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The  Open  Court. 


A  WEEKLY    JOURNAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  REEIGION  OE  SCIENCE 


VOLUME  IX 


CHICAGO 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

1895 


i-h 


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COPYRIGHT  BY 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  CO 

1895. 


OO^.^'Q. 


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INDEX  TO  ^•OLUME  IX. 


ESSAYS  AND  CONTRIBUTIONS. 


Amos.     C.  H    Cornill 4473 

Animal  Rights  of  Property.     E,  P.  Powell 4375 

Aphorisms.     Hudor  Genone -  4389 

Apocrypha,  Chapters  from  the  New ;  "  His  Garment's  Hem."— The  Sin 

of  the  Nations.     Hudor  Genone 442S 

Babylonian  Exile,  The.     C.  H.  Cornill 4537 

Balfour's,  Mr.,  "  Foundations  of  Belief."     George  M.  McCrie 4495 

Barthelemy-Saint-Hilaire,  J.,  Prof.  F.  Max  MuHer's  Reminiscences  of..  ,   4747 

Booty's  Ghost.     F.  M.  Holland 475^ 

Bow,  The,  in  Art.  Metaphor,  and  Song.     George  Henry  Knight 4505 

Brain-Surgery,    Recent,    in   Its   Psychological    Bearings.      S.    Millington 

Miller 443' 

right.  John,  on  Woman  Suffrage.     Theodore  Stanton 4348 

Buddha,  The  Parisian.     Moncure  D.  Conway 4GS7 

Buddhism.  Whv  '     C.  Pfoundes 4594 

Butterfly,  The.     Wilhelm  Winkler 45^9 

Byron.     F.  M.  Holland 4425 

Canada,  Can  She  Be  Coerced  Into  the  Union  ?     (A  Canadian  View.)     J. 

Clark  Murray 45^' 

Captivitv.  The  Return  from  the.    C.  H.  Cornill 4587 

Cellular'Soul,  The.     Ernst  Haeckel 4439 

Centralisation  and  Decentralisation  in  France.     Theodore  Stanton 4632 

Christening  in  Cyprus.     Moncure  D.  Conway 4624 

Congress  of  Religions,  A  Universal.     The  Abbe  Victor  Charbonnel.    . 4679 

Conservation  of  Spirit.     Hudor  Genone 4346 

Death,  The  Beauty  of.     Woods  Hutchinson 4639 

Deutero-lsaiah.     C.  H.  Cornill 4576 

Deuteronomy,     C.  H.  Cornill 4521 

Diagoras.  The  British.     F.  L.  Oswald 4559 

Dickens  in  America.     F.  M.  Holland   4580 

Douglass.  Frederick.     F.  M.  Holland 4415 

Du  Camp,  Maxime.     G.  Koerner 4551 

Education.     Thomas  C.  Laws 4499.  4507 

Education  in  Ethics.     R.  W.  Conant 4426 

Education,  The  End  of.     T.  Elmer  Will 4673 

Elijah.     C.  H.  Cornill 4463 

Epigenesis  or  Preformation.     Ernst  Haeckel 4513 

Ethical  Education,  Some  Data  for.     Hudor  Genone. 4481 

Ethics  in  Nature  :  The  Wheattield.— The  Oak.— The  Ant-Hill.     Wilhelm 

Winkler 4491 

Evolution  and  Idealism.     Ellis  Thurteli 4538 

Experiment,  An  Imaginary.     George  M.  McCrie 4351 

Ezekiel.     C.  H.  Cornill 4547 

Ezra  and  Nehemiah.     C.  H.  Cornill 4599 

Fables  from  the  New  ,tsop  :  The  Neighbors,  4590;  The  Serving  Spy.— 
The  Puzzled  Philosopher,  4597:  A  Wise  Widower. — The  Big  Beast 
and  the  Little  Worm.— Casting  the  Golden  Ball.— Two  Sorts  of  Mur- 
der.—Fittest.  Not  Best.— Two  Brothers,  462S  ;  Sports  of  the  Gods, 
4691:  Parasus's  Predicament.— The  Egotist's  Cure,  4707;  The  Great 
Physician  and  the  Dumb  Broom,  4726  ;  The  Silly  Triangle.  4727.  Hu- 
dor Genone. 

