that only one plan in nine (360%oo = 9)
of continuous squares can be made associated by shifting the lines
and columns. Bearing in mind the fact that eight variants of a
square may be made by turning and reflection, it is interesting to
note that if we wish a square of the fifth order to be both associated
and continuous, we can locate unity in any one of the four cells
marked n in Fig. 15, but by no constructive process can the de-
JS
33
42 /O
'7
to
zt
/s
J/
JJ
/6
Fig. 14.
Fig. 15.
Fig. 16.
sired result be effected, if unity is located in any cells marked Q-
Then having selected the cell for I, the cell next to I in the same
column with the central cell (13) must contain one of the four
numbers 7, 9, 17, or 19. The choices thus entailed yield our esti-
mated number of sixteen diverse associated nasik squares, which
may be naturally increased eight times by turning and reflection.
That we must place in the same row with I and 13, one of the
four numbers 7, 9, 17, or 19 is apparent when it is noted that of
the series
12345
o 5 10 15 20
having placed 3 and 10 in the central cells of the two subsidiaries,
and o and I in two other cells, we are then compelled to use in the
same line either 5 or 15 in one subsidiary and either 2 or 4 in the
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
other subsidiary, the combination of which four numbers affords
only 7 and 17, or 9 and 19.
With these facts now before us we are better prepared to con-
struct such squares as in which only prime numbers are used, etc.
Reviewing a list of primes it will be seen that every number ex-
cepting 2 and 5 ends in either i, 3, 7 or 9. Arranging them there-
fore in regular order according to their terminal figures as
i ii 31 41
3 13 23 43
7 17 37 47 etc.
we can make an easier selection of desired numbers.
A little trial develops the fact that it is impossible to make
five rows of prime numbers, showing the same differences between
every row, or members thereof, and therefore a set of differences
must be found, such as 6, 30, 30, 6 (or some other suitable set) .
Using the above set of differences, the series of twenty-five primes
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shown on page 146 may be found. In this series it will be seen that
similar differences exist between the homologous numbers of any
row, or column, and it is therefore only necessary to arrange the
numbers by a regular rule, in order to produce the magic square in
Fig. 6.
These facts throw a flood of light upon a problem on which
152 THE MONIST.
gallons of ink have been wasted, i. e., the production of pandiagonal
and regular squares of the sixth order. It is impossible to dis-
tribute six marks among the thirty-six cells of this square so that
one and only one mark shall appear in every column, row and
diagonal. Hence a primitive pandiagonal magic square of this
order is excluded by a geometrical necessity. In this case the
natural series of numbers is not adapted to construct pandiagonal
squares of this order. That the difficulty is simply an arithmetical
one is proven by the fact that 6x6 pandiagonal squares can be
made with other series, as shown in Fig. 16. We are indebted to
Dr. C. Planck for this interesting square which is magic in its six
rows, six columns and twelve diagonals, and is also four-ply and
nine-ply, i. e., any square group of four or nine cells respectively,
sums four or nine times the mean. It is constructed from a series
made by arranging the numbers i to 49 in a square and eliminating
all numbers in the central line and column, thus leaving thirty-six
numbers as follows :
123567
8 9 10 12 13 14
15 16 17 19 20 21
29 30 3i 33 34 35
36 37 38 40 41 42
43 44 45 47 48 49
Fig. 17 shows the completed square which is illustrated in
skeleton form in Fig. i. All the sub-squares are faultless except
the small internal 3x3, in which one diagonal is incorrect.
FRIERSON, LA. L. S. FRIERSON.
TWO MORE FORMS OF MAGIC SQUARES.
SERRATED MAGIC SQUARES.
The curious form of magic squares, which is to be described
here, is a style possessing a striking difference from the general
form of magic squares.
To conform with the saw-tooth edges of this class of squares,
I have ventured to call them "serrated" magic squares.
A square containing the series i, 2, 3, 4,.... 41 is shown in
Fig. i. Its diagonals are the horizontal and vertical series of nine
numbers, as A in Fig. 2. Its rows and columns are zigzag as
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
153
shown at B, and are sixteen in number, a quantity which is always
equal to the number of cells which form the serrations.
nrnTTTn
A
Fig. i.
Fig. 2.
All of this class of squares must necessarily contain the two
above features.
Fig. 3
But, owing to its Nasical formation, Fig. I possesses other fea-
tures as follows:
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There are nine summations each of the square and cruciform,
as at C and D in Fig. 2, the centers of which are 40, n, 32, 5, 21,
154
THE MONIST.
37, 10, 31 and 2 respectively. Of E and F there are six summations
each, and of the form G there are twelve summations.
This square was formed by the interconcentric position of the
two Nasik squares shown in Fig. 3, and the method of selecting
their numbers is clearly shown in Fig. 4.
There are numerous other selections for the sub-squares and
the summations are not necessarily constant. This is shown by the
following equations.
Let N and n equal the number of cells on a side of the large
and small squares respectively, and let 2 equal the summations.
Then, when the means of each sub-square are equal
When the large square has the first of the series and the small
square has the last of the series
,
2 2
When the large square has the last of the series and the small
square has the first of the series
-
Only in such squares that fit the first equation, is it possible to
8
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CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
155
have complementary pairs balanced about the center ; in other words
known as regular or associated squares.
Fig. 5 is one of this class and has summations of 855. In
this case the mean of the series was used in the 7X7 sub-square and
the remaining extremes made up the 8X8 square.
Fig. 6. Fig. 7. Fig. 8.
Figs. 6, 7, and 8 are the smallest possible examples of serrated
squares. Fig. 6 is regular and is formed with the first of the
above mentioned equations, and its summations are 91. Fig. 7 is
formed with the second equation and its summations are 97. Fig.
8 is formed with the third equation and its summations are 85.
MAGIC SQUARES WITH THE ODD NUMBERS IN SEQUENTIAL SERIES.
During the last year the writer has noticed in a weekly period-
ical, a few examples of magic squares in which all of the odd num-
bers are arranged sequentially in the form of a square, the points
of which meet the centers of the sides of the main square and the
even numbers filling in the corners as shown in Fig. 3.
s
6
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Fig. i.
Fig.
Fig. 3-
These articles merely showed the completed square and did not
show or describe any method of construction.
A few simple methods of constructing these squares are de-
scribed below, which may be found of some interest.
THE MONIST.
To construct such squares, n must necessarily be odd, as 3, 5,
7, 9, ii etc.
A La Hireian method is shown in Figs, i, 2, and 3, in which
the first two figures are primary squares used to form the main
square, Fig. 3. We begin by filling in the cells of Fig. I, placing
i in the top central cell and numbering downward I, 2, 3 to 7 or n.
We now repeat these numbers pan-diagonally down to the left,
filling the square.
Fig. 2 is filled in the same manner, only that we use the series
o, I, 2, to 6 or n — i in our central vertical column, and repeat these
pan-diagonally down to the right. The cell numbers in Fig. 2 are
then multiplied by 7 or n and added to the same respective cell
numbers of Fig. i, which gives us the final square Fig. 3.
IB
22
24
1
2
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+
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Another method is shown in Fig. 4 where we have five sub-
squares placed in the form of a cross. The central one of these is
filled consecutively from i to w2. We then take the even numbers of
the upper quarter, in this case 2, 8 and 4, and place them in the
same respective cells in the lower sub-square. The lower quarter
or 22, 1 8 and 24, are placed in the upper square. Likewise the
left-hand quarter is placed in the right-hand square, and the right-
hand quarter in the left-hand square. This gives us the required
square, which is shown in heavy numbers.
A third method is to write the numbers consecutively, in the
form of a square, over an area of adjacent squares as in Fig. 5.
The mean of the series must be placed in the center cell of the
central or main square and the four next nearest to the center must
find their places in the corner cells of the main square, which con-
sequently governs the spacing in writing the series. We then re-
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
157
move all these numbers to the same respective cells in the main
square, and this gives us the square shown in Fig. 6.
/s
Fig- 5
Fig. 6.
66
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66
20
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Fig. 7.
This last method is not preferable, owing to the largeness of
the primary arrangement, which becomes very large in larger squares.
58
THE MONIST.
It might however be used in the break-move style,1 where the steps
are equal to the distance from the center cell to the corner cell, and
the breakmoves are one cell down when i is at the top.
What seems to be the most simple method is shown in Fig. 7,
where the odd numbers are written consecutively in the main square
and directly following in the same order of progression, the even
numbers are written.
The even numbers necessarily run over into three adjacent sub-
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Fig. 8.
squares. These are removed to the same respective cells in the
main square, the result of which is shown in Fig. 8.
It will be noticed that all these methods give identically the same
results, which I believe are the only possible forms of this style of
squares.
The summations of Fig. 3 are 175, the summations of Figs. 4
and 6 are 65, and the summations for Fig. 8 are 369. Also, all
complementary pairs are balanced about the center.
SCHENECTADY, N. Y. HARRY A. SAYLES.
WORK TO BE DONE IN BUDDHIST CRITICISM.
AN APPEAL TO CHINESE SCHOLARS.
Perhaps there is nothing more romantic in the history of religion
than the spectacle of a Parthian prince renouncing his throne in A. D.
149 and going to China as a Buddhist monk. He spent his life in
his adopted country, translating parts of the sacred writings into
Chinese. Acording to his own Catalogue of the Chinese Tripitaka
(Oxford, 1883), Nanjio translated 176 original works, of which
1 This style is thoroughly explained in Magic Squares and Cubes by Mr.
W. S. Andrews.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 159
55 are extant. Judging from their titles, 43 of these are Hinayana.
Anesaki, in his priceless essay, "The Four Buddhist Agamas in
Chinese" (Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Tokyo,
1908, pp. 17, 18; 28-31) identifies forty-four of these works with
texts now extant in the Pali canon.
Let us look at some of thees texts, and see what kind of books
were valued in Parthia and China at the time of Justin Martyr!
Going through the Pali Nikayas in regular order, the first that we
find is the Mahanidana-sutta (Digha No. 15). This was considered
important enough to be included in Grimblot's selections from the
Long Collection (Paris, 1876) and in Warren's Buddhism in Trans-
lations (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1896). The text is No. 31 in
the same Nikaya, also published by Grimblot. and finally there is
the last sutta therein. No. 34, the Dasuttara, which gives a remark-
able survey of Buddhist doctrine, under categories numbered from
one to ten.
In the great Middling Collection (as I prefer to call it, because
it is named after the medium length of its Sutras, and not after its
position in the Agamas, which varied) our Parthian prince hit upon
No. 6, which Rhys Davids shose in London, 1700 years later, for
translation into English in Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XI. Next
we come to No. 52, and then to No. 87, then to No. 113 (on the
"True Man") and finally to No. 141, the "Analysis of Truths." In
this sutta Buddha exhorts the disciples to obey Sariputto and Mog-
gallano.
Besides these there are texts from the Classified and Numerical
Collections, one of which is Buddha's First Sermon, also included
by Rhys Davids in his volue of Suttas aforesaid.
Besides the illustrious Parthian, many more translators of dif-
fernt nations went to China to continue the good work, and one of
these, in the third century, translated the gist sutta of the Majjhima,
the Brahmayu, which gives the vivid account of Buddha's personal
appearance, his table-manners, his gait, and daily habits, first made
known by Spence Hardy in 1853. In Hardy's mediaeval version,
Buddha says grace, but this is not in the Pali. It would be inter-
esting to know whether the third-century translator found it in the
lost Hindu original before him.
In this interesting old Sutta, we have a full-length life-picture
of Gotamo of undoubted historical truth, and I often say that this
discourse alone justifies the assertion that we know more about him
than about Jesus.
l6o THE MONIST.
Now, it has long been my contention that these Hinayana texts
of the second and third centuries deserve special study. They are
the first Buddhist Suttas of the primitive collections which we can
date. The books translated into Chinese in the first three centuries
were largely Mahayana and later on they were altogether so. Could
not a little text-book be made of the Pali suttas translated by the
Parthian, with, say, the third-century Brahmayu added? Give the
original Pali, and note Chinese various readings, as Anesaki has
done in my Buddhist and Christian Gospels.
This perhaps is the most crying need of Buddhist scholarship.
Next to this, if not before it, I rank the translation of the Great
Council Discipline (Maha-Sanghika-Vinaya). This sect was the
sworn enemy of the school of the Elders who have transmitted to
us the Pali. Each sect accused the other of falsifying the scriptures,
so that any agreement between them would go back to an enormous
antiquity. I do not myself believe that the final schism took place
at Vesali, as the Ceylon Chronicles would have it, but at an obscure
council held by Agnimitra, about the middle of the second century
B. C. My reasons for this are the statements from the Great Council
Discipline translated by Samuel Beal, in his learned Introduction to
5. B. E., Vol. XIX; and, by the way, I was very much pleased to
see his pioneer work highly commended by a distinguished French
sinologue.
The Great Council Discipline was brought to China by Fa-Hien
in A. D. 415, and some scholar who had overlooked the translators
of the earlier centuries once asserted that this Discipline was the
first Buddhist book we could date !
One of the most curious things in this Discipline is its list of
the sacred books, and it was translated for us by Suzuki in The
Monist for January, 1904. The present writer has taken occasion
to draw conclusions from this in previous articles. (See for ex-
ample, the San Francisco Light of Dharma, January, 1905, and the
fourth edition of Buddhist and Christian Gospels, Vol. I, pp. 82 and
266.)
Ther are reams upon reams of translations and critcal work to
be done, but, in my opinion, these two are the most eleemntary,
most necessary and most immediately pressing. I appeal to the
sinologues of France, Holland and Japan to emulate each other in
this important task. ALBERT J. EDMUNDS.
HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA, Nov. 16, 1910.
VOL. XXI. No. 2. APRIL, 191 1.
i
ll.*
THE MONIST
A Quarterly Magazine
Devoted to the Philosophy of Science
Founded by EDWARD C. HEGELER.
CONTENTS:
PAGE
INFINITY OF THE UNIVERSE.
SVANTE ARRHENIUS 161
THE GREEK INFLUENCE IN ECCLESIASTES.
A. H. GODBEY 174
SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST.
ARTHUR O. LOVEJOY 195
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY.
BERNHARD PICK 223
ON THE ABUSES OF THE NOTION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS.
LUCIEN ARREAT 267
THE IDEAL AND LIFE (Schiller's Poem with Translator's Comment).
Translated by PAUL CARUS 278
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
The Finiteness of the World. PAUL CARUS 285
The Divine Five-Fold Truth (With Editorial Comment and Author's Reply).
JOHN ELOF BOODIN 288
Games of Chance. ALFRED H. LLOYD 296
Work to be Done in Buddhist Criticism. ALBERT J. EDMUNDS 304
Prof. K. Borinski on W. B. Smith's Biblical Criticism 307
General Congress of Monists 307
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES.
The Hilprecht Anniversary Volume, 309. — Matter and Memory, H. Bergson, 318.
— Les roches et leurs elements mineralogiques. Ed. Jannctlaz. 320.
CHICAGO
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
1911
COPYRIGHT BY
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING Co.
1911
VOL. XXI. APRIL, 1911. No. 2.
THE MONIST
INFINITY OF THE UNIVERSE.1
EVER since the earliest period of Greek philosophy
two distinctly different theories of the extension of
the universe have been propounded. According to one of
them, which no doubt originated in the naive world-con-
ception of primitive man, the universe is finite and the earth
or sometimes the sun occupies its central position. The
Pythagorean school (in the sixth century B. C.) placed a
hypothetical "central fire" in this point, around which the
heavenly bodies were uniformly arranged in all directions,
and according to this school therefore the universe was
globe-shaped. Also in the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic sys-
tems the earth, supposed to be the center, was surrounded
by several spheres, the outermost of which was the Firma-
ment, the seat of the fixed stars. Aristotle's theory re-
ceived the sanction of the church of the middle ages.
In modern times it is assumed by many astronomers
that the universe is finite and surrounded by an infinite
empty space into which the sun and the stars radiate an
energy forever to remain lost. Frequently also the idea is
voiced that our sun occupies a position near the center
of such a finite universe. We might for instance recall
the passionate discussion that for some years followed simi-
lar utterances by the renowned English biologist, Wal-
lace. The world is then frequently identified with the ga-
lactic star-system.
1 Translated from the German by J. E. Fries.
l62 THE MONIST.
On deeper reflection, however, arose the by no means
far-fetched idea of an infinite universe. That space is un-
limited is evidently conceded by everybody. Very remote
parts of the universe we cannot observe. But it is an axiom
that when something is beyond the reach of our senses we
must assume it qualitatively to be similar to that within
our reach. Our knowledge of the outside world we have
derived through our sense-perception and something quali-
tatively different from our experience we cannot even im-
agine. It was a quite natural thought, therefore, that
infinite space would contain stellar bodies scattered through-
out its invisible ranges in a way if not in number, like that
in its visible parts.
Anaximander (611-547 B. C.) expressed the theory of
an infinite number of heavenly bodies which according to
him had evolved from primitive chaos. The somewhat later
Demokritos, the greatest nature philosopher of antiquity,
taught that the Milky Way consisted of a vast number of
stars similar to our sun. The heavenly bodies were infinite
in number and subject to gradual changes involving decay
and rebirth.
This conception, so strikingly coinciding with our own,
is not essentially different from the one later expressed
by Giordano Bruno and Kant. According to Bruno, the
fixed stars are suns like our own surrounded by inhabited
planets. A similar view was expressed with immunity about
one hundred years earlier by Cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus.
The stellar bodies float in the infinite transparent ether-sea.
This theory was further developed by Descartes and was
accepted by educated minds up to Newton.
Kant speaks at length — at somewhat too great length —
of the qualities belonging to inhabitants of other worlds.
He assumed, as is well known, that the sun and likewise
other stars develop from a chaos, gradually turn luminous
and "burn to ashes." They will, however, awake to new
INFINITY OF THE UNIVERSE. 163
life. "When we endeavor to trace this cosmic Phenix
through infinities of time and space and find it consuming
itself by fire only in order to arise rejuvenated from the
ashes, then the soul, contemplating all these things, is truly
inspired with awe." According to this system, the parts
of the universe near to us are not essentially different from
other interstellar spaces.
A special development of this theory has been given by
Swedenborg and Lambert. The sun with its planets and
their moons form one system, the solar system. Several
solar systems combine in a certain orderly way into a sys-
tem of higher (second) order to which our solar system
stands in a relation somewhat like that of Jupiter with its
moons to our solar system. This system of second order,
including our sun, forms the galaxy. Several galaxies con-
stitute a higher system of third order. Systems of third
order are units in a system of fourth order and so on. This
conception has quite recently been quantitatively treated
by Professor Charlier of Lund. According to him, the
systems of second order — the galaxies — are within the
system of third order enormously far apart, or more pre-
cisely so far that the nearest galaxy outside of our own
would have an apparent diameter of less than o . 2 seconds
and a maximum luminosity of a star of the 37th magnitude.
It would therefore entirely escape our present power of ob-
servation. Systems of third order are millions of times
still farther apart, and so on, according to Professor Char-
lier, and immense spaces void of stars and of exceedingly
rapidly increasing extension separate systems of successive
orders. This doctrine of an infinite rarity of matter in
space no doubt differs radically from the original ideas of
the Greek philosophers Anaximander and Demokritos who
assumed the density of the stars throughout space about
equal to that of our own neighborhood; i. e., of our galaxy.
This theory that our immediate surroundings should
164 THE MONIST.
differ to such an extraordinary extent (in reality infinitely)
from the mean conditions of space, appears to me a priori
so improbable that a closer examination of the reasons lead-
ing up to such a conception seems necessary. These rea-
sons may be summed up in the following way.
Von Olbers pointed out in the year 1826 that if the
density of the stars was equal throughout infinite space,
then "the entire firmament must be as luminous as the sun."
If we consider the stars in a spherical shell of thickness dr
and radius r, with our sun in the center, the number of
stars in this shell is proportional to its volume 477 r2 dr. As
further the illumination at the center, due to these stars,
is proportional directly to the mean luminosity hr of the
shell and inversely to the square of the distance from the
shell, the total illumination obtained from these stars is
proportional to the expression hr dr.
If we now circumscribe the sun with a series of such
shells bounded by spheres of radii o, 1,2, 3, 4, etc., where
the unit for instance is 100 light years, the total illumina-
tion L becomes: L = ^1+^2+^3+^4+
The first terms are not exactly correct, but the later
terms are more so the higher their index. This series is
not convergent so that L becomes infinite unless the terms
decrease more or less in a geometric progression. If we
now also assume that the brightness of the stars is inde-
pendent of their distance from the sun, the series cannot
converge. If the mean luminosity of the stars per unit
surface equals that of the sun, the whole firmament would
in fact glow with the intensity of the sun. An infinite lu-
minosity would not be reached because the more distant
stars would partly be hidden by the nearer ones.
In reality experience teaches us that the luminosity
hn is constantly decreasing with growing n, which is gen-
erally expressed in the statement that the star-density de-
creases the farther we travel from the sun. This is par-
INFINITY OF THE UNIVERSE. 165
ticularly demonstrated through the researches of Kap-
steyn. This phenomenon may either be real, as assumed
by most astronomers and by Mr. Charlier among them,
or the explanation may be that the light from distant stars
does not travel unchecked through space.
According to the last alternative, space is not entirely
transparent. For this case two hypotheses have again
been offered: first, the ether itself absorbs light; second,
material bodies exist in space which disturb the ether. The
first hypothesis lies too far outside our experience to be
considered and would in fact demand structural changes
in the ether due to radiating light (similar to chemical re-
arrangements) and capable of absorbing unlimited quan-
tities of energy which is entirely incomprehensible.
The second hypothesis again assuming dark bodies in
interstellar spaces agrees perfectly with our experience.
The dark satellites that so frequently are introduced to
explain the periodic displacement of the lines in the stellar
spectra; the planets and moons in our solar system; the
multitude of meteorites falling into our earth and whose
parabolic orbits indicate their interstellar origin; the cos-
mic dust incessantly driven off from the sun by the light
pressure — all exemplify such dark bodies. Generally one
is satisfied by pointing out the existence of such light-
absorbing matter. Another question, however, arises. How
can these bodies remain at their low temperature when
since immeasurable time they have been exposed to the
radiation from the sun, unless, as assumed by most astron-
omers, their heat is dissipated in infinite space, which as-
sumption on the other hand contradicts our original thesis
that the density of matter in space, although small, pos-
sesses a definite value.
It has, however, always been held that the nebulas
which are widely distributed over the heavens possess an
exceedingly low temperature, because if the molecules in
l66 THE MONIST.
their outside layers were of higher temperature their ther-
mal motion would expel them into space against the weak
gravitational force of the extenuated nebula. In such gas
formations small particles of cosmic dust are no doubt
accumulated which absorb rays entering from outside
space. The surrounding gas is thereby expanded. As
Lane and Ritter have shown, this expansion is so great
that a cooling is effected by such absorption of radiating
light. The very probable assumption is here made that
the nebulous gases, like the air of the earth, are mon- or
di-atomic. The gas molecules that possess the highest
velocity no doubt leave the nebula and roam about in space
until attracted by denser bodies. They are then replaced
by gas delivered from the interior of the nebula to the
outer parts. Finally all the radiation from luminous, as
well as dark, bodies is ultimately absorbed by the nebulas,
which, however, are not heated thereby.
In order to fill this function the nebulas must occupy a
relatively large surface in the heavens as compared with
the luminous stars. According to Charlier's calculations
all the visible stars taken together give a light 3000 times
stronger than a star of the first magnitude. The sun on
the other hand is one hundred thousand million times
stronger than such a star or about 30 million times as
strong as all visible stars together. Observed from earth
the sun appears as a disc whose diameter occupies an arc
of 1919 seconds. Consequently all the visible stars of the
heavens together would form a disc of less diameter than
0.4 seconds. It is then assumed that the mean luminosity
of the fixed stars per unit surface equals that of the sun.
As the majority of the stars are white, while the sun is
yellow, the estimate of 0.4 seconds is evidently consider-
ably too high. Compare herewith a planetary nebula, No.
5 in Herschel's catalogue, near star B in the Great Bear,
which occupies about 160 seconds and we see at once that
INFINITY OF THE UNIVERSE. 167
this nebula alone covers more than 100,000 times as large
a part of the firmament as all the visible stars together.
Add hereto the enormously more rarified diffused nebulas
with small power of absorbtion but occupying spaces sev-
eral degrees square. Undoubtedly there also exists a num-
ber of feebly luminous nebulas that escape our power of
observation.
It seems perfectly reasonable then to conclude that the
nebulas are able to absorb the energy radiating from the
stars. The nebulas also possess the ability to check the
dust particles driven away from the sun by the light-
pressure, so that these cold bodies may be considered as
storage houses for the quantities of matter and energy
that radiate from the hot suns.
While Von Olber's proof of the hypothesis that the
density of the stars decreases as we travel from the sun
does not seem quite convincing, Charlier on the other hand
believes that he has found a much better argument for this
theory accepted by the majority of astronomers. This ar-
gument was first propounded by Professor Seeliger in
Munich (Astr. Nachrichten, 1895) later modified by Char-
lier and may be formulated as follows :
Suppose distributed throughout space gravitational
masses M0, MI, M2, etc., where numerous bodies, if far
enough removed, may be treated as rigid systems ; for in-
stance constellations or Milky Ways outside our galaxy
or systems of even higher order to which our sun and
Milky Way do not belong and which therefore must be
exceedingly remote. For simplicity's sake we assume with
Charlier that the systems are globe-shaped. The potential
V per unit mass of a body in our Milky Way is then :
V — A + Mo/r0 + M1/r1 + M,/r, +
A is the potential with reference to the nearest bodies be-
longing to the Milky Way. M0/r0, Mi/n, etc., are the
potentials respectively with reference to outside systems.
1 68 THE MONIST.
Charlier presupposes that V cannot be infinite. Therefore
the terms in the series M0/r0, Mi/ri, etc., must decrease
somewhat in a geometric progression, commencing with
some certain term. The significance of this formula is
easily understood. If we divide space as before, by cir-
cumscribing spheres with radii i, 2, 3, etc., around the body
selected as center, then beyond a certain radius the masses
enclosed between consecutive pairs of spheres must dimin-
ish at a rate somewhat less than a geometric series would
indicate. The star-density again would decrease very rap-
idly with growing distance from the galaxy. In this way
the apparent result has been reached that the mass of the
universe is finite.
It is not customary, however, to draw this conclusion.
If we arrange the spheres in such a fashion that between
any two consecutive spheres the mass contained is con-
stant, it suffices to make the series converge if the asso-
ciated distances r0, r\, r2, etc., commencing with any certain
term, increase in a geometric progression. As rn becomes
infinite only when n is infinite, it is possible to select any
arbitrarily high value of n and nM; i. e., the quantity of
matter in the universe exceeds any arbitrary great value.
But in any case the mean density of stars in the universe
equals zero (infinitely small).
This theory has been elaborated by Charlier to estab-
lish the possibility of an infinite universe. In spite hereof
the solution is not satisfactory. Infinity of matter should
then be of a lower order, so to speak, than infinity of space,
so that the mean density of matter would be infinitely small
(zero). Professor Seeliger correctly objects that a "space
filled with infinitely rare matter can after all not be im-
agined."
One may now ask: why might not the potential V be
infinite? The answer is, because then the velocity of a
star arriving "from outside" would become infinite with
INFINITY OF THE UNIVERSE. 169
reference to our point of observation, and we never observe
any immeasurable velocities of the stars. Only in rare
cases do these velocities exceed 100 kilometers per second.
This would agree with the Charlier system if the traveling
time of the stars could also be infinite. This, however, as
we will see later, is impossible because such a system can
only last for a finite period. But if we assume with the
old philosophers an approximately uniform distribution of
the stars throughout infinite space, no "outside," and con-
sequently no danger of infinite, velocities exist.
In order to understand the peculiar development of this
question so that the false conclusion drawn will become
apparent, let us return to a simplification of Seeliger's rea-
soning already familiar to us. Imagine a globe-shaped con-
glomeration of stars of constant density throughout. A
star at a certain distance from the center is attracted to it
by a force proportional to the product of the density and the
distance.
Although our Milky Way does not form such a globe,
we must admit that somewhat similar conditions obtain if
we assume its form to be that of a considerable oblate
spheroid. If we now let the radius of our star-globe grow,
the density remaining unaltered, the attraction on a star
located on, say, half the radius increases in proportion to
the radius. When the star-conglomeration grows beyond
any limit chosen, the attraction on the star considered
towards the center also grows beyond any limit mentioned.
In addition the position of the center becomes undeter-
mined, and so consequently does the attraction, which is
unthinkable. Professor Seeliger also considers the case
of the stars arranged inside an infinite cone of revolution
and meets again with great difficulties.
In this connection Seeliger expresses himself as fol-
lows: "Entirely possible and reasonable assumptions lead
to impossible and unreasonable consequences. Such re-
I7O THE MONIST.
suits from an entirely general law seem hardly permissible
and we are forced to admit that Newton's law applied to
an infinitely extended universe leads to insurmountable
difficulties and insolvable contradictions if the quantity of
matter dispersed in the universe is considered unlimited."
Seeliger very consistently comes to the conclusion that
Newton's law does not always hold as is evidenced by the
following statement: "Newton's law is a purely empirical
formula, the absolute exactness of which cannot be ad-
mitted without introducing a new hypothesis for which
we have no foundation." But if we endeavor to formu-
late another law to substitute for Newton's when dealing
with enormous distances, such a one can hardly be found
which contains Newton's law for smaller distances and at
the same time does not lead to the difficulties met with in the
deductions of Seeliger. True, he offers a kind of absorp-
tion of gravity similar to that of light as a possible solution.
But as we know of no matter with such powers the analogy
is fictitious. We lose also by such considerations all firm
ground for further discussion.
It is then easily understood why Seeliger's argument is
often cited as disproving the infinity of the universe. But
his reasoning is not conclusive. The supposed difficulty
is that the attraction on a body surrounded by an infinite
number of other bodies becomes indetermined according
to Seeliger's method of calculation and consequently may
assume any arbitrary value. But this only proves that
such a method cannot be used, and how can we after all
imagine an infinite globe containing stars surrounded by
an infinite empty space? If a body is located in an infinite
space where matter is approximately evenly distributed,
the attraction due to this matter, apart from that due to the
bodies in its vicinity, is equal in all directions as evidenced
already by considerations of symmetry. These attractions
consequently cancel and the body in question behaves ex-
INFINITY OF THE UNIVERSE.
actly as under the influence of the nearest bodies or groups
of bodies alone, with the more distant ones entirely removed
or their attraction in some way absorbed.
No conclusive reason exists therefore why the universe
should not be approximately uniformly interspersed with
stars. On the contrary a system where the star-density
rapidly decreases outwardly, like the system conceived by
Charlier, or still more a finite system of celestial bodies,
does not harmonize with our conceptions as soon as we
take the second side of infinity, relating to time, into con-
sideration.
If we legitimately discuss the conditions for an infinite
quantity of matter in space we are also justified in consid-
ering the relation of matter to the endlessness of time. Pecu-
liarly enough this problem given by Demokritos and Kant
has aroused small interest on the part of astronomers, and
yet we call the indestructibility of matter and energy our
two fundamental laws of physics.
When we, with most astronomers, imagine large gaps
m the firmament through which a ray of light may escape
without encountering any material obstacle, however far
it travels, so must matter driven away by the light-pressure
as well as radiating energy disappear through these gaps
forever to remain lost. The same fate is in store for those
wandering stars, which like 1830 Groombridge and Arc-
turus, possess a velocity too high to be bound to our Milky
Way. In the course of endless time such a system must lose
not only its energy but also its matter. Neither can it have
existed since immeasurable time.
Lord Kelvin says with reference to our Milky Way that
if its mass is io9 times greater than that of the sun and its
radius 3.(X)Xio16 kilometers, so would its stars from orig-
inal rest collapse in the course of about 17 million years into
one lump. He also holds that the stars cannot have been
luminous for more than 25 to 100 million years. Here-
172 THE MONIST.
with should be compared the different estimates that allow
life on earth an existence during about 1000 million years.
The last estimate by Kelvin must in fact be considerably
too low.
In any case the propounders of a finite universe or of
the Charlier conception admit that the Milky Way must
once have come into existence. We cannot assume that
matter suddenly (or gradually) was born out of nothing,
and the same is true about energy. Consequently the Milky
Way must have originated from bodies that in some way,
presumably through a catastrophe, were dispersed into
a disc-shaped formation of splinters. We can hardly con-
ceive of any mode of creation different from that in which
the spiral nebulas are formed, that is, by the collision of
two colossal stars that meet with enormous velocities and
burst asunder. In fact Easton is of the opinion that our
Milky Way possesses a spiral structure. The question is
now whether or not such enormous stars exist. The mass
of Arcturus has been calculated to be more than 50,000
times that of the sun. This is more than sufficient to give
rise to the 6000 stars of the sixth magnitude that Seeliger
takes into account. But it does not suffice for the io9 stars
included in our galaxy by Kelvin and Charlier. It may
reasonably be questioned whether the mean size of these
stars equals that of the sun, and further the estimate of
the mass of Arcturus is obviously only a lower limit. In
any case such an explanation is not absolutely inconceiv-
able.
Under any circumstances we must admit that the Milky
Way is not a formation that has existed since eternity and
that it owes its origin to the collision of stellar bodies
journeying from other parts of the heavens. But if we
assume the density of matter in space equal to zero, the
probability for such an encounter becomes zero too; i. e.,
we cannot conceive of such a distribution of matter.
INFINITY OF THE UNIVERSE.
The most obvious argument, however, against a finite
quantity of matter in space is the fact that the energy of the
stellar bodies in the course of infinite time would long ago
have been dissipated in empty space so that no luminous
stars could further exist.
From the previous discussion I believe the conclusion
may be drawn that no other world-conception is possible
than the one already presented by the Greek nature phi-
losophers Anaximander and Demokritos, who assumed
matter to be distributed throughout the universe in a fash-
ion approximately like that in our neighborhood.
Concerning the solution offered by Charlier in particu-
lar, according to which the Milky Ways combine into higher
systems and these again into systems of still higher order,
and so on, an enormous difficulty presents itself in ex-
plaining the origin of such systems. The same objection
naturally holds in regard to the older theories of Sweden-
borg and Lambert. It is already very difficult to under-
stand the formation of a system as large as the Milky
Way. Incomparably more so becomes the explanation of
systems greater beyond comparison.
With reference to the dissipation of energy through
radiation and of matter through light-pressure from lu-
minous stars, the Charlier world-conception meets with
exactly the same difficulties as the assumption of a limited
world in an unlimited space.
A finite world or a world where matter is infinitely
rarefied cannot have existed in endless time and therefore
does not harmonize with our knowledge of the qualities
of energy and matter.
SVANTE ARRHENIUS.
NOBEL INSTITUTE, ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, STOCKHOLM.
THE GREEK INFLUENCE IN ECCLESIASTES.
""HE average intelligent reader of the Old Testament
J- knows something of the long discussion provoked by
the above named book, and the early hesitancy about plac-
ing it in the canon. He knows also that some modern
scholars would question the authenticity of some portions
as inconsistent ; other critics would rearrange the material
to secure logical order and consecutiveness of thought.
But if the reader side with those who view the book as a
diary of "confessions," like those of Rousseau or Marie
Bashkirtseff, he will repeat that "to him who only thinks,
life is a comedy, while to him who feels, life is a tragedy,"
and feeling is not logical nor consistent nor logically con-
secutive in its self-expression. The critical proposals men-
tioned need balancing with psychological insight.
Tyler and Plumptre have made the scholarly world fa-
miliar with a Greek element in the book, though a slight
modification may be necessary. A chief interest has lat-
terly centered around the question of date, — one group
making the work belong to the late Persian period and a
stronger group contending for the Greek period, about
200 B. C. Renan would date it as late as 125 B. C. —
which would give a chance to E. J. Dillon, to find Buddhist
influence in the book. But the historic evidence of inter-
communication between Greece and Palestine is sufficient
to account for the elements in question at a date before the
rise of Buddhism. We may question if the psychological
THE GREEK INFLUENCE IN ECCLESIASTES. 175
unity of humanity does not account for all that impresses
Mr. Dillon. The parallels are not sufficiently close and
numerous.
Some familiar data upon the intercommunication of
Greece with the Orient may here be grouped. Were Ec-
clesiastes the work of a traveled Hebrew, his contact with
Greek thought might be put at a very early date, if the
linguistic phenomena of his book did not forbid it.
1. Magnesite from Eubcea and teak wood from India
are found in the lower levels at Nippur — approximately
4000 B. C. ; a date pre-Hellenic and pre-Buddhist.
2. Sargon of Accad and his son Naram-Sin have left
in Cyprus memorials of their rule — about 2800 B. C.
3. Assyrian conquest reached Cyprus as early as 1150
B.C.
4. Early Greek art copies Assyrian and Egyptian mod-
els, as shown by various recovered specimens.
5. Its mythology is similarly influenced: Griffins and
harpies are Oriental cherubs and eagle-headed divinities.
6. The Greek alphabet, introduced from Palestine, and
written from right to left, antedates 700 B. C., probably
should be dated 1 100 B. C. Ionic Greeks may have adopted
it a little earlier : an ancient Asianic syllabary of the Troad
being displaced, but lingering a while longer in Cyprus.
7. The Greek is very prominent in the East immediately
afterward. Greek mercenaries filled the armies of Psam-
tik I of Egypt, of the 26th dynasty. Their inscriptions at
Abu Simbel, nearly contemporary with Josiah, antedate
Solon and the seven wise men of Greece. Hebrew refu-
gees, despite Jeremiah's warning, sought shelter under
the protection of their fortress at Daphne, a generation
later.
8. Archilochus, the Greek poet, tells us that his brother
served in the army of Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem,
176 THE MONIST.
B. C. 586. Nebuchadnezzar's attack upon Egypt about
570 B. C. was checked by the Greek garrisons of the Delta.
9. The close connection between Greek and Persian,
and the Hellenizing of many enterprising Persians there-
after is a familiar story. Xenophon's 10,000 Greeks
marched northward through Babylonia four years before
Ezra set out thence to reform worship at Jerusalem.
For the intellectual life that might flow through these
channels of intercommunication, we have the following
synchronisms :
1. When Nebuchadnezzar was casting up his embank-
ments at Jerusalem, the Orphic religious revival was shak-
ing Greece and its colonies, and Thales at Miletus was
making his systematic attack upon the mythical origin of
things, and undertaking physical explanations. About this
time Siddartha is believed to have taught in India.
2. When Haggai and Zachariah were striving to re-
build the Temple, Pythagoras was teaching in Italy, Hera-
kleitos in Ephesus just afterward ; Xenophanes had begun
his systematic attack upon the anthropomorphic gods of
Greece. Zeno, Parmenides and Empedocles had won their
fame ere Nehemiah began rebuilding the walls of Jerusa-
lem; and Socrates perished in 399 B. C., two years before
Ezra began his reforms (Kosters).
3. Of the great humanistic religious reconstructionists,
^schylus was born near the time of Cyrus's death, Sopho-
cles was a contemporary of Nehemiah, Euripides died soon
after Ezra's reforms.
As Koheleth hardly shows systematic philosophy, but
rather the gnomic reflections of one probably mystical and
poetical in temperament, we need hardly give much atten-
tion, as Tyler does, to the later Greek systematic philos-
ophers. But the earlier Greek philosophers were unable to
shake off the fetters of centuries of oral expression and
wrote in gnomic hexameters for popular circulation. These
THE GREEK INFLUENCE IN ECCLESIASTES.
are nearer the Hebrew "Wisdom," the Semitic proverbs,
in method. The poet, rather than the metaphysician, ex-
presses the heart of his people, and the Greek populace were
familiar with many passages from their poets and gnomic
philosophers. This type of teaching would be peculiarly
adapted to the Hebrew mind. Koheleth shows us heart
struggles rather than metaphysics.
Passing the first philosophical speculations of the Mile-
sian school we find the Ephesian Herakleitos protesting
against polytheism, declaring that the present order of
things has existed forever, and will forever exist; change
is unceasing, yet is by fixed measures and laws; the gods
may not alter them. The eternal order was not made by
any (popular) god or man. The Sun cannot overstep his
bounds; if he did the Erinnyes would find him out. God
is all things and in all things ; he is day and night, winter
and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger. He as-
sumes different forms, as when incense mingles with in-
cense, vapor with vapor ; and each man gives him the name
he pleases. All things flow ; we cannot bathe twice in the
same river. Struggle and change must be forever ; if they
should cease, all things would pass away. For all things
come by strife ; war is the father of all things, and hidden
harmony is better than manifest (i. e., is an incentive to
action, stimulates men to search for it). For God, all
things are fair and good and just, but men deem some
things just and others unjust, and all things are absolutely
destined. The gods are the mortals; men are the immor-
tals, each living in the other's death, and dying in the
other's life. Fire is the primal element ; of it are all things
made, into it will all things be dissolved. The senses are
not always reliable; there are many illusions, wherefore
it is better to follow reason than sense.
Xenophanes, the Eleatic (B. C. 580-500?) taught that
God is one, supreme, all-perceiving, all-hearing, without
178 THE MONIST.
such body or organs as men ascribe to him ("If the cows
had a god they would paint him as a cow," he said, ridi-
culing anthropomorphism). As for the visible universe,
all things begin in earth and end in earth. Transmigration
he ridiculed with the story of a man who told another to
stop beating a hound, "it is the soul of a dear friend — I
recognize his voice." Those who preferred strength to
wisdom he ridiculed. An acute observer of nature, he
added notes of fossils in the rocks as showing that the
land rose out of the water. He gained as a pupil Par-
menides, who managed to reduce the world to thought,
since Thought and Being were the same. Righteousness
for him, as for Eastern lonians, is the world-ruling power
and shall triumph over all. Being is one, homogeneous
and unchangeable.
Empedocles asserted that man has little opportunity to
acquire knowledge but rises and is borne away like smoke,
thinking he has learned much and vainly boasting of the
little he has found; nevertheless wisdom is to be pursued,
though the secrets of the universe are far off and exceeding
deep — not to be found out. As for the world, there is no
beginning to be nor end, but only mixture and separation.
Nothing is added to them and nothing is taken away. But
all things come from Love and Strife, and these shall be
forever, though men appear but a little time and then van-
ish like smoke. And when the limbs of man are united
vigorously by love, then is the frame strong; but when
strife prevails, then the limbs fail and fall apart and are
scattered on the sea of life. The world itself is now in its
period of strife. As to God, Empedocles held with Xenoph-
anes that he is all-pervasive pure mind, without such parts
as men attribute to him. Perhaps all things came from
mind. Matter could not grow old or perish, but the mind
became weary. As ta the soul, he was rather Pythagorean,
counting himself a present fugitive from the gods, and
THE GREEK INFLUENCE IN ECCLESIASTES. 179
a wanderer on the raging sea of strife, for 30,000 seasons
apart from the blessed, having formerly been a maiden, a
boy, a fish, and a plant ; doomed to wander in this stage where
are murder, wrath, diseases, contention and harmony, folly,
truth, obscurity, birth and death, sleep and waking, motion
and stability, many-crowned greatness and lowness, silence
and voice. All these are only forms of change, yet there
is no real change; these are only illusions to which our
senses are liable. His problem then was to escape the
domination of sense.
These brief summaries are for a purpose. They are
the sources to a large extent of the philosophy of the Greco-
Phoenician Zeno, 150-200 years later. It will be seen that
they deal mainly with physical speculation ; are alike in dis-
carding the old Greek gods. Parmenides must be grouped
with them. He denied the change of the Ever-One — this
was only an illusion of our senses. None of these philos-
ophers distinguished between the physical and spiritual,
as we do ; spirit and matter seem really one for them. But
they were neither materialists nor pantheists, as we use
the terms. Merely asserting the unity of God and nature,
it is man's place to cast aside his illusions and to be at one
with it and its purposes.
Again, it is seen that Empedocles possesses for us the
livelier human interest, being distressed to know his own
place in the cosmos rather than to give us a mere cosmology
(compare Matthew Arnold's "Empedocles on y£tna") ; and
this, with the world-weariness of the quest, is the theme
of Koheleth. The utter unlikeness of the latter to all other
old Hebrew literature must emphasize the possibility of
connection.
Looking now at the great tragedians, the other re-
ligious reconstructionists of the epoch, we find the attack
upon the old popular gods more direct ; or, let us say, more
fervid, emotional. Since the Greek stage was the Greek
l8o THE MONIST.
pulpit, and the drama developed out of religious liturgies
and festival choruses that dealt with the legends and re-
ligion of the Greeks, as the Hebrew prophet drew upon
the past of his people, these Greek humanists are of first im-
portance for us. We shall find that God is more vividly
personal for them, as he always is for the emotional or
"lyrical" temperament; while the philosophic views just
mentioned fail to emphasize his personality as distinguished
from nature. The conception of the latter is closely akin
to our stock phrase of "natural law." With the whole early
Ionian school, from which stoicism was to come, natural
and moral law were ultimately identical. They did not
weigh the relations of each individual human personality
to the divine, nor consider profoundly the latter's relation
to the social order. Here we find the field of the tragedian
and Orphic mystic.
The most volcanic attack upon the old popular gods
is that of ^Eschylus. Writing nearly a century after the
systematic philosophical attack of Xenophanes, in the
throes of the Greco-Persian struggle, the titanic power
with which he speaks is due in some measure to the fervid
emotions of the time. Choosing the myth of Prometheus
bringing fire from heaven to man, and giving a Greek
etymology to the old Sanskrit title, he makes the Titan
personify forethought, providence, intelligence, hope. For
the crime of seeing that light is good and makes men wise,
and for putting them in possession of the sources of knowl-
edge, he is sentenced by Zeus to be chained to a rock on
Mount Caucasus, and a vulture is stationed to devour his
liver by day while it renewed itself by growth during the
night.
yEschylus makes Kratos and Bia, power or strength,
and compulsion, the personified agents of Zeus in this war
of the cosmos with the soul. These agents speak their
character. Sheer, unfeeling brutality characterizes their
THE GREEK INFLUENCE IN ECCLESIASTES. l8l
every taunt of the Titan representative of the struggling
mind. Dignified silence is the part of Prometheus. We
are repeatedly informed that he is the child of Themis
(Justice, Natural Law, or Eternal Order) and Zeus is a
tyrannical usurper of the throne of heaven. Even He-
phaestos who dares not disobey Zeus is in full sympathy
with the sufferer he must punish, and thus addresses him
while fettering him:1
"High scheming son of right,
The woe of present evil shall oppress thee,
For he's unborn who shall deliver thee,
Such being the gain of thy philanthropy.
For thou, a god, not crouching 'neath the wrath
Of gods, on mortals hast conferred high honors,
More than just. For which offense thou must stand guard
Upon this dreary crag, in upright posture,
Sleepless, never bending knee, while manifold
Laments and bootless groanings shalt thou vent,
For Zeus's wrath is hard to be assuaged,
And every one is harsh whose rule is new."
Prometheus, replying, asserts himself divine; and fur-
ther, he foresaw too all this woe, yet dared it none the less.
Kratos and Bia sneer at his philanthropy and wisdom that
have but separated him from mankind — placed him apart
from comprehension and sympathy. Prometheus keenly
feels the fact and exclaims:
"Compassionating mortals, I was deemed
Of pity's meed unworthy ; ruthlessly
Am I thus crushed ;
To Zeus, ignoble sight!
Men's doom from mortal foresight I kept hid ;
I caused to dwell within them sightless hopes."
To Kratos and Bia this is incomprehensible. He surely
had no foresight, or he would never have gotten into this
1 Quotations from Owen, Five Great Skeptical Dramas.
l82 THE MONIST.
plight. He disdains reply, but again assures others that
he knowingly incurred this pain. Compare Ecclesiastes,
"He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."
Yet are there soothing influences in the visible order of
nature. The daughters of Okeanos, the fragrant spirits
of air and sea, come to comfort him. At the touch of sym-
pathy, his stoicism gives way :
"Would that in Hades, 'neath the earth,
Or Tartaros of unbounded girth,
Home of the dead, where darkness reigns
He'd placed me when in cruel chains
Impregnable he'd bound me ;
That neither god nor mortal being
Should laugh when these my sorrows seeing
But now the plaything of the wind,
'Neath open sky am I confined
While foes may joy around me."
He says of Zeus, "Justice he keeps for himself alone"
(i. e., he has naught but injustice for all others),
"Yet shall he need me ; I, not he, shall triumph."
Not his strength, his brute force, but his injustice and
craft is his power;
"But mother Themis, Justice, Earth,
Of many names one form, hath disclosed
To me the future, how it shall befall !"
"For somehow to each tyranny pertains,
This malady — suspicion of its friends."
Again the sympathy of the powers of nature is felt,
but they seductively urge him to yield, though they cry out
against the injustice of Zeus (compare Lowell's "Sirens,"
Tennyson's "Lotus-Eaters"). Life is so short — wisdom
so little — pain so much ; and Okeanos interposes, "Thou art
THE GREEK INFLUENCE IN ECCLESIASTES. 183
better fitted to advise thy neighbors than thyself, if one
may judge by thy fate." But Prometheus responds,
"I will bear out my present destiny,
Till Zeus's mind shall cease to rage."
"Without me, men seeing saw to no purpose,
And hearing did not understand."
He has made civilization and social order out of ig-
norant brutish cave-dwellers, teaching them all things, —
but "curing others cannot cure myself." The chorus (pop-
ular thought) interposes,
"Be not regardless of thy luckless self.
I have good hopes that from these chains set free
Thou yet shalt be not less in power than Zeus."
To this Prometheus answers:
"Not so are those things ordered by Fate,
Who all things consummates. But bowed down
By countless grievous woes, I thus escape
My chains and art is weaker far than fate !"
That is, his doom is that he must suffer still ; his relief
that he must still struggle for knowledge and truth; he
escapes by bearing and daring; convinced that evil shall
yet fall, he is stronger though bound, than the tyrant.
This is the inspiration of Lessing's choice of search for
truth, rather than truth itself; of Sophocles's "Toil con-
quers toil by toiling" ; of Goethe's "Who comforts himself
by ceaseless struggle, we can at last set free." Compare
Koheleth's "This sore travail hath God given to the sons
of men to be exercised therewith." Shelley and Byron
have taken fervid inspiration from the same passage.
Prometheus declares the curse of Time is upon Zeus,
who lacks Prometheus (foresight) — "I never will be his!"
All his enginery will recoil upon himself. The chorus
warns him of Zeus's preparations — "So let him do — all is
184 THE MONIST.
foreseen by me!" Hermes enters with supercilious de-
mands. Prometheus retorts to this "errand-boy of Zeus" :
"For thy base thralldom, — know thou this full well —
I would not barter my unhappy lot;
Since I deem better, slavery to this rock,
Than to be trusted messenger of Zeus !"
And this final defiance of the roused and rallied cosmic
forces :
"Let fiery wrath
Of lightning double-edged be hurled on me
And vexed be ether by the thunder claps,
And paroxysms of fierce winds!
Earth from her basements let the storm winds rock ;
Aye, from her very roots!
Let ocean waves and paths of heavenly stars
In violent surge commingle mutually,
Let Zeus my body cast with whirling fling
By Fate's stern eddies into murky Tartaros,
At least he cannot visit me with death !
O Majesty revered of Mother Earth;
O Ether that the common light of all
Revolv'st around —
Ye see what wrongs I suffer!"
We can hardly imagine the effect upon a Greek audi-
ence when their chief god is thus arraigned through the
medium of one of their popular legends as a monster of
wrong. Though accustomed to offer him sacrifice and
vows daily, their greatest tragedian has assailed him as
cruel, arbitrary, conscienceless, wronging innocence, striv-
ing to crush him who would help mankind. He openly
attacks the idea that because Zeus is God he can do what
he pleases and asserts the real divinity and immortality
of man's ethical consciousness. Only Kratos and Bia main-
tain, before the liberty-loving Greek audience, that "none
THE GREEK INFLUENCE IN ECCLESIASTES. 185
but Zeus is free/' Unselfish sympathy and service of man
is superior to every despot, human and divine, and must
ever suffer, but never die — like Isaiah's "suffering ser-
vant." The hero foresees that he shall live, and be vindi-
cated, though he does not yet know how. One may com-
pare Job and Habakkuk.
Prometheus maintains, in effect, that justice, humanity
and sympathy are of mightier authority than the inexorable
fate of the Greek tragedies. To the taunt that the light he
has given men has not freed them from sorrow, he replies
that wisdom and knowledge increase sorrow, yet neverthe-
less are the best gifts for men. So Koheleth concludes.
In the cool and silent contempt for Kratos and Bia,
brute strength and compulsion, Prometheus expresses the
Greek sentiment that "wisdom excelleth strength as far
as light excelleth darkness." In saying that "sorrow but
makes the learner to be lord," he again anticipates Kohe-
leth. In concluding that strife and struggle are not merely
inevitable, but the true, needful portion of man, he thinks
like Koheleth. Freedom lies in the acceptance of one's
fate, and conformity to righteousness, as Koheleth con-
cludes. Men's conscious innocence and "blind hopes"
(faith?) sustain them against wrong, as in Job's case. In
his expression of ceaseless change that cannot die, with
ceaseless pain for the wise, which the brutish cannot feel,
we have the world-weariness of Empedocles and Koheleth
— "Weariness of weariness, all is weariness." Asserting
that there should be one system of ethics for God and man,
he voices the favorite theme of the Hebrew prophet, though
approaching the problem from the other side, asserting
that man has some rights that even a god is bound to re-
spect — a fruitful viewpoint for theological construction.
More sharply than the Hebrew he asserts the authority of
reason and conscience and ethical ideals. In this sense of
individual power, Job and Koheleth do not attain to
l86 THE MONIST.
lus. Replying to the taunt of Folly for conferring wisdom
and knowledge upon feeble creatures of an hour, who spend
their wisdom in madness and foolishness, his assertion of
"sightless hopes" conferred upon mankind means that true
wisdom transcends the finite and visible, and includes an-
ticipation as well as realization. He has a doctrine of so-
cial evolution — that he has made men out of cavern-brutes
— which calls to mind Koheleth's "Say not thou, What is
the reason that the former days are better than these ; for
thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this."
We cannot speak at length of the loftiness and moral
sublimity of this drama of ^schylus, nor of its immeasur-
able influence upon the history of human thought. We
may ask why, with an outburst so impassioned, with lofti-
ness unsurpassed even in Hebrew literature, with disinter-
ested philanthropy and intense unmerited suffering — did
the Greek utterly fail — go morally and spiritually bankrupt
in the degenerate days of the Seleucidae?
You cannot rehabilitate a dethroned divinity. Fallen
Dagons must be set up every morning — and a sorry figure
they cut. The higher Greek ethical ideals were left related
"to an unknown God." For the masses of mankind, the
character of their gods is inseparably linked with the idea
or name of god; you cannot assail the old character and
keep the god name. There was an advantage then with
the Hebrew in starting with a divine name not known to
the patriarchs, nor burdened with ancient traditions. Their
first knowledge of Yahveh, that he sent some messengers
and rescued them from a region not under his jurisdiction
gave them an ineffaceable impression of his power, sympathy
and unselfish kindness. Beyond that, they knew nought,
and had to learn his ways. There was then less danger
that advances in ideals of morality and humanity would
have to battle with the supposed character of Yahveh.
What this meant from the standpoint of possible religious
THE GREEK INFLUENCE IN ECCLESIASTES. 187
evolution is almost incalculable. The prophet could attack
abuses with the claim that Yahveh was misunderstood.
He did not by such attacks subvert all worship. The very
fact that Yahveh for some centuries was deemed to dwell
in Teman, only issuing forth to battle in hours of desperate
need, lent itself to the end in view, and prevented early
days of superstition from completely fusing Yahveh with
local legend, to the utter ruin of the hopes of religion.
Thus the Hebrew god could be kept in advance of the
popular ideal. The reverse became true of the nobler of
the Greeks. These last must borrow the Hebrew personal-
ity as a satisfactory radial point for their intellectual sys-
tems and a proper support for their strong individual, self-
asserting sense of righteousness. For the final query of
humanity is not merely "What is said?" but "Who says
so?"
Shall we say that the corruptness of the Greek Pan-
theon was the blessing destined to correct the deficiencies
of Hebrew prophetism ? This is not said to be sensational.
We know the turmoil and trouble in Israel, knowing of
their national god only what was told by conflicting schools
of prophets and priests, and with a sense of utter depend-
ence upon special messengers, and ceaselessly looking for
an objective god, and complaining that "He hideth him-
self that I cannot find him." But the restless Greek intel-
lect, destined to teach the world to think, grapples with
the problem of evil; and concluding it to be one with the
character of the national gods, voices the volcanic explo-
sion of ^schylus. The Greek seeks truth subjectively,
appeals to his own conscience, his own sense of justice, his
own humane instincts, his own hatred of ignorance, his
passionate longing for perfect self-expression, his belief
in the eternity of right, his own blind but deathless hopes.
He arraigns the gods at the bar of humanity, and predicts
his own victory in the strife, suffer as he may in the mean-
l88 THE MONIST.
time. They may torture, but cannot destroy him. As Soc-
rates said of his soul "You may bury me — if you can catch
me!" And he will teach the later Jew, burdened with
doubt, slave of the scribes, wearied with the yoke of ordi-
nances and traditions of the elders, something of his own
method of inquiring after God. Ask yourself, inquire of
the light within. Return and commune with thine own
heart. As Kingsley's Aben-Ezra says to Miriam, "Men
have lied to you about Him, mother, but has He ever lied
to you about Himself?" So Koheleth has learned this non-
Semitic method, and returning and communing with his
own heart sees some things clearly that the world-order
seems to refute, or fails to explain. The Greek helps save
the Jew in his hour of intellectual need. The individualism
of Ezekiel had not reached to individual intellectual inde-
pendence. The final priestly domination, akin to that of
Babylonia, produced the tyranny of the New Testament
times : accept the dictum of the elders or be cast out of the
synagogue — "Learning to the bastile, and courage to the
block ; when there are none left but sheep and donkeys, the
state will have been saved." Here again we may note the
utter absence of the priestly element in Koheleth, and the
great difficulty it had in getting past the arbiters of ortho-
doxy of a later time.
We may not follow in detail subsequent developments
of ^schylus's attack upon the national faith. Sophocles,
with unconcealed contempt for the gods in one sense, asserts
a supreme righteousness as the final force in nature. He
treats with mild irony men's pretensions to knowledge, the
boasted strength that is only weakness, the self-congratu-
lation upon good fortune when ruin is at the door. Though
one live many years and beget many children, the days of
darkness shall be many. The central agents in some scene
of wrong at last confess "I am nothing — nothing !" With
^Eschylus, he holds to the right leading of certain inner
THE GREEK INFLUENCE IN ECCLESIASTES. 189
impulses as opposed to the laws and conventions of men
or the oracles of the gods; and opposes Antigone, a poor
and wise child, to Kreon, an old and foolish king. Out-
bursts of anger characterize fools ; evil will achieve its own
ruin, though often not till after many days. Heaven hates
much speaking, vociferous worship, and hypocritical ser-
vice; but the humbled penitent, though outcast from men,
is "ushered forth from life, not with groans or sickness or
pain, but beyond all mortals, wondrously/' Sophocles
adopts a vicarious doctrine ; is sure of a future life, though
he knows not what it is like. Present suffering is not pro-
portioned to visible demerit, nor is the sufferer always
guilty. The misdeeds of ancestors and the oppression,
treachery and ambition of evil men occasion much suffering
of the innocent. Yet the latter are sometimes overwise,
and find their wisdom is a vanity and grasping of wind.
Men conquer by enduring, and sorrow is a spiritual disci-
pline. His conception of the power that is to be revered
is more personal than that of the philosophers we have
noticed. His theology seems that of his contemporary, Soc-
rates— his inner divine light is the daimonion of the latter.
He differs from Koheleth in being devoid of pessimism —
he "sees life steadily and sees it whole," though the chorus
of the people sings that it is best never to be born, or being
so, to return whence we come as speedily as possible. His
own faith in an ultimate overruling power is never shaken.
In his idea of God is no anthropomorphism.
The figures of Euripides are more human, if possible;
more pathetic. The feeling of pain is greater, the quest
for knowledge more fruitless, temptation to evil more over-
powering, and he is tormented by a sense of the pettiness
of human woes. Hence arose Aristophanes's jest about
"the rags in which Euripides dressed his heroes." One
feels that the Greek nerve is failing, the Unknown God
must soon appear. "Scarce one happy scene canst thou
THE MONIST.
find in all the life of man." His diatribes against the
national gods are alternately furious or cynical. "Wert
thou, Apollo, Poseidon, or Zeus, the Lord of Heaven, to
make atonement to mankind for every act of lawless love,
ye would empty your temples in paying fines for your mis-
deeds!"— a shot perhaps at contemporary priests as well
as ancient myths. To a victim, "Avenge thee on the god
who injures thee, and fire the sanctuary !" To an oppres-
sor, "Oh, thy hard heart ! Oh, the gods' — more hard than
thine!" The altars of the gods protect alike the just and
unjust ; religion often cloaks an evil man.
Contrasting, the sorely beset Hippolytus (in Joseph's
situation) declares, "To reverence God, I count the highest
knowledge," a sentiment also found in Sophocles. The
heroes of Euripides all cling to moral convictions, but he
portrays the difficulties in the way of right living more
seriously than his predecessors. One may perish in devo-
tion to truth, nevertheless "it is better to slay thyself than
yield to unholy appetite." There should be no yielding of
the spirit to external compulsion. The righteous perish
because of their righteousness. The virgin-goddess Ar-
temis addresses the dying Hippolytus:
"No sin of thine hath thus destroyed thee!
Thy noble soul hath been thy ruin!"
Hippolytus : "Ah, fragrance from my goddess wafted !
Even in my agony, I feel thee near and find relief!
She is here in this very place, my goddess Artemis!
Artemis: "I have none now to tend my fane; but e'en in death,
I love thee still."
That is the climax of the Greek subjective search for
God in a world objectively confusing. The Hebrew's ob-
jective method could never say this. See Job's recurrent
complaint, that he cannot find Him (e. g., chapter xxiii) ;
his voice is rather that of Ps. xxii, "My God, my God, why
THE GREEK INFLUENCE IN ECCLESIASTES.
hast Thou forsaken me?" We may see the inestimable
value of the Greek truth; the dying Hippolytus prepares
us for the dying testimony of the Greek martyr Stephen,
or the Carpenter's calm in His hour of trial — "Neverthe-
less, I am not alone, for My Father is with Me."
This material is sufficient. Zeno and Epicurus contrib-
ute nothing, both really going back to the conceptions of
Herakleitos of Ephesus, borrowing some things from other
sources.
What is the central feature of this 200 years of specu-
lation and skepticism with regard to old Greek theology?
A protest against anthropomorphic and unmoral concep-
tions of God, and mythical cosmogonies. The animism
that gave each feature in a Grecian landscape its animating
nymph, dryad or oread, results in the philosopher sub-
stituting one spirit as resident in and animating all nature ;
our modern doctrine is that of the Divine Immanence.
What philosophical difficulty is met here? As the pop-
ular dryad could not be separated from the tree in thought,
nor the tree from the dryad, each existing or perishing with
the other, so the larger world spirit of Herakleitos, Xe-
nophanes and Empedocles was not at first differentiated
from the physical universe. Their emphasis upon the unity
of physical and moral law anticipates the method of Henry
Drummond, 2500 years. For them, Themis, "What is
established" stands in the place of the Hebrew's "It is
written."
Having the doctrine of supreme, inexorable law "with-
out variableness or shadow of turning" as the key to the
world order, the humanists consider man's place in this
iron scheme. The cry of the human for a personality dif-
ferentiates God and the individual soul from the things
that are seen, gives the high faith of Sophocles, Socrates
and Euripides, and opens the way for Plato's "music of
the stars" that but ends in his longing for a Divine Man
THE MONIST.
who shall make plain what is still dark to him. Progress
in a definite direction — evolution? — is substituted for the
ceaseless round of meaningless change first glimpsed by
the philosophers. Ceaseless pain is recognized therein, but
its necessity as discipline affirmed.
We have seen the place asserted for the human intellect
or soul ; the asserted divinity of inner convictions. Socrates
dies for them, like the heroes of ^Eschylus, and finds these
subjective manifestations of divinity a sure sustaining
power. Their authority is absolute and a basis of respon-
sibility. All the humanists emphasize subjective evidence
of immortality ; none essay to paint the future life.
Thus in the "Old Testament according to the Greeks,"
some ideas are wrought out that were not evolved upon
Semitic soil. Add to the overthrow of anthropomorphism,
to an immanent as contrasted with a purely external God,
to the value of subjective phenomena and data, and to the
certainty that suffering is disciplinary not merely punitive,
the primitive difference between Aryan and Semitic gods,
viz., world or universal powers as contrasted with local
or national gods. There was never a god of the Greeks, as
there was a god of the Hebrews. But there was a quick
identification of various local divinities with Zeus, Artemis,
Apollo, etc., that showed the Greek power of generalization,
and a fundamental notion of the unity of the Universal
Object of man's spiritual quest — a notion involving com-
parative religion striving to free itself from the confusing
aliases of the Divine, and a notion which we may question
the unaided Hebrews' ability to attain.
Consider now Koheleth: It is devoid of the dominant
Hebrew traits. It is without anthropomorphism, as even
its later imitators Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom of Solomon
are not. What other O. T. writing thus speaks of God?
There is an absence of racial or local reference in connec-
tion with God. There are no historical references, no inter-
THE GREEK INFLUENCE IN ECCLESIASTES. 193
est in "the chosen people" nor in "the god of the Hebrews,"
no god of battles, Lord of Hosts, or God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. There are no marvels, signs and won-
ders, on the contrary, an unceasing steadfastness even in
the wearying changes of the world order. The cosmo-
logical order, not the local, social order of the Hebrew
prophet, is the subject of complaint. There is no interest
in forms of worship, no question of orthodox portrayal of
the Lord; no reference to "the law of the Lord," or "the in-
struction of the Lord" — "the way of the Lord" — in any
Hebrew prophetic, priestly or wisdom sense. Let us em-
phasize the fact that every familiar form of reference to
God found in other Hebrew wisdom literature is conspic-
uously absent. Koheleth's references are for the Hebrew,
sui generis.
Is there then a God in Koheleth? In the first part of
the book, you feel there is probably not; at the last, you
know there is. At the first, there is no certainty of a power
differentiated from the world order, as with the Ionic phi-
losophers. At the last, all critics are so certain of such
personality, that some have proposed to pare away portions
as inconsistent or spurious. They are said to contain Chris-
tian, not Hebrew, conceptions of God. What is this but
admitting Greek influence? For while illiterate people
must generally think of God in Hebrew fashion, the modes
of thought of educated classes remain essentially Greek.
The whole method of "In Memoriam" is a familiar illus-
tration.
What of the soul and the future, in Koheleth ? As with
the God idea, not a certain and lasting differentiation of it
from the world-order at first; individuality and responsi-
bility clear at the last. Reflection and conscience are Kohe-
leth's salvation; he ever returns and communes with his
own heart.
Is the final faith in God a definite return to "the faith
194 THE MONIST.
of the fathers" ? Is there any exhortation thereto ? We
have already noticed the psychological difficulty in such
rehabilitation. Had Koheleth been influenced by Greek
humanists, he could not have returned to Yahvism or post-
Exilic Judaism. But the Hebrew God idea would form a
personality about whom to group Greek modes of thought.
The ultimate God idea of Koheleth is often asserted to be
the loftiest in the Old Testament. Hence some critics
would pare it away. But considering the Greek method
of approach to God, Koheleth will appear a unit. Every
sentiment can be duplicated from Ionic philosophers and
Attic humanists. Late Hebrew in dress, the book is Greek
in thought. The hands are the hands of Esau, but the
voice is the voice of Jacob.
Even the method of announcing the conclusion is a
paraphrase of a Greek form of official announcement. Com-
pare ^schylus, "Suppliants," 922 ff., where the king form-
ally announces the local law to a foreign envoy : "Solemn is
the decree of the popular assembly, and the nail has been
driven through, that it may remain firmly fastened; it is
not in tablets, or the folded leaves of books, but you hear it
from my mouth."
A. H. GODBEY.
BADEN, Mo.
SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST.
THE Absolute of the philosophy of Schopenhauer is
notoriously one of the most complicated of all known
products of metaphysical synthesis. Under the single, and
in some cases highly inappropriate, name of "the Will"
are merged into an ostensible identity conceptions of the
most various character and the most diverse historic ante-
cedents. The more important ingredients of the compound
may fairly easily be enumerated. The Will is, in the first
place, the Kantian "thing-in-itself," the residuum which is
left after the object of knowledge has been robbed of all
of the "subjective" forms of time and space and related-
ness. It is also the Atman of the Vedantic monism, the
entity which is describable solely in negative predicates,
though at the same time it is declared to sum up all
of the genuine reality that there is in this rich and highly
colored world of our illusory experience. The Will is,
again, the "Nature" of Goethe; it is the "vital force"
of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century vital-
ists in biology; and it is even the physical body of man
and animals, in contrast with the mind. It is likewise
the absolutely alogical element in reality, the "non-rational
residuum," of the last period of Schilling's philosophy;
and it is an apotheosis of that instinctive, naive, spon-
taneous, unreflective element in human nature, which had
been glorified by Rousseau and, in certain of his moods,
by Herder. It is Spinoza's "striving of each thing in suo
196 THE MONIST.
esse perseverare." It is the insatiable thirst for continued
existence which the Buddhist psychology conceives as the
ultimate power that keeps the wheel of existence in motion,
and it is an hypostasis of the Nirvana in which Buddhism
conceives that thirst to be extinguished.
Though thus singularly manifold, these elements are
not all necessarily incongruous inter se. But, apart from
minor discrepancies among them, they all fall into at least
two groups, having attributes which obviously cannot be
harmonized as characterizations of one and the same entity.
The Will, in Schopenhauer, has manifestly a positive and
a negative aspect ; it is thought of now in concepts to which
the name Will is truly pertinent, now in concepts to which
that name is singularly unsuitable. In so far as the "Will"
is a designation for the thing-in-itself, or for the Vedantic
Absolute, it is a being which is not only itself alien to time
and to space and to all the modes of relation, unknowable,
ineffable, but is also ipso facto incapable of accounting for,
or of being manifested in, a world of manifold, individu-
ated, striving and struggling concrete existences. It is
merely the dark background of the world of experience ; it
is the One which remains while the many change and pass.
From the point of view of the world of the many and of
change, it is literally nothing. To the understanding it is
necessarily as inaccessible, and, indeed, as self-contradic-
tory and meaningless, as is the Unknowable of Herbert
Spencer, — of which it is, indeed, the twin brother, not to
say the identical self. This kind of negative and inexpres-
sible Absolute is a sufficiently familiar figure in the philos-
ophy of all periods. Schopenhauer assuredly did nothing
original in reviving it. What was original in his work
was that he baptized this Absolute with a new, and start-
lingly inappropriate, name; and that he gave it this name
because, in spite of himself, he was really interested in
SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST. 197
quite another kind of "ultimate reality" of which the name
was genuinely descriptive.
The other aspect of Schopenhauer's "Will" is, of course,
that in which it appears, as Spencer's Unknowable inter-
mittently appears, as a real agency or tendency in the tem-
poral world, as a power which is not merely behind phe-
nomena, but also is manifested in phenomena; and, more
especially, as a blind urge towards activity, towards change,
towards individuation, towards the multiplication of sep-
arate entities — each of them instinctively affirmative of its
own individual existence and also of the character of its
kind — towards the diversification of the modes of concrete
existence, and towards a struggle for survival between
these modes. When Schopenhauer speaks of the Will as
a Wille sum Leben, it is sufficiently manifest that what he
has before his mind is not in the least like the Oriental
Brahm, "which is without qualities" and without relations
and without change. It is, of course, true that Schopen-
hauer imagined that he had mitigated the baldness of the
incongruity between the two aspects of the Will by calling
the one reality and the other mere phenomenon, by insist-
ing that the first sort of characterization tells us, so far as
human language can, what the Will is in itself, while the
second form refers only to the illusory appearance which
the Will presents when apprehended by the understanding.
But, as a matter of fact, it is quite clear that the character-
istics of the world of phenomena, as Schopenhauer habitu-
ally thinks of it, are explicable much more largely by the
nature of the Will than by the nature of the Understanding.
Schopenhauer is fond of reiterating, for example, that
space and time constitute the principium individuation is;
but they are so only in the sense that they provide a means
for logically defining individuality. It is very apparent
that there is nothing in the abstract notion of either space
or time which can explain why that pressure towards in-
198 THE MONIST.
dividuation, that tendency towards the multiplication of
concrete conscious individuals, should exist. It is, after all,
the Will that must be conceived to be responsible for its
own objectification in a temporal and spatial universe;
for, even from Schopenhauer's own point of view, there
is nothing in the conception of the forms under which the
Will gets objectified which can account for the necessity
of such objectification. It was with the Will in its concrete
sense, and in its restless, temporal movement, that Schopen-
hauer was more characteristically concerned ; it was the ubi-
quity and fundamental significance of this trait of all ex-
istence which constituted his personal and novel aperqu.
Now the conception of the Will as a force or tendency
at work in the world of phenomena is manifestly a con-
ception which might have been expected to lead the author
of it into an evolutionistic type of philosophy. Since the will
is characterized as ein endloses Streben, as ein ewiges
Werden, as ein endloser Fluss, and since we are told of it
that "every goal which it reaches is but the starting point
for a new course," its manifestations or products might, it
would seem, most naturally be represented as appearing
in a gradual, progressive, cumulative order. The phrase
"will to live" readily, if not inevitably, suggests a steady
movement from less life to more life and fuller, from lower
and less adequate to higher and more adequate grades of
objectification. But did Schopenhauer in fact construe his
own fundamental conception in this way ? An examination
of his writings with this question in view makes it appear
probable that at the beginning of his speculative activity
he did not put an evolutionistic construction upon the con-
ception of the Will; but it makes it very clear that in his
later writings he quite explicitly and emphatically adopted
such a construction, connecting with his metaphysical prin-
ciples a thorough-going scheme of cosmic and organic evo-
lution. Singularly enough, this significant change in
SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST. 199
Schopenhauer's doctrine upon a very fundamental point,
has, so far as I know, not hitherto been fully set forth. Not
only the most widely read histories of philosophy, but even
special treatises on Schopenhauer's system, represent his
attitude towards evolutionism wholly in the light of his
early utterances ; and even where his later expressions upon
the subject are not forgotten, their plain import has often
been denied, upon the assumption that they must somehow
be made to harmonize with the position taken in his early
and most famous treatise.
In Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung Schopenhauer
is preoccupied chiefly with the negative and "other-worldly"
aspect of his philosophy. His emphasis may, upon the
whole, be said to be laid upon the consideration that the
world of objects is but an illusory presentation of the Will,
rather than upon the consideration that the Will is, after
all, the kind of entity that presents itself in the guise of a
world of objects and of minds. With this preoccupation,
Schopenhauer delights to dwell upon the timelessness of
the true nature of the Will. Yet, since even in his most
mystical and nihilistic moments he is obliged to remember
that the Absolute does somehow take upon itself a temporal
form, this emphasis upon the eternity of true being did
not of itself forbid his representing the temporal side of
things as a gradual process of expansion and diversifica-
tion. The passages in which Schopenhauer speaks of the
timelessness of the Will ought not to be quoted, as they
sometimes have been quoted, as constituting in themselves
any negation of a developmental conception of the world
in time; for such passages are not pertinent to the world
in time at all. It is rather a subsidiary and somewhat arbi-
trary detail of his system, which he uncritically took over
from Schelling, that leads Schopenhauer in this period to
pronounce in favor of the constancy of organic species.
Between the Will as a timeless unity and the changing
2OO THE MONIST.
world of manifold phenomena he interpolates a world of
Platonic Ideas, or archetypal essences of phenomena. This
world, it is true, has only an ideal existence; it has, in a
sense, not even the degree of reality that phenomenal ob-
jects have. But it has an important functional place in
Schopenhauer's scheme of doctrine; since the Ideas, so to
say, lay down the limits of diversity within which the phe-
nomena may vary. Each individual being is in some degree
different from every other, and the name of them is legion.
But the generic forms, the kinds of individuals that there
may be, are determined by the natures of the Ideas.
Now these Ideas relate primarily to the kinds of natural
processes which Schopenhauer regards as the hierarch-
ically ordered grades of the objectification of the Will, —
mechanism, chemism, organism, etc. But it is evident that
Schopenhauer also includes among the Ideas the timeless
archetypes of each species of organism. Even from the
fact that, upon Schopenhauerian principles, the pure form
of each species is eternal, as it behooves a Platonic Idea
to be, it could not necessarily be inferred by any cogent
logic that the temporal copies of these forms need be
changeless. Schopenhauer none the less does appear to
draw, in a somewhat arbitrary manner, the inference that
species must be everlasting and immutable. He writes, in
the Supplement to the third book of Die Welt als Wille und
Vorstellung (second edition, 1844) :
"That which, regarded as pure form, and therefore as lifted out
of all time and all relations as the Platonic Idea, is, when taken
empirically and as in time, the species ; thus the species is the empir-
ical correlate of the Idea. The Idea is, in the strict sense, eternal,
while the species is merely everlasting (die Idee ist eigentlich ewig,
die Art aber von unendlicher Dauer), although the manifestation
of a species may become extinct upon any one planet."
So again (in the chapter on "The Life of the Species,"
ibid., chapter 42) Schopenhauer writes:
SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST. 2OI
"This desire [of the individuals of a species to maintain and
perpetuate the characteristic form of their species], regarded from
without and under the form of time, shows itself in the maintenance
of that same animal form throughout infinite time (als solche Tier-
gestalt eine endlose Zeit hindurch erhalten} by means of the con-
tinual replacement of each individual of that species by another; —
shows itself, in other words, in that alternation of death and birth
which, so regarded, seems only the pulse-beat of that form (cISos,
ISea, species) which remains constant throughout all time (jener
durch alle Zeit beharrenden Gestalt)"
These passages seem to be fairly clear in their affirma-
tion of the essential invariability of species.
In Der Wille in der Natur in I8541 we find Schopen-
hauer passing a partly unfavorable criticism upon Lamarck,
which at first sight undeniably reads as if he at that date
still retained the non-evolutionistic position of his earlier
treatise. He has been asserting that the adaptive charac-
ters of organisms are to be explained neither by design
on the part of a creative artificer, nor yet by the mere
shaping of the organism by its environment, but rather
through the will or inner tendency of the organism, which
somehow causes it to have the organs which it requires in
order to cope with its environment. "The animal's struc-
ture has been determined by the mode of life by which the
animal desired to find its sustenance and not vice versa ....
The huntsman does not aim at the wild boar because he
happens to have a rifle : he took the rifle with him, and not
a fowling piece, because he intended to hunt boars; and
the ox does not butt because it happens to have horns, it
has horns because it intends to butt." This, of course,
sounds very much like a bit of purely Lamarckian biology ;
and Schopenhauer is not unmindful of the similarity.
"This truth forces itself upon thoughtful zoologists and anat-
omists with such cogency that, unless their mind is purified by a
1 This is the date of the second edition. The first edition appeared in 1836 ;
to it I have not been able to have access.
2O2 THE MONIST.
deeper philosophy, it may lead them into strange error. Now this ac-
tually happened to a very eminent zoologist, the immortal De Lamarck,
who has acquired undying fame by his discovery of the classification
of animals into vertebrates and invertebrates, so admirable in pro-
fundity ; for he quite seriously maintains and tries to prove at length
that the shape of each animal species, the weapons peculiar to it,
and its organs of every sort adapted for outward use, were by no
means present at the origin of that species, but have, on the con-
trary, come into being gradually in the course of time and through
continued generation, in consequence of the exertions of the animal's
will, evoked by the nature of its situation and environment, — i. e.,
through its own repeated efforts and the habits to which these gave
rise."
Schopenhauer then goes on to urge certain purely bio-
logical objections, which may for the moment be passed
over, to what he conceives to be the Lamarckian hypoth-
esis. The most serious misconception on Lamarck's part,
however, he declares to arise from an incapacity for meta-
physical insight, due to the unfortunate circumstance that
that naturalist was a Frenchman.
"De Lamarck's hypothesis arose out of a very correct and pro-
found view of nature ; it is an error of genius, which, in spite of all
its absurdity, yet does honor to its originator. The true part of it
should be set down to the credit of Lamarck himself, as a scientific
inquirer ; he saw rightly that the primary element which has determined
the animal's organization is the will of the animal itself. The false part
of it must be laid to the account of the backward state of metaphysics
in France, where the views of Locke and his feeble follower, Condillac,
still hold their ground, and where, accordingly, bodies are supposed
to be things in themselves, and where the great doctrine of the
ideality of space and time and of all that is represented in them. . . .
has not yet penetrated. De Lamarck, therefore, could not conceive
his construction of living beings otherwise than as in time and suc-
cession. . . .The thought could not occur to him that the animal's will,
as a thing in itself, might lie outside time, and in that sense be prior
to the animal itself. Therefore he assumes the animal to have first
been without any clearly defined organs, and indeed without any
clearly defined tendencies, and to have been equipped only with per-
SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST. 2O3
captions. . . .But this primary animal is, in truth, the Will to Live ; as
such, however, it is metaphysical, not physical. Most certainly the
shape and organization of each animal species has been determined
by its own will according to the circumstances in which it needed
to live ; not, however, as a thing physical, in time, but on the contrary
as a thing metaphysical, out of time."
As it stands this passage, apart from its context, un-
questionably is most naturally interpreted as a rejection,
not merely of the details of Lamarck's hypothesis, but also
of the general doctrine of a gradual transformation of spe-
cies in time. Its import has been so understood by a num-
ber of expositors of Schopenhauer. Thus Kuno Fischer
writes : "Schopenhauer blames De Lamarck for represent-
ing animal species as evolved through a genetic and his-
torical process, instead of conceiving of them after the
Platonic manner."2 So Radl3 : "Schopenhauer speaks in
praise only of the Lamarckian doctrine that the will is the
cause of organic forms ; Lamarck's genetic philosophy, on
the other hand, he rejects." But these writers have neg-
lected to observe that, only a few pages later in the same
treatise, Schopenhauer sets down an unequivocal though
brief affirmation of the origination of species from one an-
other through descent; and does so on the ground that
without such an hypothesis the unity of plan manifest in
the skeletal structure of great numbers of diverse species
would remain unintelligible. In other words, Schopen-
hauer argues in favor of transformism by pointing to one
of the most important and familiar evidences of the truth
of the theory of descent, viz., the homologies in the inner
structure of all the vertebrates. In the neck of the giraffe,
for example, (he remarks) we find, prodigiously elon-
gated, the same number of vertebrae which we find in the
neck of the mole contracted so as to be scarcely recog-
1 Arthur Schopenhauer, 1893, p. 463.
*Geschichte der biologischen Theorien, II, 456 n.
2O4 THE MONIST.
nizable. This unity of plan, argues Schopenhauer, requires
to be accounted for; and it can not be accounted for as
one of the aspects of the general adaptation of organisms
to their environment. For that adaptation might in many
cases have been as well, or better, realized by means of a
greater diversity in the architectural schemes of species
having diverse environments and instincts.
"This common anatomical factor (Element) which, as has been
already mentioned, remains constant and unchangeable, is so far
an enigma, — namely, in that it does not come within the teleological
explanation, which only begins after that basis is assumed. For in
many cases a given organ mght have been equally well adapted to
its purpose even with a different number and arrangement of bones.
.... We must assume, therefore, that this common anatomical factor
is due, partly to the unity and identity of the Will to Live in general,
partly to the fact that the original forms of the various animals have
arisen one out of another (dass die Urformen der Tiere erne aus der
andern hervorgegangen sind), and that it is for this reason that
the fundamental type of the whole line of descent (Stamm) has been
preserved."4
And Schopenhauer himself adds a reference to a pas-
sage in the Parerga and Paralipomena5 (to be examined
below) in which, at much greater length, his own particular
form of organic evolutionism is expounded.
Now, abundant in contradictions though Schopenhauer
was, it is difficult to suppose that he can have expressed,
within half a dozen pages, diametrically opposed views
upon a perfectly definite and concrete question of natural
science, in which he manifestly took an especial interest,—
and that he can, in spite of his habit of carefully revising
each edition of his works, have left such a piece of obvious
self-contradiction standing in the final version of Der Wille
in der Natur. If, now, bearing this in mind, we revert to
the criticism of Lamarck which has not unnaturally mis-
4 Der Wille in der Natur, 3d ed., 1878, p. 53.
'To §91 of the first edition, 1851 (= §93 of the second edition).
SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST.
led hasty readers of Schopenhauer, we shall see that what
is criticized is not necessarily the doctrine of the derivation
of species from earlier species by descent, but only a spe-
cific theory of the manner in which "the Will" works in
the formation of species. Lamarck, at least as Schopen-
hauer understood him, placed behind every organ or func-
tion of all animals, as its cause and temporal antecedent,
a felt need, a conscious desire, leading it to the activities
by means of which that organ is developed. To this
Schopenhauer objects, in the first place, that the hypothesis
implies that if we should go back to the beginning of the
series of animals we should come to a time in which the
ancestor of all the animals existed without any organs or
functions at all, in the form of a mere need, a desire pure
and simple ; — which implication he regards as reducing the
hypothesis to an absurdity. This is an entirely pertinent
criticism upon Lamarck's explanation of specific characters
as the results of use and disuse of organs, in so far as that
explanation is taken as the sole explanation. The criticism
applies, not only to the origination of animal organs and
functions in general, but also to the origination of any par-
ticular class of organs and functions. It is difficult to see
how an animal, yearn it never so strongly, can develop an
organ out of its needs merely as such ; or how it can modify
by use or disuse a type of organ of which it is not yet in
possession. Given the rudiments of an eye, with a specific
visual sensibility, and it is at least abstractly conceivable
that the persistent utilization of such a rudimentary organ
might somehow lead to its further development; but some
sort of eye must necessarily first be given. In other words,
Lamarckianism (as apprehended by Schopenhauer) did
not sufficiently recognize that the primary thing in species-
forming must be the appearance (through obscure embryo-
genetic processes with which conscious needs and desires
can have nothing to do) of suitable congenital variations.
2O6 THE MONIST.
The essence of Lamarck's error, as Schopenhauer sees it,
is that, according to the French naturalist, "it is the will
which arises out of knowledge," i. e., out of the animal's
temporally antecedent consciousness of its own need;
whereas, in fact, "the will did not proceed from the in-
tellect, nor did the intellect exist, together with the animal,
before the will made its appearance." We cannot even say
that the will, in the sense of a definite concrete volition,
existed before the production of the organ requisite to
make the fulfilment of the given kind of volition possible
in an animal species. In short, Schopenhauer's doctrine
was that the timeless Will, working in time in the form
of a blind purposiveness, gives rise to the organs and the
potencies of new species by producing new congenital char-
acters before any felt need for and endeavor after those
characters have arisen ; while Lamarck's doctrine, as Scho-
penhauer believed, was that an actual (though doubtless
vague) awareness of need, and a concrete movement of
conation, temporally precede the production of each new
character or organ. The two doctrines were really dis-
tinct; but (as will presently more fully appear) the one was
as definitely evolutionistic as the other.
It was, furthermore, an objection in Schopenhauer's
eyes to Lamarck's theory (and would have doubtless been
urged by him as an objection to the Darwinian theory)
that it supposed species to have been formed by the gradual
enlargement and accumulation of characters too small and
trivial at their first emergence to be functionally signifi-
cant, or useful in the struggle for survival. He says,
"Lamarck overlooks the obvious objection. . . . that, long before
the organs necessary for an animal's preservation could have been
produced by such endeavors as these carried on through countless
generations, the whole species must have died out from the want of
them."
SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST. 2O/
Schopenhauer, after his definite adoption of evolution-
ism, always insisted not only upon the primacy of the fact
of variation in the explanation both of species-form and
of adaptation, but also upon the doctrine that, though one
species descends from another, it descends ready-made.
In other words — and in twentieth-century words — Scho-
penhauer was, in his view concerning species, a mutation-
ist, though one of a somewhat extreme and peculiar sort.
In interpreting the bearing of Schopenhauer's com-
ments on Lamarck in The Will in Nature I have, of
course, been guided not only by the context of that passage,
but also by the passage in the Parerga and Paralipomena
to which, as has been mentioned, he himself refers his
reader for a fuller exposition of his views on the question
of species. The latter passage occurs in the small treatise
(Chapter VI of Parerga and Paralipomena) entitled Zur
Philosophic und Wissenschaft der Natur, perhaps the most
important of its author's later writings, but one which has
been amazingly neglected by the historians of philosophy
and even by writers of special monographs on Schopen-
hauer. With the publication of this work ( i85o)6 he quite
unmistakably announced — what remained his final view —
that the philosophy of nature to which his metaphysics of
the Will properly led was of a frankly and completely evo-
lutionistic type. Since this part of the Parerga and Para-
lipomena (unlike most of the rest of that collection) has,
so far as I know, never been done into English, I shall, in
setting forth the teachings of it, for the most part simply
give a translation of Schopenhauer's own words.7
Organic life originated, Schopenhauer declares, by a
*It is evident from the references in The Will in Nature that the evolu-
tionistic passages occurred in the first edition of Zur Philosophic und \Vissen-
schaft der Natur, though in the text of the second edition from which I shall
quote (published posthumously, 1861) they are amplified by additions written
by Schopenhauer as late as 1859 or 1860.
'What immediately follows is based upon Parerga und Paralipomena, II,
§§ 90-94, 74, 87-
2O8 THE MONIST.
generatio aequivoca of the organic (under certain definite
physical conditions) out of the inorganic; indeed, he be-
lieved, with singular scientific naivete, that spontaneous
generation is an everyday occurrence, taking place "before
our eyes in the sprouting of fungi from decaying vegetable
matter." But only the simplest forms can have been thus
produced.
"Generatio aequivoca cannot be conceived to occur in the higher
grades of the animal kingdom as it does in the lowest. The form
of the lion, the wolf, the elephant, the ape, or that of man, cannot
have originated as do the infusoria, the entozoa and epizoa, — cannot
have arisen directly from the sea-slime coagulated and warmed by
the sun, nor from decaying organic substances. The genesis of these
higher forms can be conceived of only as a generatio in utero hetero-
geneo* — such that from the womb, or rather from the egg, of some
especially favored pair of animals, when the life-force of their species
was in them raised to an abnormal potency, at a time when the
positions of the planets and all the atmospheric, telluric and astral
influences were favorable, there arose, exceptionally, no longer a
being of the same kind as its parents, but one which, though of a
closely allied kind, yet constituted a form standing one degree higher
in the scale. In such a case the parent would for once have produced
not merely an individual but a species. Processes of this sort nat-
urally can have taken place only after the lowest animals had ap-
peared in the usual manner and had prepared the ground for the
coming races of animals."
The reader will observe in the account of the conditions
requisite for the production of these exceptional births
traces of Schopenhauer's queer weakness for occultism;
but the condition which he chiefly insists upon is less remote
from the range of conceptions sanctioned by modern nat-
ural science. The productive potency of organisms, "which
is only a special form of the generative power of nature as
a whole," undergoes this "abnormal heightening" when it
encounters antagonistic forces, conditions tending to re-
8 Birth from a parent belonging to a different species from that of the off-
spring; "heterogenesis," in Kolliker's phrase.
SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST. 2<X)
strict or destroy it ; "it grows with opposition." This ten-
dency, for example, manifests itself in the human race in
times of war, pestilence, natural catastrophes, and the
like; and in such periods of special intensification of the
power of reproduction, that power, Schopenhauer seems
to conceive, shows also a greater instability and variability,
a tendency to the production of new forms which thereafter
remain constant. Now, says Schopenhauer, — adopting the
geological system of Cuvier, — a renewal of life through
generatio aequivoca, followed by an increasing multiplica-
tion of diverse descendant species, must have taken place
"after each of those great revolutions of the earth, which
have at least thrice extinguished all life upon the globe so
that it required to be produced anew, each time with more
perfect forms, i. e., with forms more nearly approximating
our existing fauna. But only in the series of animals that
have come into being subsequently to the last of these great
catastrophes, did the process rise to the pitch of producing
the human race, — though the apes had already made their
appearance in the preceding epoch."
We have seen Schopenhauer in The Will in Nature de-
claring in favor of the theory of descent on the ground
that it affords the only possible explanation of the homol-
ogies of the skeletons of the vertebrates. In the present
writing he still more emphatically declares in favor of it
on the ground of the argument from recapitulation, — of
the parallelism of the ontogenetic and the phylogenetic
series.
"The batrachians visibly go through an existence as fishes before
they assume their characteristic final form, and, according to a now
fairly generally accepted observation, all embryos pass successively
through the forms of lower species before attaining to that of their
own. Why, then, should not every new and higher species have
originated through the development of some embryo into a form
just one degree higher than the form of the mother that conceived
210 THE MONIST.
it? This is the only reasonable, i. e., the only rationally thinkable,
mode of origination of species that can be imagined."
Schopenhauer was thus, as I have already said, not
only an evolutionist in his biology but also a mutationist ;
his speculations are prophetic of the theory of De Vries
rather than that of Darwin. But the scale on which he
supposed these "discontinuous variations" to occur is calcu-
lated to make our contemporary mutationists stare and
gasp ; the changes of form which he assumed are saltatory
indeed. He writes :
"We are not to conceive of this ascent as following a single
line, but rather as mounting along several lines side by side. At
one time, for example, from the egg of a fish an ophidian, and after-
wards from the latter a saurian arose; but from some other fish's
egg was produced a batrachian, from one of the latter subsequently
a chelonian; from a third fish arose a cetacean, possibly a dolphin,
some cetacean subsequently giving birth to a seal, and a seal finally
to a walrus. Perhaps the duckbill came from the egg of a duck,
and from that of an ostrich some one of the larger mammals. In
any case, the process must have gone on simultaneously and inde-
pendently in many different regions, yet everywhere with equally
sharp and definite gradations, each giving rise to a persistent and
stable species. It cannot have taken place by gradual, imperceptible
transitions."
The implication with respect to the simian descent of
man Schopenhauer does not shirk:
"We do not wish to conceal from ourselves the fact that, in
accordance with the foregoing, we should have to think of the first
men as born in Asia from the pongo (whose young are called orang-
outangs) and in Africa from the chimpanzee — though born men,
and not apes .... The human species probably originated in three
places, since we know only three distinct types which point to an
original diversity of race — the Caucasian, the Mongolian and the
Ethiopian type. The genesis of man can have taken place only in the
old world. For in Australia Nature has been unable to produce any
apes, and in America she has produced only long-tailed monkeys,
SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST. 211
not the short-tailed, to say nothing of the highest, i. e., the tailless
apes, which represent the next stage before man. Natura non facit
saltus. Moreover, man can have originated only in the tropics ; for
in any other zones the newly generated human being would have
perished in the first winter. . . .Now in the torrid zones man is black,
or at least dark brown. This, therefore, without regard to diversities
of race is the true, natural and distinctive color of the human spe-
cies ; and there has never existed a race white by nature."
Schopenhauer does not leave us without a hint as to the
writer from whom he learned his evolutionism; though —
never generous in his acknowledgments, and always pre-
pared to think the worst of the English — he is a good deal
more copious in criticism than in appreciation of that
writer.
"The conception of a generatio in utero heterogeneo which has
here been expounded was first put forward by the anonymous author
of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (6th ed., 1847),
though by no means with adequate clearness and definiteness. For
he has entangled it with untenable assumptions and gross errors,
which are due in the last analysis to the fact that to him, as an
Englishman, every assumption which rises above the merely physical
— everything metaphysical, in short — is forthwith confused with the
Hebraic theism, in the effort to escape which, on the other hand, he
gives an undue extension to the domain of the physical. Thus an
Englishman, in his indifference and complete barbarism with re-
spect to all speculative philosophy or metaphysics, is actually in-
capable of any spiritual (geistig) view of Nature; he knows no
middle ground between a conception of it as operating of itself ac-
cording to rigorous and, so far as possible, mechanical laws, and a
conception of it as manufactured according to a preconceived design
by that Hebrew God whom he speaks of as its "Maker." The par-
sons, the English parsons, those slyest of all obscurantists, are re-
sponsible for this state of things."
This can scarcely be considered a very clear and co-
herent criticism of Robert Chambers. But the passage
makes it appear highly probable that it was through be-
coming acquainted, late in the eighteen-forties, with the
212 THE MONIST.
mutationist evolutionism of Chambers's Vestiges, that
Schopenhauer was led to adopt and to develop in his own
fashion a similar doctrine.
These transformist opinions in biology were, in the
treatise Zur Philosophic und Wissenschaft der Natur,
merely a part of a thorough-going scheme of evolutionism,
which included a belief in the development of the chemical
elements out of an original undifTerentiated Urstoff, in the
gradual formation of the solar system, and in an evolu-
tionary geology.9 His cosmogony Schopenhauer takes over
from Laplace. The general outlines of the history of our
planet, as he conceives them in the light of the geology of
Cuvier, are set forth in a passage which is interesting
enough to be worth quoting at length :
"The relation of the latest results of geology to my metaphysics
may be briefly set forth as follows : In the earliest period of the globe,
that preceding the formation of the granitic rocks, the objectification
of the Will to Live was restricted to its lowest phases — i. e., to the
forces of inorganic nature — though in these it manifested itself on
the most gigantic scale and with blind impetuosity. For the already
differentiated chemical elements broke out in a conflict whose scene
was not merely the surface but the entire mass of the planet, a
struggle of which the phenomena must have been so colossal as to
baffle the imagination .... When this war of the Titans had spent its
rage, and the granite rocks, like gravestones, had covered the com-
batants, the Will to Live, after a suitable pause and an interlude in
which marine deposits were formed, manifested itself in its next
higher stage — a stage in sharpest contrast with the preceding —
namely, in the dumb and silent life of a purely plant-world. . . .This
plant-world gradually absorbed carbon from the atmosphere, which
was thus for the first time made capable of sustaining animal life.
Until this was sufficiently accomplished, the long and profound peace
of that world without animals continued. At length a great revolu-
tion of Nature put an end to this paradise of plants and engulfed its
vast forests. Now that the air had been purified, the third great
stage of the objectification of the Will began, with the appearance
of the animal world : in the sea, fishes and cetaceans ; on land, only
8 Op. cit., Section 74.
* SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST. 213
reptilia, though those were of colossal size. Again the curtain fell
upon the cosmic stage; and now followed a still higher objectifica-
tion of the Will in the life of warm-blooded animals; — although
these were chiefly pachydermata of genera now extinct. After an-
other destruction of the surface of the globe, with all the living
things upon it, life flamed up anew, and the Will to Live objectified
itself in a world of animals exhibiting a far greater number and
diversity of forms, of which the genera, though not the species, are
still extant. This more complete objectification of the Will to Live
through so great a multiplicity and variety of forms reached as
high as the apes. But even this, the world just before ours, must
needs perish, in order that the present population of the globe might
find place upon fresh ground. And now the objectification of the
Will reached the stage of humanity.
"An interesting incidental consideration, in view of all this, is
that the planets which circle round the countless suns in all space —
even though some of them may be still in the merely chemical stage,
the scene of that frightful conflict of the crudest forces of Nature,
while others may be in the quiet of the peaceful interlude — yet all
contain within themselves those secret potencies from which the
world of plants and animals must soon or late break forth in all the
multiplicity of its forms .... But the final stage, that of humanity,
once reached, must in my opinion be the last, for this brings with it
the possibility of the negation of the Will, whereby there comes
about a reversal of the whole inner tendency of existence ( der Um-
kehr vom ganzen Treiben}. And thus this Divina Commedia reaches
its end. Consequently, even if there were no physical reasons which
made certain a new world-catastrophe, there is, at all events, a moral
reason, namely, that the world's continuance would be purposeless
after the inmost essence of it has no longer need of any higher stage
of objectification in order to make its deliverance (Erldsung) pos-
sible."
It is thus clear that by 1850 Schopenhauer had reformu-
lated his conception of the "objectification of the Will" in
thoroughly evolutionistic terms and had incorporated into
his philosophy a complete system of cosmogony and phy-
logeny.10 It was at about the same time that Herbert
10 It is a singular illustration of the present condition of the historiography
of scientific and philosophical ideas, that this fact is ignored, and Schopen-
hauer's position represented as essentially anti-evolutionistic, in such reputable
214 THE MONIST.
Spencer was beginning to imagine the outlines and primary
principles of the Synthetic Philosophy, which has commonly
passed for the first comprehensive attempt by any nine-
teenth-century philosopher to generalize the conception of
evolution and to give to it the principal role in his system.
The two doctrines may, in truth, not uninstructively be
set side by side. They exhibit, in the first place, a degree
of resemblance which is likely to be overlooked by those
who can not discern, beneath diversities of terminology
and of emphasis, identities of logical essence. In both
systems, for example, the ultimate nature of things is
placed beyond the reach of temporal becoming. Spencer's
evolutionary process belongs only to the realm of "the
knowable," Schopenhauer's to the world of the Will as
objectified; behind the one stands, as true reality, the Un-
conditioned, alien to all the characters of human experience
and all the conceptions of human thought ; behind the other
stands the Will as it is in itself, timeless, indivisible, in-
effable. In other words, both systems consist of an evolu-
tionary philosophy of nature projected against the back-
ground of an essentially mystical and negative metaphys-
ics. Yet each, as I have already remarked, regards its
supratemporal and indeterminate Absolute as the very
substance and sum of the world in time ; and each is prone
to the same inconsistency, that of practically treating this
same Absolute as the real ground and explanation of be-
coming and as a power at work in the temporal movement
of things. In the degree of emphasis which they lay upon
this negative element in their doctrine, the two philos-
histories of philosophy as those of Hoffding, Windelband, Kuno Fischer (who
devotes a whole volume to Schopenhauer) ; in Radl's Geschichte der biologi-
schen Theorien (II, 457) ; in Von Hartmann's Neukantianismus, Schopen-
hauerianismus und Hegelianismus (1877, pp. 150-151) ; and in P. Schultz's
special article on "Schopenhauer in seinen Beziehungen zur Naturwissen-
schaft" (in Deutsche Rundschau, 1899). Most of the histories of philosophy
which do not contradict the fact, at least fail to mention it. It is, however,
correctly though concisely set forth in Frauenstadt's Neue Briefe iiber die
Schopenhauersche Philosophie, 1876, p. 193, and in Dacque's Der Descendenz-
gedanke und seine Geschichte, 1903, p. 82.
SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST. 215
ophers, no doubt, greatly differ. Spencer closes the door
upon it after half a dozen chapters, and then forgets it for
whole books at a time, — reverting to it only at the moments
when his logic seems, in the deduction of the laws of "the
knowable," to be on the point of breaking down.
Schopenhauer, too, can forget the obscure background
of existence when he is absorbed in the concrete phenomena
of evolution ; but he takes it, on the whole, more seriously,
and draws the veil from before it more frequently. And
the more closely Kantian affinities of his epistemology
create for him a difficulty in adjusting his evolutionism to
his metaphysics which Spencer seemingly escapes, — though
he escapes it only by an evasion. Since, for Schopenhauer,
space and time are subjective forms of perception, pre-
mental evolution, the formation of planetary systems and
of planets themselves before the emergence of conscious-
ness, necessarily has for him an especially equivocal onto-
logical status.
"The geological processes which took place before there was any
life on earth were present in no consciousness;. . . .from lack of a
subject, therefore, they had a merely objective existence, i. e., they
were not at all. But what is meant then by speaking of their 'having
been' (Dagewesensein} ? The expression is at bottom purely hypo-
thetical ; it means that if any consciousness had been present in that
primeval period, it would have then observed those processes. To
them the regress of phenomena leads us back ; and it therefore lay
in the nature of the thing in itself to manifest itself in such pro-
cesses [i. e., if there had been any consciousness for it to manifest
itself to]."
When Spencer declares that our conceptions of space
and time are modes of thought produced in us somehow
by the Unconditioned, but not ascribable to that entity it-
self, he involves himself in a similar difficulty about early
geological time, and implies an identical way of dealing
with the difficulty; but so far as I can recall, he does not
anywhere directly face the question.
2l6 THE MONIST.
The points of resemblance between the system of Scho-
penhauer and that of Spencer, however, consist chiefly in
che general fact that both were evolutionists, and that their
/evolutionist cosmology had much the same sort of meta-
! physical setting. In its spirit, as in its details, Schopen-
hauer's evolutionism was essentially different from Spen-
cer's. He is, but for some faint foreshadowings in the phi-
losophy of certain of the Romantics, the first representative
of a tendency in evolutionistic philosophy that is essentially
hostile to the tendency of which Spencer is the representa-
tive. Spencer's enterprise is neither more nor less than a
resumption of that which Descartes had undertaken in
1633, in his suppressed treatise on "The World"; the nine-
teenth-century philosopher, like the one of the seventeenth
century, conceives it possible to deduce from the laws of the
motion of the parts of a conservative material system the
necessity for the gradual development of such a world as
we now find. Spencer's evolutionism, in short, is, or rather
attempts to be, thoroughly mechanistic. And in the course
of the whole process, therefore, (though Spencer frequently
forgets this) no real novelties can appear except novelties
in the spatial arrangement of the particles of matter. Even
these novelties are only the completely predetermined con-
sequences of the sum of matter and energy originally pres-
f ent in the universe, and of the laws of relative motion. The
whole cosmic history is solely a process of redistribution of
\ matter and change of direction in motion. It is for this rea-
son that M. Bergson is fond of saying of Spencer that his
system contains nothing that really has to do with either
becoming or evolution; "he had promised to trace out a
genesis, but he has done something quite different; his
doctrine is an evolutionism only in name."
Schopenhauer's evolutionism of the ever-expanding,
self-multiplying Will, however, is radically anti-mechan-
istic. For it the universe, even the physical universe, can
SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST. 217
not be a changeless closed system, in which no truly new
content ever emerges. The primary characteristic of the
Will is that it is never satisfied with the attained, and
therefore ever goes on to further attainment. Its objecti-
fication, in the latest phase of Schopenhauer's thought, be-
comes necessarily progressive and cumulative. In short, a
philosophy which conceives the genesis and movement of
the temporal world in terms of the Will necessarily gives
a very different account of the biography of the cosmos
from that presented by a philosophy which aspires to tell
the whole story in terms of mechanics and in accord with
the principle that the ultimate content of nature never suf-
fers increase or diminution. This latter program Spencer,
it is true, realizes very imperfectly. In the later volumes of
the Synthetic Philosophy the First Principles seem often
pretty completely forgotten. There are not a few strains
of what may be called the romantic type of evolutionism in
Spencer. But in him these strains are incongruous with
the primary postulate of his system ; in Schopenhauer they
are the characteristic note of the whole doctrine.
This contrast between the two types of evolutionism
found in these two writers is due in part to certain fea-
tures in their respective doctrines which arose without
dependence upon their evolutionism They had essen-
tially opposed preconceptions about the program and pos-
sibilities of science. Spencer was from his youth obsessed
with the grandiose idea of a unification of all knowledge.
All truths were eventually to be brought under some "high-
est generalization which is true not of one class of phe-
nomena, but of all classes of phenomena, and which is thus
the key to all classes of phenomena." This, of course,
meant the theoretical possibility of the reduction of the
more complex sciences to the simpler ones — of physiology
to chemistry, of chemistry to physics, and of all physics to
the mechanics of molecules. This intellectual process of
2l8 ^ THE MONIST.
explanation of the more complex by the simpler and more
generalized type of phenomena was the counterpart, and
in truth a necessary implication, of the objective process
of evolution of simple into more complex arrangements of
the matter of the universe. Schopenhauer, on the other
hand, from the beginning insisted upon the irreducibility
of the several sciences to one another, and most emphat-
ically upon the uniqueness and autonomy of biology. When
science, he writes, "in the quest for causal explanations
(aetiology) declares that it is its goal to eliminate all ulti-
mate forces except one, the most general of all (for ex-
ample, impenetrability) which science flatters itself upon
thoroughly understanding; and when, accordingly, it seeks
to reduce (zuriicksufiihren) by violence all other forces
to this single force, it then destroys its own foundation
and can yield only error instead of truth. If it were actu-
ally possible to attain success by following this course, the
riddle of the universe would finally find its solution in a
mathematical calculation. It is this course that people fol-
low when they endeavor to trace back physiological effects
to the form and composition of the organism, this perhaps
to electricity, this in turn to chemism, and this finally to
mechanism."11 Just why Schopenhauer adopted this doc-
trine of the irreducibility and discontinuity of scientific
laws at a period when he apparently had not adopted evo-
lutionism, is not wholly clear. He seems to have been
partly led to such a view by his conception of the Platonic
Ideas. Since for each of the broad divisions of science,
which correspond to grades of objectification of the Will,
there is a separate Idea, Schopenhauer seems to have felt
that the distinctness of the several Ideas forbade the suppo-
sition of the complete reducibility of the laws of one science
to those of a prior one. But inasmuch as the whole notion
of the Platonic Ideas is a logically irrelevant part of the
u Die Welt o/j Wille und Vorstellung, § 27.
-SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST. 2 19
Schopenhauerian system, this explanation does not carry
us very far. Whatever his reasons, the fact remains that
Schopenhauer attached the utmost importance to his con-
tention that, at the points where one typical phase of the
Will's self-manifestation passes over into a higher one, new
modes of action, essentially different kinds of being, must
be recognized. Consequently, when he eventually arranged
the grades of the Will's objectification in a serial, temporal
order, thus converting his system into an evolutionism,
this contention made his evolutionism one which implied
the repeated production of absolute novelties in the uni-
verse, and the supervention from time to time of natural
laws supplementary to, if not contradictory of, the laws or
generalizations pertinent to the phenomena of a lower
order.
Another detail of Schopenhauer's body of doctrine
which likewise antedates the evolutionistic transformation
of his system but yet has an important relation to certain
subsequent developments in the philosophy of evolution,
was his peculiar form of teleology. He was equally op-
posed, on the one hand, to the conception of design as an
explanation of the adaptive characters of organisms, and
on the other hand to the mechanistic elimination of all pur-
posiveness from nature. Between these two extremes he
endeavored to find room for a teleology dissociated from
anthropomorphism. The Will moves towards ends deter-
mined by its own inner nature, though it does not foresee
these ends. It triumphs over obstacles in its way, and cir-
cumvents obstructions; but it does so blindly and without
conscious devices. This notion of a blind purposiveness,
which more than any other philosopher Schopenhauer may
be said to have introduced into the current of European
philosophy, has come in our own day to be a familiar con-
ception in the interpretation of the meaning of evolution,
especially in its biological phase. Here again Schopen-
22O THE MONIST.
hauer is the precursor of Bergson. That contemporary
too rejects what he calls le finalisme radical not less than
the radical mechanistic doctrine, while insisting upon the
indispensability of some notion of finality in any attempt
to comprehend the development of organisms. From this
point of view Bergson has objected, upon grounds alto-
gether similar to those which have been noted in Schopen-
hauer's reference to Lamarck, to the Lamarckian tendency
to identify the cause of the production of new characters
with "a conscious effort of the individual" ; while he at the
same time regards Lamarckianism as approaching far
nearer than does Darwinism, with its essentially mechan-
istic interpretation of organic evolution, to a correct rep-
resentation of the developmental process. Like Schopen-
hauer, M. Bergson adopts, as the biological theory most
congenial to his metaphysics of the poussee vitale, a com-
bination of the doctrines of orthogenesis and of mutation.
The later writer may or may not have been influenced by
the earlier one, but there can be no doubt that in Schopen-
hauer we find the first emphatic affirmation of the three
conceptions most characteristic of the biological philosophy
of L' evolution creatrice.
It is a somewhat curious circumstance that the trait in
Schopenhauer's conception of the action of the "objectified"
Will which has hitherto most attracted the notice of writers
on the history of biology is closely related to the funda-
mental conception of precisely that sort of organic evolu-
tionism to which he was most opposed. The universal pre-
valence of a struggle for existence among organisms was
eloquently set forth by Schopenhauer forty years before
Darwin published the Origin of Species. But it seems
never to have occurred to Schopenhauer to regard this
struggle as an explanation of the formation of species
and the adaptation of organisms to their environments.
Why he was unlikely to do so is evident from all that has
SCHOPENHAUER AS AN EVOLUTIONIST. 221
been already said. The Darwinian hypothesis makes of
species and their adaptive characteristics merely the result
of a sort of mechanical pressure of external forces. Slight
promiscuous variations, due probably to fortuitous dis-
placements in the molecules of the germ-cell, are conserved
or eliminated in the course of the jostle for survival, ac-
cording as they do or do not fit the individuals possessing
them to keep a footing in that turmoil. But such a doctrine
assigns to the organism itself, and to its inner potencies,
an essentially passive role; development is, as it were, ex-
torted from living things by external circumstances, and
is not a tendency expressive of all that is most character-
istic in the nature of organisms as such. The metaphysi-
cian whose ruling conception was that of a cosmic life-force
was debarred by the dominant temper of his thought and
the deepest tendency of his system from any such account
of the causes and the meaning of that progressive diversi-
fication of the forms of life, the reality of which he clearly
recognized. Thus, though Schopenhauer incidentally shows
certain affinities with Darwinism, he is much more truly
to be regarded as the protagonist in nineteenth century
philosophy — at just the time when Darwin was elaborating
a mechanical biology and Spencer a would-be mechanistic
cosmogony — of that other form of evolutionism which a
recent French writer has described as "a sort of general-
ized vitalism."12 He was thus the first important repre-
sentative of the tendency which, diversely combined with
other philosophical motives, and expressed with varying
degrees of logical coherency, has been chiefly represented
since his time by such writers as Nietzsche, Bernard Shaw,
Guyau, E. D. Fawcett, and Bergson. The romantic evo-
lutionism of all these writers is, it is true, innocent of the
pessimistic coloring of Schopenhauer's philosophy ; but the
pessimism of Schopenhauer was always connected rather
u M. Rene Berthelot, Evolutionnisme et Platonisme, p. II.
222 THE MONIST.
with those preconceptions in his doctrine which were really
survivals from older systems, than with that vision of the
Will as creatively at work in the temporal universe which
was his real contribution to the modern world's stock of
metaphysical ideas. When his philosophy had been con-
verted, as we have seen that it was converted even by him-
self, into an evolutionism, it was already ripe for the elimi-
nation of the pessimistic strain.
ARTHUR O. LOVEJOY.
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY.
IT would be very interesting to know what impression
was made upon the heathen by the apologists of Chris-
tianity from Justin Martyr to the unknown author of the
"Epistle to Diognetus," but this satisfaction is denied to
us, fojr a direct trace of their influence is nowhere to be
found. Even Celsus, in whose time a number of apologetic
writings were still extant, gives them so little attention that
we cannot tell whether he had read them or not.
It is clear that a religion which entered the arena in
such a manner could no longer be ignored. The policy
of purposely ignoring Christianity was forever at an end.
In place of the obscure rumors which had heretofore been
so frequently the source of the popular information about
Christianity, there were now literary works which it was
impossible to disregard, and which afforded to every one
who took an interest in the subject an opportunity of form-
ing his own independent judgment. Indeed these works
challenged their readers to form such an opinion by the
very tone in which they were writtten. The farther a
man's acquaintance with Christianity extended, the less
was it possible for him to close his eyes to the importance
this religion had acquired as a new phenomenon of the
age. Men could not but feel the necessity for going seri-
ously and thoroughly into the question with regard to what
Christianity actually meant and what was its claim to
truth. It was impossible now merely to put it aside with
224 THE MONIST.
scorn and contempt. If a man could place no belief in
Christianity, it was necessary to go a step farther and
make an attempt to refute it; and as such investigations
brought into ever clearer light the whole wide difference
between the Christian and the heathen views of the world,
men were forced to go back to the ultimate principles on
which the one and the other were based.
"That among the enemies of Christianity in the second
half of the second century men were not wanting who were
impressed to the utmost with the importance of this ques-
tion, is proved by the remarkable work written against
Christianity by the Greek philosopher Celsus. Of Celsus
himself we have no further knowledge. The title of his
work was 'The True Word',1 and by it he doubtless meant
to indicate the love of truth which had induced him to enter
upon this refutation of Christianity. The work itself has
been lost, but Origen, in the eight books of his reply, has
preserved abundant extracts from it to attest sufficiently
the earnestness with which the author pursued his aim,
and the pains and care he expended on the work" (Baur).
Neander says : "In this book we certainly perceive a mind
which would not consent to surrender itself to the system
of any other individual; we find ourselves in contact with
a man who, by combining the ideas predominant in the
general philosophical consciousness of his time, the popular
ideas — so to speak — of that period, had framed a system
of his own of which he felt rather proud, and which, after
he had appeared as a polemic in his work against the Chris-
tians, it was his intention to unfold in another performance
under a more positive form. In his second work he meant
to show how it would be necessary for those to live, who
were willing and able to follow him. Whether this plan
has ever been executed we are not informed."
The work of Celsus has been saved through its refu-
\6yoi.
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 225
tation by Origen, who in the latter part of his life2 under-
took the task of replying to Celsus at the request of his
friend Ambrose.3 With great reluctance Origen took up
the work. Besides the fact that he was more than sixty
years of age at the time,4 he was of the conviction that
Christianity itself was the best defence against the attacks
since it "rests on facts, and that power of Jesus which is
manifest to those who are not altogether devoid of percep-
tion."5 However the thought that there might be some
persons who could have their faith shaken and overthrown
by the writings of Celsus,6 made him yield to the request
of Ambrose, and step by step he refutes the charges made
by the heathen assailant, meeting him at all points with
rare subtlety and acuteness as well as with immense stores
of knowledge, both biblical and literary, "by virtue of which
he is able effectually to retort upon the heathen philosopher
every charge brought against the system of the gospel."
The mass of details, indeed, is often tedious. Many ques-
tions which Origen discusses eagerly have lost their inter-
est and meaning now. There are, as might be expected,
some applications of scripture which will hardly bear the
test of a sound criticism;7 but, with every drawback, the
treatise must always hold its place as the great apologetic
work of Christian antiquity.8
"In the reign of Philip the Arabian (Eusebius I, 2), A. D. 244-279.
* "Against Celsus," pref. I, According to Eusebius VI, 18, this Ambrose
was converted from the heresy of Valentinus to the faith of the church by the
efforts of Origen.
4 Eusebius, VI, 36.
6 "Against Celsus, pref. 3.
' Ibid., pref. 4.
T In reply to the objection taken by Celsus against the slaughter of the
Canaanites, and the imprecatory language of the Psalms, Origen boldly spirit-
ualizes both. For instance in Ps. cxxxvii, "The little ones," he says "of Baby-
lon (which signifies confusion) are those troublesome sinful thoughts which
arise in the soul, and he who subdues them by striking, as it were, his heart
against the firm and solid strength of reason and truth is the man who 'dasheth
the little ones against the stones,' and he is, therefore, truly blessed" (VII, 22).
8 Green, loc. cit., p. no f.
226 THE MONIST.
It has been conclusively proved by Neumann that the
eight books against Celsus were composed by Origen in
the year 248. As to the place of composition Keim9 thought
it might be Rome, others Alexandria. The latest editor
of Origen's works, Professor Koetschau,10 suggests Cae-
sarea. However this may be, this refutation as we now
have it, is one of the ripest and most valuable productions
of Origen, and of the whole ancient apologetic literature.
And yet he did not know who this Celsus was, whether he
lived in the reign of Nero or that of Hadrian.
Modern scholars assign Celsus to the period from A. D.
150 to 178; the accepted opinion, however, is that he wrote
his attack in the year 178 in the time of Marcus Aurelius.
Some scholars think that Origen passed over a great deal
of the original work; his latest editor however is of the
opinion that the work of Celsus can be reconstructed with
tolerable completeness from Origen's reply, an opinion
which has been previously held by Mosheim, Neander,
Tzschirner, and others. Various efforts have been made
to construct a restoration of Celsus from the work of
Origen, and by none perhaps so successfully as by the late
Theodor Keim11 whose arrangement has been followed
more or less closely by later writers. Twenty years after
Keim (in 1892), Koetschau12 published a systematic ar-
rangement of the parts of the "True Word," which he
republished in the introduction to his edition of Origen's
works.13
In the following pages we have adopted Koetschau's
arrangement, interspersing passages from Origen and
notes and elucidations from other scholars, which will not
• Celsus' Wahres Wort, p. 274.
10 Origen, Vol. I, p. xxiii.
u Celsus1 Wahres Wort, Zurich, 1873.
"Jahrbucher f. d. protestantische Theologie, XVIII, (1892), pp. 604-632.
"Vol. I (1899), pp. li-lvL
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 227
only be of interest to our readers, but will help them to
understand the points in question.
INTRODUCTION.
Book I, 1-27.
A. The Christians are to be blamed because
1. their organization is illegal (I, I ; comp. VIII, 17) ;
2. their teaching is barbarous (I, 2), arbitrary (I, 3),
not new (1,4,5);
3. their power rests on magic (I, 6) ;
4. they demand an irrational belief (I, 9).
On this latter point Neander remarks (p. 164) : "How
the divine foolishness of the gospel, the faith whereby the
highest truth was to be made the common property of all
mankind, must needs appear to the twilight wisdom and
aristocratic culture of the ancient world, may be seen in
those remarks of Celsus wherein he complains that the
Christians refused to give reasons for what they believed,
but were ever repeating, 'Do not examine, only believe ; thy
faith will make thee blessed. Wisdom is a bad thing in
life, foolishness is to be preferred.' '
B. An examination of the contents and origin of the
Christian teaching (I, 12) shows that
1. Judaism must be condemned on account of its sep-
aration (I, 14-26) [For which there is no cause,
because Moses derived everything from other na-
tions and sages] ;
2. Christianity recently founded14 by Jesus, the leader,
and accepted almost entirely by ignorant people,
has no right to exist (I, 26, 27) [He cannot deny
however that among the Christians "there are
some men, sensible, well-disposed, intelligent and
skilled in allegorical interpretation," I, 27].
u Suetonius in Nero 16 also speaks of Christianity as superstitio nova et
malefico.
228 THE MONIST.
FIRST PART.
Books I, 28—11, 79.
The Objections of Celsus to the Christian Doctrine from
the Standpoint of Judaism.
A. The Jew invented by Celsus endeavors to prove that
Jesus is not the expected Messiah (I, 28-71) because
1. he is not divinely born (I, 28-39) >
2. he is not acknowledged by God (I, 41-58) ;
3. he is not approved by deeds (I, 61-68) ;
4. he is not bodily constituted like a god ( I, 69-71 ) .
It is interesting to observe how history repeats itself.
Canon Farrar in speaking of the English deist Woolston
(1669-1733), author of the celebrated Discourses on the
Miracles, says : "Occasionally, when wishing to utter gros-
ser blasphemies than were permissible by law or compatible
with his assumed Christian standpoint, he introduced a
Jewish rabbi, as Celsus had formerly done, and put the
coarser calumnies into his mouth" (Discourse IV and De-
fence, sect. I).15
On this Jew invented by Celsus, Neander remarks:
"The Jew whom he introduces as an opponent of Chris-
tianity, is made to say that he had many true things to
state in relation to Christ's history altogether different
from those reported by the disciples, but he purposely kept
them back. Yet Celsus, whose perfect hatred of Chris-
tianity led him to collect together everything that could be
said with the least show of probability against it, would
not have failed, certainly, to avail himself of such accounts,
if they were really within his reach. We must consider
this, therefore, with Origen, as one of those rhetorical
tricks of which Celsus set the example for later antagonists
of Christianity."3 And says Baur: "Before Celsus ap-
u A Critical History of Free Thought, p. 137.
18 Loc. cit., p. 109.
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 22Q
pears in his own person, a Jew comes forward to take the
part of Judaism, and the author's objections are placed in
his mouth. The object of this was not only to give dramatic
life to the scene of the controversy, but also and chiefly
to eliminate those parts of the dispute which the Jew could
bring forward from his own point of view, and so to give
more sharpness and weight to those principal objections
which form the loftier contention of the heathen opponent,
and the ultimate decision regarding which was only to be
found in philosophy. In this distribution of the parts the
Jew had to take up all the points affecting the credibility
and inner probability of the evangelical history."17
What is it that this supposed Jew has to bring forward ?
He asserts that the virgin birth has been invented by Jesus.
He was in fact born in a wretched Jewish village, secretly
and in adultery, of a poor peasant woman (who was not
even beautiful, who was a spinner and seamstress, and who
was betrothed at the time) after her bridegroom, who was
a carpenter, had heard of her connection with a soldier
Panthera,18 and had cast her out in shame and misery, in
spite of all the eloquence of her defense. Jesus was forced
by need and poverty to become a hireling in Egypt. But
there he learned various secret arts, and in reliance on
these he returned home, where he proclaimed himself to be
God, and in vanity and pride, untruthfulness and impiety,
he misled the people from their faith, especially since he
was liberal enough to admit others to the sonship of God.
He, together with John, the companion of his execution,
invented the voice from heaven at the Jordan, and made
use of deceitful tricks of juggling for his miracles, which
failed in the critical hour. With ten or eleven miscreants,
publicans and sailors, the vilest of men, he went about the
country begging his bread with difficulty, and in shameful
" Loc. cit., p. 143.
11 See Pick, article "Panthera" in McClintock and Strong's Cyclop.
230 THE MONIST.
flight, after he had been declared an outlaw. His per-
formances were neither noble nor wonderful either in deed
or in word. When challenged in the temple to exhibit some
unmistakable sign that he were the Son of God, he refused
to comply. Even if it is admitted that all is true that his
disciples say regarding his cures, or his resurrection, or
the feeding of a multitude with a few loaves from which
many fragments remained over, or those other stories which
the disciples have recorded as of a marvelous nature; are
not the tricks of the jugglers, who profess to do more
wonderful things, of a like nature, and because they per-
form such feats, shall we of necessity conclude that they
are "sons of God," or must we admit that their deeds are
the proceedings of wicked men under the influence of an
evil spirit?
Jesus claimed to be the son of God. But, says the Jew
addressing Jesus, "Such a body as yours would not have
belonged to God. The body of God would not have been
so generated as were you, O Jesus. The body of a god is
not nourished with such food. The body of a god does not
make use of such a voice as did you, nor employ such a
method of persuasion. These tenets were those of a wicked
and God-hated sorcerer."
This in the main is an outline of the address of the
would-be Jew to Jesus, as contained in the first book. In
the second book the Jew addresses Jewish Christians.
B. The Jew reproaches the Jewish Christians for hav-
ing forsaken the law of the fathers (II, 1-73) because
I.Jesus is not the Messiah, as his life proves (II,
5-13);
2. the prophecies of Jesus were invented after his
death by his disciples (II, 13-27) ;
3. the prophecies do not fit Jesus (II, 28-32) ;
4. Jesus neither proved his Messiahship, nor did he
win faithful adherents (II, 33-46) ;
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 23!
5. The alleged reasons for forsaking the law of the
fathers :
a. Jesus was punished because of Satan (II, 47) ;
b. Jesus performed cures (II, 48, 49);
c. Jesus foretold his resurrection and did actually
rise (II, 54-73)
can easily be shown as being of no account.
C. The Jew finally asserts that
1. the Christians are refuted from their own writings
(II, 74,75);
2. Jesus himself admits the weakness of his cause
en, 76-79).
That Jesus was not the Messiah may be seen from the
fact that he was betrayed by his own followers and was
punished by the Jews for his crimes. What he said re-
garding the resurrection of the dead, the divine judgment
and the fire which is to devour the wicked, is not new, but
the repetition of stale opinions. Jesus was an arrogant
fellow, and many other persons would appear as great as
he to those who were willing to be deceived. The Jews are
charged with not believing in Jesus as in God. But why
should they deem him to be a god, who not only, as was
currently reported, performed none of his promises, but
who even after they had convicted and condemned him as
deserving of punishment, was found attempting to conceal
himself, and endeavoring to escape in a most disgraceful
manner, and who was betrayed by those whom he called
disciples ? And yet, if he were a god he could neither flee
nor be led away a prisoner ; and least of all could he be de-
ceived and delivered up by those who had been his asso-
ciates, had shared all things with him in common, and had
had him for their teacher, whom they deemed to be a
Saviour, and a son of the greatest God, and an angel.
As to the so-called prophecies, they were invented by
his followers. They lied clumsily at one time in the geneal-
232 THE MONIST.
ogy of Jesus, in which they bring him into connection with
the Father of all men and with the old kings of Judah; at
another ludicrously when they make it credible that he
foretold his own death; and their power of lying is truly
shown to this day, since they hold on to each other like
drunken men, and three or four times, or even endlessly,
alter and falsify the principal and best passages of the
Gospels in order to offer better resistance to objections.
In addition to the lies there are forced solutions and inter-
pretations of prophecy ; the prophets are made to proclaim
all the acts of Jesus, although their words would in fact
be more fit for any other than for him. It may be — says
Celsus — that Jesus told his disciples he would rise again.
But others have made similar vain boasts. Besides we
learn from the myths of men who have risen again. All
such stories are pure myths. "Or do you suppose," asks
Celsus, "that the statements of others are myths and are
so regarded, wrhile you have invented a becoming and cred-
ible climax to your drama in the voice from the cross when
he expired, and in the earthquake and the darkness ? That
while alive he was of no assistance to himself, but that when
dead he rose again and showed the marks of his punish-
ment, and how his hands were pierced with nails? Who
beheld this? A half-crazy woman,19 as you state and some
18 Here we have the very beginning of the so-called "vision hypothesis,"
as still held by modern theologians. Like Celsus of old Renan says (almost
blasphemously), that "the passion of an hallucinated woman gave to the world
a risen God!" (La passion d'une hallucinee donne au monde un Dieu re-
suscite, Life of Jesus, ch. 26). In his work on the Apostles, Renan enters more
fully into the question and again emphasizes, in the genuine style of a French
novelist, the part of the Magdalene. "La gloire de la resurrection" (he says,
p. 13) "appartient a Marie de Magdala. . . .La grande affirmation de femme:
'II est resuscite !' a etc la base de la foi de 1'humanite." The vision theory has
been adopted by German, French and Dutch writers. Among English writers
the anonymous author of Supernatural Religion is its chief representative, and
states it in these words (Vol. Ill, 526, London ed. of 1879) : "The explanation
which we offer and which has long been adopted in various forms by able
critics, is that doubtless Jesus was seen, but the vision was not real and ob-
jective, but illusory and subjective; that is to say, Jesus was not himself seen,
but only a representation of Jesus within the minds of the beholders." We
may add that scholars like Ewald, Schenkel, Alex. Schweizer and Keim have
essentially modified this theory by giving the resurrection visions an objective
character and representing them as real though purely spiritual manifestations
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 233
one else perhaps of those participating in the system of de-
lusion, who either dreamed he had seen it owing to a pecu-
liar state of mind, or under the influence of a wandering
imagination had constructed for himself such a phenom-
enon according to his own wishes, as has been the case with
numberless individuals; or, and this is most probable, had
desired to impress others with this portent and by such a
falsehood to furnish an occasion to imposters like himself."
If Jesus had really risen, Celsus asserts, he would certainly
have appeared before his judges and the public in general ;
and his critic finds it very strange that Jesus during his life
preached to all and found no recognition, but that when he
had risen, and could so easily have induced all to believe
in him, he appeared only to one insignificant woman and to
his associates, and that secretly and timidly. All this, the
Jew states, is conclusive proof that Jesus "was therefore
a man, and of such a nature as the truth itself proves, arud
reason demonstrates him to be."
PART II.
Books III-V.
Objections of Celsus to the Fundamentals of Christian
Doctrine.
A. General objections (III, 1-81). The Christian doc-
trine is to be rejected
from heaven of the exalted Christ. While the vision theory has many advo-
cates yet some of the ablest of them have had to make concessions. Thus
Baur of Tubingen (died 1860), the master critic among skeptical church his-
torians, and the corypheus of the Tubingen school, came at last to the conclu-
sion (as stated in the revised edition of his "Church History of the First Three
Centuries," published shortly before his death, 1860) that "nothing but the
miracle of the resurrection could disperse the doubts which threatened to
drive faith itself into the eternal night of death. For the faith of the disciples
the resurrection of Jesus became the most solid and most irrefutable certainty.
In this faith only Christianity gained a firm foothold for its historical develop-
ment. We must rest satisfied with this, that for the disciples the resurrection
of Christ was a fact of their consciousness, and had for them all the reality of
an historical event" (pp. 39, 40). Dr. Keim (died 1879) in his last word on the
great problem comes to the conclusion that we must either humbly confess our
ignorance with Dr. Baur or return to the faith of the apostles who "have seen
the Lord" (John xx. 25). See the third and last edition of his abridged Ge-
schichte Jesu, Zurich, 1875, p. 362.
234 THE MONIST.
1. because it indicates the abandonment of the Jewish
doctrine and leads to further division (III, 1-14) ;
2. because it brings forward nothing new or import-
ant but only things borrowed and deceitful (III,
3. because it is intended only for the ignorant (III,
44-55) and the wicked (III, 59-71), but not for
the wise and good;
4. because the Christian teachers are deceivers and
seducers (III, 72-81).
Part II is thus described by Baur: "Celsus himself
speaks of the role played by the Jew as merely the prelude
to his dialectical contest with Christianity. The dispute
between Jews and Christians is in his eyes so foolish as to
be compared with the proverbial dispute about the shadow
of an ass. The points in dispute between them are of no
importance. Both believe that the Holy Spirit has prophe-
sied the advent of a redeemer of mankind ; what they con-
tend about is merely whether or not the prophecy has come
to pass. What has now to be done, accordingly, is to im-
pugn those presuppositions on which both Jews and Chris-
tians proceed, and with them, of course the supernatural
view of the world on which both these religions are based.
"Before coming forward with the weightiest arguments
which belong to this place, Celsus expresses in various
turns of thought his general view of Christianity, which
is that, generally speaking, he finds nothing in it deserving
of respect and acceptance. Christianity as a whole reposes on
no real foundation of reason. As the Jews broke away from
the Egyptians on account of religious dispute, so with the
Christians also, caprice and the desire of innovation, sedi-
tion and sectarianism20 compose the element in which they
" On this point Neander speaks as follows : "In opposing to Christianity
the many conflicting opinions which it called forth, Celsus testifies against
himself. How could a religion of base faith, a religion that called the unen-
lightened and repelled the wise of this world, give birth to such a multitude
of heresies? If he had not been so superficial an observer, he could not have
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 235
move. Only on these things and on the fear which they
inspire in others, especially through the terrifying pictures
which they draw of future punishments, do they found their
faith (III, 5 f., 14). Far more reasonable than the Chris-
tians with their belief in Jesus, are the Greeks with their
belief in Heracles, Asclepios, Dionysos, who, though men,
were accounted gods because of their meritorious acts;
with their legends of Aristeas of Proconnesus, the Hyper-
borean Abaris, Hermotimus of Clazomenae, Cleomedes of
Astypalaea, who, though the same things were told of them
as of Jesus, were not therefore held to be gods. The wor-
ship which the Christians offered to their Jesus was not
better than the cult of Antinous by Hadrian. They have
no reason to laugh at the worshipers of Zeus because his
grave was pointed out in Crete, for they did not know what
the real meaning of the Cretans was, and they themselves
worship a buried man (III, 22, 26 f., 36, 43). What sort
of a religion Christianity is may easily be seen from the
circumstances that it has no men of cultivation, no wise or
reasonable men among its adherents, while ignorant and
foolish people may confidently join its ranks ; such persons
do Christians hold to be worthy of their God, and they
openly declare that they neither will nor can have any
others among them.
As the Christians of that age belonged for the most
part to the lower orders of society, Celsus made great use
of this fact in enumerating the characteristics of Christian-
ity. The Christians appeared to him to belong to the class
of those who engage in their low trades in public places
and do not enter any respectable society. In houses of
failed to be struck with this contradiction; and in endeavoring to solve it he
must have had his attention directed to that peculiarity by which Christianity
is so clearly distinguished from all preceding phenomena in the intellectual
world. Celsus was of the opinion that these oppositions of knowledge, so
hotly conflicting with each other, would bring about the dissolution of Chris-
tianity. But history has decided against him ; it has shown how the indwelling
power of unity in Christianity could overcome these oppositions, and make
them subservient to its own ends" (loc. cit., pp. 164 f.).
236 THE MONIST.
wealth one meets with workers in wood, shoemakers, dyers,
uncultivated and ill-mannered people who dare not open
their mouths before the masters of the house, men of more
cultivation and ability. But if once these crude people can
gain access to the wives and children of their masters, they
say the most extraordinary things, and represent to them
that they should not hold to their fathers and teachers, but
should follow only the precepts of these Christian servitors ;
their fathers and teachers, they are told, are under the
power of vanity and can do nothing right ; the Christians
also know how one ought to live, and if the children follow
them they will be happy and make the house fortunate
(III, 50, 52, 55). Celsus thinks this none too harsh a
judgment on the Christians.
A still greater reproach which he brings against them
is that while in other mysteries only the pure, those who
are not conscious of guilt, those who have lived good and
righteous lives, are summoned to purge themselves from
their transgressions, the Christians, on the contrary, prom-
ise to every sinner, every fool, every miserable person, that
he will be received into the kingdom of God. Celsus takes
special offense at this preference shown by Christianity
to sinners, and its doctrine of the forgiveness of sins. He
holds broadly that forgiveness of sins is not possible. Every
one knows, he says, that those who have confirmed by habit
their natural tendency to sin are not changed by punish-
ment and still less by indulgence. Entirely to change our
nature is the most difficult thing of all. Nor does the for-
giveness of sins allow of being harmonized with the idea
of God. According to the Christian representation of him,
God is like those who allow themselves to be softened by
pity. Because of pity for the wretched he makes the path
easy for the wicked ; but the good, who do nothing wrong,
he rejects. Christians think, indeed, that God can do any-
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 237
thing ; but it is plain that their doctrine can not obtain the
approval of any reasonable man" (III, 63, 65, 70, 71).
Having shown that Christianity fails to commend itself
to reason, Celsus endeavors to prove how its unreasonable-
ness becomes still more apparent when inquiry is made as
to the ultimate grounds on which it rests. "It presupposes
a special manifestation and revelation of God; it is to the
notion of revelation that one ultimately comes in seeking
the reason of Christianity. Celsus attacks this notion with
arguments which have been brought forward again and
again from his time downwards, to disprove the possibility
of revelation in general; and he not only does this but he
reduces the main question at issue to the great difference
between the theistic and the pantheistic views of the world,
in such a way as to exhibit the whole width of the difference
between the two standpoints."
B. Special objections (books IV, V.)
I. The assumption of a descent of God or of a son of
God is wrong, and therefore the Jewish-Christian
teleology (IV, I-V, 2),
1. because no cogent reason can be adduced for the
descent of God (IV, 3-11, 79) ;
2. because it would contradict the nature of the im-
mutable and good deity to change for the worse
and come in contact with matter (IV, 14-18) ;
3. because the special reasons of Jews and Christians
for this doctrine
a. are in themselves untenable and a proof of great
arrogance (IV( 20-23);
b. are to be rejected, because of the untrustworthy
authorities (IV, 31-35) and because of the non-
sensical stories contained in their writings (IV,
36-47), which cannot even be interpreted alleg-
orically (IV, 48-53).
Taking up these three points of the special objections,
238 THE MONIST.
Celsus makes the following statements which we reproduce
in the words of Baur: "The question at issue between
Christians and Jews, whether God or the son of God has
descended to the earth in the past or is still about to de-
scend, is, he holds, a contemptible subject of contention.
The question is, what rational conception can be formed
of such a descent of God at all? (IV, 2, 3). Why did God
descend to earth? To see how things were faring with
men ? But did he not know everything ? He knew it, did
he? And yet he did not set it right, and could not set it
right with his divine power. He could not set it right
without some one being sent down for this purpose. Per-
haps, since he was still unknown to men and considered
that on this account something was wanting to him, he
wished to be known by them and to see who would and who
would not believe. To this Celsus himself gives the answer
that as far as God is concerned he has no need to be known,
but that he gives us the knowledge of himself for our profit.
Then he asks, Why did so long a time elapse before God
conceived the notion of setting the life of men right ? Did
he never think of that before? (IV, 8).
"To get still closer to the root of the matter, Celsus goes
back to the notion of God. He says he has no intention of
saying anything new, but only what has long been recog-
nized. God is good, beautiful, blessed; he is the sum of
all that is fairest and best. If he descends to men a change
must take place, but this change is a transition from good
to bad, from beautiful to ugly, from blessed to unblessed,
and who could wish for such a change for himself ? Again,
while it belongs to the nature of the mortal that it can
change and be transformed, the immortal remains always
equal to itself. Thus such a change as Christianity pre-
supposes is essentially impossible for God. The Christians
think that God can actually change himself into a mortal
body, but as this is impossible, we should be driven to think
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 239
that without actually undergoing it, he gave himself the
appearance of such a change for those who saw him. But
if this were the case, he would be lying and deceiving. Lies
and deceit are always bad and are only to be used as reme-
dies either in the case of friends, to cure them when they
are ill and out of their senses, or as against enemies, to
escape from danger. But neither can be the case with
God (IV, 14, 18).
"As concerns the special reasons for such a descent, the
Jews assert, according to Celsus, that since life is filled with
all sorts of wickedness, it is necessary that a messenger
should come from God to punish the wicked and purify all
things in the same way as at the time of the flood. The
Christians modify this statement, and say that the Son of
God has already been sent because of the sins of the Jews,
and that the Jews because they punished him with death
and gave him chole,21 'gall/ to drink, have drawn down
upon themselves the cholos?* 'wrath/ of God. The scorn
of Celsus at once fastens upon this. Jews and Christians
alike are compared to a flock of bats, or to ants that creep
forth out of their nests, or to frogs sitting around a swamp,
or worms holding an assembly in a corner in the mud, and
debating on the question which of them are the greatest
sinners. 'It is to us/ say the frogs, 'that God declares
everything before it comes to pass; and for our sake he
leaves the whole world, heaven and earth, and comes to
sojourn with us; to us alone does he send his messengers,
and he can not escape sending one messenger after another,
because it is of the greatest importance to him that we
should be with him always.' The worms say : 'God is, and
we are made after him, in all things like him ; he has put
everything in subjection to us, earth, water, air, and stars;
all things are for our sake, and are intended for our ser-
vice; but because there are some of us who have erred/
240 THE MONIST.
the worms say, 'God will come, or will send his Son to
burn up the wicked and cause the rest to have eternal life
with him/ Such wr anglings would be more endurable
amongst worms and frogs than between Jews and Chris-
tians" (IV, 23).
Knowing the connection between the Old and New Tes-
taments, Celsus now attacks the Old Testament and ridi-
cules it. By undermining the foundation he means to
ruin the whole structure. Aside from its political char-
acter, this part of Celsus's work is very interesting, because
it shows us his acquaintance with the Old Testament.
The Jews, Celsus says, are runaway slaves from Egypt
and have never done anything to distinguish themselves.
In order to trace their descent from the most ancient jug-
glers and beggars, they appeal to ancient ambiguous and
mysterious sayings which they explain to ignorant and
foolish people. Sitting in their corner in Palestine, they,
knowing nothing of Hesiod and other inspired men in their
entire want of culture, invented the crudest and most in-
credible account of the creation. Their story states23 that
a certain man was formed by the hands of God, and into
him was breathed the breath of life; that a woman was
taken from his side; that God issued certain commands
which a serpent opposed, gaining a victory over the com-
mandments of God. They thus relate certain old wives'
fables, and most impiously represent God as weak at the
very beginning and unable to convince even a single human
being whom he himself had formed (IV, 36)." They
speak in the next place of a deluge, and of a monstrous ark
having within it all things, and of a dove and a crow as
messengers, falsifying and recklessly altering the story of
Deucalion, not expecting that these things would come to
light but imagining that they were composing stories
* What follows is passed over by Baur.
14 Comp. Gen. i-iii.
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 24!
merely for young children (IV, 41)." Altogether absurd
and out of reason is the account of the begetting of chil-
dren,26 of the conspiracies of brothers,27 of the father's
sorrow,28 of the crafty procedure of mothers29; also the
story that God presented his sons with asses, and sheep, and
camels,30 also wells to the righteous.31 Mention is likewise
made of marriages and of various acts of sexual inter-
course recorded of righteous persons,32 of young women
and female servants, of daughters, worse than the crimes
of Thyestes;33 of the hatred of brothers; of the sally to
revenge the insult offered to a sister ;34 of brothers selling ;
of the brother sold and the father deceived.35 Dreams of
the chief butler and chief baker and of Pharaoh are told
and their interpretation is given in consequence of which
he who had been sold as a slave was taken out of prison
and was entrusted by Pharaoh with the second place in
Egypt.36 He who had been sold behaved kindly to his
brethren (who had sold him), when they were suffering
from hunger and had been sent with their asses to pur-
chase provisions; then, he who had been sold as a slave,
after being restored to liberty, went up with a solemn pro-
cession to his father's funeral.37 By him (Joseph) the
illustrious and divine nation of the Jews, after growing
up in Egypt to be a multitude of people, was commanded to
* Comp. Gen. vi-viii.
18 Reference is no doubt to Abraham and Sarah, Gen. xvii, 16-19; xviii. n;
xxi. 2.
* Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, Gen. iv. 8; xxvii. 41, 42.
" Either of Isaac at the flight of Jacob, Gen. xxviii. 2 ff., or of Jacob at
hearing of Joseph's death, Gen. xxxvii. 33 ff.
" Gen. xxvii. 5 ff.
30 See Gen. xiii. 2; xxx. 43; xxxii. 14.
81 See Gen. xvi. 14 ; xxi. 19 ; xxvi. 22 ; Num. xxi. 16.
M Reference is either to Abraham and Hagar, Gen. xvi, or to Judah and
Thamar, Gen. xxxv.
"Lot's Daughter, Gen. xix. 31-38.
84 See Gen. xxvii. 41 ff. and xxxiv.
* Gen. xxxvii.
"Gen. xl. 5.; xli. i ff.
" Gen. xlii. i ff . ; 1. i ff.
242 THE MONIST.
sojourn somewhere beyond the limits of the kingdom, and
to pasture their flocks in districts of no repute, till the
people finally fled from Egypt (IV, 47). The more modest
Jewish and Christian writers give all these things an al-
legorical meaning because they are ashamed of them (IV,
48). However, some of the stories do not even admit of
an allegory, but on the contrary are exceedingly silly in-
ventions (IV, 50). The allegorical explanations which
have been devised are much more shameful and absurd
than the fables themselves, inasmuch as with marvelous
and altogether insensate folly they endeavor to unite things
which can not at all be made to harmonize (IV, 51). In
proof of this he refers to the treatise entitled "Controversy
between Jason and Papiscus Regarding Christ."3
Another of the special objections of Celsus is,
4. because the Jewish-Christian notion of the order of
nature39 is radically false (IV, 52 — V, 2), for
a. God has created nothing that is mortal (IV, 52-61) ;
b. the amount of evil is a fixed quantity, which has never
varied (IV, 62-73) ;
c. natural history teaches that God did not make all
things for man, but that this world as a work of God
is to be perfect in all things (IV, 73-99) ;
d. the angels of which the Christians speak, are nothing
but demons (V, 2).
According to Celsus God made only what is immortal.
Only the soul is the work of God; the body has another
nature. As the nature of the whole is ever one and the
same, so there is always the same measure of evils in the
world (IV, 54, 62). Evil is not from God but is attached
to matter and to mortal natures, in whose periodical change
88 Celsus speaks of this work rather contemptuously, whereas Origen
deems it useful for ordinary readers. It is usually ascribed to Aristo of Pella
of the second century. See Schlurer, Geschichte des judischen Volkes, Vol. I
(3d ed., 1901) pp. 63-65.
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 243
past, present and future remain ever the same (IV, 65).
Thus man is not the object of the world at all, but all indi-
vidual existences arise and pass away solely for the preser-
vation of the whole, and what appears to one or other of
the individuals to be an evil is not in itself evil if it is of
advantage to the whole. In order to refute the teleological
position that God made everything for man, Celsus enters
into a detailed comparison of men with the brutes, in which
he finds a counter-advantage on the side of the latter for
every advantage which he allows to the former. So far is this
argument carried that men are made to stand below rather
than above the brutes. At the close of this argument (IV,
73-98) he expresses his general view of the world thus:
"The world, then, is not made for man any more than for
the lion, or the dolphin, or the eagle. It is made solely to
be a work of God perfect in itself in all its parts. The in-
dividuals in it have reference to each other only in so far
as they have reference to the whole. God cares for the
whole; his providence forsakes it not, nor does it grow
worse. God does not retire for a time into himself. He
is no more angry at men than he is at apes or flies ; all the
particular parts of the world have received their definite
and appropriate places" (IV, 99).
Baur says (p. 152) : "This in the main is the view which
has continued from the time of Celsus to the most modern
times to be the chief opponent of the supernaturalistic be-
lief in revelation, and the development of which, from the
rude form which it has with Celsus to a theory founded in
philosophy, has only rendered it the more dangerous. If
the world is a whole, complete in itself, then God and the
world are essentially connected with each other, and can
only be thought in a relation of immanence to each other.
All particular, teleological, supernatural elements at once
disappear in the all-embracing unity of the whole, and the
notion of revelation loses its entire justification, its root in
244 THE MONIST.
the philosophy of things being cut away ; for if there is no
God different from the world, standing above the world,
and operating on it by his personal will, then there can be
no revelation in the sense conceived by Jews and Christians.
God and the world exist one in the other. Everything moves
in the same order, standing fast once for all in an eternal
circle which even returns into itself.
Uhlhorn comments as follows: "There is a very strik-
ing coincidence here between the oldest antagonist of Chris-
tianity and Strauss, its most modern foe. Just as with
Celsus, so with Strauss, the principal argument against
Christianity is the impenetrable connection of the order of
nature; and like Celsus, Strauss also finally arrives at de-
nying any design in the world. Its purpose is that it is.
There will come, he explains, a time when the earth will
no longer be inhabited, yea, when the very planet will no
longer exist, and when not only all earthly things, all
human occupations and achievements, all nationalities,
works of art and science, shall have vanished, but not even
a recollection of it shall endure in any spirit, since with
this earth, its history must naturally perish. Then either
the earth has failed to accomplish its purpose, since nothing
has been evolved in its existence, or that purpose did not
consist in any thing which should endure, but was accom-
plished at every moment of the world's development. Like
Celsus, Strauss denies any improvement or deterioration
in the world. The same statement which we have just read
in Celsus, we read again in The Old Faith and the New
by Strauss.40 The universe is in no succeeding moment
more perfect than in the preceding, nor vice versa.' So
clearly indeed do these two antagonists of Christianity
agree, that like Celsus Strauss endeavors to obliterate the
distinction between man and animal. 'The chasm between
" Der alte und der neue Glaube, p. 228 (3d Engl. ed., London, 1874, Vol.
II, p. 37-
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 245
man and animal/ he says, 'was first opened by Judaism
which is hostile to the gods of nature, and by Christianity
which is dualistic'; and it sounds like the voice of Celsus
when we read, 'The more carefully the life and habits of any
species of animals are observed, the more does the observer
find reason to speak of their understanding. . . . A kind of
sense of honor, a sort of conscience, is hardly to be ignored
in the better bred and cared-for horses and dogs." Strauss
discovers even 'the rudiments of the higher moral facul-
ties' in animals, and bees, ants and elephants play the same
parts in his arguments as with Celsus.41
"It has seemed of interest to bring out the parallel
between this time of the church's conflict and the present
day. Do the modern enemies of our faith know of no ob-
jections to bring forward, except those which were ad-
vanced by our first antagonist seventeen hundred years
ago? If so, then they are refuted before they write. For
Celsus is refuted, I do not mean by Origen's answer, though
this presses him very hard, but by the fact that the faith
he scorned has triumphed."42
Having objected to the assumption of a descent of God
or of a son of God and thus to the Jewish-Christian teleol-
ogy as being wrong, Celsus now goes to prove
II. that neither Jews (V, 6-n) nor Christians (V, 51-
65 ) deserve thus to be preferred by the deity :
I, Not the Jews, because
a. they have a deficient worship of God (V, 6) ;
b. they have an abominable doctrine of judgment and
the resurrection of the body (V, 14) ;
c. they live indeed according to the law of their fathers
(V, 25-34), but arrogantly consider themselves
better than other nations, from whom they partly
derived their customs (V, 41) ;
41 Strauss loc. cit., pp. 200, 202 f. (Engl. ed. II, pp. u, 13-15).
"Uhlhorn, The Conflict of Christianity (Engl. ed.) p. 303!
246 THE MONIST.
2. Not the Christians, who are still more unworthy, be-
cause
a. they left Judaism, and are without national laws
and customs (V, 33, 51);
b. they make contradictory statements concerning
messengers and angels of God (V, 52, 54) ;
c. they have the most varied notions concerning the
deity and therefore represent the greatest oppo-
sites (V, 59-64), though they are one in self-exal-
tation with reference to other nations, even the
Jews (V, 64, 65).
"Celsus," says Baur, "stands here at the height of his
polemic against Christianity, as the champion of a view
opposed to it in principle. But he fails to maintain this
lofty standpoint. The pantheistic view of the world being
intimately associated in his mind also with the polytheism
of the old religion, he could not escape the question whether
the position of polytheism necessarily yielded the same
judgment on Christianity as he had been led to form from
the standpoint of pantheism. If it can not be allowed to
Christianity that the one supreme God descended to the
earth, yet it may be that, in the founder of it, one of those
higher superhuman beings appeared, whose existence was
taken for granted by Christians, Jews and heathens equally,
although under different names — Jews and Christians call-
ing them angels, and the heathens demons. In this view
all the arguments as yet brought against Christianity would
fail to prove that it was not of higher divine origin. This
is the point at which Celsus stands (V, 2) when he says
to the Jews and Christians that neither God nor God's
son had come or would come down to the world ; but if they
mean angels, they ought to say what they understand
under that name, whether gods, or beings of another kind,
demons. This, then, we should expect to be the further
question now to be discussed. Still it is strange that
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 247
Celsus makes no attempt at a direct answer to the question,
but, as if he felt it necessary to concede the possibility
that Christianity might be a divine revelation in this sense,
leaves that subject and turns to the contents of the religion
of the Jews and Christians, attacking them now on this
point, now on that. Especially does he seek to gain ad-
vantage over them by contrasting their system with Greek
philosophy and religion. Scarcely have angels been men-
tioned, when he wonders that the Jews, although they wor-
ship heaven and the angels in it, pay no homage to the most
exalted and most powerful beings, the sun, moon and stars
(V,6).
Celsus then turns to the next point, the doctrine of the
resurrection. On this subject he says : "It is folly on their
part to suppose that when God, like a cook, introduces the
fire which is to consume the world, all the rest of the human
race will be burned up while they alone will remain, not
only such of them as are then alive but also those who are
long since dead, which latter will arrive from the earth
clothed with the selfsame flesh as during life. Such a hope
is simply one which might be cherished by worms, for what
sort of human soul is that which would still long for a body
that has been subject to corruption? Whence, also, this
opinion of yours is not shared by some of the Christians,
and they pronounce it to be exceedingly vile, and loath-
some, and impossible, for what kind of body is that which,
after being completely corrupted, can return to its original
nature, and to that selfsame first condition out of which
it fell into dissolution ? Being unable to return any answer,
they betake themselves to a most absurd refuge, viz., that
all things are possible to God. And yet God cannot do
things that are disgraceful, nor does he wish to do things
that are contrary to his nature. God is the reason of all
things that exist, and therefore can do nothing either con-
trary to reason or contrary to himself" (V, 14).
248 THE MONIST.
Continuing, Celsus concedes to the Jews that they have
the same right to their own national legislation that other
nations have to theirs, while the Christians are deserters
from the Jews. The Jews should by all means give up
thinking that they with their laws are wiser and better
than others. Let this band (i. e., the Jews) then take its
departure, after paying the penalty of its vaunting, not
having a knowledge of the great God, but being led away
and deceived by the artifices of Moses, having become his
pupil to no good end (V, 15-41).
Having dismissed the Jews, Celsus turns now to the
Christians, conceding to them that their teacher is actually
an angel, but insisting that he did not come first or alone,
but that others came before him, as those also maintain
who suppose a higher God and father distinct from the
Creator of the world (V, 52). This proves that both Jews
and Christians have the same God, and this is admitted
by the members of the great church who adopt as true the
accounts regarding the creation of the world which are
current among the Jews, viz., concerning the six days and
the seventh on which day God rested. They also mention
the first man from whom they deduce the same genealogy.
They also speak of the conspiracies of brothers against
one another, of the descent into Egypt and of the flight
thence (V, 59). Nevertheless, Celsus goes on, some con-
cede that their God is the same as that of the Jews, while
others maintain that he is a different one, to whom the
latter is in opposition, and that it was from the former
that the Son came. And there are some who accept Jesus
and boast on that account of being Christians, and yet regu-
late their lives, like the Jewish multitude, in accordance
with the Jewish law. There are Christians who are be-
lievers in the Sibyl; Simonians who worship Helene, or
Helenus, as their teacher, and are called Helenians, Mar-
cellians, Harpocratians, Marcionites, etc. (V, 62). Some
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 249
take this one, others take another as their teacher and de-
mon, but utter against one another dreadful blasphemies,
hating each other with a perfect hatred (V, 63). Yet all
these, though assailing each other with the most shameless
language, utter the words, "the world is crucified to me,
and I unto the world" (V, 64). And yet, much as they
differ among one another, they say that they are possessed
of greater knowledge than the Jews (V, 65).
PART III.
Books VI, I— VII, 58.
Objections of Celsus to Several Christian Doctrines, that
They Are Borrowed and Adulterated from
Greek Philosophy.
i. The demand of the Christians that their teachings
must be unconditionally believed is a misunderstanding and
adulteration of the Platonic view that the chief good cannot
be described and is only knowable to a few (VI, 3-11).
On this point Celsus argues that even if Christianity
contains some elements that might prepossess a man of
understanding in its favor, it has no monopoly of these,
that these things are common property and have been said
far better by the Greeks before and without those threats
and promises about God or a son of God. Plato, he says,
did not promulgate his doctrines as supernatural revela-
tions, nor shall the mouth of any one who wished to inquire
into the truth of them for himself. He made no demand
that we should first of all believe ; he did not say, God is so,
or so; he has such a son, and he himself has come down
into the world and has spoken with me (VI, 8). On every
point, even when the subject of investigation does not ad-
mit of further explanation, Plato brings forward reason-
able arguments; he does not pretend to be the discoverer
of something new, or to have come from heaven to reveal
it, but says where he got it (VI, 10). When some of the
25O THE MONIST.
Christians appeal to this authority and some to that and
all alike insist, "Believe if you wish to be saved, or else go
your way," what are those to do who are in earnest in
wishing to be saved ? Are they to appeal to the dice for a
decision in what direction they shall turn, or to whom they
shall give heed? (VI, n).
2. The teaching of the Christians that the wisdom that
is among men is foolishness with God is derived from Her-
aclitus and Socrates in order to attract the ignorant (VI,
12-14).
3. The Christian exhortation to humility, repentance
and poverty is derived from Plato (VI, 15, 16).
4. The Christian cardinal doctrine of the kingdom of
God is unworthy to be recorded (VI, 17), because
a. the doctrine of a super-celestial God is Platonic but
misunderstood ;
b. the doctrine of the seven heavens is borrowed from
the Persians or the Cabiri (VI, 23) ;
c. the Christian mystery concerning the fate of the soul
ascending to God is borrowed from the Mithraic
mysteries (VI, 23-34) ;
d. connected with this is the Christian magic and sor-
cery (VI, 39, 40).
5. The Christian doctrine of an opponent of God (devil,
Satan or Antichrist) is derived from a misunderstanding
of the allegorical narratives about a certain holy war men-
tioned by Heraclitus and others and from the Egyptian
mysteries of Tryphon, and Horus, and Osiris (VI, 42-46).
According to Celsus the most godless errors of the
Christians proceed in general from their inability to under-
stand the divine mysteries. Under this category he reckons
more particularly the Christian doctrine of Satan, the ad-
versary of God. Even the ancients, Pherecydes, Heraclitus
and others, spoke enigmatically of a war of the gods. The
Christians perverted this and made out of it their doctrine
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 251
of Satan. 'The Son of God," says Celsus, "is overcome
by Satan, and warns the Christians of the Satan yet to
come who will accomplish great and wonderful things, and
arrogate to himself the honor of God, telling them that
they are not to be shaken in their faith when he appears.
All this shows simply that this Satan is a sorcerer or de-
ceiver like Jesus himself, and naturally enough is afraid
of the latter as his rival" (VI, 42).
6. The Christian doctrine of the creation of the world
is foolish and full of contradictions (VI, 47-65).
The reason, Celsus goes on, why the Christians speak
of a son of God, is that the ancients called the world a
child of God because it derives its existence from God (VI,
47). This leads him to speak of the world and the creation
of the world, and of the Mosaic history of creation (VI,
49). In criticising this history he contrasts with the gross
anthropomorphisms which he finds in it his Platonic doc-
trine of God. The Mosaic cosmogony he thinks extremely
silly. The distribution of the creation of the world over
certain days, before days existed, is the most silly of all;
for as the heaven was not yet created, nor the foundation
of the earth yet laid, nor the sun yet revolving, how could
there be days? (VI, 60, 50). They also think that the
words, "Let there be light," were only the expression of
a wish. For "the Creator did not borrow light from above,
like those persons who kindle their lamps at those of their
neighbors. And if, indeed, there did exist an accursed
god opposed to the great God, who did this contrary to his
approval, why did he lend him the light ?" ( VI, 51). "More-
over (taking and looking at these things from the begin-
ning) would it not be absurd in the first and greatest God
to issue the command, Let this come into existence, and
this second thing, and this; and after accomplishing so
much on the first day, to do so much more again on the
second, and third, and fourth, and fifth, and sixth (VI, 60) ;
252 THE MONIST.
and after this, indeed, to be weary, like a very bad work-
man, who stands in need of rest to refresh himself ? But
it is not consistent with the fitness of things that the first
God should feel fatigue, or work with his hands, or give
forth commands" (VI, 61 ) . God, the cause of all existence,
is without color, form, or motion, and exalted above every
word and conception (VI, 65).
7. The Christian doctrine of God's manifestation upon
earth is already found among the Stoics and is untenable
on account of its intrinsic contradictions (VI, 66-81). Such
being the case one might ask, "How, then, shall I know
God? and how shall I learn the way that leads to him?
And how will you show him to me? (VI, 66). How think
ye to know God and how shall ye be saved by him ? ( V, 68) .
To this, Celsus says, the Christians may argue that just
because God is so great and it is so hard to know him, he
implanted his spirit in a body like our own, and sent him
to us that we might hear him and learn from him (VI,
69). This, however, only provides Celsus with an oppor-
tunity which he is not slow to use, to cover with derision
so sensuous a representation. He not only points out that
to call God a spirit is not only peculiar to the Stoics (VI,
71 ), but he asks : If God wanted to send his spirit out from
himself, why did he find it necessary to breathe it into the
body of a woman ? He knew how to make men, and could
surely have formed a body for his spirit without casting
it into such filth. If he had appeared in this way coming
down suddenly from above, no unbelief would have been
possible (VI, 73, 74). But if the divine spirit was to be
in a body, he ought to have surpassed all others in great-
ness, beauty and the imposing effect of his whole presence.
As it was, he was entirely undistinguished ; in fact he was
small and ugly (VI, 75). If God, like Zeus in the comedy,
awoke from a long sleep and formed a desire to deliver the
human race from its evils, why did he send what the Chris-
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 253
tians call his spirit into a corner? He ought to have ani-
mated many such bodies and sent them into the whole
world. The comedy-writer, in order to excite laughter in
the theater, made Zeus send Hermes to the Athenians and
Lacedaemonians when he woke from his sleep; but it is
much more ridiculous that God should send his son to the
Jews (VI, 78). And was not God, knowing all things,
aware of this, that he was sending his son amongst wicked
men who were to be guilty of sin, and to inflict punish-
ment upon him? But, adds Celsus, they (the Christians)
say, that all these things were predicted (VI, 81).
8. The Jewish-Christian predictions are no better than
the oracles, besides being false, because in them ugly and
impossible things are attributed to God (VII, 2-18).
Celsus objects that the Christians set no value on the
oracles of the Pythian priestess, of the priests of Dodona,
etc., but those things which were uttered or not uttered in
Judea, after the manner of that country, as indeed they are
still delivered among the people of Phoenicia and Palestine,
these they look upon as marvelous sayings and unchange-
ably true (VII, 3). Celsus then goes on to speak of the
kind of prophecies given forth by so-called prophets, who
utter dark sayings that have no meaning at all but "give
occasion to every fool or imposter to apply them to suit his
own purposes" (VII, 9). He adds that "those prophets
whom he had heard, when urged by him, confessed their
true motives, and acknowledged that the ambiguous words
they used really meant nothing at all" (VII, 11). Even
those who support the cause of Christ by a reference to
the writings of the prophets can give no proper answer in
regard to statements in them which attribute to God that
which is wicked, shameful, or impure (VII, n, 12). For
how much better was it for God to eat the flesh of sheep,
or drink vinegar and gall, than to feed on filth? (VII, 13).
If the prophets foretold that the great God — not to put it
254 THE MONIST.
more harshly — would become a slave, or become sick, or
die, would there be therefore any necessity that God should
die, or suffer sickness, or become a slave, simply because
such things have been foretold? Must he die in order to
prove his divinity?
But the prophets never would utter predictions so
wicked and impious.
We need not therefore inquire whether a thing has
been predicted or not, but whether the thing is honor-
able in itself, and worthy of God. We must not believe
that which is evil and base, even though it seemed that all
men in the world had foretold it in a fit of madness. How
then can the pious mind admit that those things which are
said to have happened, could have happened to one who
is God? (VII, 14). If these things were predicted of the
Most High God, are we bound to believe them of God
simply because they were predicted? (VII, 15). If the
divine prophets of the Jews prophesied of Jesus as the Son
of God, how can God, speaking through Moses, give the
command to accumulate riches, to rule, to replenish the
earth, to put enemies to death, to extirpate whole popula-
tions, as God himself did under the eyes of the Jews, while
his Son, the Nazarene, gives commands exactly opposite
to these; closes the access to the Father against the rich,
the ambitious and those who are striving after wisdom and
honor; bids men care for food less than the ravens, for
clothing less than the lilies, and requires that a man should
turn the other cheek to the smiter? Who is lying then,
Moses or Jesus? Or had the Father, when he sent Jesus,
forgotten the command which he had given through Moses,
or had he repented of his own laws, and did he send another
messenger with contrary directions? (VII, 18).
9. The eschatological doctrines of the Christians can
easily be refuted, because
a. God has no human-like body, can therefore not be
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 255
seen perceptibly by the pious after death (VII, 27
-34);
b. the Christian notion of a better earth is misunder-
standing the Platonic doctrine of the pure earth,
(VII, 28-31);
c. the Christian doctrine of the resurrection rests upon
misunderstanding the philosophical doctrine of me-
tempsychosis (VII, 32).
According to Celsus, the Christians say that God is
corporeal in his nature and possesses a body like a man,
statements which can easily be refuted (VII, 27) But
if they be asked, "Where do you hope to go after death ?"
they answer: "to another land better than this" (VII, 28),
a statement which, he says, the Christians borrowed from
certain ancient writers whom he styles "divine," and chiefly
from Plato who in Phaedo discourses on the pure land lying
in a pure heaven. And as they misunderstood this, they
also misunderstand the doctrine of metempsychosis, which
they turned into a doctrine of the resurrection (VII, 32) . .
And after they are utterly refuted, they still, as if regard-
less of all objections, come back again to the same ques-
tion: "How then shall we see and know God? how shall
we go to him?" (VII, 33). They expect to see God with
their bodily eyes, to hear him with their ears, and to touch
him sensibly with their hands (VII, 34).
10. When the Christians excuse the suffering and dy-
ing of Jesus with the precept that one must patiently bear
the wrong, this precept, too, is derived from Plato's Crito
(VII, 36-58).
Celsus continues, saying it is not the man that asks this
(viz., how can we know God unless by the perception of
the senses) , not the soul but only the flesh. If the cowardly
body-loving generation will hear anything, it is necessary
to say to it that on these terms only will they see God,
that they close their senses and look up with their spirit,
256 THE MONIST.
that they turn away from the eye of the flesh and open
that of the soul. And if they want a leader for this way
they should eschew sorcerers and deceivers and those who
recommend idols. If they do not do this, they make them-
selves in every way ridiculous. On the one hand, they
blaspheme the approved gods as idols; on the other hand,
they worship a god who is in fact more miserable than the
very idols — not even an idol, but a dead man, and seek for
a father like him (VII, 36). Celsus holds up to them the
Platonic dictum that it is hard to find the Creator and
Father of the universe, and when one has found him, im-
possible to express him for all. This is the true path on
which divine men seek the truth ; a path indeed on which
the Christians, altogether entangled in the flesh and seeing
nothing pure, cannot follow (VII, 42) . If they believe that
a spirit has come down from God to proclaim the truth,
this can be none other than that spirit who reveals those
things with which men of the olden time were filled. If
they cannot understand these things they should hold their
peace and conceal their ignorance, and not call blind those
who see, lame those who walk, when they themselves are
quite lame and crippled in soul, and live only with their
dead body (VII, 45). If from their love of innovation
they must have some one to adhere to, they should have
chosen one who died a noble death, and was worthy of a
divine mythos. If Heracles or Asklepios did not please
them they might have had Orpheus, who also died a violent
death, or Anaxarchus, or Epictetus, of whom sayings were
reported such as to fit them for the position. Instead of
this they make a god out of one who closed the most in-
famous life with the most shameful death. Jonah in the
belly of the whale,43 or Daniel in the den of lions44 would
have served better (VII, 53).
"Jonah ii. I, II.
44 Daniel vi. 16 ff.
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 257
They have also, says Celsus, "a precept to this effect,
that we ought not to avenge ourselves on one who injures
us, or, as he expresses it, 'Whosoever shall strike thee on
the one cheek, turn to him the other also/ ' This, Celsus
says, is an ancient saying, which had been admirably ex-
pressed long before, and which they have only reported
in a coarser way (VII, 58).
PART IV.
Books VII, 62— VIII, 71.
Celsus Defends the Religion of the State.
A. The Christians have no right to reject the heathen
cult (VII, 62 — VIII, 49), because
1. they would only follow the example of the Scyth-
ians, Libyans, Seres and Persians (VII, 62) ;
2. Christians should not abhor the images of the gods,
since they claim to have been created by God after
his own image (VII, 62, 66, 67) ;
3. the demons ought to be worshiped,
a. because they have their authority from the su-
preme God (VII, 68) ;
b. because in worshiping the demons they honor
the supreme God (VII, 68— VIII, 2) ;
c. because it is impious to assume an opposition
between God and demons hostile to him (VIII,
ii);
4. The Christians have so much the less cause to re-
ject the worship of demons, the more extravagantly
they worship God's Son, beside him, yea, above
him (VIII, 12-16) ;
5. The Christians have no excuse for keeping aloof
from the sacrificial feasts, for nowhere can they
withdraw from contact with the demons (VIII,
17-37);
6. The power of the heathen gods has sufficiently
258 THE MONIST.
proved itself in the persecutions of the Christians,
in prophecies, cures, in public and in private (VIII,
38-48).
B. To the philosophically cultured Christians, with
whom Celsus hopes to come to an understanding on
a common basis, he emphasizes (VIII, 49),
1. that the demons should be worshiped in order not
to be ungrateful and unjust towards them (VIII,
53-58) ;
2. that moderation in the worship of demons ought
to be observed, and never and nowhere should the
worship of the supreme God be neglected (VIII,
60-63);
3. that the worship of Caesar must not be neglected,
because
a. the rulers have their positions through the in-
strumentality of the demons,
b. their behest must be executed in order to avoid
punishment ;
c. Christians should not trust in their God, who
prevented neither the expulsion of the Jews from
Palestine nor the persecution of the Christians
(VIII, 63-71).
"It is hard to understand," says Baur, "the reason for
such deadly hatred against the Christians in an opponent
to whom it ought to have been an easy matter to concede
to Christianity a divine origin, if not in the Christian sense,
yet in the sense of the pagan doctrine of demons. And so
we cannot think it fortuitous that at the close of his work
Celsus takes up the doctrine of demons for special dis-
cussion."
The transition to the subject is made in this way. Cel-
sus could not leave unreproved the antipathy of the Chris-
tians to temples, altars, and images. The Christians, he
says, simply reject images of the gods. If their reason
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 259
for this is that an image of stone, wood, brass, or gold
cannot be a god, this is a ridiculous wisdom; none but a
fool holds them to be anything more than mere votive
offerings and images. But if they think that there should
be no images of the gods, because the gods have another
form, the Christians should be the last to say this, for they
believe that God made man after his own image, and that
man is like him. Their reason then must be that they hold
those to whom the images are dedicated to be, not gods,
but demons, and are of opinion that a worshiper of God is
not at liberty to serve demons. It is clear that they wor-
ship neither a god nor a demon, but a dead man (VII, 68).
But why should demons not be worshiped? Does not
everything proceed from divine providence? Does not
everything that is done, whether by a god, or by angels,
or by other demons, or by heroes, derive its law from the
supreme God? Is not each one placed over that of which
the power has been given to him ? Thus, according to the
assertion of the Christians, he who worships God does not
do right in worshiping one who has received his power
from God, for it is not possible, as they say, to serve more
masters than one (VII, 68). This assertion, however,
can only be maintained by those who make a principle of
sedition and discord, and who separate and break them-
selves away from the rest of mankind. He who speaks
thus imputes to God his own affections. With men it
might very naturally be the case that if the servant of one
served another as well, the former might feel his rights
encroached on. But nothing of the sort can be the case
with God, and he who worships a number of gods honors
the supreme God by honoring those who belong to him
(VIII, 2, 9).
It is impious to speak of God as the one Lord. This
presupposes that there is an adversary, and can only bring
division and disunion into the kingdom of God (VIII, n).
26O THE MONIST.
The Christians might maintain their proposition if they
worshiped no other but the one God, but they pay ex-
travagant honor to one who appeared only lately, and they
think that, notwithstanding the worship they pay to his
servant, they do not come short of their duty to God (VIII,
12). The very fact that the Christians worship God's son
as well as God amounts in itself to a concession that not
only the one God is a proper object of worship, but his
servants as well (VIII, 13). So eager are they for the
worship of the founder of their sect, and of him alone,
that even if it were proved to them that he was not the
son of God, they would not worship the true God, the
Father of all, without him (VIII, 14).
That the Christians, if they believed that the demons
were not gods, should refrain from taking part in public
worship, in sacrifices and sacrificial feasts, was very nat-
ural, and what Celsus says against them on this head has
no further significance. But all the more striking is his
claim that he has reduced the Christians to the dilemma,
that either they must worship the demons, or, giving up
the worship of the demons, must renounce all further claim
to live. "If the Christians shrink from feasting with the
demons, one can only wonder how they do not know that
on these terms also they are table-companions with the
demons, even though there is no slaughtered victim before
them. The grain that they eat, the wine that they drink,
the fruits they partake of, even water and the air they
breathe, all these things do they receive from the particular
demons to whom, each in his province, the care of every
single thing is committed (VIII, 28). Either, then, a man
must not live at all, and cease to tread this earth, or, if one
goes into this life, one must be thankful to the demons who
are appointed as overseers over the earth, and bring them
first-fruits and prayers as long as one lives, that they may
continue to be kind to men" (VIII. 33).
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 26l
Again and again does Celsus set before the Christians
the two alternatives : the first, "that, if they refuse to pay
to the guardians of all the honor that is due to them, then
they should not live the life of men, should not marry
wives nor beget children, nor do any of the other things
customary in this life, but go away altogether without leav-
ing seed behind them, in order that such a race may die
quite out of the world"; the second, "that if they marry
wives, beget children, enjoy the fruits of the earth, take
their share of what life affords, and put up also with the
evils that are laid upon them (for nature itself so arranges
it that all men have evils to endure; there must be evils
as well as good things), then they should also pay to the
overseers who are in charge of these things the honor that
is due them, and fulfil the common duties of life until they
are released from their bonds, so as not to appear unthank-
ful towards them. For it is unfair to enjoy what belongs
to those powers, without paying them some tribute for it"
(VIII, 55)."
Very striking is the following remark by Baur: "To
thus narrow a point is the polemic between Christianity
and paganism here reduced. If only the Christians could
have made up their minds to call their angels demons, and
to consider them in that light, this would at once have
removed one great cause of offence to the heathens who
would then have been much more inclined to make admis-
sion to Christianity in particulars which the existence of
this point of variance made them still contest. But how
could Christianity ever make this one concession without re-
nouncing itself? Had the Christians worshiped those same
a To this charge of ingratitude Origen replies : "We, while recognizing the
duty of thankfulness, maintain that we show no ingratitude by refusing to
give thanks to beings who do us no good, but who rather set themselves against
us when we neither sacrifice to them nor worship them. .. .Moreover, as we
know that it is not demons, but angels, who have been set over the fruits of
the earth, and over the birth of animals, it is the latter that we praise and bless,
as having been appointed by God over the things needful for our race ; yet
even to them we will not give the honor which is due to God" (VIII, 57).
262 THE MONIST.
beings, whom they called angels, as demons in the sense
of the heathens, they would have been assenting to heathen
polytheism, and taking up a position identifying themselves
with the attitude peculiar to the heathen world. The oppo-
sition of the Christians to the heathen doctrine of demons
is thus simply the point where the profound intrinsic an-
tithesis in which Christianity stands towards heathens be-
comes most strikingly apparent. Their denial of the hea-
then doctrine of demons was to the Christians the renun-
ciation of the whole heathen world-conception, or of that
way of thinking which does away with the absolute notion
of the divine wherever it prevails, because it does not up-
hold a strict enough distinction between the divine and the
natural, but lets them flow together in one and the same
conception thus becoming indistinguishable. Thus, slight
as the difference might appear to be between the angels
of the Christians and the demons of the heathens, yet the
antithesis which underlies it is as deep as possible.
"It is noteworthy that where he deals with the doctrine
of demons, Celsus plays the part not so much of the assail-
ant of Christianity as of the apologist of heathenism, as if
he felt it to be of the utmost importance to convince the
Christians here at least of the truth of the heathen religion.
He cannot urge upon them too earnestly that by denying
the heathen doctrine of demons, they deny their inmost
consciousness of God, violate the most sacred duties, and
show themselves to be men who do not deserve to live in the
world at all. Must not the denial of the heathen doctrine
of demons have appeared to Celsus to amount ultimately
to an open declaration of war against all that the whole
heathen world counted as faith, and as holy usage handed
down from the most ancient times?" (p. 162 f.)
THE ATTACK OF1 CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 263
CLOSING WORD.
VIII, 72-75-
Although Celsus thinks it impossible "that all the in-
habitants of Asia, Europe and Libya, Greeks and barbar-
ians, all to the uttermost ends of the earth" can be united
into one form of worship of God, yet he hopes
1. for an agreement with cultured Christians,
2. for their participation in the affairs of the state, es-
pecially in times of need ; to hold office in the govern-
ment of the country if that is required for the main-
tenance of the laws and the support of religion.
Origen closes his refutation with the remark that "Cel-
sus had promised another treatise as a sequel to this one,
in which he engaged to supply practical rules of living to
those who felt disposed to embrace his opinion." But it
seems that he never carried out his plan.
We may close this review with a remark of Baur : "This
more than anything else is characteristic of the attack
which Celsus made on Christianity, that, refusing to rec-
ognize in it anything great and fitted to awaken reverence,
he made Jesus himself a deceiver, and was unable, as it
appears, to account in any other way for Christianity than
that it owed all its growth and its successes simply to fraud
and deception. Yet we can scarcely fail to see that the deep
contempt with which Celsus looks down upon Christianity
and the bitter mockery with which he overwhelms it in such
abundant measure, are in fact feigned, and not the true ex-
pression of the writer's mind. Can there be any greater testi-
mony to the importance which Christianity had by this time
obtained in the eyes of the public of thinking men, than just
the fact that a man like Celsus, undoubtedly one of the
most cultivated and enlightened, the best informed and
most competent to judge, of those living in that age, thought
the new phenomenon of such importance as to make it the
264 THE MONIST.
subject of a most careful and elaborate investigation?
However much he found in it that was objectionable and
worthless, absurd and meaningless, sensuous and material-
istic; though he could not attribute any distinctive value
to it as a whole, either from a philosophical or religious
point of view ; yet, to combat it successfully he felt himself
compelled to resort to every means that Greek philosophy
offered and to take up in opposition to it no less lofty a
position than that of a Platonic philosopher. And if the
main point of the controversy came to this, that the Chris-
tians refused to worship the demons, and would hear noth-
ing of the popular mythical religion, how could he put so
much earnestness into the accusation which he brought
against them, when to himself, with his philosophical views,
belief in the old gods could not possibly be anything more
than a tradition which had become more or less detached
from his consciousness? In spite of this, it is a fact that
his standpoint prevented him from seeing in Christianity
anything but a work of deception. Still it is something that
by this time it had come to be held for nothing worse ; and
we may take it as a proof of the great importance which
attached to it in the mind of the age that people should
think there was no explanation but that of imputing a de-
ception, a phenomenon which appeared the more enig-
matical, the greater its influence was. What is this but
saying that it had come to be a power in the world by a
secret and mysterious path no further explanation of which
could be given?" (p. 166 .)
"Celsus," says Uhlhorn, "has evidently a suspicion that
he is the champion of a lost cause. This whole book is in-
deed a prediction of victory for Christianity. Thus we
can understand how Celsus, with all his bitter hatred of
Christianity, yet finally proposed a kind of compromise
to the Christians. They were to have toleration, even free-
dom to serve the one supreme God, if they would also
THE ATTACK OF CELSUS ON CHRISTIANITY. 265
worship the demons, the subordinate gods which are set
over particular departments in this world, and if they would
make up their minds to honor the emperor and to help him
in this time of difficulty by participating in the efforts and
burdens of the Roman Empire. Celsus took great pains
to render this compromise acceptable to the Christians.
He set himself to work to bring philosophy and the Chris-
tian faith nearer together. It was not much that he asked.
They might remain Christians in all else, worship the
supreme God as before, if they would only also pay to the
demons the honors which were their due. It was not as
if they were required to do anything disgraceful. What
impiety could there be in singing a beautiful hymn to
Athene? In her they would really be worshiping the su-
preme God. Or what impiety was there in swearing by
the genius of the Emperor? Had not God given him his
power? Did he not issue his commands by God's permis-
sion and under his authority? But in case the Christians
should resist these advances, Celsus threatened them with
violence — they were to be utterly exterminated. The Chris-
tians might take their choice: Peace or war.
"To the Christians there was of course no choice. They
could not accept the compromise. The worship of the su-
preme God excluded the worship of the demons, and Chris-
tianity must be more than a religion tolerated side by side
with others. The deification of the powers of nature and
of the emperor would have made Christianity into a new
heathenism. Yet the Christians would one day share the
efforts and burdens of the empire ; yea, they were one day
to become its strongest support. A time was to come,
when the old and tottering empire would seek and find in
the youthful strength of Christianity the basis of a new
life. But that time was yet distant. For the present the
Christians could do nothing but suffer" (loc. cit., p. 305 f.).
Keim comments as follows upon the view of Christian-
266 THE MONIST.
ity presented by Celsus : "The Jesus from the pen of Celsus
requires no contradiction, however terrible the weapons
of the author's critical acumen, led on as it is by his heathen
animosity to the person of Jesus and further to the whole
of Christianity. It is only necessary to observe that he
has contradicted himself, 'slain with his own weapons/
since he ascribes to Jesus the most beautiful sayings in his
sermon on the mount, and at the same time expressly de-
clares that heathen philosophy has already said it all be-
fore, only with greater beauty and accuracy, and that
Christianity reveals itself as a misunderstood and maimed
philosophy. It is therefore a philosophy, and not merely
a deceit — in truth, the philosophy with which he may come
to terms in the midst of the fearful persecution and from
which he may only desire some concessions to heathenism.
And here is a marvel. Celsus perceives that Christianity
cannot and will not give way, but cannot Celsus give way ?
When he himself says that the supreme God whom the
Christians worship must never be forsaken, when with the
philosophers he deprecates the worship of sensual demons,
that is of the gods — which stands nearest to conversion,
the weak reed of the wisdom of this world, or the might of
Christianity?46 "Should the supreme God give way to
the demons, or the demons to the supreme God? Should
the power of the demons protect Rome or the power of
the law of the universe? Thus Rome became Christian
and through the power of the God of the Christians Con-
stantine conquered."47
BERNHARD PICK.
NEWARK, NEW JERSEY.
46 The History of Jesus of Nazara, Vol. I, pp. 38 ff.
47 Celsus' Wahres Wort, p. 253.
ON THE ABUSES OF THE NOTION OF THE UN-
CONSCIOUS.*
IN former centuries philosophy was primarily inspired
by mathematics and the natural sciences. To-day it
takes its inspiration from psychology, and this changed
point of view has led to a singular diminution in the part
played by reason which was formerly declared all-power-
ful.
In the eyes of most modern psychologists reason, once
so exalted, becomes nothing more than a flimsy pattern
thrown upon the living substance which instinct has woven ;
or rather, the conscious self with which we relate it almost
vanishes by the light of pathology or resolves itself into
an unconscious activity which plays such an important part
even in normal life.
In fact we have here two subjects, instinct and the un-
conscious, which remain distinct, however allied they may
be. We shall still have to distinguish both of them, in so
far as they are psychological subjects, from the philosoph-
ical doctrines in which they find their completion ; and first
of all we must discuss the value of their application to all
the sciences of man, both theoretically and practically.
The psychological subject of instinct as far as man is
concerned applies to those profound depths of our nature
designated indifferently by the vague words tendencies,
appetites, desires or elementary feelings. The unconscious
* Translated from the French by Lydia G. Robinson.
258 THE MONIST.
is concerned rather with the hidden organization of our
mental life, the entire portion of that life which actually
escapes our view and which like instinct seems anterior
and, so to speak, exterior to our voluntary and reflective
activity which nevertheless contributes to give it form.
For the same reason it is possible that the phenomena
we call unconscious may furnish us with the secret of in-
stinct which seems to fill so wide a field. But this is not
the point we are to consider. What interests us at present
is to observe the different range of these two subjects ac-
cording to the regulations by which they are adjusted and
the deductions to be drawn from them.
In the theory1 that the subconscious, or the unconscious,
plays an essential part in our life; that every psychical
phenomenon requires at the same time both a perceiving
subject and a perceived object; that it would therefore be
vain to speak of a subject, of an ego that is purely psy-
chical; and that therefore no "pure thought" could exist,
I have nothing to criticize nor do I avoid accepting it. The
fact practically remains that "thought" is a peculiar aspect
of the "phenomenon," that it is a real fact, a fact of primary
importance, and that we can not eliminate it from our in-
vestigations without running the risk of perverting them
entirely.
* * *
This however, according to Michel Breal,2 one of our
principal leaders, is the error of those linguists who under
the standard of the unconscious have carried the idea of fa-
tality into the study of linguistic phenomena. He never
ceases protesting against a theory which seems to him to
put philology on a wrong basis. Yet, contrary to the views
of the opposing school, there is at least a half-conscious
intention, a secret and yet attentive intelligence, presiding
1 Recently formulated by G. L. Duprat in the Revue philosophique, Sept.
1910.
1 Essai de semantique (Paris, Hachette).
ABUSES OF THE NOTION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 269
over the formation of languages. This is shown in the
creation of the passive form, of the adverb, of nouns, which
the people have created, he says, "as the scholar creates
his own language." Even phonetics seems to him to be
subject to this supposed fatality which is declared to be the
law of language but which he thinks is everywhere dis-
appearing. Here again, he writes, it is the brain as well
as the larynx which is the cause of the changes. "Thought
is present everywhere."
From another point of view Victor Henry3 writes that
even if language is a conscious fact, the "processes" of
language are unconscious. But might there not be de-
grees of distinction between the voluntary, deliberate act,
and the purely instinctive or accidental one? Would not
individual invention, however understood, have some part
here? The simple imitative repetition of a word, of a
phrase, such as we may hear at every step from children
in the streets, absolutely and in every case declares a choice,
an individual fancy. Even to-day we may still observe the
invention of metaphors, images which "produced in some
well-constructed head are common property as soon as they
are spread abroad." And new compound and abbreviated
words are constantly coined "when the originality of each
nation has free play."
Some say that language has no liberty because I am
not free to change the meaning of the words. Michel Breal
replies that this particular limitation of liberty must be
correctly understood; that it is the same in kind as that
possessed by the laws which regulate our social life.
To speak here of natural law only creates confusion. It
would be more correct to speak of "intellectual laws."
* * *
If the part of individual initiative is to be retained,
however weakly, in the formation of matter (to which the
'Antinomies linguistiques (Paris, Alcan).
27O THE MONIST.
term "collective creation" would better apply) it is much
more reasonable that it should exist in the personal inven-
tions of the human race in all the forms in which it is
manifested. An eminent geometrician, Henri Poincare,
has pleaded that we should leave some part, in mathemat-
ical invention at least, to reason, to the self-conscious in-
tellect. Here too I have supported his contention.4 With
him I have shown that every sudden illumination of the
mind, though it may seem unconscious, is nevertheless pre-
pared, supported and surrounded by an act of will.
I shall not repeat what I have said before but shall add
just one word on inspiration, or rather on the circum-
stances of inspiration in art.
"It seems to me," a woman of the world said one day
to Reyer, "when I read a certain page of your 'Sigurd'
that I see you seated on the shore of the sea gazing into
the blue depths of the waves. ..." "That page?" inter-
rupted the author, " it came to me while seated on top of
an omnibus smoking my pipe."
There are many instances of this kind which might
be cited. They certainly testify against the idea of blind
inspiration rather than support it. If genius came only
unconsciously the nerves of the musician would doubtless
respond to the direct stimulation of the picture which he
sees or the experience he has lived. They would be like
the chord of a harp vibrating at a breath of wind. But this
is not the case. A strain comes to the musician because
he is expecting it, if not because he has prepared it in ad-
vance. And for this reason it comes to him at any moment
whatever, sometimes even when he is performing the most
ordinary action of everyday life.
"I can not draw the moon," wrote Berlioz to Wagner,
"except when I am looking at its reflection in the bottom
of a well." By this he meant that an act of thought must
* The Monist, Oct. 1910.
ABUSES OF THE NOTION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 27!
always intervene between the emotion of the scene and its
reproduction in art.
Whoever has produced any work great or little, whether
a musician, painter or poet, cannot but observe that his
successful inspirations which come as if by chance are
particularly frequent during the execution of the work
and relate almost entirely to details. Again they are often
the result of a fertile enthusiasm and become grafted upon
the dominant deliberate conception.
The role played by the unconscious remains on the
whole a very important one, but it is not well to let it blind
our eyes to the value of voluntary effort, nor should the
study of the secret nervous currents by which our brain
is nourished and consumed prevent us from seeing the
point of the machine at which the spark is going to flash.
It is said that we find only what we are looking for. This
is no less true of the artist in composing an original work
than of the scientist in making experiments.
I willingly grant that every sort of introspection is
dangerous. Nevertheless let us be sincere. The direct
bearing of physiology on the delicate problems of psychol-
ogy is much too slight to render so soon useless the obser-
vation most prudent in itself and every recourse to simple
argument.
Will the psychology of the unconscious therefore be
more easy and more advanced than that of the conscious ?
On the other hand we have no better evidence of the col-
lective entity than of the individual unity.
* * *
Indeed I can not separate these two questions of the
unconscious and the individual, and I find them again in
a hardly different form in our "philosophies of history."
The opposite sides taken by the theorists may be re-
duced in my opinion to a question of perspective. Viewed
in large outlines history appears to be subject to chance
2/2 THE MONIST.
or fate. Considered in details it shows the design and
intelligent will of man. The consideration of the masses
may lead equally either to eliminate the element of chance
or to exaggerate the part played by accident. It is a dif-
ferent matter when we examine at close range a definite
succession of historical events. But revolutions depend
on the conjunction of several series of facts whose progress
exceeds the short term of one human life, and the intelli-
gence of men may prove powerlesss to govern them with
security at the time, though this does not prevent its ope-
ration to a notable degree.
As in the case of the individual each nation finds itself
involved in a long succession of events, and it has direct
control over only one part of the events which make up
the series. Here its power is real, but the efficacy of this
power is in proportion to the range of its foresight and its
actions. From this I would infer in passing that the best
kind of government is that which with a wide comprehen-
sion of social changes assures as far as possible to a people
the continuity of its political action.
But we will leave these considerations which are aside
from our subject and will point out an error in sociological
theory which seems to me to have attracted one of our
most distinguished writers on art, Charles Lalo, of whom
I have had previous occasion to speak to our readers.5
According to Durkheim6 the two essential character-
istics of the social fact are that it exists outside of indi-
viduals and that it is obligatory. "A social fact," he writes,
"may be recognized by the power of external compulsion
which it exerts or is capable of exerting on individuals."
I shall not discuss this theory. However solid it may be,
and if it met with no objections, its application in my opin-
ion would not be extended without reservation to all social
* The Monist, October, 1910.
* Ragles de la mtthode sociologique (Paris, Alcan).
ABUSES OF THE NOTION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 273
phenomena and especially to esthetic phenomena of which
I wish solely to speak at present.
Referring to this definition of the social fact as "con-
straint," Lalo7 in his turn was led to define the value of
art as dependent upon the approval of our peers, to reduce
esthetic pleasure to "a very special delight born of satis-
faction in technical requirements as determined and organ-
ized by society," and therefore to subordinate in this way
the original activity of the artist to the taste of the com-
munity— by which the evolution of art, it seems to me,
would not be easily explained.
In the system of Lalo, it is true, this evolution is to be
brought about by way of an "internal dialectic," that is to
say, a necessary development of technique by virtue of the
principles on which it is based and under the influence of
material inventions capable of rejuvenating it. Still it is
doubtful whether this dialectic would have for its indis-
pensable agents individuals, the innovators of genius ; and
it seems to me that changes in art whether in music or the
plastic arts depend in the first place on the creations of the
masters, the models offered by them which finally become
the rule of a school.
The work of art which I have created possesses a value
to me before it is recognized by the public. This may be,
if you please, the value of the gold coin or silver before
the state has stamped upon it the imprint which makes it
a piece of money.
There is always a conflict and at the same time an ex-
change between the individual and society; the collective
action of the community resolves itself into particular ac-
tions. Almost the same thing occurs here of which we
have spoken with regard to language. Just as the indi-
vidual does not have the power to change the meaning of
T I have studied his theory at length in an article in the Revue philoso-
fihique, October, 1909, under the title of "Esthetics and Sociology."
274 THE MONIST.
words because then he would no longer be comprehended,
— which has not prevented strange innovations of the so-
called symbolist poets — so the activity of the musician or
painter is subject to certain conditions which serve as limi-
tations for him. But still the boundary remains wide
enough for his fancy as the many salons of our large cities
testify.
What we call the taste of the community is constantly
changing. Society is not a homogeneous mass ; it usually
consists of many groups more or less restricted and denned
so that there is a tendency towards what the life of art
collects by individual efforts which finally radiate in all
directions whence this double movement of depression and
elevation, if I may call it so, of the esthetic wave which
causes now the individual aspect and now the general or
popular aspect of artistic production to appear.
The interesting observation has been made that lan-
guages belonging to large populations become changed less
quickly than dialects. It is the nature of the latter to sub-
divide more and more as in mountainous countries, because
the proportion of individual strength compared to the
strength of the community is greater in small districts.
For the same reason schools of art have likewise been more
diverse in countries divided up as Italy was. The social
scale effectively reduces the originality of the individual
externally by means of the conditions that it imposes upon
him, at the same time reducing it internally as well by
organizing its unconscious activity against him, so to speak.
It is in this way that the sociological doctrine of constraint
follows or confirms the psychological doctrine of the un-
conscious, and that the excesses of the one at the same time
call forth the excesses of the other.
At first glance we would seem to have here a contradic-
tion between these theories and the individualistic tenden-
ABUSES OF THE NOTION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 275
cies so criticized to-day. Nevertheless the theories like
these tendencies are closely connected with one another.
Men are inclined to humiliate reason in favor of instinct,
to subordinate clear intelligence to some sort of obscure
intelligence, and at the same time it is this obscure intelli-
gence, this mysterious will of the instinct which would
justify the revolts of the individual against the objection-
able yoke of social laws.
Since our instincts know much more than our reason
it only remains to follow them and the impulse of our appe-
tites will lead us more surely than reason ever could.
What for instance do we find at the bottom of the
modern "feminist" movement if not the rebellion of desires
against the requirements of domestic duties ? Our theaters
are exhibiting a new ethics of love ; may it not be a return
to the immodesty of former times?
Certainly there is no lack of direct causes to account
for this impulse of individualism with its extreme conse-
quences, the dissolution of morals, the ruin of the family,
the relaxation of all social bonds. We might refer to the
rapid changes in economical and material conditions of
modern life, but it is curious to note the sort of parallel
progress which makes our most popular philosophies act
in the same way as these external conditions simply by vir-
tue of their principles from which they themselves do not
directly draw the application.
Under whatever name we classify these philosophies
they clearly proclaim themselves anti-intellectualists and,
if I may be allowed the word, instinctivists. The uncon-
scious and instinct are closely connected, because of the
character common to both of restraining the power or rea-
son and consequently of restricting the ground of practical
liberty. Thus the way opens to a new fatalism, a fatalism
"from within" which popular logic is no less able accurately
276 THE MONIST.
to deduce from the given premises than is the critical
scholar.
Moreover, these comparisons are in no wise directed to
condemning wholesale the philosophies under discussion.
I do not in the least underrate the value of the ingenious
and delicate analyses which they furnish us under the pen
of a William James or a Bergson, nor do I censure the mys-
ticism to which they are accused of tending. Human
thought protects all its rights, even the right of renouncing
itself and the truth is not so easily grasped that we shall
ever be able to feel assured against uncertainty or against
error.
Various criticisms have pointed out two especially se-
rious dangers in pragmatism, namely, moral materialism
and the tendency to anarchy. The lamented William James
was hardly able to defend himself from the first accusation ;
it is enough to restore to our nature the noble altruistic or
ideal tendencies which are no less essential to it than the
selfish ones. It would be still more difficult for the prag-
matists to defend themselves from the second charge which
is that of submitting truth to the fluctuations of "personal"
experience. The experience of the individual would not
acquire the right to raise itself against the social experience
were it not for the superior value attributed to instinct, to
sentiment; and it "would not be able to become associated
with it again except by ceasing to depend on pure instinct
in order to become conscious effort in the direction of the
convergence of minds.8 The ambiguity of this situation
therefore would still result from the current abuse of the
notion of the unconscious, of the excessive value attributed
to unconsciousness and vague instincts over self-conscious
reason.
8 See in the Revue philosophique, January 1911, the article "L'idee de
verite" by Andre Laland, who knows all that can be known of modern prag-
matism and has made a careful study of it. Likewise the articles of the editor
in The Monist, collected under the title Truth on Trial, (Chicago, 1911).
ABUSES OF THE NOTION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 2/7
I do not deny in the least, I repeat, the importance of
the psychical phenomena comprised in the terms uncon-
scious, subconscious or subliminal. Being inseparable from
our physiological constitution they maintain an essential
part in our life and assure us a considerable economy of
effort in the interest of activity. But I hardly see mo-
tives strong enough to require us to exaggerate this role
to the point of destroying to any extent that of intelligence
itself.
Fatality in the creations of language, fatalism or pure
accident in history, chance echo in the inspirations of the
human race, omnipotence of instinct and individual senti-
ments in social life — all these are so many allied forms of
one point of view which certainly is not new in the history
of philosophical thought but to which modern psychology,
trained as it is in the school of pathology, has come to lend
a peculiar force.
Is it then so necessary constantly to contrast intelli-
gence with sentiment ? Why must we cross so deep a preci-
pice between our instinctive and our intellectual being?
Might there not be a continuity between the two and would
it rather not be as wrong to say that instinct enters into
reason as that reason enters into instinct?
Let us keep ourselves from extremes. To look upon
these things in the noblest way let us establish even in our
thought that sort of rhythm or of balance which marks
action of every kind. The old ideas do not die. They are
reanimated when they seem extinct, and perhaps the day
is near when the intellect will be exalted anew with the
same zeal with which it has been depreciated.
LUCIEN ARREAT.
PARIS, FRANCE.
THE IDEAL AND LIFE.
BY FRIEDRICH SCHILLER.
SMOOTH, and ever clear, and crystal-bright,
Flows existence zephyr-light,
In Olympus where the blest recline.
Moons revolve and ages pass away,
But unchanged, 'mid ever-rife decay,
Bloom the roses of their youth divine.
Man has but a sad choice left him now,
Sensual joy and soul-repose between;
But upon the great Celestial's brow
Wedded is their splendor seen.
Wouldst thou here be like a deity,
In the realm of death be free;
Never seek to pluck its garden's fruit!
On its beauty thou may'st feed thine eye;
Soon the impulse of desire will fly
And enjoyment's transient bliss pollute.
E'en the Styx that nine times flows around
Ceres' child's return could not delay;
But she grasped the apple — and was bound
Evermore by Orcus' sway.
Fate's dark power our bodies claims alone
Nor ought else can ever own.
Form is never bound by time's design.
She the gods' companion, blest and bright
THE IDEAL AND LIFE. 279
Liveth in eternal realms of light
'Mongst the deities, herself divine.
Wouldst thou on her pinions soar on high,
Throw away the earthly and its woe!
To the ideal realm for refuge fly
From this narrow life below.
Ever young, crowned with Perfection's ray
Free from any taint of clay,
Man's eternal archetype lives here.
So life's silent phantoms brightly gleam
While they wander near the Stygian stream.
And in heaven e'en she did thus appear,
The Immortal one, ere she descended
Down to the Sarcophagus so drear.
While in life the conflict's never ended,
Victory for aye is here.
Not to free us from the stress of life,
But to strengthen for new strife,
Are here offered wreaths of victory.
Though we fain would rest, yet stern and strong,
Ruthlessly life carries us along
On the whirlpool of time's restless sea.
But when courage flags and when our soul
Feels the limits of its senses dull,
From the hill tops of the Beautiful
We behold the longed-for goal.
Life demands to govern and defend;
Wrestlers bravely must contend
On the path of fortune or renown.
Boldness clashes daringly with force,
And the rolling chariots thunder down
To the goal in dust-beclouded course.
28O THE MONIST.
Valor only gains the prizes great
In the races of the hippodrome.
T'is the strong alone who conquer Fate
While the weak are overcome.
Yet life's stream while rocks its course enclose
Wildly foams 'gainst crags; it flows
Gentle and meanders sinuous,
Where its way through beauty's realm it wendeth.
In its silver mirror its wave blendeth
Both Aurora and blithe Hesperus.
Warring passions here have respite found.
Reconciled by art they now appear
Gracefully in mutual union bound
And no enemy is near.
If with ardor genius createth,
Soul with lifeless marble mateth,
To dead stuff through beauteous form gives worth ;
Then let energy strain every nerve
'Till the brutal elements will serve
And the artist's noble thought bring forth.
Only he who seeks with toilsome glow
Hears the murmuring spring of hidden truth ;
Only to the valiant chisel's blow
Yields the marble block uncouth.
When we enter into beauty's spheres
Dead inertia disappears;
Of the dust it is and dust it sways
But the statue as from nothing sprung
From dead mass seems without labor wrung.
There it stands before the ravished gaze,
Quelled are struggles and all doubts allayed
At the mastery thus nobly won ;
THE IDEAL AND LIFE. 28l
And whatever might have still betrayed
Human frailty, now 'tis gone.
When in helpless nakedness man faces
Law's keen search, his pride abases;
Guilt e'en to the Holiest draws nigh.
Stoutest virtue quails before truth's ray;
The ideal unattained and high
Leaves behind deeds of our noblest day.
Mortals all their final goal will miss
For no ferry neither bridge will bear
Over this deep sundering abyss,
And no anchor catches there.
But by fleeing from the sense-confined
To the freedom of the mind
The dread specter of our fear hath flown.
Then the deep abyss at once will fill;
When we God receive into our will,
He descendeth from his lordly throne.
Servile minds alone who scorn law's sway
Need the castigation of its rod,
And with man's resistance dies away
E'en the sovereignty of God.
If by misery your soul is grasped
Like Laocoon enclasped
In the dreadful coil of vicious snakes,
Then 'tis right to show your indignation;
To the welkin ring man's lamentation
Till a tender heart for pity breaks.
Let the voice of nature's awe prevail,
Hush loud joy and let her face grow pale;
The immortal soul subdued will be
Thus by holy sympathy.
282 THE MONIST.
But in yonder regions of pure form
Realms serene, e'er free from storm,
Misery and sorrow cease to rave.
There our sufferings no more pierce the soul,
Tears of anguish there no longer roll,
Nought remains but mind's resistance brave.
Painted on the canvas of the cloud,
Beauteous as the rainbow's colored hue,
E'en on melancholy's mournful shroud
Rest reigns in empyreal blue.
Heracles in deep humiliation,
Faithful to his destination,
Served the coward in life's footsore path.
Labors huge wrought he, Zeus' noble scion:
He the hydra slew and hugged the lion,
And to free his friends faced Pluto's wrath ;
Crossed the Styx in Charon's doleful bark;
Willingly he suffered Hera's hate,
Bore her burdens, grievous care and cark
And in all he showed him great,
'Til his course was run, 'til he in fire
Stripped the earthly on the pyre,
'Til a god he breathed empyreal airs.
Blithe he now in new-got power of flight
Upward soars from joyful height to height,
And as an ill dream sink earth's dull cares.
Glory of Olympus him enfoldeth,
'Mongst the gods transfigured standeth he,
From the nectar cup which Hebe holdeth
Drinks he immortality.'
TRANSLATOR'S COMMENTS.
Whether or not philosophical poetry exists is a problem which
has often been ventilated and is mostly answered in the negative, but
THE IDEAL AND LIFE. 283
we beg to differ from this view although we grant that philosophical
poetry will necessarily be caviar to the general. Philosophers or
philosophically minded thinkers only will take to it, and so its public
will necessarily be limited.
Poetry differs from other literature, especially from scientific
exposition, in that it expresses the writer's sentiments, and so any-
thing that affects our emotional nature may became an object of
poetry. The poet speaks from his heart and appeals to the hearts
of his audience. He does not argue, he stirs the soul. If then philo-
sophical thoughts are capable of arousing and elevating our souls
and of inspiring us with the glow of enthusiasm, they may fitly find
poetical expression.
Goethe's Faust in its main tendency as well as in many of its
details, and to some extent Shakespeare's Hamlet, are philosophical ;
so also are quite a number of poems of Goethe, of Schiller, of Herder
and of Lessing, but among them Schiller's hymn, "The Ideal and
Life" takes a high rank, and we offer here to our readers a new
translation.
* * *
No better recommendation for this anthem of Schiller's philos-
ophy can be given than the fact that the poet's friend Humboldt,
a philologist of no mean standing, admired it and read it in the
secrecy of his study as a devotee would read a psalm or say his
prayers.
So far as we know there exist three translations of this most
difficult poem, one by Bulwer Lytton, another by Edgar A. Bowring
and a third one by William Norman Guthrie. Those of Bulwer
Lytton and Mr. Guthrie change the meter from the trochaic into
an iambic rhythm, although the more ponderous cadence was most
probably chosen on purpose by Schiller in preference to the easier
and forward-running measure.
* * *
A few remarks are needed in explanation of Schiller's philos-
ophy here presented in poetic form.
Schiller distinguishes between material concrete actuality and
the realm of pure form. The former is the world of sense, or pain
and struggle, of sin and disease, and of death, the latter has its
existence in thought and serves us in life as the source of our ideals.
The realm of pure form knows nothing of the ills of life and it
finds its revelation in art, "on the hill tops of the beautiful."
284 THE MONIST.
Schiller's sympathy with ancient Greece makes him utilize the
figures of the Greek gods as the eternal types of pure forms, and he
introduces the myth of Proserpine (or Persephone), the daughter
of Ceres, to illustrate how pure form is incarnated into bodily exist-
ence and how the joy of sense, the eating of the apple,1 renders the
goddess subject to the sway of Orcus, the god of death.2
Among the pure forms are mentioned first (in Stanza i) the
celestials, the Olympian gods, then pure form herself,3 further the
archetype of manhood4 in its ideal perfection, and lastly the souls
of the departed, who have stripped off their mortal coil and wander
as transfigured phantoms on the Stygian stream.8
Life is a struggle and must be such; the ideal remains un-
attained, and even the holiest is not free from guilt. But in art, in
the realm of the ideal, we enjoy the rapture of a beatific vision; we
find comfort in the beautiful and all misery disappears.
In conclusion Schiller describes Hercules, the ideal man of an-
cient Greece, characterizing him in words that remind one of Christ,
the Logos made flesh, and this very consummation of Schiller's
philosophy proves that his line of thought is nearer to Christianity
than the pagan imagery of the poem seems to warrant. P. c.
1 In the Greek myth it is a pomegranate, but Schiller prefers the more
modern and popular view that it was an apple.
* Stanza 2, lines 7-10 and Stanza 4, 6-8.
"Stanza 3, lines 2, 3, and 4-6, "Form, the god's companion herself
divine."
4 Stanza 4, lines 1-3.
* Stanza 4, lines 4-10.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
THE FINITENESS OF THE WORLD.
No problem has perhaps been more fascinating than the ques-
tion as to the nature of infinity. Infinity is commonly considered as
the mystery of mysteries, and such phrases as "the finite can not
comprehend the infinite" have become commonplace arguments of
agnosticism.
However, it seems to me that the nature of infinity is frequently
misunderstood, and we ought to bear in mind that infinity is not
and can never be an object of our sense experience. It is a demand
or postulate of thought. If in mathematics, for instance, we con-
struct a mathematical space as a scope of our operations we omit
all particular and concrete existences and retain only the abstract
idea of motion. So long as this motion can be continued we think
of its field as being without limit, and this possibility is called in-
finitude. Accordingly infinitude is not a thing but a potential function.
Infinitude is never actualized, it is thought of as being actualizable
and from these considerations we conclude that mathematical space
is infinite. If we have progressed into the unlimited field of our
operations we can resume our motion and can continue our progress
without ever coming to an end.
Infinitude is primary in our thought operations. Before we
start to move from a given point the scope of our motion stretches
before us endlessly in all possible directions, a condition which we
call "infinite space." The finite is secondary. It is the product of
starting from one definite place and halting at another place. Sects
or limited lines, figures possessing boundaries, are definite products
of mathematical constructions, and they are comparable to the con-
crete existences of the actual world.
There is one point to be heeded: it is this that every concrete
existence carries in itself this potential factor which we call infini-
tude. We have seen that when the mathematician begins to build
286 THE MONIST.
up his geometrical figures, he presupposes the idea of pure form,
of the relational, of a scope of motion, which, as has been demon-
strated elsewhere,* has been obtained by abstraction ; but we must
understand that the same is true of any objective existence, of par-
ticular and concrete things, and also of the world as a whole. The
prevalence of motion presupposes a scope of motion, and unless
there is some particular cause to set a limit to motion, the scope
of motion is infinite. The same is true not only as to distance, but
also to complications, combinations with other particular things
and the innumerable modes of motion, which means that part and
parcel of reality is its potentiality to pass through an unlimited
chain of changes. We learn from this that potentiality is not a
concrete bodily thing, but must after all be regarded as an efficient
factor in the concrete world.