Folly,  The  Wages  of.     Hudor  Genone 4543 

Forest,  The.     Wilhelm  Winkler 4556 

Form  and  Function.     S.  V.  Clevenger 4621 

Freytag,  Gustav.     In  Memoriam.     Edward  C.  Hegeler 44S7 

4619 

4743 

4447 

4591 

4387 


God.  Is  There  A  ?     E.  P.  Powell 

Good,  The  Omnipotence  of.     Woods  Hutchinson 

Grand's,  Sarah,  Ethics.     T.  Bailey  Saunders 

Greatness  as  a  Fine  Art.     S.  Millington  Miller 

Green's.  Professor,  Bridge.     George  M.  McCrie.. 

Haeckel's.  Professor,  New  Phylogeny. 


Harney's,  Mr.,  Reminiscences 

Hosea.     C.  H.  Cornill 

Huxley.     A  Discourse  at  South  Place  Chapel,  London 

way 

Immortality  Discussed.     E.  P.  Powell 

In   Memoriam^Gustav  Freytag.     Edward  C.  Hegeler 
Instinct,  Some  Definitions  of.     C.  Lloyd  Morgan 


Thos.  J.  McCormack 

4369.  440t,  4423. 

4604, 


Moncure  D.  Con- 


4458 
4609 
4479 

4711 
4631 
4487 
4635 


PAGE 

Institutional  Church,  The.     Celia  Parker  Woolley 44^9 

Irreligion  of  the  Future.  The.     Ellis  Thurteli 4705 

Irreligion  to  True  Morality.  Through.    Corvinus 4719 

Isaiah.     C.  H.  Cornill 4488 

Israel  it  ish  Prophecy,  The.     Carl.  Heinrich  Cornill 4417 

Japan,  Religion  in.     C.  Pfoundes 4372,  4377 

Japanese  Buddhism  and  the  War  with  China.     K.  Ohara 4470 

Japanese  Buddhist  Priest  on  Christianity 4662 

Jeremiah.     C.  H.  Cornill 4527 

Jonah.     C.  H.  Cornill 4616 

Legal  Tender.     (A  Posthumous  .Article.)     M.  M.  Trumbull 451 1 

Lewins,  Robert.  M.D. — In  Memoriam.     George  M.  McCrie 4607 

Literary  Achievements  of  the  Exile.     C.  H.  Cornill 4573 

Martineau,  James.     Moncure  D.  Conway  4519 

Matter  and  Spirit,  The  Relation  of.     Rodney  F.  Johonnot     4618 

Modern  Liberalism.     Hudor  Genone.  4471 

Moses,  The  Religion  of.     C.  H.  Cornill 4455 

Nature,  A  High  Priest  of.     F.  L.  Oswald 4663 

Other  Worlds  Than  Ours.     Hudor  Genone 4601,  4655,  4754 

Palmers  ton's  Borough,  Lord,     Thomas  J.  McCormack 4604,  4909 

Pan-Egoism  the  Key-Note  of  the  Universe.     The  Late  Robert  Lewins 4753 

Parable,  Ad%entures  of  a.     Moncure  D.  Conway 4575 

Parliament  of  Religions,  The,  at  Paris  in  igoo 4660 

Philosophv,  History  of.  An  Episode  in  the.    Thomas  J.  McCormack 4450 

Pliylogeny,  Haeckel's 43^9.  AAOi,  4423,  4458 

Plant-Soul.  The  Phylogeny  of  the.     Ernst  Haeckel 4458 

Post.  Albert  Hermann. — Obituary 4650 

Prophets,  The  Later.     C.  H.  Cornill 4608 

Prophets.  The  Reaction  Against  the.     C.  H.  Cornill    4503 

Protista,  The  Kingdom  of.     Ernst  Haekel 4423 

Protists,  The  General  Phylogeny  of  the.     Ernst  Haeckel 4401 

Psychological  Literature.  Recent.     T.  J.  McCormack 4485 