All the possible operations of a finite and definitely limited thing,
its combinations with other concrete existences, its possible modes
of motion, are infinite. In other words, though the maybe is not
a material entity, it is a true factor in the material world, and in the
same way space, though not a concrete thing, is an indispensable
condition of actuality. In this sense man too, though a finite being,
is a child of the infinite, and before every one of us stretches this
grand mysterious realm of infinitude.
In spite of the awe which the unfathomable abyss of infinity
has for us, I repeat that the idea itself contains nothing unclear,
nothing contradictory, nothing mystical or mystifying, and in the
realm of thought the idea of infinitude is simpler than the idea of
any finite existence. We must only bear in mind that infinitude is
never a thing but a potential, never a concrete and particular object
but a function in operation which is thought without end.
In applying these considerations to the problem of the infinitude
of the world we can only say that however unmeasurable the cosmos
may be its concrete existence can not be infinite. The globe on
which we live is a definite amount of matter with definite bound-
aries which, however, we may draw as we see fit, including or
excluding the atmosphere, including or excluding the moon, ac-
cording to the principle which for a special purpose we lay down
as a standard of measurement. The same is true of the solar
system and of the system of the Milky Way as well as of the
probable existence of a higher system of many Milky Ways which
by gravity or otherwise may be interrelated. One thing is sure
* See the author's The Foundations of Mathematics, pp. 61 ff.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 287
that the entire cosmos of all concrete existences with its Milky Way
or other systems of a still higher order, must be finite, for otherwise
they could not be concrete. The concreteness indicates particularity
possessed of definite limits, and thus we must come a priori to the
conclusion that reality is necessarily finite. But this reality, as well
as every atom, contains the potential function of infinitude. There
is no boundary to its scope of motion ; there is no limit to its possible
formation and reformation ; the infinite is always the background of
the finite. The maybe is always the frame which surrounds the is.
The law of the conservation of matter and energy is no longer
tenable if we understand by matter the chemical "elements" or the
"mass" of the physicist. We know that chemical elements originate.
The astronomer can watch their genesis in the several nebulas
which we might fittingly call the gigantic retorts of creation. Simi-
larly we may say that actual motion or kinetic energy originates
from a state of stress or potential motion by some process which
starts a world motion. As electricity is produced in a dynamo by
shearing, as it were, positive and negative electricity, so the world-
ether may have been in a state of rest until by some event a process
was started which from this latent state produced the actual com-
motion needed for the procreation of the stellar universe.
The law of the conservation of matter and energy accordingly
holds good only if we interpret its meaning in a broad sense, and
the question of the infinity of existence would then be whether or
not the amount of world-ether is limited, and the answer seems to
be that it is a definite and concrete existence which is unmeasurable
and inexhaustible but may be, or rather must be, of a definite
amount. Should we assume that the existence of the ether is not
definite, not concrete nor particular, we would have to attribute to
it the mysterious qualities of the mathematical zero and only in this
case should we be driven back to the old notion of the origin of the
world from nothing.
Such are our notions of the infinitude or finiteness of the world
from the standpoint of philosophy, and what Professor Arrhenius*
says on this subject from the standpoint of the naturalist would bear
out our considerations which are raised upon a purely a priori con-
sideration of the nature of both infinity and finiteness. The problems
which the idea of finiteness involves do not seem to me ripe for
solution. They consist mainly in the consideration that if the world
space is infinite while the world is finite, it stands to reason that
* See his article "The Infinity of the Universe" in the present number.
288 THE MONIST.
we ought to lose both its matter and energy by scattering it into the
infinite empty space, which, we must assume, surrounds this finite
world. But assuming that concrete existence is always finite and
that ether itself is concrete, which means that every particle of ether
is always at a definite time in a definite space, we need not jump
at the conclusion that actual existence scatters. We know that
energy radiates into ether, but if we assume that the amount of
ether itself is finite there is no reason to declare that the ether will
scatter into the empty space in which it swims. It may be that the
empty space possesses qualities which are radically different from
the space filled by ether or by gross matter. It may act as a limit
from which particles of ether are repelled and into which the radiant
energy of light can not penetrate. Until we possess instruments
by which we can empty space of ether itself and study the char-
acter of an absolutely empty space we can only conjecture what
reaction matter and energy may suffer at the end of finite existence.
The time when physicists will be able to experiment with absolutely
empty space is not near at hand, and it seems best not to speculate
on the subject where any proposition must be a mere guess.
EDITOR.
THE DIVINE FIVE-FOLD TRUTH.1
It is the holy stillness of night. The world with its busy cares
is asleep. And that is the witching hour of divine philosophy.
In the silence, a Spirit comes to me and bids me write. Is it in-
spiration? Or is it the fever of the night's vigil? I do not know.
But, somehow, my soul seems calm and I seem to see in a sort
of mystic way the meaning of things which were dark before. At
least I will obey the muse to-night and trust in the leading of the
Spirit, for this seems like no human insight. Go on, sweet Muse.
The night is young. I would feign revel in glorious discourse. At
other times I have spoken through the long processes of logic.
To-night, I would feign speak as an oracle.
THE DIVINE TRUTH OF "BEING."
First of all, there comes to me the old and divine truth of
"being" — not static, inert "being," but centers of energy, conscious
1 A more technical statement of the five-fold truth can be found in various
studies already published. These include "Time and Reality," Psych. Rev.
Monograph Series, No. 26; "Space and Reality," Journ. Phil., Psych, and Sci.
Meth., Ill, pp. 533, 589; "Consciousness and Reality," ibid., V, pp. 169, 225;
"Energy and Reality," ibid., V, pp. 365, 393; and "The Ought and Reality,"
Int. Jour. Ethics, XVII, p. 454.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 289
and unconscious, interlocking and interacting in space. These cen-
ters, through their dynamic, mysterious threads hang together as
a whole. You can pass on the light beams from one to the other,
even to the last. And they swing together in their rhythmic way in
cosmic space. And part, at least, have life and mind and can catch
the meaning of their relationship.
Spinoza, the God-intoxicated, had a vision of the universe as
two winding corridors ; each variegated fresco of one is imitated in
the other, for the order of thought and things is the same. Each
voice in one has its echo in the other, for the mind is the idea of the
body. Proceed as you may through the infinite windings of one, no
window opens into the other. But if eye hath not seen nor ear
heard, and if it hath not entered into the thought of man that there
is another half-world, is it more than the shadow of man's mind?
And if any one doubts the existence of the other corridor, who
shall prove it? Spinoza, in the passion of his fancy, supposed that
if things exist and if we become conscious of things, then things
must be repeated. But things are just such as we must meet them
and appreciate them in the wide, common corridor of experience.
No blind wall separates experience from the world of its interest
and love ; thoughts and things are part of one divine context. It
is through thoughts that we can use things, and things become sig-
nificant by entering into the context of thought. Thought and things
are not two halls, but relationships within one dynamic living world.
There is only one window to the significance of the world of things
and that is thought, though things may hang in their own context,
without being thought. Of what sort "being" is, of how many kinds
it consists, whether psychological, electrical or some other kind of
energy, and what constancies or equivalences it has, lo! this must
be written in the books of science.
But "being," as falsely supposed by many an inspired genius,
is not the only door to reality. It has been the habit of humanity
thus far to emphasize some aspects and read out other aspects of
reality, according to its temperamental, intellectual or practical bias.
In this it has usually been right in the importance of the aspects it
has read in, and wrong in the aspects it has read out. Thus the
Eleatics of all time are quite right, that there must be "being" —
stuff, constancies, thickness, grist. But because there must be thick-
ness, must there be absolute thickness, absolute constancy? Could
not science and practical life get on with relative constancy? So far
THE MONIST.
as our experience goes, we do so get on ; and in a manner find our
way.
THE DIVINE TRUTH OF TIME.
Instead of writing a poem to the solid, as Parmenides does,
why not write a poem, as Heraclitus does, to divine flux, with all its
sadness and novelty? Our hopes and aspirations, as well as our
doubts and fears, are built upon the consciousness that the universe
is not absolutely made, but in the making; that the future may di-
vorce the present, however firmly thought and its object are wedded
now — sometimes by altering our attitudes, when the facts we intend
seem constant ; sometimes by altering the facts in conformity with
our more constant ideals. But our attitudes are facts, too, part of
the dance of attention in the ever shifting focus of object and inter-
est in the drama of experience. However viewed, it is true that
reality is vibrant, that it is ever in solution, that it glows. And no
static view can ever piece together this motion and life of real
process. We can hold only part of reality in the net of our concepts,
the rest trickles through. And while the constant residue is more
important for science, what trickles through may be the more char-
acteristic of life. True, you can not prove from the fact of change,
any particular change or rate of change, nor deny any particular
constancy. But you can prove that if there is change, there must al-
ways be change. For, in the infinite aeons, if time or change were
finite, it must have run its course untold ages ago. Change must be
taken as real and underived, prior to all our ideal measurements,
if it exists at all. This change value, I call time. Let the paeon be
chanted to eternal time — double visaged time, with hoar frost on the
brow, looking backward, and the fire of youth in the face, looking
forward, fading Autumn and budding Spring in one.
If we center our interest on the flowing, the novel, the irrever-
sible and the surprising, we can easily fall into the mood that only
the flow is real ; that the flux is absolute and that there is no such
thing as constancy, or truth even in part; that the transforming of
the stuff of meanings and of matters is the real and that uniformi-
ties are but illusions. With Omar Khayyam we may come to say:
"One thing at least is certain — This life flies :
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The flower that once has blown forever dies."
Yes, all that is born in the pangs of earthly beauty shall fade and
die. This would be infinitely sad, if spring and youth were not re-
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 29!
born with new beauty with the turn of the year. But while "the bird
is on the wing," why deny such seeming perching, such constancy as
there is, such prediction as experience proves?
THE DIVINE TRUTH OF SPACE.
And why should not some one write a poem to the void — the
glorious expanse of space ? For what a congested world this would
be if it were condensed into a mathematical point — no looking
at each other, no embraces, no starry heavens, no gravitational equi-
poises of swinging masses, no differentiation of individual centers,
no canvas for the cosmic artist to spread his sunsets on, no marshal-
ing of the ranks of tonal harmonies, as a result of this absolute con-
densation, all for want of room. If you have space, you can put as
many holes into it as may be necessary, shooting it through with
energetic centers, conscious and non-conscious. You can stretch
your gravitational threads, you can pour in your luminiferous ether
and spread out your electro-magnetic field ; you can fill it as full as
imagination and convenience may dictate. I would not make space
everything, carving a universe out of it by means of geometrical
figures as some have done. But you must presuppose your space,
which you so thanklessly ignore, to have your side-by-sideness of
centers, your free mobility, your perfect conductivity. No hin-
drances there to the wheels of Charles's Wain, no opaqueness to the
mercurial messengers of light, — only sublime distances making feeble
man's artificial measures, where constellations dart through space to
the Pleiades. Viewed from the side of space, your bodies and ener-
gies become interferences — departures from the pure limit with which
we start. To divine, neglected space, bespangled with many a star
for diadem and begirdled with lightning, let my song go forth.
THE DIVINE TRUTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
And what shall I say of consciousness, illuminating nature, the
manifold world of process and its flow? To be sure, it would not
appear except for the complexity of the world of process — its organs
and contexts of relations. But they in turn would have no signifi-
cance or value apart from the divine light of consciousness. It was
a noble insight, that of the Sankyah philosophy in far off days and
climes. It is only as nature (Prakriti) develops senses and intellect
on the one hand, to match the motley variety of the world on the
other, that consciousness can illume the world. It is Nature that
furnishes the subject and the content too. Consciousness is a neutral
292 THE MONIST.
light. It only adds the awareness. It cannot be responsible for
plurality of egos, any more than for unity, as the Sankyah supposed.
Nor does nature vanish with consciousness, but becomes significant
nature, aware of its pulse beats and its destiny. In itself, conscious-
ness has no variety, no color, no direction. But with it comes to light
the color and variety and meaning of this whole checkered, flowing
world. No wonder the Sankyah philosophers, with their longing for
mystical peace, for the negation of strife and variety, centered their
gaze on neutral consciousness and allowed nature to vanish with the
abstraction of attention.
How long before the mysterious awakening ; what vicissitudes
of change; what migration of spirit through cosmic spaces; what
dizzy ages of evolution of organs and of mind before my spirit saw
the light, who can tell? But when consciousness does illumine the
patient face of nature, what beauty of significance is there — ex-
pressed in part ; in part, vaguely felt and only half understood. What
opportunity is there for sharing in the directive creation of the
divine destiny, which nursed us to this end? Elsewhere, no doubt,
the light has shone before; soon the light here shall flicker and go
out again, as the soul goes forth to its new mysterious birth. All
this — the before and after — is hidden in the night of our ignorance,
but how glorious to be awake just now, to catch to-night this glimpse
of the eternal procession of the ages. Whatever may be the destiny
of mind in the cosmic whirl of change, thank God for this.
When I take my journey in the sea of energies, midst ethers
and star dust, perchance through skies and clouds to stars unknown,
perhaps to linger here midst dance of circumstance, who can tell
when and how I shall appear? But I believe that the light of con-
sciousness shall shine for me again ; that I shall see anew the glory
of God's world ; that I shall feel the sympathetic touch in the march
of the aeons as I never have before. If so, what does it matter how
long I sleep, waiting for the call of God's energies to the beauteous
vision. To consciousness, lighting the world, in one flash bringing
the divine and human face to face, let my hymn be sung.
THE DIVINE TRUTH OF FORM.
And, then, what hymn can I sing worthy of the glorious divin-
ity of form? For who would want a chaos of moving pictures like
the nightmare of a dream ? Even the consciousness of such a crazy
quilt of a dream would be less to be desired than the annihilation of
Nirvana. But we have the conviction that some facts are worth
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 293
more. In the shifting and relative shapes of the flux, the soul comes
to the insight, now and then, of eternal beauty. Restless sound is
woven into harmony, the chaos of color into divine form and expres-
sion. The world of things, to some extent, can be recreated into the
world of ideals. Who can wonder that Plato found the idea of
form, of significant unity, diviner than all the flux in space and would
allow to worth alone the prize of being?
Let the materialist claim that beauty is a physiological relation ;
that it depends on a certain structure and its motor reactions. He
does not contradict the diviner insight that form — significant rela-
tionship— is an original and underived aspect of reality. True, re-
ality must prepare the spirit for its realization and appreciation by
preparing the organism. Beauty and right, as the result of survival
selection, must come to us first as intuitions, before we can under-
stand or separate the form from the matter. But it may still be true
that beauty suffuses the whole of things; that the flux has worth
only as it is sifted through eternal form ; that nature's beauty and,
still better, our conscious creation of beauty, is the imitation of a
reality of which we have but a vague intuition. Nature produces
lavishly, and some of its gifts also have form as read or appreciated
by human nature. This is not mere chance. It is part of the selec-
tive evolution of reality, for human nature is part of nature. Beauty
is but nature become conscious of its formal character through its
more developed organs of human nature. Thus do nature and hu-
man nature conspire to produce the sunset and the symphony.
As the music of each passing moment dies into the recessional
of the past, one thing remains amidst the changes and chances of
clashing masses and souls — the direction of the process. That, at
least, is absolute, eternal and divine. What is this direction? Is
it more than that the universe in patches expresses ideals and so
becomes immortalized? Is there a grand finale? If time is infinite,
this should have come to pass infinite ages ago. Yet for a superior
insight, the patch-work may be a scheme. That it is so remains for
us an act of faith — a faith which, like every faith, must be justified by
its consequences.
The conclusion of my poem, which shall remain unwritten, shall
be that I own the supplementing concreteness, the real thickness
of life as all of these, interpenetrating in one common world. Real-
ity reveals itself in five different ways. It has five windows. It
reveals itself to our purposive endeavor as a world of restless ener-
gies with their relative uniformities. It reveals itself further as
294 THE MONIST.
time, which in the flux of selves and things, gives the lie to the past
and creates for the soul new mansions of meaning and value. We
must also orient ourselves to space, the play-ground of energies
where the heavens spread out like a curtain and clouds are moved
back and forth as draperies. Under certain conditions of complexity
and intensity, the whole is lighted up by consciousness; and lastly
running through it all as the invisible warp of the many-colored woof
there must be form — the direction which our finite minds strive to
unravel. This is the Divine Five-Fold Truth — the five doors which
we must enter if we would bask in the divine illuminating wisdom.
The night is far spent. The intoxication of soul is wearing off.
The cock crows, announcing that the matins is at hand. The goddess
of drowsy slumber will soon lift her silver veil from off the naked
earth, and depart. The bustling, jostling, wakeful, petty cares will
return with the dawn. Thank you, Spirit, for divine philosophy.
May it prove sane when viewed in the glaring light of day. At least
the bliss was great, while it lasted. And now into Thy care I commit
my mind, while I, too, join the unconscious world in the soft arms
of sleep.
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS. JOHN ELOF BOODIN.
EDITORIAL COMMENT.
John Elof Boodin, professor of philosophy at the Kansas State
University, an ardent pragmatist and personal friend of the late
Professor William James, writes in the current number of The
Monist a delightful essay on "The Divine Five-fold Truth" from
the pragmatist point of view. He writes in the letter accompanying
the manuscript, "As you seemed to like my 'Philosophic Tolerance'
I venture to send you another literary attempt." And he is right.
Our opposition to pragmatism is not a condemnation of its methods
but only a protest that it is a consummation of philosophical devel-
opment. Pragmatism like agnosticism is not a movement belonging
properly in the realm of philosophy, but an outburst of literary
enthusiasm sprinkled over with psychology and philosophy; the
former not without appreciation of pathological phenomena, the
latter in the line of subjectivism and easy-going pluralism. Our
objection to pragmatism lies in its claim to be the only philosophy,
involving a wholesale condemnation of all former philosophies, ab-
solutism, dogmatism, monism, rationalism, and kindred isms, as
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 2Q5
based on unwarranted conclusions. This attitude applies not only
to philosophy but is extended to science itself.
In contrast to pragmatism we claim that science, the search for
and attainment of objective knowledge, is possible; and this involves
that philosophy also as the science of the sciences is not a phantom
of the human mind. But while philosophy as a science is a possi-
bility, and while pragmatism's claim to be the only true philosophy
must be rejected, we would not be opposed to the pragmatist in-
dulging in his conceptions of life and the world. Professor James
and his followers fight windmills when they insist that all former
philosophies believed in absolute truth, in absolute relations, in ab-
solute being, involving that there must be absolute thickness, ab-
solute constancy, etc.
It is true enough that truth grows; but the new truth builds
upon the old truth, and if the old truth be really true, its nucleus will
remain in the new truth. But for all that, the attitude of a man,
his temperamental bias, is an important item in our conception of
the world and one that should not be neglected. It is worth study-
ing and it offers us an inexhaustible material for poetry.
It would be wrong therefore to say that because philosophy as
a science is possible, our philosophical literature should be limited
to strictly scientific works. Not every man is a scientist. On the
contrary, scientists constitute but a very small minority among
rational beings, and therefore there ought to be non-scientific litera-
ture. Because mathematics, chemistry, astronomy and other sciences
are possible, shall we deny the right of existence to Homer, Shake-
speare, Goethe and the many essayists? The poet too has a right
to enter into the field of philosophy and to express his thoughts as
to how the world-conception offered him by science stirs his soul.
The Monist is not limited to the philosophy of science. Its
columns are open to the philosophical conception of scientific results,
to religious views as modified by scientific inquiry, and also to art
and poetry in their philosophical aspects. p. c.
REPLY TO EDITORIAL COMMENT.
To the Editor of The Monist:
I have read with interest and appreciation the editorial com-
ments on "The Five-fold Truth." I congratulate The Monist on
its breadth of scope. It is one of the few philosophical journals in
296 THE MONIST.
which Plato would have been permitted to express his various
moods. And while the rest of us dare not aspire to the class of
Plato, it is pleasant for us, too, to give rein now and then to poetic
fancy. It is true that we must not confuse poetry and science, but
it is also true that science has its own poetry. While pragmatism
has not been insensible to the softer muses of literature, it has not,
I think, been indifferent to the severer muses of science. It is a
pleasure to be mentioned, in whatever way, with Wm. James —
not the late, but the ever inspiring genius in American thought.
Perhaps no one's friendship has meant so much to me, and I believe
that his guidance is in the right direction. Philosophy, however,
is necessarily individualistic in its efforts, even if not in its results;
and much as I am indebted to others, I do not want any one to be
responsible for my small attempts, be they successful or unsuccess-
ful. Truth must be judged coldly on its merits, irrespective of
personal or party affiliations. It would indeed be presumptuous to
ignore the past. One cannot defeat the genuine results of thought
by giving them labels. We must take them for what they are,
whether called pragmatistic or rationalistic or by some other name.
The great systems of history overlap ; and sometimes the over-
lappings are the more significant parts. In the meantime, while
history is identifying the significant voices in the Babel of many
tongues, we must be tolerant, for only so can we judge sanely.
I thank you for extending this philosophic tolerance to pragmatism.
J. E. BOODIN.
GAMES OF CHANCE.
A Timely Essay on Certain Possibilities of Gallant Living.
The present is a time of blood-tests. Now I should not be a
bit surprised, if, could the facts be known, all times would be found
to have made blood-tests. Not that all have counted the red cor-
puscles or the white corpuscles or have been learned about phago-
cytes and spirochetes and trypanosomes and other agents of health
or disease, but simply this. All must have had some disposition to
trace local symptoms, especially local diseased conditions in the body
personal or let me now add, at once making the suggestion of the blood-
test a metaphor, in the body social, to such a general basis of life
as the blood. Be this, however, as it may, our time with its com-
manding presence, among all its other grounds for importance, is
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 297
a time of the blood-test. Closely and minutely, using the microscope
or something analogous to it when we need to, we are nowadays
constantly looking to the sources and bases of life for our diagnosis
and our treatment of the various conditions, moral as well as phys-
ical, which for good or for ill affect humanity.
And the habit of taking chances, of playing at games of mere
chance for some valuable return, can claim no exemption under the
rule. Apparently only a local trouble manifested in the offensive prac-
tices of "sports," of professional betters and gamblers, it can not
fail to appear in some form or forms, perhaps as cause, perhaps
as effect, of the local ill, in the general life of society. What is
society, in fact, but a natural training-school for the various profes-
sions, for all of these, reputable and disreputable, and what are the
followers of any profession but, if not formally, then informally,
the accredited graduates of some department of that school, being
produced by it and, as with all loyal graduates, ever after supporting
and strengthening it through their influence and example? The
"sports," then, personnel as they are of one of society's informally —
nor am I altogether sure that I need to say informally — authorized
professions, are in some sense, yes, in some very vital sense, only
what all in society are, and they are actually doing what all are
doing. This being true, it must pay to make the timely and very
practical blood-test. It must pay, with such care and minuteness
as the conditions require, to find out wherein the members of society
at large are also playing at games of chance.
What then are the facts? Always such a brutal question! In
what ways, unconsciously or consciously, without deliberation or
with it, are we and our fellows generally, like the betters and the
gamblers, relying on chance for attainment of something worth
while? How are we given to "get rich quick" schemes, whether
the returns sought be money or any other good, such as social posi-
tion, public office, reputation or even moral and spiritual excellence?
In short what games of chance can we find, when we look closely, in
the life-blood of society?
In response to this pressure for the facts, ordinarily hidden from
view, no Latin or Greek names like spirochetes or trypanosomes or
any others are required, although such names I suspect could be
coined very easily if really desired. Without using learned names
then among the games of chance to which, it is true for the most
part unconsciously, the members of society are widely addicted, I
would call attention to the following list, which is rather long and,
298 THE MONIST.
I am sure, will not be found lacking in commonplaceness : careless-
ness, of the hunter, or the automobilist, or the trustee, or of any
of that large class of the people who " didn't mean to do it" or who
wouldn't have meant to, if by chance they had done it ; disorderli-
ness, which in all situations as well as on ship-board involves large
and serious risks ; idleness and indifference of him who dilly-dallies, of
the large majority of the voters of the country, of any one who waives
or just neglects responsibility ; blindness of the sort that doesn't
look ; dependence on circumstances, on neighborhood or companion-
ship, on birth and its assumed privileges ; easy diversion from one's
chosen pursuit, such an insidious foe to any success and so, obviously,
making success, if it come, only a happen ; and, lastly, stale posses-
sion, that is, possession without effort in the attainment and without
use or at least without productive or vital use after the attainment,
being such possession, for a notable example, as that which many if
not most children have in what their parents have acquired. As to
this last game of stale possession and particularly as to the selected
example of it, is it not one of the hardest facts of this or any time
that parentage so often defeats its best purposes by training its chil-
dren to be only — and here is a strange instance of double meaning —
children of fortune?
But also quite consciously and deliberately do the members of
society at large have their games of chance. Thus the habit of enter-
ing upon specific tasks consciously unprepared is widespread. Stu-
dents and teachers the country over are addicted to it but certainly
have no monopoly of its hazards. Conscious incompetence, how-
ever, is even more flagrant and is almost as common. From this
springs quackery, which has its large following not merely in medi-
cine but also in every other occupation or important relation. Public
offices of all sorts are burdened with quackery and its amazing greed,
and all the professions have to contend with it. A Christian clergy-
man, for a timely if not novel illustration, ignorant of modern so-
ciety and its problems and of the effects of modern scholarship on
the history and the interpretation of the Bible or of the church, at
least ought to be made to show cause why he should not be con-
demned for a quack. Surely he is incompetent and probably con-
sciously so, and being incompetent, he is, like any quack, only "play-
ing" for his large stakes. Could irreverence go farther? And, be-
sides lack of preparation and besides conscious incompetence, there
are many other similar games of chance deliberately entered into
and put in competition with reputable occupations. Last in this
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 299
second list, however, I mention "high finance." This needs only
mention and I need not say that it is not by any means confined to
Wall Street and other places of the same sort. Just as there are
"get rich quick" schemes for all things worth while, so are there
"high" methods for them all. Nor is the situation ever improved
by the disposition to eliminate the element of chance through the
use of loaded dice sometimes called "wires" or "pulls." Indeed
high finance might be defined as playing for very large stakes with
loaded dice, the loading being proportional to the elevation. Thus
is one offense easily compounded with another, but suffice it to say
here, high finance and low gambling evidently are extremes that meet.
The suggested blood-test has now been made. The facts are be-
fore us. The habit of playing for possible but really and obviously
unearned returns appears in the blood that courses through all parts
of the social life. And with the habit, let me add, goes a peculiar
and most inordinate greed, mentioned already as belonging to the
particular game of incompetence. By a strange law, the more a
man relies on mere chance the more return or reward he seems to
expect for his trouble. Perhaps, too, his greed, being so justified,
leads him to think that he has a right even to cheat chance by load-
ing his dice. How else, forsooth, can he make sure of the return
that is so obviously — think of the risks! — his due? Splendid casu-
istry, of course. Indeed its argument runs so easily that one has to
wonder if, like much if not all casuistry, it may not possibly be on
the surface of some deep truth. What deep truth may come to
light before we have finished, but now a very practical question
must be met.
Thus, wherein is gambling wrong? Why may we not rely on
chance? Why may we not, whatever the ways and means, get all
we can of all the things that are worth having? If acquisition be
a right or even a duty, why object to any successful method? After
all is said, can there really be anything inherently bad in getting
rich by chance?
In reply to these questions three reasons suggest themselves at
once, and every one of the three is cogent. First, so many have
to fail, the game of chance as in any lottery being successful to the
very few. Second, success, even if it come, is very precarious, the
"new rich" always walking on very thin ice. And, third, downfall,
if it come, is very brutal, since children of fortune ordinarily re-
ceive little if any mercy. But cogent as these three reasons are, not
one of them has for me the weight or the importance of the reason
3OO THE MONIST.
that follows, for not one of them is as direct as this. Fourthly,
then, all games of chance are essentially profane. They are like
so much swearing. Only, their offense is not in spoken word but in
overt action and, I suppose, being in the act, they are really more
seriously profane than words can ever be.
But what can my meaning be ? All games of chance are deeply,
actively profane for just this reason. They drag low one of the
most sacred factors of all life. In the whole purview of human
experience nothing is more sacred than chance. Sometimes we
do call it by another name, such as uncertainty or possibility or
opportunity, or by names even loftier in their suggestion than any
of these, but the name is unimportant. By whatever name it be
called, chance is a very sacred thing. It is, like property or am-
bition or self or sex or many another affair of life, always of course
a basis of much evil, but also always a great good. In it, as in those
other things, the worst and the best in life seem to have a common
ground. As for the worst in chance we have already seen certain
serious diseases in the life-blood of society. Now, with regard to
what is best, with regard to the sanctity of chance, we have to
consider closely and carefully the following:
The spirit of adventure, to begin with, has been a great maker
of history. There had been no pioneers and no frontier without it.
Yet adventure has ever been a game of chance, often a very noble
game of chance. Remove its uncertainties and the many dangers
incident to them and you would rob it of its splendid romance and
in general of a peculiar quality, I know not by what word to de-
scribe that quality, which has always belonged to it and which has
greatly enriched human history and the life that is ever looking
to history for its inspiration. Is there a nation whose patriotism at
any time does not depend for its incentives to new achievement
upon the adventurous spirit of the past? And then, quite akin to
adventure but on one side more practical and on another more in-
tellectual, or say, as to both sides, less romantic and more soberly
rational, there is experiment. Experiment, not less than adventure,
is essentially a relation to the possible but uncertain. Certainty
as to its results would destroy the real although somewhat subtle
courage so important to its interest and worth. In its more in-
tellectual phase experiment has been, as it were, the pioneer at the
frontier of all the great scientific discoveries of any time and of
course particularly of recent times. It is, too, the leading attitude
of mind in the explorations or speculations of all philosophy. In
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 3OI
short, for the intellectual life, experiment, or its great instrument
the "working hypothesis" that is not without its analogies to the
weapons and the armor, including, I suppose, even the sword of
the spirit with which heroes of old went forth in quest of some-
thing worthy or holy, is a sacred thing and is sacred not in spite
of the uncertainty implied in it, but, apart from other grounds, be-
cause of it. And in real life, so called, that is in practical affairs,
in industry and politics, in morals and in all social relations, ex-
periment is as worthy as character, for, at least as much as any-
thing else, it is what makes character.
But experiment and adventure both require courage, which is
nothing more nor less than the ability to face uncertainty or, better
put, to seize on what is merely possible. As has been said in so
many ways for so many centuries, all great success depends on the
' courage of failure. A pretty paradox, but as vitally true and holy
as it is paradoxical! And to courage, among the marks of life as
a noble game of chance, one must add — the novelty being, it is true,
hardly more than in the names — heroism and unselfishness. The
last of these has almost a suspicion of a misnomer, but, without
pausing for any investigation, the heroic or the unselfish person
risks much if not all that he has and so, remembering that a wise
man once went so far as to define philosophy as "a sacred disease,"
in imitation I would now boldly call him that lives heroically and
unselfishly a sacred gambler. Selfishness never risks anything, or
rather it never risks what is the self's own, having little hesitation
in playing fast and loose with what belongs to others, but in all
gallant living there is the deep, pure holiness of the merely pos-
sible. Certainty has a brutality about it or a worldliness that actu-
ally suggests such a man as Thomas, strangely known as the "doubt-
ing Thomas." Poor Thomas insisted on having his dice loaded.
The heroic depths of real doubt were never even suspected by him.
Finally in this noble list I have to mention religion. To define
religion is by no means simple or easy. My notion of it, too, may
be quite different from what many have seemed to think about it.
The feeling of absolute dependence ; apprehension — of course through
some faculty more subtle than that of logical reasoning — of the in-
finite ; pure faith or belief or spiritual vision ; love of God or com-
munion with God ; these have all been ascribed to it, these and much
else besides. Yet somehow none of the many accounts of religion
that are known to me, even when such words, so easily misconstrued,
as faith and belief, are used, really make of it or mean to make of
3O2 THE MONIST.
it a relation to certainty, and with this fact — or should I call it
simply a reflection of my own? — in mind, were I to define religion,
borrowing a phrase already frequently employed here, I should
speak of it as a personal attitude, an always assertive and sometimes
heroic personal attitude, not towards the certain, but towards the
merely possible. Not that certainty may properly be denied to re-
ligion, but, if called upon to choose, keeping in view the more com-
mon usage of terms I must say that possibility rather than certainty
characterizes the object of religious consciousness and the matter
or substance of religious life. To make religion, very much as to
make any of those other things, adventure and experiment and un-
selfishness, a relation to certainty, would be to compromise what is
best in it. The certainty would take from religion its spiritual
purity. Truly God is a spirit, and, if he be a spirit, if he be not
just a perfect being, not merely some one who simply exists and so,
when found, can just be believed in without any effort or assertion
on man's part, that is, without any human demand being made on
the only thing that is truly infinite, namely, the possible, but not
certain, then is religion, and only then, as I think, can religion truly
be, a character-making agent or power. Religion is then a matter
of volition, or what James has called, if I understand him, a "will
to believe." Again, one can not merely have religion or get it, as
some seem to have or get things that just exist, money, for example ;
one can not just find God or confront and recognize him ; on the
contrary, assertively appropriating to oneself and one's life what,
so spiritually real is God's nature, only may be, one must, with a
real effort, worthy as it is heroic, make or will Him. God is, then,
only what men, laboring in the field or in the vineyard of possibility,
are bent, in spite of opposition and real danger, on asserting and
achieving. So subtle a philosopher and mathematician as Pascal,
of the seventeenth century, once advised a young man, to whom he
was writing, to treat the Christian religion and especially the Chris-
tian belief in immortality as a wager probably well worth making;
and, although one's first feeling must be a feeling of resentment
against such a seeming irreverence, yet with reflection must one
not see, even while objecting to Pascal's way of expressing himself
in the language of profane living, that he was near to a deep ap-
preciation of Christianity and of religion in general? But I would
repeat : Religion is a personal attitude, an always assertive and some-
times heroic personal attitude, not towards the certain, but towards
the merely possible.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 303
So, in review, are adventure and experiment and courage and
heroism and unselfishness and even religion itself all games of
chance, but noble games of chance, and we can now understand
clearly how it is that gambling or "playing" for possible but un-
earned returns, be it the gambling of society's accredited professionals
or that of ordinary commonplace men, the gambling laity, who are
careless and disorderly and needlessly blind and incompetent and
often, such is their greed, dishonest in their "play," is essentially
profane, dragging low one of the most sacred factors of all life.
Gambling in any form seriously misuses or abuses just that from
which, properly used, such things as courage and great heroism and
religion have their rise.
But, the profanity of gambling having now been explained with
special reference to its character as a game of chance, there remains
to be said something, at least not less significant, with reference to
the dice — a term that should be taken figuratively, not merely liter-
ally— and to the winnings. He who takes chances, we have been
told, deserves a reward for his risk, for the self-denial of it, and may
accordingly even load the dice on the strength of this desert. So
ran the gambler's argument in casuistry. In this argument, how-
ever, there does lie a great truth, which, if I can succeed in pre-
senting it, will only make the profanity of him who, pretending to
take his chance, would basely cheat chance, appear still more offen-
sive. Thus, truly the self-denial of risk merits a reward, and the
right so constituted may always be protected by such effort to
eliminate chance as the self's own powers of body and mind, openly
and fairly used, may enable. Loading the dice, in other words, is
only the gamblers' lazy and cowardly substitute for what all who
take risks have a right to employ, that is, for what among those
who live gallantly takes the form of fair play, which as I regard
it is made up of personal effort, honesty and the skill that comes
with attention and understanding. That intelligent attention is a
factor of all fair play many men quite forget, but it is surely an
important factor. Fair play, then, also always loads the dice. The
game of life, fairly played, gallantly lived, cannot be a losing game.
Risks do have their rights and their certain winnings and never was
better way, I imagine, of interpreting the time-honored saying that
virtue is its own reward. Virtue is its own reward, if the acts by
which it would explore and exploit the region of possibilty be the
acts of real effort, if honesty pervade them all, and if the under-
standing derived from candid study and close thinking have en-
304 THE MONIST.
lightened them. Virtue's reward, moreover, has always satisfied a
greed not merely for certain goods, but also for still larger possi-
bilities. Whoever wins, be he gambler or gallant, wins the chance
of winning more.
This essay on the possibilities of gallant living may very properly
close with the simple remark that ability to take chances is a power
possessed by every individual. Also, as in the case of any other
power of individuals, it may be spoken of as one of any nation's
important resources. Nations have so-called physical resources,
that is, water-power, coal mines, climate, soil, strategic positions and
the like, but they have also resources of a less tangible yet surely
not less important sort in the peculiar character of their people or
in the more general characters of all human beings and of these
subtler resources the ability to take chances, is, I would assert with
great emphasis, of inestimable value. Carefully protect and de-
velop this power by proper training in the home and by a public
education at school or in the civil and political and industrial life
or in the church that will induce habits of care and orderliness and
a disposition to honest thought and effort and to independence in
both of these, and the nation will grow and grow strong, for its
dice will be honestly loaded. Waste this great power with gambling,
I do not mean the so-called professional gambling, for that is only
local and relatively insignificant, but the gambling which is manifest
in the circulating life-blood of the people at large, in the shiftless-
ness and the shoddyism, in the "get rich quick" schemes of all sorts
and the high finance and in all the other profane uses of a life of
chance, and the waste, whatever be the apparent winnings, will end
in weakness and disaster. The modern nation is indeed rich, rich
in the power of taking chances, but out of the wastefulness that has
gone on for so long and that is so widespread there comes a call
that must not go unheeded, for men who, instead of gambling, will
play fairly and live gallantly.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. ALFRED H. LLOYD.
WORK TO BE DONE IN BUDDHIST CRITICISM.
AN APPEAL TO CHINESE SCHOLARS.1
Perhaps there is nothing more romantic in the history of religion
than the spectacle of a Parthian prince renouncing his throne in A. D.
1 This communication was inserted by mistake without correction in the
January number of The Monist (pp. 158-160) and is here reproduced in its
proper form.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 305
149 and going to China as a Buddhist monk. This remarkable man,
An-shi-kao by name, spent his life in his adopted country, rendering
parts of the sacred writings into Chinese. According to Nanjio's
Catalogue of the Chinese Tripitaka (Oxford, 1883), the prince trans-
lated 176 original works, of which 55 are extant. Judging from
their titles, 43 of these are Hinayana. Anesaki, in his priceless
essay, "The Four Buddhist Agamas in Chinese" (Transactions of
the Asiatic Society of Japan, Tokyo, 1908, pp. 17, 18; 28-31) identi-
fies forty-four of these works with texts now extant in the Pali
canon.
Let us look at some of these texts, and see what kind of books
were valued in Parthia and China at the time of Justin Martyr!
Going through the Pali Nikayas in regular order, the first that we
find is the Mahanidana-sutta (Digha No. 15). This was considered
important enough to be included in Grimblot's selections from the
Long Collection (Paris, 1876) and in Warren's Buddhism in Trans-
lations (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1896). The next is No. 31 in
the same Nikaya, also published by Grimblot, and finally there is
the last sutta therein, No. 34, the Dasuttara, which gives a remark-
able survey of Buddhist doctrine, under categories numbered from
one to ten.
In the great Middling Collection (as I prefer to call it, because
it is named after the medium length of its sutras, and not after its
position in the Agamas, which varied) our Parthian prince hit upon
No. 6, which Rhys Davids chose in London, 1700 years later, for
translation into English in Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XI. Next
we come to No. 52, and then to No. 87, then to No. 113 (on the
"True Man") and finally to No. 141, the "Analysis of Truths." In
this sutta Buddha exhorts the disciples to obey Sariputto and Mog-
gallano.
Besides these there are texts from the Classified and Numerical
Collections, one of which is Buddha's First Sermon, also included
by Rhys Davids in his volume of suttas aforesaid.
Besides the illustrious Parthian, many more translators of dif-
fernt nations went to China to continue the good work, and one of
these, in the third century, translated the 91 st sutta of the Majjhima,
the Brahmayu, which gives the vivid account of Buddha's personal
appearance, his table-manners, his gait, and daily habits, first made
known by Spence Hardy in 1853. In Hardy's mediaeval version,
Buddha says grace, but this is not in the Pali. It would be inter-
306 THE MONIST.
esting to know whether the third-century translator found it in the
lost Hindu original before him.
In this interesting old sutta, we have a full-length life-picture
of Gotamo of undoubted historical truth, and I often say that this
discourse alone justifies the assertion that we know more about him
than about Jesus.
Now, it has long been my contention that these Hinayana texts
of the second and third centuries deserve special study. They are
the first Buddhist sutras of the primitive collections which we can
date. The books translated into Chinese in the first three centuries
were largely Mahayana and later on they were altogether so. Could
not a little text-book be made of the Pali suttas translated by the
Parthian, with, say, the third-century Brahmayu added? Give the
original Pali, and note Chinese various readings, as Anesaki has
done in my Buddhist and Christian Gospels.
This perhaps is the most crying need of Buddhist scholarship.
Next to this, if not before it, I rank the translation of the Great
Council Discipline (Maha-Sanghika-Vinaya). This sect was the
sworn enemy of the school of the Elders who have transmitted to
us the Pali. Each sect accused the other of falsifying the scriptures,
so that any agreement between them would go back to an enormous
antiquity. I do not myself believe that the final schism took place
at Vesali, as the Ceylon Chronicles would have it, but at an obscure
council held by Agnimitra, about the middle of the second century
B. C. My reasons for this are the statements from the Great Council
Discipline translated by Samuel Beal, in his learned Introduction to
S. B. E., Vol. XIX ; and, by the way, I was lately very much pleased
to see his pioneer work highly commended by a distinguished French
sinologue.
The Great Council Discipline was brought to China by Fa-Hien
in A. D. 415, and some scholar who had overlooked the translators
of the earlier centuries once asserted that this Discipline was the
first Buddhist book we could date!
One of the most curious things in this Discipline is its list of
the sacred books, and it was translated for us by Suzuki in The
Monist for January, 1904. The present writer has taken occasion
to draw conclusions from this in previous articles. (See, for ex-
ample, the San Francisco Light of Dharma, January, 1905, and the
fourth edition of Buddhist and Christian Gospels, Vol. I, pp. 82 and
266.)
There are reams upon reams of translation and critical work
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 307
to be done, but, in my opinion, these two are the most elementary,
most necessary and most immediately pressing. I appeal to the
sinologues of France, Holland and Japan to emulate each other in
this important task.
ALBERT J. EDMUNDS.
HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA, Nov. 16, 1910.
PROF. K. BORINSKI ON W. B. SMITH'S BIBLICAL
CRITICISM.
Prof. Karl Borinski has devoted to a discussion of Prof. W. B.
Smith's theory of the pre-Christian Jesus an exhaustive article in a
German periodical of Leipsic entitled Xenien. Extracts from the
article were translated in The Monist (October, 1908). He recom-
mends this most destructive and radical method as finally leading to
new positive issues. He says:
"We look forward to the promised continuation of our author's
researches in such a well-ransacked region, indeed, with intense ex-
pectation. In this remarkable investigator, with all his radicalism,
there breathes no breath of destructive zeal, but rather, through and
through, a constructive and requickening criticism. . . .Investigations
like the foregoing furnish clear proof that there is no better antidote
for the much decried 'destructive' tendencies of biblical criticism than
its own self — than resolutely to follow out its most delicate and
'dangerous' researches and reasonings to the very end."
The "constructive and requickening" quality of this criticism is
particularly conspicuous in the "promised continuation," shortly to
appear in German under some such title as, "Ecce Deus, the Witness
of the Gospels to the Pre-Christian Cult of the Jesus."
GENERAL CONGRESS OF MONISTS.
Those German Monists who have been associated together under
the name of Monistenbunft for more than four years, intend to con-
vert their fifth annual meeting into a General Congress of Monists.
It will convene at Hamburg, September 8-11, 1911. Professor Ernst
Haeckel has consented to act as honorary president and the program
contains very prominent names, including among its lecturers Pro-
fessors Svante Arrhenius, of Stockholm ; Friedrich Jodl, of Vienna ;
Jacques Loeb, of New York ; and Wilhelm Ostwald of Leipsic, each
of whom will speak on his own specialty.
308 THE MONIST.
In order to dispel many current false ideas about monism, the
Monistenbund adds in its announcement the following paragraphs
with regard to its true aim and significance:
"Monism hopes to build up a scientifically tenable conception
of life and the world, and to attain the practical realization of this
conception.
"Monism recognizes no super- or extra-natural beings or forces
that might interfere arbitrarily in the processes of nature or of hu-
man life.
"Monism, threfore, instead of any supernatural revelation, sees
in religions the productions of the emotional and spiritual life of
different peoples in different times.
"Likewise, to monism the demands of ethics are not super-
natural, but the necessary result of communal life. Just as ethics
has developed from human nature, so is it capable also of further
development. To build up a system of ethics on these principles
monism regards as one of its noblest tasks.
"Monism regards the state as the result of man's struggle for
existence and his tendency to organization, and considers it the
ultimate aim of the development of the state to combine the greatest
possible freedom of the individual with a perfect order of the whole.
"Monism desires a union of all individuals and societies that
take their stand on a scientific world-conception, in order thus to be
able to meet the influential powers that are inclined to oppress free-
dom of conscience and investigation."
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES.
THE HILPRECHT ANNIVERSARY VOLUME. Studies in Assyriology and Archae-
ology dedicated to Herman V. Hilprecht by his Colleagues, Friends and
Admirers. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1910. Pp. 450.
Cloth, $5.00.
This volume in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Professor Hil-
precht's doctorate and the fiftieth of his birth brings together no less than
thirty articles from as many different scholars on the other side of the At-
lantic. From Austria, Bohemia, England, France, Germany, Holland, Hun-
gary, Italy, Syria, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey, distinguished Assyriol-
ogists and archeologists have sent their contributions as free-will offerings.
The members of the Committee on Publication, whose names are appended to
the Dedication, are Count V. M. de Calry, Lucerne; Prof. L. A. Milani, Flor-
ence; Prof. Sir Wm. M. Ramsay, Aberdeen; His Excellency Hamdy Bey,
Constantinople; Prince Friedrich Wilhelm zu Ysenburg und Biidingen; E. B.
Coxe, Jr., Philadelphia; Dr. Paul Carus, Editor; Prof. D. E. Smith, Columbia
University ; Prof. G. McClellan, M. D., Jefferson Medical College ; and R. Y.
Cook, Philadelphia. In order to understand the real significance of the pub-
lication of this book we can not avoid referring to the Hilprecht controversy
of which we have heard much through the public prints during the last few
years. A couple of years ago Professor Hilprecht was most vigorously attacked
by some of his colleagues and at his request an investigation was held at the
University of Pennsylvania for the purpose of educing the facts in the case.
Expert witnesses were invited, some of whom, for reasons satisfactory to them-
selves we suppose and not difficult for us to imagine, were unable to respond.
Others appeared and gave evidence pro and con. One of the jurors, especially,
succeeded in making the unfortunate impression in some quarters that he was
acting more or less as counsel for the defendant, an impression that could not
do otherwise than detract from the value of the final judgment in the eyes of
all who were so impressed. A lengthy and complete account of the examina-
tion and findings was published and distributed about two years ago. Professor
Hilprecht was exonerated by the court of inquiry; and yet, it appears that the
judicial decision left the matter, which was of international notice and com-
ment among Semitists, not much clearer than it was before the investigation
began. This was most unfortunate for all concerned, and not only for them,
but for the good name of the science of Assyriology, one of the youngest and
most difficult, yet one of the highest value culturally of the modern sciences.
The appearance of this volume in Dr. Hilprecht's honor recalls the state-
3IO THE MONIST.
ment with which the fifth chapter of the First Book of Maccabees opens : "Now
when the nations round about heard that the altar was built, and the sanctuary
renewed as before, it displeased them very much." Not only are the names
of Professsor Hilprecht's principal antagonists absent from the Committee on
Publication and from the list of contributors, not a single name of a Semitic
scholar in the United States is to be found in either, except that of Dr. Hugo
Radau of Philadelphia, an excellent and independent scholar, and a devoted
friend of Dr. Hilprecht. Nothing could more clearly indicate the dissatis-
faction felt by the Professor's colleagues in the department of Semitics in the
universities of this country with the method or findings, or with both, of the
committee of investigation.
That, doubtless, has contributed to the decision of Semitic scholars on
this side of the water not to join with the friends of Dr. Hilprecht on the
other side in their loyal expression of appreciation of the service he has ren-
dered in the advancement of Assyriological and archeological research — a
service which has been undeniably great, and one to which the Professor has
devoted himself with exceptional ardor and self-sacrificing toil, combined with
ripe scholarship. Often, in his solution of difficult problems, he has shown a
degree of acumen that merits recognition on all sides, and on all sides it ought
to be, and, I think, it is, ungrudgingly admitted. But, in addition to their
silent protest against what seemed to them the unjudicial proceedings of a
university court of adjudication, Semitic scholars in this country have been
influenced by their disapproval of methods which they regard as undesirable
and even unbecoming in the field of scholarship. If no more serious, they have
held them to be, at least, infra dignitatem. It has been, to a certain extent,
a question of taste, but to some extent also, I think, a question of moral judg-
ment. As regards the latter, Professor Hilprecht denied in his examination
that he had at any time intentionally misrepresented any of the facts, although
it appeared that statements made in some instances in his writings were liable
to lead to incorrect conclusions. But that was not enough. Men -forget easily
that "charity covereth a multitude of sins," and that most of us cannot afford
to advise that the mantle be taboo. We should not hesitate about the proper
beneficiary of the doubt in a case involving the imputation of moral reprehen-
sibility.
The question of bad taste, involved in the charges, is less serious, though
in itself often very embarrassing. It is one, moreover, that ought to be judged
in the light of general anthropological science and special environment. Ego-
tism is a great fault and many a man's bane. The desire to impress others is
universal. Many a man caustic in his criticism of vanity is far removed from
exhibiting in his own person and utterances a genuine type of saintly or, to
affirm less or more as the case may be, of gentlemanly modesty. It was a
distinguished observer who wrote: "It is not only the belle who, by elaborate
toilet, polished manners, and numerous accomplishments, strives to make
conquests; but the scholar, the historian, the philosopher use their acquire-
ments to the same end." Herbert Spencer stated a well-known fact, and one
that finds ample and sometimes humiliating verification in the conduct of the
best. Men of good family may have bad manners. Kings have misused their
authority, and the preachers of the Cross have been known to exaggerate, and
state considerably more than the facts warranted. It is by no means a past
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES. 311
vice of the pulpit. Professor Hilprecht's greatest fault, perhaps, is that he
is easily tempted in these points, if not in all points, like as they are. His
friends have admitted that he has a lively and somewhat exuberant imagina-
tion— possibly the Professor would admit it himself were he approached in a
manner conducive to subjective analysis.
Granting that there have been exaggerations, even misstatements, in the
publications of the excavator of ruined cities concerning the importance of his
work, have we ever inquired whether or not the bacillus americanus has not
been one of the disturbing causes ? "The biggest thing on earth" is distinctly occi-
dental in usage and loses something of its significance if not uttered with that
attractive nasality that is limited by latitude. Have we never seen university
catalogues, almost too big for our waste-paper basket, coming to us with the
sound of trumpets, parts of which, we have suspected, would have been placed
upon the collegiate Index expurgatorius had there been a rigid moral censor-
ship in existence on the campus? Support for Oriental excavations and the
study of ancient Oriental literatures make little appeal to the Western mind
unless big, or startling, results can be proclaimed. A few thousand tablets will
not suffice — we want a whole temple library, if by any means we can have it,
and we would like one "bigger" than they have in the British Museum. We
would like to have a Babylonian Story of the Creation, or of the Deluge older
than the one George Smith discovered in the Kujundjik Collection. If any one
can promise us such results we can find the money to set a thousand spades
at work. But if we ask for money to promote and advance Semitic studies in
our universities our only reply may be the smile of ignorant wonder that men
of modern times should be interested in the study. Yet, of what use would
Assyrian tablets be if we had no students trained in Semitics to read and
interpret them? We must be impressive in order to succeed. In addition to
his naturally enthusiastic nature may it not be that Professor Hilprecht com-
ing as a foreigner among us and, therefore, in no way immune from the germ,
may have had to contend not only with the more harmless inherited Teuton
Enthusiasmus but also with the more noxious bacillus Americanus? In our per-
sonal opinion Professor Hilprecht has erred in the use of the "business" ad-
vertizing method of overstating, a method, however, which has not been ig-
nored recently by some of our educational institutions, and that is worse. We
are further of the opinion that some of the gentlemen active in their opposition
to Hilprecht might have found sufficiently large scope for moral reform nearer
their own lecture rooms. The feud, however, has been of long standing. It
goes back to the beginning of the excavations at Nippur over twenty years
ago, when Peters, Hilprecht and Robert Harper were in the field. It has been
more or less of a big boys' quarrel from the first, and one which should never
have been allowed to attain the dimensions and publicity it has. It was from
the first, and still is (for it still goes merrily on in the public prints), one to
be settled in our scientific journals, or independent books or brochures, by
proof and counter proof, and not by a university court which in such matters
is necessarily incompetent, still less by the daily press whose reports are
garbled and distorted.
It is not a matter of such immense importance whether the Temple Li-
brary was discovered or not. The question we are most interested in is, What
new information have the tablets to give us concerning Babylonian civilization ?
312 THE MONIST.
Neither is it a matter of serious importance to science whether this tablet
which Dr. Peters found there is stated by Dr. Hilprecht in one of his books to
have been found here. Scientific scholars are not supposed to assume the role
of moral teachers and trainers. It is their function to refute through the
appropriate media, not the columns of the newspapers, false statements of
scientific fact or theory by incontrovertible evidence of the contrary. And
this should be done calmly and dispassionately, with a zeal only for scientific
accuracy.
On the other hand, every scholar should recognize the excellent virtue and
enhancing as well as becoming grace of modesty. Here, as in religion, posing
and Reklame are anathema.
It must be evident enough from the foregoing that the present writer is
not seeking either to condone what are claimed to be scholarly irregularities
or to excuse them, but merely to point to conditions among us which, perhaps,
may partly help to explain them. The Hilprecht controversy has done no
good. It has hurt Hilprecht for semper aliquid haeret, but it has not less in-
jured his accusers, the latter perhaps more than they could anticipate. Would
it not be best now for both parties to bury the hatchet and forever after keep
their peace?
Whatever may be the attitude of American Semitists, one thing is certain,
viz., that despite the inability of his American colleagues to join in doing him
honor on this occasion, Professor Hilprecht numbers among his friends a
distinguished list of names on the other side of the Atlantic. We cannot with-
hold from him our congratulations that he has his friends, who, whatever their
private judgment may be respecting the merits of the discussion, are never-
theless sufficiently in accord to join in presenting to him this handsome attesta-
tion of their recognition of his service to Semitic science.
ii.
In taking notice of the contents of the various articles contained in the
book we may appropriately turn, in the first place, to the interesting con-
tribution with which the work closes from the pen of Dr. Radau. We notice
that the author continues to speak of "The Temple Library" and of "The
Older Temple Library" as though the existence of a "Temple Library" had
never been questioned, just as Professor Hilprecht has done in previous pub-
lications, and as he continues to do in his most recent work (The Babylonian
Expedition of the Univ. of Penn., Vol. V. Fasc. I, "The Earliest Version of
the Babylonian Deluge Story and The Temple Library of Nippur"). According
to Hilprecht more than 50,000 tablets have been unearthed at Nippur by the
four Babylonian expeditions of the University of Pennsylvania. In a mound
named by the explorers "Tablet Hill," lying to the southwest of the temple of
Enlil and separated from it by a narrow strip of land, which Professor Hil-
precht thinks indicates the course of an ancient canal, approximately 22,000
tablets were discovered during the four expeditions — the vast majority of them,
about 17,500, during the fourth. The sacred ground of the temple-complex
in Sippar, Hilprecht points out, was similarly separated by a canal "from the
territory of the city proper, where the school and temple library were situated."
In a work soon to appear, Model Texts and Exercises from the Temple School
at Nippur, Hilprecht hopes to present conclusive proof that this large mound
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES. 313
(Tablet Hill) covers the ruins of the Temple Library, School, and part of the
archives of the older period. The view adhered to by Hilprecht's opponents
is that the character of the documents found, so far as known, does not justify
the claim to a discovery of a temple library. Hilprecht described them, in
part, in 1896 and later, as syllabaries, letters, chronological lists, historical
fragments, astronomical and religious texts, building inscriptions, votive tab-
lets, inventories, tax lists, contracts, etc. On page 8, Vol. V, he now writes
" 'the large quantities of tablets of the Hammurabi period' reported by Peters,
(Nippur, Vol. II, p. 200) to have been found in 'rooms destroyed by fire' in
Tablet Hill. . . .are for the greater part tablets of a literary character, not con-
tract tablets." On page 12, ibid., he writes again that about 22,000 of the more
than 23,000 tablets obtained from Tablet Hill "belong to the lowest stratum,
and with the exception of a few hundred tablets deal with scientific, historical,
literary or religious subjects, generally written in Sumerian." It was for this
reason, Professor Hilprecht adds, that he designated these ruins as the site of
the older Temple Library of Nippur. A fuller description is given on pp. 14
and 15. "The tablets include lists of Cuneiform signs syllabaries, lists of
ideograms,. .. .lists of personal proper names grammatical paradigms and
phrases,. .. .geographical lists of mountains and countries, lists of gods and
temples, of plants, stones and animals, of objects made of wood, leather, etc.,
professional names,. .. .synonym lists of various kinds of words,. .. .long lists
of weights and of the measures of length, surface, and capacity,. .. .lists of
months,. .. .fragments of chronological lists giving the names of the rulers of
dynasties in their successive order. There are medical prescriptions in-
cantations and exorcisms against evil demons, . . . divination texts and long lists
of omina, building inscriptions, historico-religious inscriptions such as elegies,
hymns, prayers and other songs .... containing frequent allusions to certain
kings, hostile invasions and tyrannical oppression by foreign potentates, or
liturgical compositions such as New Year and harvest songs." In a footnote,
p. 18, we are informed that no less than six volumes of Sumerian hymns and
prayers addressed to Enlil, Ninib, Tammuz, Sin, Shamash and Ishtar are in
course of preparation. Besides these gods, hymns and prayers are addressed
to over a dozen more. Yet this, we are informed, does not give us an exhaus-
tive statement of the various classes of scientific and literary texts, but one
based solely upon an examination of only about 5000 tablets — not a quarter of
the whole, among which are to be found lengthy historical inscriptions.
After reading statements like the foregoing and being in a position to
verify them, in part, by the publications referred to, we must admit that they
go far towards establishing the claim to a great library. If they do not prove
one they go far towards establishing the possession of the principal requisites
of one. We cannot make the same demands here that were met in the later
and prosperous days of Assyrian rule when especially literary kings were upon
the throne and the older libraries of Babylonia were searched for treasures
with which to grace the royal library of an Ashurbanipal.
"The greater part of the 'Older Temple Library' has to be assigned," Dr.
Radau writes, in confirmation of Hilprecht's statement in B. E., Vol., XX, p
10, "to the time of the second dynasty of Ur and the first half of the first
dynasty of Isin," i. e., about 2700-2400 B. C. Some of the tablets are still
older. The dates are definitely established by names of kings belonging to the
314 THE MONIST.
dynasties of Ur and Nisin which appear in what the author terms religio-
historic texts. Whether Dr. Radau is correct in speaking of the second dynasty
of Ur is not a question of importance here. Dr. Radau gives the texts, ex-
cellently autographed, transliterated and translated with notes of several Su-
merian hymns, and at the end very good photographic reproductions of the
tablets follow. Much may be expected from these religious compositions when
the texts are all published. Th. Dangin has presented strong arguments in
favor of only one dynasty of Ur, although Radau in his Early Babylonian
History divides its rulers into four dynasties. Four specimens of hymns from
this collection are given in transliteration and translation together with copious
and valuable notes in which are discussed various questions of great impor-
tance to the better understanding of the early Babylonian cults and their rela-
tion to each other. The author holds that while all the more important cities
of Babylonia had their own temples and ritual, these were but a copy of that
of Nippur. The great god Enlil whose worship goes back to 5700 years B. C,
and the Nippur trinity are declared to be the prototypes of the great gods and
trinities worshiped in Ur, Isin, etc. In anticipation of his forthcoming vol-
umes in which these Sumerian religious documents will be presented, Dr.
Radau has added a selection of twenty-three hymns and prayers beautifully
autographed and accompanied by half-tone photographic reproductions.
To enter into a discussion of any of the thirty remaining articles is not pos-
sible in this notice. They are all meritorious. Ed. Mahler presents a paper
on "The Calendar of the Babylonians" in which he shows that the Babylonians
in the earliest period of their history had a month of 30 days, while they also
had a lunar month alternately of 29 and 30 days. They must, therefore, have
also had an intercalary system by which the lunar year and solar year were
equalized, and this calendrical system implies a knowledge of astronomy. The
"Platonic number" 12,960,000, which figures in the mathematical tables, pub-
lished by Hilprecht in 1906, Mahler thinks, in view of the role played in the
Orient by the number 30, is the product of 30 divine dynasties, each 432,000
years, the period of the 10 kings who ruled from the Creation to the Deluge
according to Berossus. It may, therefore, represent the number of years in a
world year = 36 divine years, each = 360 divine days, each of which, according
to Psalm xc. 4, is equal to 1000 years. Weissbach of Leipsic also presents an
article on the calendar, to which is appended a table with the help of which a
Babylonian date falling between the years 565 and 506 may be reckoned ac-
cording to the Julian calendar. Evidently Mahler and Weissbach are not in
agreement as to the astronomical knowledge of the early Babylonians, but
the latter is a Cartesian in the matter of doubt. — Prasek, University of Prague,
writes on the "Beginning of the Persian-Achaemenian Year" and concludes
that the Persians adopted the Babylonian method of reckoning the ist of
Nisan as New Years' day, the time of the spring equinox. Professor Hyde of
Oxford, in his Vetaerunt Persarum, etc., 1760, held that the old Persian year
began in the spring, but this view has been rejected in recent years by several
scholars who place it at the autumnal equinox. A learned article of 36 pages
from the pen of Dr. Ball, Oxford, author of Light from the East, etc., sets up
and seeks to establish the thesis that Sumerian, so far from being an artificial
jargon, as Halevy would have us believe, is entitled to be styled Proto-Semitic.
Daiches, Jews' College, London, follows with a brief and instructive paper on
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES. 315
"Balaam — a Babylonian Baru." The importance of the study of Assyrian in con-
nection with Old Testament study is, as so often, well illustrated in this article.
Balaam was not a prophet, but a sorcerer. The story of the episode reveals
Babylonian magical elements throughout. — An interesting archeological paper
follows from Professor Sayce. A lamp which appears on a boundary stone
of the Cassite dynasty (dr. 1400 B. C.) as the symbol of the god Nusku, the
fire-god, has the name of the god engraven upon it. This is not only of great
value in showing the significance of the symbols upon boundary stones (not
astronomical, but intended to show what gods were invoked in the protection
of the boundaries), but also, that the lamp of the Greeks and Romans came
to them from the Babylonians. Homer knows nothing of it. The hall of
Ulysses's palace was lighted by Xa/iirr^pcj (lampteres) , pans of stone or metal.
Excavation has failed to produce a Greek or Roman lamp before the seventh
century. But at Boghaz Keul M. Chantre discovered in 1894 two bronze lamps
of the Babylonian form. From this Hittite center in Asia Minor the lamp,
like so much else, was carried by the Phrygian successors of the Hittites to
the shores of the ^Egean and of Thrace. — C. Fossey, Paris, contributes an ar-
ticle on the "Permutation of Consonants in Sumerian," which may be read with
profit in connection with that of Dr. Ball. — M. de Genouillac, Paris, publishes
six contract tablets of the dynasty of Ur, and A. de la Fuye discusses the suc-
cession of the patesis of Lagash from Entemena II to Urukagina with special
reference to Enetarzi whom he places immediately after the former, admitting,
however, that some uncertainty still exists. Urukagina, king of Lagash, Oppert
first placed before Ur-nina, and he has been followed by Hilprecht, Radau, and
generally by historians relying too much on indecisive paleographical evidence.
Heuzey on the same evidence placed him after, and de la Fuye places him
fifth from Entemena, and, following Nikolski, assigns seven years to Enlitarzi.
— An interesting pendant to Sayce's article on the lamp as the symbol of the
fire god Nusku is found in Dr. Frank's (Leipsic) paper. In it he shows that
the plough, called kankannu from "the reed-shaped ploughshare," was the
symbol of the goddess Geshtinna, the goddess of the plains, and also the scribe
of the lower-world. As scribe she was also mistress of the reed (qanu). The
name, however, can hardly be connected with the shape of the ploughshare
as Levy does the Aramaic qanqan in his Dictionary and as Frank does here,
but much more probably with the hollow receptacle, or drill, which held the
grain. — Frank's Bilder und Symbole is quoted by Otto Weber in an additional
article on "Divine Symbols" found on South-Arabian monuments. Many of
these symbols have a mythological significance as in the case of the Babylonian.
We question very much, however, whether the author's connection of the
Zicgenkopf with the Babylonian dragon is correct, and especially the state-
ment that the upper part of the latter has developed out of the harmless
"house-goat, and that the South-Arabian monuments show clearly the inter-
mediate stage in the development." — Dr. Alfred Jeremias (Leipsic) finds the
key to the explanation of Urim and Thummim in Deut. xxxiii. 8 f. These
are cosmic symbols of light and darkness respectively — the upper world and
the lower world — the sun as ruler of the former, the moon of the latter.
Everything is here reduced to ultimate cosmological-mythological material and
motive, and whatever may be said unfavorably to the myth-and-motif inter-
pretation as a universal key to the mysteries and obscurities of ancient Semitic
316
THE MONIST.
religion it is often able to make illuminating suggestions. This much, at least,
may be predicated of this discussion of Urim, Tummim, and Ephod.
Pere Scheil has almost succeeded in being humorous in searching Baby-
lonian literature for a document recording the investiture of some one with
official dignity or power — such being suitable, to his thinking, for the occasion.
Under the title "Diplomatica" he gives, accordingly, text and translation of a
small document which states that a certain Zarik is raised to the patesi-ship in
the presence of ten witnesses ; and, on the following page, a similar one record-
ing the appointment of a minister in the name of the king. Unfortunately we
learn nothing of importance from the happy idea. — Hommel (Munich) writes
on the Babylonian-Assyrian "lists of planets." He several times takes issue
with the interpretations and views of Pere Kugler. Kugler, by the way, has
recently come to the front in an astronomical way, and has denied the knowl-
edge or cultivation of astronomy among the early Babylonians before the
seventh century B. C. He has been followed by Boll, who claims that the old
Babylonian Weltanschauung as set forth by Winckler, Alf. Jeremias and oth-
ers, rests on "Greek astronomy" ! Ed. Meyer, the historian, has also been so
far carried adrift, apparently by Kugler's extreme pronouncements, that he
has entirely lost his moorings and before the Berlin Academy of Sciences given
utterance to statements some of which are wholly inexplicable, as for instance,
that "the Library of Assurbanipal is rein assyrisch, nicht babylonisch." Had
Meyer ever read the Index of Cuneiform Ins. of W. A., or known sufficient
Assyrian to read the colophons beginning kima labirisu satir^a, he might have
been saved from following too rashly in Kugler's footprints. Kugler's latest
contribution, "On the Ruins of Pan-Babylonianism," Anthropos, IV, 1909,
sounds like too triumphant a cry to be sure of itself. In reply to that Hommel
writes : "In opposition to that which is there set forth, I hold firmly that the
old Chaldeans through their thousands of years of observation must have, and
actually did, discover the Praecession." In this volume Kugler writes on the
number nine among the Babylonians, which he declares to be a sacred symbol.
When a city is said to have been destroyed "nine times," that means "completely."
This sacred symbolism of numbers goes back to the third millennium, to the
time of Gudea in whose inscriptions the goddess Nisaba appears as the one
who understands "numbers." The "seal of Al-Ghazzali" occurs to me in this
connection with its p Arabic letters in 3 rows, 3 in each row, and which, when
added horizontally, perpendicularly and diagonally, always give the number
15. Its original meaning is unknown, though explanations are not wanting.
That the sacredness of 9 is due to its being the product of 3X3 and because 3
itself is sacred, as Kugler says, is doubtless true; but that it represents the
divine power "in its completeness in overcoming an inimical power" seems to
be a conclusion from the "9 times destroyed" of the text. The 3 doubtless
gets its sacredness first from the human triad of father-mother-son, which was
afterwards applied to the gods. All that was known of the gods was borrowed
from human experience and observation. The Dreiheit (trinity) is not ex-
plained by saying that it is chiefly used of the gods, or of the deity. — Professor
Kittel of Leipsic contributes a highly interesting article on "Primitive Rock
Altars in Palestine," which is intended mainly to furnish by its excellent photo-
graphs of altars a supplement to his Studien zur hebraischen Arch'dologie etc.,
1908. — P. Dhorme (Jerusalem) writes on the Babylonian god 'Nin-Ib.' Pro-
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES. 317
fessor Clay of the University of Pennsylvania made the discovery in 1907, in
connection with his study of the Nippur Collection, that the preceding ideo-
graphic writing was read in Aramaic niZJliK ('nwsht). Clay interpreted this
as "En-Martu, lord of the West," Radau as "lord of healing," and several
other scholars in other ways. Dhorme regards the / as feminine and reads
unash = urash = the name of the god Ib of which Nin-Ib is the feminine.
He identifies this Nin-Ib with the god Nin-gir-su of Lagash and gives con-
vincing evidence in support of the identification. Myhrman's discussion of an
Aramaic text, on one of the clay bowls of Nippur, remains of the Jewish
settlers in Babylonia; Boissier's on presages furnished by house insects and
the remaining articles are all of great interest and valuable contributions. We
fear, however, that the space at our disposal will not permit us to enter into
further details regarding the collection. A word or two may, however, be per-
mitted with regard to Professor Hilprecht's recent publication, The Earliest
Version of the Babylonian Deluge Story. The text is given in autograph and
photograph, transliterated and translated. The beginnings of the lines are
all broken off. The fragment reads :
i Thee( ?)
2 I will loosen
3 all men together it shall sweep away( ?)
4 before the deluge goeth forth.
5 a-ni all there are, verily I shall bring, overthrow, destruction,
annihilation.
6 a great ship build and
7 total height let be its structure.
8 It shall be a house-boat carrying the saved of life.
9 roof strong roof (it) .
10 (which) thou shalt make
n beasts of the field birds of heaven.
12 ku um mi ni
13 and the family
14 and
The above is the text as it is without Professor Hilprecht's restorations.
The following remarks may now be permitted, (i) The fragment is clearly a
part of a Babylonian version of the Deluge. (2) With the data available it is
impossible to determine its age. Neither the records of the excavations, nor
the paleography, nor the linguistic forms, nor all of them together are suffi-
cient to establish for it the age of Rim-Sin, or dr. 2100, or "surely before 2000
B. C." It is just as possible, and I think more probable, that it belongs to the
Cassite period, dr. 1700-1130. It may, however, be a copy of a much older
original. (3) Hilprecht's restoration of line 12 to ...."[and the creeping
things, two of everything] instead of a number" is inadmissible, as well as his
translation of "ku um mi ni" by "instead of a number." Judging from the
photograph which, of course, is not decisive, it seems possible that ni may not
have to be read with the mi at all, and that the ku-um-mi may form one word.
There remains also the possibility of reading um-mi-ni = ummani of the Nine-
veh version. But the close connection of the ku with the next sign and separa-
tion from what preceded is against taking it in this way, as the end of a pos-
318 THE MONIST.
sible suliku = sulik. Hilprecht's application of the meaning "number" to the
Hebrew mm cannot be justified by Hebrew or Semitic usage. (4) No in-
ferences of any importance to Biblical study, or bearing upon the origin of
the Priestly version of the Deluge Story in Genesis can be drawn from this
little fragment. Nevertheless the author is to be congratulated upon the dis-
covery of a fragment of a new Deluge Story in the Nippur Collection. It is
possible that something may be added to it when the collection is thoroughly
examined.
JAMES A. CRAIG.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, June, 1910.
MATTER AND MEMORY. By Henri Bergson. Authorized Translation by Nancy
Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer. London: Sonnenschein, 1911.
Pp- 339- Price, IDS. 6d. net.
Henri Bergson, a member of the Institute and professor at the College
of France, is broadly before the public, and he proposes a philosophy which is
strongly opposed to the traditional views. He claims that science is not and
ought not to be monistic, and will naturally be considered as reactionary by
scientists as well as monistic thinkers. His book on Matter and Memory
fairly characterizes the trend of Bergson's thought, and considering that fact
and his significance at the present day, we will quote a number of passages
which indicate both his arguments and conclusions.
He says :
"This book affirms the reality of spirit and the reality of matter, and
tries to determine the relation of the one to the other by the study of a defi-
nite example, that of memory. It is, then, frankly dualistic. But, on the other
hand, it deals with body and mind in such a way as, we hope, to lessen greatly,
if not to overcome, the theoretical difficulties which have beset dualism....
Realism and idealism both go too far, [and] it is a mistake to reduce matter
to the perception which we have of it, a mistake also to make of it a thing able
to produce in us perceptions, but in itself of another nature than they. Matter,
in our view, is an aggregate of 'images.' And by 'image' we mean a certain
existence which is more than that which the idealist calls a representation,
but less that which the realist calls a thing, — an existence placed half-way
between the 'thing' and the 'representation.' "
Bergson's idea of matter differs from common usage as is seen from the
following quotation :
"Pure perception, which is the lowest degree of mind, — mind without
memory — is really part of matter, as we understand matter. We may go
further: memory does not intervene as a function of which matter has no
presentiment and which it does not imitate in its own way."
The argument of the whole book hinges upon an explanation of memory
as distinguished from perception. Between the two is the function of sensory
image. On page 170 he says :
"Perception is never a mere contact of the mind with the object present;
it is impregnated with memory-images which complete it as they interpret it.
The memory-image, in its turn, partakes of the 'pure memory,' which it be-
gins to materialize, and of the perception in which it tends to embody itself:
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES. 3IQ
regarded from the latter point of view, it might be defined as a nascent per-
ception. Lastly, pure memory, though independent in theory, manifests itself
as a rule only in the colored and living image which reveals it."
The difference between Bergson's view and other interpretations appears
best in his explanation of attention and the act of cognition, which is greatly
helped by memory. He says :
"Attentive perception is often represented as a series of processes which
make their way in single file; the object exciting sensations, the sensations
causing ideas to start up before them, each idea setting in motion, one in front
of the other, points more and more remote of the intellectual mass. Thus
there is supposed to be a rectilinear process, by which the mind goes further
and further from the object, never to return to it. We maintian, on the con-
trary, that reflective perception is a circuit, in which all the elements, including
the perceived object itself, hold each other in a state of mutual tension as in
an electric circuit, so that no disturbance starting from the object can stop
on its way and remain in the depths of the mind: it must always find its
way back to the object whence it proceeds. Now, it must not be thought that
this is a mere matter of words. We have here two radically different con-
ceptions of the intellectual process. According to the first, things happen
mechanically, and by a merely accidental series of successive additions ....
In the second, on the contrary, an act of attention implies such a solidarity
between the mind and its object, it is a circuit so well closed, that we cannot
pass to states of higher concentration without creating, whole and entire, so
many new circuits which envelop the first and have nothing in common be-
tween them but the perceived object. .. .Memory, capable, by reason of its
elasticity, of expanding more and more, reflects upon the object a growing
number of suggested images, — sometimes the details of the object itself,
sometimes concomitant details which may throw light upon it. Thus, after
having rebuilt the object perceived, as an independent whole, we reassemble,
together with it, the more and more distant conditions with which it forms
one system."
His theory of spirit may briefly be described in a passage on pages 312 to
313:
"As long as we confine ourselves to sensation and to pure perception, we
can hardly be said to be dealing with the spirit. No doubt we demonstrate,
as against the theory of an epiphenomenal consciousness, that no cerebral
state is the equivalent of a perception. No doubt the choice of perceptions
from among images in general is the effect of a discernment which fore-
shadows spirit. No doubt also the material universe itself, defined as the
totality of images, is a kind of consciousness, a consciousness in which every-
thing compensates and neutralizes everything else, a consciousness of which
all the potential parts, balancing each other by a reaction which is always
equal to the action, reciprocally hinder each other from standing out. But
to touch the reality of spirit we must place ourselves at the point where an
individual consciousness, continuing and retaining the past in a present en-
riched by it, thus escapes the law of necessity, the law which ordains that the
past shall ever follow itself in a present which merely repeats it in another
form, and that all things shall ever be flowing away. When we pass from pure
perception to memory, we definitely abandon matter for spirit."
32O THE MONIST.
He distinguishes between pure perception and remembrance, stating that
in the former the perceived object is present. It is a body which modifies our
own, while the latter is a representation of an absent object, and there are
two hypotheses with opposite consequences. Professor Bergson says :
"If, in the case of a present object, a state of our body is thought suffi-
cient to create the representation of the object, still more must it be thought
so in the case of an object that is represented though absent. It is necessary
therefore, on this theory, that the remembrance should arise from the atten-
uated repetition of the cerebral phenomenon which occasioned the primary
perception, and should consist simply in a perception weakened. Whence this
double thesis : Memory is only a function of the brain, and there is only a
difference of intensity between perception and recollection."
The opposite of this hypothesis reads thus :
"Memory is something other than a function of the brain, and there is
not merely a difference of degree, but of kind, between perception and recol-
lection."
Professor Bergson is opposed to the mechanical theory of life, and he
thinks that memory does not depend on the brain. He opposes the theory of
parallelism, and refutes it by the following argument:
"That there is a close connection between a state of consciousness and
the brain we do not dispute. But there is also a close connection between
a coat and the nail on which it hangs, for, if the nail is pulled out, the coat
falls to the ground. Shall we say, then, that the shape of the nail gives us the
shape of the coat, or in any way corresponds to it? No more are we entitled
to conclude, because the physical fact is hung on to a cerebral state, that there
is any parallelism between the two series psychical and physiological." K
LES ROCHES ET LEURS ELEMENTS MiNERALOGiQUES. Par Ed. Jcmnettaz. Paris :
A. Hermann, 1910. Pp. 704. With twenty colored and eight uncol-
ored plates, 322 figures and 2 geological maps. Price, 8 fr.
Geology is one of the most interesting of the sciences and, as the author
of the volume before us says in his preface, the necessity of the knowledge
of the elements which make up the crust of the earth, is evident not only
to chemists, geologists, and miners who are directly interested in it, but even
to the sculptor who is in search of a fine statuary marble, to the architect
who should familiarize himself first with the constitution of the soil upon
which he builds and then with that of the materials in the construction and
adornment of buildings, and finally to the agriculturist who must not be in
ignorance of the quality of the arable lands to which he entrusts his seed.
M. Jannettaz is a lecturer at the Sorbonne and is connected with the
museum of that institution. He has here undertaken to give a complete treat-
ise on the entire subject of rocks that will prove satisfactory to those who wish
to enter upon the study.
The book is divided into three parts. The first may be regarded as an
elementary treatise on physical chrystallography ; the second on a compen-
dium of mineralogy, and the third is devoted to a description of rocks. In
an appendix is given the method of determining rocks, also tables of the
characteristics of their elements, a chronological list of eruptive and sedi-
mentary rocks, and a bibliography. p
VOL. XXI. No. 3. JULY, 1911.
THE MONIST
A Quarterly Magazine
Devoted to the Philosophy of Science
Founded by EDWARD C. HEGELER.
CONTENTS:
PAGE
ON THE MNEMONIC ORIGIN AND NATURE OF AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES.
EUGENIO RIGNANO 321
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND His DOCTRINE OF WILL TO POWER.
CHARLES C. PETERS 357
MAX STIRNER, THE PREDECESSOR OF NIETZSCHE.
EDITOR 376
BECOMING (Poem).
JOHN WESLEY POWELL 398
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
The Revelation of Present Experience 405
The Christ Myth of Drews. A. KAMPMEIER 412
Rignano's Theory of Acquired Characteristics. EDITOR 432
Eccentric Literature. ARTHUR MACDONALD 437
The Logic of Lunacy. EDITOR 449
The Fetish of Originality. EDMUND NOBLE 454
Boot
>K REVIEWS AND NOTES.
The First Grammar of the Language Spoken by the Bontoc Igorot, C. W. Seiden-
adel, 470. — Till det andliga difvets filosofi, Allen Vannerus, 475. — Das Problem des
Pythagoras, H. A. Naber, 476. — Psychotherapy, Hugo Munsterberg, 477. — The
Principles of Pragmatism, H. Heath Bawden, 477. — Medicine and the Church,
Sir Clifford Allbutt and others, 478. — Rudolf Eucken's Kampf um einen neuen
Idealismus, Emilc Boutroux, 478. — Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophic mit be-
sonderer Beriicksichtigung der Religionen, Paul Deusscn, 479. — Die Begriffe und
Theorien der modernen Physik, /. B. Stallo, 480. — Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik
auf Grundlage der Erfahrung, G. Heymans, 480. — Der Monismus und seine philo-
sophischen Grundlagen, Fr. Klimke, 470. — Scritti di G. Vailati, 480.
CHICAGO
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
1911
COPYRIGHT BY
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING Co.
1911
VOL. XXI. JULY, 1911. NO. 3.
THE MONIST
ON THE MNEMONIC ORIGIN AND NATURE OF
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES.1
i.
IF we observe the behavior of the various organisms from
the unicellular up to man, we see that a large number of
their processes, and especially the most important ones,
may be regarded as manifestations of a tendency of the
organism to maintain or to restore its "stationary" physio-
logical state (to use the term of OstwakTs energetics).
In other words, if we call "affective" that particular
class of organic tendencies which appear subjectively in
man as "desires" or "appetites" or "needs" and objectively
in both man and animals as "movements" completed or
incipient (except those that have become mechanical in
character), then a large number of the principal "affective
tendencies" thus defined may be at once reduced to the
single fundamental tendency of each organism to preserve
its "physiological invariability."
For instance, we see that hunger, the most fundamental
of all affective tendencies, is in reality nothing but the
tendency to keep, or restore that qualitative and quanti-
tative condition of the nutritive system of the body which
will make possible a continuation of the stationary meta-
bolic state. This tendency of an organism towards the in-
variability of its own metabolism has become, in the course
of its phyletic evolution, an inherent propensity to pass
1 Translated for The Monist.
322 THE MONIST.
through all the temporary physiological states that could
re-establish this necessary condition within it, hence, a
tendency to perform all movements that have nourishment
for their object ; yet in doing this it has never relinquished
its original character. This results directly from the fact
that all inclination to procure new food ceases as soon as
the internal nutritive system of the animal has attained its
normal state.
Accordingly, the hydra or sea anemone does not react
positively to food except when its metabolism reaches a
state requiring more nutriment, "unless," says Jennings,
"metabolism is in such a state as to require more material" ;
for instance, when the large sea anemone Stoichactis heli-
anthus does not experience a sensation of hunger, a bit of
food placed upon its disk occasions the same characteristic
"rejecting reaction" as if it were any other disturbing ob-
ject. And all other organisms, the higher as well as the
lower, behave in exactly the same fashion.2
Schiff's experiments of injecting nutritive substances
into the veins of dogs are direct evidence, on the other
hand, that the fundamental condition of hunger is the ab-
sence of histogenetic substances in the blood, for these in-
jections resulted not only in nourishing the animal but
also in allaying its hunger.
Moreover the fact that hunger, especially as long as it
is only moderate, assumes in man the form of a particular
localized sensation originating in the wall of the stomach
and being the sole cause of the activities induced by real
hunger, is — it is scarcely necessary to state — a natural
consequence and of but secondary importance. It is only
one of many forms in which we see the substitution of the
part for the ivhole, and this characteristic phenomenon of
all mnemonic physiological processes is true also for the
*H. S. Jennings, Behavior of Lower Organisms, pp. 202, 205, etc. New
York, MacMillan, 1906.
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 323
tendency to physiological invariability, which is also essen-
tially mnemonic as we shall see more clearly later on.
These peculiar sensations localized in the gastric mucous
membrane and produced by its swelling or by some other
more or less similar change caused by the empty condition
of the stomach, usually take place before or simultaneously
with the actual lack of histogenetic substance in the blood,
and so finally became representative or vicarious signs of
hunger.
The same is true of thirst and of its localization in the
upper part of the alimentary canal.
We might pass on from hunger and thirst to the other
more or less fundamental organic "appetites" or "needs."
All would show us in their different manifestations that
they are all directed simply and solely toward the restora-
tion of the stationary physiological state, which has been
lost or in some way disturbed.
Thus there exists for every animal species an optimum
of environment with reference to the degree of saturation
of the solution in which the animal lives, to the tempera-
ture or to the intensity of light, etc., above and below which
the organism cannot maintain its normal physiological
state and which the animal makes every effort to main-
tain.
So for instance we see that the infusorium Paramae-
cium at 28° C. reacts negatively to a rising but not to a
falling temperature, whereas at 22° C. it reacts negatively
to a falling but not to a rising temperature. We see also
that the Euglena in a moderate light reacts negatively to
a decrease but not to an increase in the intensity of light,
whereas in a stronger light the reaction is exactly re-
versed.3
The tendency of organisms to invariability in their
' Jennings, Behavior of Lower Organisms, pp. 294-295.
324 THE MONIST.
stationary physiological state consequently resolves itself
into a tendency to invariability in their external and in-
ternal environments. Thus for instance, oysters and ac-
tinians close when exposed to the air ; that is, they behave
so as to keep the standard of moisture unaltered within
themselves and in their immediate surroundings.4
To the invariability of environment is due also the posi-
tion which the organism takes with relation to the direction
of the various forces to which it is exposed, especially grav-
ity. Hence the tendency to preserve or restore its normal
position. Thus, for instance, the ameba draws in its pseudo-
podia when they come in contact with solid non-edible
bodies ; but if it is lifted off the bottom of the aquarium and
is suspended in the water it stretches out its pseudopodia
in all directions. As soon as one of these touches a solid
object, the ameba takes hold of it, draws its body over to
it, and again resumes its original position. Likewise a
starfish when inverted tries to turn over, that is, to return
to its normal environmental conditions with relation to
gravity.5
All "needs" to throw off substances which have been
produced by the general metabolism and which the organ-
ism can no longer use, are likewise no exceptions to this
general rule. For, although the need for eliminating them
may be called forth by certain vicarious local sensations
capable of evoking the act of expulsion in advance, yet in
reality, whether in the case of the smallest and simplest
infusorium or of the most highly developed vertebrates,
it is due only to the circumstance that the accumulation
of this waste material within the organism would even-
tually disturb its normal physiological state.
To this class of eliminative affective tendencies the
sexual hunger seems to belong. For we know that certain
4 H. Pieron, L 'evolution de la memoire, pp. 29, 74. Paris, Flammarion, 1910.
8K. C. Schneider, Vorlesungen iiber Tierpsychologie, pp. 5, 57. Leipsic,
Engelmann, 1909.
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 325
recent theories are inclined to assign the whole organism
rather than any one definite part of the body as the seat
of sexual hunger just as in the case of hunger proper, and
at the same time to regard it as due to the need of elim-
inating the germinal substance.6
It may be that just as infusoria after a certain number
of bipartitions become subject to "senescence" (Maupas)
so also the germinal substance constantly produced in the
adult organism, especially when it has undergone the re-
ducing divisions, may be subject to a similar degeneration
if it has not also experienced the requisite caryogamic re-
juvenation. Therefore it seems quite plausible that "sexual
hunger" is originally nothing but the tendency of the or-
ganism to free itself of this "senile corruption" which the
germinal substance, being in its nature a nuclear substance
awaiting fertilization, produces by means of its hormonic
secretions, or substances of disintegration, and spreads
throughout the entire organism.
The more or less brilliant or striking "wedding gar-
ment" which nearly all animals assume when in love, arises
from an abnormal condition of general hypersecretion oc-
casioned again by the hormonic products of the germinal
substance. At any rate it shows how deep is the physio-
logical disturbance caused in all somatic cells by the germ-
inal substance. The effort to expel so disturbing an ele-
ment then becomes a tendency to copulation as means of
effecting this expulsion. Hence the fundamentally selfish
character (nature foncicrcment egoiste) of sexual love
which Ribot rightly emphasizes : "In the immense majority
of animals, and frequently in men, the sexual instinct is not
accompanied by any tender emotion. The act once accom-
plished, there is separation and oblivion."7
* See, for instance, though only in certain respects, J. Roux, L'I'I
d'amour, ch. I, "Base organique de 1'instinct sexuel. Paris, Bailliere, 1904.
L'instinct
e, 1904.
1 Th. Ribot, La psychologie des sentiments, p. 258. Paris, Alcan, 1908
326 THE MONIST.
It still remains to explain why copulation of the sexes
is the only means of eliminating the germinal substance,
whereas the single individual is sufficient for the removal
of all other more or less similar waste matter.
It is easy to suppose that the reason lies in the peculiar
nature of the substance itself, and there are two circum-
stances that may perhaps, if considered together, contrib-
ute a little to the desired explanation : First, the attraction
exerted at a distance by the ovum on the spermatozoid by
means of secretions diffused in all directions; and second,
the fact that hermaphroditism probably preceded sexual
dimorphism in the phylogeny of pluricellular organisms.
Still we cannot conceal the fact that the phylogenetic pro-
cess, which by this elimination has become so closely asso-
ciated with copulation, is still far from a satisfactory ex-
planation.
But even in this incomplete form the hypothesis which
attributes to the sexual instinct no further significance than
a tendency to eliminate a disturbing element, permits us
to present this instinct in very different light from that in
which it has hitherto appeared. For were this hypothesis
to be accepted, the sexual instinct would not have orig-
inated and developed for the "good" of the species, but of
the individual. It would therefore not represent the "will
of the species" imposing itself upon the individual, as most
people now maintain with Schopenhauer, but much rather
would it mean here as always the "will" of the single indi-
vidual; that is, the usual tendency to keep unchanged its
stationary physiological condition. And instead of seeing
in it with Weismann and all neo-Darwinists a new evidence
of the alleged omnipotence of natural selection, Lamarck's
principle of individual adaptation combined with the in-
( English translation in Contemporary Science Series, London, 191 1, p. 253).
— Essai sur les passions, pp. 67 ff. Paris, Alcan, 1907.
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 327
heritance of acquired characters would be sufficient to
account for this as well as for all other instincts.
Moreover, the "elimination" hypothesis is sufficient by
itself to explain certain peculiarities of this impulse which
would be quite incomprehensible from the standpoint of
Schopenhauer and the neo-Darwinians.
Ribot, for instance, is surprised that an instinct which
is so exceedingly important for the continuance of the
species is so often exposed to certain perversions which
seem to involve its complete negation.8
The fact that such perversions are common accords
poorly with the hypothesis that the only reason for the
existence of such an instinct is the need for the continuance
of the race.
Finally, the fact that both animals and man now desire
copulation or even certain secondary sexual relations for
their own sakes — hence independently of the act of the
elimination of the germinal substance, perhaps even in de-
fault of any to eliminate, — this also, as we shall better
appreciate later on, is only the consequence of the mne-
monic law already mentioned of the substitution of the
part for the whole, and of its derivative, the law of the
transference of affective tendencies. According to this law
all phenomena that constantly accompany the satisfaction
of certain affectivities become also in their turn objects of
desire, and all habits acquired for the satisfaction or in the
satisfaction of certain affectivities likewise become affective
tendencies.
If the sexual instinct also, on account of its origin, can
be referred to the class of tendencies which serve to main-
tain the stationary physiological condition of the organism,
then the above law is open to no exception as far as the
fundamental organic tendencies are concerned. Hence we
can sum it up in the following words :
•Ribot, La psych, des Sent., pp. 263, 265 (Engl. ed., pp. 257, 259).
328 THE MONIST.
Every organism is a physiological system in a station-
ary condition and tends to preserve this condiiton or to
restore it as soon as it is disturbed by any variation occur-
ring within or without the organism. This property con-
stitutes the foundation and essence of all "needs", of all
"desires," of all the most important organic "appetites."
All movements of approach or withdrawal, of attack or
flight, of taking or rejecting which animals make are only
so many direct or indirect consequences of this perfectly
general tendency of every stationary physiological condi-
tion to remain constant. We shall soon see that this ten-
dency in its turn is only the direct result of the mnemonic
faculty characteristic of all living matter.
This single physiological tendency of a general kind,
accordingly, is sufficient to give rise to a large number of
the most diversified particular affective tendencies. Thus
every cause of disturbance will produce a corresponding
tendency to repulsion with special characteristics deter-
mined by the kind of disturbance, by its strength, and by
the measures capable of avoiding the disturbing elements ;
and for every incidental means of preserving or restoring
the normal physiological condition, there will be a quite
definite corresponding tendency such as "longing," "de-
sire," "attraction" and so forth.
Even the instinct of self-preservation — when under-
stood in the usual narrow sense of "preservation of one's
own life" — is only a particular derivative and direct con-
sequence of this very general tendency to preserve physio-
logical invariability. For every condition which would
eventually lead to death first presents itself as a mere dis-
turbance, and it is only as such that the animal tries and
learns to avoid it. Jenning's ameba, for instance, which
had been completely swallowed by another ameba, but had
succeeded in getting away, did not in all probability flee
from a phenomenon that endangered its life, but from a
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 329
condition in its environment which even though a profound
disturbance, was nevertheless nothing but a disturbance.
It is well known that Quinton was the first to develop
a theory that organisms tend to maintain in their internal
intercellular environment the same chemical and physical
conditions that obtained in the primordial environment
when life first appeared on earth.9
But it is easily seen that our theory is limited to a con-
sideration of the tendency to invariability only so far as it
manifests itself each moment by the behavior of each indi-
vidual. Therefore instead of serving as a far too one-sided
starting point for the explanation of the evolution of spe-
cies it forms the basis upon which all the most important
affective tendencies of the animal world may be built up.
As a factor of invariability for the individual, this
tendency to preserve its stationary physiological condition
is indeed one of the most important factors in the variation
and progress of the species, but in quite a different way
from that pointed out by Quinton. For from this tendency
arose and developed the power of motion which is the
greatest difference between plants and animals, and with
which also has kept pace the development and perfection
of the whole motor apparatus, including that of the nerves
and senses, which plays so important a part in determining
the characteristics which distinguish the different zoolog-
ical species.
Finally as a factor of individual invariability it has
proved by its effect on man to be one of the most conspic-
uous factors in all social evolution, for we may well say that
technical inventions and industrial products from the first
cave dwellings, the first skins used for clothing, the first
discovery of fire to the most complex attainments of to-day
have tended constantly more or less, directly or indirectly,
* R. Quinton, L'eatt de mer, milieu organique. Especially Book II, "Loi
generate de Constance originelle," pp. 429-456. Paris, Masson, 1904.
33O THE MONIST.
towards one single goal, namely the artificial maintenance
of the greatest possible constancy in the environment, which
is the necessary and sufficient condition for preserving
physiological invariability.
ii.
Closely connected with this inherent fundamental prop-
erty of every organism to strive to preserve its normal
physiological condition or to restore it as soon as it is
disturbed, is still another attribute which in its turn be-
comes the source of new affectivities.
For as soon as the previous stationary condition can-
not be restored by any means, that is by any movements
or change of location, the organism disposes itself in a
new stationary condition consistent with its new external
and internal environment. In this way there originate
a large number of new phenomena called "adaptations."
Thus, for instance, Dallinger's classical experiments
on the acclimatization of lower organisms — suggested by
the observation that a mass of organisms usually living
in water of a normal temperature, also live and flourish
in the hottest spring, — have proved that infusoria may
gradually become accustomed to a constantly higher tem-
perature so that finally after years of continuous slow in-
crease in the degree of heat they can stand a temperature
so high that any other individual not acclimated would
certainly die if subjected to it. It is likewise known that
the same species of protozoa are found in both fresh and
salt water, and that it is possible to accustom fresh-water
amebas and infusoria to a salt habitat which would have
killed them at the start, — and there are more instances of
the same kind.10
10 See C. B. Davenport and W. E. Castle, "On the Acclimatisation of Or-
ganisms to High Temperatures." — Archiv fur. Entw.-Mech. der Organismen,
II, 2. Heftjuly, 1895.— C. B. Davenport and R. V. Neal, "On the Acclimati-
sation of Organisms to Poisonous Chemical Substances," he. cit., II, 4. Heft,
Jan. 1896.
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 331
One feature of special interest to us is the fact that the
new conditions of the environment to which the animal
gradually becomes accustomed tend in time to become his
optimum. "This individual adaptation (e.g., to a different
proportion of salt) is affected in accordance with the rule
that the conditions of density under which an individual
is living, tend to become in time the optimum conditions for
that individual."11
This may be observed even in plant organisms. Plas-
modia of the Myxomycetes die when plunged suddenly into
i or 2.% glucose solutions, and even draw back from }4
or l/4% solutions, and yet they may gradually become ac-
customed to 2% solutions so that they finally show by their
behavior that they prefer their new environment to the
original one without glucose."
The diatom Navicula brevis ordinarily shuns even the
weakest light and tries to hide itself in the darkest part of
the drop of water in which it is being observed. However,
if a culture is placed in the bright light of a window for
two weeks, it exhibits exactly the opposite tendency and
makes for the brightest part of the drop as soon as it is
removed again to its former position in a weak light.13
The common actinia (Actinia equina) often found
clinging to rocks in all possible positions with relation to
the force of gravity, sometimes with the axis of the body
directed upward, sometimes downward and sometimes to
one side, seems to become so accustomed to its position that
it tries to assume the same one when removed to another
spot. For instance, if several actinians found in various
positions are collected and placed in an aquarium, "they
u Davenport and Castle, op. tit., p. 241.
u E. Stahl, "Zur Biologic der Myxomyceten,"5o/. Zeit., Mar. 7, 14 and 21,
1884, P- 166.
u Davenport and Castle, op. tit., p. 246.
332 THE MONIST.
show in attaching themselves a distinct tendency to assume
the same position they had formerly held."14
We might bring forward innumerable other examples
but are here chiefly concerned with pointing out their sig-
nificance. They show that the new physiological state
arising from adaptation to the new environment, when
once it has supervened and has existed a certain time within
the organism, tends thereafter to preserve or restore itself.
This tendency of a past physiological state to remanifest
or reproduce itself is nothing but the tendency inherent
in every mnemonic accumulation to "evoke" itself again.
Hence it is a tendency of a purely mnemonic nature.
From this then it follows directly that the tendency to
physiological invariability from which originate, as we
have seen, the most important organic affective tendencies
of all organisms must be equally mnemonic in nature. For
if according to the above-mentioned examples an entirely
new and recent physiological state is nevertheless able to
leave behind a mnemonic accumulation producing a distinct
tendency to its own restoration, it is easy to understand
that just because the normal physiological state has lasted
so much longer it must possess a correspondingly stronger
mnemonic tendency toward its restoration whenever it is
disturbed.
This then implies that each of the innumerable different
elementary physiological states, of which each is effective
at one definite point of the organism and all combined con-
stitute the general physiological state, possesses the faculty
of depositing independently a "specific accumulation" from
all indications similar to that deposited in the brain by each
of the nervous currents which make up the different sen-
sations and leave behind a mnemonic residue capable of
being reactivated or revived. By "specific accumulations"
of the various nervous currents we mean here only that
11 Pieron, op. cit., p. 144.
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 333
every accumulation is capable of giving as discharge only
that particular specificity of the nervous current by which
this accumulation has itself been deposited.
The extension of this faculty of "specific accumulation"
to all physiological phenomena in general accords with the
hypothesis that nervous energy is the basis for all the phe-
nomena of life. If in the psycho-mnemonic phenomena
properly so called the action of nervous energy produced
by "discharge" or by stimulation of the respective center
appears in the foreground, whereas the specific physico-
chemical phenomena accompanying the discharge remain
in the background so that until recently they were quite
overlooked, it would be — according to the fundamental
concept of Claude Bernard on the essential identity of all
the different forms of irritability of living matter — a differ-
ence of degree only but not of essence, inasmuch as true
physiological phenomena accompanying the respective stim-
ulation (muscular contraction, glandular secretion, etc.)
appear with greater distinctness, whereas the specific nerv-
ous phenomena which likewise accompany this physiolog-
ical activity are less perceptible. In this way we have tried
to explain the fundamental mnemonic property of all living
substance which has recently been especially emphasized
by Hering, Semon and Francis Darwin, and also to explain
the most essential and significant biological phenomena
proceeding from it either directly or indirectly.15
By this extension of the mnemonic faculty to all ele-
mentary physiological phenomena we now obtain a somatic
or visceral theory of the fundamental affective tendencies
in the sense that the tendency toward physiological in-
15 Eugenic Rignano, Ueber die Vererbung envorbener Eigenschoften, Leip-
sic, Engelmann, 1907. (English translation by Basil Harvey in preparation,
Open Court Publishing Co. French edition, Paris, Alcan, 1906; Italian edition,
Bologna, Zanichelli, 1907). See especially the chapter on "The Phenomena of
Memory and the Vital Phenomena." See also "Die Zentroepigenese und die
nervose Natur der Lebenserscheinung," Zeitschr. f. d. Ausbau d. Entwicklungs-
lehre, II, 1909, Heft 8-9. — "Das biologische Gedachtnis in der Energetik,"
Annalen der Naturphilosophie, VIII, and Scientia, XI, 3, 1909.
334 THE MONIST.
variability or toward the restoration of this or that pre-
vious physiological state corresponding to this or that pre-
vious environment, depends on innumerable elementary
specific accumulations, differing from point to point of the
body and whose combined potential energy would form as
it were a "force of gravitation" toward that environment
or those conditions which make possible the preservation
or restoration of the combined physiological system repre-
sented by all these elementary accumulations.
Naturally in organisms supplied with nervous systems
there would arise and be gradually developed side by side
in cooperation with, and often as a substitute for, every
one of these affective tendencies of purely somatic origin
and seat, the affective tendency represented by the cor-
responding mnemonic accumulations which had been de-
posited in that particular zone of the nervous system di-
rectly connected with the respective points of the body.
In man, for instance, this zone would be Flechsig's Korper-
fuhlsphare to which in certain cases may also be added the
frontal zone.16
Now after the cerebral mnemonic accumulations had
arisen phylogenetically under direct somatic action, they
would finally have become able to represent by themselves,
after all connection with the body had been severed, those
former affective tendencies to which they owed their origin.
And indeed this is true because of the two fundamental
mnemonic laws of ( I ) the gradual independence of the part
with reference to the whole and (2) the substitution of the
part for the whole, which arise directly from the fact that
every elementary specific accumulation when once depos-
ited is capable of an independent existence. Therefore
Sherrington's "spinal" dog, for instance, continued to ex-
perience the same repugnance to the flesh of other dogs,
18 P. Flechsig, Gehirn und Seele, pp. 19, 21-22, 92, 99-100. Leipsic, Veit,
1896.
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 335
to exhibit other similar affectivities and even the same
emotions as the normal dog, though all of them are un-
doubtedly of phyletic somatic origin.17
But this cooperation and this possibility of an eventual
substitution of the affective tendency whose seat is in the
brain, for the corresponding affective tendency of somatic
origin, does not prevent the former from being entirely in
the control of the latter. Therefore modern psychology
generally admits that the affective life "has its cause below
in the variations of the cenesthesia, which is itself a result-
ant, a combination of vital operations."3
Nor does it in the least prevent affective tendencies
from keeping all the fundamental properties which they
owe to their mnemonic visceral origin, of which the most
important are first the possession of a "diffuse" seat, and
secondly that they are eminently "subjective."
For every stationary physiological system in equilib-
rium with regard to its environment permeates the whole
organism and consequently also all that part of the brain
in which this organism is reflected. Accordingly, in con-
trast to the mnemonic sense-accumulations each of which
to all appearances has a seat distinctly localized at a single
point or in a single center of the cortex of the brain, we
have every reason to conclude that each affective tendency
is made up of an infinitely large number of different ele-
mentary mnemonic accumulations, deposited respectively
in every point of the body and in every corresponding point
in the brain.
To this mnemonic physiological origin of the affective
tendencies is also due their eminently "subjective" char-
acter; for the organism is equipped potentially with this
"See C. S. Sherrington, The Integrative Action of the Nervous System,
pp. 260-265. London, Constable, 1906. Cf. the pertinent discussion of these
experiments by Lloyd Morgan, Animal Behaviour, 2d ed., p. 292, London, Ar-
nold, 1908 ; and Revault d Allonnes, Les inclinations, pp. 101 ff., Paris, Alcan,
1908.
" Ribot, Psych, des sent., p. 10.
336 THE MONIST.
or that "idiosyncratic" affective tendency, with this or that
"appetite," according to the various environments or con-
ditions in which the species and the individual were placed
for a longer or shorter time in the past, in other words
according to their individual history.
Hence the subjectivity and infinite variety manifest in
the needs, the appetites and desires and consequently in
everything that furnishes an object of "affective evalua-
tion."
in.
The hypothesis here presented of the mnemonic nature
of all affective tendencies in general is further confirmed
by other examples of more special affectivities which have
also originated by way of "habit" and yet bear special re-
lations to the environment since they refer only to one part
or another of the organism and manifest an activity only
periodically or intermittently. They are especially in evi-
dence in the higher animals and in man most of all.
As a typical instance it will be sufficient to consider
maternal love.
Evidently the habit of having certain relations of para-
sitism, or of symbiosis in general, with the progeny
throughout a long series of generations has become grad-
ually transformed in a mnemonic way into affective tenden-
cies towards these relations.
"Comparative ethology," says Giard, "shows us most
clearly that the relations between the parent organism and
its progeny are in principle absolutely the same as those
existing between a parasite and the animal it lives upon,
and that after a period of unstable equilibrium in which
one or other of the two connected organisms suffers to the
advantage of its companion there is a tendency to the
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 337
establishment of a definite position of mutual (mutualiste)
equilibrium."19
This is true for instance of the relations of internal in-
cubation, which though first sought and effected by the em-
bryo itself in some phase of its development for the purpose
of nutrition or some other advantage, and at first simply
endured by one of the parents, either father or mother,
finally become actual "needs" to this parent.
It is likewise true of the relations of external incubation
(brooding) which arise at first as the result of some par-
ticular circumstance and in this way become a habit. For
instance the attachment manifested by the female spider
Chiracanthium carnifex for her nest, whether it be her own
or one of which she has taken possession, grows with time,
that is with the length of her occupation of it. Hence
"mother love" seems in her case to be really nothing but
her attachment to a home to which she has become accus-
tomed.20
It is just the same with the brooding of birds and some
reptiles which owes its origin to the pleasant sensation
which the contact with the fresh eggs brings to the feverish
condition accompanying the egg-laying process, but which
by habit has become in itself an instinctive inclination.21
Finally as regards lactation the young have gradually
developed secretions in the lactiferous glands by sucking
the secretions of the perspiratory glands on the breast of
the mother brooding over them, and thus they have at the
same time so accustomed the mother to this process that
lactation finally becomes an actual need for her. "With
mammals we must look for the origin of the mutually sym-
biotic relations which unite mother and child in the phe-
"A. Giard, "Les origines de 1'amour maternel," Revue des idees, April
15, 1905, p. 256.
" A. Lecaillon, "Sur la biologic et la psychologic d'une araignee," Annee
psychologiquc, Annee ice, pp. 63-83. Paris, Nasson, 1904.
21 Giard, op. cit., p. 266.
338 THE MONIST.
nomenon of lactation. The physiological disorders of preg-
nancy and parturition lead, among other very curious
trophic effects, to an excessive secretion of the mammary
glands which, as we know, are only a special localization
of the sebaceous glands of the skin. The young animal
in thus taking its first nourishment alleviates the discom-
fort of the female and thus becomes a means toward the
comfort of its mother."23
That the need for lactation is the origin of "maternal
love is shown by the fact that the mother who is deprived
of her young tries to replace them by foster-nurslings.
"The necessity of getting rid of a troublesome secretion is
powerful enough sometimes to cause the female that lost
her young to steal the progeny of another, and these rob-
beries have been performed even by females that were still
suckling their own young, the satisfaction of a need lead-
ing them, as is generally the case, to seek a still greater
satisfaction which might lead even to excess."23
In the cases observed by Lloyd Morgan, this need of
the mother takes the form of a mother love solicitous for
the nourishment of her young, and it is possible that it
may actually represent to them the beginning of an un-
selfish attachment. "Further, I have seen both bitches and
cats get up and again lie down so as to bring the teats into
closer proximity to the mouth of any young which failed
to find them. It has been noticed by a man who is a re-
markably good observer and has had much to do with ani-
mals, and also by myself, that when a lamb is weakly and
fails to find the teat, the mother not infrequently uses its
shoulders, head and neck as a lever to place the lamb on its
legs; and, having accomplished this, straddles over the
lamb, and brings the teats against its lips ; and these efforts
are continued until the little animal sucks."24
" Giard, op. cit., pp. 269-270.
" Giard, loc. cit., p. 270.
** Lloyd Morgan, Habit and Instinct, p. 115, New York, Arnold, 1896.
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 339
This example is very significant for it shows clearly
how the necessity for the elimination of the milk must end
in arousing an attachment for the nursling as the cus-
tomary means for attaining this end, just as we have seen
that the need for the elimination of the germinal substance
must lead to an affectivity for the other sex, here again
as the customary means to effect this elimination.
Just as "sexual attraction" ceases after the elimina-
tion of the germinal substance, so also does "mother
love" disappear as soon as the need for lactation is no
longer felt. "Maternal affection does not generally sur-
vive the causes which produced it and only vague traces
of it are noticeable after lactation has ceased."25
Finally, the fact that the mother's affection is stronger
than that of the father, and that the parents' love for their
children is stronger than that of the children for their
parents confirms the hypothesis that all these affectivities
have arisen exclusively by way of habit, for it shows that
affection for those with whom we have certain relations
is the more intense the more numerous and prolonged these
relations are. "Among animals as a whole," remarks
Ribot, "paternal love is rare and inconstant and among the
lower representatives of mankind it is a feeble sentiment
and forms but a slight bond."26 Paternal love exists only
where the union of the sexes is close, that is, where the
communal life "creates a current of affection because of
services rendered."27
"Every one recognizes," says Pillon in his turn, "that
the love of parents for their children exceeds in intensity
the children's love for the parents, and that of the two
parents it is the mother whose love is stronger for her
child.... The reason is that in the mother's case much
* Giard, op. cit., p. 273.
" Ribot, Psych, des sent., 285.
* Ribot, Psychol. des sent., p. 286.
34O THE MONIST.
more than with the father the love for the child is nour-
ished and stimulated, because of her special functions, that
is, by the constant performance of the actions it dictates."28
But mother-love, and mutual love within the family in
general, owing its origin to certain relations grown into
habit, represents only one particular case of a universal
law. For every other relation to person or things (no
matter how special) which becomes in the slightest degree
a habit finally appears for this very reason as something
"desired." In every environmental relation whether gen-
eral or particular is verified Lehmann's law of the "indis-
pensability of the customary," which this investigator es-
tablished for every stimulus to which one becomes accus-
tomed and whose cessation arouses a need for its presence.29
"I have a small clock in my room," a friend once wrote
to G. E. Miiller, "which will not run quite twenty-four
hours with one winding. It often happens therefore that
it stops. Whenever this occurs I notice it at once, whereas
of course I do not hear it at all when it is running. The
first time this occurred the sensation was somewhat as
follows: it happened that I was suddenly aware of a very
indefinite unrest, a sort of emptiness without being able
to say just what the matter was. Not until after some re-
flection did I discover the cause in the stopping of my
clock."30
Moreover each of us has doubtless had opportunity to
observe how things which are disagreeable at first finally
become attractive from custom, and how such habits as-
sumed in the course of man's life become as peremptory
"needs" as those which we call natural needs. "Smokers,
snuff-takers, and those who chew tobacco, furnish familiar
* F. Pillon, "Sur la memoire et 1'imagination affective," Annee philoso-
phique, XVII, 1903, pp. 69-70. Paris, Alcan, 1907.
** A. Lehmann, Die Hauptgesetze des menschlichen Gefiihlslebens, pp.
194 ff. Leipsic, Reisland, 1892.
*° G. E. Miiller, Zur Theorie der sinnlichcn Aufmerksamkeit, p. 128, Leip-
sic, Edelmann.
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 341
instances of the way in which long persistence in a sensa-
tion not originally pleasurable, makes it pleasurable — the
sensation itself remaining unchanged. The like happens
with various foods and drinks, which, at first distasteful,
are afterwards greatly relished if frequently taken/'31
Thence arises the hankering after certain customary
things which we suddenly miss: "In some animals there is
produced a condition resembling nostalgia, expressing it-
self in a violent desire to return to former haunts, or in a
pining away resulting from the absence of accustomed per-
sons and things."32
Mere habit, therefore, is enough, as we have seen in
the case of family love, to cause other similar affectivities
also to originate and take root. Such are gregariousness,
sociability, friendship, and the like: "The perception of
kindred beings, perpetually seen, heard, and smelt, will
come to form a predominant part of consciousness — so
predominant a part that absence of it will inevitably cause
discomfort."33
Finally we are all well aware of the powerful influence
of the habits of life current in any family circle during
the earliest years of a child's life — "nurture" in its broad
sense, as Galton would say — because from these habits
arise and grow the feelings and moral tendencies which
remain impressed upon the whole life as though they were
"innate."34
In short from these few instances adduced simply in
explanation of our position, we see how profound is the
truth contained in the saying that habit is a "second na-
ture."
M Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Psychology, 4th ed., I, 287. London,
Williams and Norgate, 1899.
11 Th. Ribot, Essay on the Creative Imagination, p. 95. Chicago, The Open
Court Publishing Company, 1906.
* Spencer, op. cit., II, 626.
** Francis Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, pp.
208-216. London, MacMillan, 1883.
342 THE MONIST.
But if to a certain extent we can see the most diverse
tendencies originate by way of habit before our very eyes,
then we may also attribute a similar mnemonic origin to
all affective tendencies, since the nature of innate tenden-
cies differs in no wise from that of acquired tendencies.
Very similarly in the case of morphological evolution we
may consider that Lamarckianism is quite justified in
drawing from the few observable cases of adaptation ac-
quired during life, the conclusion that the entire structure
of the organism owes its existence to an infinite number
of similar functional adaptations.
Hence we may complete the saying quoted above with
the phrase that on the other hand "nature" is nothing but
a "first habit."
IV.
The hypothesis of the mnemonic origin and nature of
all affective tendencies finds still further support in a prop-
erty which is inherent in all of them, namely their "trans-
ference" which likewise is itself essentially mnemonic and
by which all other affectivities are derived from those of
direct mnemonic origin and thus come to have an indirect
mnemonic origin (Ribot's "law of transference").
For in consequence of the "substitution of a part for
the whole," a fundamental mnemonic principle frequently
mentioned above, it happens that merely parts or fragments
of certain environmental relations, striven for originally
in their totality, or that "analogous" environmental rela-
tions, i. e., those that are only partly similar to one desired,
or that environmental relations constituting "means" suited
to the attainment of an "end" and therefore its necessary
precursors, or, in fine, that environmental relations which
constantly accompany this "end," evoke the same affec-
tivity as the original "end" itself. Hence this affectivity
is "transferred" from the whole to the part, and this at-
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 343
tachment for the part then becomes so much stronger that
this partial relation which is first sought as a substitute
for the whole finally constitutes in its turn an habitual en-
vironmental relation henceforward desired or sought for
its own sake quite apart from the real and original affective
"transference."
This is the case for instance, as has been mentioned
above, with regard to copulation, the customary means for
the elimination of germinal substance, and also with regard
to the secondary sexual relations as phenomena usually
accompanying copulation. The "conquest" of the other
sex though only a necessary means for the satisfaction of
sexual appetite finally becomes with certain individuals an
end in itself. The pleasure in seducing for its own sake,
the "sexual vanity" of both male and female and the other
similar affectivities are further instances.
The case is the same with the tearing to pieces of prey
which was originally the customary means for satisfying
hunger but finally gave place to cruelty for cruelty's sake.
"One half of the animal race live upon prey; and as it
is delightful to eat so it must be delightful to kill. Pleasur-
able also must be all the signs of discomfiture, the helpless
struggles and agonized gestures of the victim."35
In man the love of victory for its own sake, ambition,
thirst for power, desire for fame and glory, the endeavor
to surpass his fellows, are all derived as consequences of
further "transference."
In these and all other similar cases of affective trans-
ferences to environmental relations constantly becoming
less material and more moral, besides the real proper affec-
tive transference which transforms the part into a new
"end," there is always involved in man and in the higher
* Alexander Bain, The Emotions of the Will, 4th ed., London, Longmans
Green, 1899, p. 65.
344 THE MONIST.
animals the cooperation of their own intellectual develop-
ment.
For the intellect is constantly discovering new and un-
suspected similarities between the most diverse phenomena,
even between material and ethical phenomena, extending
the same affectivities to the one class that are valid for
the other; just as disgust for certain foods characterized
by taste or odor as unwholesome extends to certain objects
which can only be touched or seen (viscous bodies), and
then, carrying the analogy still farther, even to simple
"objects" or relations of an ethical order.36
At the same time inasmuch as the intellect foresees
with constantly increasing sharpness the external phenom-
ena to be expected as effects of given causes, it continues
to devise new means more indirect and more complex for
attaining its end, and thereby to open a broader sphere of
efficiency for "affective transference." For instance the
weapon which was invented by man as means for self-
preservation has rendered possible an affective transfer-
ence to himself which is characteristic of the warrior and
the hunter; and the earth which the agriculturist has uti-
lized to provide his own nourishment has made possible
that intense love for the soil frequent among farmers.
Furthermore, since the intellect also foresees with in-
creasing certainty internal psychical processes, it calls into
being a large number of new affectivities destined to pre-
vent possible future affective tendencies from remaining
unsatisfied. For instance the anticipation of future hunger
gives even the satiated man the inclination to lay up food
that is left from a meal, and to keep it in his possession.
Thus arises in general the sense of ownership, and in the
same way the anticipation of the innumerable other desires
which civilized man cherishes to-day excites in him an
** Ribot, Psych, des sent., p. 212. — Essai sur les passions, pp. 65 ff.
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 345
intense longing for wealth, covetousness and similar pas-
sions.37
Finally, the intellect renders possible that infinite vari-
ety of shades of which affective tendencies are capable in
man. For since it is able to observe from different points
of view, simultaneously or nearly so, all environmental
relations even when only slightly complex, it can evoke
diverse affectivities at the same time, and these, as Bain
would say, by association, combination, confluence, inter-
ference or mutual partial inhibition finally produce an ex-
ceedingly complex affectivity which is therefore capable
of showing the finest imaginable gradations from one case
to another according to the number and character of its
component parts.
Thus, for instance, fear, anxiety and kindred feelings
had already developed in animals from the instinct of self-
preservation in its purely defensive form; but in man this
latter gave rise also to all the propitiatory affectivities in
innumerable varieties and shades, such as prostration, hu-
mility, hypocrisy, flattery and the like. Even the religious
sentiment in its lowest forms is a direct consequence of
this propitiatory affectivity, while the loftier religious sen-
timent and the kindred feeling experienced in the presence
of the sublime are more highly developed and more com-
plete forms of the same thing.38
Similarly from the instinct of self-preservation in its
double aspect, offensive and defensive at the same time,
had already developed in the higher animals the instinct
to attack and all the different varieties of counter-attack;
but in man this instinct has assumed the most varied forms
and shades from deepest hatred to a scarcely perceptible
antipathy, from rapacity to the merest envy, and from the
"Spencer, Princ. of Psychol, I, 488!. — Ribot, Psychol. des sent., no,
269-270.
™ For instance, see Ribpt, Psych, des sent, p. 100, and E. Rignano, "II
fenomeno religiose," Scientia, XIII, I, 1910.
346 THE MONIST.
most violent thirst for revenge to the slightest resentment.
The noble sentiment of justice is a very remote and hardly
distinguishable derivative of the same instinct.39
How high may be the degree of complexity which can
thus be attained is attested, for instance, by maternal love
which has grown from the purely bodily necessity for lac-
tation to the tenderest feelings of the noblest self-denial,
and especially also by conjugal affection which has been
transformed from coarse brutal sexual appetite to an har-
monious cooperation of the gentlest and most delicate
moral affectivities.40
Yet it is easily comprehensible that it would be useless
and impossible to stop here to investigate all of the affec-
tivities and their slightest shades which have in this way
attained their origin and development in the higher ani-
mals and especially in man. Let these few indications
suffice to render intelligible the fact that as soon as the
organism has acquired in the direct mnemonic way a stock
of affective tendencies and the intellect has attained its
proper development, the number of affectivities which may
be derived by "transference" and by "combination," that is
to say, by indirect mnemonic means, is infinite.
v.
But few words are needed to indicate the place of affec-
tive tendencies among those fundamental psychical phe-
nomena which are most closely connected with them, such
as the emotions, the will, and the states of pleasure and
pain.
Emotions are only sudden and violent modes of activa-
tion of those very accumulations of energy of which the
affective tendencies consist.
"See Bain, The Emotions and the Will, pp. 117! — Ribot, Psych, des sen-
timents, pp. 229 {., 271 f. — Problemes de psychologic affective, chap. Ill, "L'anti-
pathie," Paris, Alcan, 1910.
*° Spencer, op. cit., I, 487 f.
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 347
Of course it is not always possible clearly to distinguish
affective tendencies from emotions, since the former are
perceptible neither objectively nor subjectively as long as
they remain in a potential state, but become so at their
activation which, when sudden and violent, represents the
corresponding emotion. But the importance and necessity
of distinguishing accurately between emotions and affec-
tive tendencies — a distinction however which is usually en-
tirely neglected by most psychologists — lies in the fact that
one and the same affective tendency may according to ex-
ternal circumstances give rise to the most diverse emotions,
to the most diverse degrees of their intensity, or even to no
emotion at all properly so called. For instance if we see
a vehicle approaching at a distance we quietly step aside
out of the way, but if it appears suddenly before us at an
abrupt turn in the street we feel a strong emotional shock.
And the same affective tendency of the dog towards a
piece of meat can give rise to flight, anger, or the careful,
coolly calculated search for a safe hiding place, according
to the circumstances under which his dainty meal is en-
dangered.
In short, every emotion, as Stout rightly emphasizes,
presupposes an affective tendency, but the reverse does
not follow; for an affective tendency even when in full
activation need not always imply any emotion.41
Every affective tendency "impels" to action, that is, it
not only "starts" but really "impinges" upon the organs
of motion either directly as in the lower organisms or by
the aid of the nervous system as in the higher. Therefore
from the first moment of its activation it has the appear-
ance of a "motion in the nascent state" (Ribot).
If its activation is sudden and intense the resulting
activity of the motor muscles is accompanied by that of
all the viscera. This "visceral cooperation" which thus
41 See G. F. Stout, A Manual of Psychology, 2d. ed., p. 305, London, 1907.
348 THE MONIST.
takes place in connection with the emotions properly so
called, is not, as Sherrington believes, due solely to the
fact that the rapidity and intensity with which the muscles
are set in motion induces the immediate action of the
viscera which furnish the muscles with the material for
their energy, but also and especially because there is an
overflow of nervous energy, which suddenly released in
great quantities acts like a flood, and pours forth in nu-
merous other tracks than those closely connected with the
locomotor apparatus.42
And this visceral commotion thus produced as a result
of the sudden intense impulse, according to the well-known
theory of James, Lange and Sergi, finds its centripetal
echo in the brain in the form of an emotion.43
Hence it is the affective tendency which impels us and
not the emotion, as Sherrington maintains in accordance
with the prevalent confusion between affective tendency
and emotion which cannot be too greatly deplored, and the
emotion is only the reaction of a too rapid and intense mani-
festation of this tendency.
On the other hand if on account of external conditions
or the psychical disposition of the individual the activation
of the affective tendency takes place neither too suddenly
nor with too great intensity, then only are the requisite
muscles called into play without any emotion. Thus the
amount of useful work accomplished as a result of the
discharge of the affective tendency is greater in inverse
proportion to the amount lost in the coordinated move-
ments of a purely emotional significance. This is the
reason why we generally observe the greatest determina-
tion, the most tenacious persistence in transactions,44 the
u See Sherrington, The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, pp. 265!.
41 See the famous article of W. James, "What is an Emotion ?" Mind,
April, 1884, pp. 188-205. — Renault d'Allonnes, Les inclinations, 108 f.
44 See Renault d'Allonnes, Les inclinations, pp. 207 f.
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 349
most intense and feverish activity in "unemotional" indi-
viduals.
As regards the will, an act of volition takes place when-
ever an affective tendency directed towards a future goal
triumphs over an affective tendency whose aim is for the
present ; in other words, whenever a far-sighted affectivity
is victorious over a short-sighted one. It is not the man
who sweating and panting after a long run throws himself
down to drink eagerly from a spring, who exercises an act
of volition, but rather the one who forbears to slake his burn-
ing thirst for fear of a greater future evil. Likewise no act
of volition is exerted when an exhausted wanderer throws
himself down to sleep, but rather when a mountain climber
overcomes exhaustion in order to reach the desired goal.
And the act of a man who on a momentary impulse falls
upon his opponent at the slightest provocation with hard
words and fisticuffs does not demand any will power, as
does the conduct of the man who bridles his just anger in
order coolly to estimate to its remotest consequences the
most appropriate procedure to enter upon against the of-
fender.45
Essentially then the will is nothing else than a true and
proper affective tendency which checks other affective tend-
encies because it is more far-sighted and which in its turn
impels to action like all affective tendencies. "There is
present in the action of will some desire of a good to be
obtained or of an evil to be shunned, which imparts its
driving force."46
Two extreme instances deserve special mention, for
they include all other cases. The first of these may again
be divided into two.
Sometimes one of the affective tendencies is so strong
48 Cf. E. Meumann, Intelligent und Wille, pp. 181 f. (Leipsic, Quelle und
Meyer, 1908) , although differing in many points.
*" Maudsley, The Physiology of Mind, p. 339. London, MacMillan, 1876.
35O THE MONIST.
and persistent that it constantly outweighs all others; it
checks them if it is contrary to them and strengthens them
if it is in harmony with them. Such an "hypertrophied"
affective tendency is called "passion" (Ribot, Renda). If
it is directed towards some present aim we say that it over-
throws the will because it successfully withstands the in-
hibitive effect of every other affective tendency directed
towards the future; if on the other hand its own aim is
in the future, an "ideal" whose attainment may require the
work of a lifetime, then we say that the individual is per-
severing, stubborn, unyielding, endowed with an iron will,
because every other opposed affective tendency directed
toward an immediate end dashes in vain against it.
On the other hand it sometimes happens that the two
conflicting affective tendencies are evenly balanced. At
one moment the far-sighted tendency gains greater force
and seems to triumph by turning the mind to new conse-
quences in the future, but the next instant the short-sighted
tendency discovers new or more clearly recognized aspects
in the object desired for the time being, and becomes more
intense, theatening again to gain the upper hand. The
individual then falls in a state we call "indecision." When
a philosopher discovers by introspection that he is in this
situation, he will easily realize that both affectivities exist
together within him, that they are "flesh of his flesh," and
that the slightest and most insignificant psychical occur-
rence is enough to cause either one to gain ascendency over
the other. It is clear that he can easily fall a prey to the
illusion that nothing at all, any chance breath of wind,
is enough to give one the preponderance over the other.
This is the subjective illusion of free will which for many
centuries has constituted the greatest and most difficult
problem that philosophy has been called upon to solve.
Finally to come to the consideration of "pleasure" and
"pain," it is the merit of the modern psychological school
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 351
that it has shown the fallacy of Bain's theory that the
fundamental fact of animal life is the pursuit of "pleasure,"
in other words, the search for everything pleasant and the
avoidance of everything unpleasant ; and on the other hand
that it has clearly emphasized that the conditions of pleas-
ure and pain represent only the superficial part of the af-
fective life, "of which the deep element consists in affective
tendencies, positive or negative. . . .These are the elemen-
tary processes of affective life, of which pleasure and pain
represent only the satisfaction or failure."47
Since an activation of nervous energy accompanies
every "satisfaction" of any affective tendency, and every
"disappointment" corresponds to an interruption or ces-
sation of this energy, pleasure really corresponds to every
state of discharge or activation of the nervous or vital
energy, and pain to every state of inhibition or suppression
of it.
In fact "painful" is every act inhibitive of certain nerv-
ous activities; "unpleasant" every too perceptible change
of surrounding conditions which renders impossible the
continuance of the hitherto stationary physiological state,
"agonizing" every sudden and violent change of environ-
ment which brings about the complete stoppage or destruc-
tion of life in one or another part of the organism, and
"sad" is the individual when there is a general diminution
of vital functions within his organism.
Inversely, it is "pleasant" to exercise one's muscle in
play and sport ; the cessation of a strained condition of the
soul is a "relief," the return to an accustomed environment
and the resumption of habits is "welcome," and in general
full of "joy" and "pleasure" is every state in which the
organism experiences a greater activity of nervous en-
ergy.48
47 Ribot, Psychol. des sent., p. 2. — Probl. de psych, off., p. 16.
a See Ribot, Psych, des sent., Part I, chapters I-III, especially pp. 52 f. and
352 THE MONIST.
It is sufficient here to indicate that the theory of the
mnemonic origin of all affective tendencies which we have
endeavored to explain and substantiate in this essay, offers
a new argument in support of the modern psychological
views with regard to the inmost nature of pleasure and
pain. For in assigning to these affective tendencies the
nature of mnemonic accumulations it implies that the fun-
damental principle of affective life can be nothing but the
tendency to activation inherent in these accumulations, as
is the case with every other accumulation of potential en-
ergy, and that therefore pain and pleasure, pleasant and
painful states, can be nothing but the superficial and sub-
jective side of this activation or of its inhibition.
VI.
Before terminating these few notes upon the nature
of affective tendencies, we shall add a few remarks, which
seem to us indispensable, on the fundamental character of
these tendencies according to which they constitute a force,
so to speak, with a definite end to be attained but with the
path to be followed left undetermined.
Affective tendencies owe this property of gravitating
toward an end while the means remain undecided, to the
circumstance that they depend on the existence in a poten-
tial state of a certain general or local physiological system
or state, which was determiend in the past by the outside
world as a whole or by individual particular relations to
this outside world, and which now like every other poten-
tial energy simply endeavors to remanifest itself as soon
as it is released by the persistence or recurrence of even
a small part of this environment or these environmental
relations. For the result of the existence of this tendency
is that the organism gravitates toward this environment
83 f. — W. Ostwald, Vorlesungen iiber Naturphilosophie, pp. 388 flf. Leipsic,
Veit, 1905.
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 353
or these environmental relations rendering possible the
recurrence of this physiological state, but it does not imply
any "impulse" toward or "impingement" upon any one
of the series of passing physiological states or movements
which, even if they were capable of eventually bringing
the organism back to the desired environment, nevertheless
have nothing in common with the definitive physiological
state itself which corresponds to this environment.
Only from the moment when one series of movements
happens to bring the organism back to the desired environ-
mental relations earlier than another one, will it have ac-
quired an advantage over the others, and this result may
be expressed by saying that the affective tendency has exer-
cised a "choice" (James, Baldwin and the American school
in general).
Hence it is only from that moment that the affective
tendency will by mnemonic association constitute a force
which "impels" these movements toward the end, just as
certain reflex movements "impinge" on one another (Sher-
rington). And only from that moment will these move-
ments ( so long as they have not become mechanical in the
form of reflexes) be determined exclusively under the pres-
sure of the corresponding affectivity or the equivalent "act
of the will."
However, until this takes place the affectivity betrays
no tendency at all to discharge in one path rather than in
another, hence the great difference between the affective
tendency or act of will on the one hand, and the reflex
movement on the other. This reflex movement, by means
of which the act so "chosen" when often repeated becomes
by mnemonic accumulation gradually mechanical and quite
independent of the whole, represents a tendency to dis-
charge along one single given path which is determined
in advance. It is a force whose point of application and
direction are known beforehand, and might therefore be
354 THE MONIST.
indicated graphically by the customary arrow used to rep-
resent the forces of mechanics. On the other hand the
affective tendency constitutes a force of which neither the
point of application nor the direction are predetermined
but only the point towards which it tends. It is a "dis-
posable" energy to be applied at will to this or that act
so long as it leads to the desired end. Therefore it can be
represented at the same time quite indefinitely by any of
the infinite number of arrows which fill the entire volume
of a cone and converge at its apex.
The reflex movement admits therefore of but a single
solution. On the other hand its affective tendency admits
of an indefinitely large number of solutions so long as none
of the possible movements has been performed by chance
and given rise to a choice; or when there are numerous
equivalent paths to the goal.
This possibility of many solutions constitutes exactly
the "unforeseen," the "antimechanical" behavior dependent
on the affectivity or will, in contrast to the predetermined
mechanical behavior of reflex movements or of any such
complex combinations of reflex movements as certain in-
stincts exhibit.
Finally it is this fundamental property of the affective
tendency of constituting in some degree a force gravitating
toward that environment or those particular environmental
relations which permit the reactivation of certain mnemo-
nic accumulations forming this very tendency, which lends
that environment or those environmental relations the ap-
pearance of a vis a fronte or "ultimate cause" differing
very essentially from the vis a tergo or "actual cause"
which alone is operative in inorganic nature.49
The organism, writes Jennings, "seems to work toward
a definite purpose. In other words, the final result of its
* See W. James, Principles of Psychology, I, pp. 7 f. London, Macmillan,
1901.
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES. 355
action seems to be present in some way at the beginning,
determining what the action shall be. In this the action
of living things appears to contrast with that of things
inorganic."50
Now this "final result of its action" exists really from
the beginning in the form of mnemonic accumulation. For
that environment or those special environmental condi-
tions to which the animal is gravitating' operate now as
vis a fronte inasmuch as they were formerly vis a tergo
and in so far as the physiological activities then deter-
mined by them in the organism have left behind a mne-
monic accumulation which now itself constitutes the real
and true vis a tergo, moving the living being.31
Thus it is clear that one and the same explanation
applies to all the "finalism" of life. For from the onto-
genetic development which creates organs that cannot per-
form their functions until the adult state, to the property
of all physiological states determined by certain environ-
mental conditions to remanifest themselves at the first ap-
pearance of phenomena usually preceding these conditions,
but in no wise constituting them; from the perfect way
in which the organism in its entirety is morphologically
adapted to its environment before the latter can exercise
its formative influence, to all the wonderful formations
and special structures so exactly adapted to all the most
probable conditions to which this organism might later be
exposed ; from the simplest reflex motions that are directed
so perfectly toward the preservation and welfare of the
individual to the most complex instincts by means of which
animals prepare in advance for future conditions of which
they themselves are probably ignorant — all these "final-
istic" phenomena of life, identical in their nature, can be
"Jennings, Behavior of Lower Organisms, p. 338.
n E. Mach, Die Analyse der Entpfindungen, sth ed, pp. 70, 78, Jena,
Fischer; English edition: Chicago, Open Court Publishing Cornany, 1897.
356 THE MONIST.
explained as so many manifestations of a purely mnemonic
nature, as we have seen in our earlier writings mentioned
above.
And now in the present essay we see that affective tend-
encies, which are even more conspicuously "finalistic" man-
ifestations, are likewise based upon the mnemonic prop-
erty of living substance, and hence in the last analysis
upon the faculty of "specific accumulation," a faculty be-
longing exclusively to the nervous energy which underlies
all life.
This mnemonic property, this faculty of "specific ac-
cumulation," which by its absence leaves inorganic nature
exclusively in the power of forces a tergo and deprives
it of every finalistic aspect, is on the other hand everywhere
present in organic nature and because of its presence makes
the world of life a world apart, of which the most char-
acteristic elements cannot be explained by the laws of phys-
ics and chemistry alone in the limited sense assigned to
them to-day.
EUGENIO RlGNANO.
MILAN, ITALY.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND HIS DOCTRINE
OF WILL TO POWER.
TO "boost" one's friends and to "knock" one's enemies
constitutes the philosophy of no small number of men.
It is true that most of these would be alarmed to think that
so large a residuum of barbarism lingers in their breasts,
but to this it amounts, however euphoniously it may be
named. To these, striving for strength of individuality
on their own part, and to those who, consciously or uncon-
sciously, idolize this individuality when seen in others, as
most of us do, it is refreshing to turn to the work of Fried-
rich Nietzsche, the great modern philosopher of individ-
ualism.
It is true that one who vaguely feels that might is not
only right but good, and who, unable to find a logical justi-
fication for this attitude, is seeking one who can give it a
consistent formulation, has little to hope from Nietzsche.
For if there was anything about which Nietzsche felt little
concern that thing was consistency. He was beyond con-
sistency just as his "superman" was "beyond good and
evil." What is valuable in his work is not its fitness to
convince but to persuade. It has in it all of the delightful,
and at the same time all of the disgusting, features which
belong to any philosophy that is pure emotionalism. What
he utters in his books is not what he thinks but what he
feels. His whole philosophy is the incoherent cry of a
sensitive and suffering mortal, who knows that he has
358 THE MONIST.
been stung but does not take time to locate the wound.
His books are filled with flashes of indignation and of
deep, wild yearning for freedom from the decadence into
which humanity has fallen, but are absolutely lacking in
method and in sober judgment.
But despite this intrusion of so much of the personal
equation in his philosophy Nietzsche's work is by no means
insignificant. Its influence upon modern life, particularly
in some places, has been immense. Despite, too, his con-
tempt for consistency there is dominant in one phase of
his work — and this is the central phase — a single, con-
sistent strain. This is his doctrine of the Will to Power
as the goal of life. To this doctrine, then, as the most
notable defense of individualism extant, and to an estimate
of its place in ethics, we shall turn.
i.
From what has been said above it will doubtless be
suspected that an account of Nietzsche's life would throw
light upon his work as philosopher. And so it does, though
in a very unique manner. It will, therefore, be quite ap-
propriate to look for a minute or two into his biography
for some clue to his strangely extravagant philosophy.
To one who bears in mind the well-known fact that
a man's philosophy is almost inevitably an expression of
his temperament, it is doubly surprising to hear that
Nietzsche, who prided himself on being the "Philosopher
of the Immoral," "was," as Hugge says, "the perfection
of a well-mannered boy and never did anything naughty."
His whole life was a complete contradiction of his philos-
ophy. Instead of in the company of the lion-natured
beyond-man he grew up under feminine influences, his
father having died when the boy was only five years old.
In spite of the fact that he claimed to have learned from
no one, he was a model student who got along well with
NIETZSCHE AND THE WILL TO POWER. 359
his classmates and wrote affectionate poems in honor of
his school. Though he taught that God is dead and de-
spised Christianity as the greatest scheme of revenge ever
perpetrated by a malicious set of slaves, he was certificated
from his school as strong in religion. A frenzied contemner
of the slightest restraint, he was an exemplary soldier in
the German army. An advocate of relentless struggle in
which the weaker should be given no quarter, and a fierce
denouncer of sympathy, he was obliged by circumstances to
go to the Franco-Prussian war as nurse in the hospital in-
stead of warrior in the field. A calumniator of pity, he was so
deeply touched by the suffering which he saw there in the
hospital that his health was permanently impaired by the
shock. A worshiper of that mighty prowess to which he
would have his superman attain, he was himself, through-
out the greater part of his life, an invalid, obliged to resign
his professorship at Basel because of ill health and to
pass his time in various southern health resorts, for the
most part a recluse shut up within a little room darkened
that the light might not injure his eyes. Yearning to
meet one more immoral than himself from whom he might
learn, he was taken by his neighbors for a saint and pre-
sented with candles for his evening prayers. Certainly
fate could not have been more ironical.
Startling as is this incongruity, it by no means argues
insincerity. Indeed, however immature we may think his
judgment, certainly insincerity is the last thing with which
Nietzsche can be charged. There are passages in his
books — and particularly in the Zarathustra — that are al-
most tragic with their burden of pathetic earnestness. In-
deed it is out of this very incongruity between his ideals
and attainments that his earnestness arises, and it was to
it that reference was made above when it was said that
the story of Nietzsche's life throws light upon his philos-
ophy. He saw in his own life an extreme case of the de-
360 THE MONIST.
cadence of man. All that he was not and could not be he
yearned for with a mighty yearning. This he idealized
and preached as the goal of the beyond-man. It was not
primarily because he hated the life about him that he urged
a transvaluation of all values, but because he loved an
ideal beyond, of which his own lack had made him feel its
worth the more.
But there were other factors also in the" making of the
philosopher. Philosophy was his fate rather than his
choice. By profession he was a philologist and professor
of philology in the University of Basel. He was not with-
out distinction in his profession and gave promise of no
insignificant future. But the proper work of the philol-
ogist was too limited in scope to satisfy him. He hungered
for the larger methods of philosophy. So he gradually
drifted away ''from his philological orthodoxy and began
to discuss questions affecting the relation of music to the
origin of the Greek drama. Indeed a semi-philosophical
music, like that of Wagner, was to him the deepest ex-
pression of life — an expression in which the inarticulate
will in nature made itself felt. But such dabbling offended
his musty fellow philologists and cost him the reputation
which he had earned by his earlier books. But he cared
not for the philologists and went on expounding Wagner.
About this time, too, Schopenhauer's book came into his
hands and influenced him profoundly. For a while he
stopped here as a disciple of Schopenhauer, but the great
German pessimist served only as a stepping stone to a
more positive philosophy. As Nietzsche himself says,
Schopenhauer only enabled him to find his true self. And
so he passed on inevitably from the Will to Live to the Will
to Power.
But as might be expected, each added step toward
radicalism cost him the loss of more friends — friends whom
he could not afford to spare, for he loved the friendship of
NIETZSCHE AND THE WILL TO POWER. 361
strong men and women. His friendship for Wagner,
whom he had almost worshiped, was gradually turned to
hatred. He broke with his publisher and being unable
to find another was obliged to have his books published at
his own expense. Even his sister, who had understood
him best and had sympathized with him most, was for a
time estranged from him. His books would no longer
sell and he turned his hopes to the future for a hearing.
Of one of his now best known books he had only forty
copies printed intending to distribute them among his
friends but could dispose of only seven of them — so for-
saken was he.
It must not be understood from this that Nietzsche
was personally disagreeable. He was not. He was ostra-
cized only because of his too great nobility — a nobility
which would not permit him to compromise a single point
for the sake of ease. Most of these estrangements were
due to some insincerity in the character of the friend
which was forced upon Nietzsche's attention and which
he could not endure. Some others, as that of his sister —
happily only temporary — were due to mistakes. None was
due to any fault of Nietzsche's.
It is true that Nietzsche himself courted this hard life.
The principles by which he admits having go'verned his
actions were by no means such as to soften the pricks
against which he inevitably ran. But Nietzsche had only
contempt for those who so conducted their lives that they
might be able to sleep well. "Seek I happiness?" he has
Zarathustra say, "I seek my work."
A few words regarding his metaphysics — in so far as
he had any — may also throw light upon his ethical doc-
trine. His philosophy he bases upon the assumption that
God is dead — that is, not only the God of popular tradition
but also God as the ultimate ground of the universe. What
he finds everywhere is will, and not only will to live but
362 THE MONIST.
will to power. Moreover this is not a unified world will
but many unrelated wills, each equally legitimate. It is
the business of each thing then to force its way in the
universe. Things are only what they are made. They are
not found ; they are created. "The doer," he says, "alone
learneth." Apart from doing there is nothing to learn
for facts do not hang together in such a way as to con-
stitute truth. There is in the universe as such no unity,
no coherence. It is foolish to speak about truth for there
is no truth that belongs to the objective world. Only a
fool would attempt to be consistent. The self is primal,
the self is sovereign. There is no truth except what it
creates.
One should not, then, permit one's self to be dominated
by the past and its institutions. The present does not grow
out of the past and owes nothing to it. It merely comes
as it is made and stands entirely by itself. Values should
not, therefore, be brought over from the past. The old
tables should be broken and each day should make its own
tables. To bind the present to the past by cords of con-
vention is to fetter the sovereign self.
But this self which is sovereign is only "an earth head
which giveth significance to earth." "He who is awake
and knoweth saith 'body I am throughout and nothing
besides ; the soul is merely a word for something in body/ '
The wisdom on which men pride themselves is only instinct.
The processes that run through the universe are merely
mechanical processes which run themselves out and then are
reversed. This is Nietzsche's doctrine of the Eternal Re-
currence, the doctrine that "all things recur eternally, our-
selves included. .. .so that all these years are like unto
each other in the greatest and in the smallest things." I
leave the world now to find it again just as I left it. "Thus
willeth mine eternal fate. As a proclaimer I perish. The
NIETZSCHE AND THE WILL TO POWER. 363
hour hath now come when the perishing one blesseth him-
self. Thus endeth Zarathustra's destruction."
ii.
"The perishing one blesseth himself. Thus endeth
Zarathustra's destruction." It is just thus that Nietzsche
escapes pessimism. If one must perish then let one wel-
come perishing. If one has ugly passions then let him
fully allow those passions and they become beautiful. He
alone who attempts to fight fate and to crush out his in-
stincts finds evil in the world, and whoever finds evil at
all finds infinite evil since things eternally recur. Since
this, then, is fate let man accept it. Let him say, as the
fallen Satan did, if such be his instincts, "Evil be thou
my good." "Thou laidest thy goal upon thy passions,"
says Nietzsche, "and they became thy virtue and thy de-
light." Let Amor fati be your motto. What you can not
help, willingly embrace and call it good. To the irre-
vocable "it was" say "thus would I have it" and it remains
no longer evil.
It is clear then that there can be no general ethical
principles. " 'This is my way ; where is yours ?' I an-
swered unto those who asked me for the way. 'For the
way existeth not.' ' Any attempt to reduce life to order
would be to suppress it. It would be to restrain the sover-
eign self. Whether authority is imposed from without or
whether it is self imposed it is denial of life. "Good men,"
says Nietzsche, "never speak the truth. Whoever obeyeth
doth not know himself." The proper society is an an-
archistic society in which each one forces his own way and
in which those who are not strong enough for this volun-
tarily go to the madhouse. "The state," says Nietzsche,
"is a liar in all tongues of good and evil ; whatever it saith
it lieth, whatever it hath it hath stolen. . . .Verily this sign
(i. e., the sign of the state because it attempts to enforce an
364 THE MONIST.
impossible equality) pointeth to the will unto death. Verily
it waveth hands unto the preachers of death."
Only that has value which contributes to life. That
alone is evil which crushes down life. Power is the goal
of man. The will to power is the sovereign will which
justifies itself and any means that the attainment of its
goal demands. It is not quantity but quality that counts.
"Too many are born," says Nietzsche, "For the superfluous
the state was invented." For the evolution of the man of
power the rabble must be freely sacrificed. He is not
bound by the conventions of society. He is beyond good
and evil. He is a law unto himself. He is the creator of
values. He is not bound by the ties of the past. History
centers about him. If he wishes to be ruthless then ruth-
lessness is his right. Indeed it is to be the special pride
of the beyond-man that he has hewn his way up. "A
right," says Zarathustra, "which thou canst take as a
prey thou shalt not allow to be given to thee."
For the beyond-man there must be an entire trans-
valuation of all values. The virtues of the good are merely
compromises within the herd by which they have agreed
not to destroy each other. They are the conventions of
cowards, not of strong men. They make toward death
and not toward life. "With whom," says Nietzsche, "is
the greatest danger for the whole human future? Is it
not with the good and the just? For the good can not
create, they are always the beginning of the end." But
the virtue of the beyond-man will be in his immorality.
It will be in his strength, in his might, in his towering
grandeur. "What is evil," says Nietzsche, "is man's best
power. Man must become better and more evil. Thus
I teach. The evil is necessary for the best of beyond-man."
In the first place the beyond-man will be free from
pity. Pity is weakening. It is a millstone about the neck
of one who is seeking for egoistic power. It must be
NIETZSCHE AND THE WILL TO POWER. 36$
killed or it will kill. "Pity," says Nietzsche, "was the
murderer of God .... He was suffocated with pity."
Nor will the beyond-man concern himself at all to serve
the herd whether with or without pity. He will let the
sick themselves wait upon the sick. This moral sickness
which holds the herd in its grip is contageous so let him
who has his health beware. Let him be strong and merci-
less. Let the strength of his posterity atone for the sacri-
fice of his neighbor. "Spare not thy neighbor," counsels
Zarathustra, "for man is something that must be sur-
passed .... Let the future and the most remote be for thee
the cause of thy to-day."
Voluptuousness, thirst for power, and selfishness —
these are the virtues of the beyond-man. But such a pro-
gram meant to Nietzsche something far deeper than li-
cense. It was not a passive but an intensely active scheme
of life which he was proposing. Upon these virtues he
did not pitch because they were in defiance of the current
morality but because he found them indispensable in the
making of the man of power. He did not wish to dispense
with morality but to change and, as he thought, to deepen,
its meaning. If Nietzsche's beyond-man is to be beyond
good and evil he will never be, as Nietzsche urges, beyond
good and bad.
Nietzsche is not at all to be taken as primarily a hater,
though hatred is about all that he succeeds in expressing.
He despised man only in contrast with beyond-man, in the
way of whose coming, man, with the good and evil of his
slave morality, was standing. It is only when man forgets
that he is a means and not a goal — which indeed he
usually does — that Nietzsche directs his polemic against
him. It is this new doctrine that man's glory lies in the
fact that he is a means and not a goal, a rope between man
and beyond-man, that Zarathustra comes down from the
cave proclaiming, like John the Baptist from the wilder-
366 THE MONIST.
ness. All must be sacrificed, not on account of any evil
that is involved in itself, but for the bringing in of the
beyond-man. "My great love unto the most remote," says
Nietzsche, "commandeth spare not thy neighbor. Man is
something that must be surpassed." "From love alone my
despising and my warning bird shall fly up, and not out of
the swamp." "Oh my brethren," he says again, "when
I bade you break the good and the tables of the good it
was only that I put man on board ship for his high sea ....
Walk upright in time, oh my brethren, learn how to walk
upright. The sea stormeth. Many wish to raise them-
selves with your help. The sea stormeth, everything is in
the sea. Up, upwards, ye old sailor hearts! What? A
fatherland? Thither striveth our rudder where our chil-
dren's land is. Out thither, stormier than the sea, our
great longing stormeth."
But the doctrine of self-assertion which Nietzsche is
advocating is by no means utilitarianism. It is true that
he sometimes characterizes the state of the beyond-man
as happiness but it is a very vigorous and even tragic
kind of happiness. It is joy rather than happiness — the
joy that one has in his strength when he is striving mightily
and mastering. It is by no means that passive satisfaction
which the utilitarian means by happiness. Indeed when
he uses the word happiness to describe the state of the
beyond-man he usually pairs it off with its direct opposite.
It is an unnameable something that is at once joy and
sorrow. "Unutterable and nameless," he says, "is that
which maketh my soul's pain and sweetness, and it is a
hunger of mine intestines," and at another place in speak-
ing of the optimum he says, "It is not his road to happiness
of which I am now speaking, but his road to power, to
action, to mightiest action, and actually, in most cases, his
road to unhappiness."
But, it may be asked, granted that this ideal of power
NIETZSCHE AND THE WILL TO POWER. 367
is true, does it necessarily involve the complete overturning
of our tables or would it be sufficient if only we would inter-
pret broadly our old rules of morality? Can power be at-
tained, as Nietzsche thought, only beyond good and evil?
The answer, I think, is clear. If you have in mind the
type of power that Nietzsche did, and if you set it up as
the sole measure of worth, then our present standards
must be transcended. There can be no doubt that society,
as now organized, must sacrifice the individual to the
mass. There is constantly a centripetal force drawing
both extremes toward a common mean. The weak are
protected and the overstrong held in check. There is a
constant clamor for charity institutions on the one hand
and for graduated income taxes on the other. The weak
man is given a lift and the strong man is envied and calum-
niated. It is the average man in whose making we are
interested. In a dispute the presumption is always against
the man of Nietzsche's hope. We leave him to take care of
himself. Nothing seems more unethical to-day than the
doctrine that to him that hath shall be given and from him
that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
A society in which the mass was sacrificed to the production
of the individual of power who intended to use and enjoy
his power entirely egoistically would be a society in which
values had been indeed transmuted.
in.
The defects of this doctrine are, I think, obvious. In
the first place very few persons would be willing to
accept the metaphysics upon which it is based or at
least upon which it would need to be based for one
who was concerned about being consistent. A material-
ism so thoroughgoing as that which Nietzsche some-
times expresses would not find many advocates at the
present day. How "an earth-head" could "give signifi-
368 THE MONIST.
cance to earth" is something that I for my part can not
understand. If "the soul is merely a name for something
in body" it is the name for something that is of at least
equal dignity with the body and probably by far the most
important part of life. But if this is true then Nietzsche's
emphasis is largely misplaced. The instincts, which he
would unstintedly sanction, are the part of man which he
brings up from the brutes rather than down from the gods,
and they have no sacredness except for him who yearns
back toward the brute. The thing that is most character-
istic of man is conscious control rather than instinct. Cer-
tainly history has abundantly shown that man is most com-
pletely man not when he is giving rope to his instincts but
when, at many points, he is inhibiting these, or at least
organizing them into a larger unity.
In the next place a purely emotionalistic and nominal-
istic philosophy is certainly untenable. Nietzsche says in
one of his apothegms, "We do the same when awake as
when dreaming; we only invent and imagine him with
whom we have intercourse and forget it immediately."
But if we really do invent him with whom we have inter-
course we at least invent him in a much more coherent way
than that in which dreams are made. No one who wishes
to be in the least true to experience can maintain that
nature is wholly plastic. It is given, at least in part, inde-
pendently of the capricious self and must be taken account
of. Facts may be strung within certain limits so as to
suit human purposes but withal they have a character of
their own which no single self can capriciously transmute.
The isolated self is not, then, and can never be, wholly
sovereign. It is not wholly true, as Nietzsche asserts,
that no one can learn who does not create. There is some-
thing beyond which constitutes truth, and to which the ego
must adjust itself if it is not to commit suicide. A self is
not isolated but is a member of a larger system whether
NIETZSCHE AND THE WILL TO POWER. 369
it wishes to be or not. If it could be divorced from this
system it would cease to be a self. One need not become
a member of any human society to be bound by limitations
over which he has no control. His individual caprice is
just as securely blocked by the inflexibility of nature as
by any social compacts. One can therefore approximate
to sovereignty much more nearly by accepting certain so-
cial limitations in exchange for physical ones, for from the
limitations imposed by physical conditions one can free
himself to any great extent only by cooperating with his
fellows and by accepting whatever limitations such coope-
ration makes necessary. The acceptance of such limita-
tions is not the will unto death, as Nietzsche thinks, but
rather the will to a larger life. It does not destroy sover-
eignty ; it makes toward sovereignty, as far as sovereignty
is possible for man. Only thus, indeed, if at all, can the
mighty man be brought forth.
In another of his apothegms Nietzsche says, "It is a
terrible thing to die of thirst at sea. It is necessary that
you should so salt your truth that it will no longer quench
thirst." Now to die of thirst at sea is exactly the fate that
would overtake the beyond-man. If he is to attain to
strength he must have mighty battles to fight. He can not
attain added prowess, nor even maintain that which he
has acquired, except by engaging in new conquests. But
his battle could not be against himself for his ideal is to
affirm rather than to deny his instincts. It could be only
against weakness — against the slave morality and his tend-
ency to revert to this. But suppose that Nietzsche's doc-
trine should ever come to prevail and the beyond-man
should cease to be looked upon as the immoral one, whom
then should he despise that his ruggedness might grow by
feeding upon his contempt? Clearly then the salt with
which his truth was salted would have lost its savor. One
can not be a sovereign and yet remain a fighter. Struggle,
37O THE MONIST.
if it is to be real, demands something foreign to the indi-
vidual, which has a will of its own, and which limits the
will of him who encounters it. A too plastic world is no
place for the hero. His supreme success is at the same time
his supreme failure.
Even though one be seeking for individualistic power
he dare not cut himself off from his fellows. The road
to strength does not lead through the wilderness but
through the market place. One's deepest problems are
those which spring out of one's relation to one's fellows.
One is on the surest road to might when he is boosting
others as well as himself — when he is a champion instead
of an outlaw. It may be true, indeed, that such conquests
in and for society will call for self-denial, but self-denial
for the sake of some larger victory is by no means "will
unto death." If the sense of mastery has worth it has equal
worth in whatever sphere it be won. If therefore Nietzsche
is right in contending that power is the goal of life the
method which he proposes for acquiring that power would
certainly defeat its own end. A policy of exclusion and of
constant yea-saying can never lead to sovereignty. If one
wishes to be sovereign he must first learn to be servant.
It is, then, the code of the independent self, rather than
that of the member of the herd, which is "the virtue that
maketh smaller."
It is scarcely necessary to say here that Nietzsche lacks
utterly the historic spirit. That fact is only too glaring
on every page of his books. The real motives back of the
reigning types of religion and of morality he entirely mis-
apprehended. Whatever errors may be involved in any
religion, religion is by no means, in origin and essence, a
gigantic scheme of revenge. The will to self-control in
society does not spring, as Nietzsche supposed, from either
hatred of life or cowardice. My love for my neighbor is
not my bad love for myself. I do not restrain myself within
NIETZSCHE AND THE WILL TO POWER. 371
the limits of moderation merely in order that I may sleep
well. That Nietzsche saw no more in life than that shows
only that he had not looked beyond the surface and that he
saw only external authority and fraud in principles that
are rooted in the very nature of life.
But the coming of the beyond-man we need not fear.
Nietzsche looked for him as the culmination of the process
of biological evolution. But evolution is not tending in that
direction and is not at all likely to do so. Greater social
solidarity, and not greater independence of the component
parts, is the unmistakable drift. The beyond-man will be
"beyond" only in the degree of his acquiescence in good
and evil and not in his defiance of them. Social solidarity
has always been a greater factor in survival than individ-
ual strength. The isolated beyond-man of Nietzsche's
dream would have, then, less chance of surviving than a
band of monkeys. Thus, instead of making toward death,
pity, sympathy, and acquiescence in authority are the only
conditions upon which life remains possible. A new type
of morality which left these out could never lift man above
himself.
IV.
But certainly Nietzsche was right when he maintained
that life is primal. Knowledge and truth are for the
sake of life. Facts are true only when they have been so
formulated as to function efficiently in life. If they have
not been so formulated a truer formulation is possible.
Virtue, too, is nothing in itself. "Virtue for virtue's sake"
is a perversion that well deserves the bitterest polemic.
Too often it has been forgotten that the moral law, like the
Sabbath, was made for man and not man for the law. Too
often fulness of life is sacrificed to an outworn abstraction
which is taken to be a principle having worth in itself. In
372 THE MONIST.
Nietzsche's time this dogmatism was particularly preva-
lent and his reaction against it was altogether proper.
He is right, too, in contending that standards of value
must be transmuted and that the old tables must be broken.
Rightly a table of virtues or of duties should never be
made, for it can be at best only a gross approximation to
what it should be. The occasion alone defines the duty.
Each situation calls for a unique solution and can be solved
only in terms of the expected contribution which will be
made to life. Rightly there should be no moral law except
what the self finds good as each particular occasion arises.
Of course so free a self should have a criterion deeper than
the moment's caprice, but in an ideal world the agent
should not be hampered by any artificial formulas.
There is a certain amount of truth, too, in Nietzsche's
doctrine of the sovereignty of the self. One has a right
to resent being imposed upon. A self is a person and not
a thing. In so far as a self is used merely as a tool it is
not a self. Its selfhood consists in its autonomy. Obliga-
tion can not be imposed from without. It must be freely
accepted. Even God could not impose obligation upon a
self without retracting its selfhood. Nietzsche would be
right, therefore, in spurning restraints if they were merely
external. They can be justified only when they are self-
imposed — a possibility which Nietzsche did not take with
sufficient seriousness.
But a self-imposed or, which is the same thing, a self-
accepted, restraint is quite consistent with the sovereignty
of the self. It is of this kind that moral principles are.
Social institutions are not thrust upon men by the gods or
by cunning schemers. They are slowly evolved with the
implied consent of those who accept them and are ac-
quiesced in because they add to the fulness of life. The
hardships which they chance to involve are accepted along
with their blessings, for rational animals realize that when
NIETZSCHE AND THE WILL TO POWER. 373
they have accepted a scheme they have implied in its ac-
ceptance acquiescence in its consequences. Even, then, if
they as individuals should suffer in consequence of those
institutions such suffering would be no imposition from
without upon the sovereign self.
Nietzsche's doctrine of the worth of the sense of power
is not by any means without a parallel in the history of
philosophy. It forms the core of all Fichtean and Hegelian
philosophy. Life would be sterile without conquest, say
the thinkers of this type. In such a world as that with
which we are acquainted, at any rate, we can attain to
character only through struggle and through suffering.
Attainment, except as the culmination of such struggle,
would be a tame affair. We prize things only in pro-
portion to the effort which we must make to get them.
The sense of mastery, the sense of power, has worth, and
supreme worth. Life would lose much of its significance
were the necessity for struggle, and the possibility of the
sense of mastery which can come only with struggle, taken
away. "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread"
turns out to be a blessing and not a curse. The results of
a game which can be put into statistical form are by far
the least significant results. It is the sense of power that
victory gives that counts for most.
But this craving for power is not merely an instance
of human perversity. It is the deepest of all metaphysical
facts. It is in terms of it that the universe is to be ex-
pressed. There is no reason why God should go beyond
himself to create a world except that there might be a
field for conquest and hence for the enrichment of being.
And having created a world there is no reason why he
should not have created it complete and perfect at a single
stroke except the fact that power through conquest is
better than static perfection. There is no other reason why
God should permit the course of existence to roll on
374 THE MONIST.
through such a devious path, approaching its goal only in
an asymptotical manner. God is not bound by any impli-
cations within the system of existent things. Why should
he not, then, suspend the rules of the game and bring the
world to its goal in a single leap? Nothing can limit an
infinite self. By suspending the rules he could injure no
one but himself.
Ah, but he would injure himself. He would annihilate
himself just because, even for God, life lies in the quest.
It is not the end but what is involved in attaining the end
that counts. To abandon a purpose is to abandon self-
hood, for a self can be defined only in terms of the pursuit
of a specific goal. The reality is in the process, in the
struggle. The worth, then, is not in the consummated vic-
tory, for this is infinitely far away, but in a progressive
synthesis, in mastery, in power.
But if power has value for the whole it also has value
for the particularizations of that whole. The finite life is
a part, an aspect, of the divine life. What is God's is also
man's and what is man's is God's. The infinite self is
made up of his particular self-expressions. What, then,
is a factor in his life must be a factor also in these. If con-
quest, and power through conquest, alone can constitute
worth for God it must also constitute worth for man. For
him, too, life must lie in the quest. The power that is his
is not his alone. It is also his contribution to the whole,
precisely because he is that whole in one of its phases of
self-activity.
But perhaps such an excursion into a system of meta-
physics with which many persons will not agree should not
be attempted here. It is not necessary for our purpose.
The logic of passion holds as well in a pluralistic as in a
monistic universe — for an isolated finite self as well as for
an infinite self. Indeed we impute it to the Infinite merely
on the basis of what we see about us. It is the very essence
NIETZSCHE AND THE WILL TO POWER. 375
of passion to seek its antithesis — to desire a problem
through the solution of which it may assert its mastery.
If there were in the universe nothing but "an earth-head,"
as Nietzsche thought was the case, that earth-head would
disintegrate the moment it had fought its last battle and
won its last victory. That this is true shows what a vital
place the struggle for mastery, for power, holds in life
however life may be viewed.
But why, one may ask, should a self choose so painful
a lot? Would not life be less tragic if one were satisfied
with calmer joys? Why not pleasure instead of power?
Is it not a sufficient justification of a policy of life that it
enables one to sleep well ? Well, one can only reply to him
who wishes that the universe had been so made that most
of us would not want it so. We can give no other reason
for preferring power through struggle except that, de-
spite its painful suspense and its hard knocks, it approves
itself to us as valuable. Should one say, as the charcoal
of Nietzsche's fable to the diamond, "Why so hard,
brother?", it is sufficient reply to answer merely "Why
so soft?" There is a joy in the sense of power which no
amount of passive pleasure could ever equal. Very few
of us, indeed, would be willing to exchange the militant
life of this terrestrial sphere for a heaven of inactivity
where we could wallow forever in the mud and bask etern-
ally in the sunshine.
And so, when rightly defined, the will to power has a
legitimate place in morality. Of course one must not define
power merely in physical terms and one must realize that
it can be truely attained only as it is shared. But thus
shared and thus broadly defined it must find its place in any
adequate scheme of life.
CHARLES C. PETERS.
WESTFIELD COLLEGE, WESTFIELD, ILL.
MAX STIRNER, THE PREDECESSOR OF
NIETZSCHE.
T^RIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, the author of "Thus
JL Spake Zarathustra" and the inventor of a new ideal
called the "overman," is commonly regarded as the most
extreme egotist, to whom morality is non-existent and who
glories in the coming of the day in which a man of his
liking — the overman — would live au grand jour. His phi-
losophy is an individualism carried to its utmost extreme,
sanctioning egotism, denouncing altruism and establishing
the right of the strong to trample the weak under foot.
It is little known, however, that he followed another
thinker, Johann Caspar Schmidt, whose extreme individ-
ualism he adopted. But this forerunner who preached a
philosophy of the sovereignty of self and an utter disregard
of our neighbors' rights remained unheeded; he lived in
obscurity, he died in poverty, and under the pseudonym
"Max Stirner" he left behind a book entitled Der Einzige
und sein Eigentum.
The historian Lange briefly mentioned him in his His-
tory of Materialism, and the novelist John Henry Mackay
followed up the reference which led to the discovery of this
lonely comet on the philosophical sky.
The strangest thing about this remarkable book con-
sists in the many coincidences with Friedrich Nietzsche's
philosophy. It is commonly deemed impossible that the
famous spokesman of the overman should not have been
MAX STIRNER, THE PREDECESSOR OF NIETZSCHE. 377
thoroughly familiar with this failure in the philosophical
book market; but while Stirner was forgotten the same
ideas transplanted into the volumes of the author of "Thus
Spake Zarathustra" found an echo first in Germany and
soon afterwards all over the world.
Stirner's book has been Englished by Stephen T. By-
ington with an introduction by J. L. Walker at the instiga-
tion of Benjamin R. Tucker, the representative of Ameri-
can peaceful anarchism, under the title The Ego and His
Own. They have been helped by Mr. George Schumm and
his wife Mrs. Emma Heller Schumm. These five persons,
all interested in this lonely and unique thinker, must have
had much trouble in translating the German original and
though the final rendering of the title is not inappropriate,
the translator and his advisers agree that it falls short
of the mark. For the accepted form Mr. B. R. Tucker is
responsible, and he admits in the preface that it is not an
exact equivalent of the German. Der Einzige means "the
unique man," a person of a definite individuality, but in
the book itself our author modifies and enriches the mean-
ing of the term. The unique man becomes the ego and an
owner (ein Eigener), a man who is possessed of property,
especially of his own being. He is a master of his own and
he prides himself on his ownhood, as well as his ownership.
As such he is unique, and the very term indicates that the
thinker who proposes this view-point is an extreme indi-
vidualist. In Stirner's opinion Christianity pursued the
ideal of liberty, liberty from the world; and in this sense
Christians speak of spiritual liberty. To become free from
anything that oppresses us we must get rid of it, and so
the Christian to rid himself of the world becomes a prey
to the idea of a contempt of the world. Stirner declares
that the future has a better lot in store for man. Man
shall not merely be free, which is a purely negative quality,
but he shall be his own master ; he shall become an owner
378 THE MONIST.
of his own personality and whatever else he may have to
control. His end and aim is he himself. There is no moral
duty above him. Stirner explains in the very first sentence
of his book :
"What is not supposed to be my concern ! First and foremost,
the good cause, then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth,
of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people,
my prince, my fatherland ; finally, even the cause of mind, and a
thousand other causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern.
'Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!' "
Stirner undertakes to refute this satirical explanation
in his book on the unique man and his own, and a French
critic according to Paul Lauterbach (p. 5) speaks of his
book as un livre qu'on quitte monarque, "a book which
one lays aside a king."
Stirner is opposed to all traditional views. He is
against church and state. He stands for the self-develop-
ment of every individual, and insists that the highest duty
of every one is to stand up for his ownhood.
J. L. Walker in his Introduction contrasts Stirner with
Nietzsche and gives the prize of superiority to the former,
declaring him to be a genuine anarchist not less than
Josiah Warren, the ideal of the small band of New Eng-
land anarchists. He says:
"In Stirner we have the philosophical foundation for political
liberty. His interest in the practical development of egoism to the
dissolution of the state and the union of free men is clear and pro-
nounced, and harmonizes perfectly with the economic philosophy of
Josiah Warren. Allowing for difference of temperament and lan-
guage, there is a substantial agreement between Stirner and Prou-
dhon. Each would be free, and sees in every increase of the number
of free people and their intelligence an auxiliary force against the
oppressor. But, on the other hand, will any one for a moment
seriously contend that Nietzsche and Proudhon march together in
general aim and tendency, — that they have anything in common
except the daring to profane the shrine and sepulcher of superstition ?
MAX STIRNER, THE PREDECESSOR OF NIETZSCHE. 379
"Nietzsche has been much spoken of as a disciple of Stirner,
and, owing to favorable cullings from Nietzsche's writings, it has
occurred that one of his books has been supposed to contain more
sense than it really does — so long as one had read only the extracts.
"Nietzsche cites scores or hundreds of authors. Had he read
everything, and not read Stirner?
"But Nietzsche is as unlike Stirner as a tight-rope performance
is unlike an algebraic equation.
"Stirner loved liberty for himself, and loved to see any and all
men and women taking liberty, and he had no lust of power. Democ-
racy to him was sham liberty, egoism the genuine liberty.
"Nietzsche, on the contrary, pours out his contempt upon democ-
racy because it is not aristocratic. He is predatory to the point of
demanding that those who must succumb to feline rapacity shall be
taught to submit with resignation. When he speaks of 'anarchistic
dogs' scouring the streets of great civilized cities, it is true, the con-
text shows that he means the communists ; but his worship of Napo-
leon, his bathos of anxiety for the rise of an aristocracy that shall
rule Europe for thousands of years, his idea of treating women in
the Oriental fashion, show that Nietzsche has struck out in a very
old path — doing the apotheosis of tyranny. We individual egoistic
anarchists, however, may say to the Nietzsche school, so as not to
be misunderstood : We do not ask of the Napoleons to have pity, nor
of the predatory barons to do justice. They will find it convenient
for their own welfare to make terms with men who have learned of
Stirner what a man can be who worships nothing, bears allegiance
to nothing. To Nietzsche's rhodomontade of eagles in baronial form,
born to prey on industrial lambs, we rather tauntingly oppose the
ironical question: Where are your claws? What if the 'eagles' are
found to be plain barnyard fowls on which more silly fowls have
fastened steel spurs to hack the victims, who, however, have the
power to disarm the sham 'eagles' between two suns?
"Stirner shows that men make their tyrants as they make their
gods, and his purpose is to unmake tyrants.
"Nietzsche dearly loves a tyrant.
"In style Stirner's work offers the greatest possible contrast to
the puerile, padded phraseology of Nietzsche's Zarathustra and its
false imagery. Who ever imagined such an unnatural conjuncture
as an eagle 'toting' a serpent in friendship? which performance is
told of in bare words, but nothing comes of it. In Stirner we are
treated to an enlivening and earnest discussion addressed to serious
380 THE MONIST.
minds, and every reader feels that the word is to him, for his instruc-
tion and benefit, so far as he has mental independence and courage
to take it and use it. The startling intrepidity of this book is infused
with a whole-hearted love for all mankind, as evidenced by the fact
that the author shows not one iota of prejudice or any idea of division
of men into ranks. He would lay aside government, but would es-
tablish any regulation deemed convenient, and for this only our con-
venience is consulted. Thus there will be general liberty only when
the disposition toward tyranny is met by intelligent opposition that
will no longer submit to such a rule. Beyond this the manly sym-
pathy and philosophical bent of Stirner are such that rulership ap-
pears by contrast a vanity, an infatuation of perverted pride. We
know not whether we more admire our author or more love him.
"Stirner's attitude toward woman is not special. She is an in-
dividual if she can be, not handicapped by anything he says, feels,
thinks, or plans. This was more fully exemplified in his life than
even in this book ; but there is not a line in the book to put or keep
woman in an inferior position to man, neither is there anything of
caste or aristocracy in the book."
It is not our intention to enter here into a detailed
criticism of Stirner's book. We will only point out that
society will practically remain the same whether we con-
sider social arrangements as voluntary contracts or as or-
ganically developed social institutions, or as imposed upon
mankind by the divine world-order, or even if czars and
kings claim to govern "by the grace of God." Whatever
religious or natural sanction any government may claim
to possess, the method of keeping order will be the same
everywhere. Wrongs have been done and in the future
may still be committed in the name of right, and injustice
may again and again worst justice in the name of the law.
On the other hand, however, we can notice a progress
throughout the world of a slow but steady improvement
of conditions. Any globe-trotter will find by experience
that his personal safety, his rights and privileges are prac-
tically the same in all civilized countries, whether they are
republics like Switzerland, France and the United States,
MAX STIRNER, THE PREDECESSOR OF NIETZSCHE. 381
or monarchies like Sweden, Germany and Italy. At the
same time murders, robberies, thefts and other crimes are
committed all over the world, even in the homes of those
who pride themselves on being the most civilized nations.
The world-conception lying behind our different social the-
ories is the same wherever the same kind of civilization
prevails. Where social evils prevail, dissatisfaction sets
in which produces theories and reform programs, and when
they remain unheeded by reaching a certain climax, leads
to revolution.
Stirner's book begins with a short exhortation headed
with Goethe's line,
"My trust in nothingness is placed."
He discusses the character of human life (Chap. I)
and contrasts men of the old and the new eras (Chap. II).
He finds that the ancients idealized bodily existence while
Christianity incarnates the ideal. Greek artists transfigure
actual life; in Christianity the divine takes abode in the
world of flesh, God becomes incarnate in man. The Greeks
tried to go beyond the world and Christianity came ; Chris-
tian thinkers are pressed to go beyond God, and there they
find spirit. They are led to a contempt of the world and
will finally end in a contempt of spirit. But Stirner be-
lieves that the ideal and the real can never be conciliated,
and we must free ourselves from the errors of the past.
The truly free man is not the one who has become free,
but the one who has come into his own, and this is the
sovereign ego.
As Achilles had his Homer so Stirner found his prophet
in a German socialist of Scotch Highlander descent, John
Henry Mackay. The reading public should know that
Mackay belongs to the same type of restless reformers,
and he soon became an egoistic anarchist, a disciple of
Stirner. His admiration is but a natural consequence of
382 THE MONIST.
conditions. Nevertheless Mackay's glorification of Stirner
proves that in Stirner this onesided world-conception has
found its classical, its most consistent and its philosoph-
ically most systematic presentation. Whatever we may
have to criticize in anarchism, Stirner is a man of uncom-
mon distinction, the leader of a party, and the standard-
bearer of a cause distinguished by the extremeness of its
propositions which from the principle of individualism are
carried to their consistent ends.
Mackay undertook the difficult task of unearthing the
history of a man who, naturally modest and retired, had
nowhere left deep impressions. No stone remained un-
turned and every clue that could reveal anything about his
hero's life was followed up with unprecedented devotion.
He published the results of his labors in a book entitled
"Max Stirner, His Life and His Work."1 The report is
extremely touching not so much on account of the great
significance of Stirner's work which to impartial readers
appears exaggerated, but through the personal tragedy
of a man who towers high over his surroundings and suf-
fers in the misery of poverty and failure.
Mr. Mackay describes Stirner as of medium height,
rather less so than more, well proportioned, slender, always
dressed with care though without pretension, having the
appearance of a teacher, and wearing silver- or steel-
rimmed spectacles. His hair and beard were blonde with
a tinge of red, his eyes blue and clear, but neither dreamy
nor penetrating. His thin lips usually wore a sarcastic
smile, which however had nothing of bitterness ; his general
appearance was sympathetic. No portrait of Stirner is in
existence except one pencil sketch which was made from
memory in 1892 by the London socialist Friedrich Engels,
but the criticism is made by those who knew Stirner that
his features, especially his chin and the top of his head,
1 Max Stirner, sein Leben und sein Werk. Berlin, Schuster, 1898.
MAX STIRNER, THE PREDECESSOR OF NIETZSCHE. 383
were not so angular though nose and mouth are said to
have been well portrayed, and Mackay claims that he never
wore a coat and collar of that type.
Stirner was of purely Prankish blood. His ancestors
lived for centuries in or near Baireuth. His father, Albert
Christian Heinrich Schmidt of Anspach, a maker of wind-
instruments, died of consumption in 1807 at the age of 37,
a half a year after the birth of his son. His mother, Sophie
Eleanora, nee Reinlein of the city of Erlangen, six months
later married H. F. L. Ballerstedt, the assistant in an
PENCIL SKETCH OF MAX STIRNER.
The only portrait in existence.
apothecary shop in Helmstedt, and moved with him to
Kulm on the Vistula. In 1818 the boy was sent back to
his native city where his childless god-father and uncle
Johann Caspar Martin Sticht and his wife took care of
him.
Young Johann Caspar passed through school with
credit, and his schoolmates used to call him "Stirner" on
account of his high forehead (Stirn) which was the most
conspicuous feature of his face. This name clung to him
throughout life. In fact his most intimate friends never
384 THE MONIST.
called him by any other, his real name being almost for-
gotten through disuse and figuring only in official docu-
ments.
Stirner attended the universities of Erlangen, Berlin
and Konigsberg, and finally passed his examination for
admission as a teacher in gymnasial schools. His step-
father died in the summer of 1837 in Kulm at the age of
76. It is not known what became of his mother who had
been mentally unsound for some time.
Neither father nor stepfather had ever been successful,
and if Stirner ever received any inheritance it must have
been very small. On December 12 of 1837 Stirner mar-
ried Agnes Clara Kunigunde Burtz, the daughter of his
landlady.
Their married life was brief, the young wife dying in
a premature child-birth on August 29th. We have no
indication of an ardent love on either side. He who wrote
with passionate fire and with so much insistence in his
philosophy, was calm and peaceful, subdued and quiet to
a fault in real life.
Having been refused appointment in one of the public
or royal schools Stirner accepted a position in a girls'
school October I, 1839. During the political fermentation
which preceded the revolutionary year of 1848, he moved
in the circle of those bold spirits who called themselves Die
Freien and met at Hippel's, among whom were Ludwig
Buhl, Meyen, Friedrich Engels, Mussak, C. F. Koppenn,
the author of a work on Buddha, Dr. Arthur Miiller and
the brothers Bruno, Egbert and Edgar Bauer. It was
probably among their associates that Stirner met Marie
Dahnhardt of Gadebusch near Schwerin, Mecklenburg,
the daughter of an apothecary, Helmuth Ludwig Dahn-
hardt. She was as different from Stirner as a dashing
emancipated woman can be from a gentle meek man, but
these contrasts were joined together in wedlock on October
MAX STIRNER, THE PREDECESSOR OF NIETZSCHE. 385
21, 1843. Their happiness did not last long, for Marie
Dahnhardt left her husband at the end of three years.
The marriage ceremony of this strange couple has
been described in the newspapers and it is almost the only
fact of Stirner's life that stands out boldly as a well-known
incident. That these descriptions contain exaggerations
and distortions is not improbable, but it cannot be denied
that much contained in the reports must be true.
On the morning of October 21, a clergyman of ex-
tremely liberal views, Rev. Marot, a member of the Con-
sistory, was called to meet the witnesses of the ceremony
at Stirner's room. Bruno Bauer, Buhl, probably also
Julius Faucher, Assessor Kochius and a young English
woman, a friend of the bride, were present. The bride
was in her week-day dress. Mr. Marot asked for a Bible,
but none could be found. According to one version the
clergyman was obliged to request Herr Buhl to put on his
coat and to have the cards removed. When the rings were
to be exchanged the groom discovered that he had for-
gotten to procure them, and according to Wilhelm Jor-
dan's recollection Bauer pulled out his knitted purse and
took off the brass rings, offering them as a substitute dur-
ing the ceremony. After the wedding a dinner with cold
punch was served to which Mr. Marot was invited. But
he refused, while the guests stayed on and the wedding
carousal proceeded in its jolly course.
In order to understand how this incident was possible
we must know that in those pre-revolutionary years the
times were out of joint and these heroes of the rebellion
wished to show their disrespect and absolute indifference
to a ceremony that to them had lost all its sanctity.
Stirner's married life was very uneventful, except that
he wrote the main book of his life and dedicated it to his
wife after a year's marriage, with the words,
386 THE MONIST.
"Meinem Liebchen
Marie Dahnhardt."
Obviously this form which ignores the fact that they
were married, and uses a word of endearment which in
this connection is rather trivial, must be regarded as char-
acteristic for their relation and their life principles. Cer-
tain it is that she understood only the negative features
of her husband's ideals and had no appreciation of the
genius that stirred within him. Lauterbach, the editor of
the Reclam edition of Stirner's book, comments ironically
on this dedication with the Spanish motto Da Dios almen-
dras al que no tiene muelas, "God gives almonds to those
who have no teeth."
Marie Dahnhardt was a graceful blonde woman rather
under-sized with heavy hair which surrounded her head
in ringlets according to the fashion of the time. She was
very striking and became a favorite of the round table of
the Freien who met at Hippel's. She smoked cigars freely
and sometimes donned male attire, in order to accompany
her husband and his friends on their nightly excursions.
It appears that Stirner played the most passive part in
these adventures, but true to his principle of individuality
we have no knowledge that he ever criticized his wife.
Marie Dahnhardt had lost her father early and was in
possession of a small fortune of 10,000 thaler s, possibly
more. At any rate it was considered quite a sum in the
circle of Stirner's friends, but it did not last long. Having
written his book, Stirner gave up his position so as to
prevent probable discharge and now they looked around
for new resources. Though Stirner had studied political
economy he was a most unpractical man ; but seeing there
was a dearth of milk-shops, he and his wife started into
business. They made contracts with dairies but did not
advertise their shop, and when the milk was delivered to
MAX STIRNER, THE PREDECESSOR OF NIETZSCHE. 387
them they had large quantities of milk on hand but no
patrons, the result being a lamentable failure with debts.
In the circle of his friends Stirner's business experience
offered inexhaustible material for jokes, while at home
it led rapidly to the dissolution of his marriage. Frau
Schmidt complained in later years that her husband had
wasted her property, while no complaints are known from
him. One thing is sure that they separated. She went
to England where she established herself as a teacher
under the protection of Lady Bunsen, the wife of the Prus-
sian embassador.
Frau Schmidt's later career is quite checkered. She
was a well-known character in the colony of German exiles
in London. One of her friends there was a Lieutenant
Techow. When she was again in great distress she emi-
grated with other Germans, probably in 1852 or 1853, to
Melbourne, Australia. Here she tasted the misery of life
to the dregs. She made a living as a washerwoman and
is reported to have married a day laborer. Their bitter
experiences made her resort to religion for consolation, and
in 1870 or 1871 she became a convert to the Catholic
Church. At her sister's death she became her heir and so
restored her good fortune to some extent. She returned
to London where Mr. Mackay to his great joy discovered
that she was still alive at the advanced age of eighty. What
a valuable resource her reminiscences would be for his
inquiries! But she refused to give any information and
finally wrote him a letter which literally reads as follows:
"Mary Smith solemnly avoives that she will have no more
correspondence on the subject, and authorizes Mr. 2
to return all those writings to their owners. She is ill and
prepares for death."
The last period of Stirner's life, from the time when
"The name of the gentleman she mentions is replaced by a dash at his
express wish in the facsimile of her letter reproduced in Mr. Mackay's book
(p- 255.)
388 THE MONIST.
his wife left him to his death is as obscure as his childhood
days. He moved from place to place, and since his income
was very irregular creditors pressed him hard. His lot was
tolerable because of the simple habits of his life, his only
luxury consisting in smoking a good cigar. In 1853 we
find him at least twice in debtor's prison, first 21 days, from
March 5 to 26, 1853, and then 36 days, from New Year's
eve until February 4 of the next year. In the meantime
(September 7) he moved to Philippstrasse 19. It was
Stirner's last home. He stayed with the landlady of this
place, a kind-hearted woman who treated all her boarders
like a mother, until June 25, 1856, when he died rather
suddenly as the result of the bite of a poisonous fly. A few
of his friends, among them Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Buhl,
attended his funeral; a second-class grave was procured
for one thaler 10 groats, amounting approximately to one
American dollar.
During this period Stirner undertook several literary
labors from which he possibly procured some remunera-
tion. He translated the classical authors on political econ-
omy from the French and from the English, which ap-
peared under the title Die National-Oekonomen der Fran-
zosen und Engldnder (Leipsic, Otto Wigand, 1845-1847).
He also wrote a history of the Reaction which he ex-
plained to be a mere counter-revolution. This Geschichtc
der Reaction was planned as a much more comprehensive
work, but the two volumes which appeared were only two
parts of the second volume as originally intended.
The work is full of quotations, partly from Auguste
Comte, partly from Edmund Burke. None of these works
represent anything typically original or of real significance
in the history of human thought.
His real contribution to the world's literature remains
his work Der Einzige und sein Eigentnm, the title of which
is rendered in English The Ego and His Own, and this,
MAX STIRNER, THE PREDECESSOR OF NIETZSCHE. 389
strange to say, enthrones the individual man, the ego, every
personality, as a sovereign power that is not subject to
morality, or rules, or obligations, or duties of any kind.
The appeal is made so directly that it will convince all those
half-educated and immature minds who after having sur-
rendered their traditional faith find themselves without
any authority in either religion or politics. God is to them
a fable and the state an abstraction. Ideas and ideals,
such as truth, goodness, beauty, are mere phrases. What
then remains but the concrete bodily personality of every
man of which every one is the ultimate standard of right
and wrong?
It is strange that neither of these philosophers of indi-
viduality, Nietzsche or Stirner, has ever taken the trouble
to investigate what an individual is. Stirner halts before
this most momentous question of his world-conception, and
so he overlooks that his ego, his own individuality, this
supreme sovereign standing beyond right and wrong, the
ultimate authority of everything, is a hazy, fluctuating,
uncertain thing which differs from day to day and finally
disappears.
The individuality of any man is the product of com-
munal life. No one of us could exist as a rational per-
sonality were he not a member of a social group from
which he has imbibed his ideas as well as his language.
Every word is a product of his intercourse with his fellow-
beings. His entire existence consists in his relations
toward others and finds expression in his attitude toward
social institutions. We may criticize existent institutions
but we can never do without any. A denial of either their
existence or their significance proves an utter lack of in-
sight into the nature of personality.
We insert here a few characteristic sentences of Stir-
ner's views, and in order to be fair we follow the condensa-
tion of Mackay (pp. 135-192) than whom certainly we
39O THE MONIST.
could find no more sympathetic or intelligent student of
this individualistic philosophy. Stirner claims the ancients
came to the conclusions that man was spirit. They created
a world of spirit, and in this world of spirit Christianity
begins. But what is spirit? Spirit has originated from
nothing. It is its own creation and man makes it the center
of the world. The injunction was made, thou shalt not
live to thyself but to thy spirit, to thy ideas. Spirit is the
God, the ego and the spirit are in constant conflict. Spirit
dwells beyond the earth. It is in vain to force the divine
into service here for I am neither God nor man, neither
the highest being nor my being. The spirit is like a ghost
whom no one has seen, but of whom there are innumerable
creditable witnesses, such as grandmother can give account
of. The whole world that surrounds thee is filled with
spooks of thy imagination. The holiness of truth which
hallows thee is a strange element. It is not thine own
and strangeness is a characteristic of holiness. The
specter is truly only in thine ownhood Right is
a spleen conferred by a spook; might, that is myself.
I am the mighty one and the owner of might
Right is the royal will of society. Every right which
exists is created right. I am expected to honor it where
I find it and subject myself to it. But what to me is the
right of society, the right of all? What do I care for
equality of right, for the struggle for right, for inalienable
rights? Right becomes word in law. The dominant will
is the preserver of the states. My own will shall upset
them. Every state is a despotism. All right and all power
is claimed to belong to the community of the people. I,
however, shall not allow myself to be bound by it, for I
recognize no duty even though the state may call crime in
me what it considers right for itself. My relation to the
state is not the relation of one ego to another ego. It is
the relation of the sinner to the saint, but the saint is a
MAX STIRNER, THE PREDECESSOR OF NIETZSCHE. 39!
mere fixed idea from which crimes originate (Mackay,
pages 154-5).
It will sometimes be difficult to translate Stirner's dec-
larations in their true meaning; for instance: "I am the
owner of mankind, I am mankind and shall do nothing for
the benefit of another mankind. The property of mankind
is mine. I do not respect the property of mankind. Pov-
erty originates when I can not utilize my own self as I
want to. It is the state which hinders men from entering
into a direct relation with others. On the mercy of right
my private property depends. Only within prescribed
limits am I allowed to compete. Only the medium of ex-
change, the money which the state makes, am I allowed to
use. The forms of the state may change, the purpose of
the state always remains the same. My property, however,
is what I empower myself to. Let violence decide, I ex-
pect all from my own.
"You shall not lure me with love, nor catch me with
the promise of communion of possessions, but the question
of property will be solved only through a war of all against
all, and what a slave will do as soon as he has broken his
fetters we shall have to see. I know no law of love. As
every one of my sentiments is my property, so also is love.
I give it, I donate it, 1 squander it merely because it makes
me happy. Earn it if you believe you have a right to it.
The measure of my sentiments can not be prescribed to
me, nor the aim of my feelings determined. We and the
world have only one relation towards each other, that of
usefulness. Yea, I use the world and men." (Pp. 156-157.)
As to promises made and confidence solicited Stirner
would not allow a limitation of freedom. He says: "In
itself an oath is no more sacred than a lie is contemptible."
Stirner opposes the idea of communism. "The community
of man creates laws for society. Communism is a com-
munion in equality." Says Stirner, "I prefer to depend
392 THE MONIST.
on the egotism of men rather than on their compassion."
He feels himself swelled into a temporary, transient, puny
deity. No man expresses him rightly, no concept defines
him; he, the ego, is perfect. Stirner concludes his book:
"Owner I am of my own power and I am such only when
I know myself as the only one. In the only one even the
owner returns into his creative nothingness from which
he was born. Any higher being above, be it God or man,
detracts from the feeling of my uniqueness and it pales
before the sun of this consciousness. If I place my trust
in myself, the only one, it will stand upon a transient mortal
creator of himself, who feeds upon himself, and I can say,
"Ick hob mein Sack' auf nichts gestellt"
"In nothingness I placed my trust."
We call attention to Stirner's book, "The Only One
and His Ownhood," not because we are overwhelmed by
the profundity of his thought but because we believe that
here is a man who ought to be answered, whose world-
conception deserves a careful analysis which finally would
lead to a justification of society, the state and the ideals
of right and truth.
Society is not, as Stirner imagines, an artificial product
of men who band themselves together in order to produce
a state to the benefit of a clique. Society and state, as well
as their foundation the family, are of a natural growth.
All the several social institutions (kind of spiritual organ-
isms) are as much organisms as are plants and animals.
The cooperation of the state with religious, legal, civic
and other institutions, are as much realities as are indi-
viduals, and any one who would undertake to struggle
against them or treat them as nonentities will be implicated
in innumerable struggles.
Stirner is the philosopher of individualism. To him
the individual, this complicated and fluctuant being, is a
MAX STIRNER, THE PREDECESSOR OF NIETZSCHE. 393
reality, indeed the only true reality, while other combina-
tions, institutions and social units are deemed to be mere
nonentities. If from this standpoint the individualism of
Stirner were revised, the student would come to radically
different conclusions, and these conclusions would show
that not without good reasons has the individual developed
as a by-product of society, and all the possessions, intel-
lectual as well as material, which exist are held by indi-
viduals only through the assistance and with the permis-
sion of the whole society or its dominant factors.
Both socialism and its opposite, individualism, which
is ultimately the same as anarchism, are extremes that are
based upon an erroneous interpretation of communal life.
Socialists make society, and anarchists the individual their
ultimate principle of human existence. Both are factors
and both factors are needed for preserving the health of
society as well as comprehending the nature of mankind.
By neglecting either of these factors, we can only be led
astray and arrive at wrong conclusions.
Poor Stirner wanted to exalt the ego, the sovereign
individual, not only to the exclusion of a transcendent
God and of the state or any other power, divine or social,
but even to the exclusion of his own ideals, be it truth or
anything spiritual; and yet he himself sacrificed his life
for a propaganda of the ego as a unique and sovereign
being. He died in misery and the recognition of his labors
has slowly, very slowly, followed after his death. Yea,
even after his death a rival individualist, Friedrich Nietz-
sche, stole his thunder and reaped the fame which Stirner
had earned. Certainly this noble-minded, modest, altru-
istic egotist was paid in his own coin.
Did Stirner live up to his principle of ego sovereignty ?
In one sense he did ; he recognized the right of every one
to be himself, even when others infringed upon his own
well-being. His wife fell out with him but he respected
394 THE MONIST.
her sovereignty and justified her irregularities. Appar-
ently he said to himself, "She has as much right to her
own personality as I to mine." But in another sense,
so far as he himself was concerned, he did not. What be-
came of his own rights, his ownhood, and the sweeping
claim that the world was his property, that he was entitled
to use or misuse the world and all mankind as he saw
fit; that no other human being could expect recognition,
nay not even on the basis of contracts, or promises, or for
the sake of love, or humaneness and compassion? Did
Stirner in his poverty ever act on the principle that he was
the owner of the world, that there was no tie of morality
binding on him, no principle which he had to respect?
Nothing of the kind. He lived and died in peace with all
the world, and the belief in the great ego sovereignty with
its bold renunciation of all morality was a mere Platonic
idea, a tame theory which had not the slightest influence
upon his practical life.
Men of Stirner's type do not fare well in a world where
the ego has come into its own. They will be trampled under
foot, they will be bruised and starved, and they will die by
the wayside. No, men of Stirner's type had better live in
the protective shadow of a state; the worst and most des-
potic state will be better than none, for no state means
mob rule or the tyranny of the bulldozer, the ruffian, the
brutal and unprincipled self-seeker.
Here Friedrich Nietzsche comes in. Like Stirner,
Nietzsche was a peaceful man; but unlike Stirner, Nietz-
sche had a hankering for power. Being pathological
himself, without energy, without strength and without a
healthy appetite and a good stomach, Nietzsche longed to
play the part of a bulldozer among a herd of submissive
human creatures whom he would control and command.
This is Nietzsche's ideal, and he calls it the "overman."3
* The translation "superman" is a solecism, for it is unnecessarily a com-
MAX STIRNER, THE PREDECESSOR OF NIETZSCHE. 395
Here Nietzsche modified and added his own notion to
Stirner's philosophy.
Goethe coined the word "overman" (Uebermensch) in
German and used it in the sense of an awe-inspiring being,
almost in the sense of Unmensch, a man of might without
humanity, whose sentiments are those of Titans, wild and
unrestrained like the powers of nature. But the same
expression was used in its proper sense about two and a
half millenniums ago in ancient China, where at the time
of Lao-tze the term chun jen (iJA), "superior man," or
chun tze, "superior sage," was in common usage. But the
overman or chun jen of Lao-tze, of Confucius and other
Chinese sages is not a man of power, not a Napoleon, not
an unprincipled tyrant, not a self-seeker of domineering
will, not a man whose ego and its welfare is his sole and
exclusive aim, but a Christlike figure, who puts his self
behind and thus makes his self — a nobler and better self —
come to the front, who does not retaliate, but returns good
for evil,4 a man (as the Greek sage describes him) who
would rather sufifer wrong than commit wrong.5
This kind of higher man is the very opposite of Nietz-
sche's overman, and it is the spirit of this nobler conception
of a higher humanity which furnishes the best ideas of all
the religions of the world, of Lao-tze's Taoism, of Bud-
dhism and of Christianity. Stirner in his personal life is
animated by it, and, thinking of the wrongs which the
individual frequently suffers in a bureaucratic state through
red tape and unnecessary police interference and other
annoyances, he preaches the right of the individual and
treats the state as non-existent — or rather as a spook, an
error which exists only because our spleen endows it with
bination of the Latin super and Saxon man. Say "superhuman" and "over-
man" but not "overhuman" nor "superman."
* Lao-tse's Too Teh King, Chaps. 49 and 63.
" For a collection of Greek quotations on the ethics of returning good
for evil, see The Open Court, Vol. XV, 1901, pp. 9-12.
396 THE MONIST.
life. A careful investigation of the nature of the state
as well as of our personality would have taught Stirner
that both the state and the individual are realities. The
state and society exist as much as the individuals of
which they are composed,6 and no individual can ignore
in his maxims of life the rules of conduct, the moral prin-
ciples, or whatever you may call that something which
constitutes the conditions of his existence, of his physical
and social surroundings. The dignity and divinity of
personality does not exclude the significance of super-
personalities ; indeed the two, superpersonal presences with
their moral obligations and concrete human persons with
their rights and duties, cooperate with each other and
produce thereby all the higher values of life.
Stirner is onesided but, within the field of his onesided
view, consistent. Nietzsche spurns consistency but accepts
the field of notions created by Stirner, and, glorying in the
same extreme individualism, proclaims the gospel of that
individual who on the basis of Stirner's philosophy would
make the best of a disorganized state of society, who by
taking upon himself the functions of the state would utilize
the advantages thus gained for the suppression of his fel-
low beings ; and this kind of individual is dignified with the
title "overman."
Nietzsche has been blamed for appropriating Stirner's
thoughts and twisting them out of shape from the self-
assertion of every ego consciousness into the autocracy of
the unprincipled man of power ; but we must concede that the
common rules of literary ethics can not apply to individual-
ists who deny all and any moral authority. Why should
Nietzsche give credit to the author from whom he drew
his inspiration if neither acknowledges any rule which he
feels obliged to observe? Nietzsche uses Stirner as Stirner
declares that it is the good right of every ego to use his
'See the author's The Nature of the State, 1894, and Personality, 191 1.
MAX STIRNER, THE PREDECESSOR OF NIETZSCHE. 397
fellows, and Nietzsche shows us what the result would be
— the rise of a political boss, a brute in human shape, the
overman.
Nietzsche is a poet, not a philosopher, not even a
thinker, but as a poet he exercises a peculiar fascination
upon many people who would never think of agreeing
with him. Most admirers of Nietzsche. belong to the class
which Nietzsche calls the "herd animals," people who have
no chance of ever asserting themselves, and become hungry
for power as a sick man longs for health.
Individualism and anarchism continue to denounce the
state, where they ought to reform it and improve its insti-
tutions. In the meantime the world wags on. The state
exists, society exists, and innumerable social institutions
exist. The individual grows under the influence of other
individuals, his ideas — mere spooks of his brain — yet the
factors of his life, right or wrong, guide him and determine
his fate. There are as rare exceptions a few lawless so-
cieties in the wild West where a few outlaws meet by
chance, revolver in hand, but even among them the state
of anarchy does not last long, for by habit and precedent
certain rules are established, and wherever man meets man,
wherever they offer and accept one another's help, they
cooperate or compete, they join hands or fight, they make
contracts, they cooperate, and establish rules and the result
is society, the state, and all the institutions of the state, a
government, the legislation, the judiciary and all the in-
tricate machinery which regulates the interrelations of man
to man. P. C.
BECOMING.
[Intimate friends of the late Major John Wesley Powell know
that he was not only an anthropologist of high standing, an organ-
izer and a born executive, a chief, educator and a reformer, for
which qualities the University of Heidelberg conferred upon him
the unusual honor of a doctor's degree, but that he also was a
poet. In a former rwmber of The Monist (Vol. V, No. 3) we pub-
lished his poem on "The Soul," and we here insert another poem
which describes evolution under the title "Becoming."]
OLD RIDDLE.
In marble walls as white as milk,
All lined with skin as soft as silk,
A golden apple doth appear,
In ambient bath of crystal clear.
There are no portals to behold,
Yet thieves break in and steal the gold.
SONG. :;
Island of beauty encircled
With girdle of filigree wave
Woven by tempest of ocean
Where tide follows moon as a slave —
Dream of my childhood, I love thee,
The home of my ancestors brave.
BECOMING. 399
Glorious oak on the island
That stands by my forefather's home,
Down where the breakers are roaring,
Becrowned with their beautiful foam,
Why from thy shade have I wandered,
In turbulent regions to roam?
Musical robin of greenwood,
With bosom in blushes agleam,
Ever your memory haunts me
In moment of silence supreme,
Borne from the scenes of my childhood,
To revel in many a dream.
THE ISLAND.
The sands of hill an island may become;
For summer shower gathers them in rills,
The brook receives them, bears them on to creek,
Which gives to river, it to ocean vast,
And then beneath the waves the sands are stayed —
An island egg in nest of sea is laid.
The island germ is fed by every rain
That falls among the hills where rivers run ;
More sands from year to year and age to age
Corne down with rains that fall from roaring storms
That ever ride on air from sea to land,
Until through waves there bursts an island grand.
THE OAK.
A seed a giant tree at last becomes;
For, planted well in soil of ocean's isle,
4OO THE MONIST.
A treelet bourgeons from the acorn's heart,
Which penetrates the earth with hungry roots
And stretches arms to reach vivific light,
Its leaves in love with day, its roots with night.
And many a storm the creeping rootlets feed,
And many a zephyr caters deft to leaves,
And many a sunbeam leaves the orb of light
In journey swift past meteor and cloud
To marry crystal drops of summer rain
With yearning molecules of southern breeze,
Until as oak the treelet vies with pine
And bears in sturdy arms the pendent vine.
THE ROBIN.
An egg with turkis spots a robin holds :
The germ, sequestered safe in marble walls,
Is warmed to life by mother's tender care,
Who gathers crumbs from cottage tables cast
And fruit from meadow, copse, and forest tree.
The nestling, sconced in honeysuckle home,
Is neophyte that yet must learn to roam.
On welcome store of food the birdlet grows,
Evolving fingered feet with clasping skill
To perch upon the blossom-bearing bough,
With wings to hover over land and sea,
And eyes to revel far in scenes of light,
And tongue to give a loving mate delight.
THE LESSON.
The bird that sings on island tree,
The tree that stand on ocean's isle,
BECOMING. 4OI
The isle that sleeps in boundless sea,
Forever poet's thought beguile.
O, beautiful isle, O, glorious tree,
O, musical bird, teach wisdom to me!
The word of truth is this they give to him
Who ponders well the meaning deep of world :
What is ne'er was, and will not be again ;
What is becomes by increments minute,
And wondrous transformation is performed —
The hills dissolve, an island grows apace;
From storm and air the seed becomes a tree ;
While atoms join to make the bird so fair,
The robin-redbreast, flying through the air.
THE COMING OF ISLANDS.
O, beautiful isle of the sea —
Embraced in its billowy arms,
Caressed by its pulsating tides
And kissed by its tremulous waves
And fed by the rivers of land —
Your life is the wine of the land !
The isle that gems the shore shall mainland be
And tide-swept bank shall mountain summit crown,
Plateau shall be submerged as ocean floor,
And lofty peak beneath the deep sea sink,
In sure obedience to cosmic force
As alternating generations come,
When land to sea and sea to land gives birth,
Evolving continental forms of earth.
4O2 THE MONIST.
THE COMING OF TREES.
O, glorious tree of the isle —
Upborne on its wave-beaten breast,
Caressed by the matinal wind
And kissed by the vesperine breeze
And fed by the nourishing storm —
Your life is the wine of the storm!
In long procession through the aeons come
The arborescent generations vast,
Evolving with the many forms of land;
The fit to life, unfit to death consigned;
In adaptation yielding everywhere —
With sweet consent in zones of tempered wind,
With lusty growth where tropics ardent woo,
And gnarled conformity to arctic storms —
Till earth is clothed with multitudinous forms.
THE COMING OF BIRDS.
O, musical bird of the tree —
Becradled on pendulous bough,
Caressed by the bountiful leaves
And kissed by the odorous flowers
And fed on the beautiful fruit —
Your life is the wine of the fruit!
Then tribes of birds adown the ages come,
In generations numbered like the years,
With fitting kind for every habitat
For such as win sweet life by high emprise
With winged endeavor, giving form and skill
BECOMING. 403
In flight from tree to tree and clime to clime,
While groves and sky are filled with music sweet — •
A vast inheritance of plume and song,
Evolving as the ages course along.
THE NEW CREATION.
To him who lingers e'er on narrow shore
Nor heights of land nor depths of sea are known ;
For pleasure's flotsom, tossed on folly's foam,
With flow and ebb of purpose strong and weak,
Forever chafes the marge of common life,
While days and years pass on in weary strife.
The wise man goes beyond the seeming thing —
The rocks and shoals of hither shore of cause —
Abroad on strandless, wide, unfathomed sea
Of being, doing, and becoming world,
And, borne afar by sail of thought, he learns
That new creation which the prophets saw
Is cryptic growth of universal law.
SONG.
All islands encircled by murmuring sea,
All trees that are clustered in musical grove,
All birds of the forest that joyfully sing,
A tale of becoming in harmony bring.
In bed of the sea is the nest of the isle,
In heart of the isle is the nest of the tree,
In arms of the tree is the nest of the bird,
And voice of the nestling in music is heard.
404 THE MONIST.
The cantion they warble on morn of their birth,
Continued as daybreak encircles the earth,
While longitudes wheel to the matinal light,
Is heard as the aeons proceed in their flight.
From croak of the frog to the voice of the lark,
From creeping of reptile to soaring of bird,
The way of becoming is long, very long —
The wonderful theme of their matinal song.
We come, O we come down the mystical years,
Unreckoned in lore of the sages and seers,
Through bundles of ages, as time gathers sheaves,
We come like the army of vernal-tide leaves.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
THE REVELATION OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE.
Dr. Edmund Montgomery, the hermit philosopher of Liendo
plantation, has written another book1 which contains in a popular
form the gist of his philosophy. Instead of reviewing this book
we prefer to let Dr. Montgomery speak in his own words. He may
be characterized as a scientific mystic who stands in awe at the mys-
tery of existence and especially of organized life. He devotes much
space to the vexatious problem of idealism and realism. He opposes
religious superstitions ; he rejects them and yet favors a teleological
interpretation of nature and bases his monism upon a mental sub-
stance as ultimate reality. The extracts of his views are here given
in his own words:
"It is safe to say that the world-revelation contained in the
present experience of cultured man is most consistently and posi-
tively recognized by help of the collective results attained in the
various provinces of scientific research. It is relevant, then, to
inquire what sort of general survey our scientifically enlightened
thinking is at present justified in constructing on the strength of
this newly acquired information. (Page I.)
"The physical medium in which all life is carried on is appar-
ently the same for animals as for man, yet in man it has become
transfigured into a supersensible world of transcendent import. (5).
To get to understand the gradual formation and memorized fixation
of the latent content of our conscious microcosm is a more funda-
mental task than the mere analysis of this content, when it becomes
manifest in actual awareness ready-made. (6).
1 The Revelation of Present Experience. Boston : Sherman French & Co.,
1910. His large work, Philosophical Problems in the Light of Vital Organi-
sation, was discussed at length in The Monist, XIX, 582. Since this review
was written Dr. Montgomery passed away on April 17 at his home on the
Liendo Plantation near Hempstead, Texas. For further particulars of his
life and death see The Open Court of June, 1911, p. 381, and The Monist
of October 1909, p. 582.
406 THE MONIST.
"A flame may to some slight extent illustrate the true nature of
consciousness. A flame, as visual phenomenon, is the fleeting but
sustained result of the process of combustion. Consciousness, as
sentient phenomenon, is the fleeting but sustained result of the
process of vital organization. In order to sustain the flame entirely
new amounts of combustible raw-material have to be supplied. In
order to sustain consciousness the integrity, and therewith the effi-
ciency of vital organization has to be maintained by assimilation of
new complemental material. A flame, as visual phenomenon, is
itself a forceless outcome of the process of combustion. Conscious-
ness, as a sentient phenomenon, is a forceless outcome of the process
of vital organization. The visual flame, an ideal product of real
combustion, illuminates into present awareness the manifold con-
tent of the field of vision. Consciousness, an ideal product of real
vital organization, resuscitates in present awareness the manifold
latently preserved and memorized content of past experience, as
guidance for present and future actions. (7-8).
"Grossly insufficient as it will sound, life, as merely physically
or perceptually revealed, consists in a specific cycle of motions main-
taining the constitution and vitality of the living substance of which
all organisms are composed. This specific cycle of motions is set
going by definite stimulating influences that impinge from outside
upon the highly complex and mobile chemical compound, disinte-
grating it to some extent. Whereupon the disintegrated substance
reintegrates itself from within by force of indwelling affinities.
Chemically expressed, it resaturates itself by combining with com-
plemental material afforded by the medium. Whenever and wher-
ever on our Mother Earth this process of alternate disintegration
and reintegration has taken place in ever so rudimentary a manner
in what proves to be an integrant chemical compound, there life
has originated. It has not fallen from the skies as a creation
ready-made. Nor has a separate vitalizing imponderable principle
seized upon ponderable material and coerced it into structural ar-
rangements, imparting to it the endowments and efficiencies displayed
by organisms. The unfathomable awe-inspiring mystery attaching
to life in its multitudinous manifestations lies altogether in the in-
trinsic endowments mysteriously accruing to it in ever heightened
modes of efficiency accompanying its structural development. Surely
a creative result most mysteriously attained. (9-10).
"It is a chimerical expectation to think that one can ever arrive
at a valid interpretation of organic life in its relation to the environ-
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 407
ment and the world at large, either by viewing the whole as con-
sisting exclusively of mental modes, generally conceived as a system
of self-evolving concepts, or as a conglomeration of self -associated
sensations ; or on the other hand, by viewing the whole as a combina-
tion of mere material configurations consisting of aggregated atoms
mechanically actuated.
/'Idealists deceive themselves with words when they believe they
can consistently account in mental terms for any fact or occurrence
of perceptible nature. (12-13).
"Naturalists, on the other hand, look upon living organisms as
mere intricate mechanical contrivances, constructed out of ordered
aggregations of inert material particles, and being set going by im-
parted modes of motion ; to such mechanistic and materialistic natur-
alists the apparently astounding activities of these definitely grouped
arrangements of material elements or so-called organisms, are really
nothing but unwilled motor-performances of the material mechanism,
running their course wholly independent of the accompanying psy-
chical by-play. (15).
"The utter insufficiency of this view comes, however, glaringly
to light when living organisms are held to be composed of inert
material particles actuated by imparted motion or transferred en-
ergy. (16).