Puritanism  and  the  November  Portents.     F.  L.  Oswald 4741 

Reason,  The  Prevailing  Despair  of  the.     Charles  L.  Wood 4524 

Relief  by  Work.    Cornelius  Gardener 4647 

Religion,  The  Eternal.     George  M.  McCrie 4626 


Saving  Element.  A.     Irene  A.  Saftord . . 

Science  and  Reform  :  Over-Legislation — Moral  Sunday  Sports — Climatic 
Curios — The  Power  of  the  Press — An  Expensive  Theory — "  Spelin." 
4354;  Weather  Saints— The  Alcohol  Problem— A  Doomed  Nation- 
Jury  Freaks— Specialty  Literature — Posthumous  Hero-Worship— \'ic- 
tims  of  Nicotine.  4405  ;  ■■  Elbe  "  Echoes— Our  Lost  Italy—Half  Truths 
—  More  Light— An  Unprofitable  Trade— Doubtful  Reformatories— Cli- 
matic Resources — .\valon.  4461. 

Science  of  Spirit.     Hudor  Genone 

Scientific  Immortality.     Hudor  Genone 

Sermon,  A.  That  Made  History.     Moncure  D.  Conway 

She  Died  for  Me.     \'oltairine  be  Cleyre 

Shoemaker.  The  Old.     Voltairine  De  Cleyre 

Siam.  Crown  Prince  of.  H.  R.  H.  Chow  Fa  Maha  Vajirunhis.— In  Memo- 
riam   

Smith,  Adam.  On  the  Nature  of  Science.     T.  J.  McCormack 

Socialist,  The  First  French.     Moncure  D.  Conway 

Song  of  Songs.  The.     T.  A.  Goodwin 4671.  46S8, 

Soul,  The,  an  Energy.     C.  H.  Ree\e 

Souvenirs  of  the  Cuban  Revolution.    Theodore  Stanton 

Spiritualising  Clay.     S.  Millington  Miller ' 

Standard  Dictionary,  The.     Thomas  J.  McCormack 

Strikes.  How  to  Avoid,     F.  M.  Holland 

Success,  The  Secret  of.     Edwin  Arnold     


4715 


4410 
4420 
4399 
4756 
4642 

4615 
4450 
4367 
4695 
4359 
4442 
4391 
4582 
4536 
4382 

Theology,  The  Old,  and  the  New  Philosophy.     George  J.  Low 4735 

Thought,  The  Modern  Habit  of.     Atherton  Blight 4412 

Thoughts  of  Comfort.     Helmuth  von  Moltke 4407 

Trilbymania.     Outsider 44^5 

Twentieth  Century,  The.     F.  M.  Holland 4/03 

Woman  in  Recent  Fiction.     William  M.  Salter 4383 

Wright,  Frances.     F.  M.  Holland  4623 


THE  OPEN  COURT.— IxDEx  to  Volume  IX. 


EDITORIALS. 


PAGE 

Accad  and  the  Early  Semites 4651 

AH.  The  Soul  of  the 4353 

Aligeld's  Message,  Governor 4397 

Apocrypha,  The,  of  the  Old  Testament 47oo 

Azazel  and  Satan 4692 

Bad  for  Me,  but  Worse  for  Him 4509 

Behold  :  I  Make  All  Things  New 4343 

Bliss,  The,  of  a  Noble  Life 4749 

Buddhism,  A  Revival  of 4525 

Chinese  Education  According  to  the  "Book  of  Three  Words." 45^7 

Chinese  Fable,  A 4622 

Christian  Critics  of  Buddha 4475.  4483 

Conservative  Radicalism 4728 

Death  and  Immortality,  The  Conceptions  of.  in  Ancient  Egypt 4666 

Death  is  Silent,  but  Life  Speaks 4395 

Egoless  Man,  An 4^57 

Evil,  The  Idea  of,  in  Early  Christianity 47i7 


Freytag,  Gustav,     In  Memoriam.    E.  C.  Hegeler. . 