"It is almost cruel, moreover, to remind the advocates of the
physical theory of biological occurrences, that during their occupa-
tion with these materialistic and mechanistic explanations, they lose
sight of their own mentally guided and mentally cognizing activities,
which alone enable them to apprehend and conceive what they con-
sider to exist and to occur outside their own perception and concep-
tion. Evolving the logical consequences to which their mechanistic
views necessarily lead, they can find no legitimate way of reaching
mind or consciousness in general, and therewith no way to the very
consciousness within which their own reality-depleted conception of
organic life has its exclusive existence. Such downright reductio ad
absiirdum of the purely mechanical conception of life and nature in
general would deserve to evoke Homeric laughter, if it had not, in
physics at least, proved pragmatically so exceedingly fruitful in the
cause of enlightenment and liberation from gross superstitions.
"Employed as a working hypothesis in the precise investigation
and exact discrimination of sense-revealed natural occurrences, with
no pretentions as regards a true and valid interpretation of their
408 THE MONIST.
real nature, physical science has claims on our gratitude and admira-
tion that surpass all estimates. (18-19).
"It is evident that without an extra-conscious matrix, which
latently preserves past experience, no conscious content whatever
would arise into actual awareness. Pure idealism would then have
no world-revelation as subject-matter to idealistically interpret....
In fact every kind of idealism derives its entire content from that
extra-conscious source. (22).
"The consistent materialistic and mechanistic view excludes
from its interpretation of nature all participation of modes of con-
scious awareness as superfluous epiphenomena, which merely ac-
company but nowise influence what causatively and necessarily hap-
pens in a world of moved matter. The consistent idealistic view, on
the other hand, denies altogether the existence of an extra-conscious
physical or perceptible world. Physics, then, has no room for mind ;
psychics no room for matter. In modern times, ever since Descartes
bisected nature trenchantly into an extended material substance and
an unextended thinking substance, this dualism of matter and
thought, of body and mind, has given rise to no end of philosophical
perplexities, until weary of so much contention, physicists as well as
psychists found rest at last in the hypothesis of psychophysical paral-
lelism.
"Although an unsatisfactory compromise, it has to be conceded
that by trusting to the materialistic horn of the psychophysical di-
lemma the great advantage is gained of looking upon perceptible
objects and occurrences as existing in all reality in an external world
independent of being perceived, allowing them, moreover, to be
accurately described, measured, and their invariable connections posi-
tively ascertained, so that by these definite signs they can at all times
be discriminated as positively recognized realities. (25). Trusting,
on the other hand, to the lead of the idealistic side of the psycho-
physical dilemma, one reaches the incontestable fact that all subjec-
tive or individual experience consists of mental phenomena ; that
therefore all physical knowledge, however positive and reliable, turns
out to be after all wholly a mental possession made up of specific
percepts and concepts. Philosophically speaking, the perceptible
world is being apparently entirely absorbed by mind. (26).
"Now as neither materialism nor idealism can account for mem-
ory, but has nevertheless to invoke its aid in order not to remain
void of content, the fundamental task of philosophy and science is
epistemologically to demonstrate the existence of the real permanent
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 409
matrix which latently harbors preserved and memorized past expe-
rience. Such desiderated matrix has to be positively shown to con-
stitute a real substance. And under real substance is philosophically
and scientifically understood an entity which maintains its own iden-
tity and efficiency unimpaired, while producing or emitting a sus-
tained manifestation of natural phenomena, being in fact the proxi-
mate source of the becoming of conscious appearances. In Kant's
words: "In it (substance) alone is to be sought the seat of the fruit-
ful source of the appearances.' (27).
"Idealism, admitting but one single- all-inclusive mental content,
has even boldly to deny the independent substantial existence of
individual human beings. This denial of our self-existence is rather
a serious matter that closely concerns all of us, as it has been virtually
the cause of no end of fanatical nature-perverting beliefs and prac-
tices. (29).
"The only mental or ideal existence we are actually aware of
is the all-revealing conscious content, and this has as such obviously
no power whatever to forcibly affect the outside world, and to make
itself directly known to any outside percipient. Fancy you and me
to be pure ideal or spiritual beings, or for that matter to be the
mere flesh and blood perceptible beings we really are. It is a positive
fact that anyway we can nowise become directly aware of, nowise
perceive the content of our respective consciousness. (30).
"But if human beings do not consist of mental or ideal stuff,
nor of what is held to be material stuff, of what do they really con-
sist? They evidently consist of non-phenomenal, substantial stuff
that has power to compel to arise in the conscious content of be-
holders their symbolical representation, and that contains latently
preserved a vast store of memorized past experience. Their presence
and their superficial characteristics become revealed by means of
percepts mostly visual and tactual. Their sundry activities are made
known by means of definite motions of these percepts. All this in-
formation, minutely serviceable as it is, consists only of emblematic
signs. To gain a somewhat adequate idea of how profoundly the
real human being's nature remains enigmatic in this mere perceptual
revelation let us imagine that within the conscious content of an
observer the bodily percept of another human being visually arises,
sense-compelled. Nothing has affected the observer's vision save
a specifically constituted impingement of what are called ethereal
vibrations. Thereupon within his subjective sphere of special lumi-
nosity a definitely shaded and colored form makes its appearance,
4IO THE MONIST.
which is recognized as representing a human being. Noticing the
characteristics, features and motions of the visually aroused apparition
within his conscious content the observer interprets the significance
of these perceptual signs entirely by means of his own intrinsically
gathered and memorized experience, supplementing what is essen-
tially implied by the signalized vision. He himself, by dint of his
own mental endowments, fills the empty visual form with as much
or as little meaning as his own introspective experience allows. (31-
32).
"The real human being has been shown to be a perceptible,
power-endowed, extra-conscious entity, that compels through sense-
stimulation — mostly of a vicarious character — a perceptual represen-
tation called his body to arise in the conscious content of beholders.
This real human being is thus revealed to the actual awareness of
outsiders solely by means of this perceptual bodily appearance. To
himself the awareness of this visual and tactual body is likewise a
mere perceptual, sense-aroused appearance within his own conscious
content. (35).
"The animal (is) developed into a human being by the acqui-
sition of speech, engendered in social intercourse .... Without the
use of linguistic signs conceptual thinking is impossible .... and
rational conduct is rendered mentally possible by memorized past
experience, consciously apprehended (37-41).
"Life had a most humble mundane beginning in a mere see-saw
movement of alternate disintegration from without, and reintegration
from within, manifest in the perceptually revealed primitive living
substance .... Hunger and assimilation of restitutive nutriment on
the part of the organic individual would secure only its own preser-
vation, and life would have become extinct on our globe in a single
generation — fulfilling thereby without much ado the fervently pro-
fessed desire of the ascetics. This would infallibly have happened
of the process of the creative development of vital endowments, to
which we owe our own existence, did not involve the 'wicked' propa-
gation of 'sinful' individuals, and therewith the preservation of the
'fallen' race. (50-51).
"What is so strikingly witnessed in the circumscribed life-history
of insects, namely, that their entire vital activity, from beginning to
end of their career, is directed toward the propagation of their race ;
a predetermined reproductive end-result arrived at unbeknown to
themselves — this unmistakably teleological process affords a certain
analogical insight into what productively occurs in phyletic organic
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 411
development. ( 55 ) .... The world as revealed in the symbolical me-
dium of sentiency and consciousness is obviously a new creation ;
something newly arising into perceptual existence. It has become
toilsomely embodied in what perceptually appears as specifically
organized vital structure. (56).
"The principal results in the scientifically valid interpretation
of the perceptible world-revelation have been gained by close obser-
vation and exact numerical determination of the behavior of the
sense-compelled appearances arising within the conscious content of
the observer. These appearances faithfully, though only symbol-
ically, reflect what really happens in the sense-compelling, extra-
conscious world. Consequently such scientific interpretation of phe-
nomenal appearances, however exact, can yield only phenomenalistic
information in terms of extension and motion. The intrinsic sig-
nificance of the perceptual appearances and their motor changes
has to be supplied by the experiencing subject's own organically
memorized and systematized knowledge. (59).
"Rational enlightenment, mostly scientifically attained, has lib-
erated progressive nations from many terrifying and pitiless supersti-
tions, also from the former thraldom of utmost intolerance, which
mercilessly inflicted the crudest penalties on unbelievers in the tenets
of this or that dominant theological creed. In order entirely to over-
come the injurious and unjustifiable anthropomorphic conception of
a creative power, volitionally and intentionally in control of all that
happens in nature, it will be well to get to understand that our own
will and our own intelligence, which are obviously the real proto-
types upon which are patterned the will and intelligence ascribed to
a postulated deity, are utterly powerless to impart or change under
given conditions any property or mode of behavior of the interacting
constituents of the cosmic order and its procedure. (68) ... .In the
fashioning of organisms the surpassing incomprehensibility of crea-
tive might is most strikingly evinced. (70).
"On the whole the conviction has preponderated that true reality
is revealed by conception and not by perception. The consistent out-
come of this prevalent persuasion is that the real world is of ideal
consistency, and has its real being in mind, consciousness or spirit.
(75).... What are called laws of thought, often looked upon as
super-humanly normative, receive no less their validity from vitally
organized correspondence of conceptual thinking to what such think-
ing applies to. (86).
"What is deemed objective in nature, or above it, is not directly
412 THE MONIST.
given in experience, but only inferred from certain actually given
subjective data within the conscious content. It is obvious, then,
that subjectively revealed spacial forms, for instance, inferred to
have their real existence in an objective extra-conscious world, have
of necessity to conform to subjective space-perception, of which they
are — as thus actually experienced — sense-compelled determinations.
(87-88).
"In cultured communities, social conduct and social development
have become the chief concern of humanized existence. (90) ....
And here justice and benevolence reveal themselves as the leading
principles that make for progressive humanization, and for realiza-
tion of the social ideal. This ideal of social solidarity is conceived
as a state, in which all humanity is imagined to share in the bene-
factions of a rationally and ethically cultured life. (91)
"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity are sublime watchwords to stead-
fastly remind us of the far-off humanitarian goal. But that goal
cannot be reached before a great majority of individuals composing
the social community have constitutionally attained a degree of hu-
manization that renders them socially congenial and capable of con-
sistently performing the duties involved in the realization of the
ideal state" (92).
THE CHRIST MYTH OF DREWS.
The object of this book1 is to prove that the Jesus Christ of
Christianity is a pre-Christian Hebrew sun- and fire-god by the
name of Jesus, identical with Joshua, Elijah, John the Baptist and
other assumed Hebrew forms of these gods, whom the writers of
the New Testament transformed into a human being, represented
as having lived in the first century of our era under the name of
Jesus, though such an historical Jesus never existed.
In order to prove that there was such a pre-Christian God the
author presents to the reader, especially in the first part "The pre-
Christian Jesus" but also in the second part "The Christian Jesus",
an enormous amount of information and material taken from the
comparative study of ancient religions. The facts given in this
way will be of great value even to the reader who can not follow the
author in the final conclusions he draws from them, for they show
how many different pre-Christian conceptions and ideas, mythical,
1 The Christ Myth. By Arthur Drews. Translated from the third edition
(revised and enlarged) by C. Delisle Burns. Open Court Pub. Co., 1910.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 413
mystical, ritualistic, sacrificial, speculative, etc., from Pagan and
Jewish sources entered into the formation of the Christian Christ-
idea. Whether we follow the author or not in his final conclusions,
we must fully agree with him that the Christ myth, the idea of a
dying and risen saviour-god who brings life and immortality out
of death, is rooted deeply and firmly in the many pre-Christian
ideas of the kind just mentioned and is a natural outgrowth of them.
The author shows that Parseeism influenced Judaism deeply in
regard to the Saviour and Messiah idea ; that even far distant India
may have furnished material both from the side of Vedic and Bud-
dhistic religion ; that other religions of antiquity such as those of
ancient Babylonia and Egypt furnished the same idea, though in
different ways, of the dying and resurrected god, at bottom the
yearly waning of the sun and the death of vegetation either by
winter in more northern, or by the dry season in more southern
climates and its revival in the spring ; he shows also that the actual
human sacrifices, in order to assist nature in its revivification, or the *
bloodless imitation ceremonies in connection with the early festivals
of the dying and resurrected god, entered into the idea of the Chris-
tian Christ ; he shows that much mythical, mystical and speculative
language of exactly the same terms in Mithraism, Mandaeism and
other cults entered into the religious language of Christianity re-
garding its Christ and the relations of believers to him; he shows
the influence of Parsee, Vedic, Buddhistic and Greek metaphysical
thought in the formation of Christian metaphysical ideas, the idea
of the divine wisdom, the divine word or the Logos, standing as
a mediator between the far-away God and his creation, a kind of
emanation or sonship of God becoming incarnate ; he shows that
Christianity in fact furnished nothing new whatever in the ethical
sphere and that the highest moral thought of Christianity is to be
found previously both in Judaism and paganism ; that the picture
of the ideal, perfect, just, suffering man, as we have it in Christian-
ity, is furnished likewise by Plato and Seneca; he shows that the
ideas of the union of man with God through sacred rites, baptism,
sacred meals, etc., such as we have in Christianity, were deeply
rooted in pre-Christian customs ; he shows how strong was the
pre-Christian idea of propitiatory death, in that even the death of
martyrs dying for their religion as in the Maccabean insurrection
was considered redemptive for the whole people ; in short the author
furnishes in a very skilful way such an enormous amount of valu-
able material showing what a host of different ideas entered into
414 THE MONIST.
the formation of Christianity to make it a thoroughly syncretic
religion, that the reader is fully repaid thereby for acquiring the
book.
The writer of The Christ Myth might have added other strong
arguments for the syncretical character of Christianity and its out-
growth from previous thought. When speaking of Philo and his
influence upon the Fourth Gospel he might have shown how the let-
ter to the Hebrews is still more thoroughly impregnated by Philo
even to exactly the same terminology. When speaking of the dying
and resurrected gods of pre-Christian religions and the effects of this
thought upon the ancient human mind, he might have shown still
more strikingly that this idea of the dying and rising god, referring
originally only to processes of nature, was transferred into the
purely spiritual and religious sphere. He might have referred to the
Egyptian burial liturgy in which occur the following words regard-
ing the deceased: "Not as dead does he go away, but as living; as
true as Osiris lives, he also will live ; as true as Osiris has not died,
he also will not die; as true as Osiris has not been destroyed, he
also will not be destroyed." (If instead of "Osiris" we place
"Christ" we have a fully Christian burial liturgy). He might have
referred to the words of the priest in the Greek mysteries at the
height of the mystical cult:
"Be confident, initiates, the God is saved,
And also we from sufferings will be saved."
If it had been more in the interest of the author of The Christ
Myth, he might also have stated how much of the mythical matter
related of the assumed god Jesus, and god-forms identical with
him, was also related of historical persons. He might have pointed
to the fact that not only Plato, Augustus and others were said to
have been divinely-begotten sons of virgins, but that exactly the
same story told of Joseph, the father of Jesus, is told of the father
of Plato, who did not consummate the marriage with Plato's mother
till after the child's birth; that a star appeared at the birth of
Augustus and great signs preceded the death of Caesar; that the
Roman senate attempted to prevent the birth of Augustus; that in
the apotheosis of a Csesar witnesses were required to appear before
the senate to testify that they had seen the soul of the emperor ascend
to heaven ; that at the birth of Apollonius of Tyana a chorus of swans
sang ; and that as late as in the Middle Ages the story of the dying
and resurrected god was transferred to Frederick I, Barbarossa,
who was to arise and bring again the glory of the old empire.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 415
While, as has been said, the author of The Christ Myth places
before the reader an enormous amount of valuable material for which
we must be grateful, I think exception must be taken to the way in
which he states certain assumptions and theories as facts which as
yet lack definite proof. For instance, if the author accepts as a basis
for his thesis the theories of Winckler and others, that all the heroes
of the early Old Testament history from Abraham down to Elijah,
and perhaps even further, are nothing but astral, zodiacal, solar and
lunar gods, the reviewer in company with many others is willing
to yield to this theory to a certain extent, as in the case of Samson
where the solar characteristics are clear, even in the name itself
(Shimshon, "the solar one"). Nevertheless he thinks it would be
more cautious and in accordance with facts to assume that, as in
the case of the Iliad, Odyssey and the Nibelungenlied, there may
likewise be in early Hebrew history a mixture of the purely mythical
and historical, nature-myths and early tribal and national history,
in which it is sometimes very difficult to separate the purely myth-
ical from the historical characters.
The Joshua (Greek Jesus) of the conquest of Canaan may have
been a tribal sun-god, but the high priest Joshua who appears in the
books of Zechariah and Ezra was surely no god. Likewise, if the
Joshua of the conquest was a god, all consciousness of the fact was
lost and he was considered an historical person (see 1 Kings xvi. 34),
at least during the times of the Exile. Even in the eighth century
B. C, as we can gather from such old prophets as Amos, Hosea and
Micah, the history of the conquest as we find it in the Pentateuch and
the Book of Joshua was accepted. Micah vi. 7 speaks of Moses,
Aaron and Miriam (the latter of whom Drews erroneously con-
siders a sister of Joshua, see page 117) as historical persons, not as
gods.
The patriarch Joseph may likewise have been a tribal sun-god,
but it is very questionable whether when the Gospels represented
Jesus as a son of the carpenter Joseph, a myth was still known, if
ever such a one existed, relating that this sun-god Joseph was an
artisan, i. e., a "world modeller" (p. 114) as in the case of the father
of Agni, the god of fire, and Kinyras, the father of Adonis, where the
sun-myth is entirely transparent.
If Elijah is a sun-god, his contemporary Ahab at least is his-
torical and well attested by the Moabite stone. Elijah appears to me
rather to be a genuine Oriental religious zealot. The miracles re-
lated of him and his final fiery ascension to heaven do not disprove
416 THE MONIST.
his historical character. Similar things are related of Mohammedan
marabouts even to-day, and the miracles told about Empedocles, a
character somewhat similar to Elijah in his stand against the mighty
and his marvelous end, do not stamp him therefore as unhistorical.
Further, to connect Elijah etymologically with Helios (sun) will
only appeal to those ignorant of ancient languages and philological
laws. And finally Elijah has played an important role as an his-
torical prophet in Jewish literature, in the Gospels and the Talmud
in connection with the Messianic hopes ever since Malachi iv. 5.
John the Baptist is to Drews another form of the sun-god. As
he does not occur in the Old Testament, "under the name Johannes
is concealed the Babylonian water-god Oannes (Ea)," another form
of the sun-god, i. e., "the sun begins its yearly course with a baptism,
entering after its birth the constellation of the Water-carrier and
the Fishes" (p. 122).
As John the Baptist occurs in Josephus (Ant. XVIII, 5, 2) this
passage is declared a Christian interpolation on the authority of the
Jewish writer Graetz, though his authority is rejected when de-
claring the Vita Contemplativa of Philo a Christian forgery (p. 51).
Whether Graetz declared the Baptist passage an interpolation be-
cause he considered John unhistorical is not said, nor is an appeal
in this connection to a note in Schiirer (Geschichte des judischen
Volkes, etc.) more illuminating. I have read Schiirer on Josephus
in Herzog and Plitt's latest edition and find in his discussion of
interpolations in Josephus not the least word on the passage of the
Baptist. I am sure that to Schiirer John is historical.
We ought to be extremely careful in declaring passages inter-
polated. Preconceived theories ought not to influence our judg-
ment in this respect in the least. No one has a right to declare
passages interpolated unless on the fact that they are wanting in
some manuscripts, or on grounds which thoroughly show that they
are imported foreign matter. If the passage on the Baptist (known
to Celsus before 180) is a Christian interpolation, the interpolator
must have been entirely ignorant of the accounts about the Baptist
in the Gospels, for these contradict the Josephus passage in many
respects and are written from an entirely different viewpoint.
In connection with John the Baptist the philology regarding the
river Jordan2 will again only appeal to those who base comparative
philology on the similarity of sounds instead of on scientific prin-
'"Eridanus, the heavenly Jordan or year-stream (Egyptian iaro or iero,
the river)" (p. 122).
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 417
ciples. This kind of philology occurring in so many places in The
Christ Myth is one of the weakest points in the book and ought to
be removed in future editions. Likewise if the method were correct
that Drews applies to Hebrew names in which the word El (God)
occurs, not one of the host of names for persons in the Old Testa-
ment containing El would signify a human being, but each would
signify a god. (Compare on page 77: "Israel, the mighty God,"
"the earliest designation of the God of the Hebrews until displaced
by Yahveh." A very questionable assertion!) Likewise, according
to the same method, if all names for human beings, in which the
syllable jah or jeho (abbreviation for Yahveh} occurs, would sig-
nify a god, there would be no end of such gods in the Old Testa-
ment. (Compare Jehoshua considered as a god.) It is to me ex-
tremely doubtful whether the very frequent names in the Old Testa-
ment in which the syllables el or jah or jeho appear would ever have
been used for the designation of a god. According to the method
applied by Drews we might with the same right consider Merodach
Baladan, a king of Babylonia (Is. xxxix. 1) a god, but that name
simply means "Merodach is ruler and lord."
It also seems to me incomprehensible that if Jehoshua were
such a noted sun-god of the Hebrews we do not see the least trace
or mention of his cult in the Old Testament or elsewhere in Jewish
literature, while the cults of Tammuz, Moloch, Baal Peor, Cemosh
and other gods, surely all different forms of the sun-god, are men-
tioned. But Drews furnishes direct proofs that Joshua or Jesus
was a pre-Christian Hebrew god. Jesus is not only a sun-god but
also a god of healing and saving (p. 58) identical with the Greek
Jasios or Jason, i. e., "the healer," (another example of the weak
philology of the book) and is mentioned as such in ancient docu-
ments. But Hebraists know that Joshua or Jesus means no such
a thing as "healer" or "saviour." The Hebrew for "physician" is
rof>he,3 and for "saviour" moshia* a hiphil participial form of the
verb jasha, often occurring in the Old Testament as an attribute
of God, as in the Greek Zeus Soter.
P>ut what about the ancient documents? In a Parisian magic
papyrus published by Wessely (line 3119 etc.), we read the words,
"I exhort thee by Jesus the God of the Hebrews." While Drews
considers this papyrus to be of pre-Christian times, other scholars
say that it appears to date from the first half of the fourth century
A. D., and that if in it Jesus is called the "God of the Hebrews,"
8 KEI
418 THE MONIST.
this does not necessarily point to a pre-Christian time but may just
as well be due to Christian influence, in that Jesus is mistakenly
conceived to be a god of the Hebrews by some conjurer; that just
as the name of Solomon was made use of in conjurations (compare
Josephus Ant. VIII, 2, 5) so the name Jesus was made use of not
only by Christians but also by others who conceived his name to be
powerful (compare Acts xix. 14).
The existence of the pre-Christian god Jesus is also assumed
on the basis of another document. The great heresy expert Epi-
phanius (4th century A. D.) says in a very muddled way:5 "Upon
these follow in order the Nazoraioi, who belong to the same time as
they and who, whether existing before them or with them or after
them, nevertheless are their contemporaries ; for I can no longer
tell exactly who followed the others. For they were, exactly as I
said, contemporaries and had similar thoughts. But they did not
attribute to themselves the name of Christ or Jesus but that of the
Nazoraioi, and all Christians then were called likewise Nazoraioi.
But it happened a short time before that they were called Jessaioi
before they began to call the disciples of Jesus in Antioch Christians.
And they were as I think called Jessaioi on account of Jesse. They
either were called Jessaioi after Jesse the father of David or after
the name of Jesus our Lord, because they went out from Jesus as
disciples or because this is the etymology of the name of the
Lord. For Jesus means in Hebrew the same as therapeutes, i. e.,
physician and saviour. Before they were called Christians they were
called by this name somehow as a surname. From Antioch as said
above, they began to call the disciples and the whole church of God
Christians, but some called themselves Nasaraioi for the heresy of
the Nasaraioi existed even before Christ and did not know anything
of him. But all called the Christians Nazoraioi as also the accusers
of the apostle do."
From this passage and a few more words in the above-mentioned
magical papyrus reading (line 1549) : "I conjure you by the mar-
parkourith nasaari" and from the mention of the words Jesus
Nazarja in a hymn of the Naassene sect, Drews, following Professor
William Benjamin Smith of Tulane University in all this, draws the
conclusion that there were two pre-Christian sects called Jessaioi
and Nazoraioi who were closely related to each other, if not abso-
"The following quotation from Panar. Haer., XXIX, 6, is not given by
Drews.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 419
lutely identical (p. 59). They were so called from the divinity they
adored, Jesus Nasarja, meaning the "saviour-protector."
To strengthen this assumption and the claim that the Christian
sect of the Nasoraioi in the New Testament were not called thus
from the home of Jesus, Nazareth, the existence of Nazareth in the
first century is questioned on doubts raised in the article "Nazareth"
in Enc. BibL (The exceedingly slim grounds for the non-existence
of Nazareth in the first century I have exposed in my article, "Naza-
reth, Nazorean and Jesus," Open Court, June 1910).
In answer to the assumed Nasarja divinity identical with the
god Jesus, and his adorers, the Nasoraioi, the following is to be
said: The form Nasarja occurring in the hymn of the Christian
gnostic sect of the Naassenes (who knew the Fourth Gospel and
therefore were no pre-Christian sect) is nothing but the Syrian or
Aramaic form for the Greek Nasoraios in the New Testament, i. e.,
"he of Nazareth." This is proved by the Syrian translation of the
New Testament. The Syrian Nasarja has nothing whatever to do
with the Hebrew Nasarjah, "one whom Yahveh guards," (note the
difference in the spelling of the last syllable in both forms). An-
other form, which Drews cites as identical with the Syrian Nasarja,
and which occurs in the Talmud, namely nosri, also has nothing
to do with the idea of protector. This form nosri is simply a Hebrew
form denoting descent, i. e., "he of Nazareth," just as Thimni
(Jud. xv. 10) means "one from Thimnatha" and Beth-ha Shimshi
(1 Sam. vi. 14) "He from Beth Shemesh." The Syrian Nasarja
and the Hebrew Nosri both mean the same as the Greek Nasoraios
of the New Testament, "he of Nazareth." Nevertheless the strongest
blow which this whole p re-Christian Jesus Nasarja saviour-protector-
divinity receives is the one dealt by Aramaic scholars, who say that
at the times of Jesus the Palestinian Jews did not use the Hebrew
verb nasar for "to guard" but the Aramaic ne'tar. In reproducing
the theory of Professor Smith, Drews unconsciously weakens it (p.
59) by appealing to the "protector of Israel" (Ps. cxxi. 4) to prove
that Nasarja means protector. Drews does not notice that in the
Hebrew of that passage not the verb nasar but shamar is used which
also means "protect." This bad mistake, which of course one ig-
norant of the original text does not notice, ought to be corrected
in future editions. The whole passage of Epiphanius speaks for
Nasaraioi as being the earliest name of the Christians rather than
that of a pre-Christian sect, especially since it clearly distinguishes
between Nasoraioi and the pre-Christian Nasaraioi, who according
42O THE MONIST.
to him rejected the Pentateuch and were vegetarians. The passage
of Epiphanius and the other documents mentioned above afford at
least a very uncertain basis upon which to build such a theory of a
pre-Christian Jesus-Nazarja divinity.
But to another point. In bringing before the reader the ex-
tensive material from the comparative study of religion to prove his
thesis, we notice that the author does not always distinguish sharply
between earlier and later customs and ideas of Christianity. Never-
theless this ought to be done when we attempt to trace the first be-
ginnings of Christianity. If Drews adduces "the Magi or kings"
(p. 94) as the three stars in the sword-belt of Orion, we must re-
member that the Gospel speaks neither of kings nor of three persons
and that the legend of the three kings is a very much later legend
whose foundation on pagan myths we of course would not in the
least dispute.
When speaking of Christian baptism and tracing its origin back
to fire-worship (p. 119) the author says the Greek name for baptism
is photismos, "enlightenment," but we must remember that in the
New Testament no such a term is used for baptism though later
ecclesiastical writers call catechumens expecting baptism soon, pho-
tizomenoi, without surely any thought of fire-worship.
On page 89 the flight of Mary into Egypt on an ass with the
child Jesus is traced back to pictorial representations of the flight
of the son of Isis on an ass out of Egypt, and here we must again
remember that nothing of all this occurs in Matthew and that very
probably the whole myth of the flight to Egypt is based on the al-
legorical use of Hosea xi. 1, the people of Israel, the son of Yahveh,
being taken as the type of the Messiah.
The martyrdom of Stephen is traced back and according to
Drews is made to rest on the constellation of Corona (Greek, Stepha-
nos} becoming visible on the eastern horizon about Christmas (St.
Stephen's day, December 26) but we must remember that both the
December 25th as the birthday of Christ and the following day as the
date of the martyrdom of Stephen are very, very much later institu-
tions of the church.
Drews further connects the expression Agnus Dei (lamb of
God) etymologically with the fire-god Agni and says that it is nothing
else than Agni Dens (p. 145), but here he forgets that Agnus Dei is
the later Latin translation of the Greek d/xvos TOV Otov (John i. 29)
and not the original expression.
When the cross of Christ is brought into connection with the
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 421
ancient fire-cross and other symbols, the author unconsciously ad-
mits that this comparison is not justifiable, since he himself rightly
shows that the term stauros in the New Testament does not mean
"cross" but simply "stake" and that marks of nails are first men-
tioned in the late Gospel of John (p. 147). It is doubtful whether
Jesus was nailed to the cross, and even if he was fastened by nails,
the cross was not necessarily of the shape -j- but may have been of
the ~\ shape which form the early so-called Epistle of Barnabas as-
sumes, whose composition Drews places much earlier than the
Gospel of John, even towards the end of the first century (p. 220).
The author therefore has also no right to say that "the Saviour
carrying his cross is copied from Hercules (Simon of Cyrene),
bearing the pillars crosswise" (p. 241). If Drews shows that crim-
inals in the time of Jesus were simply bound to the stake and left
to die, what has the carrying of the stake to do with Hercules bear-
ing the pillars "crosswise" ? That condemned criminals had to bear
the stake to the place of execution is related by classical writers.6
By the way if Simon of Cyrene is Hercules how does Drews explain
that this Simon is said in Mark xv. 21 to be the father of Alexander
and Rufus, persons of whom we know absolutely nothing, but who
must have been well known in the Christian community where this
incident was first related?
Some other strictures might be made concerning the method
employed of using ideas and facts of very much later date than the
times of the origin of Christianity, as for instance the use made of
the Talmudic double Messiah, the Messiah ben Joseph and Messiah
ben David (p. 80) corresponding as is said (p. 81) to the Haman
and Mordecai of the Jewish Purim feast. Concerning the custom
at this festival of executing one criminal, Haman, and releasing the
other, Mordecai, under the mask of which custom Frazer believes
that a Jewish teacher by the name of Jesus may have been executed,
and which Drews accepts as an absolutely certain custom among the
Jews, making much of it in favor of his thesis, we have not the least
trace in Jewish literature nor proof of its existence. The Purim
festival as we know it among the Jews is based entirely upon a
romance, the Book of Esther, and of so late a date that it is not
mentioned in the text-books of Hebrew archeology where all the
other Hebrew festivals are treated extensively in regard to their
origin. The writer of that tale undoubtedly brought the fictitious
incident he relates into connection with some Persian or Babvlonian
* Cic., De divin., I, 26 ; Valer. Max. XI, 7 and others.
422 THE MONIST.
custom or festival (ix. 19 etc.) but he evidently did not know any-
thing certain about the meaning of the word Pur, which he trans-
lates "lot," though there is no such word for "lot" in Persian.7
Zimmern assumes the Purim feast to be of Babylonian origin, the
New Year festival on which the gods under the presiding Marduk
cast lots in an assembly (puhru) regarding the fate of the next
year. If the custom to which Drews refers existed so late in history
among the Jews, the meaning of it must have been totally lost to
them, or else the author of Esther could not, as far as I can see,
have tacked his story to it. Some commentators are inclined to
believe that the Book of Esther was written by one of the many
Jews in Mesopotamia or Persia. The book itself only came into the
canon under very strong protest because of the ugliness of its ex-
treme fanaticism.
The author of The Christ Myth surely makes very skilful use
of many assumptions which he gives out as well proven facts in favor
of his thesis, but it is doubtful whether in the long run they will
stand the test. How careless the author is in making use of material
in his favor without testing it, is shown on page 79, where he follows
an interpretation of Dan. ix. 26, which the staunchest orthodoxy
has followed for 1800 years, but which scientific investigation has
rejected for over a century, and which even the neo-Platonist Por-
phyry and a Christian writer Julius Hilarianus of the fourth cen-
tury had rejected. I refer to the orthodox interpretation that in this
passage reference is made to the dying Christ. All scientific investi-
gators refer it to the death of some historical personality, such as
Alexander the Great, Seleucus Philopator or Onias III. The author
is often too credulous in accepting his material and therefore too
quick in suppositions, as when he lumps together all the different
Marys of the New Testament, the mother of Jesus, the Magdalene,
the mother of James the Less and Joses into the twofold form of the
mother and the "beloved in the sexual sense of the word," of the
God Jasius or Joshua (p. 117) ; or when he suspects the Alpha and
Omega of Revelation to be concealed in Ao (Aoos} said to be a
Greek form for Adonis, while philologists consider this latter form
as probably the Doric aos for Attic eos, "the dawn" ; or when he
suspects Golgotha as being a site of ancient Adonis worship, because
Golgos is said according to some scholia to have been a son of
Adonis and Aphrodite, while Golgotha (Hebrew Gulgoleth = skull)
T Cornill, Einleitung ins Alte Testament, p. 140.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 423
may very simply only refer to the skull-shaped locality of the exe-
cution of Jesus.
* * *
Going over to the second part of the book, "The Christian
Jesus," we fully agree with the author that without Paul Christianity
would have remained a very restricted faith and would have made
but little progress. The author clearly sees the important and dom-
inant part which Paul took in the rising Christianity. He gives a
very good description of Paul's metaphysics, his doctrine of sin and
redemption, his mystical ideas of the union of God and man through
Christ, and the magical power of baptism and the Lord's Supper,
etc. Still, if "the information the Acts give as to Paul's life is for
the most part mere fiction" (p. 166) and if all the Pauline letters
are so extremely doubtful (p. 166 f.) regarding their authenticity
as the author assumes, we can not very well understand why such an
extended use is made of these letters in proving the thesis of the
book, and why any passages in them running contrary to it are de-
clared interpolations. If the letters were written "by a whole school
of second century theologians" we should not expect that there
would be much necessity for interpolations later. At least so it
seems to the writer.
We also do not understand why, if the Acts are so very un-
trustworthy, so much use is made of them to prove the existence
of a widely spread cult of the pre-Christian god, Jesus. From Acts
xviii. 25 and other passages in the Acts, the conclusion is drawn
that the preaching about Jesus of Apollos and others who knew
only the baptism of John the Baptist, was a teaching about the pre-
Christian god Jesus. Others who take the words of the Acts re-
garding the preaching of Apollos as the author of Acts meant them,
simply see in the fact of Apollos knowing only of the baptism of
John a proof that Jesus did not himself institute a special baptism
as the last words of Matthew give it (evidently a later addition be-
traying itself by the formula "in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Ghost") and that the baptism in the name of Jesus
was only gradually introduced by the growing primitive church.
The Acts surely contain many inaccurate statements, but the "we"
passages incorporated into their second part at least seem to bear
the stamp of genuineness. These even contain a mention of James,
(xxi. 18) whom Paul (Gal. i. 19) calls "the (definite article, not o)
brother of the Lord," evidently meaning a close relation to Jesus,
424 THE MONIST.
no spiritual brother or follower.8 What Jerome, a zealous advocate
of the perpetual virginity of the mother of Jesus, said a few cen-
turies later about this James, does not count.
As concerning the Acts, so also with regard to the authenticity
of the Pauline letters we do not wish to start a long discussion.
We will restrict ourselves to the following : Drews places the epistle
of Clement of Rome at the end of the first century (p. 220). Now
this letter mentions the first letter to the Corinthians by name (xlvii)
referring to the dissensions in Corinth, discussed in the first chapter,
and to Apollos and Kephas (the latter by the way seems to be con-
sidered a legendary character by Drews, according to the preface
p. 20). Further, the letter of Clement has passages which remind
us of passages in the letter to the Romans; it has passages which
occur verbatim in the letter to the Hebrews (non-Pauline, but strongly
testifying also to the humanity of Jesus, v. 7). I may just mention
in connection here that Clement, of whom Drews says that he "is
completely silent as to the Gospels," twice cites words which he
atributes to Jesus, occurring in the Gospels (XLVI & XIII). To
close my remarks on the authenticity of the Pauline letters, I will
say that to me the extremely passionate, polemical, personal and
individualistic character at least of the letters to the Romans, Co-
rinthians, Galatians and Philippians seems to be the strongest proof
for their authenticity. I do not see how second century theologians
could ever have invented this. Could Paul's pathetic wish (Rom.
ix. 1), for instance, to be accursed for the sake of his people, ever
have been invented by second century theologians, when the com-
plete separation of Christianity from Judaism had long been an
established fact?
Now to some points in "The Pauline Jesus."
"The form in which Paul grasped Christianity was that of an
incarnation of God" says Drews on page 189. Still this form and
representation of Paul's religion in his letters does not refer to any
historical Jesus in which this incarnation took place. All that seems
to look like this is mere phantom. Though the words seem to point
to a human Jesus, they do not mean this. "It was not unusual
among the heathen peoples for a man to be crucified in place of the
Deity as a symbolical representative ; although already at the time
of Paul it was the custom to represent the self-sacrificing God only
by an effigy, instead of a real man. The important point, however,
'The brothers of Jesus in I Cor. ix. 5 and mentioned by name in the
Gospels are allegorized into "followers of the religion of Jesus" (p. 172).
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 425
•
was not this, but the idea which lay at the foundation of this divine
sacrifice" (p. 188). "When Paul designated the Messiah Jesus as
a bodily descendant of David according to the flesh, born of woman,
he thought not at all of any concrete individuality which had at a
certain time embodied the divinity within itself but purely of the
idea of a Messiah in the flesh" (p. 190). All have thought thus
far that the designations just mentioned "from the seed of David
according to the flesh," "born of woman," and others, "born under
the law, "delivered over in the last night," "crucified," "buried,"
"seen after death by his disciples" etc., occurring in the Pauline
letters referred to an historical personality, but according to Drews
they mean nothing of the kind. If any passages seem to speak too
definitely about some historical personality Jesus, such as the above
mentioned passage in Galatians which mentions "the brother of the
Lord," or the passage in 1 Corinthians about the delivering of
Jesus in the last night, or the passage on the different appearances of
the Lord after his death in 1 Cor. xv, a passage which even a David
Strauss considered as the oldest account of the visions the disciples
had of their master, these passages are declared later interpolations.
All that seems to point to an historical Jesus, says Drews, is as
historical as what was said of the redeemers Hercules and Mithras
(p. 178). Yet these were believed to have lived in antiquity while
Paul refers to a person with whose disciples and brothers he had
come into personal contact; and while Hercules is the offspring of
Zeus and a human woman, and Mithra is born from the rock, Jesus
according to Paul comes simply from the seed of David and is born
of a woman.
When Drews in several places in his book speaks of the dei-
fication of other human persons in history ; when he mentions Jewish
gnostic sects, who imagined the Messiah to have become incarnate
in Adam, Enoch, Abraham, and so on, finally to become incarnate
in Jesus (p. 112) ; when he says that "the guiltless martyrdom of
an upright man as expiatory means to the justification of his
people was also not unknown to the adherents of the Law since the
days of the Maccabean martyrs" ; when he says "a captive criminal
was looked upon as an imitation of the God sacrificing himself"
(p. 188) ; it is hard to see why after all this he goes to the trouble
of attempting to prove that there was no historical Jesus who could
have been deified and considered a divine incarnation, and whose
death could be taken as an expiatory death for mankind. Drews
does not seem to consider at all that these possibilities could have
426 THE MONIST.
been further supported by the fact that Jesus very probably thought
himself specifically and divinely chosen for his work and made
claims which moved his followers to exalt him to a divinely sent
saviour and redeemer. The author of The Christ Myth criticizes
liberal theology for assuming "ecstatic visionary experiences" and
"pathological states of over-excited men and hysterical women"
among the causes of the historical foundation of Christianity (p.
268). But are these assumptions so very unreasonable? It is a
well-known fact that in religion reason plays a very much less
important role than feeling, and in the foundation of the great
religions of the world the ecstatic, abnormal, and pathological states
of mind of their founders have always been a very important fac-
tor. A. Meyer (The Resurrection of Christ} says: "Visions are
in certain periods of history the necessary form of religious reve-
lation. A visionary disposition possesses many morbid elements
but in great men it is an heroic sickness."
But my review is already too long. I will therefore restrict
myself to the remaining questions and remarks which further oc-
curred as important to me while reading the book. I will give these
as they occurred to me consecutively in reading the remainder of
"The Pauline Jesus" and the following chapter, "The Jesus of the
Gospels," without any special order, since each question or remark
is independent of any of the other remarks or questions.
I may be mistaken, but is it probable (p. 186) that the first
Christian missionaries in Antioch made any compromise with the
more or less voluptuous Adonis cult? Paul in his letters at least
does not speak in any very accommodating way of heathen cults.
If Antioch is rather the birthplace of Christianity and the
spreading of Christianity did not start from Jerusalem (p. 210),
why then does Paul so often return to Jerusalem, not only according
to the Acts, but also according to his letters, keeping up his connec-
tion with the mother church and supporting it by collections from
the churches he founded?
Is not the reiterated statement of Paul that he had seen the
Lord (of course in a vision) upon which he bases his apostleship
(1 Cor. ix. 1 and other places) as well as the older apostles in
Judea, and at the same time the antagonism of his evangelization
methods to the older apostles who considered themselves the more
privileged as having stood nearer to the master, a proof of the
exsitence of a Jesus, who had given no hint whatever as to the
methods to be followed regarding pagan believers, and had con-
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 427
centrated all his efforts to the salvation of his own people in expec-
tation of the near end ?
Has our author, who places The Doctrine of the Twelve Apos-
tles so very early, "perhaps even at the end of the first century"
(p. 220), ever read this work? He claims that it speaks of a Jesus-
God "in no wise the same as the Christian redeemer" (p. 62) and
that it "cites Christ's words, such as stand in the Gospels, but not
as sayings of Jesus." It seems to me that if this work when giving
thanks to God for the eucharist repeatedly speaks of Jesus as "thy
servant Jesus, through whom thou hast revealed to us life, knowledge
and immortality, etc.," this does not sound very much as if referring
to a Jesus-God. Besides this it does cite such words as those stand-
ing in the Gospels as sayings of the Lord, i. e., Jesus (VIII, 2; IX,
5). Evidently Robertson too on whom Drews depends had not
read this work thoroughly. It is always better to search inde-
pendently.
The same may be said of the secular testimonies concerning
early Christianity, those of Tacitus, Pliny, (the passage on the
persecution under Nero in Suetonius is not mentioned at all). The
author rejects all these testimonies as forgeries (pp. 228 and 231).
Has he made an independent investigation of all of them? If he
had done so he might have found out how exceedingly slim are the
grounds on which such authorities as Hochart and others reject
these passages. The reviewer at least has experienced this by in-
dependent investigation and since that time he has become very
suspicious in regard to "authorities." If the testimonies referred
to are Christian forgeries, the only grounds for them must have
been that the forgers foresaw the modern attacks on the historicity
of Jesus, for there were no such reasons for forgery in their own
times and what other reasons could have influenced them I do not
understand. In regard to the Tacitus passage, on which the main
attack is directed, I have asked the very pertinent question, why
should just this passage be forged, when Sulpicius Severus, who
cites it verbatim in regard to the Neronic persecution, also cites the
same Tacitus verbatim in regard to other matters not dealing with
Christianity. (See Monist, Jan. 1911).
If Schiirer thinks that Josephus may not have meant James the
brother of Jesus, (Ant. IX, 1) this ground is also not yet decisive.
If Drews cites the hyperbolical words of the so-called Epistle
of Barnabas (which he places as early as 96 A. D., p. 220) that
Jesus chose his apostles from the worst of sinners to preach his
428 THE MONIST.
gospel, in order to prove that he came to call not the righteous but
sinners to repentance, adding that this was neither written by an
apostle nor one of their pupils (which no one claims), these words
at least seem to refer to an historical Jesus. Further they seem
indeed "to be written after our Gospels," as they cite words occurring
there, and they further do not seem to be written "at a time when
the learned masters of the church had still a free hand to show their
spirit and ingenuity in giving form to the evangelical story." If
Drews places this epistle at 96 A. D. and rejects the Tacitus passage
as well as the Pliny passage referring to persecutions in Bithynia
about 111, how then could there be much of a church with learned
masters at that time according to his view? The fact is rather that
the critics place the letter of Barnabas about 25 years later, when
all the Gospels very probably were in existence.
When Drews wrote "The Jesus of the Gospels," did he think
of the strong proofs for an historical Jesus to be found in some of the
parables, such as the parable of the evil husbandmen and the parable
of the supper which the king made for his son ? According to both
parables (it does not matter whether Jesus spoke them in the form
we have them or whether they were enlarged upon by the Gospel
writers) punishment is dealt out to the evil doers, who, it is clearly
hinted are meant for the Jewish people. That these parables speak
of an historical Jesus, the final and most eminent of the prophets
God sent to his disciples, as the parables put it, I should think is
clear.
Jesus is a physician-god like Asclepius, on account of the mir-
acles related of him (pp. 240, 264 and also 138). Still if (p. 240)
Tacitus and Suetonius are referred to as relating miracles performed
by Vespasian of the same nature as those done by Jesus, and "if
the Old Testament stand as a model" in this respect, why is Jesus
then necessarily a healer-god and not historical?
All along we have been told that Jesus was a pre-Christian
God. But on page 246 it is said that the Gospels intentionally in-
vented the deficiencies of Jesus that they record, i. e., temporary in-
ability to do miracles, non-omniscience, moral imperfection, etc.,
in order "to paint the celestial Christ of Paul for the faithful as a
real man and to treat his idea of humanity seriously." Liberal
theologians have thus far considered these deficiencies of Jesus as
a proof of a historical perfectly human Jesus, and even orthodox
theologians look at them as showing how thoroughly God became
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 429
man, but now we are told that all this is only ingenious device.
Our intelligence is often strongly taxed.
On page 36 Drews rightly says that in the view of a later age
primitive gods become men, such as Achilles, Hercules, Siegfried,
etc. He then adds that the elevation of men to gods is as a rule only
found in the earliest stage of human civilization or in periods of
moral or social decay, worthless flattery, etc. Well, were not the
later Hellenic times such times, when "a Plato and Aristotle were
honored after their death as godlike beings" (p. 267) ; when im-
portant generals and kings and emperors were deified, as also hap-
pened to Apollonius of Tyana, a contemporary of Jesus? If "it was
merely an expression of personal gratitude and attachment, of over-
flowing sentiment" (p. 268) to render divine honors to eminent
men, why should this not have happened to Jesus? "Primitive gods
in a later age become men," it is true, but this process is generally
a very long one. It will be hard to make people believe that the
Jesus of the New Testament is the outcome of such a process. He
springs up suddenly in history and the process of his deification
is a comparatively short one and corresponds to the time in which
similar processes of deification came about.
The ethical teachings of Jesus are truly (p. 257) no higher
than those of other ancient moral teachers, Jewish or pagan, but is
not the actual life of Jesus, especially among the lower classes, those
looked down upon by the righteous, in order to save them, a good
proof of his real humanity? It is just this life of Jesus which seems
peculiarly real. Further, is not just the "egoistical pseudo-morals,
his basing moral action on the expectation of reward and punish-
ment in the future, his narrow-minded nationalism, his obscure
mysticism with mysterious references to his heavenly father, etc."
as Drews characterizes the teaching of Jesus (p. 257), a proof for
the historical Jesus, or is all this only intentional invention of the
Gospels again?
In order to prove his thesis that there is no historical truth in
the Gospels and that the impression which Jesus is said to have
made upon his time is the impression of a fictitious personage,
Drews draws a comparison with Goethe's Wcrther, which pro-
duced an enormous impression though entirely fictitious (p. 257).
But the great impression made by Werther is perhaps due to the
concrete realities standing behind it, the suicide of young Jerusa-
lem in consequence of a deep love for the wife of a friend and the
inner and outer experiences of Goethe himself.
43O THE MONIST.
In the Gospels, and, we may add, the letters of Paul, there is
likewise a mixture of historical truth and myth, of concrete reality
and inner and outer experience. The tragical career of Jesus is
surely not invented, nor is the impression he made upon his fol-
lowers. According to page 264 "Christ is only another form of
the club-gods of religious-social brotherhoods, such as Attis, Adonis,
Mithras, etc., with their yearly bloody expiatory sacrifice, baptism of
blood, forgiveness of sins and rebirth." But it is to be remarked
that if Jesus is only such a club-god, why was not in his case also
a yearly bloody expiatory sacrifice and a baptism of blood repeated?
The death of the human Jesus was once for all time the death-knell
of all such bloody sacrifices and perhaps just because he was human
and no club-god.
If according to page 267 it was possible to create out of a pure
idea the semblance of a concrete personality that never existed,
first by Paul and then more fully by the Gospels and all this in a
comparatively short time, why could not the reverse be true, to create
out of an historical personality a divine incarnation? The latter
process, if we take into consideration the peculiar mental and ecstatic
state of the first followers of Jesus and of Paul, seems to us less
of "a psychological puzzle" than the former process.
On page 271 we are told that the lowest stratum on which our
canonical Gospels are based was a Judaistic literature which had
the closest interest in the historical determination of Jesus's life.
"Judaism in general and the form of it at Jerusalem in particular,
needed a legal title on which to base its commanding position as
contrasted with the Gentile Christianity of Paul ; and so its founders
were obliged to have been companions of Jesus in person and to
have been selected for their vocation by him." "In Paul's lifetime
the transformation of the Jesus faith into history did not take place
as one can believe from his letters." In order to discredit the
apostleship of Paul, the Judaists "made the justification for the
apostolic vocation consist in this, that an apostle must not only
have seen Christ risen but must also have eaten and drunk with him"
(p. 270). While liberal theology is inclined to see in the coarse
materialization of the appearances of Jesus to his disciples after his
death later accretions to the original resurrection story as told in
1 Cor. xv, and this probably in opposition to the Docetics who
taught that Jesus had only an apparent, not a real, body, even before
his death, Drews thinks that all this was done by Judaistic Chris-
tianity with the set purpose of making Jerusalem the central seat
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 431
of authority. "For this reason the god Jesus was transformed into
an historical individual whose central point of action was Jerusa-
lem" and whose right successors were the Judaistic apostles.
The reviewer must confess that it took him a long time to
understand this reasoning of Drews as to why and how the god
Jesus was transformed into an historical individual. It is very in-
tricate to see how the god Jesus was made historical and yet was
not historical, especially since the author says (p. 272) "that the
Pauline epistles themselves contain nothing to lead one to believe
that the transformation of the Jesus faith into history took place in
Paul's time," while on page 275 he says that "the Pauline Chris-
tianity was in earnest with the manhood of Jesus," speaking simi-
larly in earlier pages (p. 191 etc.). It seems then that Paul, like the
Judaists who laid the basis for the Gospels, as Drews says, only
talked of Jesus as historical though he was not historical. This
whole thing seems to me to be one great tangle. The matter be-
comes still more confused when we read that all this representation
of the god Jesus as an historical man, though not historical, was
done in order to meet the gnostics of whom Drews says that they
"agreed with the Christians that Jesus had been human" (p. 274).
If they agreed with the Christians that Jesus was human (I suppose
Drews means to say that they represented Jesus as human though
he was not human) why then all this trouble of Paul and the Gos-
pels to meet them by making Jesus historical who was not historical ?
On pages 278-281, the author speaks of the Fourth Gospel as
mainly directed against gnosticism "though itself gnostic but funda-
mentally differing" from the views it meets by "asserting that the
Logos was made flesh." In this connection Drews says: "The his-
torical picture which came down to the writer of the Fourth Gospel
was forcibly rectified by him and the personality of Jesus was worked
up into something so wonderful, extraordinary and supernatural,
that if we were in possession of the Fourth Gospel alone, in all
probability the idea would hardly have occurred to any one that it
was a treatment of the life-story of an historical individual." This
seems to me to be an admission fatal to the theory of Drews, for it
is just the great difference between the idealistic Fourth Gospel and
the Synoptics and Pauline letters which make us surmise a human,
historical Jesus behind the latter.
In the appendix, "The Religious Problem of the Present," the
author criticizes much of the language and phraseology of liberal
theology, as he also does in other passages throughout the book,
432 THE MONIST.
and to my opinion in many cases rightly. He criticizes especially
that such liberals speak still of Jesus as "redeemer" and "the voice
of God to us." Still when Drews himself says, giving his view of
religion : "God must become man, so that man can become God,
and be redeemed from the bounds of the finite, etc." (p. 296) and
when he speaks of "the divine essence of mankind, the immanent
Godhead" as "the inner Christ" to be worked out, etc., his phraseol-
ogy does not differ very much from that of those he criticizes ; per-
haps after all he does not differ so much in the essential points of
religion from those he criticizes. On page 290 he calls the phraseol-
ogy of a liberal theologian, A. Meyer, concerning God in con-
nection with Jesus, pantheistic. Yet he himself, speaking of "the
tidal wave of naturalism, ever growing more powerful and sweeping
away the last vestige of religious thought," thinks that "the sinking
fire of religion must be transferred to the ground of pantheism in a
religion independent of any ecclesiastical guardianship."
The Christ Myth is a good statement of one of the many pres-
ent theories that Jesus never existed, and we hope that it may find
many readers, in order that the actual truth may be probed to the
bottom. But just for this reason it would have been desirable that
the author in giving the facts on which he bases his theory, would
have been less assertive and would have shown that the facts adduced
are really well founded.
A. KAMPMEIER.
IOWA CITY.
RIGNANO'S THEORY OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS
The transmission of acquired characters from parent to child
was an old problem in the days before Darwin when the theories of
preformism and epigenesis were pitted against each other. Pre-
formism was also called evolution in the narrow and literal sense
of the word, for the life of any creature was assumed to be simply
an unfolding of the type latent in the germ. A real chicken, though
invisible on account of its diminutive size, was supposed to lie hid-
den in the egg, while the epigenesis theory explained the successive
stages of the life in both the race and the individual by additional
growth. The discussion of this same problem was renewed by
Weismann, who takes a very uncompromising position against La-
marck's view of the development of life through exercise of organs
and specialization by use. Weismann denies altogether the inheri-
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 433
tance of acquired characteristics. It is commonly considered that
the two positions, preformism and epigenesis, are incompatible be-
cause contradictory, that if one theory is true the other must neces-
sarily be wrong ; but Rignano is confident that he has found a middle
ground.
Both parties are agreed that heredity is a kind of memory, and
memory is a subject upon which great interest has been concentrated.
All recent attempts to bring out the significance of this fundamental
factor of organized life are based upon Hering's essay, originally
a lecture, "On Memory as a Function of Organized Matter."1
Among other works in this line we will mention Semon's interesting
book entitled"Mneme as the Preservative Principle in the Change
of Organic Action,"2 and also Rignano's "On the Inheritance of
Acquired Characteristics."3
Rignano has been much before the scientific public on account
of his new theory of inheritance which he calls centro-epigenesis and
which is intended to be a conciliation between preformism and epi-
genesis. In making the attempt at overbridging the gulf between
these two hypotheses, Rignano has worked out his theory with a
great mass of detail which renders his book valuable, if for no other
reason, as a collection of the most important data and propositions
as well as theories proposed on this much mooted subject.
It is noteworthy that Rignano is not originally a biologist but
an engineer and has for a large part of his life devoted special atten-
tion to physics. This had influenced him in so far as he falls back
upon physical allegories of which his comparison of memory to elec-
tric currents appears in his conception to be more than a mere com-
parison.
Rignano is greatly influenced by Weismann whose belief in the
isolation of germ plasma he incorporates into his own theory not
to its whole extent but only so far as to assume that not the entire
germ plasma but only its central zone remains isolated and is there-
fore stable and not subject to change. This theory of the existence
of a stable central zone induces him to call his theory the hypothesis
of centro-epigenesis.
It is well known that Weismann tries to explain in this way
the rigid stability of heredity. His favorite evidences are found in
1 Published in an English translation by The Open Court Publishing Co.
in 1902.
* Die Mneme als erhaltcndcs Prinsip. Leipsic, Wilhelm Engelmann, 1908.
1 An English translation by Basil Harvey to be published by the Open
Court Publishing Company is in preparation.
434 THE MONIST.
the beehive and the ant-hill where the queen bee and the queen ant
are independent individuals and absolutely separate from the work-
ers. So if a community either of bees or ants changes conditions
unsuited for their lives the race would die out if they depended on the
transmission of new characters acquired by the workers and not by
the queen. Facts compel us to assume that bees and ants do adapt
themselves to new conditions, for changes set in in the workers al-
though they can not possibly have been transferred by them upon the
queen ; and in the same way Weismann believes that the germ cells
are independent organs, which cannot be affected by the experience
or new acquisitions of the rest of the body, the so-called somatic
cells.
Rignano differs from Weismann in assuming that only the
central zone of the germ plasma remains stable and continues to
consist of the same substance, remaining isolated except for periodic
impulses which it gives to somatic life, in this way directing them
on to the ontogenetic development of the individual according to
the phylogenetic development of the race.
The theory of a central zone is extremely doubtful and it is
scarcely probable that further investigations will bear out either
assumption, that of a special memory substance which has been de-
posited after the fashion of galvanic currents, or that heredity is
due to the existence of a special germ plasma with a stable and iso-
lated central zone. Rignano's book contains much material of great
interest but its value consists not in what he says but in how he says
it, for it will certainly stimulate inquiry.
According to our opinion memory is not due to an identity of
substance, but to a preservation of form. The same is true of hered-
ity which is a memory transmitted from the parent organism to its off-
spring, and for the sake of proving the preservation of form in a con-
stant change of substance we must bear in mind that it is character-
istic of all life. In order to understand that the race memory is stronger
than the memory of a single individual, we have simply to assume that
the characteristics of forms, consisting ultimately of millions and mil-
lions of generations, are so much stronger than those fewer ones of
one generation which we see before us in the parent organism. In
fact it stands to reason that the germ plasma representing the in-
numerable ancestors of the race should be overwhelmingly more vig-
orous than any amount of characteristics acquired during life. This
principle would not exclude that once in a while acquired character-
istics can be transmitted, and we may add that they are transmitted
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 435
only in cases where the germ plasma of the individual is favorably
predisposed for receiving them. In our opinion this proposition
would solve the problem of preformism against epigenesis in the
simplest and most satisfactory way. At any rate it disposes of the
extravagant claim of Weismannism.
Rignano accepts the vaguest part of Weismannism by assum-
ing a bodily identity and isolation of the germ plasma. This hypoth-
esis is the more improbable as all life produces a change of sub-
stance, and it seems all but impossible that one part, and in fact
the most important part, of an organism should remain isolated,
stable and unchanged. Rignano escapes some of the difficulties of
Weismann by reducing the isolation of the germ plasma and con-
ceiving it only as relatively stable.
Rignano declares that both preformism and epigenesis are un-
tenable in their extreme forms, and that though both theories are
commonly assumed to exclude one another each contains in its way
an important truth. In his defence of preformism Rignano falls
back again on Roux who by extirpation produced half-embryos and
created otherwise perfect organisms which only lack definite organs.
These experiments allow no other interpretation than that definite
portions of the germ are preformed.
The explanation of memory as due to a preservation of form
seems not only simpler but more probable than any other hypothesis
which is based upon mere assumption. The stability of form pre-
served in the flux of sentient substance is no less persevering than
the stability of a substance which in living organisms is, to say the
least, very improbable.
Rignano argues that since the organs of an organism are always
in equilibrium they cannot cause the changes of a further develop-
ment. Therefore he accepts the conclusion that there must be a
special zone of substance which remains constant and unchanged
during the development of the individual, and that this zone sends
out the stimuli which dominate the progress of organisms from
stage to stage. Finally he identifies this central zone with Weis-
mann's germ plasma which represents the phylogenetic factors and
remains separate from the ontogenetic fate of the individual. But
Rignano differs from Weismann by assuming that not the whole
germ plasma but only its center remains isolated, which isolation,
however, does not exclude that from time to time it sends out im-
pulses and effects the individual somatic conditions without being
reacted upon. This is claimed to explain the several facts which
436 THE MONIST.
have troubled biologists, both the preformists and the believers in
epigenesis.
Rignano finds a proof of his theory in Roux's experiments of
post-generation. The salamander's amputated feet grow again, so
do the lenses of the triton's eyes, which indicates that the factor
of generation does not lie in the destroyed organs but has its source
in some other part of the body according to Weismann, the germ
plasma.
Rignano, having devoted much of his thought to physics, falls
back upon a physical explanation of memory which in our opinion
is rather unfortunate. Instead of regarding memory as a preser-
vation of forms in sentient substance he compares the nervous ac-
tivity to the currents of accumulators, which deposit a substance
capable of reproducing the same current. A discharge can take place
only if resistance is sufficiently weak. Thereby Rignano explains
how the different nervous currents of ontogenesis follow each other
in the definite succession of their phylogenesis. Every nervous cur-
rent reproduces the analogous state of evolution which the discharge
of the accumulated elements render possible. These considerations
induce Rignano to explain the phenomena of memory as resting on
the same foundation. The nervous current which corresponds to
a definite sensation also deposits a specific substance, which later on
reproduces an analogous nervous process and with it an analogous
elements of consciousness. This reproduction actually takes place
if the resistance to a discharge is sufficiently weak, which means
that the former nervous situation repeats itself in the same or partly
the same way.
Mr. Rignano writes in a private letter to the author : "Naturally
what interested me more than all is what you say concerning bio-
logical memory, and you have understood perfectly that the basis
of memory resides in the anabolic processes of a restoration of living
substance. A little step further and you will perceive memory as a
process of specific accumulation, which means that this conception
of memory is an accumulation of energy. The transition of it from
a potential to an actual state constitutes what is called mnemonic
evocation, which seems preferable to the old conception of memory
as a trace. This becomes evident in my article on 'The Mnemonic
Origin and Mnemonic Nature of Affective Tendencies,' for every
one admits that these affective tendencies are only accumulations of
energy, and if they are of a mnemonic origin it means that the
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 437
mnemonic phenomenon itself is also in its essence only a phenomenon
of accumulation."
It is possible that the old view of memory conceived as a trace
may have been insufficient, and may have interpreted it as a dead
inactive impression like that of a seal, but a careful consideration
of the facts will show that form is the indispensable and most im-
portant feature in the preservation of memory. As I conceive the
nature of memory it is a form, not only of substance, but also of
energy. Whatever energy may be stored up, the character of energy,
its significance, its meaning, does not depend on any kind of force,
be it electrical, or vital or mechanical but on the form of force,
which again is dependent upon the impression preserved in the brain
substance.
It has been my endeavor to bring out the all-importance of
form, which theory becomes most apparent in biology.
Rignano's explanation of the way in which the germ plasma
reproduces the succession of specific nervous currents which have
been produced by phylogenesis appears to me somewhat stilted and
could be greatly simplified by seeking the cause of memory purely
in form and not in a specific substance deposited by a kind of ner-
vous accumulator.
There is a third hypothesis proposed by Rignano which con-
ceives the life process, especially assimilation, as "an internuclear
oscillating nervous discharge," but Rignano himself considers the
proposition a bold one and points out that the two other hypotheses
are independent of the third. His work in this line is more tentative
than safe in its constructions and we may add that in all his labors
his criticism is the most valuable part of his work. Rignano is well
read in the literature of his subject, perhaps more so than others,
for the horizon of specialists is often limited to the publications that
appear in their own native language. Rignano's book bristles with
references to facts and experiments of great significance, and this
feature of his labors alone would render his presentation both in-
structive and stimulating whether or not his two main theories are
right. P. C.
ECCENTRIC LITERATURE.
The authors of eccentric literature are usually cranks or mat-
toids.1
1 The term "mattoid" is preferable to "crank," which is misused.
438 THE MONIST.
This literature is characterized by an association of false ideas
based upon false premises, but which may be logically deduced.
It is usually written in disregard of all known rules of composition
and style, and its purpose is often difficult to discover. It is full
of extravagant statements and visionary matter in philosophy, sci-
ence, religion and politics. Eccentric literature has been called
heterodox, but it has been remarked, that it is usually "heterodox
ignorance."
As early as 1785, Adelung,2 a German author, published a
work of seven volumes on the "History of Fools," by which he
meant biographies of "celebrated necromancers, alchemists, exor-
cists, conjurers, astrologers, soothsayers, prophets, fanatics, vision-
aries, fortune-tellers, prognosticators and other philosophical mon-
sters." The author of this pioneer work said he desired to present
to the public an assemblage of men who made it their business to
oppose philosophy and sound reason, and thereby to imagine them-
selves great philosophers, but who rather brought philosophy into
contempt.
One difficulty in selecting eccentric literature is due to the
fact that some great minds, known to history, have manifested
in their writings symptoms of eccentricity of all degrees until in
some instances insanity has been reached. In fact, there are few sane
people who have not during their lives been under the influence of
some momentary illusion or hallucination. The greatest and wisest
men have at times expressed such foolish ideas as not even ordinary
people would have thought of saying. Highest reason has its freaks.
Eccentricity and deranged mentality, as manifested in geniuses,
have been treated at length by the writer in another place ;8 the in-
tention here is to consider the writings of those whose eccentricity
is more of a permanent nature and where minds are much less
powerful, brilliant and durable, though their delirious ideas are
sometimes expounded with much plainness and animation. Many
aberrated persons with literary claims and scientific associations,
produce volumes, in which the steps from eccentricity to partial
or complete insanity can be traced. There is enough of such curious
* Geschichte der menschlichen Narrheit, etc., Leipsic, 1785.
* See chapter on "Genius and Insanity" in Senate Document ( 187, s8th
Congress, 3d Session), entitled Man and Abnormal Man (780 pages).
This document may be obtained gratis through any United States Sen-
ator or Representative, or by sending its price (40 cents) to the Superinten-
dent of Documents at the Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
439
and eccentric literature almost to make a library. There are at
least 284 authors who have written eccentric literature.
The following is a table giving the number of eccentric books
according to subjects. It will be seen that religious works pre-
dominate ; books on spiritism, which are numerous, have not been
collected.
CLASS
NO.
Theologv
82
Prophecy
44
Philosophy
36
Politics
28
Poetry and Drama
9
Language and Grammar
8
Miscellaneous subjects
20
227
SYMPTOMS OF ECCENTRIC LITERATURE.
Some cranks in their writings continually play upon words to
absurdity, or use large numbers of words to no purpose, even
writing volumes full of redundancy. Others repeat ideas of great
statesmen or philosophers, but distort them by exaggeration, often
making them ridiculous. Another symptom of eccentric literature
is a use of stereotyped phrases in a peculiar sense and repeated
many times with useless details. Many words are underscored, and
the writing is in different characters. Even the pages may have
various colors. As an illustration of profuseness of writings, one
work consisted of 117 volumes. In addition to prolixity, the purpose
is not only absurd, but the nature of the books is often entirely for-
eign to the education of their authors. Thus a physician writes con-
cerning geometry, and a cook on political economy. A pseudo-
geologist discovers a secret way of embalming bodies that is known
to any demonstrator of anatomy ; a university professor in a treatise
mentions the exhalations of the fish as an advantage of sea-bathing,
and yet his book contained many good things, reaching a second
edition.
The ideas of eccentric writers are not only exaggerated but
there is sometimes a painful disproportion in them; thus after ex-
44O THE MONIST.
pressing a sublime conception, they suddenly descend to trite ideas
which are usually opposed to the views of most people. Some choose
difficult subjects, as the exposition of the Apocalypse or the squaring
of the circle, possibly to give the impression of mental profundity.
Books on machines for perpetual motion are of the eccentric type;
so, also, are odd interpretations of scripture. Cranks try to prove
great men mistaken. It attracts attention and seems flattering to
them. For instance, much has been written to prove Newton wrong.
Some simply dispute the statements of authorities in order to bring
themselves into notoriety. Some persons also regard the Bacon-
Shakespeare controversies as eccentric literature.
ECCENTRIC TITLES.
Eccentric books frequently have very long titles, and some are so
peculiar as to leave no doubt as to the nature of the work. Pneuma-
tology of Spirits and their Fluid Manifestations, is one illustration.
Another book has nine titles and is dedicated to as many kings. The
following is a title : "Problem of the Law of Justice solved by Arith-
metic. Statement of what passed for many years between Dr. John
Dee and some Spirits." Another work is dedicated to "Father and
Mother, to Paris and the Universe." This title is sufficient: "A
Doctrine where Chaos will replace Order, and Time put an end to
our Aberrations: God, Destiny, Equity. By Equity to accomplish
our Destiny, the Will of God."
SCULPTURE.
Artistic cranks entered the public competition at Rome, for a
proposed monument to Victor Emanual. Their productions were
characterized by stupidity. Some of the designs were grotesque and
the inscriptions irrelevant, referring to the artist himself and show-
ing excessive vanity. Many who submitted designs were ignorant
of art, being teachers of grammar, mathematics, medicine, law and
military science.
POETRY AND LITERATURE.
It has been said of certain decadent poets, that it is very difficult
to make anything out of their series of words, which being con-
nected together according to the laws of syntax might be supposed
to have some sense but have none, keeping one's mind on the stretch
in a vacuum, like a conundrum without any answer.
In literature proper the mental aberrations of authors are less
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 44!
concentrated than in philosophy and theology. The mind touches
rather upon the surface of things. The figures, tropes and analogies
are strange. Forms and expressions of ideas, rather than their ab-
stract nature and value are considered. Long speculations are rare.
As an illustration of eccentricity in literature proper, a pro-
fessor of history in the sixteenth century, when attacked with mel-
ancholia, employed his time on a work entitled, "Program of Uni-
versal History." He had the fixed idea that the annals of the
Egyptians, Jews, Greeks and Romans were composed by fanatics
and people without sense. As a matter of fact, he said, men have
existed from eternity.
One author writes poetry on an enormous number of subjects,
until he passes into mental ramblings and absurdities, yet through
it all he preserves the rhythm. Another considering himself the
greatest poet who ever existed, composes a heterogeneous mass of
malice, pride, talent, vile defects and great qualities.
Walt Whitman's spirit of individuality, exaltation of ego, prin-
ciple of pride and revolt caused him to become unbalanced. In him
are symptoms found in those who proclaim themselves great men
and universal reformers. Whitman says: "I have the idea of all.
I know all. I am divine, without and within ; I make all divine,
that which I touch and all that touches me. My head is more than
the churches, Bible and symbol of faith."
In certain individuals there seems to be a close relation between
poetic power and insanity.
There are rare cases in which insanity increases intellectual
power. Here is a case reported by physician. A very pious lady
gradually became oppressed with a deep melancholic feeling, caus-
ing her mind to be deranged so that it was necessary to place her
in an asylum. While there she expressed such remarkable ideas in
verse, that they were written down. After she had recovered from
her trouble she had no recollection of the matter and was not able
to write with such elegance as when she had been deranged.
Another illustration is the composition by a lady confined in an
insane asylum. The cause was the loss of her pet bird "Goldie":
"Wise people I know believe
That birds, when they have ceased to breathe,
Will never more revive;
But though I cannot tell you why,
I hope though Goldie chanced to die,
To see him yet alive.
442 THE MONIST.
"May there not be, if heaven please,
In Paradise both birds and trees?"
A young man who had become insane through disappointment
in love, wrote this among other verses :
"Whene'er I hear the wild birds lay
And the echo in the grove,
And see the face of Nature gay
With beauty and with love,
I'll think that thou art with me still
By vale and murmuring stream,
And o'er the past my soul will dwell
In faint collected dream.
When all the charms of nature fade,
And Autumn leaf is strewn,
One charm will still be mine, sweet maid,
To dream of thee alone."
A graduate of Cambridge University, England, and winner of
the best prize for the poem, became insane and was confined in an
asylum. Though he had no paper, ink or pen, he wrote on the
wooden panels of his room, by the aid of a key, a poem to the
glory of King David, the Prophet. The following is the first stanza :
"He sang of God the mighty source,
Of all things, the stupendous force
On which all strength depends,
From whose right arm, beneath whose eyes,
All pride, all power and enterprise
Commences, reigns and ends."
POLITICAL LITERATURE.
Political and sociological subjects are perhaps the most diffi-
cult to write about, requiring not only the highest rationality, but a
practical and sound sense in adapting ideas to actual conditions in
which passion and sentiment play an important role.
Those who go to political and sociological extremes or eccen-
tricities usually have an appearance of calm when in the public
eye. This may indicate a strong conviction based upon intense
feeling, and when partisanship, personal interests and ambitions are
involved, they furnish a subject attractive to disordered minds.
Demons, Counsellor in Amiens, France, published works, one
of the titles of which is : "The Demonstration of the Fourth Part of
Nothing and Something ; and All ; and the Quintessence taken from
the Fourth Part of Nothing and its Dependencies containing the
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 443
Precepts of Sanctified Magic and Devout Invocation of Demons, in
order to find the origin of the Evils of France and the Remedies for
them. (8°, 1594, 78 pages and one error)."
The author, Demons, said that he had determined to bring to
light a classification of the shades of his timid obscurity in the
quintessence which he had taken from nothing and to give an ex-
planation of the enigma of his invention.
Francis Davene, a fanatic dreamer, published much in verse
and prose at Paris in 1649 to 1651. He wrote to indicate the royalty
which he claimed God had given to him. He desired to prove that
the world would end in 1655, and in his "Harmony of Love and Jus-
tice" he endeavored to show that Louis XIV could not be the son
of Louis XIII. He was persuaded that he himself would supplant
Louis XIV.
"Addressed to All the Powers of Europe." The author of this
epistle was born at Copenhagen in 1644. At the age of 12, he had
visions. He was proud to have made a compact with God, to expel
the Turks from Europe and deliver Judea. In spite of his many
visions, he lived to be 98 years of age.
Hoverland (born 1758) was strictly of the old regime, de-
testing new ideas, execrating those whom he called revolters. For
thirty years he breathed calumnies and injury against those of his
compatriots, whom he accused of liberalism. He manifested his
eccentricity by walking in the streets dressed like a savage. He was
a lawyer and member of the council of 500. After having exer-
cised different public functions he wrote a history of his native town
(Tournay) consisting of not less than 117 volumes, without order,
plan or reason, an undigested mass of documents, full of calumnies,
forgetting no one whom he did not like.
Herpain, a Belgian, called Usamer (1848), with a mind un-
balanced by ideas of social progress, endeavored to have adopted
universally, what he called a physiological language, so that his
ideas might be comprehended by every one. He developed his
system in an article which he sent in this language to the legislative
assemblies of different countries. The following is the Invocation:
"As soon as Your Majestic Presence had illumined the nothing,
the nothing was made the means of existence. Then you willed to
icign favorably over the essences and principles of beings were
produced."
Another author dedicates his book on "Demons and Spirits,"
to all the sovereigns, king, emperors and princes of the four parts
THE MONIST.
of the world. He held that everything was spirit, as the falling
of a cat from the roof, or smoke coming from a chimney.
PHILOSOPHY.
One of the most significant symptoms of mental lack of equi-
librium is weakness in that logical faculty upon which philosophy
especially depends. For it deals with abstract and speculative sub-
jects, where the mind has less to restrain it from aberrations. Un-
balanced persons have produced less intelligible results in philosophy
than other subjects.
In 1792 an author of natural history made interesting re-
searches on the antiquity of Brittany, but he developed theories on
man, the universe and the spiritual world in eight large volumes
called The New Jerusalem, in which he claimed to establish an har-
monious union of the world of bodies with that of spirits; stating
that the spirit of John the Baptist would manifest itself to him on
the 26th, and that of Peter on the 30th of June 1861.
Another author (1852) finds in names and dates, seven har-
monic laws, which rule in the events of history. He said there would
be 278 popes, no more, no less.
Wronski, a Polish philosopher and visionary mathematician
(born 1788, died 1853) claimed to have created a universal religion,
made over the mathematical sciences and organized politics on a
new basis. He placed himself in the attitude of a Messiah and
another Newton. He boasted of revealing the definite theory of
numbers and giving the solution of the existence of matter in its
three states, solid, liquid and fluid of air. The titles of two of his
works were as follows: "Messianicism, Final Union of Philosophy
and Religion, Constituting the Absolute Philosophy" (Paris, 1831-
39, 2. vols. 4°) and "The Political Secret of Napoleon as basis of the
future morality of the world" (Paris, 1837, 8°).
Such titles are sufficient to indicate the strangeness of Wronski's
ideas.
SCIENCE.
A German physician published (1595) at Leipsic, a book con-
cerning a child born with a golden tooth, which he attributed to the
influence of the stars.
Deyraux entitled his book (1855) "Discovery of the Veritable
Astronomy, based upon the Law common to Movement of Bodies."
In a footnote he says that this important discovery of the true
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 445
astronomy can aid investigation and account for the facts. Until
this day, he adds, the origin of the facts has been ignored by all
ancient and modern astronomers.
A certain member of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon and
Counsellor of the Legation at Paris, in spite of all his titles and
honors, must be classed among writers whose compositions are eccen-
tric.
This academician filled his large apartment at Paris with birds
in order to study their customs. He finally formulated a theory of
determining the physical and moral dispositions of animals according
to analogies, dress and colors, entering into details as to feathers
and bills. He drew some peculiar conclusions. One was that if
speech is wanting to the monkey, it is an advantage, because it pre-
serves his liberty.
A learned and distinguished Orientalist (born 1663) presented
the French Academy a memoir in which he claimed to show that
Adam was 140 feet in height, Noah 50, Abraham 40 and Moses 25.
Jerome Cardan, a celebrated Italian physician, philosopher and
charlatan, claimed the future was revealed to him by dreams and
by marks upon his finger nails.
Another Italian physician, confined in an asylum, wrote works
in 1496, on the Aristotelian philosophy, but endeavored to prove
that Aristotle never existed.
Paracelsus (1536) was an alchemist, physician and philosopher.
He was also a charlatan, but with undisputed talent and rambling
mind. He wrote some 250 treatises. He peopled the world with
demons and geniuses, and affirmed that he was in communication
with celebrated personages of the other world.
Another author of a book entitled The Great Scientific Restau-
ration, Philosophic Mineralogy," gave at the end a list of 52 differ-
ent works, which he announced he would write on scientific ques-
tions.
Thomas Wirgman, with a capital of more than $200,000, ex-
pended it all for printing his books, which were published in London
at the commencement of this century. Not more than twenty copies
were ever sold. The title of one of his books was Grammar of
Six Senses, based upon three ideas, "time, space and eternity." The
work was unintelligible. The author was fully convinced that when
his ideas were universally adopted they would produce peace and
harmony on earth and virtue would take the place of crime. In
his application for the chair of philosophy at the University of Lon-
446 THE MONIST.
don, he wrote, "So long as I have a breath of life, I will not cease
communicating to a new world the source of happiness." He wrote
to George IV that if he did not adopt the principles of his books,
neither he nor any of his subjects would be saved in the other world.
One reason why his works cost him so much money was that he had
special paper made and the pages colored differently, sometimes
even with two colors on the same page; and when they did not
please him, he would have others made.
William Martin entitled one of his works, A New System of
Natural Philosophy on the Principle of Perpetual Motion, published
at Newcastle in 1821.
He said perpetual motion was impossible through machinery,
but added, "I had a strange dream. .. .and after awaking was ab-
solutely convinced that I was the man whom Divine Majesty had
chosen to discover the great secondary cause of all things and the
veritable perpetual motion."
In an introduction to another work, he wishes long life and
prosperity to the Ruler of Ireland, who knows that he, William
Martin, has "completely effaced Newton, Bacon, Boyle and Lord
Bolingbroke."
John Steward (born 1822) had a mania for traveling. He left
his business in India, and walked through many parts of the earth.
He then wrote books, of which two of the titles are : Voyages to Dis-
cover the Source of Moral Movement (300 pages) and Books of
Intellectual Life or Sun of the Moral World, Published in the Year
of Common Sense 7000 of the Astronomical History of the Chinese
Tables."
In one of his works he places himself above Socrates. In an-
other he claims to be the only man of nature, who has ever appeared
in the world. As indicating still greater conceit and mental aberra-
tion he had the idea that all kings of the earth were conspiring to
destroy his works, and he therefore besought his friends to preserve
a few copies, and after wrapping them up carefully, to bury them
seven or eight feet under the ground, taking care not to let the
place be known until on their death bed, and then only as a secret.
RELIGION.
The aberrations of religious mattoids consist in emotions, pas-
sions and instinctive impulsions of the soul. This is a realm almost
without limit, where hopes and fears take all forms in the flights
of the imagination.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 447
In fanaticism the realities of the material world disappear, not
by the flight of reason but because the fanatic believes it is his
duty to annihilate it in the interest of his soul. His whole existence
is absorbed in his thought, which not only influences his aberrations
but modifies all the phases of the external manifestations of his
mind. His conjectures have no limit and his doctrines can become
so exaggerated by intense enthusiasm or imagination, that they be-
come not only eccentric, but so extreme as to border on insanity.
As an illustration we have works such as the one with regard to
"the mouth or nose of the glorious Virgin," or a sermon by Baxter
of England on "Hooks and Eyes for Believers' Trousers." These
are not only eccentric, but vulgar, and sometimes immoral.
A theologian wrote a book to show that the aborigines of South
America were the direct descendant of the devil and one of the
daughters of Noah, and that consequently it was impossible for
South Americans to obtain either salvation or grace.
ISAAC NEWTON.
Isaac Newton in his commentary on Daniel and the Apocalypse
(London, 1733) interpreted the expressions of the Hebrew prophets,
"one time, two times and a half a time," to mean 1260 solar years,
beginning with the year 800 A. D. Newton fixed the destruction
of the Papacy in the year 2060. He also attempted to determine the
time for the destruction of the world, and the coming of a new world
where justice would reign.
It has been asked why such a distinguished mathematician
should occupy himself with such visionary ideas. Some say it in-
dicated a decline in his genius ; others, that he acceded to the sur-
roundings in which he lived. Philomneste4 does not accept those
reasons, but says that Newton like all men with real genius believed
himself invested with a divine mission. This belief increases with
age ; he sought an expression of it in the prophecies of the Bible
where numbers, which had been the joy of his life, played a great
role.
Peter Leroux, a visionary who mixed philosophical ideas, de-
fined love as "the ideality of the reality of a part of the Infinite Be-
ing, reunited to the objectivity of the ego."
William Blake, a talented painter, engineer and poet, who saw
and heard supernatural beings, reproduced them in crayon and then
engraved them.
*Les Fous litteraires, Brussels, 1880.
448 THE MONIST.
It is surprising that a clear-sighted juris consul in his latter
days should allow himself to announce that he had received a mes-
sianic message.
The author of Faith Disclosed by Reason in the Knowledge of
God, of His Mysteries and of His Nature (1680, 280 pages) was
a grave man and counsellor of the King; nevertheless he was un-
balanced, believing he held in his hand the truth of truths. His
mental wanderings were unintelligible. He found in matter the
three elements of the Trinity: (1) Salt, the generator of things
corresponding to God the Father; (2) mercury, where extreme fluid-
ity represents God the Son spread in the whole universe, and (3)
sulphur, which by its property of uniting salt and mercury repre-
sents the Holy Spirit. His works were condemned.
Gleizes (born 1773, died 1845) wrote works on vegetarianism.
He deserted his wife, whom he loved, because she would not cease
eating meat. He said meat was atheistic, but fruits contained the
true religion, and that vegetables were an antidote for all evils. He
left ten volumes. *
The writings of aberrated esthetics and mystics constitute many
eccentric books, the extravagancies of which have been injurious to
religion.
Another religious author fixed six thousand years as the dura-
tion of the world, saying that the man of sin, the anti-Christ, would
appear in 1912 and rule forty-five years, and be exterminated in
1957.
As an illustration of wisdom mixed with absurdity, there was a
distinguished Lutheran theologian of the 17th century who wrote
learnedly on New Testament Greek, but subsequently became exalted
and prophesied that the end of the world would come in the year
2000.
John Humphrey Noyes, who claimed the gift of prophecy,
founded a sect of biblical perfectionists or communists called the
Oneida Community. He claimed to have* established a divine gov-
ernment on earth, declaring that marriage was a theft and fraud,
just as property was. He did not recognize human legislation.
Everythinng, including insignificant details, was designated as an
inspiration from heaven.
While attending a clinic of Professor Flechsig on insanity at
the University of Leipsic, the writer heard an address of a theo-
logical student who had become insane. The patient talked about
twenty minutes on the doctrines of the Trinity in a most learned
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 449
way, insisting that a great error had been 'made, for instead of three
there were really four persons in the Trinity. After finishing his
somewhat incomprehensible arguments his last words as he left the
room were: "Gentlemen, I am the fourth person."
WRITINGS ON ECCENTRIC LITERATURE.
As the number of writings on eccentric literature is not large,
a list of the principal ones is given here:
Achard. Dictionnaire des Hommes illustres de la Provence, Marseilles, 1736.
Adelung. Geschichte der menschlichen Narrheit, etc., Leipsic, 1785 (7 vols).
American Journal of Insanity, 1848. Illustrations of insanity furnished by
letters and writings of the insane.
"Cent et Un." Paris, L'advocat, 1832.
Delepierre, Octave. Histoire litteraire des fous, London, 1860, pp. 184.
De Bure. Bibliographic instructive.
Erdan, M. La France mystique, 1858.
Gregoire, B. H. "L'histoire des sectes religieuses," Paris, L' Intermediate
des chercheurs et des curieux.
Melanges de litterature maronique, 1852.
Moreau, C. Bibliographie des Mazarindes.
Nodier. Bulletin du bibliophile.
Oettinger, E. M., Bedlam litteraire, 1809.
Philomneste Junior. Les fous litteraires, Brussels, 1880, pp. 227.
Polain, Louis A. Catalogue. Liege, 1842.
Querard. Supercherries litteraires devoilees.
ARTHUR MACDONALD.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
THE LOGIC OF LUNACY.
The nature of reason is consistency and we are convinced that
all attempts to construct a logic which would stand in contradiction
to the old-fashioned so-called Aristotelian logic must necessarily end
in failure.
Aristotelian logic can be expanded. A logic of probability may
be developed and the rules of inductive logic can be more and more
perfected and added to the old trite deductive system of syllogisms.
The laws of actual thought have been investigated, a grammar of
science has been written, an algebra of logic has been worked out,
a logic of relatives has been conceived, a system of logical graphs
has been invented, and the names of such men as Leibnitz and
Lambert, George Boole, Karl Pierson, Ernst Schroeder, Louis Cou-
turat and Charles S. Peirce are well known as promoters of this new
45O THE MONIST.
branch of scientific thought. But so far all their work is an elabora-
tion of the old logic, and no non-Aristotelian logic has yet become
recognized.
Nevertheless there is a possibility of tracing the operations of
a logic that would not be consistent, a logic that would not recog-
nize the principle of identity, that would reject continuity or ignore
the principle of the conservation of matter and energy, a logic of
fairyland. This kind of logic contradicts reality and is not consistent
with experience except on the conditions of fallacious observation.
But fallacious observation and immature judgment are by no means
impossible. On the contrary they belong to the most frequent oc-
currences in the domain of mental activity, and if we recognize
provisionally the assumption of fallacious reasoning, we can very
well build up systems of thought which would fall into the category
of curved logic.
A large field for logic that follows its own line and is char-
acterized by an erratic freedom is found in dreamland. The logic
of dreams has been subject to frequent inquiry and many good ob-
servations have been made in this special line which is typical for
kindred conditions in a waking state. It occurs quite frequently
in the psychology of children, in moments of excitement, and gen-
erally in hysterical persons.
Consistency is indispensable for any kind of logic and even an
inconsistent logic ought to have some rule in its inconsistency. In
other words, its inconsistency should be relative and ought to be
governed by a principle. To put it bluntly, the inconsistency should
be carried out with consistency.
The most extreme form of an inconsistent logic would be the
logic of the insane, who, though illogical in the common acceptance
of the word, follow in their arguments definite rules, and if we
possess the clue to their aberrations, we can foretell the conclusion at
which they arrive and also their actions. It stands to reason that
in almost every single case there will be method in their madness.
When we bear in mind the consistency with which the insane
argue, we feel justified in coining the term "logic of lunacy" and
would say that in the sense of the present explanations this term
has a deep meaning. A study of the logic of lunacy would form an
important branch of psychology as well as abstract logic. It would
not be correct logic, but it would be a logic that actually exists and
is obeyed according to rules of its own.
There are certain rules in grammar according to which devia-
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 45 1
tions from correct speaking are made by unschooled persons, and
the most important source of these errors is false analogy. Lunatic
logic similarly obeys the rules of its own false analogy. Alienists
know very well that insane people frequently argue as sharply and
consistently as sane people but their arguments have a twist. In
addition to false analogy they suffer from false generalization and
other errors. Similarly a wrong logic dominates the mind of primi-
tive man, whose explanations of nature may appear extremely com-
ical to us and certainly are erroneous, but the savage takes them
seriously. From his standpoint, with his limited knowledge, with
his lack of discrimination and his wrong application of logical prin-
ciples, he must fall into exactly those errors, for instance animism
and the idea that the planets, because they move, are living and
thinking beings. We may call such modes of thinking the logic of
primitive man.
A peculiar kind of reasoning underlies the several systems of
magic and the main principle is a belief in the efficiency of the
symbol. The Indians symbolize rain in a rain dance and are confi-
dent that rain will come. A witch burns a wax figure representing
the person whom she desires to kill, and she believes that a burn-
ing fever will destroy his health.
It will pay the historian to ransack the records of almost all the
sciences in their prescientific state for indications of a twisted logic.
The very symbols of alchemy are based upon the idea that there are
kindred tendencies in different things which for some reason or
other have received the same name or have been connected with the
same patron divinity whether in the shape of a patron god or a
Christian saint. Thus the god Mercury, the metal mercury, the
planet, and all that is connected with the name Mercury in any shape
are considered akin and in order to produce a desired effect one
can be replaced by another. The symbol of Mercury, two serpents
twined about a rod, stands for all of them and is as efficient as the
objects which it represents.
Prescientific medicine is based on the same principle. A lion's
heart produces courage, a hare's leg makes rapid runners, etc. Some
of the strongest drugs can be traced back to a primitive conception
of the efficacy of certain objects. The logic of astrology belongs
to the same class and belief in it has not yet died out, as can be
seen by the number of astrological books published and sold at the
present time. All fortune telling by cards and otherwise is based
on this twisted logic which symbolizes certain events and personal-
452 THE MONIST.
ities in the different cards and tries to reproduce an analogous out-
line of the life of the person who consults the fortune-teller.
How deeply these notions of a twisted logic are rooted in the
human mind appears from the fact that a man of such high standing
as Schopenhauer was affected by it and seriously believed that the
will in its metaphysical quality as will-in-itself can work miracles
after the fashion of the ancient magic. The will-in-itself is above
time and space and so can break through its limitations. The will
can effect others at a distance and a somnabulist can have visions
of events distant in time and space. He endorses Bacon's propo-
sition that "magic is practical metaphysics" (Par. u. Par., I, 320
and 283). Indeed Schopenhauer insists that magic effects can be
produced with the assistance of symbolic representations, declar-
ing that though physically impossible they can only be explained
by metaphysics ; that magic has a causality of its own which makes
actio in distans possible. According to Schopenhauer magic refutes
materialism and even naturalism; it throws light on the efficiency
of magnetism and would prove that there was a truth in the medieval
belief in witchcraft.
One curious form of twisted logic is the identification of thought
and being, of statement and objective reality. Ideas are the stuff
of our intellectual life. We are made of ideas, and sensations are
the actualities of our surroundings. If that is so, we can manu-
facture our own world, and in a sense this is quite true ; but he who
can not heed the difference will live in a world of illusions. The Egyp-
tians painted food for the dead in the tombs and the ghosts were
supposed to feed on these painted viands. This is quite an original
notion and yet it crops out in all other countries among all the
nations of the earth, wherever human minds possess a similar twist
of logic and wherever their notions as to the nature of the soul are
limited.
Why are most of the productions of erratic minds so very
similar? Why are there so many circle squarers who are bent on
solving a problem whose very significance they do not understand?
Why are there so many who agree in general tendencies in their
explanations of the meaning of that mysterious book, The Reve-
lation of St. John the Divine? Why are all expositions of theories
of this kind so very similar? Their authors mean to be very orig-
inal and in a sense they are. They try to strike out into new paths
which lead away from the common trivial truth which the profes-
sional scientist discovers. Yea, the very itching for originality is
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 453
typical and so it happens that even this longing and all its several
expressions can be classified according to general rules.
Psychologists have here to deal with rules of typical mistakes.
The twist in them is that feature which, in its extreme case, is
called lunacy, and if a logician would concentrate his mind on false
analogies and the other typical twists which dominate these wrong
arguments, he would work out what might properly be called the
logic of lunacy.
The logic of lunacy might have a very practical application.
We would be able not only to understand the mind of an insane
person and trace part of his insanity ; we would be able not only to
see how, from his standpoint, his argument must appear sound,
just as in the days of savagery the conclusions of the savage ap-
peared as deep philosophy, but we would also learn how to treat and
even cure those who are afflicted with such twists in their logic.
I will conclude these comments with a short anecdote about
an alienist whose quickness in comprehending the mind of an insane
person saved his life at a critical moment.
In visiting an insane asylum, Dr. R. met at the entrance to the
park surrounding the institution, a gentleman to whom he intro-
duced himself, telling him of his desire to visit the asylum. The
gentleman welcomed him, introduced himself as the director of the
asylum and courteously expressed his willingness to show him
around. Having had some talk on insanity, the self-styled director
of the asylum led the visitor to a high lookout tower from which
the whole institution and grounds could be surveyed. After reach-
ing the top of the tower, this director politely requested his visitor
to jump down, and the latter realized at once that he was in the
presence of a patient who was on the verge of turning into a maniac.
The eyes of the insane man flashed in triumph at having lured his
victim to a place from which he could not escape. It was a perilous
moment. Escape was impossible, a struggle would have meant
death for both, rational argument would be absolutely unavailing.
What was to be done? Being accustomed to deal with similar
kinds of patients, the alienist remained calm and said quietly, "To
jump down from here is nothing extraordinary. I can do something
much more remarkable. I can jump up from below. Come along,
I will show you." The insane man, attracted by this unique idea and
strangely puzzled to know how it could be done, peacefully followed
the stranger down the rickety stairs to a place where both were out
454 THE MONIST.
of danger. The rest need not be told. At the foot of the tower a
warden came along and took charge of "the director."
Human life is full of instances of twisted logic or we might
say curved logic: relics of the logic of primitive man, the logic of
false analogy, of wrong generalization, of misconception of facts,
etc. If we treated these forms of twisted logical theories seriously
we could a priori develop systems which would be consistent with
themselves, but could not be applied to reality. There they would
fail because reality has a definite logic which in its applications
becomes often very complicated, but is quite plain, quite consistent
and let us say straight or even or level in its general principles.
I do not mean to say that these original theories of logic are to be
condemned and rejected ; no, they must be studied and understood.
They have their field in the realm of fairy tales and of Utopian
romances. They must be taken seriously in the domain of religious
mysticism as well as in the symbolic ceremonies of the church. They
constitute a world of their own in which another kind of causation
is effective and where the mind of man is not bound to respect the
character of reality and of natural law, but imposes upon the phan-
toms of his imagination rules laid down by his own sweet will.
P. C.
THE FETISH OF ORIGINALITY.
"Die Wahrheit war schon langst gefunden,
Hat edle Geisterschaft verbunden;
Das alte Wahre, fass es an!" Goethe.
The notion of spontaneity dies hard. It was at high tide when
primitive man read his own abounding vitality into the environment.
It has lost caste in these scientific days, and many of us still cling to
the belief that we are living in a world of interdependent things,
where changes take place not capriciously but according to rule, and
where a settled causal order gives us the power both of retrospect
and prevision. But the pack of knowledge has been again shuffled,
and some are attempting to give us a new deal. So far as the cards
have come out, they present unfamiliar signs and pictures that be-
wilder. We miss, for example, the "things which abide" on which
so many of nature's vicissitudes used to be founded; we confront
self-originating actions which have no support in objects; indeed,
the whole universe, as they tell us, is made up of just such actions
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 455
minus things.1 Substance reappears as an impulse to create, and
it is through this exigence de la creation that chaos passes into cos-
mos and matter arises. Then the torch of spontaneity is handed on
to organisms, making it possible to explain as well as illuminate the
mysterious realm of life by what is called I' elan de la vie, or le grand
souffle de la vie. In both inorganic and organic new events constantly
start into being; there is an irresistible rush upward and onward of
the actions which act ; anything old may happen anyhow, something
new may suddenly come up anywhen from anywhere. Nature, in
a word, is "original." Her supposed link with the past is a scientific
superstition soon to be outgrown, and her supposed amenableness
to prediction must henceforth rank as crass intellectualism. She is
free beyond the wildest dreams of caprice ; her wilful products pour
forth unceasingly ; and it is not her recurrences, her repetitions, her
imitations, but her endless "novelties" to which our gaze is directed.
This belief in the spontaneity of nature is of a piece with the
idea of self-sufficiency in men. The notion of human originality
has survived the exaggerated individualism of the nineteenth cen-
tury into our own day. The cult of "self-reliance" is still a factor
in so-called character-building. We continue to be warned, in var-
ious voices and from various quarters, against slavish subservience
to inherited modes of action and conventional ways of thought.
There is a widespread distrust of "ruts," and a more or less out-
spoken prejudice against "beaten tracks." The age rings with the
praise of originality : It is not the plodding worker, but the man of
new ideas who is most in evidence. In art, literature, science, poli-
tics, the palm is everywhere awarded to the original mind. There
is optimism in this tendency, and its effect in stimulating effort is
undoubted. The injunction "Be yourself — do not imitate!" has fre-
quently brought out native powers that might else have slumbered.
Even the delire des grandeurs must have had its influence upon
progress. But how far can the cult of originality make good its
claim? To what extent is the individual really self-sourced and
spontaneous in his activities? When and where does he cease to
be dependent?
Unless all signs are at fault, man himself is an imitation. Not
only, by virtue of being an organism, is he separated toto coelo from
all the forms of non-organic existence ; in fundamental characters
he at once inherits from and resembles all the living creatures that
'Henri Bergson, L'tvolution crtatrice. "II n'y a pas de choses, il n'y a
que des actions" (p. 270).
456 THE MONIST.
have preceded him. The worm that crawls and the biped who looks
up to the heavens carry on the same physiological processes, how-
ever these may differ in complexity and incidence; even the non-
locomotive plant shares with the higher order of animal the activ-
ities which are needed for self-maintenance. The doings of human
beings are similarly linked by the bond of likeness. If man is an
expanded model of the lower organic life, he is also an imitation of
the individuals who belong to his own society. The activities of
daily life, vary as they may from place to place and from occupation
to occupation, are connected by deep and subtle resemblances These
begin for animal life in periods of rest and wakefulness, of play and
food-hunting, of pairing and rearing, estivation and hibernation.
For developing man there are the night fire in cave or camp, the
division of the bright hours into spaces for work and meals, the
daily glow and gloom of the hearthstone, the morning ablution and
the evening prayer, the recurring periods of worship and sacrifice,
just as for civilized society the week has its theater-going or church
attendance, the year its politics and voting, its stock-taking and rent-
paying, its fasting and its vacations. Somewhere and somewhen
people are always doing the same things, always carrying on activ-
ities which, on the ground of common elements, can be grouped
into great classes. The functions performed may differ, the actions
involved may vary, but under analysis the resemblances only grow
more profound, and the unlikenesses more superficial, for both are
determined by the structural unity of life itself.
Not only is man an imitation of earlier organisms and of other
men, he is an imitator of himself. His most spontaneous actions
show the recurrence, in however modified a form, of his activities
in the past. Habit is heredity writ large; and the growing ease
of a direction once taken, enlisting the whole power of the organism
in its favor, ensures those repetitions which Kierkergaard has called
"the satisfying bread of daily existence." Meanwhile man is being
constantly assimilated to his surroundings and his society. As mol-
ecules must resemble each other to form any particular substance,
so human individuals must be fundamentally alike in ways of acting
and thinking if they are to cooperate. The lower animals are born
in an advanced state of fitness for life ; men need to be "licked into
shape." The process of qualifying them for human society begins
with home education, through which speech and customs are passed
on by the old to the new generation. The schools simply enlarge this
process with a formal training directed, not to the encouragement
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 457
of originality, but to the moulding of the individual, in knowledge,
conduct and ideals, into likeness with the race. The all-potent assim-
ilating forces of every-day life then come into operation. The indi-
vidual who would be himself yields submission to his social environ-
ment in thousands of ways. He acquires habits that are suggested
to him ; he accommodates himself to customs ; swayed by institu-
tions, he is constantly under the domination of laws. If his modes
of life are imposed from without, so are his speech, his ideas, and
the general trend of his thought. The current words, the street
and newspaper slang of a locality, are put into his mouth. As his
behavior is dictated by the "good form" of a particular society, so
he is influenced to wear clothes generally like those worn by every-
body else. Consciously or unconsciously to himself, his home life
is also thus regulated. It is the "proper" furniture, carpets and
pictures with which he provides his house. He does not spontan-
eously choose an Aphrodite of Milo or a statue of Nike for orna-
ments; these are selected for him, little as he is aware of the fact.
His very personality belongs, in part at least, to others. It is subject,
as the psychologists show, to more or less permanent modification
by every other personality with which he happens to have inter-
course. A thinks he is always A, yet when he comes into contact
with B he becomes C; when D visits him he mysteriously changes
into E, and so on all through the alphabet. All the time, if a self-
conscious individualist, he is struggling to be "original" ; yet all the
time, in spite of, or unknown to himself, he is imitating. Even his
mental furnishings are largely dictated by others. A work in the
hands of a friend, gossip about the latest novel and its phenomenal
success, some printed notice of the week's "best seller," perhaps
merely the glittering cover in a bookseller's store — these are among
the influences which now and then bind even the sturdiest indi-
vidualist captive to his milieu. As for opinions, he would fain be
"original" in them, but the ease of thinking as others think is so
alluring, the difficulty of differing from them so disagreeable, that
his best laid plans for independent judgments "gang aft agley."
The wisest of his conclusions in the most lucid of his intervals are
meanwhile buttressed in the judgments of the race.
The larger angles of human life are also being worn down.
If the nation is an imitation of previous stages of national existence,
repeating, with whatever variations and modifications, the ideas, cus-
toms, institutions of those stages, so is the nation more and more
an imitation of other nations. In the earlier days of the race, seas,
458 THE MONIST.
mountains, rivers, were effective barriers to intercourse, and the
separated peoples grew up in an individualism of life and thought,
of costume as well as custom, which still lingers here and there in
Europe and the Orient. But the science which binds continents
together with railways, which pierces mountains and navigates the
most distant oceans, bids fair to diminish national "originality" al-
most to the point of disappearance. Nor is the movement less in
evidence where the changes wrought take the direction of progress.
Cities catch from each other the methods that make for social and
political advance ; industrial improvements pass from country to
country ; new ideas of government, especially of democracy in gov-
ernment, are rapidly becoming the common property and heritage
of all the peoples. Yet through it all, whether we call it "standard-
izing," holding-down, or levelling-up, the process is one which in-
sists on the assimilation of each group to the general life of all the
groups. The nation may plume itself on its "originality" — may de-
termine to be itself and only itself. It must yield, and is constantly
yielding, to the influences that reach it from without. For it is not
in the superficial differences that linger, nor yet in the progressive
variations sure to arise, but in the fundamental likenesses which co-
operation at once requires and helps to produce, that the hope of a
world democracy is bound up.
But there is surely scope for originality in the free life of the
spirit, in the products of the mind. Admitted that language itself
was a joint creation, the great ideas of the race must have flashed
up suddenly in the brain of some supremely endowed individual.
How suddenly? The existence and unity of Deity were proclaimed
more than 3000 years ago by the Hindu Vedas ; at least as ancient
is the pantheism which teaches the oneness of God and the world.
The conception of an ether system from which all matter arises and
to which it returns may be found, in however rude a form, in the
apeiron of Anaximander. The modern scientific teleology which
with Naegeli and Haeckel endows the atoms with elementary feeling,
had its anticipation in the hylozoism of the Greeks. Newton's law
of the equality of action and reaction was implied in the strife which
Heraclitus read into the very constitution of things. The principle
of the conservation of energy, "discovered" or experimentally dem-
onstrated by Mayer, Helmholtz, Colding and Joule, may be found in
Descartes, Kant, Huygens, and Leibnitz ; the earliest suggestions
of it date back to Aristotle, who spoke of the maintenance of the
whole amid change of the parts, and to Telesius, who traced the
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 459
unchanging "mass" of matter to a power of conservation. The
atomic theory, which is still the fundamental creed of modern chem-
istry, was proclaimed by Leucippus and Democritus, who also clearly
formulated the causal law which excludes chance from the natural
order. The latest and "newest" theory in physics is the electron
theory of matter, yet Lord Kelvin in his essay "Aepinus Atomized"
traced its main features to Franz Hoch who wrote in 1759. Nor is
the doctrine of evolution new in either its general or its special
aspects. Not only did ancient thought contain the notion of the
origin of life from the inanimate, it adumbrated, however imper-
fectly, the idea of the progression of life forms through natural
selection. Democritus taught that living beings arose from slime,
Anaxagoras that organisms came from the damp earth under the
influence of warmth. Both Heraclitus and Empedocles announced
the germ of Darwinism in their assertion that forms unsuited to the
conditions perished, while forms suited to them were maintained.
Perhaps we find more originality in the sciences. Strictly de-
limited from each other by name and "special" to an extent not
altogether good for them, they touch and interpenetrate each other
at a thousand points. Proud in their isolated preoccupations, they
are borrowers a haute volee. Each transmits by a sort of osmosis
to the sciences most nearly related to it, and all benefit more or less
from the contributions of each. The astronomer must be some-
thing of a mathematician and geometer, of a physicist and chemist ;
the physicist must know something of the inorganic sciences. What
would the biologist do without chemistry, the paleontologist without
geology, the sociologist without biology, anthropology and linguis-
tics? Is it because science is modern that the sciences are inter-
dependent? Mathematics and geometry come up to us from the
dim beginnings of civilization, and despite up-to-date theories of
hyperspace, Euclid is still a name to conjure with. We have spectro-
scopic analysis and heaven-piercing mirrors, yet astronomy was prac-
ticed in the ancient worlds of Chaldea, Babylonia, Assyria, and
Egypt, and our star maps are still scattered over with Arabic and
Latin names. The Chaldeans knew of the phases of Venus over
4000 years before Galilei saw them through his glass ; the rotundity
of the earth was reasoned out by the Greeks centuries before Magel-
lan's ship circumnavigated the globe. We discuss the ether and
its properties, call new compounds to the aid of our industries,
watch the process of cell division through our microscopes, and
gather endless materials for the sciences of mind and society; yet
460 THE MONIST.
there have been physicists, chemists, biologists, psychologists, by
whatever names they called themselves, since nature-study began.
The sciences as "applied" ought to yield us the required evidence
of spontaneity. Even here the bond with past achievement is un-
mistakable. Telescope, steam engine, telegraph — all the great "in-
novations" that impress us in the history of scientific progress —
become intelligible only in the light of their historic background.
The telescope no more came full-fledged from the brain of an in-
ventor than did the spectacle-glass, and both had centuries of ex-
periment in optics behind them. The magnifying lense focussed
the solar ray amid Assyrian darkness, and the sun-dial which tells
the bright hours in our summer gardens pointed its shadowy finger
to "the time" at least half a century before Christ. The steam-
engine was anticipated in the aeoliple of Heron ; navigation had the
magnetic needle in second-century Cathay ; telegraph, telephone and
dynamo were implicit in Gilbert and lay in the experiment of Oersted
like the statue in the block of marble. The thonged pebble preceded
the Nasmyth hammer, as the clepsydra with toothed wheel preceded
the clock, and as the rude brick printing of Babylonia preceded the
movable types of Forster and Gutenberg. We may call the digging
stick of the Australian savage the ancestor of the steam plough ; the
stone sickle, the roasting tray, and later the tribulum, as Mason
reminds us, were the progenitors of the steam harvester. The
mechanically driven street carriage gave a good account of itself
in pagan times, and one of the labors of Rameses II — to say nothing
of Xerxes — anticipated by more than 3000 years the modern canal-
piercing operations at Suez and Panama. The Greeks had sails
when the Pleiades were named; the seas are still white with can-
vass.
Will not the wonder-world of machinery give us some glimpse
of the innovator depending wholly upon himself? Modern ma-
chines are vastly more complex than those known to the ancients,
yet they are all products of cooperative effort resting on past achieve-
ment, and there is some justification for the claim that they embody
a series of improvements rather than a succession of absolutely new
creations. "Examine at random," says W. H. Smyth, "any one of
half a dozen lines of mechanical invention. One characteristic com-
mon to them all will instantly arrest attention. They present noth-
ing more than a mere outgrowth of the manual processes and
machines of earlier times. Some operation, once performed by hand
tools, is expedited by a device which enables the foot as well as the
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 461
hand to be employed. Then power is applied; the hand or foot
operation, or both, are made automatic, and possibly, as a still further
improvement, several of these automatic devices are combined into
one. All the while the fundamental basis is the old, original hand
process; hence — except in the extremely improbable event that this
was the best method — all the successive improvements are simply
in the direction, not of real novelty, but of mere modification and
multiplication."
Not only must the new machine, however "original," be founded
on experience of all past machines; its "innovation" must take the
course traced out for it, on the one hand by the properties of matter
and the nature of energy, on the other by the underlying structural
unity of all life. It is this unity, and not anything like voluntary
choice, which makes man an unconscious imitator of mechanical con-
trivances first developed by organisms much lower in the scale of
existence than himself. Hydrostatic principles are followed in the
flow of blood through the arteries and veins ; mechanical principles
find illustration in the interplay of muscles, sinews and bones; the
lever is a large factor in the movements of animals, and there is
a ball-bearing at every joint. The awl and the saw were brought
to perfection by the boring insect, the beginnings of navigation are
to be found in the floating pupa skin of the gnat and the sail of the
nautilus. Uncounted ages before the African laid his earth traps,
the dark continent was honeycombed with the pitfalls of the ant-lion.
The climbing hooks of the tiger-beetle antedated grappling irons,
as the scale armor of the armadillo preceded the soldier's cuirass.
Poison was used by plant and animal long before the savage tipped
his arrows with it; the gymnotus and his congeners invented the
electric battery. The lowly fire-fly still outdoes man's highest powers
of contrivance with a method of producing light without heat.
If the appeal be made to the fine arts, what does architecture
say? Here there is indeed variation from age to age, yet through
all mutations due to fashion or taste the laws of stability and pro-
portion persist. Our decorative public buildings continue to remind
us of Greece and Rome or of the Middle Ages. What is our "high-
style" architecture other than Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Romanesque,
Gothic, Italian, or of endless minglings and modifications of these?
No wonder that Fergusson distinguished between "the true and the
copying or imitative styles" when he wrote: "It is not perhaps too
much to say that no perfectly truthful architectural building has
been erected in Europe since the Reformation. . . .In modern designs
462 THE MONIST.
there is always an effort to reproduce the style of some foreign
country or that of some bygone age — frequently both." Nor is the
critic of to-day any the less emphatic. "Since the close of the 18th
century," says Arthur L. Frothingham, "there has been no true
style anywhere, but simply a series of fashions chasing each other
across the background of equally mutable social conditions." "It
has been a trouble to many," writes Russell Sturgis, "that in our
recent American architecture a whole building, or a large and showy
member of a building, should have been so closely copied from some
fine old structure in Europe that it is easy of recognition. But those
who are greatly exercised about this should not need to be told
that such close copying has long been the rule in details. For what
purpose are used those large photographs of small details of which
every architect has as many as he can afford ? . . . . One need hardly
fear contradiction in saying that in the majority of cases they are
simply used for copying."
Sculpture and painting, essentially imitative arts, have models
common to all. If it be said that the originality in this field con-
sists in an unexcelled closeness of imitation, we may fairly ask to
have the superiority indicated to us. The modern artist has un-
doubtedly outdone his predecessor in giving us "real" views of nat-
ural objects. But how modern is the realism? Man of the flint-
chipping age carved figures on bone with a fidelity to life which
anthropologists never tire of admiring. "Nearly every great group
of animals," says A. C. Haddon, "is represented in native art, and
often so faithfully that it is possible for the naturalist to give the
animals their scientific names." Is it. then, in the ideal, the sub-
jective element that we are to find spontaneity? Why have we not
surpassed Phidias, Michel Angelo and Canova in sculpture, Raphael
and Leonardo da Vinci in painting? Nor is decorative art in any
better case. A vast number of our modern patterns in ornamentation
are to be found in the art of primitive peoples. The inventors of
"new designs" in our art schools and elsewhere make a liberal use
of the same natural objects which have served their clan in all the
ages.
In music the notion of merely imitative effects seems over-
whelmed by the thought of enormous resources of combination.
Yet the recombining depends for its newness, so-called, only upon
the total structure of the composition, since all compositions consist
of series of notes which have been repeated and re-repeated since
drums were first sounded and stringed instruments came into ex-
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 463
istence. Within the general repetitions, moreover, there are special
resemblances which connect the great compositions with the link,
not only of heredity, but also of family likeness. The historians of
the art are not content merely to ask what Richard Strauss, Brahms,
Wagner, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, even Beethoven would
be without Bach. They rearrange the imitations and redistribute the
indebtedness. Mozart and Philipp Emanuel Bach are brought in
to explain Haydn. Chopin's harmonic system is re-discovered in
Wagner. Handel, as well as Bach, reappear in Elijah, the Saint
Paul, and the Reformation Symphony of Felix Mendelssohn-Bar-
tholdy. If Beethoven "seems to have included in his mighty sym-
phonies all that had been," the same critic assures us that "in his
ninth symphony and last piano sonatas may be found the seeds that
sprouted into the luxuriant forests of the Wagner music, and gave
birth to the dream-haunted imaginings of Chopin, Schumann and
Berlioz." Everywhere we hear the "dominant note" gathering the
past to its timbre, but only to sound down again through the ages.
"Originality" and indebtedness in music refuse to be disassociated.
Note the dedication of a recent book on Grieg and His Music to
"Edward MacDowell, America's most original composer, who was
more influenced by Edvard Grieg than by any other master!"
The chosen home of spontaneity, then, must be literature, since
here we recognize the actual workings of the individual mind. The
fundamental likenesses of nature and man predestined the family
resemblances of belles lettres the world over from the beginnings.
The Mahabharata tells us all that we need to know of their antiquity.
The ancients — India, Greece, Persia, Arabia — have given us not
only inspiration, but also style and material. Philostratus, the Athen-
ian, supplied B. C. 170 the original for Ben Jonson's "Song to
Celia" ; the Book of Job and the old Hindu theater gave Goethe the
idea for the Faust prologue. That the Iliad and the Odyssey are
the chief sources of all later story writing has become a literary
commonplace. It was this universal indebtedness to Homer which
led Voltaire to write, "If this father of poetry could recover from
his descendants all they have borrowed from him, what would re-
main of the ^neid, of the Jerusalem Delivered, of Roland, of the
Lusiade, of the Henriade, and of all the things of this kind one dare
name?" Virgil imitated Theocritus, says M. Benoist, "not only in
the choice of subjects, but also in the details of his style and of his
personification ; he borrows verses sometimes entirely, being con-
tent only to translate." And Eichoff adds the accusation that the
464 THE MONIST.
great Latin poet copied from his compatriots Ennius, Attius, Catul-
lus, and Nevius.
The moderns begin, but do not end, with the imitation of an-
tiquity. Chenier, says B. de Fougiere, "has not a scene which he
has not borrowed from the ancients," and it is the opinion of Alfred
de Musset that "Greek tragedy, that majestic and sublime ocean,
gave birth to both Racine and Alfieri." The "Wasps" of Aristoph-
anes reappear in Racine's "Les Plaideurs," as the fables of JEsop
and Phedrus reappear in Gellert, La Fontaine, Kryloff, and Afanas-
sieff. Boccaccio gave rise to a host of imitations, among them the
Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, and sixteenth century English poets
did not disdain to polish their compositions under the light shed by
Dante, Ariosto and Petrarch. Spanish romances were the founda-
tion of Spenser's Faerie Queen, and Spenser himself had an imitator
in Phineas Fletcher. Milton looked for sources and suggestions to
Homer, Virgil, Tasso, the plays of Pindar, and the Old and New
Testament. Renz de Gourman calls Fenelon's "Telemaque," itself
a borrowed style, "the most imitated work, phrase for phrase, in
all literature." As Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors" had its source
in Plautus, so Corneille's "Cid" has been traced to a Spanish drama
by Guillen de Castro. "Dryden's second best play," says Saintsbury,
"is built with an audacity to which only great genius or great folly
could lead, on the lines of Shakespeare. His longest and most am-
bitious poem follows with surprising faithfulness the lines of Chau-
cer. His most effective piece of tragic description is a versified
paraphrase — the most magnificent paraphrase perhaps ever written
— of the prose of Boccaccio." "The imitation of Pope," according
to Edmund Gosse, "grew to be a rage from Sweden to Italy," yet
the brilliant Pope was himself an imitator. His "January and May"
is a modernized version of Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale" ; his "Dun-
ciad" was modelled upon the "MacFlecknoe" of Dryden. If Pope
sat at the feet of Horace, Sterne borrowed from Rabelais, Mon-
taigne, and half a dozen others. Defoe studied Bunyan assiduously,
"hence the excellence of Robinson Crusoe." In the writings of
Charles Lamb look for Sir Thomas Browne, Fuller, Earle and Over-
bury, Burton and Isaak Walton. And so the story goes on.
How far a great writer who compels others to copy him may
himself be a borrower is conspicuously seen in the case of Goethe.
"The air which Goethe breathed," says Hermann Grimm, "was
filled with Rousseau's spirit ; and we have only to compare Werther
and Lotte with St. Preux and Julie to be convinced that without
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 465
the latter the former would never have been created. The heroes
of the "Nouvelle Heloise" and of Goethe's romance, if their silhou-
ettes could be placed side by side, would be found to coincide line
for line. If St. Preux and Werther had met in life they would
have regarded each other with the terror with which one meets his
double What Goethe added from his own character and Jerusa-
lem's personality appear only like the accident of custom and situa-
tion .... It seemed to Goethe as if a special providence had thrown
Rousseau's romance into his hands, and he felt compelled to adhere
to his model. But not alone for the conception of the characters in
Werther is Goethe indebted to Rousseau. He is in fact in quite as
great a measure dependent upon him for the color."
The fervid and far-famed Chateaubriand took Bernardin de
St. Pierre for his model, yet "you will not find a single page in all
our writers," says Sainte-Beuve, "which has not had its germ in
Chateaubriand" ; and it is to Chateaubriand that Lanson traces Vic-
tor Hugo, "alike in his picturesque descriptions, his epic visions,
and the use he makes of historic erudition." Jeffrey called Lord
Byron "a mere mimic of styles and manners, and a great borrower
of external character," adding, "He and Scott, accordingly, are full
of imitations of all the writers from whom they ever derived grati-
fication, and the two most original writers of the age who would thus
appear to superficial observers to be the most deeply indebted to their
predecessors." Yet the wave of Byronic influence not only over-
whelmed Pushkin and Lermontoff in Russia, Mickiewicz, Gagarinski
and Krasinski in Poland — it moved Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset
and Dudevant in France, and reached Heine in Germany. It was
Mickiewicz who once said that Byron was the secret link which
bound the whole literature of the Slavs to the West. And if we were
to pursue still further this interesting study, we should read of
Coleridge lighting his fire from the candle of William Lisle Bowles,
of De Quincey "preferring the ornate manner of Jeremy Taylor,
Sir Thomas Browne, and their contemporaries," of Shelley embody-
ing in his "Alastor" and the lyrics echoes from Wordsworth and
Moore, and of "suggestions which it is difficult to believe that Thack-
eray did not in the first instance owe to Dickens." "Who," asks
A. W. Ward, "would venture to call Capt. Costigan a plagiarism
from Mr. Snevellici, or to affect that Wenham and Wagg were
copied from Pyke and Pluck, or that Major Pendennis was founded
upon Major Bagstock, or the Old Campaigner in the Newcomes on
the Old Soldier in Copperfield ? But that suggestions were in these,
466 THE MONIST.
and perhaps a few other instances, derived from Dickens by Thack-
eray it would, I think, be idle to deny."
In numerous cases there is affirmation, rather than denial, by the
authors themselves. "I copied my personages," says Racine, "from
the greatest painter of antiquity — I mean Tacitus; and I was then
so full of my reading of this excellent historian that there is scarcely
a brilliant touch in my tragedies of which he did not give me the
idea." Dr. Johnson told Boswell that his style was founded on Sir
William Temple. Southey, writing of his own work, says, "I see
in 'The Doctor' a little of Rabelais, but not much; more of Tris-
tram Shandy,' somewhat of Burton, perhaps more of Montaigne."
"I am neither actor nor poet," Lessing tells us, "but I should be so
poor, so short-sighted, if I had not learned in some degree to bor-
row others' wealth, to warm myself at others' fire, and to strengthen
my eyes with the lenses of art." Goethe said to Eckermann one day,
"We bring capacities with us, but we owe our development to a
thousand influences from the great world out of which we appro-
priate what we can and what is suited to us. I owe much to the
Greeks and the French; my debt to Shakespeare, Sterne and Gold-
smith is infinite." John Stuart Mill admits that he rendered his
style "at times lively and almost light" by the study of writers "who
combined, in a remarkable degree, ease with force," among them
Goldsmith and Fielding, Pascal and Voltaire. "Whenever I read
a book or a composition that particularly pleased me," says Robert
Louis Stevenson, "I must sit down at once and set myself to imi-
tating that quality of propriety or conspicuous force, or happy dis-
tinction in style. I was unsuccessful at the commencement of it,
but I got some practice in these vain bouts in rhythm, in harmony,
in construction, and in coordination of parts. I have thus played
the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Browne and
Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Baudelaire and to Obermann."
From such salient examples and opinions — the examples offered
to suggest an unexhausted wealth of illustrative material, the opin-
ions cited from experts writing with no special view of imitation in
mind — it should be evident that spontaneity of product forms but
a limited factor in individual achievement. In presence of them
the whole edifice of so-called originality crumbles before our eyes
as we examine it, but it crumbles only to be built up again on a more
reasonable and enduring basis. A foundation of imitation, of repe-
tition, of submission to habit and subjection to convention is re-
quired at the outset. The mass of social units must repeat their
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 467
community with a close approximation to faithfulness. It is out of
the general level thus secured that progressive variations take their
rise, and it is among these variations that the claim for at least a
relative spontaneity of individual achievement finds its greatest
strength. Yet even here, in the common acceptance of the term,
originality is not a true, but a pseudo-idea. The law of conscious-
ness itself misleads us into diminishing race contributions and mag-
nifying individual contributions. Not only do differences — varia-
tions from the customary — impress the average mind much more
profoundly than likenesses, but phenomena in the present are vastly
more easy to realize and appreciate than the long elapsed phenomena
of the past. It was because the reflective grasp of the intellect
matures only slowly that insight into evolutionary processes came
late in the history of the race. The hypothesis of the origin of
natural products by abrupt and sudden creative acts was a realizable
— the only realizable — view of nature in an earlier stage of intel-
lectual development ; with the growth of mental power it became
crude and unsatisfactory. When men progressed to the idea of
metamorphosis by physical change the mind rested for a while in the
notion of catastrophic vicissitudes, periodical upheavals that changed
the face of the world. It took ages to reach the thought of evolu-
tion as the result of very slight changes accumulated through long
intervals of time. So in our estimation of human products, it is
vastly easier to regard them as arising suddenly and spontaneously
as the creation of particular individuals, than to recognize them as
the outcome of contributions made by all individuals.
Nor is it only that appreciation of the dependence of the pres-
ent on the past grows with the progress of the race ; the dependence
itself is an increasing quantity. It was Comte who said that the
longer our species lasts and the more civilized it becomes, the more
does the influence of past generations over the present, and of man-
kind en masse over every individual in it, predominate over other
forces. With the advancing unification of the race the scope for
really "original" achievements by individuals is a diminishing, not an
increasing quantity. And this is true in the realm of action, as well
as in that of thought. The isolations of the tribe, making the sub-
jection of its members all the more easy, gave opportunities for the
development of the "strong man" which are not yielded by modern
society. The captain of industry, the prominent statesman, the suc-
cessful general, conspicuous as their doings may be, achieve results
under an increasing control, and must more than every acknowledge
468 THE MONIST.
the final domination of the masses whom they are supposed to wield.
In the isolation of peoples and races the world had its Ghingis
Khans, its Tamerlanes, its Alexanders, its Fredericks ; the new inter-
national configurations make another Napoleon an impossibility.
The old order in science brought forth individual inquirers who
knew little or nothing of what others were doing, whereas to-day
scientific discoveries, universally diffused, become the common prop-
erty of all, and the investigators of nature are joined together, not
merely by the printing press, but by national and international scien-
tific organizations. The separate compartment method of study so
favorable to individual variations in science has also passed for
literature. In earlier times, when education was costly and rare,
individual writers stood out like giants above the mass of their con-
temporaries. For the one thus conspicuous we now have hundreds in
every large community who can write well and with some degree of
literary power. And if we turn to the nations which have given us
our greatest books in the past, we find them nurturing, not figures
isolated by surpassing gifts, but swarms of able litterateurs who
compel our attention without always dazzling us with their genius.
The danger of our distributed culture is not that it may produce too
many great names, but that such few as give promise of appearing
will find themselves swamped in the dead level of literary medioc-
rity.
We have now seen, not only that the "new things" of human
contriving are all of them based on older things, but that even the
newest of them spring far less from a single personal source than
from the individual "originator" plus the whole of his contempo-
raries and predecessors. Originality is of the race, and not in any
valid sense of the individual. The progressive variation subsumes
and requires the whole hierarchy of such variations in the past. The
ascending step of the innovator is indeed indispensable to advance,
but it can be taken only with the whole stairway of previous human
progress for its substructure. As the most striking individual traits
of the human countenance would be lost in a composite photograph
which included all living men, so the individual achievement dwin-
dles into comparative insignificance when viewed against the back-
ground of all human achievements. The story of man's dependence
upon his kind is really the story of nature writ large. The vibrating
electron, the revolving planet, the rushing star, the gathering nebula
— these would be powerless and motionless without the universe.
The topmost peak that pierces so proudly into the sky requires the
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 469
vast bulk of supporting mountain for its elevation; the wave-front
which wastes a cliff or destroys a breakwater has the whole length
of thundering ocean behind it. The wonderful adaptations of the
individual plant would be impossible without the long travail of the
species to which it belongs. Is it less reasonable to say that the
most brilliant achievement of the human individual receives its im-
pulse and derives its possibility from the total life out of which it
also emerges?
Nor does the power of initiative, of self-reliance, lose anything
by being regarded not as self-sourced, but as system-sourced. It
rather gains immensely from recognition of the mighty reservoir
which may be depended upon and drawn from for individual human
effort. In the new conception of originality which science has
done so much to develop, each man will more than ever look for
his salvation to the larger self which is outside; and it is within
this wider framework of opportunity that the determination to be
"original" will find increased scope for exercise. The individual
contribution is to grow rather than diminish, but it will grow just
because the streams that feed it flow in from the present and up from
the past in ever augmented volume. The progressive variation is to
have a value unheard of before, yet its blessing will be multiplied,
not by any solitary virtue of the individual, but by the accumulated
richness of human powers and the advancing unification of man-
kind. The innovator most likely to be "original" in the future is
not he who, in mistaken independence, lays claim to a lawless
spontaneity of production unrelated to the total yield of human
effort but the man who, most completely realizing and utilizing that
yield, goes forth armed with the whole power of the race.
EDMUND NOBLE.
BOSTON, MASS.
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES.
THE FIRST GRAMMAR OF THE LANGUAGE SPOKEN BY THE BONTOC IGOROT. With
a Vocabulary and Texts, Mythology, Folklore, Historical Episodes,
Songs. By Dr. Carl Wilhelm Seidenadel. Chicago : Open Court Pub.
Co., 1910. Pages i-xxiv; 1-583. 12 full page illustrations; Addenda
Corrigenda: pp. 587-588.
This monumental work is divided into three parts as follows: Part I, pp.
1-270, Grammar; Part II, pp. 275-475, Vocabulary; Part III, pp. 481-583, Texts.
The material was obtained by the author personally from various members of
the Bontoc Igorot groups who were on exhibition in Chicago in 1906-1907.
These people, who come from the interior of N. Luzon, one of the Phillipine
Islands, speak a language whose intricacies and general character it has been
reserved for Dr. Seidenadel to present to the scientific world. To state that
his task has been well done would be far too meagre a modicum of praise for
this painstaking and thorough philological enthusiast who has left no stone
unturned in order to make clear, even to his lay readers, the peculiarities of the
particular Malayo-Polynesian dialect which he has, we may well say, dis-
covered. He has, however, made little or no attempt to connect the Bontoc
Igorot, nor to formulate its relationship, with its sister Austronesian idioms.
It will be sufficient in this recension to note some of the main features of the
Bontoc-Igorot, as presented by Seidenadel and to comment upon them, so far
as the writer of this review feels himself competent to do, from a general
philological point of view.
With regard to the phonetics of the dialect, the consonantal interchanges :
f — b; p — b; k — g; t — d; dj — d, noted, p. 5, are all common to the Malayo-
Polynesian group (see especially the Comparative Table in this review).
The glottal check (p. 9), probably identical in sound with the Arabic
'Ayin, is not indicated by Prof. P. W. Schmidt (Die Mon-Khmer Volker,
Archiv fiir Anthrop., XXXIII, pp. 84-85), but it may be equivalent to the
guttural kh of some of the Austronesian and Indonesian dialects. A further
study of Filipino and kindred idioms might perhaps throw additional light
on this point.
The vowel written by Seidenadel as, a fluctuation between o and «, is clearly
allied to Schmidt's a, a fluctuation between d and o (p. 85). I represent this
in the following table by o.
The elements of the Bontoc-Igorot articles nan, son, si, tja all appear in
other MP. idioms, as in the Malay indefinite sa, Formosan Amia chi, etc.
(see below Table s. "One"). I call especial attention to Seidenadel's chapter
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES.
on the B. I. ligatures (pp. 14-16), which constitute a system of phonetic
copula.
The B. I. substantive, as in all the other MP. idioms, occasionally partially
reduplicates for the plural (p. 17). Furthermore, the B. I., like its sister
Austronesian tongues, forms its substantive by means of prefixes, infixes, re-
duplication of the stem, and suffixes (pp. i8ff.), hereby demonstrating its
Austronesian character, as distinct from the Mon-Khmer tongues, described
by Schmidt (of>. cit.). These last mentioned languages, spoken on the Assam
Peninsula, Schmidt has shown to be a connecting link between the people of
Central Asia and Austronesia. He demonstrates, for example, by exhaustive
comparisons (op. cit., pp. 83 ff.), that the roots are essentially the same on the
continent and islands and that the chief and fundamental difference between
the Austronesian languages and the Indo-Assamese representatives of this
group lies in the fact, that the Austronesian tongues seldom use the simple
stem as a word, but almost always employ prefixes and infixes, while, in the
Indo-Assamese idioms of this family, particularly in the Nikobar and Mon-
Khmer, the stem frequently appears as an independent word. Whether the
pure root-forms are the original, or whether they constitute a degradation of
an older form with additions to the root, it is, as yet, impossible to predicate.
Personally, the writer of the present review is inclined to the opinion that the
more complicated forms are always the original, or at least are older than the
simpler forms, since primitive man probably spoke articulate language, be-
fore he was able mentally to arrange an orderly system of grammatical speech.
There can be no doubt, however, of the connection between the Malayo-
Polynesian group, more especially its Austronesian branch, and the Mon-
Khmer, which Schmidt compares with the Nikobar, Santali, Khasi, Bahnar
and Stieng dialects.
Bontoc-Igorot has a system of possessive suffixes both for nouns (pp. 34 ff)
and verbs (pp. 54 ff), a remnant of which probably original common MP. pecu-
liarity, remains in the simplified Malay : rumah-ku, rumah-mu, rumah-nya, "my,
thy, his (her, its) house," respectively. In fact, the distinction between the noun
(adjective) and the verb in B. I., as in its sister idioms, is not really made,
any more than is the case in other primitive speech-types (cf. my papers on
the Eastern Algonquin languages in the Amer. Anthropologist, and note Seiden-
adel's remarks, pp. 51 ff.). The noun-adjective or verb in B. I. is a vocable
composed of a stem with a prefix, infix or suffix. The B. I. possessive verb
(pp. 67 ff.), which is a participialized verbal root with a possessive suffix, or
addition, is an excellent illustration of this fact. Here should be noted the
existence of an inclusive and exclusive first person plural suffix in B. I.,
peculiar to other MP. tongues, as well as to certain American idioms (as
Algonquin). Of course, in American idioms pronominal incorporation takes
place almost invariably by means of prefixation, infixation and suffixation, all
of which phenomena do not appear in Malayo-Polynesian.
It will be observed that B. I. actually conjugates its verb according to a
complicated system, altering the root materially for the suffix (pp. 74 ff.), as
^/kaeb, "make," but k&pek, "I make." This seems also to be the case in the
Formosan native Austronesian dialects; cf. Paiwan vaik, "I go" (cf. Table, s.
"go").
Dr. Seidenadel's chapters on prefixation (pp. 109-117) and on the modi-
472
THE MONIST.
fying auxiliary (pp. 117-134) are most illuminating. He treats exhaustively
the B. I. complex system of modifying verbs (pp. 134-138) ; negatives (pp.
138-148) ; the equivalents for relative clauses, expressed usually by participial
periphrases, as in other agglutinative languages (pp. 149-158) ; the indirect
question (pp. 177-179) ; the method of expressing "to be" and the copula
(pp. 179-186) ; "to have" (pp. 187-189) ; numerals (pp. 189-195) ; prepositions
(pp. 196-222) ; adverbial expression (pp. 222-232, 233-241) ; conjunctions (pp.
242-257); conditional sentences (pp. 257-266) and interjections (pp. 267 ff).
I cite all these instances, in order to demonstrate how very thoroughly he has
done his work.
In connection with his Vocabulary, Part II, pp. 275-475, he very properly
warns the student on no account to attempt to use his word-list until the pre-
ceding grammatical sections are mastered. It is, however, permissible, I
think, for me to attempt to point out by means of the following Comparative
Table between B. I. and six other MP. languages, the probable position of
Bontoc-Igorot in the Austronesian speech-group. The Formosan material
(Paiwan, Tipun, Amia) I have taken from G. Taylor's list which was originally
intended to supplement his Rambles in Southern Formosa, but which was not
published in that work, but later in the China Re-view, XVII, pp. 109-111.
This Formosan material is probably approximately correct, owing to its evi-
dently cognate character with the Austronesian languages, Malay, Javanese
and the Filipino Tagalog.
B.-I.
TAG.
JAV.
p.
T.
AM.
MAL.
Ant
kuyint
tatek
kakunak
Ashes
tjapol
saging
take
nasok
take
Banana
fdlad
velivel
velivel
pouU
Bird
aydyam
kaiakaiam
kaiam
aiam
(see Fowl)
Black
ngilidZ
niok
kuttingel
koataengai
Blood
djdla
aro
diamok
thzdral
darak
Body
awak
pakpak
aivah
rarik?
Bone
tonga
balong
toelang
tulung
Bow
bandolay
panak
pana
panah
(Ilocano)
Butterfly
akdkobt
dugo
kupu
kupukupu
Cat
kdshab
katouan
kuching
nau
nauw
pushi
kuching
(loanword)
Child
dnak
anak
ilidlak
anak
Cocoanut
Inyug
avinong
(nlyog)
Cold
Idteng
lialdkat
Come
umdliak
tnarein
mari
paaUek
fata
1 Owing to typographical difficulties I have been unable to indicate any Bontoc-Igorot
quantities in the comparative table. P., T. and A.= Paiwan, Tipun and Amia.
"Ant"=£/Zyz>«; the root ku appears in B.-I. and Amia. K&sim, B.-I. has the root s in
B.-I. and P. sasek.
i Tjapo. Note here the variations tj=s (Tag., P., and Am.) with metathetic nasok, in T.
SNgtttd; ng common to P. and Am. with metathetic niok in Tag. A similar metathesis
is seen in B.-I. Akdkob; kob=kup in J. and Mai., but dugo in Tag.
4 Djdla. Note the variations dj=1. tA*=P. di (palatalization) and Mai. d in darah.
t> All foreign words. Note P. and T. nau, «aaw=Chinese mau 'cat'.
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES.
473
B.-I. TAG.
JAV.
p.
T.
AM.
MAL.
Day
dkyut
kado-jj
hari
Deer
6gsa
rusa
rusa
Dog
dsol
asu
vatu
suan
atsu
Door
pdnguan*
la-wan g
Ear
kdweng*
tsalinga
tangera
tangila
telinga
Egg
ft log
undok
katchilo
utinun
vitaul
Eight
wdlo valo
tuola
valu
valu
varo
delapan
Eleven
(y& <"*'•*<"*
sivalas
tapulo ita
tapulo ita
(savou
chitsai
(sapulo
satu
Eye
matd butu
moto
matsa
mata
mata
mata
Father
dma
ama
ama
ina
Fire
apuy
sapoe
apoe
apt
Fish
Ikan
chikao
ikan
Five
lima lima
lima
lima
lima
lima
lima
(see Hand)
Flower
ftnga
toalinginl
bunga
Foot
tjapdn /alO
karopupan
saripat
Four
ipdt apat
papat
sipat
sipat
sipat
ampat
Fowl
ay d yam
kaiakaiam
kaiam
aiam
(see Bird)
mdnok momok
(chicken)
Go
umuyak
vaik
Good
kawisll
ngdai
Hand
I it* all
lima
lima
(see Five)
Hard
ink'otso malakas
kras
kutseol
krass
Head
6lo\$ ulo
kuro
kapala
tinged
(back of
tang-urulS
the head)
Hog
t&tug
vavui
vavui
vavui
babui
Honey
(see Water) ftjfnotm
— 'water of \si yukan
the bee'.
Hundred
sin lashdt
Husband
(asd owa
ay laldki
(assoua
lailaikai
assoua
Large
tsaktsdki
gedeU
Leaf
t6/oU
dahun
Little
akit
chili
Louse
kitoU
kutu
kutu
tsaenan
(water?)
katsa
kidi
kutso
makiting
kuto
timoeout
takai
kutu
daun
kitchil
kutu
* Akyu seems metathetically connected with P. kadow. The Mai. hari is, HO doubt, the
same root: h=k and d—r(V),
I The element su'tu) appears to mean 'dog' ; cf. also Mai. andj-ing clearly the same
stem, by metathesis andj=*dja=*su(tu),
8 Common stem ang.
9 Common stem ng.
10 There is no connection between these /a-stems and the Hind, pa'on 'foot'.
II Stem ka=nga.
11 Three out of the seven languages here compared regard the hand as a bunch of
five (fingers).
15 Olo, ulo=k-ura, kap-ala. B.-I. t(nged=tan in T. tanguru.
M Note J. ged-t P. /•-/ ^metathetically B.-I. ts-k. Am. t-k.
1* B.-I. tdfo—}. dahun: i. e., t=d and B.-I. f=h (dahun), seen also between Hawaian
wahini and Samoan :/<»//»» 'woman'. In Mai. daun, the aspirate has disappeared.
16 Koto: stem to (*'); cf. Santali: se 'louse' and Mon- Khmer: chai: Bantar: si, Khasi: ksi,
the latter with the /t-Anlaut, as in the forms given above; (cf. Prof. P. W. Schmidt, Archiv
fur Anthrop., XXXIII. p. 97).
474
THE MONIST.
B.-I.
TAG.
JAV.
Male laldki
Man laldki
laldki
Mosquito kifmaae
nyamokll
Mother Ina
ina
mboW
Nail (hand i.4-
or foot) *Mo
kuku
Nine slam
siam
sang a
Nose lleng
ilong
idong
Oil Mm
(Cocoanut) l&
longis
lungo
One /.fi/
ita
sa
Pig
(see Hog)
Rain otjan
ulanW
hud am
Rat dtot
River wdnga
Road djdlan
dam
ntalaku
Saliva tobfa
Salt tisin
assin
Seven pitd
pito
pitu
Silver W/a*
pilak
perak
Six initn
anim
nanam
Skin (of
buffalo, /W#i/
etc.)
balat
kulit*
Smoke tjubldek
Sour impakashfi-
asamU
Sun d£y«
(see Day)
Ten pdlo
sampo
pulah
Thirty toldn pd'o
(tallo
\ampo
talupulah
Thousand Hfo
isanlibo
Three tdlo
tallo
talu
Tongue djlla
dila
ilattS
T-ve (#{£
(labing
deloua
rolas
Twenty djudn pd'o
diouaampo
rongpuluh
Two <#Ba
diloua
loro
Water tjinumto
banyu
Woman26 fafdyi
baibai
okadilai
okadilai
kina
ina
liaoliao liaoliao
ita ita
lakilaki
nyamok
ina maI8
kuku
siwa sambilan
idong
liaoliao
chitsaiVi satu\9
kumudjel kumudjel ural
itu
diaran
pita
unum
kalits
tsuvuil
kadow
pita
peso
unum
hasim
kadow
lalan
supatt
china
pito
peso
unum
hudjan
jalan
tujoh
perak
anam
kulit
atsuvuil
atchichetn masam
pulo pulo pulo sapulo
tulupulo tulupulo tulupulo tigapulo
tutu
tulu
tolu
tiga
ItdanVS lid ah
tapulo nusa tapulo nusa \kgtlavou tapulodua
nusapulo nusapulo tusapwlo duapulo
nusa nusa tusa dua
lalium ranu n<inum
vavaien vavaien vavaheian bini
(wife)
The following significant fact then becomes at once apparent.
From the eighty of Seidenadel's Bontoc - Igorot words compared and
17 Metathesis between B.-I.: komaaii and J.: nyamok.
18 Note the variant m in J. and Malay.
19 Amia and Malay have the demonstrative elements resp. chi and sa before the stem
s=t=ts.
20 The changes l=d=dj=r are common in the MP. languages.
21 Paiwan: pana is the same word as B.-I. wdnga. There is no connection with Hind
pani 'water'.
22 Am. supa clearly contains all the elements of B.-I. tobfa.
28 Note the metathesis : tjil=*lit, lits.
H The common stem-elements seem to be sibilant + nasal (m, ng)\ viz., B.-I.: thueng=
sam=sim=ckem.
26 The stem denoting 'water' seems to be « (ly, ny] u (>»).
26 The stem/a appears also in B.-I.: fa/i si ongonga 'womb'. This stem a clearly=
P., T., Am., va; also Tag. and Mai. 6. Note also Hawaian: luahlni: Samoan : faflni 'woman'
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES. 475
discussed herein, it appears that the three Formosan dialects above men-
tioned preponderate in resemblance to B. I. over Tagalog, Javanese and
Malay, there being a hundred and eighteen resemblances to B. I. in Paiwan,
Tipun and Amia, as opposed to eighty-four in Tagalog, Javanese and Malay.
The following small table will illustrate the number of close and fairly close
resemblances to B. I. of the six MP. languages compared in the Comparative
Table:
TAG. JAV. PAIWAN TIPUN AMIA MALAY
18 17 21 22 22 16 Close
10 13 23 14 16 10 Fairly Close
I am not prepared to state what conclusion should be drawn from such a
phenomenon. Formosa was probably populated originally both from the
Chinese side and from the East. It seems possible that the eastern colonists
were of an Austronesian substock not far removed from that of the Igorots.
A subsequent investigation of other Igorot dialects might throw a valuable
light on this subject, and it is to be hoped that Dr. Seidenadel will be able to
prosecute his labors still further in this direction.
Dr. Seidenadel's third part (pp. 481-583) consists of texts, all new and
valuable from the point of view of folk-lore and linguistics. One could wish
that he had also collected the melodies to a few songs, as an illustration of
this remarkable people's musical development.
This work stands forth as a noteworthy contribution to the still involved
science of the Malayo- Polynesian languages, and Seidenadel's labors cannot
be overlooked by any conscientious specialist in this group. What the author's
English style here and there lacks (as, for example, p. 277) is amply com-
pensated for by the thorough erudition he has displayed in handling an ab-
solutely new material, collected most expertly by himself.
JOHN DYNELEY PRINCE, PH. D.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK CITY.
TILL DET ANDLIGA LiFVETS FiLOSOFi. By Allen Vonntrus. Stockholm : A. Bon-
nier.
This work, the latest of a long series of philosophical works by this writer,
contains in its preface a criticism of contemporary Swedish philosophy, which
the author finds lacking in actuality and life, with "no spiritual energy, no
fermenting ideas, no problems under debate, no criticism, nothing actuated by
a strong will, much less anything that is struggling forward with spontaneous
force." There is no encouragement for philosophical research in Sweden.
When not long ago the Rector of the University of Stockholm gave out a
statement of the needs of the institution, he did not even mention philosophy,
though that subject has no representative on the faculty of the university.
"Statistics and other such blessings must come first. This is very natural and
consistent. We live in the age of social utilitarianism. 'Social' has a religious
meaning. Little houses and gardens where one may go out and dig, that is
something holy. (Of course, I do not criticize, I only state facts.) Here we
stand before a revolution in the appraisement of material and spiritual values
to which there are few counterparts in the world's history. But wait. Philo-
sophic muss sein. It is a necessary part of higher spiritual culture." The
author feels the need of a philosophical renaissance in Sweden, of a regen-
476 THE MONIST.
crating genius, "a great systematician, a representative of the type of Hegel,
Comte, Spencer, Wundt."
I have quoted at length from this preface because it brings out, from the
author's particular point of view, a feeling that seems to be growing among all
classes in Sweden, that an awakening is needed, a stirring up of the national
life of the people, a quickening of the social conscience, a feeling that the
whole nation is in need of a regenerator, a genius, "coming like a flash" to
point the way, upward and inward.
Vannerus's new book is one of a series of works in which he has given
a presentation of his philosophical system. The other volumes are : Filosofiska
konturer, published in 1902 ; Vetenskapssystematik, 1907 ; Den empiriska natur-
uppfattningen, 1902; Vid studiet af Wundts psykologi, 1896; Kunskapslara,
1905; here enumerated in the order of their arrangement in the system, the
new work having its place as the next to the last. To be complete, the sys-
tem ought to include two more volumes, a metaphysics, and a theory of values,
but these, the author says, he hardly expects to complete. Another task is
nearer to his heart, namely to reissue what he has already published in new
and revised editions, as parts of a coherent system. As a systematizer Van-
nerus is unique among Swedish philosophers; no one else has attempted the
task which he has brought so near completion. But he does not expect that
his philosophy will ever obtain a far-reaching influence. It is, he says, "too
abstract and prosaic, has too little of romance and sentiment, it does not carry
everything before it, it is not fascinating, not resplendent, nor 'genial,' to
quote the common phrases of pretension and resplendence." But he is not
without his enthusiasms, though they are intellectual, rather than emotional.
He is a representative of that evolutionary idealism which is taking hold
of so many in our days who do not feel satisfied with the materialistic
naturalism of the last century, but for whom supernaturalism has no attrac-
tions. He belongs to the group of thinkers among whom the foremost names
are Wilhelm Ostwald and William James. A. G. S. JOSEPHSON.
DAS PROBLEM DES PYTHAGORAS. Von Dr. H. A. Naber. Harlem : Visser, 1908.
Pp. 239. Price 4 fl.
This famous theorem (Euclid I, 47), which states the fundamental law
that the square of the hypothenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the
other two sides, is here restored in its original form and is regarded as the
foundation or kernel of the entire Pythagorean system of philosophy. Dr.
Naber states that Pythagoras has received a degree of recognition to which
even Plato has not attained. His character was unimpeachable, his knowl-
edge all-comprehensive, both theoretical and practical, his teaching an over-
whelming whole which began with the motes in a sunbeam and ended only
with Olympus. He was fair alike to the natural and the supernatural, and thus
was able to become the soul of a republic, a spiritual leader of the highest
rank, the head of a nobility which resembled that of the Grail in its high
ideals and severe prescriptions. The topics discussed in this volume cover a
wide range of subjects dear to the heart of the mathematician. Among many
others treated in the forty-odd sections we find the orientation of temples, the
value of T, the golden mean, logarithmic spirals, the pyramid of Cheops, the
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES. 477
trisection of an angle, the Limac.on, Abracadabra, the number 5, the tektratys
and evolution as taught by Pythagoras.
PSYCHOTHERAPY. By Hugo Miinsterberg. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co.,
1909. Pages 401. Price $2.00 net.
However stringent may be the criticisms brought against Christian Sci-
ence, and however short may prove its nominal domination over the minds of
man, the ultimate judgment of its worth or worthlessness will have to concede
that it has served the cause of science and civilization in so far as it has given
impetus to the application of psychological principles to the healing of disease.
It has awakened both the medical and clerical professions to their responsi-
bilities in determining how far suggestion and other psychical influences should
be used to supplement the regular remedial agencies. In the volume before us
Dr. Munsterberg discusses for the general public the practical applications of
modern psychology in this line. His position is clearly set forth in the con-
cluding paragraph of the Preface :
"The chief aim of this book is twofold. It is a negative one: I want to
counteract the misunderstandings which overflood the whole field, especially
by the careless mixing of mental and moral influence. And a positive one :
I want to strengthen the public feeling that the time has come when every
physician should systematically study psychology, the normal in the college
years and the abnormal in the medical school. This demand of medical edu-
cation cannot be postponed any longer. The aim of the book is not to fight
the Emmanuel Church Movement, or even Christian Science or any other
psychotherapeutic tendency outside of the field of scientific medicine. I see
the element of truth in all of them, but they ought to be symptoms of tran-
sition. Scientific medicine should take hold of psychotherapeutics now or a
most deplorable disorganization will set in, the symptoms of which no one
ought to overlook to-day." p
THE PRINCIPLES OF PRAGMATISM. By H. Heath Bawden. Boston : Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1910. Pp. 364. Price $1.50 net.
Since even in the minds of professed exponents of pragmatism many con-
tradictory interpretations of its terms and aims have arisen, Mr. H. Heath
Bawden sets himself the task of clarifying the meaning of this new philosophy.
In nine chapters he goes over the whole field, explaining Philosophy, Expe-
rience, Consciousness, Feeling, Thinking, Truth, Reality, Evolution and the
Absolute, and Mind and Matter. In our opinion the task is more difficult than
the author thinks, for the movement is still in a process of fermentation, and
we feel confident that when this stage is over the new philosophy will appear
very much less original than now.
As a sample of how the subject is treated we quote the following passages
on truth. Mr. Bawden condemns the old definition, saying:
"The ordinary conception of the test of truth regards it as the agreement
of the idea with the thing, of perception with the object, of knowledge with
reality. This is the naive, unreflective veiw of common sense, known in phi-
losophy as the representative or copy theory of knowledge. .. .It is not un-
common to hear even men of science declare that fact is the test of truth.
'Here are the facts. There is your theory. Test your theory by the facts.'
478 THE MONIST.
But it is obvious, upon reflection, that the facts as they are in themselves are
a mere abstraction. They have become facts only in the process of knowledge,
and cannot therefore be used as an external test of the validity of that process."
Following the pragmatic method he replaces this "naive conception of
truth" by the following proposition:
"The criterion is the habit brought to consciousness. The most compre-
hensive habit or system of habits, taking form in consciousness as an image
or idea, is the ultimate standard. Primitive peoples and children have no
criterion : they act on impulse. There is little or no reflection or prospection.
But in the reflective consciousness the conflict of habits produces the image
or idea which becomes an ideal or standard, a guide or norm. An ideal is
ordinarily thought of as having reference to an act which is yet to be per-
formed, while a standard is regarded as the test of acts that have already
taken place. But in the larger sense, which embraces the reference forward
and backward, the standard is only the generalized ideal, while the ideal is the
specific definition of the standard."
MEDICINE AND THE CHURCH. By Sir Clifford Allbutt and others. Edited
with an introduction by Geoffrey Rhodes. London: Kegan Paul, 1910.
Pp. 298. Price, 6s. net.
This book consists of a series of studies on the relationship between the
practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick written by English
clergymen and physicians of standing and authority. Clearly the purpose of
the book is to combat the increasing influence of Christian Science by showing
that the same good results may be and are attained by intelligent physicians
and the ministry of clergymen, and also to urge further cooperation of these
professions to the same end. Ostensibly the main objection made to Christian
Science is that although it "undoubtedly does overcome some cases of nervous
trouble, these in no sense outweigh the mischief done by its followers in
denying the sick medical care;" but the feeling against the cult is strong to
the point of bitterness. For instance when the editor says in his introduction
that "There is nothing new in Christian Science except the colossal impudence
of its pretensions."
The spirit of the book is as a partisan both of the medical profession, that
the necessity and value of its ministrations be appreciated, and of orthodox
theology, on the ground that the Christian Scientists claim for themselves the
power of miraculous healing that was given and belongs only to Christ. The
Bishop of Winchester whose advice and aid throughout the compilation is
acknowledged by the editor, says in his Foreword that "the temper of our
age favors an inquiry conducted in a spirit which will neither disregard the
requirements of science, nor rule miracles out of court as impossible." Many
of the separate articles are of interest and value as contributions to the litera-
ture of mental therapeutics. P
RUDOLF EUCKEN'S KAMPF UM EINEN NEUEN IDEALISMUS. Von Emile Bou-
troux. Uebersetzt von J. Benrubi. Leipsic: Veit, 1911. Pp. 32.
Emile Boutroux, the French philosopher who has written this essay on
Rudolf Eucken and his struggle for a new idealism, holds a similar position
in France to that of his German colleague in Germany, insisting on the
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES. 479
spiritual and intellectual values of life in contrast to the one-sided materialism
which would resolve all values of life in material possessions and mechanical
accomplishments. Eucken does not want to be classified as a dualistic phi-
losopher. He insists that the purpose of man's life must be sought rather in
activity than in material culture, and in seeking and attempting, and daring
and doing he finds the significance of life. The main books which mark his
career cover the following subjects: The History of Philosophical Terminol-
ogy (1879); The Fundamental Conceptions of the Present Age (1878, 4th
ed. 1909) ; The Unity of Spiritual Life in Consciousness and in the Activity
of Mankind ( 1888) ; Great Thinkers' Conceptions of Life ( 1890, 9th ed.
1911); The Struggle for the Spiritual Content of Life (1896); The True
Value of Religion (1905); The Main Problems of the Philosophy of Re-
ligion of the Present Age (1907); Outlines of a New World-Conception;
and finally The Meaning of Value and Life, which in its third edition ap-
peared in 1911.
Professor Eucken is energetically preparing new books which will soon
see the light of publication. They are on The Old and New Christianity and
a Theory of Cognition. Many of his books have been translated into English,
and he had several invitations to lecture in London and Oxford on philo-
sophical and religious problems. His topic for a recent address delivered
on the invitation of the Unitarians was Religion and Life. K
ALLGEMEINE GESCHICHTE DER PHILOSOPHIE MIT BESONDERER BERUCKSICH-
TIGUNG DER RELiciONEN. Von Dr. Paul Deussen. Leipsic: Brockhaus,
1911. Pp. 530. Price 6 M., cloth 8 M.
The first volume of this General History of Philosophy was reviewed in
The Monist some time ago, and we now announce the publication of the first
part of the second volume. Readers familiar with the philosophical literature
of to-day are aware that Professor Deussen represents a metaphysical con-
ception in philosophy which attributes an objective reality to the atman, to
the Vedanta philosophy, to the Platonic ideas of ancient Greece and to
Kant's things-in-themselves. This explains the feeling of sympathy by which
he is induced to classify Jacob Boheme's philosophy as a kind of Vedantic
pluralism. We cannot say that Professor Deussen ever followed Professor
William James's pragmatism, nor is his pluralism kin to the pluralism of
that great American pragmatist, but he has a pluralism of his own after the
prototype of the Vedantic theory which recognizes the existence of in-
numerable souls finding a unit in the universal atman which might be called
in Emerson's language the "oversoul."
In contrasting the subject of his first volume to the treatment of Greek
philosophy discussed in the second volume, Professor Deussen says in the
preface : "The Indian has penetrated more deeply into the problems of ex-
istence, whereas modern thinkers are more scientific and rigorous ; but more
beautiful, more luminous, more brilliant philosophy has never been than on
the Ionian coasts of Asia Minor and on the shores of Ilissos."
This volume covers the several periods of Greek thought. The origin
of Greek philosophy — the oldest period, the second period including Plato
and Aristotle, and the post- Aristotelian period, the theories of the Epicureans,
the Skeptics, the Eleatic philosophies, the Jewish-Alexandrian school, and
480 THE MONIST.
neo-Platonism before and after Plotinus. The work is done with care and
precision and we have no doubt that the appearance of this volume will be
welcome to Professor Deussen's many friends and followers. K
DIE BEGRIFFE UNO THEORIEN DER MODERNEN PHYSIK. Von /. B. Stallo. Ueber-
setzt von Dr. Hans Kleinpeter. 2d ed. Leipsic: Earth, 1911. Pp.328.
Price 7 marks.
ElNFUHRUNG IN DIE METAPHYSIK AUF GRUNDLAGE DER ERFAHRUNG. Von Dr.
G. Heymans. Leipsic: Earth, 1911. Pp. 364. Price 9 marks.
We announced some time ago the appearance of this German translation
of J. B. Stallo's Modern Physics, a book of extraordinary importance, con-
taining a preface by Professor Ernst Mach. We are now in possession of a
second edition, and we are glad to see that the new world-conception of a
scientific philosophy is finding more and more recognition in the Fatherland.
The same house announces the second enlarged edition of Dr. G. Hey-
mans's "Introduction to Metaphysics." Dr. Heymans, professor of philosophy
at the University of Groningen, Holland, defines metaphysics as that science
which endeavors to propound "the most complete and least relative world-
conception possible." Cognition means "to have conceptions which agree with
their objects and which we think of as agreeing with them." Heymans dis-
cusses realism and dualism, first in their state of naivete and then as scien-
tifically derived theories. He contrasts them first with a monistic materialism
and then with a realistic parallelism. After a review of agnosticism and
positivism, he establishes a psychical monism. He finds that all rival theories
by a critical development lead to the same conclusion and then ends with the
applications of his philosophy to epistemology, ethics, and a philosophical
consideration of religion. *
DER MONISMUS UNO SEINE PHILOSOPHISCHEN GRUNDLAGEN. Von Friedrich
Klimke, S. J . Freiburg i. B. : Herder, 1911. St. Louis, Mo., B. Her-
der. Pp. 620. Price $3.80 net.
Friedrich Klimke, S. J., the philosopher among the Jesuits, offers this
book as a contribution to a criticism of modern thought, and it goes without
saying that he condemns modernism in its very principles. Nevertheless he
allows monism to stand as a methodological postulate and as an ideal of cog-
nition. Metaphysical monism, however, in whatever form it may be pre-
sented finds its refutation. It is is perhaps characteristic that the book knows
nothing of monism in the United States. The existence of The Monist, as
well as all the publications of the Open Court Publishing Comany are ig-
nored. Haeckel figures conspicuously as a target for refutation.
The writings of the Italian pragmatist G. Vailati, who died two years
ago, May 14, 1909, have been collected under the title Scritti di G. Vailati, and
published in Leipsic by Johann Ambrosius Barth, and in Florence by the
successors of B. Seeber in the current year* of 1911. They cover a period
from the year 1863 to 1908. The book is an enormous royal octavo volume of
972 pages. For its enormous bulk the price is comparatively small, being only
15 francs. *
VOL. XXI. No. 4. OCTOBER, 1911.
THE MONIST
A Quarterly Magazine
Devoted to the Philosophy of Science
Founded by EDWARD C. HEGELER.
CONTENTS:
PACK
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. (With Appendixes of Leading Passages
from Certain Other Works.)
PHILIP E. B. JOURDAIN 481
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY.
RICHARD GARBE 509
SOME MODERN ADVANCES IN LOGIC.
PHILIP E. B. JOURDAIN 564
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE.
EPHRAIM M. EPSTEIN 567
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
Titchener's System of Psychology. HERBERT S. LANGFELD 624
The New Logic and the New Mathematics. (In Comment on Mr. P. E. B. Jour-
dain's Articles. ) 630
Dr. Epstein on the Tabernacle 633
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES.
Natural Philosophy, Wilhelm Os twa Id, 635. — Elements de calcul vectoriel, C. Burali-
Forti and R. Marcolongo, 638. — Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophic und
Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, Ernst Cassirer, 639. — Razionalismo e misticismo,
Michele Losacco, 639. — Geologic nouvelle, Henri Lenicque, 640. — La Morphologic
dynamique, Frederic Houssay, 640. — Life as Reality, Arthur Stone Dewing, 640.
CHICAGO
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
1911
COPYRIGHT BY
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING Co.
1911
VOL. XXI. OCTOBER, 1911. NO. 4.
THE MONIST
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL.
WITH APPENDIXES OF LEADING PASSAGES FROM CERTAIN
OTHER WORKS.
"Even a joke should have some meaning."
The Red Queen, T. L. G., p. 170.
[EDITOR'S NOTE. — When Mr. B*rtr*nd R*ss*ll, following the advice of
Mr. W*ll**m J*m*s, again got into touch with reality, and was torn to
pieces by anti-suffragists, many of whom were political opponents of Mr.
R*ss*ll, and held strict views on the necessity of protection, the following
manuscript, which was almost ready for the press, was fortunately saved from
the flames on the occasion when a body of eager champions of the Lost Cause
of the Sacredness of Personal Property, from the city of Oxford, burnt the
late Mr. R*ss*ll's house in B*gl*y W**d.]
ABBREVIATIONS :
A. A. W. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. London : Mac-
millan, 1905. People's Edition, i4Oth thousand.
T. L. G. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found
There. London : Macmillan, 1905. People's Edition, 87th thou-
sand.
S. B. Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno. London: Macmillan, 1889.
Ph. L. Bertrand Russell, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leib-
niz, with an Appendix of Leading Passages. Cambridge: Uni-
versity Press, 1900.
Pr. M. Bertrand Russell, The Principles of Mathematics, Vol. I. Cambridge :
University Press, 1903.
A. d. L. Ernst Schroder, Vorlesungen uber die Algebra der Logik. Leipsic :
Teubner, Vol. I, 1890; Vol. II, 1891 and 1905.
Gg. G. Frege, Grundgesetze der Arithmetik. Jena : Hermann Pohle, Vol. I,
1893; Vol. II, 1903.
Z. S. G. Frege, Ueber die Zahlen des Herrn H. Schubert. Jena, 1899.
Gl. G. Frege, Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, eine logisch-mathematische
Untersuchung uber den Begriff der Zahl. Breslau, 1884.
R. M. M. Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale.
S. L. John Venn, Symbolic Logic. London : Macmillan, 1881 ; ad ed., 1894.
F. L. Augustus De Morgan, Formal Logic; or The Calculus of Inference,
Necessary and Probable. London, 1847.
482 THE MONIST.
Fm.L. John Neville Keynes, Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic. 4th
ed., London, 1906.
E. u. I. Ernst Mach, Erkenntnis und Irrtum. Skizzen zur Psychologic der
Forschung. 2d ed.. Leipsic, 1906.
G. u. E. G. Heymans, Die Gesetze und Elemente des wissenschaftlichen
Denkens. Leiden, Vol. I, 1890; Vol. II, 1894.
A. C. P. The Annotated Book of Common Prayer, ed. by John Henry Blunt,
D. D. New Edition. London : Rivingtons, 1888.
THE INDEFINABLES OF LOGIC.
HPHE view that the fundamental principles of logic con-
J. sist solely of the law of identity was held by Leib-
niz,1 Drobisch, Ueberweg,2 and Tweedledee.3 If this were
the case, the principles of logic could hardly be said to be,
as they are, a body of propositions whose consistency
is impossible to prove.4 This characteristic is important
and one of the marks of the greatest possible security; for
while a great achievement of late years has been to prove
the consistency of the principles of arithmetic, a science
which is unreservedly accepted except by some empiri-
cists,5 it can be proved formally that one foundation of
arithmetic is shattered.6 It is true that it has been shown
quite lately that this conclusion may be avoided, and by a
re-moulding of logic we can draw instead the paradoxical
conclusion that the opinions held by common sense for so
many years are in part justified ; but it is quite certain that
with the principles of logic no such proof of consistency
and no such paradoxical result of further investigations
are to be feared.
Still, this re-moulding has had the result of bringing
logic into tolerable agreement with common sense. There
1 Russell, Ph. L., pp. 17, 19, 207-408.
' Schroder, A. d. L., I, p. 4.
* Sec Appendix A.
4 Cf Fieri in R. M. M., March, 1906, p. 199.
" As a type of these, Humpty-Dumpty, with his inability to admit anything
not empirically given, and hts lack of comprehension of pure mathematics,
may b« taken (See Appendix B). In his (correct) thesis that definitions are
nominal, too, Humpty-Dumpty reminds one of J. S. Mill (see Appendix C).
' See Freg« ,Gg., II, p. 253.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. 483
were only two alternatives: If we chose principles in ac-
cordance with common sense we arrived at conclusions
which shocked common sense ; by starting with paradoxical
principles, we have arrived at ordinary conclusions. Like
the White Knight,7 we have dyed our whiskers an unusual
color and then hidden them.
The quaint name of the "Laws of Thought" which is
often applied to the principles of logic, has given rise to
confusion in two ways : In the first place the "Laws," un-
like other laws, cannot be broken, even by refusing to
think; and in the second place people think that the laws
have something to do with holding for the operations of
their minds, just as laws of nature hold for events in the
world around us.8 But that the laws are not psychological
laws follows from the facts that a thing may be true even
if nobody believes it, and something else may be false if
everybody believes it. Indeed it generally is.
Fortunately, the principles or laws of logic are not a
matter of philosophical discussion. Idealists like Tweedle-
dum and Tweedledee, and even practical idealists like the
White Knight, explicitly accept laws like the law of identity
and the excluded middle, as we have seen above or shall
see in the Appendix, under E.
In fact, throughout all logic and mathematics, the ex-
istence of the human or any other mind is totally irrelevant ;
mental processes are studied by means of logic, but the sub-
ject-matter of logic does not presuppose mental processes,
and would be equally true if there were no mental processes,
It is true that in that case we should not know logic ; but our
knowledge must not be confounded with the truths which
we know, any more than an apple should be with the eating
of it.9
T Sec Appendix D.
* See Frege, Gg. I, p. xv.
* B. Russell, Hibbert Journal, July, 1904, p. 812.
484 THE MONIST.
IDENTITY.
Identities are frequently used in common life by people
who seem to imagine that they can draw important con-
clusions respecting conduct or matters of fact from them.
I have heard of a man who gained the double reputation
of being a philosopher and a fatalist by the repeated enun-
ciation of the identity, "Whatever will be, will be"; and
the Italian equivalent of this makes up an appreciable part
of one of Mr. Robert Hichens's novels. Further, the iden-
tity "life is life" has not only been often accepted as an ex-
planation f©r a particular way of living, but has even been
considered by an authoress who calls herself "Zack" to be
an appropriate title for a novel; while "business is busi-
ness" is frequently thought to provide an excuse for dis-
honesty in trading, for which purpose it is plainly inade-
quate.
Another example is given by a poem of Mr. Kipling's,
where he seems to assert that "East is East" and "West
is West" imply that "never the twain shall meet." The
conclusion, now, is false; for, since the world is round —
as geography books still maintain by arguments which
strike every intelligent child as invalid10 — what is called
the "West" does, in fact, merge into the "East." Even if
we are to take the statement metaphorically it is still un-
true, as the Japanese nation have shown.
The law courts are often rightly blamed for being
strenuous opponents of the spread of symbolic logic; the
frequent misuse of and, or, the, and provided that in them
is notorious. But the fault seems partly to lie in the un-
complicated nature of the logical problems which are dealt
10 The argument of the hull of a ship disappearing first is not convincing,
since it would equally well prove that the surface of the earth was, for ex-
ample, corrugated on a large scale. If the common sense of the reader were
supposed to dismiss the possibility of water clinging to such corrugations, it
might equally be supposed to dismiss the possibility of water clinging to a
spherical earth. Traditional geography books, no doubt, gave rise to the
opinions held by Lady Blount ana the Zetetic Society.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. 485
with in them. Thus it is no uncommon thing for people
to appear there who are unable to establish their own
identity, or for A to assert there that B was not himself
when he made a will leaving his money to C.
The chief use of identities is in implication. Since, in
logic, we so understand implication that any true proposi-
tion implies and is implied by any other true proposition,
if one is convinced of the truth of the proposition Q, it is
advisable to choose one or more identities (P), whose truth
is undoubted, and say that P implies Q. Thus Mr. Austen
Chamberlain, according to the Times of March 27, 1909,
professed to deduce the conclusion that it is not right that
women should have votes from the premises that "man is
man" and "woman is woman." Unfortunately this method
requires that one should have made up one's mind about
the conclusion before discovering the premises — by what,
no doubt, Jevons would call an inverse or inductive method.
Thus the method is only of use in speeches.
Mr. Austen Chamberlain afterwards rather destroyed
one's belief in the truth of his premises, by putting limits
to the validity of the principle of identity. In the course
of the debate on the Budget of 1909, he maintained, against
Mr. Lloyd George, that a joke was a joke except when it
was an untruth, Mr. Lloyd George, apparently, being of the
opinion that a joke is a joke under all circumstances.
SYMBOLISM AND MEANING, AND SIGN AND SIGNIFICATION.
When people write down any statement such as "The
curfew tolls the knell of parting day," which we will call
"C" for shortness, what they mean is not C but the mean-
ing of C; and not "the meaning of C" but the meaning
of "the meaning of C." And so on ad infinitum. Thus in
writing or in speech we always fail to state the meaning
of any proposition whatever. Sometimes, indeed, we suc-
ceed in conveying it; but there is danger in too great a
486 THE MONIST
disregard of statement and preoccupation with the con-
veyance of meaning. Thus many mathematicians have
been so anxious to convey to us a perfectly distinct un-
metaphysical concept of number, that they stripped away
everything that they considered unessential (like its logical
nature) from the idea of number, and have finally delivered
it to us as a mere sign. By the labor of Helmholtz, Kron-
ecker, Heine, Thomae, Pringsheim and Schubert, many
people were persuaded that when they said "2 is a number"
they were speaking the truth, and hold that "Paris" is a
town containing a p.11 When Frege pointed out this diffi-
culty, e. g., in Z. S., he was almost universally denounced
as "spitzfindig." In fact, Germans seem to have been in-
fluenced by Kant to despise the White Knight's subtle dis-
tinctions12 and to regard subtlety with disfavor to such a
degree that their only mathematical logician except Frege,
namely Schroder — the least subtle of mortals, by the way
— seems to have been filled with such fear of being thought
subtle, that he made his books so prolix that nobody has
read them.
Another term which mathematicians are accustomed
to apply to thought which is more exact than any to which
they are accustomed is "scholastic." Thereby, I suppose,
they mean that the pursuits of certain acute people of the
Middle Ages are unimportant as compared with the great
achievements of modern thought, as exemplified by a
method of making plausible guesses, known as induction;
by the bicycle and the gramophone — all of them instru-
ments of doubtful merits.
u De Morgan (F. L., pp. 246-247) said that "if all mankind had spoken
one language, we cannot doubt that there would have been a powerful, per-
haps universal, school of philosophers who would have believed in the inherent
connection between names and things; who would have taken the sound man
to be the mode of agitating the air which is essentially communicative of the
ideas of reason, cookery, bipedality, etc.,. .. .'The French,' said the sailor,
'call a cabbage a shoe ; the fools ! Why can't they call it a cabbage when they
must know it is one ?' "
u See Appendix E.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. 487
PREVIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES OF MATHEMATICS BY
MATHEMATICIANS.
Mathematicians usually try to found mathematics on
two principles. One is the principle of confusion between
the sign and the thing signified (they call this principle
the foundation-stone of the formal theory), and the other
is the principle of the identity of discernibles (which they
call the principle of the permanence of equivalent forms).13
But the truth is that if we set sail on a voyage of dis-
covery with logic alone at the helm, we must either throw
such principles as "the identity of those conceptions which
have in common the properties that interest us" and "the
principle of permanence" overboard, or, if we do not like
to act in such a way to old companions with whom we are so
familiar that we can hardly feel contempt for them, we must
at least recognize them clearly as having no logical validity
and merely as psychological principles, and reduce them
to the humble rank of stewards to minister to our human
weaknesses on the voyage. And then, if we adopt the
wise policy of keeping our axioms down to the minimum
number, we must refrain from creating, or perhaps rather
thinking we can create, new numbers to fill up gaps among
the older ones, and then recognize that our rational num-
bers are particular cases of "real" numbers, and so on.
We get, by this, a world of conceptions which looks,
and is, different from that which ordinary mathematicians
think they see; and perhaps this is the reason why some
mathematicians of great eminence, like Hilbert and Poin-
care,14 have produced such absurd discussions on the fun-
damental principles of mathematics, showing once more
u These principles, after many attempts to state them by Peacock, the
Red and the White Queen (see Appendix G), Hankel, Schroder, and Schu-
bert had been made, were first exactly formulated by Frege in Z. S.
14 See Couturat, R. M.M., March, 1906, and Russell, ibid., Sept. 1906.
THE MONIST.
the truth of the not quite original remark of Aunt Jane,
who
" observed, the second time
She tumbled off a 'bus :
The step is short from the sublime
To the ridiculous.' "
AMBIGUITY AND SYMBOLIC LOGIC.
The universal use of some system of symbolic logic
would not only enable everybody easily to deal with ex-
ceedingly complicated arguments, but would prevent am-
biguous statements. In denying the indispensability of
symbolic logic in the former state of things, Dr. Keynes
(Fm. L.) is probably alone,15 against the need strongly
felt by Alice and most modern logicians. (See Appendix
H). '
As regards ambiguity, a translation of Hymns Ancient
and Modern into, say, Peanese, would prevent the well-
known puzzle of childhood as to whether the "his" in
"And Satan trembles when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees,"
refers to the saint's knees or Satan's.
ASSERTION.
The subject of the present chapter must not be con-
fused with the assertions of ordinary life. Commonly an
unasserted proposition is synonymous with a probably false
statement, while an asserted proposition is synonymous
with one that is certainly false. But in logic we apply
assertion also to true propositions and, as Lewis Carroll
showed in his version of "What the Tortoise said to Achil-
les,"16 usually pass over unconsciously an infinite series
of implications in so doing. If p and q are propositions,
18 The Duchess is more consistent than Keynes, for Keynes really uses the
X and + of Boole and Venn under the different shapes of the words "and"
and "or."
"Mind, New Series, Vol. IV, 1895, PP- 278-280. Cf. Russell, Pr. M., p. 35-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. 489
p is true and p implies q\ then, at first sight, one
would think that one might assert q. For, from (A) "p
is true," and (B) "p implies q," we must, in order to
deduce (") "q is true," accept the hypothetical (C) "If A
and B are true, n must be true." And then, in order to
deduce n from A, B, C, we must accept another hypothet-
ical (D) "If A, B, and C are true, « must be true"; and
so on ad infinitum. Thus, in deducing Q, we pass over an
infinite series of hypotheticals which increase in complex-
ity. Thus we need a new principle to be able to assert q.
Frege was the first logician sharply to distinguish be-
tween an asserted proposition, like "A is greater than B,"
and one which is merely considered, like "A's being greater
than B," although an analogous distinction had been made
in our common discourse, on certain psychological grounds,
for long previously. In fact, soon after the invention of
speech, the necessity of distinguishing between a considered
proposition and an asserted one became evident, on account
of the state of things referred to at the beginning of this
chapter.
IS.
Is has four perfectly distinct meanings in English, be-
sides misuses of the word. Among the misuses, perhaps
the most important are those referred to by De Morgan:17
" .... we say 'murder is death to the perpetrator* where
the copula is brings; 'two and two are four/ the copula
being 'have the value of,' etc."
Schroder18 quite satisfactorily pointed out the well-
known distinction between an is where subject and pred-
icate can be interchanged (such as: "the class whose mem-
bers are Shem, Ham, and Japhet is the class of the sons
of Noah") and an is or are where they cannot (such as:
"F.L., p. 268.
"A. d. L.. I.
49O THE MONIST.
"Englishmen are Britons"), but failed to see19 the more
important distinction (made by Peano) of is in the sense
of "is a member of." If Englishmen are Britons, and
Britons are civilized people, it follows that Englishmen
are civilized people ; but though the Harmsworth Encyclo-
paedia is a member of the class "books (of one or more
volumes)," and this class is the member of some class A
of which it is the only member, yet the Harmsworth En-
cyclopaedia is not a member of A, for it is not true that
it is the whole class of books ; and such a statement would
not even be made, except possibly in the form of an adver-
tisement.
The fourth meaning of is is exists; it is a matter for
regret that there are difficulties in the way of using one
word to denote four things with different meanings; for,
if there were not, we might prove the existence of Any-
thing by making It the subject of a proposition, and thus
earn the gratitude of theologians.
"AND" AND "OR."
When, with Boole, alternatives (A, B) are considered
as mutually exclusive, logical addition may be described
as the process of taking A and B or A or B. It is a great
and rare convenience to have two terms for denoting the
same thing: commonly, people denote several things by
the same term, and only the Germans have the privilege of
referring to, say, continuity as Stetigkeit or Kontinuirlich-
keit. But Jevons20 quoted Milton, Shakespeare, and Dar-
win to prove that alternatives are not exclusive, and so
attained first to recognized views by an argument which
was plainly inadequate for his purpose.
Of course, "and" is often used as the sign of logical
addition : thus one may speak of one's brothers and sisters,
"Ibid., II.
*P*re Logic, London, 1864, pp. 76-79. Cf. Venn, S. L., ad ed., pp.
40-48.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. 49!
without being understood to mean the null-class (as should
be the case).21 And a word like "while" is often used for
a logical addition, when exclusiveness of the alternatives
is almost implied. Thus, a reviewer in Mind,2* noticing the
translation of Mach's Popular Science Lectures into Amer-
ican, said, of these lectures, that: "Most of them will be
familiar. . . .to epistemologists and experimental psychol-
ogists ; while the remainder, which deal with physical ques-
tions, are well worth reading." The reader has the im-
pression, probably given unintentionally, that Professor
Mach's epistemological and psychological lectures are not,
in the reviewer's opinion, worth reading.
«
THE COMMUTATIVE LAW. J
Often the meaning of a sentence tacitly implies that the
commutative law does not hold. We are all familiar with
the passage in which Macaulay pointed out that by using
the commutative law because of exigencies of meter, Rob-
ert Montgomery unintentionally made Creation tremble
at the Atheist's nod instead of the Almighty's. This use
of the commutative law by writers of verse renders it
doubtful whether, in the hymn-line:
"The humble poor believe,"
we are to understand a statement about the humble poor,
or a doubtful maxim as to the attitude of our minds to
statements made by the humble poor.
Then non-commutativity to English titles offers diffi-
culties to some novelists and Americans, who make a
point of referring to Mary Lady So-and-So as Lady Mary,
and vice versa.
11 Children sometimes pray for their relations and friends ; two plainly
exclusive classes.
• New Series, IV, p. j6i.
492 THE MONIST.
THE.
The word "the" implies existence and uniqueness. It
is a mistake to talk of "the son of So-and-So" if So-and^So
has a fine family of ten sons. People who refer to "the
Oxford Movement" imply that Oxford only moved once;
and those quaint people who say that "A is quite the gentle-
man" imply both the doubtful proposition that there is
only one gentleman in the world, and the indubitably false
proposition that he is that man. Probably A is one of
those persons who add to the confusion in the use of the
definite article by speaking of his wife as "the wife."
In a certain children's hymnbook, one reads:
"The river vast and small."
Few would deny that there is not more than one such
river, but unfortunately it is doubtful if there is such a
river at all. The case is exactly the same with the onto-
logical proof of the existence of the most perfect being.
According to the Daily Mail of October 9, 1906, Judge
Russell decided against a claim brought by an agent
against his company for appointing another agent, the
claim being on the grounds that he was appointed as "the"
agent.
Most people admit that the number 2 can be added to
the number 2 to give the number 4, but this is a mistake.
They concede, when they use the, that there is only one
number 2, and yet they imagine that, when they remove
this, to consider it apart as the first term of our above
sum, they can find another to add to it, and thereby form
the second term. The truth is, that "2 -(-2=4" is a very
misleading equation, and what we really mean by that
faultily abbreviated statement is: If x and y denote any
things, and x' and y' any other things, which form a class
(A) which, like that of x and y, is a member of that class
(which we call "2"), of classes which have a correspond-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. 493
ence with what we call a class B of two things, such that,
if any member of A corresponds to one, and only one,
member of B, and inversely; for the class of all the terms
x> y> x '* y' is a member of that class of classes which, anal-
ogously, we call "4." In this, for the sake of shortness, we
have introduced abbreviations which should not be used
in a rigorous logical statement.
UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR PROPOSITIONS.
People who are cynical as to the morality of the English
are often unpleasantly surprised to learn that "All tres-
passers will be prosecuted" does not necessarily imply that
"Some trespassers will be prosecuted." The view that
universal propositions are non-existential is now generally
held. Venn seems to have been the first to hold this, while
older logicians, such as De Morgan,23 considered universal
propositions to be existential, like particular ones.
If the Gnat24 had been content to affirm his proposition
about the means of subsistence of a Bread-and-butter-fly,
in consequence of their lack of which such flies always die,
without pointing out such an insect, and thereby proving
that the class of them is not null, Alice's doubt as to the
existence of the class in question, even if it were proved to
be well-founded, would not have affected the validity of
the proposition.
This brings us to a great convenience in treating uni-
versal propositions as non-existential. We can maintain
that all x's are v's at the same time as that no x's are y's.
if only x is the null-class. Thus when Mr. MacColl25 ob-
jected to other symbolic logicians that their premises imply
that all Centaurs are flower-pots, they could reply that
" Cf. F. L., p. 4.
14 See Appendix I.
*Cf. Mind, 1905.
494 THE MONIST.
their premises also imply the more usual view that Cen-
taurs are not flower-pots.
IMPLICATION.
A good illustration of the principle that what we call
"implication" in logic is such that a false proposition im-
plies any other proposition, true or false, is given by Lewis
Carroll's puzzle of the three barbers.26
Allen, Brown, and Carr keep a barber's shop together ;
so that one of them must be in during working hours.
Allen has lately had an illness of such a nature that, if
Allen is out, Brown must be accompanying him. Further,
if Carr is out, then, if Allen is out, Brown must be in for
obvious business reasons. The problem is, may Carr ever
go out?
Putting p for "Carr is out," q for "Allen is out," and r
for "Brown is out," we have:
1 i ) q implies r,
(2) p implies that q implies not-r.
Lewis Carroll supposed that "q implies r" and "q im-
plies not-r" are inconsistent, and hence that p must be
false. But both these propositions are true if q is false.
Thus, if p is true, q is false ; or, if Carr is out, Allen is in.
The odd part of this conclusion is that it is the one which
common sense would have drawn in that particular case.
The principle that the false implies the true has very
important applications in political arguments. In fact, it
is hard to find one principle of politics of which false propo-
sitions are not the main support.
If p and q are two propositions, and p implies q ; then,
if, and only if, q and p are both false or both true, we also
have "q implies p." The most important applications of
" Mind, N. S., Ill, 1894, pp. 436-438. Cf. the discussions by W. E. John-
son, ibid., p. 583, and Russell, Pr. M., p. i8n, and Mind, N. S., XIV, 1905, pp.
400-401.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. 495
this invertibility were made by the late Mr. Samuel Butler37
and by Mr. G. B. Shaw. A political application may be
made as follows. In a country where only those with
middling-sized incomes are taxed, conservative and bour-
geois politicians would still maintain that the proposition
"the rich are taxed" implies the proposition "the poor are
taxed," and this implication — which is true because both
protasis and apodasis are false — would be quite unneces-
sarily supported by many false practical arguments. It is
equally true that "the poor are taxed" implies that "the
rich are taxed." And this can be proved in certain cases
on other grounds. For the taxation of the poor would im-
ply, ultimately, that the poor could not afford to pay a
little more for the necessities of life than, in strict justice,
they ought; and this would mean the cessation of one of
the chief means of production of individual wealth.
We also see why a valuable means for the discovery of
truth is given by the inversion of platitudinous implica-
tions. It may happen that another platitude is the result
of inversion ; but it is the fate of any true remark, especially
if it is easy to remember by reason of a paradoxical form,
to become a platitude in course of time. There are rare
cases of a platitude remaining unrepeated for so long
that, by a converse process, it has become paradoxical.
Such, for example, is Plato's remark that a lie is less im-
portant than an error in thought.
Of late years, a method of disguising platitudes as par-
adoxes has been too extensively used by Mr. G. K. Chester-
ton. The method is as follows. Take any proposition p
which holds of an entity a ; choose p so that it seems plau-
sible that p also holds of at least two other entities b and c ;
call a, b, c, and any others for which p holds or seems to
hold, the class A, and p the A-ness or A-ity of a, b, and c ;
"The inhabitants of "Erewhon" punished invalids more severely than
criminals. In modern times, one frequently hears the statement that crime is
a disease; and if so, it is surely false that criminals ought to be punished.
496 THE MONIST.
let d be an entity for which p does not hold; and put d
among the A's when you think that nobody is looking.
Then state your paradox : "Some A's do not have A-ness."
By further manipulation you can get the proposition "All
A's do not have A-ness." But it is possible to make a very
successful coup if A is the null-class, which has the advan-
tage that manipulation is unnecessary. Thus, Mr. Chester-
ton, in his Orthodoxy, put A = the class of doubters who
doubt the possibility of logic, and proved that such agnos-
tics refuted themselves — a conclusion which seems to have
pleased many clergymen.
In this way, Mr. Chesterton has been enabled readily
to write many books, and to maintain, on almost every
page, such theses as that simplicity is not simple, hetero-
doxy is not heterodox, poetry is not poetical, and so on;
thereby building up the gigantic platitude that Mr. Chester-
ton is Chestertonian.
In the chapter on "Identity" we have illustrated the
use of the principle that any true proposition implies any
other true proposition. This important principle may be
called the principle of the irrelevant premise?* and is of
great service in oratory because it does not matter what the
premise is, true or false. There is a principle of the irrele-
vant conclusion, but, except in law courts, in interruptions
of meetings, and in family life, this is seldom used, partly
because of the limitation involved in the logical impossi-
bility for the conclusion to be false if the premise be true,
but chiefly because the conclusion is more important than
the premise, being usually a matter of prejudice.
Certain modern logicians, such as Frege, have found
it necessary so to extend the meaning of implication of q
by p that it holds when /> is not a proposition at all. Hith-
* Irrelevant in a popular sense; one would say, speaking loosely, that the
fact that Brutus killed Caesar is irrelevant to the fact that the sea is salt; and
yet this conclusion is implied both by the above premise and the premise that
Caesar killed Brutus. Ci. on such questions, Venn, 5". L., 2d ed., pp. 240-244.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. 497
erto, politicians, finding that either identical or false propo-
sitions are sufficient for their present needs, have made no
use of this principle; but it is obvious that their stock of
arguments would be vastly increased thereby.
Logical implication is often an enemy of dignity and
eloquence. De Morgan29 relates "a tradition of a Cam-
bridge professor who was once asked in a mathematical
discussion 'I suppose you will admit that the whole is
greater than its part?' and who answered, 'Not I, until I
see what use you are going to make of it.' ' And the care
displayed by cautious mathematicians like Poincare,
Schoenflies, Borel, Hobson, and Baire in abstaining from
pushing their arguments to their logical conclusions is
probably founded on the unconscious — but no less well-
grounded — fear of appearing ridiculous if they dealt with
such extreme cases as "the series of all ordinal numbers."
They are, probably, as unconscious of implications as the
author of the remark that Gibbon always had a copy of
Horace in his pocket and often in his hand, was of the
necessary implication of these propositions that Gibbon's
hand was sometimes in his pocket.
DENOTING.3Q
A concept denotes when, if it occurs in a proposition,
the proposition is not about the concept, but about a term
connected in a certain peculiar way with the concept. Some
people often assert that man is mortal, and yet we never
see announced in the Times that Man died on a certain day
at his villa residence "Camelot" at Upper Tooting; nor
do we hear that Procrastination was again the butt of Mr.
Plowden's jokes at Marylebone Police Court last week.
That two phrases may have different meanings and
the same denotation was discovered by Alice81 and Frege.
*F.L., p. 264.
" Cf. Russell, Pr. M., pp. 53-54.
K See Appendix J.
498 THE MONIST.
Alice observed that the road which led to Tweedledum's
house was that which led to the house of Tweedledee;
and Frege pointed out that the phrases "the house to
which the road that leads to Tweedledum's house," and
"the house to which the road that leads to Tweedledee's
house" have different Sinn but the same Bedeutung.
NON-ENTITY.
When people say that such-and-such a thing "is non-
existent," they usually mean that it is not an it at all, or
that there is not any it.
Dr. Venn meant this when he described (in S. L., 1881,
p. 339n) his encounter with what he imagined to be a very
ingenious tradesman : "I once had some strawberry plants
furnished me which the vendor admitted would not bear
many berries. But he assured me that this did not matter,
since they made up in their size what they lost in their
number. (He gave me, in fact, the hyperbolic formula,
xy—c2, to connect the number and magnitude). When
summer came no fruit whatever appeared. I saw that it
would be no use to complain, because the man would urge
that the size of the non-existent berry was infinite, which
I could not see my way to disprove. I had forgotten to
bar zero values of either variable."
It is to be regretted that this useful note was omitted in
the second edition of S. L. ; one can imagine that it might
have protected Mr. MacColl and Herr Meinong (who be-
lieved in round squares and fabulous monsters),32 against
the dishonest practices of traders who were too free in
their promises. For the death-blow to this kind of free
trade was not given until 1905, when Mr. Russell published
his article "On Denoting," and took up the position of the
White King in opposition to Alice's later assertions.33
"This belief was unlike Alice's first opinion (see Appendix K).
* See Appendix K.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. 499
Venn's experience illustrates another characteristic of
mathematical logic. It is necessary, in order to make our
arguments conclusive, to devote great care to the elimina-
tion of difficulties which rarely occur. The White Knight
—who was like Boole in being a pioneer of mathematical
logic in this way, and seems to have held, like Boole, those
philosophical opinions which would base logic on psychol-
ogy— recognized the necessity of taking precautions
against any unusual appearance of mice on a horse's
back.84
THE UNKNOWABLE.
According to Mr. S. N. Gupta,35 the first thing that
every student of Hindu logic has to learn when he is said to
begin the study of inference is that "all H is S" is not
always equivalent to "no H is not S." "The latter propo-
sition is an absurdity when S is Kebaldnvayi, i. e., covers
the whole sphere of thought and existence. . . .'Knowable'
and 'Nameable' are among the examples of Kebaldnvayi
terms. If you say there is a thing not-knowable, how do
you know it? If you say there is a thing not-nameable,
you must point that out, i. e., somehow name it. Thus you
contradict yourself."
Mr. Herbert Spencer's doctrine of the Unknowable
gives rise to some amusing thoughts. To state that all
knowledge of such and such a thing is above a certain per-
son's intelligence is not self-contradictory, but merely rude ;
to state that all konwledge of a certain thing is above all
possible human intelligence is, in spite of its appearing to
be a modest platitude, nonsense. For the statement shows
that we do know something of it, viz., that it is unknowable.
It is somewhat amusing to find that to the last ( 1900)
edition of First Principles was added a "Postscript to Part
M See Appendix L.
"Mind, N. S., IV, 1895, P- 168.
5OO THE MONIST.
I,"36 in which the justice of this simple and well-known
criticism as to the contradiction involved in speaking of
an "Unknowable," which had been often made during the
forty odd years in which the various editions had been on
the market, was grudgingly acknowledged as follows:
"It is doubtless true that saying what a thing is not, is,
in some measure, saying what it is ; .... Hence it cannot be
denied that to affirm of the Ultimate Reality that it is un-
knowable is, in a remote way, to assert some knowledge of
it, and therefore involves a contradiction."
The "Postscript" reminds one of the postscript to a
certain Irishman's letter. This Irishman, missing his
razors after his return from a visit to a friend, wrote to
his friend, giving precise directions where to look for the
missing razors; but, before posting the letter, added a
postscript to the effect that he had found the razors.
One is tempted to inquire, analogously, what might be,
in view of the Postscript, the point of much of Spencer's
Part I. It is, to use De Morgan's description of the argu-
ments of some who maintain that we can know nothing
about infinity,37 of the same force as that of the man who
answered the question how long he had been deaf and
dumb.
The analogy of the contradiction of Burali-Forti to the
contradiction involved in the notion of an "unknowable"
may be set forth as follows. If A should say to B : "I know
things which you never by any possibility can know," he
may be speaking the truth. In the same way, infinity may
be said, without contradiction, to transcend all the finite
integers. But if some one else, C, should say: "There are
some things which no human being can ever know any-
* First Principles, 6th ed., 1900, pp. 107-110. The first edition was pub-
lished in 1862.
37 Note on p. 6 of his paper : "On Infinity ; and on the Sign of Equality,"
Trans. Comb. Phil. Soc., XI, Part I, pp. 1-45. (Read May 16, 1864.)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. 5OI
thing about/' he is talking nonsense.88 And in the same
way if we succeed in imagining a number which transcends
all numbers, we have succeeded in imagining the absurdity
of a number which transcends itself.
All the paradoxes of logic (or "the theory of aggre-
gates") are analogous39 to the difficulty arising from a
man's statement: "I am lying." In fact, if this is true, it
is false, and vice versa. If such a statement is spread out
a little, it becomes an amusing hoax or an epigram. Thus,
one may present to a friend a card bearing on both sides
the words: "The statement on the other side of this card
is false ;" while the first of the epigrams derived from this
principle seems to have been written by a Greek satirist :40
"Lerians are bad : not some bad and some not ;
But all. There's not a Lerian in the lot,
Save Procles, that you could a good man call —
And Procles is a Lerian after all."
This is the original of a well-known epigram by Por-
son, who remarked that all Germans are ignorant of Greek
meters,
"All, save only Hermann —
And Hermann's a German."
MR. SPENCER, THE ATHANASIAN CREED, AND THE ARTICLES.
When, in what I believe is misleadingly known as "The
Athanasian Creed," people say "The Father incomprehen-
sible," and so on, they are not falling into the same error
as Mr. Spencer, for the Latin equivalent for "incomprehen-
sible" is merely immensus,41 and Bishop Hilsey translated
it more correctly as "immeasurable." It is a regrettable
"I think that all the talk about the finitude of man's mind is nonsense;
both because, if we say that the mind of man is limited, we tacitly postulate
an 'unknowable' and because, even if the human mind were finite, there is no
more reason against its conceiving the infinite than there is for a mind to be
blue in order to conceive of a pair of blue eyes (Cf. De Morgan, he. cit.).
- Russell, R. M. M., Sept. 1906.
"The Greek Anthology, by Lord Neaves (Ancient Classics for English
Readers). Edinburgh and London, 1897, p. 194.
"A.C.P., p. 217.
5O2 THE MONIST.
fact that Dr. Blunt, in his mistaken modesty, has added
a note42 to this passage: "Yet it is true that a meaning
not intended in the Creed has developed itself through this
change of language, for the nature of God is as far beyond
the grasp of the mind as it is beyond the possibility of
being contained within local bounds."
Mr. Spencer seems no happier when we compare his
statements with those in the Anglican Articles of Religion.
There God is never referred to as infinite. It is true that
his power and goodness are so referred to; but this defi-
ciency was presumably brought about intentionally, so
that faith might gain in meaning as time went on.
"GEDANKENEXPERIMENTE" AND EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS.
The "Gedankenexperimente" upon which so much
weight has been laid by Mach43 and Heymanns,44 had
already been investigated by the White Queen,45 who, how-
ever, seems to have perceived that the results of such ex-
periments are not always logically valid. The psycholog-
ical founding of logic appears to be not without analogy
with the surprising method of advocates of evolutionary
ethics who expect to discover what is good by inquiring
what cannibals have thought good. I sometimes feel in-
clined to apply the historical method to the multiplication
table. I should get a statistical inquiry among school-
children, before their pristine wisdom had been biased by
teachers. I should put clown their answers as to what
6X9 amounts to; I should work out the average of their
answers to six places of decimals, and should then decide
that, at the present stage of human development, this
average is the value of 6X9.
"Ibid., p. 218.
* See, e. g., E. u. I., pp. 183-200.
"G.u.E., Vol. I.
48 See Appendix M.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. 503
APPENDIXES.
A. Logic and the Principle of Identity.
T. L. G., p. 63 : " 'Contrariwise/ continued Tweedle-
dee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would
be: but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.' "46
S. B., p. 159: The Professor said: "The day is the same
length as anything that is the same length as it."
S. B., p. 161 : Bruno observed that when the Other
Professor lost himself, he should shout. "He'd be sure
to hear hisself, 'cause he couldn't be, far off."
B. Empirical Philosophers and Mathematics.
T. L. G., p. 124: " '. . . .Now if you had the two eyes
on the same side of the nose, for instance — or the mouth at
the top — that would be some help.'
( 'It wouldn't look nice,' Alice objected. But Humpty-
Dumpty only shut his eyes and said: 'Wait till you've
tried/ "
T.L.G., p. 112: "'And if you take one from three
hundred and sixty-five, what remains?'
'Three hundred and sixty-four, of course.'
"Humpty-Dumpty looked doubtful. 'I'd rather see
that done on paper,' he said."
C. Nominal Definition.
T.L.G., p. 114: "'When / use a word,' Humpty-
Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what
I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make
words mean different things.'
44 Unfortunately, there is some doubt here as to whether Tweedledee, like
Jevons, understood is to mean the same as (=), or, like Schroder, to mean
the relation of subsumption. The first possibility alone would justify our
contention. The next extracts illustrate the importance which the Professor
and Bruno ascribed to the Principle of Identity.
504 THE MONIST.
" The question is/ said Humpty-Dumpty, 'which is to
be master — that's all.' "
D. Conformity of a Paradoxical Logic with Common Sense.
T.L. G., p. 162:
"But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one's whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen."
(Verse from White Knight's song).
E. Idealists and the Laws of Logic.
T. L. G., p. 75: " '. . . .if he [the Red King] left off
dreaming about you [Alice]/ [exclaimed Tweedledee],
'where do you suppose you'd be?'
" Where I am now, of course/ said Alice.
" 'Not you !' Tweedledee retorted contemptuously.
'You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in
his dream!'
" 'If that there King was to wake/ added Tweedledum,
'you'd go out — bang! — just like a candle!'
" 'I shouldn't !' Alice exclaimed indignantly. 'Besides,
if I'm only a sort of thing in his dream, what are you, I
should like to know?'
" 'Ditto/ said Tweedledum .... ' . . . . you know very
well you're not real.'
" 'I am real!' said Alice, and began to cry."
T.L.G., p. 157: "'How can you go on talking so
quickly, head downwards?' Alice asked, as she dragged
him out by the feet, and laid him in a heap on the bank.
"The Knight looked surprised at the question. 'What
does it matter where my body happens to be?' he said.
'My mind goes on working all the same. In fact, the more
head downwards I am, the more I keep inventing new
things.' "
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. 505
T. L. G., p. 159: " '< . ; .Everybody that hears me sing
— either it brings the tears into their eyes, or else — '
" 'Or else what ?' said Alice, for the Knight had made
a sudden pause.
" 'Or else it doesn't, you know.' '
F. Distinction Between Sign and Signification.
T. L. G., pp. 159-160: " The name of the song is called
"Haddocks' Eyes." '
" 'Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?' Alice said,
trying to feel interested.
" 'No, you don't understand,' the Knight said, looking
a little vexed. That's what the name [160] is called. The
name really is "The Aged Aged Man."
Then I ought to have said "That's what the song
is called," ' Alice corrected herself.
" 'No, you oughtn't : that's another thing. The name
is called "Ways and Means:" but that's only what it's
called, you know!'
: 'Well, what is the song, then ?' said Alice, who was
by this time completely bewildered.
" 'I was coming to that,' the Knight said. The song
really is " A-sitting on a Gate" . . . . '
G. The Principle of Permanence.
T.L.G., p. 172: '"Can you do Subtraction?' [asked
the Red Queen], Take nine from eight.'
" 'Nine from eight I ca'n't, you know,' Alice replied
very readily: 'but — '
" 'She ca'n't do Subtraction,' said the White Queen."
H. Utility of Symbolic Logic.
A. A. W., pp. 121-122: " 'I quite agree with you,' said
the Duchess; 'and the moral of that is — "Be what you
would [122] seem to be" — or if you'd like it put more
5O6 THE MONIST.
simply — "Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than
what it might appear to others that what you were or
might have been was not otherwise than what you had
been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."
" 'I think I should understand that better/ Alice said
very politely, 'if I had it written down: but I'm afraid I
ca'n't quite follow it as you say it.'
" 'That's nothing to what I could say if I chose,' the
Duchess replied, in a pleased tone."
I. Universal and Particular Propositions.
T. L. G., p. 54: The Gnat had told Alice that the Bread-
and-butter-fly lives on weak tea with cream in it; so:
' 'Supposing it couldn't find any ?' she suggested.
'Then it would die, of course.'
' 'But that must happen very often,' Alice remarked
thoughtfully.
" 'It always happens,' said the Gnat."
J. Denoting.
"T.L.G., p. 59: Tweedledum and Tweedledee were,
in many respects, indistinguishable, and Alice, walking
along the road, noticed that "wherever the road divided
there were sure to be two finger-posts pointing the same
way, one marked 'TO TWEEDLEDUM'S HOUSE,' and the other
*TO THE HOUSE OF TWEEDLEDEE.'
" 'I do believe,' said Alice at last, 'that they live in the
same house !....'
K. Non-Entity.
T.L.G., p. 137: "T always thought they [human
children] were fabulous monsters!' said the Unicorn.
' 'Do you know,' [said Alice], 'I always thought Uni-
corns were fabulous monsters, too! I never saw one alive
before !'
"[138] 'Well, now that we have seen each other,' said
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL. 507
the Unicorn, 'if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is
that a bargain ?' '
T.L.G., p. 127: "'I see nobody on the road/ said
Alice.
" 'I only wish / had such eyes/ the (White) King
remarked in a fretful tone. 'To be able to see Nobody!
And at that distance, too ! Why, it's as much as / can do
to see real people by this light !' '
A. A. W., p. 10: "And she [Alice] tried to fancy what
the flame of a candle is like after it is blown out, for she
could not remember ever having seen such a thing."
A.A.W.,p.84:" this time it [the Cheshire Cat]
vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail,
and ending with the grin, which remained some time after
the rest of it had gone.
'Well ! I've often seen a cat without a grin/ thought
Alice; 'but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious
thing I ever saw in all my life !' '
A. A. W., pp. 9/8-99: "... .the Dormouse went on. . . . ;
'and they drew all manner of things — everything that be-
gins with an M — '
" 'Why with an M ?' said Alice.
" 'Why not ?' said the March Hare.
"Alice was silent.
"....[the Dormouse] went on: ' — that begins with
an M, such as mouse-trap, and the moon, and memory,
and muchness, you know you say things are "much of
muchness", .did you ever see such a thing as a drawing
of a muchness?'47
[99] " 'Really, now you ask me/ said Alice very much
confused, 'I don't think — '
" Then you shouldn't talk/ said the Hatter."
"This extract also illustrates the chapter on "Denoting."
508 THE MONIST.
L. Objects of Mathematical Logic.
T. L. G., p. 149 : " 'I was wondering what the mouse-
trap [fastened to the White Knight's saddle] was for,'
said Alice. 'It isn't very likely there would be any mice
on the horse's back.'
" 'Not very likely, perhaps, said the Knight, 'but, if
they do come, I don't choose to have them running all
about.' i -
" 'You see,' he went on after a pause, 'it's as well to be
provided for everything. That's the reason the horse has
anklets round his feet.'
" 'But what are they for ?' Alice asked in a tone of
great curiosity.
" To guard against the bites of sharks,' the Knight
replied."
M. Gedankenexperimente.
T. L. G., p. 92 : "Alice laughed. 'There's no use try-
ing,' she said: 'one ca'n't believe impossible things.'
" 'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the
[White] Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it
for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as,
many as six impossible things before breakfast.' '
A. A. W., p. ii : "She [Alice] generally gave herself
very good advice (though she very seldom followed it),
and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring
tears into her eyes ; and once she remembered trying to box
her own ears for. having cheated herself in a game of
croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious
child was very fond of pretending to be two people."
PHILIP E. B. JOURDAIN.
BROADWINDSOR, BEAMINSTER, DORSET, ENGLAND.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRIS-
TIANITY.1
WE are now aware that most dissimilar forces have
combined in the origin of Christianity and of the
Gospel narratives of the life of Jesus: of foreign civiliza-
tions, especially the Hellenistic, Persian and Babylonian.
But I dare assert almost with certainty that Buddhism
has not furnished any contribution, as I shall endeavor to
show in the first part of this paper.
For this purpose I shall have to emphasize a point of
view which to my knowledge has hitherto received no con-
sideration. This is the essential difference between the
alleged Buddhist elements in the canonical Gospels and
the actual Buddhist elements in the Apocryphal Gospels.
The narratives of the canonical Gospels which accord with
Buddhist stories do not at all bear a specifically Buddhistic
or even a specifically Indian character; their origin is en-
tirely comprehensible without the hypothesis of an Indian
derivation. On the other hand the stories of the Apoc-
ryphal Gospels, parallels to which exist in Buddhist litera-
ture, show genuine features of India's romantic lore. Why
is this not true of the New Testament? This important
difference seems to me to be of paramount significance in
clearing up the matter. Here at the very beginning of
1 Authorized translation from the German by Lydia G. Robinson.
5IO THE MONIST.
my exposition I have thus stated what may be expected
from it, because I wished to forestall the assumption that
this essay belongs to the numerous attempts to "Buddhize"
the New Testament.
The similarities between the stories of Buddhism and
those of the New Testament have formed an arena where
dilettantism has long had a flourishing existence. There
every resemblance is explained as a loan without pausing
to ask when the Buddhist texts which had been called into
service were written, whether the loan is at all possible
historically, whether the details of the parallels are of
such a kind as to justify the idea of an external connection,
and whether the conditions in India and Palestine were
not so similar that some ideas and stories would naturally
show a certain similarity in spite of an independent origin.
Further, the problem is frequently treated as if its solu-
tion affected the value of Christianity and Buddhism. In
this point of view freedom from prejudice — an essential
condition of all scientific work — is impossible, and in its
place there enters the tendency to prove according to the
author's religious position either that Christianity is free
from Buddhist influences or else that it is under the influ-
ence of Buddhism, whereas in reality the details under dis-
cussion are entirely without importance for the essential
character of either religion. Neither Christianity nor Bud-
dhism has anything to win or to lose from the answer to
the question with regard to their connection. The whole
matter has no religious nor ethical significance but is of
value only for the history of literature.
Under these circumstances a word should be spoken
first of all with regard to the literature really deserving
attention in any consideration of the subject. In spite of
the overproduction in this domain only a few volumes and
treatises are of importance.
To Rudolf Seydel is due the credit of having turned the
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 511
treatment of the theme into scientific channels. In his two
books, "The Gospel of Jesus in Its Relation to Buddha-
legend and Buddha-lore"3 and "Buddha-legends and the
Life of Jesus According to the Gospels,"3 Seydel believes
he has been able to establish the influence of Buddhism,
and indeed of Buddhist literary sources, on the Gospels,
and for this view he has won as much enthusiastic applause
as he has received decided opposition. That he undertook
to prove more than is capable of proof is not denied to-day
even by the supporters of the loan hypothesis.
Of the literature which followed upon his books, the
"Indian Influence on Gospel Narratives"4 of G. A. van
den Bergh van Eysinga and Albert J. Edmunds's Buddhist
and Christian Gospels5 deserve unlimited recognition be-
cause of their scientific method. Both of these works, and
especially the second, represent a sort of retreat from Sey-
del's standpoint; but both advocate the dependence of the
Gospels on Buddhist models although Edmunds regards
the loan question as a secondary consideration. It is a
special merit of Eysinga's work that it rejects Seydel's
groundless hypothesis of a Buddhistically colored Chris-
tian Gospel which the authors of the canonical Gospels are
supposed to have used together with their other sources;
also that it does not seek to render probable any dependence
of Gospel narratives on Buddhistic writings, but only on
Buddhistic materials which have been handed down by oral
tradition. One year before the appearance of the first
German edition of Eysinga's work a similar standpoint
was taken by Otto Pfleiderer in his work on "The Christ
'Das Evangelium von Jesu in seinen Verhiiltnissen zu Buddha-Sage und
Buddha-Lehre, Leipsic, 1882.
1 Die Buddha-Legende und das Leben Jesu nach den Evangelien, Leipsic,
1884 ; 2d ed., Weimar, 1897.
4 Indische EinAusse auf evangelische Erzdhlungen, 2d ed., Gottingen, 1909.
8 Buddhist and Christian Gospels Now First Compared from the Originals.
Edited with English notes on Chinese versions dating from the early Christian
centuries by Prof. Masaharu Anesaki, 4th ed., 2 vols., Philadelphia, 1908, 1909.
512 THE MONIST.
of Primitive Christian Faith in the Light of the History
of Religions."6
Of those works which support the opposite point of
view we would mention as especially valuable and thought-
ful the treatise of Louis de la Vallee Poussin on "Buddhism
and the Canonical Gospels with Reference to a Recent
Publication,"7 (the third edition of the above-mentioned
book of Edmunds) ; the twelfth chapter on "Comparative
Science" of Ernst Windisch's "Birth of Buddha and the
Doctrine of the Transmigration of Souls";8 and Otto
Wecker's "Christ and Buddha."9
Especially noteworthy also is an article, "Christ in
India," published by the American Sanskritist E. Washburn
Hopkins, the successor of W. D. Whitney to the chair of
Sanskrit at Yale, in his book India Old and New.10 This
article may be divided into two parts of unequal value.
In the first, the contents of which are quite unexpected
from the title of the treatise, Hopkins investigates the par-
allels between Christianity and Buddhism in such a care-
ful and plausible way that in the main I can endorse his
expositions. The case is different with the second part
which discusses the relations between Christianity and
Krishnaism, for this seems to me to require thorough test-
ing. In this domain I have arrived at conclusions essen-
tially different from those of Professor Hopkins. Espe-
cially do I place at a later date than he the Christian in-
fluence in Krishnaism and other Indian religions.
In his clear expositions Windisch reaches a result to
which every calm and impartial judge of these matters
' Das Christusbild des urchristlichen Glaubens in religionsgeschichtlicher
Beleuchtung, Berlin, 1903.
7 "Le Bouddhisme et les Evangiles Canoniques a propos d'une publication
recente" in the Revue biblique of July, 1906.
8 Buddha's Geburt und die Lehre von der Seelenwanderung, Leipsic, 1908,
pp. 195-222.