4487 


Good  and  Evil  as  Religious  Ideas 4642 

"  Gospel  of  Buddha,"  The,  A  Japanese  Translation  of 4404 

Heredity  and  the  A  Priori 4540 

Individual  Impetus,  Import  of 4444 

Liberal  Religious  Societies,  The  American  Congress  of 4531 

Moltke's  Religion 4409 

Names 4379 

Not  Irreligion  but  True  Religion 4583 

Persian  Dualism 4683 

Pithecanthropos 4404 

Rainbows  and  Bridges 4388 

Religion.  The  Prospects  of 4708 

Religious  Parliament  Extension,  The 4355 

Resurrection,  Doctrine  of,  and  Its  Significance  in  the  New  Christianity. .  4738 

Rome  and  Science 4365 

Scholaromania 4435 

Soul,  Is  the,  an  Energy  ? 4362 


CORRESPONDENCE. 


PAGE 

Association  for  Advancement  of  Woman.     Ednah  D.  Cheney 4356 

"  Ethics,  Sarah  Grand's."    T.  Bailey  Saunders,  4549 ;  W.  M.  Salter 4485 

Evolution  and  Religion.    John  Maddock 4398 

"  Heredity  and  the  A  Priori."     Ellis  Thurtell 4612 

India  and  Japan.     Kedarnath  Basu 4382 

open  Court,   The.  Denounced  as  Learned  Nonsense.     (With  Editorial 

Comment,)     S.  Murphy 4437 


PAGE 

Religion,  The  Present  Need  in.     J.  W.  Caldwell 4706 

"Religion,"  The  Term,   Needless.     Anent  the  Criticism  of  Corvinus. 

John  Maddock 4709 

Sabbatarianism  and  Woman's  Suffrage  in  Massachusetts.     John  C.  Kim- 
ball   4757 

Science,  The  Religion  of.     John  Maddock 4349 

Sects  and  the  Church  of  Science.     John  Maddock 4493 

"  Trilbymania."     C.  H.  Reeve 4517 


POETRY. 


PAGE 

Creeds.    Prof.  E.  Emerson 4598 

Heaven  and  Hell.    William  Herbert  Carruth  4356 

Immortality.     Viroe 4438 

Life,     Wilhelmine  Darrow 4531 

Life  and  Death.    Charles  Alva  Lane 4644 

Peace.     Prof.  E.  Emerson 4606 


PAGE 

Resignation.     H.  A.  De  Lano 4446 

Retribution.     Viroe 4612 

Spirit  Appetence.     Charles  Alva  Lane 4710 

Swinburne.     Charles  Alva  Lane 4638 

The  Divinity  of  Science.     Charles  von  Falck     4541 

The  Question  That  Has  No  Answer.     W.  H.  Gardner 4394 

The  Usurper's  Assassin.     Viroe 4661 

Waves.     Mary  Morgan  (Gowan  Lea) 4757 

Whence  ?    J.  Arthur  Edgerton 4590 


BOOK   REVIEWS,   NOTES,   ETC. 


PAGE 

American  Congress  of  Liberal  Religious  Societies 4510,  4518 

American  Historical  Review,  The 4598 

Annee  Psychologique.  L' 4390 

Aristotelian  Society,  Proceedings  of  the 4350 

Arreat,  Lucien.     Memory  and  Imagination 4:590 

Astro-Physical  journal 4470 

Babu  Pratapa  Chandra  Roy.     Obituary 4229 

Bachelor  of  Arts ," \'\  4638 

Bax,  Ernest  Belfort.     A  Symposium  on  Value '.\.   4614 

Binet.  A.,  and  H.  H.  Beaunis.     L'Annee  Psychologique 4390 

Bodniir.  Sigmund 4514 

Borgeaud,  Charles.     Adoption  and  Amendment  of  Constitutions  in  Eur- 
ope and  America 4534 