* Christus und Buddha, 3d ed., Munster, 1910.
"New York and London, 1901.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 513
can subscribe: "We should not let the parallels between
Buddhism and Christianity escape us, but the word 'par-
allels' must be understood in its proper sense as lines
which do not touch nor intersect." And with reference to
the ideas and narratives akin to Buddhism which occur in
the writings of the New Testament in spite of the funda-
mental contrast between Christianity and Buddhism, he
says: "What has taken place may perhaps be thus formu-
lated, that ideas and materials having their origin in the
philosophical views of the time and in other religions, and
having come into circulation, have been made serviceable
to Christian ideas."11
This is the utmost that can be conceded to the advo-
cates of Buddhist influence. In reality no influence of
Buddhist tales or Buddhist doctrine upon the New Testa-
ment scriptures has as yet been proved.12 To make this
clear I shall briefly enter into those parallels which, mainly
on account of the age of the corresponding Buddhist
stories, have generally been considered the most convincing
from the point of view of the advocates of Buddhist orig-
inality and Christian dependence.
i. In John ix. 1-3, we read: "And as Jesus passed by,
he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his
disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man,
or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered,
Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, etc."
This incident has been compared to the Buddhistic
(and Brahmanistic) doctrine of transmigration and the
power of deeds to demand retribution. Hopkins gives
u See also Hopkins, pp. 136, 143, 144, 168. The cautious A. J. Edmunds
makes a similar statement in The Open Court, May 1911, p.262: "My general
attitude toward the Buddhist-Christian problem is this : Each religion is in-
dependent in the main, but the younger one arose in such a hot-bed of eclec-
ticism that it probably borrowed a few legends and ideas from the older,
which was quite accessible to it."
11 This is likewise admitted by Eysinga in the words (p. 104) : "We must
grant from the very beginning that it is hard to furnish an absolute proof for
these points."
514 THE MONIST.
expression to a correct fundamental idea when he observes,
"If Christ had been under Buddhistic influence he would
surely have said, This man only." More correctly the
statement should read: If the author of the Fourth Gospel
had been under Buddhist influence, he might have put in
the mouth of Christ only the answer, "This man/'
From the earliest times until the present it is the gen-
eral opinion in India that blindness is the consequence
of having blinded some one else in a previous life. With-
out the conception of an after effect of some such crime
in a former existence, the question the disciples put to
Christ in the Gospel of John would be quite unintelligible.
In spite of this, Hopkins with good reason denies the in-
fluence of a Buddhist source on the Biblical narrative be-
cause there is no corresponding story in the life of Buddha.
In the "Lotus of the Good Law," a Buddhist work
which cannot be placed before 200 A. D., there is a similar
parable of a physician who heals a blind man and accounts
for the blindness in the usual way as the punishment for
previous sins. With regard to the story in John, Professor
Hopkins observes (p. 127) :
"The only parallel in the Gospel account is one of
thought, for it is claimed that such an idea as is here pre-
sented in the disciples' question implies a doctrine that is
specially Buddhistic (namely, sin working out in disease
in a new birth), because it is foreign to Jewish ways of
thinking. But the latter point may be admitted without
any necessity of accepting the explanation, since an Egyp-
tian source is quite as probable as a loan from India."
Later on he adds (p. 136) : "It is possible that the idea
of karma [the law of retribution for sins committed in a
former existence] may have been received from India."
I am surprised that Hopkins here pays no attention to
the second part of the question of the disciples, namely,
whether the sins of the parents were to blame that the
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 515
man was born blind; for this question is based on the
formidable statement of the Old Testament which has
found its confirmation in the modern knowledge of the
burden of heredity and does credit to the Hebrew sense
of reality: "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third
and fourth generation." The second part of the disciples'
question, which accordingly is rooted in a typically Jewish
conception, ought to point the way to a correct interpre-
tation of the first part, for it is a priori improbable that
these two divisions should originate in the thought-cycles
of different nations. Moreover a scientific method will
always endeavor to derive and to understand the religious,
and likewise the philosophical, ideas of a people from the
conceptions of its own nationality, and not until it fails to
find there any satisfactory point of contact will it consider
the possibility of a loan from foreign lands.
In the present case, in order to establish the assump-
tions for the first part of the question as to whether the
blind condition in which the man was born had its cause
in a sin of his own, and was therefore committed in a
previous existence, it is not necessary to go so far away
as India. Nor shall we need to look for it in the Egyptian
religion, which Hopkins considers just as possible as a
loan from India ; especially as the popular Egyptian notion
of the transformability of the human soul after death
does not furnish adequate grounds. Rather must we first
prove whether we shall have to agree with Hopkins that
the notion of the pre-existence or transmigration of the
soul was an idea foreign to Jewish thought at that time.
This is not at all the case, for the idea of transmigration
was by no means unknown to Judeo-Alexandrian philos-
ophy. Philo, whose doctrines are recognized as forming
one basis of the Fourth Gospel, possesses the doctrine of
transmigration in common with the Pythagoreans and Or-
5l6 THE MONIST.
phici, from whom he received it. Zeller writes on this sub-
ject in his "Grecian Philosophy,":13 "Not until they are
separated from the body do those souls that have kept
themselves free from dependence upon it attain again to
unalloyed enjoyment of their higher life;. . . .to others, on
the rare occasions in which he speaks of the subject, Philo
holds out the prospect of transmigration demanded by
his assumptions." The accompanying note gives a series
of illustrative citations. Eysinga and O. Wecker refer also
to the Wisdom of Solomon (viii. 19, 20) where about 100
B. C. the words, "Being good, I came into a body unde-
filed," are put in the mouth of Solomon, and in this utter-
ance they find evidence for a belief among the Alexandrian
Jews in the pre-existence of the soul. Hence we have not
the slightest reason to assume Buddhist influence for the
Fourth Gospel's story of the man born blind; and we can
easily understand how Otto Pfleiderer, who at first saw
in this story one of the best foundations for Seydel's hy-
pothesis, could afterwards withdraw entirely from this
position.
2. When the advocates of Buddhist influence lay special
stress on the legends of Buddha's supernatural birth (which
were in existence three or four centuries before Christ)
this argument is untenable for two reasons. In the first
place because of the enormous difference between the Bud-
dhist and Christian birth legends. Ancient pre-Christian
Buddhism knows nothing of the virginity of the mother
of Buddha ; on the contrary the earlier texts expressly say
that she was not a virgin14 when the Bodhisattva (the
future Buddha) entered her womb in the form of a white
elephant, later to emerge into the light of day from her
right side. The second reason against the dependence of
* Philosophic der Griechen, 4th ed., Ill, 2, p. 446. See also on p. 451:
"Because he derived even the union of soul and body from a voluntary act,
etc."
"Hopkins, page 129.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 517
Christian upon Buddhist legends lies in the well-known
fact that many of the religious founders and teachers in
the Orient — and often enough also outside of the Orient
(Plato!) — are claimed to have been born in a supernatural
manner. Some of these stories, as for instance the Parsi
prophecy of the birth of the future saviour, are much
more easily comparable to the story of the birth of Christ
than are the Indian legends of the supernatural birth of
Buddha.
3. The last parallel to be taken into consideration is the
temptation story reported of both Buddha and Christ, and
indeed in both cases occurring in connection with a fast.
There is only one Buddhist temptation story referring to
the time when Buddha had attained the redeeming en-
lightenment, which need be considered for purposes of
comparison ; but we must mention that Buddhist literature
is remarkably rich in analogous tales in which Buddha
is tempted or annoyed by Satan now in one manner, and
now in another. Christ fasts 40 days before the tempta-
tion, Buddha 28 days after the temptation. Now in India
fasting is just as common a custom as in Palestine, so
that this correspondence which is not even perfectly exact
but qualified by two differences does not testify in favor
of the loan. And in details the temptation stories them-
selves differ just as conspicuously from one another as do
the stories of the supernatural birth of the two religious
teachers.
The reports of the temptation of Christ are well known
(Matt. iv. iff.; Luke iv. 2ff.). The devil demands of
Christ to change stones into bread, to throw himself down
from the pinnacle of the temple and to worship him, the
devil, in order to receive in return as a reward the kingdoms
of the world and their glory. In the Buddhist legends
the tempter endeavors in vain to corrupt Buddha by stim-
ulation of the pleasures of sense; then he attacks him,
5l8 THE MONIST.
equally in vain, with a frightful storm, and finally with his
hellish hosts. Even this form of the story does not appear
until in the later writings. The oldest source knows only
of an attempt of Satan to induce Buddha to enter into Nir-
vana immediately after the attainment of enlightenment
without declaring to mankind the way of salvation and
redeeming them from the power of darkness. In his Bud-
dha15 Oldenberg remarks in a note: "It seems scarcely ne-
cessary to observe that in both cases the same obvious mo-
tives have given rise to the corresponding narratives ; the
notion of an influence exerted by Buddhist tradition on
Christian can not be entertained." This is perfectly true.
In every religion, containing both a saviour of the world
and a Satan, a story of the temptation of the former by the
latter will be invented. The author of a biographical de-
votional work would not let the opportunity for such an
effective scene escape him. Only complete identity of sit-
uation or of single features, which would be comprehen-
sible only on the one and not on the other side from the
connection, could make the idea of a loan seem natural.
Accordingly if in this case the difference between the ac-
counts in the Buddhist source and in the New Testament is
too great for a loan to be considered, then here too there
enters the same further reason as in the case of the birth
stories, against the assumption of dependence of the Chris-
tian narrative upon the Buddhist. In the story of the temp-
tation also the more similar account of the Zarathustra
legend would offer a far better subject of comparison than
the Buddhist tales.
Although those investigators who wish to make the
New Testament appear dependent upon Buddhism draw
into the foreground other parallels, and one declares this
"Fourth German edition, pages 135-136; English translation by William
Hoey, pages 115-116. Compare with this the lucid expositions of Ernst Win-
disch in his work Mara und Buddha (Leipsic, 1895) especially in Chap. IX on
"The Christian Temptation Story."
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 519
and another that to be of particular value, still the three
parallels herein discussed have on the whole aroused the
most general attention. Nevertheless even these prove
nothing for the dependence of the Gospels upon Buddhism,
and the greater part of the material adduced as pointing
in this direction is of less weight.
To these minor stories belong the incident of Simeon
in the temple (Luke ii. 25 ff.) to which Buddhist literature
offers a parallel in the story of the venerable saint Asita,
who hastens to the new-born child Buddha, takes him on
his arm and declares him to be the noblest and most exalted
of mankind ; the stories of the twelve-year-old Jesus found
in the temple (Luke ii. 41 ff.) and of the child Buddha
gone astray in a country outing and found again sunk in
meditation under a tree which casts miraculous shadows
round about although the sun is about to set; calling the
mother of Jesus blessed by a woman of the populace ( Luke
xi. 27) and the calling of the parents and wife of Buddha
blessed by a noble maiden; the mites of the poor widow
who in a Buddhist story also offers two copper pieces in
a collection taken by the priests, whereupon the high priest
praises this gift as more acceptable than the treasures
brought by the wealthy; the Samaritan woman and the
Chandala girl by the spring ; the calling of the disciples re-
lated as taking place on the first public appearance in the
case of both Jesus and Buddha ; the transfiguration of Jesus
and Buddha, and some more.
All these briefly suggested analogies on closer inspec-
tion partly prove not to be analogies at all and partly may
be interpreted very satisfactorily from the similarity of re-
ligious disposition or of external circumstances. Hence we
find that if these parallels — and here I disregard the three
above discussed — were to be looked upon as derived by
loan, then according to the age of the Buddhist sources in
which they occur, Buddhism must have been the borrower
52O THE MONIST.
in almost every case.16 Of the four theses in which R.
Seydel has condensed the result of his comparison of the
material which he collected, the second reads : "Borrowing
upon the Buddhist side is impossible from chronological
reasons and with reference to the history of Buddhism."
Exactly the opposite proves to be the case. For instance
the story of the prodigal son does not occur in Buddhist
literature until 200 A. D. in the "Lotus of the Good Law"
and most of the other parallels, as even Seydel admits, are
to be found in the Lalitavistara, a northern Buddhistic
biography of Buddha dating at the earliest in its present
form from the second or third century after Christ. And
the story of the widow's mites, without question one of
the most remarkable parallels, we have only in a Chinese
version of Ashvaghosha's Buddhacarita. The original
dates back to the first century of the Christian era, but the
Chinese translation not until the end of the fourth cen-
tury or the beginning of the fifth.17 If the obvious ob-
jection is raised that it is possible for these Buddhist tales
to be much older than the literary garb in which we now
have them then this of course can be granted. But who-
ever makes this possibility the basis of argument without
attempting a proof loses all firm ground from beneath his
feet.
As to the previously mentioned parallel between the
stories of Asita and Simeon, it is certain that the Indian
tale would be the original, if it is necessary to assume a
loan on one side to the other.18 Besides this, two of the best
known of the miracles of the New Testament, parallels
"This is also the case with an Old Testament narrative which certainly
did not originate independently a second time, namely the incident of the
judgment of Solomon (i Kings iii. 16-28) which reappears not only in the
Tibetan Kandjur, as was previously thought, but also, as we now know, in a
Jataka. The antiquity of the Jewish story removes all doubt that it is the
original and the Bu.ddhist version is borrowed.
17 Beal, Abstract of Four Lectures on Buddhist Literature in China, Lon-
don, 1882, pp. 98, 99.
18 R. Pischel, Leben und Lehre des Buddha, 17, 18; H. Oldenberg in
Deutsche Rundschau, Jan. 1910, No. 4, Note 30.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 521
to which Max Miiller19 pointed out in two Jatakas (tales
of the previous existence of Buddha), are open to the
suspicion of Indian origin. These parallels deal with the
miracle by which Buddha satisfied the hunger of more than
five hundred people with one loaf of bread ; and with the
story of the disciple who walked upon the water in a state
of ecstasy, then began to sink when he awoke, but by his
power of concentration was finally brought successfully
to the other shore. Although the age of the Buddhist
sources is uncertain in both of these cases also, nevertheless
parallels from the Jatakas are always of greater weight
than from the Lotus and the Lalitavistara.
An Indian origin for the story of Christ and Peter
walking on the water (Matt. xiv. 25 ff.) could be based on
the additional strength that its agreement with the Indian
story receives from the feature that Peter begins to sink
because of his little faith, as does Buddha's disciple in con-
sequence of the terror which overcomes the ecstasy when,
half-way across the river, he observes the waves. The idea
that extraordinary men have possessed the power to walk
or ride in a wheeled vehicle on the water does not belong
so much to the India of Buddhism as to that of Brahman-
ism. In the Mahabharata (VII, 2267, 8) the same thing is
told of the pious and virtuous king Dilipa and Prithu
Vainya (VII, 2402 ).20 Hence this fantastic feature seems
to be genuinely Indian, which of course does not exclude
the possibility that it may have originated independently
elsewhere.
Although in the three cases just mentioned I have been
the first to be able to decide to believe in the Indian deriva-
tion of the New Testament stories, I cannot do so in the
following, although at first glance the similarities are very
striking.
* "Coincidences" in Last Essays, 284 ff .
"°E. W. Hopkins in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society,
Vol. XLIX, No. 194, 1910, p. 38.
522 THE MONIST.
Bealai has called attention to the agreement between
the description in 2 Peter iii. 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, according to
which the world was once destroyed by water and would
be annihilated by fire in the future in order to arise again
new and better, with the Buddhist account of the periodic
destruction of the world by water, fire and wind. But this
agreement is only external and apparent; for the Epistle
of Peter refers to the Old Testament legend of the deluge,
and the belief in the future destruction of the world by
fire is the result of the expectation of the Judgment in
which the fire that is to receive the condemned plays a
decisive part. Moreover here again the analogous presen-
tation of Parseeism offers a closer parallel. That the Par-
see thought-cycle actually has exerted an influence in this
case is rendered very probable by the expectation of a
new world mentioned in verse 13.
Albert J. Edmunds has repeatedly22 laid great stress on
John vii. 38 and xii. 34 where quotations from the scrip-
ture (ypa<f>Tj) and the "law" (yo/xos) are adduced that
cannot be pointed out in Hebrew literature but can be, as
he thinks, in the Buddhistic Pali canon. Although various
distinguished scholars have become convinced that this
point is established (Eysinga only in the first instance, not
in the second), yet I cannot agree with them; for in these
two cases also the discrepancies seem to me to be too great
for me to be able to believe in a connection.
In John vii. 38 where it reads: "He that believeth on
me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow
rivers of living water," we have here a figurative expres-
sion used by many races for the stimulating and vivifying
influence which proceeds from the believer. This is en-
tirely different from the great miracle of the Tathagata
(Buddha) which cannot be imitated by his followers,
* Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha. London, 1875, Introd. x, Note i.
"Buddhist Texts in John, Philadelphia-London, 1906; and "Buddhist
Texts Quoted in the Fourth Gospel," Open Court, 1911, 257 ff.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 523
namely that he has the power to have fire and water
stream out from his body ( Patisambhidamagga I, 53).
For the second passage (John xii. 34) : "The people
answered him, We have heard out of the law that Christ
abideth forever," the alleged source discovered by Ed-
munds in the Mahaparinibbanasutta (Dighanikaya 16,
translated by Rhys Davids in Sacred Books of the East,
XI, 40) reads as follows: "Anando, any one who has
practised the four principles of psychical power, devel-
oped them, made them active and practical, pursued them,
accumulated and striven to the height thereof — can, if
he so should wish, remain (on earth) for the aeon or
the rest of the aeon. Now, Anando, the Tathagato has
practised and perfected these; and if he so should wish,
the Tathagato could remain (on earth) for the aeon or
the rest of the aeon." This parallel in my judgment loses
all significance through the conditional clause that the Tat-
hagato could remain on earth to the end of the present aeon
(Kappa) if he so should wish — which luckily for him he
has exactly not wished.
That the citations in the two passages of the Gospel of
John cannot be verified in Hebrew literature does not seem
to be so serious to me as to the learned counsel in defence
of the Buddhist origin; for either the two passages may
not have been quoted literally or the Hebrew source may
have been lost.
Finally there is one more very important preliminary
question, bearing upon the loan hypothesis, which must be
duly considered. Do the evidences of intercommunication
at all permit the assumption that as early as the first cen-
tury after Christ, or earlier, Buddhist legends and ideas
had found their way into Palestine? The reports here to
be taken into account are but scanty.23 They admit, to be
"Compare among others the notices in Wecker (3d ed., p. 33 ff.) and the
literature given in his note on page 33; also Edmunds's introductory chapter
524 THE MONIST.
sure, the possibility of the assumption that Buddhist in-
fluences might have penetrated to Palestine by way of
Alexandria and still more probably by way of Antioch in
Syria — these are the routes which Eysinga makes the his-
torical foundation of his hypothesis — but they are not apt
to raise this possibility to a serviceable degree of probabil-
ity for as early a period as the first post-Christian century.
For those who, like Eysinga, rest upon the Loman-Van
Manen standpoint that the whole New Testament orig-
inated in the second century, this deliberation has little
significance. But this standpoint does not have the support
of a single serious theologian in Germany, and it is un-
tenable for the reason that it is founded on the hypothesis
that the whole collection of Pauline epistles is not genuine.
We may safely follow so prudent and sensible a leader as
Adolf Julicher who carefully weighs all circumstances.
With the exception of the pastoral letters (Timothy and
Titus) which are practically not to be considered at all for
our purpose, and the so-called Catholic epistles (i and 2
Peter, James, Jude, i, 2, and 3 John) which belong to the
second century, Julicher brings only three of the New Tes-
tament writings down to the beginning of the second cen-
tury, placing the Acts at 105 A. D.,24 the Gospel of Luke
somewhere between 80- no,25 and the Gospel of John in
the same time as his letters, namely between 100 and I25.26
In the second century after Christ the circumstances
mentioned above are slowly altering. With the increase
"The Possibility of Connection Between Christianity and Buddhism" (Vol. I,
4th ed., pp. in ff.).
** Einleitung in das neue Testament, 5th and 6th editions, pp. 395-397.
K Ibid., 295-296; still he goes beyond the year 100 with hesitancy, and his
results sound different from the words of Pischel (Leben und Lehre des Bud-
dha, 19) who in order to render probable the Indian origin of the story of
Simeon says: "The Gospel of Luke is assigned by the critics to the second
century A. D." But when Pischel directly before this remarks, "Still it is
not an accident that all contact of this kind between Christianity and Bud-
dhism is to be found in Luke," a glance at the parallels above discussed will
show that this is not correct.
"Ibid., 212, 218, 359.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 525
of communication, to which historical reports bear witness,
Indian thoughts and materials actually press towards the
west and find entrance in Christian literature. Here be-
longs the loan of the fish-symbol from northern Buddhism
for which Pischel in his essay on "The Origin of the Chris-
tian Fish-Symbol"27 thinks he had found the historical
foundation in the mingling of religions now brought to
light in Turkestan. A loan by this route may be ques-
tioned, for the combination of the elements of Christian,
Zarathustrian, Buddhist and Chinese religions before the
third century is not attested by the remarkable discoveries
in Turkestan, while the Christian fish-symbol is assigned
by Tertullian to the end of the second century.
The probability is that the transference of the Buddhist
fish-symbol into the Christian world has traveled ahead on
the same path which further on will be shown for the re-
ception of Buddhist narratives in Christian legend, that
is to say by Bactria, Persia and Syria. As to the fact of
the loan itself I no longer question it. I confess that I did
so for a long time, beacuse I thought with Oldenberg
(ZDMG. 59, 625 ff.) that the origin of the Christian fish-
symbol could be explained more simply and with entire
adequacy by the familiar acrostic28 without the aid of for-
eign influences. The objections which Eysinga has raised29
have convinced me that the ichthus can not have originated
from that acrostic. When Eysinga demonstrates that the
close sequence of these five words was not at all customary
in the usage of the language and in fact cannot be found in
antiquity ; that the combination of these letters into an
acrostic did not resemble the particular size of the initial
letters in inscriptions, nothing was left to me but the as-
sumption that the reference of the ichthus to Christ is not
17 Der Ursprung des christlichen Fischsymbols ( Sitzungsberichte der Ber-
liner Akademie, 1905).
* txOvt = 'Itjffovs ipiarbt Ocov vlbt ffurrip.
" ZDMG, 60, 210-212.
526 THE MONIST.
original, but that the word first became serviceable to the
Christians by the coincidence of the letters and then lost
its foreign aspect.
Particularly convincing to me is the appearance of the
vase of Piprava found in Buddha's grave (hence dating
from the year 477 B. C.) with its handle in the form of a
fish.30 A comparison of this ancient representation of the
Buddhist symbol with the numerous Christian fish pic-
tures in the catacombs will probably act upon others also
with the directness in which sense-perception always ex-
cels reflection. It seems to me now to be just as impos-
sible for the far-fetched fish-symbol to have been made a
symbol of the Saviour in Christianity independently of
Buddhism.
In India the literary evidence of this symbol, as is well
known, leads us back as far as the Brahmana literature.
Manu, the father of mankind, is saved from the great
flood by the supernatural fish (Satapatha Br. i. 8. I, i-io)
which later interpretation recognizes as the god Vishnu.
But the actual beginnings of the fish-symbol reach back
still more remotely in the ancient Semitic Orient, whence
it penetrated into India, to the Babylonian fish divinities
and the legend of the pious Par-napishtim whom the fish-
god Ea rescues from the deluge. Yes we may go even
farther and say that the origin of the symbol itself may
be followed back to the primitive condition of mankind
in those times when man still saw in many of the animals
that surpassed him in strength and ability, beings of a
higher order which he therefore deified. The fish belongs
to the oldest totem animals and because of its ability to
swim and to live under the water it aroused the admiration
of mankind still in the state of savagery.31
** See the illustration in Pischel's Leben und Lehre des Buddha, 45, and
"Buddhist Relics" in The Open Court, Jan. 1910, p. 33.
"Compare the useful compilations of Paul Carus in his article "Animal
Symbolism," The Open Court, February 1911, p. 79.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 527
The Indian fish-symbol which reached Christianity
through the mingling of pagan cults among the people of
the Mediterranean has led me away from my proper theme
to an excursion into remotest antiquity. We shall now
return to the second century when Buddhist elements be-
gin to penetrate into the Christian world.
What was improbable with regard to the canonical
Gospels on historical considerations, and on closer investi-
gation of details proved unfounded, does not hold true with
the Apocryphal Gospels. With this remark I come back
to what I said at the beginning of this essay.
The Apocryphal books of the New Testament are
mainly spurious Gospels and stories of the apostles belong-
ing mostly to the third, fourth and fifth centuries, some
however being older like the Proto-Gospel of James which
dates back to the end of the second century. In fantastic
style and with a preference for adventurous miracles these
Apocryphal Gospels treat mainly of the childhood but also
of the passion and resurrection of Jesus.
The parallels with Buddhist tales in the Apocrypha
are of an entirely fabulous character, and are entirely dif-
ferent from those claimed to exist in the canonical Gospels.
Here we have to do with genuine Indian miracle tales —
not miracles of situation for purposes of edification but
quite unheard-of miracles the invention of which had for
its sole purpose to arouse the astonishment of the hearer
or reader.
Since there is no law to decide here between a loan
and an independent invention, the final word about the
main point must be left to scientific discernment. Who-
ever possesses a direct insight for what is right, which
often is more important for the advancement of scientific
knowledge than scholarship or industry, will not doubt
for an instant that the stories herein to be adduced from
the Apocryphal Gospels have been transferred from Bud-
528 THE MONIST.
dhist legends in which they likewise appear. For me the
strongest proof that the Buddhist influence first entered
into Christianity in the Apocrypha is exactly the funda-
mental difference between these parallels and those of the
canonical Gospels.
Credit is due Ernst Kuhn for having first pointed out
loans from Buddhism in the Apocryphal Gospels in the
Gurupujakaumudi.32
In the Lalitavistara there are two stories which on
account of philological reasons may be counted among
the older component parts of the work. They relate how
the Bodhisattva (the future Buddha) "was once brought
in festive procession to the temple of the gods and at his
entrance the lifeless images of the gods stood up from their
thrones in order to throw themselves at the feet of the
Bodhisattva; further how, when brought to school, he
astonished his teacher by the most exact knowledge of the
sixty-four kinds of script and during the recitation of the
alphabet wise sayings were heard, to the great edification
of the whole school" (page 116). We meet with the first
of these two stories in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, and
with the second in the Gospel of Thomas in such striking
agreement that their Buddhist origin stares us in the
face. Particularly convincing as a genuine Indian idea in
this second story is the mystical meaning of letters which
the Christ-child explains to his teacher. Nor can it be a
chance correspondence that both in the narrative of the
Lalitavistara and in the Gospel of Thomas the teacher
falls unconscious to the ground at the appearance in the
school of the miraculous child.
The adoption of these two stories in the collection of
Christian legends in the period between the end of the
second and the middle of the fourth centuries is attested
M Presented at the soth anniversary of Albrecht Weber's Doctorate Jubilee,
Leipsic, 1896, pp. 116-119.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY.
by Irenaeus, Eusebius and Athanasius. These fortunate
observations of Ernst Kuhn must arouse the expectation
that a more exact investigation of Apocryphal Gospels and
stories of the apostles would bring to light many other
Buddhistic elements. Eysinga has fulfilled this expecta-
tion even though perhaps still more material may even-
tually be found. This scholar has revealed the following
connections which can not be reasoned away by the as-
sumption of accidental correspondence.
In the Lalitavistara we read that while still in his moth-
er's womb the future Buddha emitted a marvelous light,
and the Brahman sources relate the same of Krishna. Since
the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew relates the same phenom-
enon of the birth of Jesus, at the same time adding "nulla
pollntio sangninis facta est in nascente, nulhis dolor in par-
turiente" which in Buddhist sources (the Digha- and Maj-
jhima-Nikaya) is likewise related of the birth of the Bod-
hisattva, the Buddhist origin of these accounts is perfectly
evident. The declaration in the last-named source that
the Bodhisattva could stand as soon as he was born and
took seven steps towards the north, Eysinga has well asso-
ciated with the story in the Proto-Gospel of James that
the Virgin Mary when six months old took seven steps
towards her mother as soon as she had been placed upon
the ground. For the further establishment of the Indian
derivation of this story I might add that the concept of
the "seven steps" has been well established in India since
antiquity. In Vedic times the seven steps of the young
pair belonged to the universally prevalent marriage cus-
toms.33
Far more remarkable however is the following paral-
lel : According to the Lalitavistara all motion in the world
of nature and humanity stands still before the birth of
*J. Jolly, "Recht und Sitte" in Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie
und Alter tumskunde, II, 8, p. 54.
53O THE MONIST.
the Bodhisattva. The partly opened flowers cease to bloom ;
the winds stop blowing; the rivers and brooks no longer
flow ; sun, moon and stars stand still ; all human activity is
paralyzed. According to the Proto-Gospel of James, Jo-
seph notices the same miracles before the birth of Jesus.
He looks into the heavens and sees how everything in the
atmosphere and the sky has suddenly come to a stand. The
rest of the report which I here quote in the words of
Eysinga is apparently a more detailed rendering of the
shorter description of the wonderful stoppage of events
in the Lalitavistara : "Joseph himself walked around
and yet didn't walk around. He saw that laborers sat
around a platter; those who were chewing did not chew,
those who were helping themselves did not help themselves ;
some who were putting food to their mouth put nothing
in their mouth but all looked upward. Sheep driven ahead
stood still, the shepherd wished to strike them with his
staff but his raised hand remained uplifted. The goats
stretched their mouths to the water but drank not. Every-
thing in its course stood still."
In Buddhist literature we have also several parallels
to the story in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew that at the
command of the Christ-child a palm-tree bowed its
branches to the earth and offered its fruit, which other-
wise was out of reach, to the travel-worn and thirsty
Mary. Among these parallels we will consider especially
by way of comparison the story of the trees which bent
their branches to the help of Maya the mother of Buddha
when her confinement took her by surprise in the open
air. The motive of this and similar miraculous accounts
is genuinely Indian. However, when Eysinga reaches
back to the Veda and wishes to include among the Indian
stories of trees which bend their branches the passage in
the Rigveda where the woods are said to bow from fright
before the attack of the Maruts, the companions of Indra,
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 53!
and the earth and mountains to tremble, this is not cor-
rect. In this case we have simply to do with a description
of natural phenomena produced by the thunderstorm per-
sonified by the Maruts. Entirely different is the fabulous
Buddhistic motive of the trees bowing under magical com-
pulsion or from compassion.
In the domain of apocryphal stories of apostles belongs
in this connection the account of the missionary activity of
St. Thomas. In the Acts of St. Thomas the Apostle, the
substance of which dates from the first half of the third
century, it is related that Christ sold Thomas as a slave
into India in order that he might build a palace for King
Gundaphorus who had sent to Jerusalem for a skilled
architect. When Thomas spent the money that had been
given him for its construction for benevolences among the
poor and was to be punished by death by the enraged
king he was saved by the declaration that he had built
a palace in heaven for the king with these treasures.
Thomas then succeeded in converting this king and his
brother Gad to Christianity, but was finally executed at
the command of King Mesdeus by lance-thrusts after hav-
ing performed numerous miracles and converted multi-
tudes of people.
Since historically we know nothing more of Thomas
than that he was one of the twelve Apostles (whom Well-
hausen looks upon as a body instituted after the death of
Jesus) this story has been considered from the first to be
legendary in its main features. If the activity of St.
Thomas in East Persia and the neighboring Indian country
is unhistorical, the same is true of the later legends accord-
ing to which the apostle is supposed to have founded in
South India the community of the so-called "Thomas Chris-
tians." Since we have learned from coins and from an
inscription that a King Gundaphorus, or rather Gonda-
phares, ruled over Parthia and other East-Iranian districts
532 THE MONIST.
as well as the border lands of India, an entire change of
view has taken place among French and English-speaking
indologists. There the conviction has spread in wide cir-
cles, without reference to the facts, that before the middle
of the second century Christianity had not succeeded in
extending its limits to any great breadth, that that part
of the legend which tells of St. Thomas's activities in
Parthia and in the northwestern part of India is credible.
Not only Sylvain Levi and Hopkins have given utterance
to this effect, but also the English scholars W. R. Philipps,
Fleet, Grierson, W. W. Hunter and others. We would
protest vigorously against this view. What Alfred von
Gutschmid declared in the year 1864 in his famous treatise
on "Names of Kings in the Apocryphal Stories of the
Apostles"34 still stands to-day. Gutschmid rightly empha-
sizes the great intrinsic improbability that Christianity
could have spread to such a remote territory in so short
a time, before it had set a firm foot anywhere in Western
Persia, and he adds the further information that the legend
of St. Thomas is only a transformed Buddhist missionary
story. According to the legend in the A eta Thomae,
Thomas travels from Jerusalem "by the sea" to the realm
of Gondaphares and by this remarkably round-about way
reaches the Indian city Andrapolis, that is, the city of the
Andhra, a South Indian people who attained great power
in the first century of our era and extended their sway to
the vicinity of the present Bombay.
The localization of the "Andhra-City" has caused much
contention since the more original and somwhat more de-
tailed Syrian text of the Acts of Thomas, which was not
yet known in Gutschmid's time, has been discovered and
has demonstrated that the Greek version is a translation
of the Syrian text. In this the city is called SNDRVK
which can not easily be identified with Andrapolis. Since
M In the Kleine Schriften, edited by Franz Riihl, Vol. II, pp. 332 ff.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 533
space forbids a closer investigation of this question here
I will only observe, as Professor Th. Noldeke has kindly
informed me, that the only manuscript of the Syrian text
belongs to the year 936, hence to a very late time. There-
fore a corruption in the name of the city, which can be
read Sandaruk, Sandruk, Sandarok, Sandrok, or even still
differently, is certainly not excluded. The Greek trans-
lator would hardly have invented the name Andrapolis but
may have found an equivalent for it in his Syrian original.
Nevertheless even if the consideration against Andrapolis
can not be gainsaid and Sandaruk should prove finally to
be genuine and to belong in the vicinity of the Indus, still
Gutschmid's theory of the transformation of an originally
Buddhist story of conversion into the legend of St. Thomas
would not be injured in the slightest degree.
According to the legend St. Thomas would have trav-
eled a route perfectly suitable for a Buddhist missionary
to have traveled from a sacred spot in Ceylon but not for
a Christian apostle coming from Jerusalem before the
middle of the first century. Moreover, if we accept all the
other evidence brought forward by Gutschmid, especially
the fact that exactly in the time mentioned by the Thomas
legend White India or Arachosia (hence the very realm
of Gondaphares) was actually converted to Buddhism, we
can no longer doubt that the Thomas legend is indeed only
a remodeled Buddhist history of conversion. This remodel-
ing could hardly have taken place before the beginning of
the third century.
In the sixth century the Buddha legend of northern
Buddhism had traveled west across Iran in the form of the
romance of Barlaam and Joasaph ( Greek form ; Josaphat
in Latin) and on account of the ingenious parables inserted
in the romance had found its way into the literature of
all Europe. This story tells of the conversion of the Indian
Prince Joasaph by the ascetic Barlaam. In both characters
534 THE MONIST.
is impersonated the one Buddha. How and why this char-
acter has been so doubled is related in Ernst Kuhn's Bar-
laam und Joasaph** an essay which bears witness to an
astonishingly broad and profound scholarship. Here it is
pointed out that Joasaph has originated by the transposi-
tion of the Oriental letters in the Indian word Bodhisattva.
This romance therefore is of special interest in our investi-
gation because it has given occasion for the adoption of the
characters Barlaam and Joasaph among the saints of both
the Greek and Roman Catholic churches. In the latter it
is first mentioned in a list of saints of the fourteenth cen-
tury. However it is amusing to note that the Bodhisattva
distorted into "Josaphat" is to be found in such strange
company, and further that his relics (Os et pars spinae
dor si) have been worshiped in Venice, then in Lisbon and
later in Antwerp, and that a church has been erected in
Palermo to St. Josaphat.
I have mentioned above the Buddhist Jatakas (page
521). I must now enter more particularly into this litera-
ture because the origin of certain Catholic legends to be
treated hereafter is to be found in it, and this loan would
not be intelligible without some knowledge of the period
and character of the sources.
Of particular significance — and indeed not merely for
the investigation of the doctrines and conditions of Indian
Buddhism — are those tales of edification known by the name
Jataka, in which are related the experiences of the Bodhi-
sattva, the future Buddha. In these "stories of former
births" Buddha speaks in his own person and relates in
connection with some event or other from his own time,
and in application to the situation produced by it, that in a
former existence as a man, a fabulous being or an animal,
he has had a similar experience. Accordingly Buddha is
the hero of all these stories the scenes of which are laid
"Munich, 1893.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 535
in earlier times. If several other individuals or animals
appear in the stories those which do just and right things
are explained at the conclusion of the tale to be forms of
the friends and followers of Buddha in a former existence,
the wicked ones are identified with his enemies and oppo-
nents. The subject matter of these stories is in part very
old, in part the material of later inventions ; but the latest
hardly extend later than the third century after Christ. A
splendid characterization of the Jataka tales may be found
in Oldenberg's "Literature of Ancient India."36
These fanciful and didactic tales recur in great part
in the later expository and entertaining literature of India,
for they have enjoyed an extraordinary popularity among
the Hindus who have always been particularly fond of
fairy tales and fables. Many of them have then traveled
from their home over Persia, Arabia and Syria farther
into the Occident and have become the common property
of all Indo-Germanic nations. In interior, northern and
eastern Asia too they have spread simultaneously with
Buddhism.
The oldest collection of Jataka tales — and at the same
time the earliest source we possess of all Indian fiction37 —
is written in Pali, the sacred language of the southern
Buddhists, and comprises no less than 547 tales. Their
earliest ingredients, the verse incorporated among the
prose, originated about 400 B. C. while the subject matter
itself, as we have already said, is in part much older. We
possess a Sanskrit version of 34 of the most favorite of the
stories written by Aryasura in North India under the
title Jatakamala, "Cycle of Stories of Former Births"38
"Literatur des Alien Indien, pp. 103-129.
" Some beginnings found in the Veda we may here leave out of considera-
tion since they have found no continuation in the Jataka literature.
"The Pali original of the Jataka book has been edited by the Danish
scholar V. Fausboll (7 vols., London, 1877-97), and under the direction of
E. B. Cowell it has been translated into English by various young indologists
(6 vols., Cambridge, 1895-1907). Three volumes of a German translation by
the Munich scholar Julius Dutoit have appeared (Leipsic, 1908-1911). Of
536 THE MONIST.
The period of this author is not certain, but since another
work of Aryasura's was translated into Chinese in 434
A. D.,39 the Jatakamala can not have been written later
than in the beginning of the fourth century. For in those
days one century at least was necessary for a book to be-
come famous enough for its translation into a foreign lan-
guage to be considered.
Though the Sanskrit Jatakas of Aryasura must be con-
sidered in general as later than the Pali Jatakas, yet the
material present in the Sanskrit version is in part as old
and in individual cases even more original. I mention
this because the circumstance is important in connection
with the exposition given below.
A few of the Jatakas have been recognized as the
sources of Christian legends of saints.
In the first place the question will be asked, by what
route this Buddhist material succeeded in reaching Chris-
tian legend lore. In reply we may say that as early as in
the beginning of the third century, as we know from Bar-
desanes and Origen, there were Christians in Parthia,
Media, Persia, Bactria and even in northwestern India,
that is to say, in lands in which Buddhism had penetrated
at a still earlier date. Accordingly, there were in those
days Christians who had come into touch with the Bud-
dhistic world-conception and civilization ; and this has been
the case to an even greater degree in the succeeding cen-
turies in other parts of central Asia, especially in Turkes-
tan which through the epoch-making discoveries of Griin-
wedel, Le Coq, Stein and others we have learned to recog-
nize as the classical land for the mingling of religions.
translations of single parts we shall only mention here the Buddhist Birth
Stories of T. W. Rhys Davids (Vol. I, London, 1880) which contain the first
40 tales. The Jatakamala has been edited by Hendrik Kern (Boston, 1891)
and translated into English by J. S. Speyer (Oxford, 1895).
89 No. 1349 in Bunyiu Nanjio's Catalogue of the Chinese Translation of
the Buddhist Tripitaka, the Sacred Canon of the Buddhists in China and
Japan, 1883.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 537
The Christians must have been attracted by the extra-
ordinarily mild and beneficent nature of the Buddhist monks
whose ethical teachings seemed a surprisingly similar copy
of their own views. When all conditions necessary for
a closer intercourse were present, interesting stories must
have been communicated from one side to the other.
But the Buddhists were established first in the place,
and before the Christians arrived they had erected cloisters
(vihara) and monuments for relics or memorials (stupa).
More than one hundred such stupas, immense buildings
in the form of a hemisphere or bell resting directly upon
the ground, have been counted along the ancient Indo-
Bactrian royal road beginning from Mankyala on the
eastern bank of the Indus.40 The Buddhists used to dec-
orate these edifices with pictorial representations of scenes
from the favorite Jatakas. Such illustrations we find as
early as 200 B. C. on the famous stupa of Bharhut in the
central part of northern India. These reliefs on the stupas
and in the vestibules of Buddhist cloisters certainly made
a deep impression on the imagination of the Christians,
and must have promoted the borrowing and transformation
of Buddhist stories for Christian purposes. But directly
and without oral explanations they could not have brought
about the birth of the Christian legends.
If besides the familiar story of Barlaam and Joasaph
only the two Christian saint legends of which I shall speak
later on have hitherto been shown to be transformations
of Jataka stories, I hope that this essay will cause some one
of the Catholic scholars intimately acquainted with Chris-
tian legend lore to give some study to the Jataka literature
which hitherto has been neglected in this connnection. It
is very probable that many more sources will be found
there either for entire legends of the saints or for some
40 See L. von Schroeder's account in Indiens Literatur und Kttltur, 765,
Note, 6.
538 THE MONIST.
of their individual features. Particularly suited to this
task would be H. Giinter, the author of the Legenden-
studien, who in his latest valuable work on "The Christian
Legends of the Occident"41 has established in a compre-
hensive manner the sources for the motives of the legends
of Christian saints in pre-Christian times without however
taking Buddhism into consideration.
I. ST. EUSTACHIUS (EUSTATHIUS) PLACIDUS.42
The legend of St. Eustace, whose memory has been
celebrated in the Roman church since the sixth century,
divides naturally into two parts: the first treats of his
wonderful conversion,43 the second of his sufferings and
martyr death.
Placidus (in the Greek text Plakidas) was the highest
commander under Trajan and stood in great favor with
the emperor. He was a very virtuous man of a mild and
gentle disposition but brave and a great hunter. By his
wife Tatiana, who like himself clung to the pagan faith,
he had two sons whose childhood was surrounded by the
splendor of their father's position. One day Placidus went
out hunting and came upon a herd of deer among which
he saw one of conspicuous beauty. This one left the herd,
enticed Placidus away from his companions into the dens-
est thicket of the forest and then remained standing above
a rocky abyss. As Placidus approached the stag he saw
between the lofty antlers a bright sparkling cross with the
picture of the Saviour. The stag ( according to one version
41 Die christliche Legende des Abendlands. Heidelberg, 1910.
u M. Caster, "The Nigrodha-miga-Jataka and the Life of Saint Eustathius
Placidus" in the Journal of the R. A. S. of Great Britain and Ireland, 1894, pp.
335-349 (cf. also 1893, pp. 869-871); J. G. Speyer, "Buddhistische elementen
in eenige episoden uit de legenden van St. Hubertus en St. Eustachius,"
Theologisch Tijdschrift, 40, Leyden, 1906, pp. 427-453.
"This is related by John of Damascus who lived in the eighth century.
Stadler and Heim, Vollstandiges Heiligen-Lexikon, II, 129, Speyer, 431. This
legend must therefore have been known still earlier in the Byzantine world.
On page 435 Speyer places the Greek text of the Vita Eustathii in the A eta
Sanctorum (Sept. 20) in the fifth century.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 539
the Saviour from the cross) raised his voice and said:
"Placidus, why pursuest thou me? I am Christ whom thou
worshipest without knowing it. Go back to the city and
be baptized." Placidus returned to his home, told his wife
what had happened to him, and that same night was bap-
tized by the bishop of Rome together with his wife and
children. In baptism he received the name Eustachius or,
as in the Greek text, Eustathius.
This legend of conversion by means of a stag with the
crucifix was later transferred to other saints, Hubert, Fan-
tinus, Julian, Felix of Valois, and several others.44 The
best known of these is St. Hubert, but in his biography
the appearance of Christ in the form of a stag is not nearly
so well accounted for as in the original story of St. Eustace.
The second part of the Eustace legend takes up much
more space in the original sources than the first, but here
it will be sufficient to give a brief summary. The period
of Eustace's suffering and probation begins when he loses
all his property and when all his slaves, both male and
female, die of the plague. Since he is ashamed to live in
utter poverty in the place where previously he had been
rich and highly honored, he wanders out with his wife and
two young sons to Egypt. Because he has not enough
money to pay for the passage the skipper permits him and
his sons to disembark but seizes upon his beautiful wife
whom he retains as a slave. Soon afterwards Eustace
loses both his sons who are seized by wild animals, one by
a lion and the other by a wolf, while fording a river. In
utter abandonment Eustace earns a livelihood as a day
laborer. After fifteen years Trajan remembers his old
general, for he has need of his help to suppress an uprising,
and causes him to be sought throughout the entire Roman
Empire. In spite of his wretched condition Eustace is
recognized and brought back to Rome where he again
** Speyer, 430, 434 ; Gunter, Legendenstuditn, 38, 39.
54O THE MONIST.
assumes command of the troops whom he leads to victory
over the rebels. Upon this expedition he finds in a village
on the bank of the Hydaspes( !) not only his wife, who
in spite of all temptations had remained faithful and pious,
but also both his sons for they had not been swallowed by
the beasts but were rescued by peasants. The victorious
general returns to Rome with his family and is received
with great friendliness by Hadrian who in the meantime
has succeeded Trajan. However, when Hadrian learns
that his general refuses to offer sacrifices in the temple of
Apollo and confesses that he is a Christian, he falls into
a rage and commands Eustace and his wife and children to
be thrown to the wild beasts. But the lion who was set
upon the martyrs in the arena would not touch them, so
Hadrian compelled them to be thrown into a red hot iron
bull where, although they met their death, yet not a hair
of their heads was singed. When three days later the
people wished to remove their remains the four corpses
were found uninjured and shone brighter than snow — a
miracle which made the most profound impression on the
spectators including Hadrian.
The most remarkable thing about this legend is the fab-
ulous feature of the Saviour appearing in the form of a
talking stag which is entirely foreign to Christian concep-
tions. The attempt to refer this motive to ancient folklore45
or to explain it by reference to early Christian symbolism
can not be considered as successful. In Wetzer and Welte's
Kirchenlexikon*6 we read : "As the passage in Psalms xlii.
2 compares the longing of the soul for God to the panting
of the hart after the water brooks, so early Christian art
took up this idea and enriched it by reference to John iv.
13, so that the stag became the image of the believer's
soul which thirsteth for streams of grace obtainable through
Christ." At this Speyer justly observes that neither this
"Giinter, Legendenstudien, 38. "S. v. "Hirsch"; Speyer, 436.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 54!
figurative language nor the use made in early Christian
art of the symbol of the stag as a characterization of the
soul longing for the grace of God or baptism can be used
for the explanation of the cross-bearing stag of the legend
of St. Eustace, for in this legend the stag does not stand
for the soul thirsting for Christ but represents Christ him-
self.
Whatever seems puzzling in the appearance of the
Saviour in this animal form disappears when we recognize
that we have here to do with a transformation of a Bud-
dhist Jataka tale. That Buddha was an animal in his for-
mer existences and several times the king of stags is a
genuine Buddhistic idea occurring frequently in the Ja-
takas.
The direct source of the first part of the legend of St.
Eustace is Jataka 12 in the Pali collection. The discovery
was made independently by two scholars and this fact cer-
tainly speaks in favor of the correctness of the observation :
first by the Englishman Gaster in 1893, and then by the
eminent Dutch Sanskritist Speyer who knew nothing of
Caster's article mentioned above in Note 42, when in the
year 1906 he developed and placed on a surer foundation
the same thought from a careful investigation of the ear-
liest Greek text of the legend of St. Eustace in the Acta
Sanctorum.
That the Jataka just mentioned with the title Nigrodha-
miga-jataka, 'The Story of the Fig-Tree Stag/'47 is suffi-
ciently old to be looked upon as the source for the first
part of the legend of St. Eustace, there is no doubt. The
story was widely known as early as the third century B. C,
for there are three scenes from it represented in a relief
on the stupa of Bharhut mentioned on page 53/,48
47 The word miga means "stag" as well as roe and gazelle and is usually
translated as gazelle. When Dutoit in Note 3 to Jatakam I, 64, renders ni-
grodha as "banana-tree" he confuses the word "banyan" as used by the Eng-
lish, which is a name for the ficus indica, with "banana."
** See the illustration in Rhys Davids's Buddhist India, London, 1903, 193.
542 THE MONIST.
For the following account of the Jataka story I have
utilized the translation of Dutoit with a few alterations
and omissions.*
* * *
Once on a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in
Benares, the Bodhisattva was reincarnated as a stag. At
his birth he was golden of hue; his eyes were like round
jewels ; the sheen of his horns was as of silver ; his mouth
was red as a bunch of scarlet cloth; his fore hoofs were
as though lacquered ; his tail was like the yak's and he was
as big as a young foal. Attended by five hundred deer,
he dwelt in the forest under the name of King Nigrodha
(Banyan) Stag. And hard by him dwelt another stag-
king, also with an attendant herd of 500 deer who was
named Sakha, and was as golden of hue as the Bodhisattva.
In those days the King of Benares was passionately
fond of hunting and always had meat at every meal. Every
day he mustered the whole of his subjects, townsfolk and
countryfolk alike, to the detriment of their business, and
went hunting. Thought the people, "This king of ours stops
all our work. Let us supply food and water for the deer in
his own pleasaunce, and, having driven in a number of
deer, bar them in and deliver them over to the king." And
so they did. All the townsfolk got together and drove the
herds of the Nigrodha Stag and the Sakha Stag into the
royal pleasaunce and closed the gate.
The king betook himself to the pleasaunce, and in look
ing over the herd saw among them two golden deer to
whom he granted immunity; somtimes he would go of
his own accord and shoot a deer to bring home ; sometimes
his cook would go and shoot one. At first sight of the bow
the deer would dash off trembling for their lives, but after
receiving two or three wounds they grew weary and faint
* The English is mainly that of Robert Chalmers (Cowell ed.) except in
those slight points in which his translation varies from Dutoit's. — Tr,
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 543
and died. The herd of deer told this to the Bodhisattva
who sent for Sakha and said : "Friend, the deer are being
destroyed in great numbers, and though they can not es-
cape death let them not be needlessly wounded. Let the
deer go to the butcher's block by turns, one day one from
my herd and next day one from thine; the deer on whom
the lot falls shall go to the place of execution and lie down
with his head on the block." To this the other agreed.
Now one day the lot fell on a pregnant doe of the herd
of Sakha, and she went to Sakha and said, "Lord, I am
with young; order me to be passed over." "No, I can
not make thy turn another's," said he. Finding no favor
with him the doe went on to the Bodhisattva and told him
her story. He answered, "Very well; go thy way, and I
will see that the turn passes over thee." And therewithal
he went himself and laid his head upon the block. Cried
the cook on seeing him, 'Why here is the king of the deer
who was granted immunity ! What does this mean ?" And
off he ran to tell the king. The moment he heard of it the
king mounted his chariot and arrived with a large follow-
ing. "My friend, king of the deer," he said on beholding
the Bodhisattva, "did I not grant thee immunity? How
comes it that thou liest here?" The Bodhisattva replied,
"O great king, there came to me a doe big with young,
who prayed me to let her turn fall on another; and as I
could not pass the doom on to another, I have taken her
doom on myself and have laid me down here."
"My lord, golden king of the deer," said the king,
"Never yet saw I even among men one so abounding in
charity, love and pity as thou art. Therefore am I well
pleased with thee. Arise! I spare both thy life and hers."
"Though two be spared what shall become of the rest,
O king of men?" "I spare their lives too, my lord." And
thus the Bodhisattva proceeded to gain from the king the
further promise that he would spare also all deer outside
544 THE MONIST.
of the pleasaunce, then all other four-footed creatures, and
finally all birds and fishes.
After thus interceding with the king for the lives of all
creatures, the "Great Being" arose, instructed the king in
the Five Commandments, saying, "Walk in righteousness,
great king. If thou walkst in righteousness and justice
towards parents, children, townspeople, and countryfolk,
thou wilt enter the bliss of heaven when this earthly body
is dissolved." Thus with the grace and charm of a Buddha
did he preach the law to the king. A few days he tarried
in the pleasaunce, instructed the king once more, and then
with his attendant herd he passed again into the forest.
The king abode by the Bodhisattva's teachings, and after
a life spent in good works passed away to fare according to
his merits.
* * *
The points of agreement between this story and the
legend of St. Eustace are so manifold that they can not
rest on chance. The most important features are abso-
lutely identical.49 The king Brahmadatta and Placidus
are both passionately fond of hunting. Both in spite of this
trait are gentle in disposition but have not yet accepted the
true doctrine. Both meet the Saviour of the world (in the
Buddhist story it is the future Saviour) in the form of a
splendid stag — in the Jataka with silver-colored horns, in
the Christian legend with the crucifix between his horns.
In both stories the stag subjects himself to the danger of
being slain in order to point out to Brahmadatta and Placi-
dus respectively the way to salvation. Both Brahmadatta
and Placidus become converted through the stag and as
a result attain heavenly bliss.
In all investigations relating to the dependence of one
story upon another, correspondences in incidental features,
which for the course of the story are quite insignificant,
49 Caster, 337, 340.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 545
have a special importance. I would like therefore to call
attention to one such similarity which hitherto has escaped
observation.
In- the Nigrodha-miga-jlitaka the Bodhisattva after
his decisive conversation with the king repeats his exhor-
tation on a later day without any visible reason and prob-
ably only because Buddhist texts are fond of repetitions.
We find exactly this same feature, but in Christian color-
ing, in the legend of St. Eustace. The Greek text relates
that Christ, appearing thus in the form of a stag, requires
Placidus to come again the next day after he has received
baptism to the same place in order to learn what God re-
quires of him further. On coming back Placidus learns
that severe tests await him, but that if he victoriously with-
stands all temptations he will share in the supreme reward
of heaven.
Here we ask in vain what the purpose of this second
meeting may be, for what is revealed to Placidus there
might equally well have been told at the first meeting. No
other explanation for this repetition can be found except
that this particular circumstance was taken over from the
Buddhist source.
Whoever after all this still doubts the dependence of
the legend of St. Eustace upon the Nigrodha-miga-jataka
may put aside his last hesitation when he learns that there
is also a source for the second part of the legend in Jataka
literature.
When Gaster and Speyer, the two discoverers of the
Buddhist origin of the legend of St. Eustace, point to two
different stories as the prototype in this case — the first to
the story of Patacara, the second to that of Visvantara —
it does not greatly matter, for the story of Patacara who
loses her husband and her two children (the latter while
fording a river50 as in the story of Eustace) is a twig off
50 One of Patacara's children is drowned and the other is seized by an
546 THE MONIST.
the same branch from which the Visvantara story is also
derived. Its material is changed into the feminine form
for the glorification of a woman who belongs to the saints
(Arhat) of the Buddhist church.
Speyer looks upon the story of Visvantara (Sanskrit)
or Vessantara (Pali) as the proper source of the second
part of the legend of St. Eustace, and this tale is better
known and more widely spread among the Buddhists than
any other except the life of Buddha himself. Since this
story is pictorially represented on the Boro Budor, the most
famous Buddhist monument in Java, we may assume that
such representations also extended into other Buddhist
lands at the time when the story became Christianized. In
Tibet it is a favorite subject for dramatic representation
even to-day.
The substance of the story51 is mainly as follows: In
his last earthly existence before the final one, the Bodhi-
sattva was born as Prince Visvantara, son of King Sanjaya
in Jayatura (Pali Jetuttera) the capital of the country of
the Sibi. In order to become Buddha in a future life and
to bring salvation to the world from the sufferings of con-
tinuous existence, the prince constantly endeavored to ful-
fil every request made of him and to give away everything
that belonged to him. One day an embassy came from the
distant realm Kalinga suffering from drought and famine
to beseech Visvantara to send them his white elephant that
possessed the faculty of bringing rain. The prince at once
acceded to this request, expressing the regret that the mes-
sengers had not demanded of him, for instance, his flesh
eagle (Journal of the R. A. S., 1893, 554, 558). This detail from the story of
Patacara is evidently the source for the similar feature of the St. Eustace
legend
n In the Pali collection of the Jatakas the rather extensive Vessantara
Jataka is the last, No. 547. Its substance is exhaustively related by Spence
Hardy in his Manual of Buddhism, n6ff., and by Hemrich Kern in Der
Buddhismus und seine Geschichte in Indien, I, 388 ff. ; briefly also by Olden-
berg, Buddha, 5th ed., 355. In the Jatakamala of Aryasura the Visvantara
Jataka is No. 9.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 547
or his eyes. But his people did not at all approve of the
loss of the elephant which was of so much use to them and
compelled the king to banish the prince for punishment in
the wilderness on Mount Vanka. The prince's wife insisted
upon sharing his lot together with their two children.
On the next morning Visvantara called the beggars to-
gether and divided all his possessions among them. On
his way to exile he bestowed upon needy people who applied
to him even the horses and carriage with which he and
his family were riding away, and continued his journey
on foot up rough paths in the glowing heat of the sun.
Dressed as ascetics the four lived on Mount Vanka in huts
of foliage and fed upon the fruits of the forest.
After seven months a loathsome old Brahman came
that way and begged the prince to give him his two chil-
dren to serve him. And the father, the "Great Being"
was greatly rejoiced to have the opportunity to give some-
thing more valuable than anything previous and gave away
the two weeping children whom the old Brahman drove
away with blows. Then the earth quaked, lightning flashed
and thunder resounded in the air and all the gods rejoiced
because the Great Being by renouncing his beloved chil-
dren had done what was necessary for the attainment of
Buddhahood. Even their own mother, who returned from
a search for fruit to find her children gone, comforted her-
self with the thought that a greater gift than his own
children could no man give.
On the next day Indra, the King of Heaven, came to
the obviously sensible conclusion: "Yesterday Visvantara
gave away his children and the earth trembled. Now if
a common man came to ask him for his incomparably
virtuous wife and took her with him then the prince would
be helpless and abandoned. Well then I will assume the
form of a Brahman and ask Visvantara for his wife. Thus
I will put him in a position to attain the highest stage of
548 THE MONIST.
perfection; but at the same time I will make it impossible
for his wife to be given to any one else and then I will
give her back." The prince willingly handed over his wife
to the supposed Brahman and again the whole universe
shared joyously by similar miraculous phenomena in this
unprecedented self-denial. But Indra said, "Now the prin-
cess belongs to me and what belongs to another mayst
thou not give away," made himself known to the prince
and restored his wife to him.
In the meantime the steps of the old Brahman to whom
the two children had been given, were turned by the gods
to the capital Jayatura, and there the Brahman was com-
pelled to deliver the children to their grandfather, the
king, for a high purchase price. And since the people of
Kalinga of their own accord had sent back the white ele-
phant that brought the rain because now there was abun-
dance in their land, the reason for the banishment of the
prince had disappeared. King Sanjaya set out with the
two children and an immense following to Mount Vanka
and brought home his son amid great pomp and the shouts
of the people.
This story exhibits the following agreements with the
second part of the legend of St. Eustace:52 Both Visvan-
tara and Eustace belong to the mighty ones of earth.
Both lose position and wealth, wife and children. Both
go into exile whereat one — according to the highest ideal
of Buddhist ethics — surrenders everything even to the last
and dearest, while the other — according to the Christian
conception — is tested by God by means of the loss of his
property and family and by afflictions. Visvantara too
submits to a test, and indeed by Indra, the king of heaven,
who had already played the part of the testing God in ear-
lier existences of the Bodhisattva and this time in the form
M Speyer, 450, 451.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 549
of a Brahman demands his wife of him. Visvantara and
Eustace receive back what they have lost.
In supposing that the Visvantara Jataka has been used
in the Christian legend we must assume two things: (i)
that the Indian tale went through several transformations
in the western countries among the Persians, Syrians and
Greeks according as its Christianization demanded, for
Eustace could not very well give away his wife and chil-
dren to beggars but must lose them in some other way;
(2) that in the course of these transformations it has also
been enriched by motives from other Buddhist stories.53
However I can bring forward a proof which has not
occurred to either Gaster or Speyer but seems to me to be
decisive, of the fact that in reality the story of Visvantara
has served as a source for the second part of the legend
of St. Eustace, and that we do not have here simply an
accidental coincidence.
The rebellion which Placidus was called back by Trajan
to suppress had broken out in a remote eastern portion
of the realm, and on this expedition the victorious com-
mander regained his wife and children in a village on the
bank of the Hydaspes as has been mentioned before on
page 540. In that passage I placed an exclamation point
after Hydaspes, because the vicinity of Hydaspes, the Pun-
jab, lies so far outside the boundaries of the Roman Em-
pire that it betrays complete thoughtlessness on the part
of the author of the Greek life of St. Eustace to place a
rebellion against Trajan and the expedition of Placidus in
that quarter. For us however this thoughtlessness is of
great value; for if by disregarding it we have hitherto
been able to look upon the Visvantara Jataka only as very
probably the source of the second part of the Eustace leg-
end, the correctness of this view can not be better con-
firmed than by reference to the fact that the scene of the
B See Note 50.
55O THE MONIST.
Buddhist tale has been transferred in an entirely mechan-
ical way to the Christianized redaction where it stands as
an impossibility. The father of Visvantara is king in the
land of the Sibi (Pali Sim, Greek 2t/8cu), and these people
lived between the Indus and Hydaspes. In the exact spot
where Visvantara regains his wife and children, and where
according to the scene of the whole story he must find them,
Eustace also finds his wife and his sons, whereas according
to the setting of the Christian story he would never have
been able to find them there. In this particular no one will
be able to see here a play of chance, especially in considera-
tion of all the other similarities.
For the conclusion of the Christian legend, the martyr-
dom of St. Eustace and his family, we naturally may not
look for a Buddhist source. It is a matter of course that
we have here to deal with an independent addition of the
Christian redactor.
ST. CHRISTOPHER.54
The original Greek redaction of the legend of St. Chris-
topher has been placed by Gunter55 in the sixth century. Be-
fore his conversion this saint was called 'PeVpeySo?, by the
Greeks and "Reprobus" by the Latins who also called the
king appearing in this legend Dagnus of Samos in Lycia ;
in the Greek text he is called Ae/aog /ScunXevs, that is to
say, he bears the name of the typical persecutor of the
Christians. This king can not be identified with any his-
torical personage.
A medieval source, which reflects clearly earlier ideas,
relates that the man who later became Christopher was a
84 J. S. Speyer, "De indische oorsprong van den Heiligen Reus Sint Chris-
tophorus" (Bijdragen tot de Tool-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-
Indie, Zevende Volgreeks, Negende Deel. Deel LXIII der geheele Reeks.
'S-Gravenhage, 1910, pp. 368 ff.).
88 Legendenstudien, 25.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 55!
giant 12 ells in height, that he had a dog's head and came
from the land of cannibals. In Latin sources he is known
as Cananaeus.
Conscious of his own monstrous strength the giant
wished to serve only the mightiest of earth and therefore
took service with a powerful king. But when he saw that
the king was afraid of the devil he transferred his alle-
giance to the latter, and finally, because the devil in his
turn trembled before the image of the Saviour, he wished
to serve Christ as the most powerful of all. Nevertheless
he could not receive baptism because he refused to perform
the required penances, and therefore was commissioned to
serve as ferryman for poor pilgrims and to carry them
across a river on his shoulders.
One day a child came to him to be carried across. As
the giant waded through the river his burden became con-
stantly heavier and heavier, and finally in response to the
question of the giant who knew not what was befalling
him, disclosed himself to be the master of the world. Then
the real conversion of the giant was completed and he was
baptized by immersion in the water. At baptism the giant
received the name Christopher, "Christbearer." So the
saint is often represented in Christian art, especially in the
vestries of churches, as striding through the water with the
Christ-child on his shoulders.
The legend goes on to tell that Christopher converted
many heathens in Lycia, particularly by having a staff
burst forth with leaves and flowers, and for his activity
he was thrown into prison by King Dagnus and was sen-
tenced to undergo the death of a martyr. Even during his
martyrdom he converted many thousands. After he had
been scourged with iron rods they tried in vain to roast
him upon a grate and to kill him with arrows, but the
arrows were driven from their mark by violent winds.
552 THE MONIST.
Finally Christopher was beheaded. The first mention of
his martyrdom occurs in the seventh century.56
This legend contains nothing remarkable in the mar-
tyrdom which is typical in the stories of the saints, never-
theless the rest of the subject matter is highly singular and
without analogies in the lives of the saints. Since an his-
torical foundation for the tale is out of the question the
attempt has been made to follow Luther's lead and inter-
pret it allegorically. Since such explanations were not
satisfactory and the notion arose that an ancient popular
pagan personality was hidden in the form of the giant of
the legend, Germanic scholars thought of Thor and others
of Heracles.
These combinations, however, were not sufficient to ex-
plain the strange, fabulous and obviously ancient feature
of the legend that St. Christopher was a giant with a dog's
head and originally a cannibal. Only by making this fea-
ture a starting-point of investigation could the origin of the
legend be discovered. An ancient source must be found
containing a giant of the kind described and in which,
moreover, this giant carries the Saviour of the world upon
his shoulders and is converted by him; for this episode is
the center and kernel of the Christian legend even though
it does not appear at all in the Greek texts nor in the Latin
before the thirteenth century.57
Gunter indeed is of the opinion that the character of
Christ-bearer which later belonged to the saint has been
constructed solely upon the ground of a realistic verbal
interpretation. Certainly Gunter will not adhere to this
view when he learns that exactly this feature of the Sa-
viour-bearer plays an important role in the story of an
animal-headed giant in the prototype we shall discuss later.
M Stadler and Heim, Vollstandiges Heiligen-Lexikon, I, 610 ; Kirchliches
Handlexikon, edited by Michael Buchberger, I, 926 ; Die Religion in Geschichte
und Gegenwart, edited by Schiele, I, 1783.
87 Speyer, 381 ; Gunter, Legendenstudien, 25.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 553
Far less acceptable than Giinter's interpretation appears
that of Richter58 who makes the bold statement : "We were
of the opinion that there was some reason to assume that
the Christ-bearer was an offspring of German imagination
and German fancy. It may perhaps be said from a more
general standpoint that only German religious sentiment
could invent a Christopher/' It is to be regretted that
German patriotism should occasionally put forth such out-
growths in the field of science for which foreign scholars
in the most favorable instance can have only an ironical
smile.
Before I enter into the source of the Christopher legend,
the question must certainly be settled as to whether the late
testimony of the Christ-bearer element can really be a reason
for considering this feature itself as a late one. I believe that
Speyer has rightly answered this question in the negative
in the essay mentioned above in Note 54. He specifies
(page 382) that the absence of earlier literary evidence for
the judgment of this case is not of decisive significance
since much original material has been lost and the church
naturally felt most interest in the martyrdom so that other
ancient features fell in the background. Moreover Speyer
emphasizes that besides literary sources the testimony of
art, that is to say, of sculpture and painting, called for
consideration and that this seemed to bespeak a greater
age for the Christ-bearer; for the development of Chris-
topher with the Christ-child in the history of art points to
ancient tradition and Byzantine prototypes. Thus most
scholars who have occupied themselves with the story of
St. Christopher consider his character of Christ-bearer an
essential and original element of the tale. In no case is the
antiquity and originality of the giant and cannibal and the
dog's head to be doubted. These three features can not
be made to fit in the picture of the hero of Christian faith,
M"Der deutsche Christoph," Ada Germanica, V (1896) 146; Speyer, 3801
554 THE MONIST.
least of all the dog's head. Whence, then, do they orig-
inate?
Speyer has answered this question in a convincing man-
ner by pointing out the Jataka59 dealing with Prince Suta-
soma as the source of the legend of St. Christopher.
The following summary of the Jataka story is in the
main a translation of Speyer's combined presentation (pp.
383-384) :
Once upon a time when a king by the name Kauravya
ruled over the people of the Kuru, the Bodhisattva was
reincarnated as his son and was given the name Sutasoma.
Like a genuine fairy-tale prince he was inconceivably rich
and at the same time virtuous, of boundless charity, mild-
ness and gentleness — in short just what the future Buddha
who never lost sight of his aim would have to be. In his
piety he took the greatest pleasure in listening to and ap-
propriating ingenious sayings of a religious and moral
character.
One day when strolling about in the park near his pal-
ace with a few attendants and enjoying the spring splendor
of the young verdure and the opening flowers, he was in-
formed that a foreign Brahman had arrived who knew
many such sayings and wished to recite them to him. The
prince wished to go to him at once but servants came sud-
denly running up with the terrifying news that the fright-
ful cannibal had appeared in the park and was looking
for the prince. This monster, Kalmashapada by name, had
once been a king but had been changed by a curse into a
man-eating demon with an animal's face. He had prom-
ised his bloodthirsty guardian goddess to sacrifice one
hundred princes to her. He had already collected ninety-
nine and now Sutasoma was to be the hundredth.
MIn the Pali collection No. 537 (Maha- Sutasoma- jataka) ; in the Jataka -
mala No. 31. For good reasons, though without comment, Speyer has com-
bined the two accounts of the Pali and Sanskrit texts because single features
of the latter may in this case be regarded not only as just as old and genuine
as those of the more detailed Pali version, but also as more original.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 555
Hardly had the threatening danger been announced
to the prince when the giant stood before him. His atten-
dants were frightened to death and fled in every direction ;
Sutasoma alone did not lose his presence of mind. He
stepped up to the cannibal and permitted himself to be
lifted up and placed upon his shoulders without opposition.
Even when the giant ran quickly away with him he felt
no terror. Not until he arrived in the horrible dwelling
of the cannibal filled with human skeletons and skulls did
tears rise to his eyes. This behavior astonished the mon-
ster. He asked the prince why he all at once began to
weep, whether such a wise and sensible prince still felt a
longing for the world which lay behind him or whether
he feared death. "Oh no," replied the Bodhisattva, "Not
for such reasons do I weep, but because I am deprived of
the opportunity of hearing the beautiful sayings of wisdom
from the mouth of the Brahman who still sits waiting for
me. If thou wilt allow me to return once more to my palace
I could satisfy the wish of the Brahman and my own.
After I have heard what he has to say I will return to thee
again, I promise thee." The cannibal was greatly aston-
ished at this request and at first did not know what to make
of it. Then he yielded to the charm which the Bodhisattva
exercised upon every one with whom he came in contact.
He granted the prince's request, thinking that if the latter
did not return he could console himself.
But the Bodhisattva did not permit himself to be re-
strained by the entreaties of his relatives and friends and
returned to the giant. Meanwhile the giant who saw him
coming had become curious about the fine sayings which
the Brahman had recited to the prince, but the prince would
not communicate them to the cannibal saying, "Thou art
much too wicked and too great a malefactor; only good
and pious people may hear them."
Thus began a long conversation in the course of which
556
THE MONIST.
Sutasoma brought about a complete transformation in the
soul of the giant. The monster turned over a new leaf,
promised to lead a better life and never more to eat human
flesh. He released the captured princes and, cured of all
his wicked passions, received again his kingdom. Suta-
soma likewise returned safe and sound to his own people.
SUTASOMA AND THE GIANT A BUDDHIST ST. CHRISTOPHER.
From the plates of C. Seeman's work on Boro-Boedoer, CLXV, No. 117;
page 320 of the text.
This Jataka contains two features which if looked upon
as the source of the Christopher legend will explain its
fabulous and miraculous content : ( i ) the Bodhisattva con-
verts a cannibal with the head of a beast;60 (2) the can-
""The "dierlijk aangesicht" mentioned by Speyer surely refers to the
description of the Jatakamala (p. 210, lines 16 and 17 in Kern's edition) :
"His hair was covered with dirt and hung down in disorder over his face
which was covered also by a long tangled beard as if by darkness." Indeed
this is a description which in its pictorial representation would greatly resemble
the head of a dog.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY.
nibal carries the Bodhisattva on his shoulders and hurries
away with him. The distinctions between the two narra-
tives are explained by the difference between the Christian
and Buddhist manner of thought. Whoever would deem
this difference too great to recognize the Jataka as the
prototype of the Christian legend should note that in this
case the pictorial representations of this favorite tale of
the Buddhists must have been of particular significance
for their transference to the Christian world.
On the Boro Budor61 the story of Sutasoma is given
in four reliefs one of which shows the giant placing the
prince upon his shoulders. There is no doubt that pictorial
representations of this story as well as of many other
Jataka tales were located in great number in Buddhist
cloisters and stupas not only in far-away Java but also in
western lands.
Speyer even denies an internal connection between the
Sutasoma story and the Christopher legend and founds
his proof entirely upon the effect of the pictorial represen-
tations. He thinks that the Christians would have inter-
preted the picture in which the giant is carrying Prince
Sutasoma on his shoulders in their own way. It seems
to me that such a disconnection of literary influence goes
too far. Christians would never have been able to have
derived the material for the legend of St. Christopher
solely from pictures. This would only have been possible
when the Buddhists gave them the explanation that the
man carried by the giant was the future Saviour of the
world. And when the Buddhists had once told this they
would certainly also tell in their well-known loquaciousness
the whole story which was then worked over by the Chris-
tians. Without the assumption of the influence of the
story the dependence of the Christopher legend upon the
Buddhist source would to me be unintelligible.
n See page 546.
558 THE MONIST.
I believe I can produce a new reason for this depend-
ence which Speyer has not brought forward. According
to the Pali version of the Jataka, the cannibal lay in am-
bush to steal the prince, and for this purpose he stepped
into a pool of water within the royal park and hid his head
under a lotus leaf, seizing the prince just as he stepped
out of the pool after bathing. Hence according to the
Pali Jataka the cannibal placed the prince on his shoul-
ders on the bank of an expanse of water as Christopher
did the Saviour in the Christian legend. Then too the
landscape may have been visible in the background in the
Buddhist pictures. This correspondence of scenery seems
to me to be not unessential, since this incident of the Bud-
dhist prototype — and incidents unimportant in themselves
are always of particular significance in questions of loan
— explains the Christian feature in which the giant strides
through the river, for which only a slight working over
and addition was required. This conception seems to me
closer to the facts than Speyer's notion (page 388) that
the river which St. Christopher fords with the Christ-child
has its origin in the current Buddhistic simile in which
earthly life is compared to a river upon the farther side
of which lies the haven of salvation.
On the other hand I agree with Speyer when he an-
swers the question as to how Christ came to be represented
in the legend as a child by saying that this conception has
been derived from the relation of the burden to the bearer
as shown in the pictorial representation of the Buddhist
tale. The tiny figure which is carried by the giant made
the impression of a child upon the spectator.
Speyer closes his interesting essay with the words:
"Habent sua fata anthropophagi!" Seldom at any
rate will anybody make so splendid a career as the man-
eating giant of the Indian fairy-tale who has become one
of the best-known saints of Catholic Christendom.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 559
The transmissions from the Buddhist to the Christian
world discussed in this paper and which must be placed
from the third to the sixth centuries, are apt in my opin-
ion to throw light upon the coincidences in the forms of
worship of the two religions which have long attracted
attention. The following elements of worship are common
to Buddhism and Christianity: cloisters with their mon-
achism and the distinction between novices and ordained
monks and nuns, the celibacy and tonsure of the clergy,
confession, veneration of relics, the rosary, the shepherd's
crook in the Buddhist and Catholic churches, the church
spires paralleled by the towerlike reliquaries and stupas
of the Buddhists, and the use of incense and bells.62
The great theological works of reference in both Chris-
tian confessions make practically no mention of these coin-
cidences even in their more detailed articles, and explain
all of the above-named phenomena on the Christian side
as genuine and independent outgrowths of Christianity.
Nevertheless the correspondence with the external forms
of the Buddhist church are so numerous and so close that
it is difficult indeed to regard them as the play of chance.
Likewise it can hardly be made to seem credible that all
these phenomena have arisen from similar intellectual ten-
dencies conditioned by the nature of both religions and
independently of each other. If we consider that they
are collectively older in Buddhism than in Christianity,
and that from the beginning of the third century Christians
were acquainted with them in the same localities in which
we must assume the loan of the Buddhist legendary mate-
rial— that is, in Persia, Bactria and Turkestan — then we
are justified in asking why the externalities of the religious
life of Buddhism may not have served the Christians as a
**R. Spence Hardy, Eastern Monachism, London, 1850; Peter yon Boh-
len, Das alte Indien, I, 334-350; A. Weber, Indische Skizzen (Berlin, 1857),
58, 64, 65, 92; Ueber die Krishna janmashtomi (Krishna's Geburtsfest), Ber-
lin, 1868, p. 340.
560 THE MONIST.
model as well as Buddhist edificatory tales. To my knowl-
edge there is no historical evidence which contradicts the
assumption that these above-named elements of worship
have been borrowed from Buddhism by Christianity.
The first cloister-like colonies of Christian anchorites
have been traced to the Egyptian desert in the fourth cen-
tury, and hence Egypt is regarded as the cradle of Chris-
tian' monasticism."63 But almost as early — even at the
beginning of the last quarter of the fourth century —
we find it in other Oriental countries, especially in Syria
where it quickly arose to a flourishing condition. The
monks on the mountains around Antioch devoted them-
selves as early as towards the end of the fourth century
to the education of young manhood.64 Although the pre-
vailing theory is that monasticism spread there from the
small beginnings in upper Egypt, this does not seem to me
probable. Griitzmacher65 at least raises the question
whether Christian monasticism is as autochthonous to
Syria as to Egypt and says that it cannot be positively
asserted. "Autochthonous," however, means to Griitz-
macher only the possibility that Christian monasticism may
have developed in Syria from the early Christian asceticism
without Egyptian influence. The other possibility, that
Buddhist influence might have made itself felt from the
neighboring countries on the east, in which at that time
Buddhism had spread with its cloisters and its monks, does
not occur to him. To me nothing seems more probable
than this.
" The view held by H. Weingarten and Albrecht Dieterich that Christian
monasticism was derived from the Serapis hermits has been completely re-
futed by Erwin Preuschen in his Monchtum und Serapiskult (ad ed., Giessen,
1903) and henceforth may be considered as settled once for all. The attempt
of Hilgenfeld (Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie, 1878, 149) to derive
the beginnings of Christian monasticism in Egypt from Buddhism is over-
thrown by the fact that Buddhist influence on Egypt can not be proved.
84 F. X. Kraus, Real-Encyklopddie der christlichen Altertumer, II, 406.
98 In Hersogs Realencyklopadie fiir brotestantische Theologie und Kirche,
3d ed., XIII, 221.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 561
The requirement of celibacy among the clergy first ap-
peared in the Christian church in the fourth century, but
met continued opposition for seven hundred years until it
finally became law in the eleventh century under Gregory
VII. The tonsure as a distinguishing mark of the clergy
first occurs at the end of the fourth or beginning of the
fifth century, and was originally bestowed at the time
of ordination as an accompanying ceremony66 just as in
Buddhism.67 Confession, one of the oldest institutions of
Buddhist communal life, did not enter into Christianity
until the third century.
Veneration of relics does not occur in Christianity be-
fore the latter half of the third or the beginning of the
fourth century ; in the middle of the fourth, the custom of
dividing the remains of martyrs, instead of burying them,
in order to give a share of them to as many as possible,
appears to have been general in the Orient.68 This custom
has prevailed in Buddhism from the earliest times. As
early as in the year 477 B. C. the relics of Buddha's body
were divided among several princes of the faith.
There can no longer be any serious doubt as to the
Buddhist origin of the rosary, which has usually been as-
sumed to have first been brought to Europe by the cru-
saders. The Buddhists have the rosary in common with
Brahman sects ; with the former it consists of one hundred
and eight beads and has come into general use in northern
Buddhism. Albrecht Weber offers a plausible explanation
of the word "rosary" (rosarium; German Rosenkranz,
"garland of roses") which had seemed unintelligible. Ac-
cording to his view the name is a mistaken translation of
the Indian word japamala, "garland of prayer," which
** Sagmiiller, Lehrbuch des kath. Kirchenrechts, I, 150.
87 But it must not be overlooked that in Egypt since antiquity the shaving
of the head was customary among the priests of Isis and of Serapis. Herzogs
Realencyklopadie , 3d ed., XIX, 837.
" Op. cit., XVI, 631, 632.
562 THE MONIST.
was wrongly interpreted as japamala, "garland of roses"
(japd = prayer ; japQ = rose) .
As to the use of the spire in Christian architecture,
such early investigators as Ricci ( 1857) and Unger ( 1860)
found its prototype in India and Persia where in their
opinion the cradle of Christian tower-construction is to
be sought.69 Ancient Byzantine architecture is very closely
related to that of the Buddhists, especially in Armenia.70
The use of incense was condemned downright by the ear-
liest Christians because it called too much to mind the
pagan worship;71 it was first introduced into the Christian
church during the fourth century. The use of the bell in
religious service is not traceable in Christianity until rather
late. Gregory of Tours (died 595) is the first positive
authority for it. In the first centuries when the Christians
were subject to the persecutions of the pagans, the sum-
mons to meetings for worship could be given only by the
most noiseless signs possible that would not attract the
attention of the pagans. Not until the conversion of Con-
stantine (beginning of the fourth century) was it possible
to use noisy signals to invite to worship.72 In spite of their
late attestation, church-bells have been looked upon as a
product of Christianity, and at best it was only observed
that they had precursors in Judaism and paganism, for
instance in the golden bells with which the mantle of the
Jewish high priest was adorned at its lower edge together
with cotton pomegranates.73 However this is a very dif-
ferent matter from the bells which call to worship in Bud-
dhism and Christianity. Bardesanes speaks of bells in
India as early as the year I75.74
*F. X. Kraus, Real-Encyklopddie, II, 866.
" A. Weber, Indische Skizzen, 58, Note I.
n Tertullian, Apol. 42 in Bohlen,, I, 344-345.
nlbid., I, 622, 623.
nHerzogs Realencyklop'ddie, 3d ed, VI, 704.
"Bohlen, I, 346.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF BUDDHISM TO CHRISTIANITY. 563
Single correspondences in the forms of worship would
be of no significance for the question of historical connec-
tion, but in my opinion such a profusion as we have here
makes a borrowing on the part of Christianity highly prob-
able in consideration of the late evidence of the Christian
parallels throughout, especially as the path traveled by the
loan I have assumed seems perfectly clear. More than a
great probability can not be asserted at this time ; certainty
can be hoped for only from new discoveries of decisive
importance in countries now under investigation, especially
Turkestan.
Finally it should be mentioned that the common utili-
zation of the halo in both Christianity and Buddhism
comes from classical antiquity. On ancient Roman monu-
ments the nimbus is seen repeatedly in pictorial represen-
tations of the gods and apotheosized emperors; in Chris-
tianity it appears at the earliest at the end of the third cen-
tury.75 Hence it has been transmitted to Buddhism from
the Occident and indeed at so early a date that the figure
of Buddha appears with a nimbus on coins of King Ka-
nishka (about 100 A. D.) It may have come even earlier
to India directly from Hellenism.
RICHARD GARBE.
TUBINGEN, GERMANY.
" F. X. Kraus, op. tit., II, 496.
SOME MODERN ADVANCES IN LOGIC.
MATHEMATICS is traditionally supposed to be oc-
cupied with questions about number and quantity.
During the last thirty years or so certain mathematicians
— a German named Frege, an Italian named Peano, and
later, in England, Mr. Bertrand Russell and Dr. A. N.
Whitehead — have been studying this sort of question:
Take any mathematical proposition ; prove it carefully, that
is to say write down completely all the logical steps by which
that proposition follows from more simple ones ; then enu-
merate completely the fundamental notions in terms of
which the notions occurring in that proposition are defined,
and the principles of inference used. Euclid attempted —
in a way that to modern eyes is very unsatisfactory,
whether we consider his tacit assumptions or his prolixity
— to reduce the foundations of geometry to a set of defini-
tions, postulates, and axioms. Euclid's definitions are
often (as in the case of those of a point and a straight line)
only would-be explanations of certain ideas which every-
body is supposed to have, and which are really assumed as
primitive notions which are a necessary preliminary to
what follows. Further, Euclid does not reckon among his
axioms and primitive ideas the principles, such as the syl-
logism, and the fundamental ideas of logic itself. He
tacitly assumes these as preliminary to geometry.
Modern people have gone far beyond this. Peano's
work, though in some ways not nearly so fundamental and
SOME MODERN ADVANCES IN LOGIC. 565
subtle as Frege's, has become far better known than the
German's. This is owing to the noble self-sacrifice of
Peano himself. For years past he has spared neither time
nor money in the editing and publishing of a journal and a
periodical collection of mathematical propositions expressed
in the symbolism partly invented by himself. We all know
the appearance of mathematical symbols; and some of us
know that the introduction of an analogous set of symbols
has had incalculable benefit on other sciences, such as
logic and chemistry. Peano's symbolism consists of cer-
tain very convenient signs for denoting logical notions, so
that logical propositions can be translated into a form
like that of mathematical equations ; logical operations be-
come easily and almost mechanically carried out, and it
becomes possible to condense the expression of a long chain
of reasoning into a short and readily grasped form.
The idea of such a language is not new. It goes back
to Leibniz and Descartes, or perhaps earlier, and began
to be vigorously developed about the middle of the nine-
teenth century by the English mathematicians Boole and
De Morgan.
One result of Peano's work was the discovery that all
the ideas which occur in arithmetic and geometry and the
other sciences usually called mathematical can be defined
in terms of the ideas of general logic, such as class, impli-
cation, membership of a class, aggregation and disjunc-
tion of classes, together with five or six other ideas, such
as integer, number, and point. Also Peano's work con-
tained contributions of the utmost importance to logic, such
as the perception that inference in mathematics was not
the inference of one proposition from another, but the in-
ference of a whole class of propositions from another class.
Mr. Russell, partly helped by a study of Frege's work,
and partly having discovered for himself many of Frege's
distinctions, took up Peano's work where Peano had left
566 THE MONIST.
it, and defined in logical terms alone all of Peano's funda-
mental mathematical ideas and proved all his fundamental
mathematical propositions. Thus nowadays mathematics
and logic are seen to form part of a continuous whole.
Further, it now appears that the essential character of
mathematical propositions is not, as Euclid would have it,
— "A is true, therefore B is true," but "if A is true, then
B is true." In geometry, for example, we do not, as for-
merly everybody used to think, study the properties of the
space we live in. We only say things of the form — "if
space has such-and-such properties, then it has such-and-
such other properties."
Mr. Russell's work, begun in 1900, now seems to be
entering the stage of completion. Towards the end of
last year the Cambridge University Press published the
first volume of a treatise called Principia Mathematica by
Messrs. Russell and Whitehead. Here are nearly 700
pages, written to a great extent in the modified Peano-
symbolism and exposing in detail the modern views on
logic and mathematics. Nowadays a mathematician will
tell you that, of the two things with which tradition sup-
poses mathematics to deal, number is definable in logical
terms, so that mathematics is only a further-developed
logic, and quantity is not considered at all. Serial order
is, and people tend to confuse that with quantity.
PHILIP E. B. JOURDAIN.
BROADWINDSOR, BEAMINSTER, DORSET, ENGLAND.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE.
INTRODUCTION.
EVERY thorough Biblical scholar, as well as every
careful reader of the Bible, knows that the specifi-
cations given in Ex. xxvi. 1-30 relative to the construction
of the Tabernacle, are regarded as insufficient to enable
us to reconstruct it. Howbeit, that sacred structure and its
service are extensively illustrated in Christian and Jewish
literature, and learned men write and lecture about them.
This is done according to various theories, traditional and
modern, some of which are diametrically opposed to the
plain words of the text. These have been indulged in from
the time the Pentateuch was first translated into the Greek,
some centuries before Christ, until the present day. And
yet I affirm, and challenge the whole learned world to con-
tradict me successfully, that the Hebrew text is perfectly
plain, and that the specifications given in it are entirely
sufficient to enable any practical master builder to recon-
struct the Tabernacle at once, without the help of any the-
ory or dictum of tradition. A perfect familiarity with the
Hebrew language, with practical mathematics and geom-
etry is all that is needed.
I have given side by side with the English of our com-
mon version a translation of the Greek version (LXX), and
another of the Chaldean paraphrase, (Onkelos), the two
oldest translations we have. I have added my own version
in § 5 so that the reader may judge for himself according
568
THE MONIST.
to which version the reconstruction is or is not possible
without violence to the Hebrew text.
I also hope that this scientific textual exposition, which
the Lord has enabled me to give, will open a field of re-
search for those Biblical scholars, who are not afraid of
handling the numbers and measures of the Bible.
Indirectly it is demonstrated in this little work, that the
words of our text may well be the words which it is claimed
Moses received from Jehovah and communicated to the
children of Israel in the desert of Sinai.
ENG. COM. VERSION.
1. Moreover, thou shalt
make the tabernacle with
ten curtains of fine twined
linen, and blue, and pur-
ple, and scarlet; with
cherubims of cunning
work shalt thou make
them.
2. The length of one
curtain shall be eight and
twenty cubits, and the
breadth of one curtain
four cubits : and every
one of the curtains shall
have one measure.
3. The five curtains
shall be coupled one to
another, and other five
curtains shall be coupled
one to another.
4. And thou shalt make
loops of blue upon the
edge of the one curtain
from the selvedge in the
coupling ; and likewise
shaft thou make in the
uttermost edge of an-
other curtain, in the
coupling of the second.
5. Fifty loops shalt thou
make in the one curtain,
and fifty loops shalt thou
make in the edge of the
curtain that is in the
TARGUM ONKELOS.
i. And the dwelling
thou shalt make ten cloths
of fine spun linen, and
blue, and purple, and
shining red, figures of
cherubim, the work of a
master shalt thou make
them.
2.
one
EXODUS XXVI.
SEPTUAGINT.
1. And the tent thou
shalt make of ten drap-
eries of spun linen
thread, and hyacinth, and
purple, and scarlet spun
cherubim ; in weaver's
work thou shalt make
them.
2. The length of the
one drapery eight and
twenty cubits, and the
width four cubits shall
each drapery be. The
same measure shall there
be for all the draperies.
3. But five draperies
shall be held mutually
one of another ; the other
of the other : and five
draperies shall be held
together each to the
other.
4. And thou shalt make
for them hyacinthian cups
upon the border of the
one drapery on one side,
at the joining, and so
shalt thou make upon the
border of the outer dra-
pery towards the second
joining.
5. Fifty cups shalt thou 5. Fifty loops shalt thou
make in the one drapery, make in the one cloth,
and fifty cups shalt thou and fifty loops thou shalt
make at the side of the make in the side of the
other drapery at the join- cloth of the second join-
The length of the
cloth twenty and
eight cubits, and the
width four cubits of the
one cloth. One measure
for every cloth.
3. Five cloths shall be
joining one with one, and
five cloths joining one
with one.
4. And thou shalt make
loops of blue upon the
border of the one cloth
at the side of the join-
ing, and so shalt thou
make in the border of the
second cloth on the side
of the joining.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 569
KNG. COM. VERSION. SEPTUAGINT. TARGUM ONKELOS.
coupling of the second, ing ; being face to face, re- ing, the loops tending one
that the loops may take ciprocally falling against to one.
hold one of another. each other.
6. And thou shalt make 6. And thou shah make 6. And thou shalt make
fifty taches of gold, and fifty golden clasps, and fiftv clasps of gold, and
couple the curtains to- thou shalt fit together shalt join the one cloth
gether with the taches; the draperies one to the with the other by the
and it shall be one taber- other with the clasps, clasps, and the dwelling
nacle. And it shall be the one shall be one.
tent.
7. And thou shalt make 7. And thou shalt make 7. And thou shalt make
curtains of goats' hair, rough hairy cloths, a cloths out of goats for a
to be a covering upon the shelter upon the tent, spread upon the dwelling,
tabernacle; eleven cur- eleven rough cloths shalt Eleven cloths shalt thou
tains shalt thou make. thou make them. make them.
8. The length of one 8. The length of the 8. The length of the
curtain shall be thirty cu- one rough cloth thirty one cloth thirty by the
bits, and the breadth of cubits, and four cubits cubit, and the width four
one curtain four cubits; the width of the one by the cubit of the one
and the eleven curtains rough cloth. The same cloth. One measure for
shall be all of one meas- measure shall be for the the eleven cloths.
ure. eleven rough cloths.
9. And thou shalt cou- 9. And thou shalt join 9. And thou shalt join
pie five curtains by them- the five rough cloths into the five cloths by itself,
selves, and six curtains a one by itself, and the and the six cloths by it-
by themselves, and shalt six rough cloths into a self, and thou shalt
double the six curtains one by itself. And thou double the sixth cloth
in the forefront of the shalt double upon itself towards the face of the
tabernacle. the sixth rough cloth at dwelling.
the face of the tent.
10. And thou shalt 10. And thou shalt 10. And thou shalt
make fifty loops on the make fifty cups in the make fifty loops upon the
edge of the curtain that border of the one rough border of the cloth of
is outmost in the coup- cloth, the one in the mid- the one joining, and fifty
ling, and fifty loops in the die at the joining, and loops upon the border of
edge of the curtain fifty cups thou shalt the other joining,
which coupleth the sec- make in the border of the
ond. rough cloth of the sec-
ond joining.
11. And thou shalt 11. And thou shalt n. And thou shalt
make fifty taches of make fifty copper clasps, make fifty copper clasps,
brass, and put the taches And thou shalt join the and bring the clasps into
into the loops, and couple clasps out of the cups, the loops, and thou shalt
the tent together, that it and thou shalt join the Join the dwelling, and it
may be one. rough cloths, and it shall shall be one.
be one.
12. And the remnant 12. And thou shalt 12. And the surplus
that remaineth of the put down the surplus of that remains in the cloths
curtains of the tent, the the rough cloths of the of the dwelling, half of
half curtain that re- tent ; the half of the the remaining cloth shall
maineth, shall hang over rough cloth that is loose be redundant on the
the backside of the taber- below, thou shalt hide back side of the dwelling,
nacle. under the surplus of the
rough cloths of the tent.
Thou shalt hide behind
the tent.
THE MONIST.
ENG. COM. VERSION.
13. And a cubit on the
one side, and a cubit on
the other side, of that
which remaineth in the
length of the curtains of
the tent, it shall hang
over the sides of the
tabernacle on this side
and on that side to cover
it.
14. And thou shalt
make a covering for the
tent of rams' skins dyed
red, and a covering of
badgers' skins.
15 . And thou shalt
make boards for the
tabernacle of shittim
wood standing up.
16. Ten cubit shall be
the length of a board,
and a cubit and a half
shall be the breadth of
one board.
17. Two tenons shall
there be in one board,
set in order one against
another: thus shalt thou
make for all the boards
of the tabernacle.
18. And thou shalt
make the boards for the
tabernacle twenty boards
on the south side, south-
ward.
19. And thou shalt
make forty sockets of sil-
ver under the twenty
boards, two sockets un-
der one board for his
two tenons, and two sock-
ets under another board
for his two tenons.
SEPTUAGINT.
13. A cubit from this,
and a cubit from that, of
the surplus of the rough
cloths, from the length
of the rough cloths of the
tent, shall be a co-cov-
ering upon the sides of
the tent from this and
that side, that it may be
covered.
14. And thou shalt
make a reddened rams'
leather covering for the
tent, and a hyacinthian
leather super - covering
over above.
15. And thou shalt
make styles of the tent
from aseptic woods.
16. Ten cubits shalt
thou make the one style,
and one and a half cubits
the width of the one
style.
17. Two armlets to one
style falling against each
other. Thus shalt thou
make to all the styles of
the tent.
18. And thou shalt
make styles for the tent,
twenty styles on the in-
cline which is towards
the north.
19. And forty silver
bases shalt thou make
for the twenty styles,
two bases for the one
style for both of its
sides, and two bases for
the one style for both of
its sides.
20. And for the second 20. And the second in-
side of the tabernacle on cline, the one towards the
the north side there shall south twenty styles.
be twenty boards.
21. And their forty
sockets of silver, two
sockets under one board,
and two sockets under
another board.
21. And their forty sil-
ver bases; two bases for
the one style for both of
its sides, and two bases
for the one style for both
of its sides.
TARGUM ONKELOS.
13. And the cubit from
this side, and the cubit
from that side in the sur-
plus in the length of the
cloths of the dwelling
shall be redundant on
the sides of the dwelling
on this side and that to
cover it.
14. And thou shalt
make a cover for the
dwelling, of reddened
ram skins, and a cover of
badger skins above that.
15. And thou shalt
make the boards for the
dwelling of upright stand-
ing shittim woods.
16. Ten cubits the
length of the board, and
a cubit and half a cubit
the width of one board.
17. Two tenons con-
nected one against the
other. Thus shalt thou
make for all the boards
of the dwelling.
18. And thou shalt
make the boards for the
dwelling, twenty for the
point of the south side.
19. And forty supports
of silver shalt thou make
beneath the twenty
boards, two supports be-
neath one board for its
two tenons, and two sup-
ports beneath one board
for its two tenons.
20. And for the second
side of the dwelling, to
the north side, twenty
boards.
21. And their forty sil-
ver supports, two sup-
ports beneath one board
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE.
571
ENG. COM. VERSION.
SEPTUAGINT.
TAKGUM ONKELOS.
22. And for the sides 22. And at the back of 22. And at the extrem-
of the tabernacle west- the tent, towards the side ities of the dwelling west-
ward thou shalt make of the sea, thou shalt ward, thou shalt make
six boards. make six styles. six boards.
23. And two boards 23. And two styles thou 23. And two boards
thou shalt make for the shalt make upon the an- thou shalt make for the
corners of the tabernacle gles of the tent at their corners of the dwelling
in the two sides. back. at their extremities.
24. And they shall be
coupled together beneath,
and they shall be coupled
together above the head
of it unto one ring: thus
shall it be for them both ;
they shall be for the two
corners.
25. And they shall be
eight boards, and their
sockets of silver, sixteen
sockets : two sockets un-
der one board, and two
sockets under another
board.
26. And thou shalt
make bars of shittim
wood ; five for the boards
of the one side of the
tabernacle.
27. And five bars for
the boards of the other
side of the tabernacle,
and five bars for the side
of the tabernacle, for the
two sides westward.
28. And the middle bar
in the midst of the boards
shall reach from end to
end.
29. And thou shalt
overlay the boards with
gold, and make their
rings of gold, for places
for the bars: and thou
shalt overlay the bars
with gold.
30. And thou shalt rear
up the tabernacle accord-
ing to the fashion there-
of, which was showed
thee in the mount.
24. And it shall be out
of the same line below,
towards the same line
they shall be from the
heads into one clasp.
Thus shalt thou make for
both the two corners.
Alike let them be.
25. And they shall be
eight styles, and their
silver bases sixteen. Two
bases to the one style at
both of its sides, and two
bases to the one style.
26. And thou shalt
make bolts of aseptic
woods, five for the one
style at the one side of
the tent.
27. And five bolts for
the one style, at the other
one incline of the tent,
and five bolts for the
style at the back incline
of the tent towards the
28. And the middle bolt
in the midst of the styles
shall run through from
the one incline to the
other.
29. And the styles thou
shalt over gild with gold.
And the rings thou shalt
make golden, in the
which thou shalt put the
bolts. And thou shalt
over gild the bolts with
gold.
30. And erect thou the
tent after the pattern,
which was shown thee in
the mount.
24. And they shall be
tending below, and unto
one they shall be tending
at the head into one link,
thus shall it be for the
two, for the two corners
shall they be.
25. And they shall be
eight boards, and their
silver supports sixteen,
two supports beneath one
board, and two supports
beneath one board.
26. And thou shalt
make bars of shittim
woods, five for the one
side of the dwelling.
27. And five bars for
the boards of the second
side of the dwelling and
five bars for the boards
of the side of the dwell-
ing at their extremities
westward.
28. And the middle bar
inside the boards, bar-
ring from extremity to
extremity.
29. And the boards thou
shalt cover with gold,
and their links thou shalt
mafte of gold; a place
for the bars ; and thou
shalt cover the bars with
gold.
30. And raise thou the
dwelling according to its
rule which thou wert
shown in the mount.
572 THE MONIST.
I shall first consider the difficulties which the three
foregoing translations present to the Hebrew scholar and
the practical builder; then the textual and practical diffi-
culties which traditional and modern theories present to
the same. Finally I shall show in the last section that
a rigid adherence to the original text and the application
of sound common sense remove all the difficulties.
DIFFICULTIES OF THE ENGLISH COMMON VERSION.
I shall not advert in this place to the "loops" and the
"selvedge" (verse 4) of the Common Version, leaving
these for the last section.
The first difficulty we meet with is in verse 12. "The
remnant that remaineth," is an improper translation of
V'SeRaHH HoGH^D^F1. The word SeRaHH in Ezek.
xvii. 6, means "trailing," spoken of a vine, and translated
by the Common Version "spreading," which is perfectly
appropriate in the verse before us also. It should there-
fore be translated, "the spreading that remaineth."5
Next is the expression "the half-curtain that remain-
eth." What half-curtain is this? We recollect that the
goat's-hair curtains were eleven, that five of them were
joined together, and the six others also together, then that
the sixth curtain of these six was doubled. And as the
single curtain was four cubits wide, the whole 10^2 cur-
tains would give us 10^X4=42 cubits. Now the length
of the Tabernacle was 30 cubits (see verse 18), and the
height of a board was 10 cubits, and this is taken by the
Common Version to have been the height of the Taber-
nacle, so consequently we would have 42 cubits to cover
a length of 40 cubits, and two cubits would, therefore, be
remaining over.
1 nJ^n n^P?' For an explanation of the system of transcription see the intro-
ductory table to the author's "The Mosaic Names of God." The Monist, XVII, 390
2 See Midrash Kabbah Leviticus, Parsha 5 on the word mD.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 573
Now the text reads (verse 12) : "And the spreading
that remaineth of the curtains [notice the plural!], the
half of the curtain [notice the singular!] that remaineth,
shall hang over the back-side of the Tabernacle." Half,
therefore, of half the width of a curtain of four cubits
width is one cubit; but what is to be done with the other
half of the curtain's width the text does not seem to state.
The English Common Version avoids the difficulty by trans-
lating "the half-curtain," leaving out the little word "of,"
which, however, it has no more right to do here than to
leave out the same word in the first clause of the verse, and
translate it here: "And the spreading that remaineth —
the curtains," which would give no sense. But the trans-
lators of the Common Version did not know that the length
of the ceiling was longer by 1 . 0606+ cubits than the
floor of the Tabernacle (as we shall see in the last section)
and hence allowed themselves to do violence to the text
in order to make out some sense for themselves. This
difficulty will not for the present strike the reader as so
very great, as it will when he has learned all other diffi-
culties, and their simple solution ; for the truth is that the
uses and measurements of the soft coverings can not be
well understood without a correct knowledge of the frame-
work of the Tabernacle.
The second difficulty, which presents itself in the speci-
fication, is in verse 16. It says how long and how broad
each board must be, but it does not say how thick the
boards were. Suppose they were two-inch planks and a
very serious difficulty occurs. The frame-work was to
have three walls only, was therefore open at the front (see
verses 18-22). The long walls would be 30X10 cubits.
Taking a cubit to be even 20 inches, this would give us
a wall 50 feet long and 16 feet 8 inches high,3 made of 2-
inch planks held fast to only one back wall 15 feet long
* 600X200", or the cubit at 25", then 750X250".
574 THE MONIST.
and 1 6 feet 8 inches high (9X10 cubits),4 and made of the
same 2-inch planks. This would give a very precarious
frame-work which must cave in at its free ends. Nor can
we rely on the sockets mentioned in the specification, for
they weighed only a talent each of silver (see Ex. xxxviii.
27), being 93^ pounds, and even though there were two
sockets for each board, this amount of metal would not
be a sufficient base to secure a board of 16 feet 8 inches
high and 2^2 feet broad to stand upright against the gust
of a desert wind. Nor could the bars that held the boards
together help much, for there was only one such bar that
was appointed to do this, viz., the one that locked from end
to end (see verse 28).
I do not speak for the present of the wrong transla-
tions, "tenons" and "set in order one against each other."
We shall come to these afterwards. It is sufficient for the
present to consider the precariousness of such a frame-
work, especially for the desert. It must also be noted that
the specifications do not seem to rely much upon the usual
stakes and ropes of a tent, for there is no mention of them
here, and only a passing mention in one place elsewhere,
viz., Ex. xxxv. 1 8. But perhaps even this difficulty will
not appear to the reader as very great.
The third difficulty presents itself in verses 23-24. After
we think of the three walls erected and the two corners
well coapted, we read of two additional boards ordered
"for the corners of the Tabernacle in the two sides." Of
what use are they there? And how are they to be held
there? Now we must recollect that the specification in
verse 17 says that all the boards of the Tabernacle must
be alike, and these two in the corners can, therefore, be
no exception. Furthermore, the original word for the
"corners" here, M'Q00TSGHOUTH,5 means really "cut-
4 The cubit at 20" gives 180X200", or the cubit at 25" gives 225X250".
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 575
outs," or "cut-offs," and how can two boards meeting at
right angles present a cut-out or cut-off corner? And
further, each one of these boards is ordered, according to
this Common Version, to be "coupled together beneath,
and coupled together above the head of it into one ring."
Whereto is this board to be coupled? The text does not
say. Coupled to itself, gives no human sense. And are
these corner boards after all to be different from the rest?
The text does not say so, allowing an exception from the
general specification in verse 17, where it says, that all the
boards must be alike. Or was this the construction of all
the boards? Then what was it? Moreover it says in
verse 25 that these two corner boards, together with the
six of the west wall, are to make up eight boards, and the
language implies that these eight boards were to be alike.
I think the reader will here admit that he is "cornered,"
and that there is no escaping from the difficulty into which
the Common Version has brought us. But the difficulties
are only in a version and not in the original text, as we
shall see.
The fourth difficulty is in verse 28 which is rendered,
"And the middle bar in the midst of the boards shall reach
from end to end." The original words rendered here
"middle in the midst," are HaTT'ItCh^N BTVouKh6 and
mean, "the inside one inside." What "inside" then is
meant? Shall we think that one bar ran through the
thickness of the two-inch planks? That would certainly
be of no account for strengthening the walls. Or does it
mean the fifth bar between the other two above and below
it? Then it ought to have said HaTTJIKhV°uN BaiIN
HaBBR'IHH'IM,7 "the middle one between the bars" and
not "the inside one inside of the boards." Moreover, why
only one bar to "reach from end to end"? Were it not
better to have all the five bars do the same and give the
nj f ma T ovriaD 1*3 yrnzj
576 THE MONIST.
very necessary firmness to these precariously thin and
lofty walls? Or, were these four "bars" only to hold the
"boards" together, and the important corners to be left
with only one bar to bear all the strain? This would be
too unworkmanlike!
Such are the difficulties of the Common Version. It
follows the Latin Vulgate in this instance, which renders
the original Hebrew QeReSh with tabula. This transla-
tion is followed by the versions of all Roman Catholic
nations and by all versions that have sprung from the
Vulgate : so Luther ; the Zurich Synod version ; the version
by De Wette, 1839; so also Die Bibel fiir die Katholiken
von Heinrich Joachim Jack, Bamberg, 1845. All have
Brett for QeReSh. The English Common Version has
"board"; the Polish version of the British and Foreign
Bible Society has deska ; the Bohemian version of Prague,
1867, has dska; the Spanish version, London, 1855, tabla',
the French version by David Martin, Paris 1845, nas a^s-
The Russian versions alone, both by the Holy Synod, St.
Petersburg 1878, and by the British Bible Society, printed
at Vienna, 1878, have for QeReSh broos, which means a
"beam" or a "four-square beam"; thus they evidently
understand the stylos of the LXX. This does not decide,
however, the question of the identity of the Greek stylos
and the Latin stilus, which means a body formed with
a base and running up to a point. The figurative use of
stylos as "supporting pillar in the church" would also not
militate against the idea of a pointed pillar in the Taber-
nacle, for here the stylos did support the coverings of it.
But in this linguistic question I will not enter here.
THE SEPTUAGINT'S IDEA AND ITS DIFFICULTIES.
This version differs in some very important points from
our Common Version, but presents also some insuperable
difficulties.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 577
In verse 4 it renders the original L^LoA^Th1 with
angkulas* which means "cups." This translation is far
preferable to the Common Version's "loops," not only on
linguistic grounds (of which more in the last section) but
also on those of structural intention, for these "loops," or
"cups" with the "taches," or "clasps" were evidently in-
tended for a nice coaptation of the two large spreads, each
20X28 cubits (at 20 inches = 33' 4" X 46' 8", or the cubit
at 25", = 41' 8" X 58' 4", or in inches, either 400" X 500"
or 500" X 700"), and for this purpose loops and taches
were far less suitable than "clasps" going through the
edge of the cloth itself. And when they say that these
"cups" were to be "hyacinthian," it means that these were
to be worked out with hyacinthian thread.
The first difficulty we meet with in this version is the
same one we met in the Common Version. It is in the
1 2th verse. The translators deviate most strangely from
the original text, and yet even then make no sense as they
themselves admit, and as the reader will see from my
translation of this translation, which I have endeavored
to make as accurate as possible. They evidently had no
better idea of the true length of the ceiling of the Taber-
nacle than the translators of our Common Version, hence
their obscurity and violation of the text. This want of
knowledge is less excusable in them because, as we shall
see immediately, they had a more correct idea of the walls
than those who imagined them to have been straight up
and down.
The second difficulty we meet with in this version, is
in verses 15, 16, and 17. The original word QeReSh,3
which our Common Version renders "board," is here ren-
dered stylos4 which means "pillar," We would have, there-
fore, a pillar 10 cubits long, or high, (it does not say
which), and il/2 cubits wide. But how thick was it? This
578 THE MONIST.
neither the original text nor this version says. But as-
suming that the width specified means either way, then
we would have a pillar of ioX 1/^2 X 1/^2 cubits. Then at
20" the cubit, it will give us 30" X 30" X 200"= 180,000"
cubic contents; and allowing 2 cubic inches to the ounce
would give us 180,000 -j- 2 = 90,000 ounces, or 5625
pounds; too enormous a weight for carriage by hand or
cart. But in verse 17 the original word I°D'V°uTh,5
which our Common Version renders "tenons," is rendered
here angkdniskoi,6 a diminutive of angkdn,7 meaning "the
arm" and also "the bend of the arm," "the elbow." And
since in the Alexandrian Greek we regard the diminutive
particle as used in the sense of our "like," we may trans-
late that Greek word, "arm-bend-like," and understand
that that "style" or "pillar" had two arm-bend-like planes,
which on a longitudinal section across the planes would
give us a triangle of two equal sides of 10 cubits long, and
a base line of il/2 cubits. This of course would reduce the
weight of the "style" or "pillar" by just one-half, and
make it 2812^2 pounds, but still too heavy for carriage
by hand or cart, especially in a desert without roads.
The reader will admit the weight of this difficulty, and
yet he will see bye and bye that this idea of the Septuagint
contains a very important truth. Moreover that its trans-
lators had the idea that the walls of the Tabernacle were
not upright but inclining, is evident from verses 18, 20,
and 27, where they reverse the order, and in speaking of
the south side they call it the incline toward the north,
and of the north side they say, the incline toward the
south, and of the west wall the incline toward the west,
i. e., looking from the inside at the westwardly inclining
plane of the west wall. These two sides, or arms of the
"style," the Septuagint describes as "falling against each
other,"8 and this is the correct translation of the original
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE.
579
M'Sh<*>L°Bh°«Th AcSh°H A«L A»HH^Th<>H,9 which our
Common Version in verse 17 renders "set in order one
against another." In this connection I must mention
Bahr's strange misreading of this word as anapiptontes,™
giving thus the very opposite idea, viz., "falling away from
each other," from the Septuagint text. See his Symbolik
des Mosaischen Cultus, 1837, Vol. I, p. 59. He may have
had an edition of the Septuagint with such a reading,
mine is that of L. Van Ess, Leipsic, 1835.
The third difficulty we meet with in this version is in
verses 23-24 relating to the corners. In each one of those
two corners, which according to this version were only
Fig. i.
closed at the point on the ground but open above, there
would have to be fitted one "style" of the same dimensions
as the rest, which is impossible, as the figure shows. Let
A B c D represent the two square bases of the pillars, which
meet at the right angle A, and whose ridges are F i and E K.
Then the requirement is, that between E and F should fit
in the ridge of another style, viz., the line F i or EK, which
is impossible, for E A = FA = ^2 base line, and these are
the two sides of a rectangular triangle whose hypotenuse is
EF<2AF; but 2AF=Fi=EK, and could not get in to fill out
the corner, but would be stopped about the points G H. The
reader will notice that the practical difficulty is to know
what the other line of the base is, for the text gives only
580 THE MONIST.
the one of il/2 cubits, but says nothing of the other, and
we have seen it cannot possibly be il/2 cubits on account
of weight. How long is it then?
Further, it says in verse 24, "And it [a very strange
singular! Perhaps a mistake of estai for esontai11], shall
be out of the same line (ex isou12) below, towards the same
line they shall be (kata to esontai isoi13) from the heads
into one clasp." If then the "style" was a solid timber,
what does it mean: "out of the same line below," and
"toward the same line above"? Should this line refer to
the perpendicular height of the style ? But this line is not
given, for that other line of the base, or the thickness of
the style at the base, is not given, from which we might
possibly ascertain that height by construction or other-
wise. Then again what is the use of that clasp at the
heads? Does it refer to the joining of two styles together
at the top? But it speaks all along of only one style.
Then again the question recurs, are the corner styles
different in their dimensions and structure from the rest?
But this would be against the specification in verse 17.
Let the reader read this difficulty over again, and he will
see that it is insuperable.
The fourth difficulty is again in verse 28. How shall
the middle bolt be made to run through the twenty styles
on the south and the north, and the six styles, or perhaps
the eight styles on the west side? This part of the speci-
fication is not less unsatisfactory than the rest.
And yet the specifications are very plain, and the wri-
ters of the Septuagint came very near understanding it.
ONKELOS'S IDEA AND ITS DIFFICULTIES.
These are essentially the same as those presented in
our Common Version, the difference being only this, that
Onkelos adhered more closely to the original text, which
11 iarai for toovrai IZ if; law l3 Kara TO iaovrai loot
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 581
he could do as he wrote in a cognate dialect, merely tran-
scribing certain difficult words. The differences are the
following :
In verse 12 he says, "half of the remaining cloth," and
not as our Common Version, which leaves out the "of."
The word SeRaHH' rendered in our Common Version
"remnant," he merely transcribes Chaldaically SPIRHH^A/
In verse 17 he merely transcribes the original M'Sh00-
L°Bh°»Th3 Chaldaically M'ShaLBh'IN4.
In verse 24 he renders the importantly differing two
words TouAaM»IM5 and TaM'IM6 with one and the same
word M'KhaVNJIN7 = "tending," just as our Common
Version does with "coupled."
In verse 28 he renders B'TVouKh8 by B'OV9 = "in-
side," and not as our Common Version does, "in the
midst."
In all other points our Common Version is a perfect
counterpart of Onkelos's evasive paraphrase.
TRADITIONAL AND MODERN THEORIES AND THEIR DIFFI-
CULTIES.
The ancient Jewish sources on the structure of the
Tabernacle are (i) the BaRaiIITha DiML^KheTh HaM-
MiShKaN,1 which means "The Extra-Mishnaic Treatise
on the Work of the Tabernacle." There are three editions
of this work (a) Venice 1602; (b) Hamburg 1782, which
occurs at the end of a treatise on oaths, containing also
"A New Version of the Midrash Rabba on the Blessing
of Jacob on his Sons," by Rabbi Hai Gaon. Of this edi-
tion I have only the first leaf of the fascicle of the treatise
on the Tabernacle treating of the frame-work and cover-
ings, and of the court. The most valuable edition (c) is
n roirm
582 THE MONIST.
that by Heinrich Flesch as his inaugural thesis for the
Doctor degree before the Philosophical Faculty of Zurich,
June 1 8, 1892 (Die Barajtha von der Herstellung der
Stiftshiitte nach der Munchener Handschrift. The manu-
script from which this Flesch edition was made is Cod. 95,
perhaps the most valuable one of the great Munich Talmud
manuscripts, and was written in 1342. Dr. Flesch's disser-
tation leaves nothing to be desired so far as this manu-
script is concerned, but as a key to the construction of the
Tabernacle according to the specifications in the Penta-
teuch it is unsatisfactory.
The time when this Baraitha was written Dr. Flesch
thinks may be safely set as the third century A. D. What
I did not find in Dr. Flesch's comments on the text of this
treatise I stumbled upon later, viz., (2) Mishna 3 of Tract.
Shabath, Chapter 12, and both the Babylon and the Jeru-
salem G'marouth to it, which I shall give fully in my trans-
lation of and comments on verses 24-25 (pp. 602 f.).
(i) The difficulties which occur now to us in an at-
tempt to reconstruct the Tabernacle, occurred also to the
ancient Rabbis, and yet they had no more to go by than
we have now, viz., the apparently obscure specifications in
the original text. Hence they theorized. The first diffi-
culty that presented itself was the number given for the
QeRoSh'IM (translated "boards," "beams," "styles") in
the west wall, and for the two corners there, viz., six and
two, and which it is specified are to be counted together
as eight. These would, therefore, give 12 cubits width to
the Tabernacle. But then the pieces of the second covering
were only 30 cubits long, ten of which would be required
for each wall south and north, leaving, therefore, 10 cubits
for the ceiling's width. This measure of the width ap-
peared to them as imperative, since the Temple of Solomon
was 20 cubits wide, (i Kings vi. 2), so this Tabernacle
must be just half as wide, and the 30 cubits' length of the
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 583
second cover would just fit it. The two corner boards
would then give only half a cubit sticking out at each end.
But there are specified two sockets for each QeReSh, which
evidently indicated it to be thicker than a mere plank. How
thick then ? The text does not say, for it only speaks of the
length and width. They theorized one cubit. Then they
theorized further, that the sockets were one cubit high,
into which two tenons, one cubit in length were cut out
from a QeReSh and fitted in, so that nine cubits of a QeReSh
were left above the two sockets, and this diminution of one
cubit in the length (height) of the wall was again found
in its thickness, and the 30 cubits length of the second
cover would then reach from above the sockets to the
same point on the opposite wall. But the weight of such
a beam, (loXi/^Xi cubits) presented an evident diffi-
culty. So another traditional party theorizes (from that
remnant of a tradition, which we still see in the Septua-
gint translation) that the beams were only 1X1/^2 cubits
at their base but tapered off on two sides to one fingers'
thickness at the opposite end. This would diminish the
weight of a QeReSh by nearly one-half. The length then
across the frame-work would be I cubit for the socket, 9
cubits for the QeReSh, l/2 cubit for the space of the slanted
off thickness at the top, 10 cubits for the width across (as
on the ground), then again ^, 9, and I on the other side,
hence 1+9+^ + 10+^+9+1 =31. These two half cu-
bits, which the squared or slanted off beams would add to
the width of the ceiling, this second traditional party does
not account for, for they say, (Baby I. Talmud, tract Shab-
bath, fol. 98, b) that according to the slanting theory, the
first cover of 28 cubits length would reach from above the
socket to above the socket across, and the second cover,
of 30 cubits length, would reach from below the socket to
below the socket across. But a more serious difficulty for
this slanting traditional theory presented itself in the two
584 THE MONIST.
corners, for the receding slopes of the walls south and
north and west, upwards and outwards from within, would
necessarily leave at the corners an open triangular space.
This difficulty is answered by saying that the corner beams
were differently shaped from the rest.
We see, therefore, that this traditional party violates
the clear specification of the text in verse 17, where it is
said that all the QeRoSh'IM of the Tabernacle must be
alike in shape and measure. Nor does it meet the physical
difficulty of the weight of a QeReSh which according to it
too would have been 3750 pounds, viz. (10X1/^X1)^-2
cubits, the cubit taken even at 20" and allowing two cubic
inches to the ounce.
As to the inside bar spoken of in verse 28, the tradition-
ists say that it ran and kept itself there by miraculous
interposition. And the French Rabbi Solomon Itshhaki2
of the twelfth century A. D. is even willing to believe that
that bar ran around the right angle at the west wall and
into its beams, of course miraculously.
As to the widths of the two coverings applied to the
length of the Tabernacle the traditional theories are these.
The slanting theorizers give the remnant spoken of in
verse 12 as a trail at the back of the Tabernacle, and for
this they had to spare at least il/2 cubits from the second
covering of 42 cubits width. But those who theorized
the beam to be one cubit thick say that the word "trail" in
verse 12 means simply to trail beyond the first covering.
But even these last theorizers would also have one cubit
of the 42 to spare; they are not clear in their theory, and
we may be led to think with Rabbi Itshhaki that they al-
lowed a certain portion of the second covering to hang over
the front of the Tabernacle on and over its five pillars (see
verse 37). A homiletic traditional touch appears in the
1 Commonly and erroneously called and quoted as Yarhhi, but better known
as "R(a)shi," from the notaricon or initial letters of his true name. See his
commentaries to the place in tract Shabbath, and to Ex. xxvi.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 585
conundrum, Why is the Tabernacle like unto a woman?
because it has a trail behind itself like a woman who goes
in the street; and like her the same French rabbi thinks,
the Tabernacle must have had a sort of a veil in front of
its face.
These rabbinical, traditional theories, physically im-
possible and textually inconsistent as they are, are followed
nevertheless by many writers, particularly the older ones.
It is on this account that I have stated them fully.
(2) To Josephus's account of the Tabernacle I do not
think it worth while to refer. That peculiar man (despite
the praise he receives) a mixture of patriot and traitor,
priest and worldling, scribe, Pharisee, Sadducee and Greek
literateur, did not seem to have had the least idea that he
would be criticised in what he wrote by any one who knew
the original O. T. Scriptures, and so he went on ad libitum,
spinning out ideas, frequently contradictory, merely as it
seems to swell the volume of his books and for the possible
amusement of his Roman masters who might chance to
cast a glance into them, be astonished, and then give praise
to their noble protege from Judea Capta.
(3) Of modern writers, Dr. K. C. W. F. Bahr, must
be mentioned first. In Vol. I of his Symbolik des Mosai-
schen Cultus (1837), § i, he treats the subject in extenso,
He sees, indeed, both the textual and physical difficulties,
but is satisfied to adjust them more or less in accordance
with the above Jewish traditional theories, which have
great and almost ultimate authority with him. However,
he evidently did not read these traditions in their first
sources, but made his acquaintance with them at second
hand, chiefly from Rabbi Itshhaki's commentaries, and
from other modern Jews. Had he read those traditions
in their sources, he could not then have failed to discover
that the ancient rabbis were by no means a unit on the
subject, as that French modern rabbi made him believe and
586 THE MONIST.
as ev«n the Septuagint might have taught him had he not
so strangely neglected that earliest written source of Jew-
ish traditions.
(4) A more recent writer on this subject is Dr. August
Knobel in his commentary on Exodus and Leviticus in the
Kurzgef. exeg. Handbuch d. A. T., Leipsic, 1857, pp. 272-
273. The word QeReSh,3 in verse 15 and following, he
derives from a non-existing verb Q°R°uSh4 and identifies
it with Q°R°UTSS which he translates "to cut off," "to cut
in pieces," and so he gets his meaning "board" for our
QeReSh. But in the six places where this word occurs in
the Hebrew and Chaldee of the Old Testament6 the word
cannot be made to mean anything else but "to dig out,"
and "to protrude." Yet the author refers to the QeReSh
in Ezek. xxvii. 6 in corroboration of his rendering "board."
But that very place in verse 7 should have shown him the
impossibility of his rendering, for there it would make a
banner spread to the winds on a board!
In verse 17, too, he translates I°DVOUTH7 "tenons,"
and M'Sh°°L0VouTh8 "held together by a strip." For this
last word he refers to I Kings vii. 28, the only other place
it is found in the Old Testament. But the first word never
means tenon, and the translation of the second does not
suit at all in the place referred to.
M'QTSouGHa9 in verses 24-25 he also translates "cor-
ners," and derives this noun from the verb Q°TSouGHaI°
which he translates, "to cut off," "to cut in," and hence
the derived noun means, "corner." But the noun thus
derived can never mean a corner, for this is always a fin-
ished end, and not an end cut "off" or "in." The author
refers to Ezek. xlvi. 21 f., but this very place should have
6 Job xxxiii. 6, P». xxxv. 19, Prov. vi. 13, x. 10, xvi. 30, Jer. xxxxvi. to, and
Dan. Hi. 8, vi. 25.
7 nh; • 9 10
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 587
taught him that the word cannot mean a simple "corner,"
for how could it be said there that a person was made to
pass through a closed-up corner?
The corner boards, he theorizes to have been composed
each of two boards, one of them half a cubit wide, to give
the additional cubit to the nine of the west wall, (the
author accepting the traditional 10 cubits in width), and
the other limb of one cubit width which lapped over the
long wall.11 He then translates verse 24 thus: "And they
shall be double from below on, and at the same time,1'
they shall be whole (every one) until its head, until the
first13 ring." But aside from other cogent objections to
this translation and theory, they are more than sufficiently
refuted by the two Hebrew words given in footnotes 12
and 13 as irrefutable witnesses against the author. That
this theory makes the corner boards totally different from
the rest, and hence in contradiction to the definite speci-
fication in verse 17, has of course no weight with such
decided rationalists as Drs. Winer and Knobel.
The word MaBhR'IaHH,14 in verse 28, the author ren-
ders "letting pass through." But it can mean nothing
else than "bolting" or "barring." And B'TVouKh15 in
the same verse he renders, "between," i. e., as he says,
between the two upper and lower bars on the boards. But
this is no Hebrew language or diction at all!
One had a right to expect better things from such an
Hebraist as Dr. Knobel, but it seems that even rationalism
does not shield a learned man against the warping in-
fluences of traditionalism, and its disregard for the sacred-
ness of the text prevents him too from seeking and find-
ing the simple truth.
11 This theory has been previously proposed by Winer in his Bibl. RcalivSrter-
buch, vol. II. p. 529, note 3.
588 THE MONIST.
(5) The next recent author I will mention is Rev. T.
O. Paine, a minister of the New Jerusalem Church. He
treats of the Tabernacle in his work entitled Solomon's
Temple, or etc.16 which is superbly and beautifully illus-
trated. I am at a loss what to say about the author's alto-
gether new theories with regard to the Tabernacle. Space
and time forbid entering into details. Yet I would have
done so, had the author impressed me with the idea that
he understood the Hebrew language thoroughly, which
he decidedly did not. All I can say is that the author's
imagination worked here boldly and systematically, but
he removed no textual difficulty and built upon the trans-
lation of our common English version, as though it were
the original sacred text itself. But he went beyond it,
and put a gable roof on the Tabernacle of his imagina-
tion because -'* suited him. And the text stands pure,
clear, and simple, though violated by friend and foe.
(6) The next author I will mention is the well and
widely known orthodox divine and commentator, Dr. C.
F. Keil. His ideas on the subject I find in his commentary
on Exodus.17 He too accepts the rendering of QeReSh
by "board." But instead of "tenons" he translates I°-
D°«Th18 in verse 17 "pegs," and M'Sh00L°BhouTh'9 "bound
to one another." He says: "The pegs were joined to-
gether by a fastening dovetailed into the pegs by which
they were fastened still more firmly to the boards, and
therefore had greater holding power than if each one had
been simply sunk into the edge of the board." And these
two pegs were placed into one socket each. How high
these pegs were to go up on the boards, how long, broad,
thick, and how far their socket ends were to stand from
16 Published by George Phinney, 21 Bromfield St., Boston, 1861.
17 Translated by the Rev. James Martin, B. A., Nottingham, and published in
Edinburgh by T. and T. Clark, 1866, pp. 178-180.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 589
each other, the text does not say a word. Yet as a new
theory it is refreshing, and might be accepted as a last
resort, if the text had not a far plainer meaning and idea,
as we shall soon see. The corners and the corner boards
he conceives of as do Winer and Knobel, and refers also
to Ezek. xlvi. 21-22, as absurdly as Dr. Knobel. He differs
only in that he does not translate the word V'IaHHD°IV20
at all, and renders "with regard to one ring," what Dr.
Knobel translates "until the first ring." Dr. Keil finds the
meaning of these words very obscure in some points," but
is satisfied with the Winer-Knobel idea about it, together
with his new idea, that the ring mentioned here "was placed
half way up the upright beam in the corner or angle, in
such a manner that the central bolt, which stretched along
the entire length of the walls (verse 28), might fasten into
it from both the side and the back." But this verily is
adding to the essential text, for rings are provided for the
bolts specifically enough in verse 29. Nor can Dr. Keil
escape the fact that he too makes these corner boards spe-
cifically different from the rest, and therefore in contra-
diction to the clear specifications in verse 17, that all boards
(QeRaSh'IM) of the Tabernacle must be alike.
(7) The next author I will mention is Mr. James Fer-
gusson, F. R. S., F. R. A. S., Fellow of the Royal Institute
of British Architects. His ideas about the Tabernacle are
given in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. Ill, pp. 1450-
1454, article "Temple." He too accepts the idea of boards
10 cubits in width, made up by the two corner boards, added
to the six of the west wall, and seems not at all troubled
either about the tenons or about those peculiar corners and
their boards. What Mr. Fergusson is troubled about is
that the Tabernacle should have no roof to shed the rain.
He therefore assumes that there was one of such a con-
590
THE MONIST.
struction as seen in the subjoined Fig. 2, which gives a
transverse section of the frame-work and first covering of
the Tabernacle. But the reader will ask, what supported
this gable roof? Mr. Fergusson answers that there must
have been a fifteen cubit pillar in the front of the Taber-
nacle, and a similar one at its rear, and across these a rope
was drawn as a ridge pole. But even this is not enough
for him, since he still fears that the rope and the curtain
upon it will droop, so he thinks that another fifteen cubit
pole was provided for inside the Tabernacle. By referring
to Rev. T. O. Paine's ideas (see above page 588), it will
be seen that Mr. Fergusson had been preceded in the gable-
u
X
/ u
iO
10 \
5 C.
u O
20 C
5 C.
O (j
in -
in in
5 C.
10 C.
5 C.
Fig. 2.
roof idea. That there is no mention whatever of these pil-
lars and rope-ridge in the text does not seem to have dis-
turbed their imaginations. It will also be seen that it is
essential for the proportions according to Mr. Fergusson's
theory that the width of the Tabernacle should be 10 cubits,
for there everything is divided by 5. But the text says
(verse 22) that the back wall was to be only 9 cubits, or if
the two corner boards were incorporated in the length of
that wall, then 12 cubits. Mr. Fergusson does not mind it,
and relies on Josephus and tradition. But what is he going
to do with those spaces on either side and under the eaves
of the Tabernacle? He builds nice and convenient cells
there, as it to be seen beautifully drawn in his picture on
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 59!
page 1454. He finds his authority for this third depart-
ment, which he calls the porch around the three sides, in
Josephus (Ant. Ill, 6, 4) who says that the Tabernacle
was divided into three parts, though he specifies only two
— the adytum and the pronoas. "The third," exclaims Mr.
Fergusson, "was of course the porch, 5 cubits deep, which
stretched across the width of the house/' But why does
not Josephus mention this third department? Why, be-
cause he speaks only of three parts, each 10 cubits long,
one of which was taken up by the adytum (Holy of Holies),
and the two parts, 2X10 cubits, was occupied by the pro-
noas (holy). The Hebrew points which Mr. Fergusson
makes I had better pass uncriticised. There are clear and
minute specifications given in the scriptures, precluding any
necessity of the liberty of fancy and imagination as we
shall see.
(8) Another authority is Die Stiftshutte in Bild und
Wort gezeichnet von Wilhelm Neumann, mit 79 in den
Text gedruckten Abbildungen und 5 Tafeln in Buntdruck,
Gotha, 1861. This includes the entire structure and ritual
of the Tabernacle and the encampment of Israel in the
desert. The author is a Hebrew scholar. He refers to
no translation and traditional authorities and professes an
orthodox Christian faith. He contends against interpret-
ing the record of an Oriental sanctuary by Occidental no-
tions. He is familiar with Beduin tent construction (p.
16) and thinks this should guide us in the interpretation of
the Tabernacle structure. He gives a picture of two des-
ert tents, a round one and a square one, to guide us, (pp.
56-57)- Ten rules (Normen) guided him in the pres-
ent work and the first of these is as follows: (i) Not all
things that are necessary for the construction are named
in the Law (specifications, I would say) and not every-
where is the manner of that which is named exactly defined
592 THE MONIST.
and sufficiently apportioned (bemessen), as the purpose
of that which is named would demand.
Space and my time and that of the reader do not permit
a translation of all the rest of the nine rules that guided
the author. I must limit myself to some of the crucial
points in the Hebrew text.
(a) By QeReSh he understands a thick plank (Bohle),
in this case here i^ ells thick, upright square from bot-
tom to top.
(b) By I°DOUH (Ex. xxvi. 17) Com. Vers. "tenons,"
he understands two tenons at the bottom of a QeReSh
which are connected with each other and fit into silver
bases. He comes to this conclusion from verses 22 and 23,
which specify six QeReSh at the west side and two at the
corners, hence eight in all, and each at i^ ells broad would
give 12 ells for the width of the floor of the tabernacle, but
from other specifications the floor was only 10 ells, hence
when the QeReSh is il/2 ells thick the structure would be
12 ells on the outside and only ten ells on the inside. But
what about the corner QeReSh? This he miters with the
last QeReSh coming from either side north and south, and
in the top he has some ring arrangement to satisfy a textual
point. The top or roof of the Tabernacle he constructs
with poles on which the goats' hair canvasses are stretched
(pp. 77, 80). All these changes and additions are per-
missible to the author according to his rule (i) stated
above.
(9) The next work I would mention is Die Stiftshutte,
der Tempel in Jerusalem und der Tempelplatz der Jetzt-
zeit, dargestellt von Conrad S chick, Koniglich Wurtem-
bergischer Baurat in Jerusalem. Mit 47 in den Text ge-
druckten Abbildungen und n lithographischen Tafeln.
Berlin, 1896.
This author knows Hebrew but not so familiarly as the
preceding one and not enough to give his own transla-
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 593
tion of the verses concerned in the structure of the Taber-
nacle from their original. He speaks often of Luther's
translation. He seems to rely upon Talmudic traditions,
upon Josephus, and old and modern commentators. He
is commendably modest, and to this he is induced by the
difficulties which the original text apparently presents. He
gives illustrations both of the ridge construction and of
the square box construction of both of which he says he
made several models. He, too, sees the difficulties arising
from the absence of statement in the original specifications
as to the thickness of a QeReSh which he accepts to mean
"plank," and finds himself cornered when he comes to the
two corners on the west side of the tabernacle. There he
gives seven different illustrations from seven different the-
ories by seven different authors. And as none of these con-
cern themselves about the distinct specification in Ex. xxvi.
17 that all the QeR°ShiIM in the Tabernacle must be alike
whether a wall QeReSh or a corner one, so this author,
too is not concerned and satisfies himself modestly by giv-
ing seven different possibilities. The difficulties with the
coverings this author sees also, and is inclined to the Paine
and Fergusson idea of a gable roof on the tabernacle.
(10) The last work I mention is The Tabernacle, Its
History and Structure, by the Rev. W. Shaw Caldecott,
Philadelphia, 1904. This is a book of 236 pages, of which
156 pages are devoted to the demonstration of "The Triple
Cubit of Babylonia," and by these varying measures the
difficulties of the construction of the tabernacle are to be
solved. The author assumes that there existed a taber-
nacle before the Tabernacle, the pattern of which was
shown to Moses on the Mount. That pretabernacle was
placed around the twelve pillars and the altar mentioned
in Ex. xxiv. 4 and into it the other one was built in which
the twelve pillars were so distributed that a ridge-pole
could be provided to keep off rain and bad weather. The
594 THE MONIST.
QeReSh, according to this author, was a single board pro-
vided with two tenons to fit into two thresholds and the
corner QeReSh at each end of the south and north sides
joining the west side were cut out of a solid beam. The
specification of Ex. xxvi. 17, that all the QeR°ShiIM should
be alike is passed over in silence.
DIFFICULTIES REMOVED.
There are no difficulties in the Hebrew text. A He-
brew like Moses, or Bezaleel, had only to know the law
that the square of the hypotenuse of a rectangular triangle
is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides,
then having heard all the specifications of the text, he could
make his plan first, and proceed to construct the Tabernacle
by common workingmen. The difficulties are only in the
translations and these have been influenced by unscientific
traditions. These aside, the difficulties vanish. But to
remove these it will be necessary not only to give a correct
translation but to accompany the same with a commentary,
which I shall proceed to do.
Exodus XXVI.
( 1 ) "And the dwelling thou shalt make of ten cloths, of twisted
linen, and blue, and purple, and wormred. Of cherubimic design
shalt thou make them."
In xxvi. i the "dwelling" is spoken of. But a dwell-
ing cannot be made of cloth ; the word, therefore, here must
mean only some important part of it. The "twisted linen,"
i. e., the linen thread, need not be fine, but only twisted, so
as to correspond in the weaving with the other colored
thread, which is dyed in the twristed state. The design,
or pattern, was to consist of various cherubs, hence the
plural "cherubim." Nor was the design to be finished in
one piece of cloth, but to begin in one and continue in the
rest of the pieces, as our draperies are designed. The
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 595
capacity of the looms then obtainable was of course duly
considered.
(2) "The length of each cloth, twenty and eight by the cubit,
and the width four by the cubit, for each cloth ; one measure for
all the cloths."
"The cubit," one well known, of course, to speaker and
hearer. Israel may have had a different cubit from the
Egyptian one, one which Jacob may have brought with
him when he came to sojourn in Egypt. The proportion
of each piece of cloth was 7:1, and this proportion would
have to be preserved in the smaller subdivisions of the
cubit, without fractions.
(3) "Five of the cloths shall be joined one to the other, and
five cloths joined one to the other."
"One to the other," literally "woman to her sister/'1
denotes the demand of perfect coaptation of piece to piece
on account of the pattern which was complete in each set
of five pieces.
(4) "And thou shalt make loop-holes of blue upon the border
of the one cloth at its joining end, and so shalt thou make in the
ending border of the second cloth at the joining."
The word which I render "loop-hole" is L°°L°,a and
as such occurs in this place only. It is evidently an an-
cient Aramaic feminine form from the masculine L°°L3
found in the masculine plural in i Kings vi. 8, where it
refers not to "winding stairs," but to the several apertures
in the ceiling of the lower tier of cells, through which the
stairs led to the next upper tier above.4 Those who trans-
late the word "loop" follow the careless example of Onkelos
who certainly is of less authority in archeological matters
than the more ancient Septuagint which supports my ren-
4 Compare Buxtorf's Lex. Ckald. Talm. and Rob. Fisher's ed., Leipsic
1*73. P 374-
596 THE MONIST.
dering. These loop-holes were worked out with blue
thread. They did not disturb the cherubimic pattern, for
there it came to a conclusion, in the five-cloth breadth.
(5) "Fifty loop-holes shalt thou make in the one cloth, and
fifty loop-holes shalt thou make in the edge of the cloth, which is
in the joining of the second one; the loop-holes fitting oppositely
one to another."
The Common Version's rendering: "that the loops may
take hold one of another," is impossible, both linguistically5
and because the loops had to take hold of the taches that
intervened between them, and not "one of another."
The proportion 50:28 seems strange, but in 25 inches
the cubit is 14:1. But these 50 loop-holes together with
the 50 in the opposite spread are related to the 50 crooks
by which they were joined, so that the relation is 50:2X28
=25:28 and in inches it is 25700=1:14.
(6) "And thou shalt make fifty golden crooks, and join the
cloths one to another by the crooks ; and the dwelling shall become
one."
The form and name of the crook (QeReS6) is derivable
from the meaning of its verb-root Q°ROUS7 which means
"to stoop," as in carrying a burden upon the back. It
occurs in Is. xlvi. i, 2. Its form might have been thus:
The shanks would be drawn sufficiently apart from each
other to admit the thickness of the worked-out edge of the
loop-hole to pass, and then lodge on just the half of the
base ; then the same with the opposite loop-hole would form
a steady joint.
s "fronting," is not rri!>3|5ft= "receiving."
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 597
We have now a spread of 28X40, a proportion of 7:10.
What the object of this division into 2X20 is, is evident
from verse 33.
(7) "And thou shalt make goats' cloths for the tent upon the
dwelling. Eleven cloths shalt thou make them."
The object of the number eleven is evidently for the
purpose of breaking joints with the lower spread, and its
better protection. But this will give a surplus.
(8) "The length of each cloth thirty by the cubit, and the
width of each cloth four by the cubit, one measure for the eleven
cloths."
Here is again a surplus in the length which is evidently
for the protection of the lower spread. The proportion of
each cloth is 30:4=15:2.
(9) "And thou shalt join the five cloths apart, and the six cloths
apart. And thou shalt double the sixth cloth toward the front of
the tent.
(10) "And thou shalt make fifty loop-holes upon the border of
the one ending cloth at the joining, and fifty loop-holes upon the
border of the second joining cloth.
(11) "And thou shalt make fifty copper crooks, and bring the
crooks into the loop-holes, and join the tent, and it shall become
one."
The sixth piece of cloth being doubled upon itself, and
coming to the front, would make this upper spread to
break the loop-holes' joint of the lower spread, by covering
it with the middle of the sixth goats' cloth (reckoning from
the front), which would go 2 cubits further, and thence
from its loop-hole's joint it would go 20 cubits still further.
The proportion of the original six joined cloths would be
24:30=4:5, and with the one cloth doubled upon itself,
22:30=11:15. The other five joined cloths give 20:30=
2:3. The entire spread without folding the sixth cloth,
gives 44:30=22:15; with that piece folded, 42:30=7:5.
59^ THE MONIST.
(12) "And as for the surplus spread in the cloths of the tent,
half of the surplus cloth shall spread upon the backside of the dwell-
ing."
When we lay the two entire covers upon each other,
there would be 18 cubits of the lower cover from the loop-
hole's joint of the upper cover to which the 20 cubits of the
smaller portion of the upper cover would correspond and
thus give us 2 cubits of surplus ; of this the half only, viz.,
one cubit, is specified to spread or trail beyond the dwell-
ing. Where then is the other one cubit to go to? This
will be fully accounted for when we come to know the
true length of the ceiling of the Tabernacle, as given in the
construction of its frame-work.
(13) "And the cubit of this and the cubit of that in the surplus
in the length of the cloths of the tent, shall spread upon the sides
of the dwelling to cover it on this and that side."
It will be noticed that the specifications do not say a
word about the stakes and ropes which usually belong to
a tent. The entire lower spread is spoken of here as "the
dwelling," and the entire upper one as "the tent" ; and the
presumption would be that they would make one closed
whole with the supporting frame-work except at the back
side, where there is to be a trail of one surplus cubit back
of it. See verse 12.
(14) "And thou shalt make a cover upon the tent of reddened
ram skins, and a cover of Tahhash skins above."
The "cover" here is called M'KhSeH8 and is derived
from the verb K°SOUH,9 meaning always "to cover close
down" upon the object covered. It must be clearly dis-
tinguished from S°KOUH10, which is a transposition of the
letters of the former verb and means not "to cover" but
"to over-shadow." By attending to this distinction much
confusion will thus be avoided. The two covers here must
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 599
have reference to the top tent cloth alone, and not to the
walls of the Tabernacle.
Hitherto the specifications have spoken of the soft parts
of the structure. How were its hard supports, its frame-
work, to be?
(15) "And thou shalt make the styles for the dwelling of up-
right standing shittim planks.
(16) "Ten cubits the length of the style, and a cubit and half
a cubit the width of each style.
(17) "Two arms to each style, sloping one to its other. Thus
shalt thou make for all the styles of the dwelling."
The word which I render "style" is QeReSh" and oc-
curs only in this place, and once more in Ezek. xxvii. 6.
Its plural is Q'RoSh'IM.12 On the understanding of this
word depends the entire understanding of the structure
of the frame-work of the dwelling and the disposition of
its coverings. The specifications give a full description of
it, and from these the true meaning of the word must ne-
cessarily become clear. The styles were to be made of
"upright standing shittim planks." In verse 37 we read
of "shittim pillars," because those pillars may not have
been made of planks. But in the construction of Noah's
ark, Gen. vi. 14, we read of GHaTSaiI GouPheR;13 and in
the construction of the ark of the testimony, Ex. xxv. 10,
we read of GHaTSaiI Sh'TT'IM.'4 In both instances the
first word is in the plural number and in the genitive case.
We cannot, therefore, translate, "of woods of gopher,"
and "of woods of shittim," but "of planks of gopher" and
"of planks of shittim." The rendering of "wood" in the
singular by our Common Version is inaccurate and mis-
leading. The length and width of a style is 10 and I}/?
cubits. Each style was to have two arms, I°D°uTh.15
The reader who is not acquainted with the Hebrew
language needs an exposition of this word I°D°uTh. The
"B^ "ip-Jtt
6<X> THE MONIST.
Hebrew language has two genders for its nouns, mascu-
line and feminine. It has also two plurals, one which des-
ignates things that are two in nature, as hands, feet, eyes,
ears, etc., and the ending of this dual plural is aim. The He-
brew word for hand is IaD (pronouncing/ as 3; consonant).
The dual plural of IaD is therefore I°DaiIM, meaning
"hands." But when the word "hands" refers to other
things than the two hands of a human being, as for in-
stance to the arms of an armchair or axles of wheels, or
figuratively to shares, parts, powers, etc., the plural of
IaD does not have the dual plural form but the ordinary
plural of the feminine gender which is VouTh; and in
this case the plural of IaD is I°D°uTh. This word occurs
but seventeen times in the Hebrew Old Testament, while
the dual plural of IaD, viz., loD^IM, occurs 252 times.
In Gen. xliii. 34, our Common Version has this word ren-
dered with "times": "but Benjamin's mess was five times
(I°DV°uTh) so much as any of theirs." 2 Sam. xix. 3:
"we have ten 'parts' (I°DV°uTh) in the King." I Kings
x. 19: "and there were 'stays' (I°D°uTh) [marginal read-
ing 'hands'] on either side on the place of the seat."
For "tenons" as rendered by Onkelos and our Common
Version, there is not the slightest linguistic ground. But
two arms must proceed either from a broad shoulder on
either side of it, or from a common point. The text says :
"they shall be sloping one to another." The word "slo-
ping" is M'Sh00L°BhouThl6 according to the comparatively
modern vowelling of Jewish tradition, which makes a
passive participle of the original consonants of the word.
It would be better to vowel the word to read M'ShaL-
BhouTh,17 as an active participle; but this is of less account.
The greater difficulty is that besides in this place this word
occurs only in the construction of the pedestals to the ten
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 6oi
lavers in Solomon's Temple (i Kings vii. 28, 29), where
it occurs in a derived plural masculine noun. Now we
might study the meaning of the word there and apply the
result to our place ; but since Exodus is an earlier Hebrew
than Kings, it is logical to study the word in the former
and apply the results in the latter. Is it correct to translate
the verb-root Sh°L°uBhl8 as "to slope"? We shall see
when we come to have a full understanding of what a
"style"19 is. At this stage of the specifications for the
entire structure we do not have it, for here they stop de-
scribing a style and proceed to state how many styles
should come to each wall, and on what they were to rest.
We listen, therefore, with Moses.
(18) "And thou shalt make the styles for the dwelling, twenty
styles at the arid south side.
(19) "And forty silver sockets thou shalt make underneath each
style of the twenty; two sockets underneath each one style, for its
two arms, and two sockets underneath each one style for its arms.
(20) "And for the second flank of the dwelling on the north
side, twenty styles;
(21) "And their forty silver sockets, two sockets underneath
each one style, and two sockets underneath each one style.
(22) "And for the two hips of the dwelling westward, thou shalt
make six styles."
There were only three walls then. The architectural
terms here are borrowed from anatomy and are therefore
very clear. We have two parallel flanks which terminate,
as it were, in two hips between which comes the inclosing
third wall. On the ground, then, we have an oblong of
30X9 cubits, open on the east. But since the two arms
of a style were inclining towards each other, the corners
would be left open. Let the reader take two narrow strips
18 i^Tf- It may be put in the category of biliteral roots SHL with a determin-
ative third letter as liV}, rbti, n?# and *]?$, all denoting rapid movement or
direction away from the perpendicular.
6O2 THE MONIST.
of paper of equal length, and double them across their
length and he will have two two-armed styles. Let him
then put the width of one arm at right angles to the width
of an arm of the other style, so that he will have two equal
lines at right angles on the ground, and he will see that
the corner formed by the two styles remains open. How
shall this corner be closed up? We listen with Moses to
the specifications.
(23) "And two styles thou shalt make for the cut-out corners
of the dwelling at its hips."
According to the specification given in verse 17, all
the styles of the dwelling must be alike; the two styles,
therefore, for the two cut-out corners can make no ex-
ception. The scientific problem is to make such styles, by
the dimensions and description already given, as would
be all alike and close up the two cut-out corners. Let the
reader make a third style precisely like the two he has
made already and try to close up the cut-out corner with
this third style ; he will see that unless the arm of his style
is 10 by \y2 he will not be able to do it. And will he then
be able? The question is, How far is one arm of a style
to be from its fellow? True, indeed, the specification in
verse 17 says that the arms should slope to one another;
but at what angle? And are the arms to meet above, or
remain at a distance from each other? Again we listen
with Moses.
(24) "And they shall become twinning below, and together
whole shall they become upon its head, unto one and the same hous-
ing.
"So shall it become for the two, for the two cut out corners
shall they become.
(25) "And they shall become eight styles; and their silver
sockets, sixteen sockets, two sockets underneath each one style and
two sockets underneath each one style."
The first part of verse 24 must refer to all the styles
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE.
603
if the specification of verse 17 is to remain inviolate. But
lest the difficulty of the corner style should lead to an at-
tempt at such a violation, the specification says in the sec-
ond part of verse 24 that there must also be styles of this
same kind for the two cut-out corners. Then it says that all
the styles at the western ends of the two hips of the dwell-
ing shall be counted as eight, to show again that the two
corner styles must be like the six of the west wall and of
course the other walls. But am I correct in translating
M'Q°°TSGHouThao as "cut-out corners" in verse 24? Let
this be answered by the same architectural term in Ezek.
OUTER COURT
Fig. 3-
xlvi. 21, 22. "And he brought me out into the outer court,
and made me pass in the four [cut-out] corners; and be-
hold a court in the [cut-out] corner of the court, a
court in the [cut-out] corner of the court. In the four
[cut-out] corners of the court, smoking courts, forty
long and thirty wide; one measure for the four from
the [cut-out] corners." Let the reader leave out what
I have put purposely in brackets, and ask himself, How
can it be said that a court 40X30 was in the closed corner
of another court? And again, how can it be said that a
604 THE MONIST.
person passed in a corner? Is it not evident that the four
corners of the outer court were cut-out corners?
The foregoing figure, I think, will explain itself suf-
ficiently.21
The specifications about the styles are here at an end,
for having shown us this cut-out-corner resulting from the
shape of the styles, and having told us to close up that
corner with a style we are left to infer what the perpen-
dicular height must be, which is the same as inferring its
stretch below from arm to arm; and as to this height no
specification is given, for this will differ by a minutje frac-
tion in the corner styles. Nor is there any specification
given as to how deep the planks of a style are to be sunk
into their sockets, for these two unspecified items will cor-
rect each other. The scientific law which Moses had to
know in order to proceed unhampered, is what we know
as the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid, said to have
been discovered by Pythagoras about 500 B. C. Fig. 4
will make the whole thing plain.
BCGD is the inside plank of a style at the hip of the wall
on the north side at its terminus, meeting the end of the
west wall at C ; BD is the ridge of this style ; and BDMN is
its outside plank. ACFH is the inner plank of the style of
the west wall, meeting the terminal style from the north
at C, and there making with it a right angle on the ground.
AF is the ridge of this west wall style, AFEL its outside
plank. It will now be seen that AB is the ridge of the
corner style, closing in the corner. If we imagine a per-
pendicular rising from the point C, and terminating on a
level with the ridges AF, AB, and BD, then the line AB be-
comes our diagonal of construction, to show us the half
distance between the arms of a wall style at the base. For
21 With this definition of J?'S|?£ the reader will understand better the passages
in 2 Chron. xxvi. 9; Neh. iii. 19-25; also Lev. xiv. 41, and also Psa xlv. 9, where
r'i.'*i'r means "dusted in corners and folds."
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE.
605
if we imagine all the three ridges coming down straight
upon the ground, they exactly halve that distance. Then
AB is the hypotenuse of the triangle whose equal sides are
AC and CB. Now the 47th of Euclid proved that AB2=
AC2+CB2, and since the two sides here are equal, then
AB2— 2BC2, and BC=VAB2/2, and thus Moses knew as
well as we do what the half distance between the two arms
Fig. 4-
of a wall style was at its base. And knowing this, Moses
could, as we can, find out the exact height of a wall style,
as will be seen from Fig. 5. BC we know is ten cubits,
CI is our BC of Fig. 4 whose numerical value we have
just ascertained, so we know what the two sides of the
triangle CBI are; and as the angle CIB is 90°, and is oppo-
site the longest side of the triangle, then from these three
6o6
THE MONIST.
known functions we can ascertain the third side of the
triangle, BI, which is the perpendicular height of the wall
style CBK.
4°18'
e° 36'
to.
Fig. 5-
Fig. 6.
But is this the same as the perpendicular height of a
corner style? No; for referring to Fig. 4 we see that SC
is half the distance between the two arms of the corner
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 607
style, and this is just one-half of our diagonal of construc-
tion, viz 1 1/2/2 = £4 of a cubit, less therefore than BC
which we have ascertained. Therefore must the perpen-
dicular height of Fig. 6, AS, be more than BI in Fig. 5,
the difference being only 0.0285 of a cubit. This minute
difference could be easily removed by sinking the plank
ends, OP and QR of Fig. 4 (the same as AC and AK of
Fig. 6) just that little deeper in their sockets than the
planks of the wall styles were sunk in theirs, and for this
there is no specification to the contrary. With this cor-
rection the ridges of the corner styles come on a level with
the rest.
Without previously knowing the meaning of the He-
brew noun QeReSh we have obtained it from its description
and specification in the text, and we can see now how ad-
mirably such styles were adapted to fulfil all indications.
They combined strength with lightness and compactness
for carriage. They would also afford storage room for
the appurtenances of the Tabernacle when not on the
march, and would probably answer as good a purpose as
Mr. Fergusson's cells, (see page 590) without violation of
either the Bible text or Josephus. The planks of a style
did not need to be thicker than one inch, for against the
possible bending of such a long plank provision was made
in the next specification, both as to this and the compact-
ness of the walls of the structure at the same time. The
two planks were of course beveled at the top to the now
ascertained angle, and held together by a strong metallic
housing, band or ring. Below, each plank rested on a
socket of a talent of silver, about 93 pounds (Ex. xxxviii.
27), which together with the other provisions, next to be
considered, kept the planks from slipping out of position.
In taking down the structure the planks had only to be
pulled out from this top housing and laid together on the
vehicles subsequently provided. Compare Num. vii. 8,
608 THE MONIST.
with iv. 29-33. 96 planks loaded on four carts will give
to each 24 planks, each about 293 pounds (without their
gold plating), packing to a height which would leave room
to spare for the other things belonging to the styles. Then
on a little reflection it will be seen that the three inner
sockets of a corner would have to be fitted into each other,
thus forming an admirable starting point in laying out the
ground at an erection of the structure.
If very ancient traditions are of any value in proving
the truthfulness of my discovery as to the real shape of
the QeReSh which I deduced from the simple text, then I
would point the reader to the fact that unless that shape
was as I say we cannot understand the Septuagint trans-
lation (or better, paraphrase) of verses 18, 20, 27, (see
pages 570 and 578). And this is the same tradition that
we have already met with in that other Babylonian rab-
binical party on page 583. Yet from neither of these can
we get an answer to the important question, What was the
thickness of a QeReSh at its base? for both of these de-
clared a QeReSh to have been a solid timber. Hence the
Babylonian Talmud simply guessed that it was one cubit,
and left us with the absurd impossibility as to the weight
of a QeReSh. And yet they speak there (Shabbath folio
98, page a) of the 48 QeR°ShiIM beams being loaded on
4 two-ox carts ! But I stumbled on a far clearer tradition
as to the shape and construction of a QeReSh in the Jeru-
shalem Talmud (Shabbath, Chap. 12, Mishna 3, and the
Gemarah to it). It is as follows: "Any one who writes
two letters (on the sabbath day), whether with the right
or the left hand, whether of one or two names, or whether
of two signs in any language, is guilty (of violating the
sabbath). Said Rabbi Yose,22 there is no guilt in two let-
ters, except they were for marks, for in this way they
marked the QeR°Sh'IM of the Tabernacle, in order to
know each other's mate." To this the Jerushalem Ge-
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 609
marah has the following: "Who taught that thing about
the two signs'? (Answer) : Rabbi Yose did. What is the
meaning of 'in any language?' (Answer) : If he wrote a
Greek Alpha for an Hebrew Aleph. But was not that
marking for fear, lest one put the lower end up and the
upper end down? (Answer) : They were made like wri-
ting reeds (i. e., bevelled off at one end). But was it not
for fear, lest one put an inside one outside, and an outside
one in? (Answer) : The housings (viz., those mentioned
in verse 29, which they declared to have been on the outside
planks) show this. But was it not for fear, lest they be
interchanged? (i. e., those of the north south and west).
Answered Rabbi Ahha: Their (respective) inclines were
written on them. (N. B., the Septuagint, verses 18, 20, 27).
Well, what if they are changed thus? Answered Rabbi
Aimi, It is said (Ex. xxvi. 30), 'thou shalt put up the
Tabernacle according to its judgment,' and is there a judg-
ment for a plank? But this is what it means: When a
QeReSh was found worthy to be put north, it must be put
there, and if south, then south." The unprejudiced reader
must see here how much certain traditions knew of my
discovery. And yet how many Jewish rabbis, and one of
them not less a one than the great Maimonides of the
twelfth century A. D. (see his comments to this Mishna),
read these traditions and did not understand them. And
how many Christian theologians went on theorizing about
the Tabernacle, and did not even care to know about these
traditions.
I may now return to the lexical consideration of the
words which I translate "style" and "sloping," and which
I omitted on pages 599 to 601. From the "sloping" struc-
ture of a "style," which the text itself teaches us, we can
32 This is Rabbi Yousse ben HHalafta of the first half of the second century
A. D. (Hamburger Realencydopedie II, s. v. "Jo«se.")
6io
THE MONIST.
be certain that the rendering of Sh°L°uBh23 as "to slope"
is the correct one. This will help us to understand the
description of the pedestals of the ten lavars of I Kings
vii. 28, 29. The Sh'LaB'IM,24 "slopes," rendered by the
Common Version "ledges," are the side slopes on which
rested lion, ox and cherub, as is seen in Fig. 7. And if the
reader observes that each of these three squares is so con-
structed as to give three different radii with
which to describe circles in and around them,
he will see that this structure probably had
reference to the heavenly vision of the first
chapter of Ezekiel. And who knows but
that this refers to the relation of the radius
to the cirmumf erence ?
As to the word QeReSh25 let the reader
examine thorough and honest authorities,
and he will find that the word is not to be
found in any language cognate to the Hebrew,
with the sense it has in our place. Since I
am not writing exclusively for Semitic schol-
ars, I must say no more here, but if any such
should challenge my assertion I am ready
to substantiate it fully. My own explanation of this unique
word is that it was coined specially for this occasion. Not
the entire word, however, but only the last letter was
added to the two-lettered root QR,26 which is common to
both Semitic and Indo-Germanic languages. This is ac-
knowledged by Dr. Friedrich Delitzsch in his Studien iiber
indo germ. -s emit. Wurzelverwandtschaft, Leipsic, 1873, PP-
88 and 89. I differ, however, from him and others as to
the primary meaning of this root. It does not denote, I
think, "cold and contraction," but "separation from and
joining to a point." This meaning is recognizable in the
Fig. 7-
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 6ll
Semitic QeReN,27 the Indo-Germanic keras,28 cornus, horn
and crystal. To this root QR was added a Sh in coining
the word QeReSh,89 and that for arithmetical and geo-
metrical reasons.
There is no denying that the Hebrews must have used
the letters of their alphabet for numerical purposes, since
they had no other numerals in use, and without numerals
no civilized life is at all supposable.
From Fig. 4 on page 605 we saw that the formation of
the two corners at the west wall of the tabernacle were
easily constructed by the Pythagorean theorem of the right-
angled triangle, and that this afforded the solution of the
construction of all the styles in the walls. When I studied
this question thirty years ago the solution occurred to me
at that time that Moses, or whoever wrote this account of
the tabernacle, learned that theorem in the same place
where Pythagoras later learned it, viz., in Egypt. But this
does not answer as to the origin of the word QeReSh of
which the numerical values of the letters are I, 2, 3, the
last letters but one of the ancient Semitic alphabet.30
Leaving out then the last letter Thau, whose number is
400, or 4 in digits, these stared me in the face. I was
familiar with cabalistic numerics, mystically called G'Ma-
TRIA. I reflected upon the fact that the first three num-
bers, i, 2, 3, can not construct the Pythagorean theorem,
but the three numbers next to and connected with them,
3, 4, 5, can. Now is there a connection, I asked myself,
between the I, 2, 3, and the 3, 4, 5; that is, a connection
between arithmetic and geometry? And what connection
have these with that unique word QeReSh?
I shall take the liberty of repeating here the cabalistic
operations which gave me the explanation. I know very
well that to the reader of the twentieth century these will
"Pi?-
6l2 THE MONIST.
seem very improbable. But we must bear in mind that
the ancient Israelites thought in a way that anticipated
the Cabala, and in explaining their writings we ought to
think in the way they did even though it may appear
abstruse to us. This I did. I drew a right-angled triangle
the perpendicular, base and hypotenuse of which repre-
sented respectively the numbers I, 2, 3, and wrote around
it that unique word in digits 1(00), 2(00), 3(00). It told
me that i(oo)-f 2(00)— 3(00), 3I but should I continue
around the triangle now from left to right and add 1(00)
to 3(00) it would give me 4(oo),32 yet when I added the
omitted letter to the two previously added together, the
warning word "False" !33 stared me in the face. I took
it to mean that 1+3 equals 4 arithmetically but not geo-
metrically, for line i + line 2 gives me more than line 3,
as this straight line between the two points of the apex
and the base line is shorter than lines i-f-2.
Here then was a riddle before me in Hebrew numerals
composing a word. I read again my triangle in the reverse
direction and beheld the consonants which gave we the
word QaSheR,34 which means "to bind" or "to combine."
1 took this as a hint to combine not letters into words, but
numbers and sides together. I added the Shin to the Koph,
the 3 to the i, and I got the last letter of the Hebrew al-
phabet, the Thau which equals 400 or 4 in digits, and I
put it on the right side of the triangle which first had con-
tained the digit i. Then I added this digit i to the digit
2 of the base line and so I got 3 for this line. I further
added the digit 2 to the digit 3 and obtained 3(00) +2(00)
=5(00), for which result there is no single numeral letter
in the ancient Hebrew alphabet, and I left the number 5
with its numeral letter Hey35 at the hypotenuse where the
3(00) had stood before. In this way I got a combination
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE.
613
of letters36 which compose no Hebrew word that I knew
of, but I had a new triangle with the same right angle at
the base and the sides 4 and 3 at the perpendicular and
base lines as in Fig. 8.
"Ah," I exclaimed, "here is my Pythagorean theorem,
and I have only to square the sides to get my hypotenuse !"
And so I got my numbers, 4, 3, 5, evolved from I, 2, 3, but
no verbal meaning to the evolution.37 I looked and reflected
on this puzzle week after week, but it often happens that
a solution to a question may come when you are not con-
scious of reflecting upon it.
5 =
3=^*
= 4
=3
Fig. 8.
It happened, I think, some time about the autumn of
1880 that I came' to Cleveland, Ohio, on the invitation of
the late Mr. Charles Latimer, to lecture on "The Pyramids
in the Bible." Coming to the house of Mr. Latimer after
the lecture I felt tired and restless and did not retire until
after the members of the household. I went out into the
fresh air on that beautiful starlit night. The puzzle about
those numeral Hebrew letters came up in my mind, as had
then been usual for weeks and weeks. What could be the
» n, v. n
17 n. B. n from
THE MONIST.
meaning of those letters Thau, Shin, Hey, or in digits
4(00), 3(00) and 5 ? I asked mentally. And like a gentle
zephyr I heard a whisper, "Mem, Shin, Hey!"38 (for Mem
is 4(0)) and I cried out, "MouSheH!" I stretched my
N
A PERSPECTIVE VIEW
OF THE N. W. CORNER FROM THE INSIDE OF THE TABERNACLE.
a b, Feet of the terminal north and west styles, c d, Ridges of the
same, d d, Ridge of the corner style.
arms up toward the starry heavens and shouted and
laughed, and again I cried. "MouSheH! MouSheH!" for
that is "Moses" in Hebrew. I began to be anxious about
88 n, v, »
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 615
my sanity, or whether I were not the victim of a dreamlike
hallucination, and I quieted myself. If I were mad there
was method in it, for surely here was the evolution of
4, 3, 5 from I, 2, 3 in Hebrew letters and words.39 I looked
up at the stars and there was the letter Thau in Orion's
belt, and to me it signified 4, quadra! Square, of course!
I must square the digits of the Mem and the digits of the
Shin, and together they would give me the square of Hey.
And I went to bed and whispered, "MouSheH! Moses!
Pythagoras! Eureka\" and lay awake all that night.
Now, dear reader, mistake me not! I have told you
a true, simple story of what happened to me more than
thirty years ago and I never told it in public before. But
do not take me as proposing or claiming any mathemat-
ical talent or providential favor by which I discovered how
Moses taught the theorem of the square of the hypotenuse.
I am neither fool not knave enough for that. I simply
sought in a peculiar way and found a possible solution of
the origin of that unique Hebrew word QeReSh, which
was mistranslated and misunderstood and misapplied for
thousands of years by the best scholars of Hebrew, and
I am as yet but a humble learner. A curious fact of the
relation of the numerals of MouSheH (Moses) to those
of QeReSh is that the sum of the latter is just half that of
the former, 6 and 12.
Perhaps the linguistic reader will be beguiled in my
favor if he turns now to Ezek. xxvii. 6, 7, and substitutes
the word "style" for "benches," translating thus: "Of
oak-trees from Bashan they made thy oars; the people of
Ashoorim from the isles of Khittim made thy style of
ivory. Linen with inwoven colors from Egypt was thy
spread, to be a banner (not "sail") for thee! Blue and
purple from the isles of Elisha were thy tent covering!"
w TVftft from Eftp.
6i6
THE MONIST.
oO
O
CM
c*
bb
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 617
Is this not a correct description of a possibly beautiful
Tyrian pleasure boat?
(26) "And thou shalt make bolts of shittim planks, five for the
styles of the one flank of the dwelling, (27) and five bolts for the
styles of the second flank of the dwelling, and five bolts for the styles
of the flank of the dwelling at its two hips westward ; (28) and the
inside bolt inside of the styles, shall be bolting from end to end."
"Of planks," that is, squared. We need not assume
with the tradition (see above, page 584), that these bolts
were at all on the outside of the styles, for these would
spoil the looks of the walls on the inside of the Tabernacle,
and be a source of injury to the coverings on the outside
by their square housings. They could be excellently dis-
posed on the inside of the styles, two on each declivity, and
the fifth would run through housings disposed on alternate
opposite planks, and binding the entire long wall of styles
to the outer plank of the corner style. And in the same
way the bolts would be disposed inside the west wall style
planks, two on each declivity, and the fifth bolt binding all
these styles as above from one outer plank of a corner
style to the opposite one.
(29) "And the styles thou shalt overlay with gold, and their
housings thou shalt make of gold ; housings they are for the bolts ;
and the bolts thou shalt overlay with gold."
This vast expenditure of the precious metals on the
Tabernacle had very likely a double purpose : ( I ) to with-
draw the people's means of engaging in commerce with
neighboring nations and passing caravans, which would
necessarily destroy the military discipline and life for
which they were to be prepared; and (2) to protect the
woodwork against the damage by weather, for the cam-
paign in which Jehovah engaged Israel was from the very
start intended to last a whole generation. And lest Israel
should, from a natural attachment to and veneration for
6l8 THE MONIST.
a miraculous locality, be tempted to adore that mountain
of God, Sinai, Jehovah condescended to wander with Israel
in the desert, and have a portable holy dwelling in their
midst.
(30) "And thou shalt put up the dwelling according to its ad-
justment, which thou wert shown in the mount."
There was mathematical judgment necessary for the
erection of this dwelling of Jehovah, which we have so
long misunderstood. It was certainly not a mere "fashion,"
as our Common Version has it, that Jehovah is claimed to
have shown Moses in the mount.
We can now return to consider the disposition of the
two coverings over the length and breadth of the dwelling,
which was left unconsidered on page 599. Figs. 9 and 10
will show it.
It will be seen in Fig. 9 that the lower cover goes from
the front 20 cubits to its joint of gold hooks, underneath
which came the partition curtain of the Holy of Holies.
See verse 12, p. 598. Thence it went 10 cubits to a line
drawn perpendicularly from the floor. But since the back
wall receded from that line to half the base of a style, viz.,
1.0606+ cubits, the ceiling cover was by so much longer,
and nine cubits was left to cover the outside planks of the
west wall. The upper cover, which was doubled in front
to the extent of 2 cubits, covered with its 22 cubits to 2
cubits beyond the lower cover. Thence it went 8 cubits
to the perpendicular line from the floor ; thence it covered
i cubit of the recess of the wall, and the then remaining
ii cubits trailed to a point 3.64316 cubits back from the
lower end of the style planks. This therefore fully explains
verse 12. Across the Tabernacle the two covers were dis-
posed as seen in our Fig. 10.
On either side of the ceiling of the Tabernacle there
was an excess of I . 06066-}- cubits over the 9 cubits width
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE.
619
on its floor, and would therefore require 9-1-2.12132
= 11.12132+ cubits of cover for the ceiling, leaving a
small fraction less than 1% cubits to cover the sloping out-
sides south and north with the lower cover, and l% with
the upper cover, for the same sides, and this is what is
meant in verse 13. Neither of these covers reached down
to the ground, being evidently left for stretching and
shrinking in dry and wet weather of the season. The
lower one with the cherubimic design in the admirably
selected colors of white, blue, purple and carmine, was evi-
< 1.0 X
XI.O >
Fig. 10.
dently intended to represent the sky, which came down
as it were in front of the Holy of Holies, by the special par-
tition curtain of the same materials, colors and designs
(see verses 31, 33), and after overshadowing the outer
Holy sanctuary of the priesthood, joined itself by golden
crooks to it, and overshadowed with another piece of
equal dimensions the inner sanctuary of the Holy of Holies,
viz., its ceiling and outside wall. It did not reach the
ground, however, for in that dispensation heaven had not
yet reached the earth. The question has been asked,
why these superfluous 17 cubits for the walls, if it was
62O THE MONIST.
only intended for the ceiling? The answer is twofold,
(i) The proportions of 20:28 = 5:7, or 40:28=10:7,
must have a mystical significance. (2) It was necessary
to balance the 1 1 cubits of the ceiling by the 8 . 5 cubits on
either side, and thus prevent the drooping in the middle
as far as possible. For a further prevention of this
drooping, cords and stakes were used (see Ex. xxxviii.
20), and these cords could not be long, and must be within
easy reach. And I think that the outward slanting of the
inner planks also prevented that drooping in the middle.
That in the rainy season the shedding of the water would
be provided for by one or two long poles inside the Holy,
may be taken for granted. This would not be necessary,
however, as the cords and stakes could regulate it. It
does not necessitate the untextual gable roof of Messrs.
Paine and Fergusson for seven-eighths of the year.
The second or upper cover also did not reach the ground
or the sides to within half a cubit, and this was certainly
necessary to give room for stretching this heavy canvas
to the ground by cords and stakes and by its close pressure
on the downward slanting outside planks would help in
keeping the inner cover smooth and even as a ceiling. We
see here, therefore, the necessity that the housings of the
planks for keeping them together in the walls should have
been inside the styles. See comment to verse 26, page 617.
How the covers formed themselves exactly on the
ground outside as they were stretched over the ridges of
the corner styles, I have no idea, not being a tent maker.
But it seems to me that the angular pieces, 9X8.5 cubits
of the inner, and 11X9. 5 cubits of the upper cover, which
would result if the south and north walls met the west
wall at right angles from top to floor, would be well dis-
posed on their stretching over the diagonal 1 . 5 cubits
ridge of the corner style, and give some plausible form on
the ground.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 621
The doubling of the front piece of cloth of the upper
cover upon itself certainly served as an excellent seam
there, and prevented the unevenness of the line which
would necessarily follow if that line was formed by the
mere selvedge ; or if this were stretched there by cords and
stakes then it would necessarily weaken it. But there was
also a proportional intention in that doubling, for 44:30
= 22:15, while 42:30 = 7:5.
The intention of the excess of the upper cover by two
cubits over the lower cover, was certainly for the purpose
of breaking joints with the lower cover, especially at the
golden crooks, and the resulting one cubit excess in length
had necessarily to be disposed of by putting its terminus
at some distance from the foot of the back outside style
planks. It will be seen now that at the very outset of the
specifications, when they spoke as yet of the soft coverings,
that the specifier had then in his mind the inclined form
of the styles, and the i .06066+ cubit which would result
from it in the excess of the ceiling length over the floor
length. Traditionists, theorizers, and our Common Ver-
sion did not see it, and therefore translated in verse 12,
"the half curtain that remaineth," i. e., the whole two
cubits, "shall hang over the back side of the Tabernacle,"
instead of, "the half of the cloth that remaineth," i. e.,
half of the two cubits, viz., one cubit, "shall, etc." (See
page 572).
The inclined form of the styles gives us also a true
idea of the partition curtain between the Holy place and
the Holy of Holies, as it is ordained in verses 31-33. Its
sacro-technical name is P°R°uKhaTh40 and both as a de-
rived noun and in its verbal root, is a transposition of the
sacro-technical word KaPouRaTh,41 which in pious haste
the Septuagint and our Common Version render "Mercy-
622 THE MONIST.
seat." K°POUR42 means "to cover horizontally," and by
transposition of letters P°R°uKh43 means "to cover perpen-
dicularly," but in either case to cover close upon the object
covered. Hence the different name of the curtain at the
entrance of the Tabernacle, which is called M°S°Kh44 and
means only "a loose curtain," derived from S°KOUH,45
equal to "overshadow." (See verse 14, p. 598). The cur-
tain before the Holy of Holies was a permanent immovable
partition. But if the walls of the Tabernacle were per-
pendicular there could be no entrance to it. And yet the
specifications of this curtain say nothing of its being in
parts. Looking, however, at Fig. 10, we see at once that
there was a triangular space (half of a style in its shorter
diameter) left open on either side of the immovable par-
tition curtain. The entrance to the Holy of Holies was
passable, but with difficulty.
The spaces of i .06+ cubits in the ceiling (Figs. 9 and
10) must have been the vague truth which the Babylonian
traditionists heard, and they manufactured from it the
absurd idea that a QeReSh (style) was one cubit thick at
both its ends (see p. 583), and tried in this way to account
for the differences in the length and width of the covers.
Those too who maintained that a QeReSh tapered off to
one finger's thickness also held that at its base it was one
cubit thick. But neither of them understood that a QeReSh
was made of two planks. This gross neglect of the proper
study of the text can not, however, be charged either
against the Jerusalem traditionalists who evidently knew
that a QeReSh was composed of two planks, or against
the Septuagint translators who rendered the text as best
they could and which is fully capable of being understood
according to my re-discovery even in their translation.
There is, however, a suspicious neglect of the word "length"
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 623
in verse 16, as though they meant the perpendicular to
be 10 cubits. It will always appear strange to me that
scholarly commentators should have neglected to such an
extent the study of these more ancient traditions. The
great Dr. Bahr knew nothing of the Jerusalem traditions,
and blindly and complacently followed the French Rabbi
Solomon, who must have known them, but preferred the
absurdities of the Babylonians. It shows again that tra-
dition is a good servant but a blind master, if taken as
ultimate authority.
In taking leave of the reader I beg him to remember
that I have not sought in this study to apologize for any
faults or obscurities in the specifications of the Tabernacle.
I found none in the original Hebrew. And while I have
made a very important discovery, I have proposed no
theory. Jehovah's words are true, though even good men
misinterret them.
Fimrfto 8c o 0tb<i aXrj&rp;, Trds 8« dvfyxDiros tycvvrrfi, Ka$a>s yeypairreu. K. T. A.
Rom. iii. 4.
EPHRAIM M. EPSTEIN, M. D., A. M.
CHICAGO, ILL.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
TITCHENER'S SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGY.
When Professor Titchener finished his text-book of psychol-
ogy, a clean, straight path had been made through the forest of
facts, a path so straight that the end of the road can be seen from
the first step. If Titchener were not a leader of experimentalists,
a scientist with a constitutional bias against conceptualism and arm-
chair psychology, the fact of his having a system would be most
misleading. His insistence upon theory following rather than pre-
ceding facts is too well known to necessitate a defense of his right
to have a system. The straight path was not laid down with ruler
and compass upon a map in his study, nor was it directed toward
a definite goal in the beginning, as his books bear witness. There
were many blind leads which had to be retraced. There are many
places still to be smoothed, and Titchener himself is the first to
admit that future data may necessitate a shift of the line to the
right or the left, but — and here is a vital point — if there is a shift
it will be consistent with all that has gone before, just as each step
of the present path is consistent with every other step.
The above is the imagery, which for the writer is the conscious
representation of the meaning of Titchener's work. It is the pur-
pose of this paper to lay bare the skeleton of the system and to show
how firmly the parts are joined to make a whole.
The fundamental question, that of the relation of mind to
body, is decided by Titchener in favor of psycho-physical paral-
lelism,1 a parallelism which considers mind and body as two aspects
of the same thing. From the point of view of the physical, which
is here the nervous processes, there is a continuity which does not
exist on the mental side, nor does Titchener posit a sub-conscious
1 The word parallelism is not an altogether fortunate one to use for this
view, suggesting as it does two distinct processes running side by side and
separated in space.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 625
to complete the parallelism. A given nervous process, if accom-
panied at all, is accompanied invariably by the same mental process.
A nervous process which is effective for consciousness may, how-
ever, occur without a mental process. The mental process, on the
other hand, cannot occur unaccompanied by a nervous process.
When there is a gap in the mental processes, the mental process just
beyond the gap must necessarily, just as the accompanying nervous
process, show the effect of the nervous process just completed.
While in the realm of the physical the causal law rules, lack of
continuity prevents its application on the mental side. The invari-
able parallelism, that of a given mental process always being ac-
companied by the same physiological process, rescues psychology
for the sciences, only the explanations must ultimately be in physio-
logical terms.
An analysis of the stream of consciousness reveals two elemen-
tary processes, sensation and imagery being the sub-classes under
the one process, and affection the other process. Titchener often
speaks of three processes, counting sensation and imagery as two
processes, but he himself treats them as sub-classes of a common
element and says that they differ only in degree and not in at-
tributes, so that the twofold division is the logical one.
The propria of sensation are quality, intensity, clearness and
duration. Extension is only an accidens, being absent in the sen-
sation of smell and possibly also in hearing. As was just men-
tioned, the images possess the same attributes. The affections have
all of the propria of sensations with the exception of that of clear-
ness. Affections can neither be clear nor vague. They lack all
degrees of clearness just as some sensations lack the spacial at-
tribute.
Titchener's hypothesis, which gives a physiological correlate to
this lack of clearness, states that the free afferent nerve endings
may be the peripheral organs of affection. This brings affection
very close to sensation. Titchener, in fact, says in regard to the
three elements of consciousness, "that all three may, with some
show of probability, be viewed as processes of the same ultimate
type." The other distinction between affection and sensation lies
in the relation of their qualities. Pleasantness and unpleasantness,
the qualities of affection, are antagonistic, not opposites like black
and white, but incompatible, so that the presence of the one in con-
sciousness excludes the other.
It is only in the case of sensation falling upon a virgin soil,
626 THE MONIST.
thus escaping the influence of all past experience, that we can speak
of sensation without perception. Sensation is for Titchener a con-
cept arrived at by the analysis of perception, and he warns against
a genetic interpretation of this concept. For practical purposes
we may, therefore, say that sensations always enter consciousness
grouped, that is as perception, the form of the group depending upon
the laws of attention. They may also be and they almost always
are accompanied by images. Without images the group is a pure
perception, with images a mixed perception. The second and fun-
damental difference between sensation and perception is that per-
ception always has meaning. In psychological terms, that is in
terms of conscious representation, meaning which is context "is
simply the mental process which accrues to the given process through
the situation in which the organism finds itself." That is the
essence of Titchener's concept of meaning. These words have al-
ready aroused in the minds of psychologists very different mean-
ings, but perhaps further quotation and explanation will make clear
the meaning which Titchener attaches to them. "Originally, the
situation is physical, external ; and, originally, meaning is kinaes-
thesis ; the organism faces the situation by some bodily attitude,
and the characteristic sensations which the attitude arouses give
meaning to the process which stands at the conscious focus, are
psychologically2 the meaning of that process. For ourselves, the
situation may be either external or internal, either physical or men-
tal, either a group of adequate stimuli or a constellation of ideas;
image has now supervened upon sensation, and meaning can be
carried in imaginal terms." Further, and this seems at times to
be overlooked, the meaning need not be represented in conscious-
ness. There may be a short cut such as occurs in the change from
voluntary to involuntary action. To take the example of rapid
reading, certain words may produce a certain nervous set, an atti-
tude in physiological terms only, which turns the thought in a
definite direction without any imagery of the meaning occuring in
consciousness. A second point which is overlooked is that, while
the imagery which carries the meaning may shift and probably never
is the same in any two minds, the function of the corresponding
physiological processes remains the same and the thought or action
is directed toward the same definite goal. If A and B both go up
the same flight of stairs, A may retain a kinaesthetic image of his
movements, B a visual image of the stairs or even the image of a
1 Italics are mine.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 627
bald head he saw just in front of him. Later if A and B see the
word ascent, the imagery, which is the psychological representation
of the meaning, may differ. In the one case it may be a kinaesthetic
image, in the other a visual image of a flight of stairs. The cortical
set, or we may say by analogy with the physiological processes, the
function of the imagery, will be identical if A and B both mean
the same thing. It should be clear from this why we cannot build
up synthetically the meaning from the imagery ; because in so doing
the specific physiological processes are omitted. A bald head may
mean a bald head, it may mean "but," that all depends upon the
cortical set.
A perception, then, is a group of sensations with or without
imagery and with meaning. One sensation alone in consciousness
could not have meaning, therefore a perception must consist of at
least two sensations or a sensation and an image. For Titchener
this is a complete description of perception. The results of intro-
spection have never proven to him the existence of a form of com-
bination (Gestaltqualitdt) as a "distinct mental element."
An idea differs from a perception only in that it is composed
of images. Even the same laws of growth and decay that we find
in perceptions, apply also to ideas.
It was stated above that perceptions obey the laws of attention.
Now how can attention itself best be defined? To describe it as a
function brings us nowhere. It must be interpreted in terms of
consciousness. Introspection discovers that the sensations and im-
ages in a given state of consciousness show at least two degrees of
clearness, a fovea of relative clearness and a proportionately ob-
scure margin. These degrees of clearness are found to be what is
meant by degrees of attention. Thus attention may be described
in terms of sensory clearness. Although Titchener has never ex-
perienced more than two levels of attention, he admits the possibility
of many levels.
As long as a given series of perceptions or ideas remains in
the fovea of attention and there is an absence of strain and the
margin remains negligible we speak of primary (involuntary) atten-
tion. When that which is in the margin tends to come into the
fovea and there is thus a fluctuation between margin and fovea, we
have secondary (voluntary) attention.
Feelings were found to lack the attribute of clearness. That
means that they never fall under attention. In a state of conscious-
ness where we have a perception with a certain affective tone, the
628 THE MONIST.
attention can only be upon the perception. The affective tone does
not even lie in the margin of attention. The attention, therefore,
according to Titchener, does not cover the entire conscious state.
Further, if we try to examine a feeling, that is attempt to bring it
into the fovea of attention, it disappears. This, however, does not
prevent the introspection of affections. Titchener's explanation of
this introspection is that, although the attention is on the percep-
tion, the instruction concerns the affection, i. e., the attitude is to
report upon the quality, intensity etc. of the affective tone. This
attitude is sufficient to make possible the desired account of the
affection.
The description of the different forms of action is most im-
portant. Here the lapse from full consciousness to physiological
processes, the influence of the two states of attention, the function
of the cortical set and the will consciousness are best shown. There
is the typical impulsive action with its idea of end and its imagery
of the intended movement. The idea of end is the conscious rep-
resentation of the determining tendency. In the pure association
of ideas this conscious representation is absent. A rough physio-
logical description is a setting of the nervous tract for a straight
path toward a definite goal. As in meaning the imagery may not
be in consciousness, so here the idea of end may be absent. In the
language of psychophysical parallelism there is a gap on the mental
side. This gap may broaden until there is not even the consciousness
of the intended movement. We then have secondary reflex. If
there is a state of primary attention one determining tendency has
undisputed control. If there is secondary attention, we find a con-
flict of impulses. We then have selective action. What Titchener
calls volitional action is a variation of selective action. Instead of
a conflict between two impulses — two motor tendencies — there is
one between an impulse and an idea. There is a choice between a
motor reaction and a continuation of the existing state.
Selective action, in fact states of secondary attention in gen-
eral, come under what is generally called the will. Experiments
tend to prove that there is a distinct will consciousness, which con-
sists, on the conscious side, of an "acceptance." This may be rep-
resented by organic sensations or imagery which for the most part
remain in the margin of attention. This consciousness of acceptance
must not be confused with a "will element" which is denied by
Titchener.
Analytically we may find unconscious reflex action developing
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 629
into conscious action. In regard to the genetic view-point Titchener
believes that consciousness was present with the first action.
Emotions cannot be identified with organic reactions. Anal-
ysis shows an emotional consciousness to be a through and through
affective consciousness. An emotion may occur under the conditions
of primary attention or under those of secondary attention. This
secondary attention is caused by a critical attitude concerning the
cause of emotion, which attitude at times gains the fovea of atten-
tion. We then speak of sentiment rather than emotion.
With the description of sentiment the development of the affec-
tive side of mental life is complete. With the description of the
thought processes the development of sensation and imagery is
brought to a close.
That there are only three elementary processes is among the
opening statements of the Text-book. In the genesis of the system
it is naturally the last fact to be established. Thus far the assertion
has stood. Perceptions contain nothing but sensations and imagery,
ideas nothing but images. Introspection fails to find either a special
form of combination or an action element. In the thought processes
the possibility of the presence of the conscious attitude as an inde-
pendent element and the idea of relation as a dependent element
had still to be investigated. As to the first possibility, in the ex-
periments from which the data were taken to prove this assumption,
experiments which were conducted after the manner of the reaction
experiments, a description of the objects of the ideas and not a
description of the psychological vehicle of these ideas was given.
Not only does Titchener think that there was no proof offered of
the existence of thought elements, but that there was positive proof
that no such elements were there. As to the second possibility, that
of relation as a dependent element, the experiments which Titch-
ener carried on in his laboratory were much more extensive than
those experiments which seemed to show imageless thought and they
proved that the consciousness of relation was always represented in
terms of sensory or verbal imagery.
This brief outline of the system reveals the structural method
in its most consistent form. Function cannot gain the structural
psychologist's attention unless it is revealed in consciousness, i. e.,
unless we are aware of the act of seeing, hearing, etc., as well as
of the seen, heard, etc. Titchener does not believe that we are aware
of the function except as it is evinced in the temporal sequence of
the act.
630
THE MONIST.
The nature of Titchener's sensationalism, it is hoped, is clear.
It is a sensationalism very different from that of the old school. The
sheet of wax cannot act as a true picture for a living substance with
"all manner of complex synergy." Titchener may be constitutionally
inclined toward sensationalism. He is, however, still more strongly
set toward experimentation and although he believes that there are
only three elements, all sensational in nature, yet he would be the
first to honor the results of a flawless experiment which proved this
wrong.
HERBERT SIDNEY LANGFELD.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
THE NEW LOGIC AND THE NEW MATHEMATICS.
IN COMMENT ON MR. PHILIP E. B. JOURDAIN's ARTICLES.
The new logic is a science of many surprises, for it has led to
most astonishing results. Mr. Philip E. B. Jourdain treats this
subject in two articles in the present number of The Monist, in one
very short essay entitled "Some Modern Advances in Logic" and
a longer one entitled "The Philosophy of Mr. Bertrand Russell."
The latter is written in a humorous way which adds a peculiar zest
to the dryness that otherwise prevails in logic. Even the title and
subtitle with the corresponding citations in the appendices are a
parody on Mr. Russell's Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of
Leibnitz with an Appendix of Leading Passages. Mr. Bertrand
Russell whom Mr. Jourdain selects as a target for his shafts is
one of the most prominent representatives of modern logic.
It is here presupposed that the reader is acquainted with the
political views of Mr. Bertrand Russell, who is an enemy of the
Philistines' idea of personal property. At the same time he is a
staunch free trader, a vigorous upholder of woman suffrage, and
in his most popular writings, he prefers to speak in paradoxes.
Modern mathematicians have become conscious of the limita-
tions of Euclid and give expression to the hypothetical nature of the
traditional method of stating propositions by rendering them con-
ditional through an "if." They do not say: "A is true, therefore
B is true," but "If A is true, then B is true." With all due respect
for this subtlety, we can not help thinking that this cautious mode
of expression is like walking on stilts while one may step squarely
on firm ground.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 63!
Mr. Bertrand Russell corrects the traditional idea that mathe-
matics deals with space. According to his view mathematics is pure
logic. And this notion has become quite common among modern
mathematicians. For instance: "In geometry for example we do
not, as formerly everybody used to think, study the properties of the
space we live in: We only say things of the form — 'if space has
such and such properties, then it has such and such other proper-
ties.' " This method appears very guarded, but it is simply awk-
ward and misleading. It is, as we said before, stilted and not in
agreement with the true nature of mathematics. The mathematical
feature is ignored and the logical connection of its propositions is
considered as the whole and the only thing of value. If in the
same way we annul the facts of the several sciences, and limit our
attention to their methods we might declare that astronomy is
mere mathematics and financeering pure arithmetic.
Our own view is somewhat more direct than the stilted thought
of "if" clauses, and we trust it will prove more helpful, more true,
and more clear. Instead of saying "if space is so and so," we pre-
fer to construct space and see what the result will be.
We bear in mind that we gain the conditions of our construction
by abstraction ; which means, we think away all matter and energy,
all concrete existence, all particular things, and retain only pure
form, which is the relational among things characterized as non-
concreteness, non-particularity, and we note that non-particularity
implies anyness. We drop from thought our own concrete exist-
ence and retain only possibility of motion in abstracto. We move
in mere extension, which we have described as the scope of mo-
tion. Instead of saying "If we move about," we move about in
thought and note the result of our doings in this field of anyness.
Thus we start from the facts of experience : we create a field for our
activity by abstraction and construct in it the several purely formal
sciences. The foundation is given by the facts of existence, but
we must clear the field by removing what otherwise is the most
important part of knowledge, the data furnished by the senses.
The method is (in Kantian terminology) a priori and the construc-
tions accomplished are purely mental.
It is obvious that mathematical space is not the space we live
in, but an abstract idea, constructed from the notion of pure form
which has been gained by an analysis of experience.
There is no need of repeating how mathematical space and
632 THE MONIST.
then its several tools, the plane, the straight line, and the right
angle, are produced as unique limits by halving the scope of mo-
tion (mathematical space) and how they become so valuable on
account of their uniqueness which makes it possible that they can
serve as standards of reference.* No need to insist here that there
is no objection to making other constructions of non-Euclidean
spaces. The question is not which space is true, or corresponds to
our physical space, but which system of construction is most ser-
viceable in practical life.
We find that mathematics rests on a good foundation and
would encourage mathematicians to dare trust their science. Feel-
ing the terra firma of fact under our feet we confidently discard the
stilts of a gingerly "if." We do not say, "If I abstract the notion
of pure space and of pure motion, if I halve the scope of pure mo-
tion so as to make both halves equal, if I do this or that," but we
simply do it and watch the result of our doings. At the same time
we see no need in denying that there is an element in geometry,
the product of our moving about, which we call mathematical space,
and which can not be deduced from pure logic. Mathematics, or
rather geometry, is not merely pure logic. It contains an additional
factor which is the specifically mathematical feature of mathematics.
The logical element in mathematics, and also the relation of the
//-sentence to its conclusion, are merely the means to an end, while
the essential result consists in tracing the several properties of space,
viz., the nature of angles, of triangles, of circles, of curves of all
degrees and kinds, all of which are constructions in the field of
anyness and results of our own doing, and they contain features
which would remain unintelligible if we could not trace them in
figures within the scope of our thought-motion. These results, and
not the indispensable tools of logical method, are after all the main
objects of the mathematician's inquiry.
The new logic and the new mathematics herald a new period
in the development of scientific thought. They find their counter-
parts in physics in the denial of absolute motion, and we do not
deny that all these efforts tend in the right direction. We gladly
recognize the valuable work accomplished by Peano and Bertrand
Russell, not to mention others, such as Frege, Georg Cantor and
men of former generations ; but we believe that the results of their
labors can easily be supplied with or supplemented by a sound philo-
* See the writer's Foundation of Mathematics, pp. 69-72, and the condensed
synopsis of his work The Philosophy of Form, p. 9.
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 633
sophical foundation, and thereby we can dispense with all ifs as
paradoxes and mystifications. p. c.
DR. EPSTEIN ON THE TABERNACLE.
Much has been written and published about the construction of
the Tabernacle and the Temple, but modern investigators have nat-
urally acquired a habit of studying all the theories that have been pro-
pounded by their predecessors, whereupon they select from these
traditional interpretations what they deem most probable. Dr. Ep-
stein, however, forms an exception to this rule. He belongs to an
old generation. He is by birth an Israelite and has grown up in the
old-fashioned way of Jewish tradition. He reads and speaks Hebrew
fluently, and is as familiar with the Biblical text as devout modern
Christians frequently are with the King James version. His inter-
pretation is based upon the original Hebrew, and he has compared
his views with other explanations only after having formed his own
opinion.
The problem of the nature of the Tabernacle is independent
of the question whether or not the Tabernacle existed. It may
have been a pure invention as is now commonly believed by critics.
The problem of the exegetist is above all an expression of the mean-
ing of the text and what the author of these passages meant to
describe, and here Dr. Epstein is the best man to give us a correct
answer. Even among rabbis the knowledge of Hebrew as a liv-
ing tongue has become rare, and here we have an unbiased ren-
dering of the text as it impresses itself upon a man who has grown
up in the language of holy writ. A test of the value of Dr. Epstein's
conception seems to be that the construction of the Tabernacle ap-
pears not only feasible but practical. The interpretation of the two
planks as resting against each other, renders it possible that the
building could have been easily erected and would withstand even
a storm in the desert. Further, these planks would not be so heavy
as to make their transportation impossible to a tribe of migratory
nomads, while it would be a problem to determine how big beams
could be transported and be taken up and taken down again as
readily as a nomad pitches his tent. This tabernacle of Dr. Epstein
could be easily transported on four ox-carts, and its erection would
not demand either unusual skill or exertion. At any rate we deem
634
THE MONIST.
the presentation of his ideas worth the consideration of Old Testa-
ment students.
Dr. Epstein contributed to The Monist an article on "The Mo-
saic Names of God" (July. 1907), wherein he expressed his opinion
(p. 393) that the author of the 110th Psalm shows his belief in a
Christ when saying, "The Lord said unto my Lord!" This is a
straw in the wind explanatory of his conversion to Christianity, and
it drew upon him some criticism from his former coreligionists, p.c.
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES.
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. By Wilhelm Ostwald. Translated by Thomas Seltzer.
New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1910. Pp. 193. Price $1.00 net.
Under this title appears an English translation of Ostwald's treatise on
nature philosophy as distinct from academic philosophy. The book is well
translated and we propose to characterize Ostwald's philosophy by a series of
quotations.
Professor Ostwald says:
"The present work is meant to serve as the first aid and guide in the
acquisition of these comprehensive notions of the external world and the inner
life. It is not meant to develop or uphold a'system of philosophy.' Through
long experience as a teacher the writer has learned that those are the best
pupils who soon go their own way. However, it is meant to uphold a certain
method, that is, the scientific (or, if you will, the natural scientific), which
takes its problems, and endeavors to solve its problems, from experience and
for experience."
Professor Ostwald opposes science for the sake of science. He says:
"Mere knowledge of the past which is not meant to, or cannot, serve as a
basis for shaping the future is utterly aimless knowledge, and must take its
place with other aimless activities called play."
Concerning scientific concepts Ostwald says :
"The laws of nature do not decree what shall happen, but inform us what
has happened and what is wont to happen. The knowledge of these laws,
therefore, makes it possible for us, as I have emphasized again and again, to
foresee the future in a certain degree and, in some measure, also to deter-
mine it. .. .We may expect that if in a given specimen of water we discover
a relation which up to that time was unknown, we shall find this relation also
in all the other specimens of water even though they were not tested for that
particular relation. It is obvious how enormously this facilitates the progress
of science. For it is only necessary to determine this new relation in some
one case accessible to the investigator to enable us to predict the same relation
in all the other cases without subjecting them to a new test. As a matter of
fact, this is the general method that science pursues. It is this that makes it
possible for science to make regular and generally valid progress through the
labors of the most various investigators who work independently of one an-
other, and often know nothing of one another. Of course, it must not be
forgotten that such conclusions are always obtained in accordance with the
following formula: things have been so until now, therefore we expect that
636
THE MONIST.
they will be so in the future. In every such case, therefore, there is the pos-
sibility of error. Thus far, whenever an expectation was not realized, it was
almost always possible to find an 'explanation' for the error."
Concerning causation Professor Ostwald is rather didactic. He says :
"If by experience we have found a proposition of the content, 'If A is,
then B is also,' the two concepts A and B generally consist of several elements
which we will designate as a, a', a", a'", etc., and as b, b', b", b'". Now the
question arises, whether or not all these elements are essential for the relation
in question. .. .The general method of convincing oneself of this is by elim-
inating one by one the component parts of the concept A, namely, a, a, a",
etc., and then seeing whether B still appears. It is not always easy to carry
out this process of elimination. .. .We must multiply the experiences as
much as possible in order to determine what constant elements are found in
the concept B, and to form from these constant elements the corresponding
concept B'. The improved proposition will then read: if A' is, then B' is
also. This entire process may be called the purification of the causal relation."
He solves the problem of free will in this way:
"Essentially there is no objection to be found to a fundamental determin-
ism which explains that this feeling of freedom is only a different way of
saying that a part of the causal chain lies within our consciousness, and that
we feel these processes (in themselves determined) as if we ourselves deter-
mined their course."
Apparently he is not a friend of the science of language, for he thus takes
philology to task:
''The unwarranted importance attached to the historical study of lan-
guage forms is paralleled by the equally unwarranted importance ascribed to
grammatical and orthographic correctness in the use of language. This per-
verse pedantry has been carried to such lengths that it is considered almost
dishonorable for any one to violate the usual forms of his mother tongue, or
even of a foreign language like the French. We forget that neither Shake-
speare nor Luther nor Goethe spoke or wrote a 'correct' English or German,
and we forget that it cannot be the object of a true cultivation of language
to preserve as accurately as possible existing linguistic usage, with its imper-
fections, amounting at times to absurdities. Its real object lies rather in the
appropriate development and improvement of the language."
His love of an international artificial language finds expression on pages
loo-ioi :
"A twofold advantage will have been attained by the introduction of a
universal auxiliary language. Recently the efforts in that direction have made
considerable progress. In the first place it will provide a general means of
communication in all matters of common human interest, especially the sci-
ences. This will mean a saving of energy scarcely to be estimated. In the
second place, the superstitious awe of language and our treatment of it will
give way to a more appropriate evaluation of its technical aim. And when
by the help of the artificial auxiliary language, we shall be able to convince
ourselves daily how much simpler and completer such a language can be
made than are the 'natural' languages, then the need will irresistibly assert
itself to have these languages also participate in its advantages. The conse-
quences of such progress to human intellectual work in general would be
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 637
extraordinarily great. For it may be asserted that philosophy, the most gen-
eral of all the sciences, has hitherto made such extremely limited progress
only because it was compelled to make use of the medium of general language."
Professor Ostwald recurs to the subject once more on page 183, where
in a footnote he declares himself in favor of Ilo as against Esperanto which,
he predicts, "must inevitably die out."
His theory of time and space may be characterized in the following quo-
tation :
"The properties of time are of so simple and obvious a nature that there
is no special science of time. What we need to know about it appears as part
of physics, especially of mechanics
"As for space, the presence of the three dimensions conditions a great
manifoldness of possible relations, and hence the existence of a very extensive
science of bodies in space, of geometry. Geometry is divided into various
parts depending upon whether or not the concept of measurement enters.
When dealing with purely spacial relations apart from the concept of meas-
urement it is called geometry of position. In order to introduce the element
of measurement a certain hypothesis is necessary which is undemonstrable,
and therefore appears to be arbitrary and can be justified only because it is
the simplest of all possible hypotheses. This hypothesis takes for granted that
a rigid body can be moved in all directions in space without changing in
measure. Or, to state the inverse of this hypothesis, in space those parts are
called equal which a rigid body occupies, no matter how it is moved about.
"We are not conscious of the extreme arbitrariness of this assumption
simply because we have become accustomed to it in school. But if we reflect
that in daily experience the space occupied by a rigid body, say a stick, seems
to the eye to undergo radical changes as it shifts its position in space and that
we can maintain that hypothesis only by declaring these changes to be 'ap-
parent,' we recognize the arbitrariness which really resides in that assump-
tion. We could represent all the relations just as well if we were to assume
that those changes are real, and that they are successively undone when we
restore the stick to its former relation in our eye. But though such a con-
ception is fundamentally practicable in so far as it deals merely with the
space picture of the stick, we nevertheless find that it would lead to such ex-
treme complications with regard to other relations (for example, the fact
that the weight of the stick is not affected by the change of the optic picture)
that we do better if we adhere to the usual assumption that the optical
changes are merely apparent."
Professor Ostwald opposes the mediumistic explanation of nature. He
says:
"All natural phenomena can ultimately be conceived as the motion of
matter. Through the greater part of the nineteenth century this conception,
called scientific materialism, was accepted almost without opposition. At
present it is being more and more recognized that it was only an unproved
assumption, which the development of science daily proves to be more un-
tenable."
We search in vain for a definition of the soul. But our author speaks
of organisms as "extremely specialized individual instances of physico-chem-
638
THE MONIST.
ical mechanics," and what takes the place of the soul appears to be in his
philosophy, "adaptation or memory." He says:
"It is the property which we have called memory, and which we will
define in a very general way as the quality by virtue of which the repetition in
organisms of a process which has taken place a number of times is preferred
to new processes, because it originates more easily and proceeds more smoothly.
It is readily apparent that by this property the organisms are enabled to travel
on the sea of physical possibilities as if equipped with a keel, by which the
voyage is made stable and the keeping of the course assured."
Professor Ostwald raises the question, Is there a standard in the scale
of organisms? and answers it thus:
"Since our opinion as to what constitutes a higher and a lower organism
is doubtless arbitrary, let us ask whether it is not possible to find an objective
standard by which to measure the relative perfection of the different organ-
isms."
Concerning civilization he says :
"Everything which serves the social progress of mankind is appropriately
called civilization or culture, and the objective characteristic of progress con-
sists in improved methods for seizing and utilizing the raw energies of nature
for human purposes. Thus it was a cultural act when a primitive man dis-
covered that he could extend the radius of his muscle energy by taking a pole
in his hand And at the other end of the scale of civilization the most ab-
stract scientific discovery, by reason of its generalization and simplification,
signifies a corresponding economy of energy for all the coming generations
that may have anything to do with the matter. Thus, in fact, the concept of
progress as here defined embraces the entire sweep of human endeavor for
perfection, or the entire field of culture, and at the same time it shows the
great scientific value of the concept of energy."
According to Professor Ostwald, man is not yet civilized, for he continues :
"If we examine our present social order from this point of view, we
realize with horror how barbarous it still is. Not only do murder and war
destroy cultural values without substituting others in their place, not only
do the countless conflicts which take place between the different nations
and political organizations act anticulturally, but so do also the conflicts be-
tween the various social classes of one nation, for they destroy quantities of
free energy which are thus withdrawn from the total of real cultural values.
. .. .We are living at a time when men are gradually approximating one an-
other very closely in their natures, and when the social organization therefore
demands and strives for as thorough an equalization as possible in the con-
ditions of existence of all men." *
ELEMENTS DE CALCUL VECTOREEL. Par C. Burali-Forti et R. Marcolongo. Trans-
lated from the Italian by S. Latt&s. Paris : A. Hermann, 1910. Pp. 230.
Price 8 fr.
The vectorial calculus is here studied in relation to its many applications
to geometry, mechanics and mathematical physics. Part one treats of real
numbers, points, vectors, and Grassmann's forms of primary space. The
second part presents applications of this vectorial system which the authors
CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 639
call the "minimum system," and illustrations are chosen to show the great
superiority of the absolute rectorial calculus over the old indirect methods of
coordinates. P
DAS ERKENNTNISPROBLEM IN DER PHILOSOPHIE UND WISSENSCHAFT DER NEUE-
REN ZEIT. Von Ernst Cassirer. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1911. Pp. 601.
The first volume of this scholarly work of Dr. Ernst Cassirer, of the
University of Berlin, has now appeared in a second edition. The author has
enlarged upon and to some extent modified his views since they were pre-
sented in the first edition. The problems of thought appear to him no longer
as rigid ready formations which are going to stand forever, but as instru-
ments of thought. The absolute has disappeared, and the creations of
thought appear in their historical relativity as conditioned by their time and
their surroundings. The present volume has been revised and supplemented
in many places, and in the second volume certain sections have been thor-
oughly rewritten and show considerable change of view, for instance the
chapter on Gassendi.
The work begins with the age of the Renaissance, starting with Nikolaus
Cusanus. It discusses in the second part the discovery of the concept of
nature, and in the third part the foundation of idealism. The second volume
may soon be expected. «
RAZIONALISMO E MISTICISMO. Da Michele Losacco. Milan: Libreria Editrice
Milanese, 1911. Pp. 259. Price 3.50 lire.
This is a collection of essays and sketches most of which have appeared
in various Italian philosophical and literary periodicals. They show con-
siderable familiarity with general European thought. Following an intro-
ductory essay on "Rationalism and Mysticism" the author gives first his
opinion on the Origin of Natural Philosophy," then discusses in turn the
revival of mysticism, the theory of objects and rationalism, rationalism and
"intuitionism" including a critique of Bergson and Schmitt as representatives
of the latter school. The last of the essays is a hitherto unpublished treatment
of Jakob Bohme in the light of the latest criticism and his own Aurora.
The sketches are more diversified in object matter though most of them
are more or less in the general character of reviews, and many of them are of
purely local interest. Their titles are fairly indicative of their scope : "A New
Book on Hegel" discusses a work now nearly four years old by the Italian
B. Croce; "The Thinker Leopardi" is called forth by an Italian work of
Gatti on this philosophical writer; "The Anti-Metaphysical Prejudice" is a
brief history of the opposition to metaphysicism ; "Facts and Laws in Human
Affairs" treats of the uniformities noticeable among the diverse isolated facts
of history ; "Nietzsche and Tragedy" discusses the light thrown on Nietzsche's
personality by his "Origin of Tragedy" recently translated into Italian; "A
Successor of Pascal" is the French Priest Laberthonniere ; then follow "The
Magician of the North" (J. G. Hamann) ; "Franciscan Studies," a review of
a book by F. Tocco; "The Circulation of Italian Thought"; "B. Croce and
his Philosophy of Practice" ; "Delacroix and his Studies in Mysticism" ; "Le
Philosophe Inconnu"; "The Greatest Problems of Varisco" and "Masci's Con-
ception of Religion." p
640 THE MONIST.
GEOLOGIE NOUVELLE. Theorie chimique de la formation de la terre et des
roches terrestres. Par Henri Lenicque. Paris : Hermann, 1910. Pp. 263.
Price 7 francs.
Henry Lenicque has published a new work on the new geology, which is
a chemical theory of the formation of the earth and its rocks. The book is
well illustrated and elucidates the ideas of the author by appropriate dia-
grams. By "new geology," M. Lenique understands a conception of the for-
mation of the earth which is neither the theory of the Neptunists nor of the
Plutonists, but one which would explain the rock formation from the laws of
chemistry . The author follows in the main the authority of M. Adhemer, a
Frenchman who is perhaps not much known outside of France.
The book is prefaced by a critical letter of M. Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a
prominent French engineer.
LA MORPHOLOGIE DYNAMiQUE. Par Frederic Houssay. Paris : Hermann, 1910.
Pp. 29. Price 1.50 fr.
Prof. Frederic Houssay of the Sorbonne in Paris has published this little
pamphlet as the first number of a "Collection on Dynamic Morphology," and
it is noticeable with what clearness he insists on the difference of substance
and form in all the sciences, a difference which we ourselves have always in-
sisted on. He starts with a quotation from Prof. A. Dastre who says : "In
many things, we must distinguish form and contents, figure and substance."
In the second chapter he discusses the artificial opposition between morphol-
ogy and physiology ; in the third, their fundamental identities. The fourth
chapter is devoted to the energetic and static aspects of these sciences. Then
he discusses the cinematic and dynamic function of physiology, and finally
the possibilities in a further development of dynamic morphology. «
LIFE AS REALITY. A Philosophical Essay by Arthur Stone Dewing. London :
Longmans, 1910. Pp. 214. Price $1.25 net.
Mr. Dewing has studied philosophy under Professor Royce to whom he
dedicates this volume. He advocates a system of idealism which would give
full value to the strivings of the personal will "without degenerating into
crude individualism." He believes that reality is "revealed directly through
the impulses, the strivings, the purposes of our life and only indirectly through
the vast world of objects. .. .It is in the effort and not at the goal that we
must search for the real." The author outlines the method of his work in
the preface. He has followed the method of trial and error in this search.
After stating the problem of the final reality in the opening chapter, he in-
quires what the material world and science have to offer by way of solution.
Later the problem shifts to the realm of the moral law, to society, to re-
ligious experience, and to the various conceptions of philosophic truth, cul-
minating in the eighth chapter which bears the title of the whole. He ac-
knowledges his debt to "The whole idealistic trend of our modern world"
and especially "to the imperial genius of Kant." P
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