Boyer.  E.  R.     A  Laboratory  Manual  in  Elementary  Biology 4558 

Brave  Engineer,  A.     [George  Peppet] 4646 

Bright,  John.     On  Woman  Suffrage 442" 

Brodbeck.  Adolf.     Die  Existenz  Gottes 4614 

Bruneiiere,  M.     Bankruptcy  of  Science 4614 

Bryan,  John.     Fables  and  Essays ]..   4757 

Bryce,  James.     The  American  Commonweaiih W'.'. js4i 

Buddha  Birth  Stories 4422 

Buddha.  Picture  of,  Designed  by  Emperor  William' of  Germany,  4734  ; 
statue  of,  4638. 

Buddhist  Catechism.  A 4G54 

Buddhist.  The,  on  ' '  The  Gospel  of  Buddha  "  ".'.'.".".'. 4733 

Bureau  of  Education *  *       4414 


PAGE 

Cams,  Paul.    The  Gospel  of  Buddha 4733 

Cause,  The 4358 

Charbonnel,  Abbe,  on  the  Parliament  of  Religions  at  Paris    4686 

Chautauqua  Literary  and  Scientific  Circle 4534 

Cheyne,  Prof.     Introduction  to  the  Book  of  Isaiah 4558 

Children's  Drawings,  Exhibition  of 4670 

Christian  Unity  Conference 4582 

Cobbe,  W.  Rosser.     Doctor  Judas 4541 

Comte  and  Harriet  Martineau's  Positive  Philosophy 4550 

Conference  of  Evolutionists 4542 

Conybeare,  F.  C.     About  the  Contemplative  Life 4478 

Cooke,  Flora  j.     Nature  Myths  and  Stories  for  Little  Children 4678 

Cornill,  C.  H.     The  Prophets  of  Israel   4693 

Corson,  Hiram.     The  Aims  of  Literary  Study 4558 

Corvinus 's  Rejoinder,  Dr.  Cams' s  Reply  to 4726 

Cowell.  E.  B.     Buddha  Birth  Stories 4422 

Cunningham,  W.,  and  Ellen  A.  McArthur.     Outlines  of  English  Indus- 
trial History 4534 

Curtis,  Anson  Barrie.     Back  to  the  Old  Testament  for  the  Message  of 

the  New 4526 

Dansk,  En.     The  Drama  of  the  Apocalypse 4533 

Day,  George  F.     Obituary 4646 

Dharma-mahotsava 4645 

Dresser,  Horatio  W.     The  Power  of  Silence 4533 

Dying  Rabat's  Sermon,  The 4732 


THE  OPEN  COURT.— Index  to  Volume  IX. 


BOOK  REVIEWS  AND  NOTES— Continued. 


PAGE 
4414 
4750 
4750 
4414 
4645 
4670 
4558 

4542 
4478 
4518 
4510 
4758 

4533 
4526 


Education,  Commissioners  Report  of 

Egyptian  Herald  on  Mohammedanism 

Episcopal  Recorder  on  "  The  Prophets  of  Israel  " 

Ernian,  Adolf.     Life  in  Ancient  Egypf 

Fallows,  Bishop  Samuel 

Fatherhood  of  God 

Fellowship  in  Classical  Archieoloey 

Ferri,  Enrico.     Socialismus  und  nioderne  Wissenschaft  (Darwin-Spen 

cer-Marx) 

Ferri,  Prof.  Comm.  Luigi,  Obituary  of 

Fortier,  Alcee.     Louisiana  Folk-Tales 

Free  Religious  Societies  in  Germany 

Freeihought  Magazine 

French,  Charles  W.     Selections  from  the  Works  of  Robert  Browning  . . . 
Freytag.  Gustav.     The  Lost  Manuscript 

Gandhi,  V.  R.,  in  London 4525-  47i8 

Garson.  J.  G.     Early  British  Races. 4350 

Gassaud,  M.     M.  de  Quatrefages's  Movement 4422 

Giddings,  Franklin  H.     The  Principles  of  Sociology 4526 

Ginn,  Edwin.     Are  Our  Schools  in  Danger  i* 4598 

Gissac,  F.  de.     Criticism  of  the  Bel-Merodach  Slab 4662 

Gizcyki,  Prof.  George  von.     Obituary 4470 

Godwin,  Parke.     Commemorative  Addresses 4358 

Goodwin,  T.  A.     Lovers  Three  Thousand  Years  Ago 4749 

Gospel  of  Buddha.     Review  in  The  Outlook 4733 

Grassraann,  Hermann.     Punktrechnung  und  projektive  Geometrie 4414 

Haeckel,  Ernst.     His  "  Confession  of  Faith,"  4366  :  bust  of 439S 

Harris,  W.  T.     Educational  Report 4414 

Harris.  W.  T.     Report  of  the  Committee  of  Fifteen  4470 

Harrison,  Frederic,  Harriet  Martineau.  and  Comte's  Positive  Philosophy  4550 

Harrison,  Frederic.     The  Choice  of  Books 4538 

Hering,  Ewald.     Called  to  the  University  of  Leipsic 4750 

Hicks,  R.  D.,  and  Franz  Susemihl.    The  Politics  of  Aristotle 447S 

India,  Statistics  of 4438 

jevons,  Stanley.    The  State  in  Relation  to  Labor    4478 

Jones,  Jenkin  Lloyd.    The  Word  of  the  Spirit 4390 

Journal  of  Education 4470 

Karma.    Japanese  Edition 4749 

Kaye,  Rev.  Dr.     About  the  Holy  Bible 4525 

Labor.  A  New  Gospel  of 4446 

Lazarus  Henry.     The  English  Revolution  of  the  Twentieth  Century 4430 

Leaming,  Edward,   and  Edmund  B.  Wilson.     Atlas  of  Fertilisation  and 

Karyokinesis 4550 

Levy,  J.  H.     Transactions  of  the  National  Liberal  Club 1614 

Lewins,  Dr.  Robert,  Obituary  of 4614 

Liberal  Religious  Societies,  Second  Congress  of 4510,  451S 

Liberty  of  Conscience  and  State  Church  of  Prussia 4510 

Lodge.  Oliver.     The  Work  of  Hertz 4350 

Lubbock,  John.     The  Pleasures  of  Life 455S 

Lynching  in  the  Far  West 4670 

Mach,  Ernst.     His  Call  to  the  University  of  \'ienna 4542 

Magazine  International.  Le 4470 

Maha-Bodhi  Society 4510 

Martineau,  Harriet,  and  Comte's  Positive  Philosophy 4550 

McArthur,  Allen  A.,  and  W.  Cunningham.    Outlines  of  English  Industrial 

History 4534 

McGee.  W.  G.     The  Earth  the  Home  of  Man 4502 

Medico- Legal  Congress 4478 

Mill,  John  Stuart.  Selected  Essays  of 4550 

Monisi,  The  October 4685 

Moore.  T.  Howard.     Why  I  am  a  Vegetarian 4678 

Morselli,  Enrico 4614 

Moslem  God  conception 4574 

Moulton,  Richard  G.    The  Modern  Reader's  Bible 4558 

Mussaeus  School  and  Orphanage,  Ceylon 4534 

Nachrichten 4390,  4494,  4614 

National  Geographic  Monographs 4606 


New  York  State  Reformatory 4541 

Northern  Library 452G 

Novelist's  Library 4526 

Observer,  The 4550 

Ostrander.  D.     Social  Growth  and  Stability 4533 

Outlook,  The 4733 

Pali  Jataka,  Buddha  Birth- Stories 4422 

Pan-American  Congress  of  Religion  and  Education 4550,  4645 

Parliament  of  Religions  at  Paris 4686 

Pfoundes.  C 4374,  4598 

Physical  Review,  The 4454 

Picavet,  M    F.    The  Experimental  Science  of  the  Thirteeth  Century  in 

the  Occident.     M.  Theodule  Ribot 4382 

Pithecanthropos,  G.  Max's 4398 

Posse,  Nils.     The  Special  Kinesiology  of  Educational  Gymnastics 4414 

Powell,  E.  F.     Religion  as  a  Factor  in   Human  Evolution 45io,  4606 

Powell,  J.  W.     National  Geographic  Monographs 4606 

Prang  &  Co.     Christmas  and  New  Year's  Cards  and  Calendars 4758 

Reich,  Eduard.     Philosophie,  Seele.  Dasein  und  Elend 463S 

Religious  Parliament  in  Ajmere. 4718 

Review  of  Reviews 4430 

Ribot,  Th.     Diseases  of  Personality 4494 

Roberty,  E.  de.     La  Recherche  de  I'Unite.    Auguste  Comte  et  Herbert 

Spencer 4612 

Romanes,  George  John.    Thoughts  on  Religion 4454 


Sameresingha.  C.     The  Dying  Rabat's  Sermon  ....    

Schlegel,  V 

School  of  Applied  Ethics 

Schroder,  Ernst.     Note  on  the  Algebra  of  the  Binary  Relative 

Schubert.  H 

Shi-Do-Kwai-Ko-Koku.     A  Japanese  Magazine 

Shoemaker.  The  Old 

Sixty  Years  of  an  Agitator's  Life 

Solvay,  M.     Gift  to  University  of  Brussels 

Standard  Dictionary 

Standard  Novels,  Illustrated , 

Stetefield.  C.  A.     The  Relations  Existing  Between  Authors  and  Publish- 
ers of  Scientific  and  Technical  Books 

Subhadra  Bhikshu,     Buddhist  Catechism 

Sunset  Club 

Susemihl,  Franz,  and  R.  D.  Hicks.    The  Politics  of  Aristotle 


4732 
4598 
447S 
4502 
4598 
4542 
4646 
4430 
4525 
4582 
4494 

4606 
4733 
4502 
4478 


Tarde,  M.  G.     La  logique  sociale 443° 

Thomas,  H.  W.,  on  Colonel  Ingersoll 4694 

Tibetan,  The 4566 

Tiero,  C.  V.     A  Gold  Standard  but  Not  Gold  Money 451M 

Towards  Utopia 4558 

Turkey,  A  Few  Facts  About 4622 

Union,  The 4718 

Unsectarian,  The 4454 

"  L'surper's  Assassin,"  Criticism  of 471S 

Veeder,  M.  A.     On  Magnetic  Storms 4502 

Wake,  C.  Staniland.     Memoirs  of  the  International  Congress  of  Anthro- 
pology    4390 

War  Reader,  The  4542 

Ward,  Lester  F".     Static  and  Dynamic  Sociology.     The  Relation  of  Soci- 
ology to  Anthropology.  4622  ;   Fossil  Plants  ;  Saporta  and  Williamson  ; 

The  Place  of  Sociology  Among  the  Sciences 4732 

Ward,  Mrs.  Humphry.     Amiel's  Journal 4558 

William,  Emperor 4734 

Wilson,  Edmund,  B.,  and  Edward  Leaming.     Atlas  of  Fertilisation  and 

Karyokinesis 4550 

Winter,  William.     Shakespeare's  England 4558 

Woman  Suffrage,  John  Bright  on 4422 

Wordsworth,  Works  of 4526 

World's  Congress  Extension 4645 

4750 


Xenions  of  Goethe  and  Schiller. 


The  Open  Court. 


A   WEEKLY  JOUENAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.   384.     (Vol.  IX.— I.) 


CHICAGO,   JANUARY  3,   1895. 


j  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
(  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.— Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


BEHOLD!  I  MAKE  ALL  THINGS  NEW. 


The  Reformation  of  Christianity  Through  the   Higher  Criticism  and  a 
New  Orthodoxy. 


The  old  year  is  gone,  the  new  year  has  come,  and 
we  are  again  reminded  of  the  truism  that  hfe  is  both 
transient  and  immortal.  The  statement  appears  con- 
tradictory, but  the  fact  is  undeniable.  Nothing  per- 
sists and  yet  everything  endures.  The  changes  that 
take  place  are  transformations  in  which  everything 
continues  to  exercise  an  influence  according  to  its  na- 
ture and  importance. 

Science  has  changed  our  life  and  is  still  chang- 
ing it,  raising  our  civilisation  to  a  higher  plane,  and 
making  us  conscious  of  the  great  possibilities  of  inven- 
tion, which  by  far  outstrip  the  boldest  promises  of  the 
illusions  of  magic.  But  science  affects  also  our  re- 
ligion :  the  very  foundations  of  morality  and  faith 
seem  to  give  way  under  our  feet,  and  lamentations  are 
heard  that,  if  the  least  iota  in  our  beliefs  be  altered, 
desolation  will  prevail  and  the  light  that  so  far  has 
illumined  our  path  will  be  extinguished.  Many  earnest 
believers  are  full  of  anxiet}'  on  account  of  the  results 
of  the  scientific  Bible-research,  commonly  called  the 
Higher  Criticism,  which  threatens  to  destroy  Chris- 
tianity and  appears  to  leave  nothing  tangible  to  be- 
lieve or  hope  for.  The  old  orthodoxy  is  tottering  in 
all  its  positions,  and  nothing  seems  left  which  can  be 
relied  upon. 

O  ye  of  little  faith  !  It  is  the  old  dogmatism  only 
that  falls  to  the  ground,  but  not  religion,  and  not  even 
orthodoxy.  Many  ideas  that  were  dear  to  you  have 
become  illusory  ;  you  did  not  understand  their  alle- 
gorical nature,  and  now  that  they  burst  before  your 
eyes  like  soap-bubbles,  you  while  gazing  at  them  are 
dismayed  like  children  who  will  not  be  comforted. 

Orthodoxy  means  "right  doctrine"  and  it  is  but 
natural  to  think  that  if  our  orthodoxy  is  hopelessly  lost, 
scepticism  will  prevail  and  we  must  be  satisfied  with 
the  conclusion  that  there  is  no  stability  in  the  world 
and  that  nothing  can  be  known  for  certain.  But  be- 
cause the  old  orthodoxy  fails  there  is  no  reason  to  say 
that  orthodoxy  itself  in  the  original  and  proper  sense 
of  the  term  is  a  vain  hope.  Bear  in  mind  that  the  na- 
ture of  science  is  the  endeavor  to  establish  an  unques- 


tionable orthodoxy  on  the  solid  foundation  of  evidence 
and  proof? 

The  very  power  that  destroys  the  errors  of  the  past 
is  born  of  the  same  spirit  which  gave  life  to  the  ages 
gone  by  so  long  as  they  were  the  living  present.  The 
authority  of  science  is  not  a  power  of  evil,  but  it  is  of 
the  same  source  as  the  noble  aspirations  for  a  higher 
life  which  were  revealed  through  the  pens  of  prophets 
and  holy  men  who,  yearning  for  truth  and  righteous- 
ness, wrote  the  scriptures  and  called  the  Church  into 
existence  in  the  hope  of  building  up  a  kingdom  of 
heaven  on  earth.  The  allegories  in  which  the  past 
spoke  have  ceased  to  be  true  to  us  who  want  the  truth, 
according  to  the  scientific  spirit  of  the  age,  in  unmis- 
takable terms  and  exact  formulas.  But  the  aspiration 
lives  on,  and  a  deeper  scientific  insight  into  our  reli- 
gious literature  does  not  come  to  destroy  religion  ;  it 
destroys  its  errors  and  thus  purifies  religion  and  opens 
another  epoch  in  the  evolution  of  religious  life.  The 
negation  of  the  Biblical  criticism  is  only  a  preliminary 
work,  which  prepares  the  way  for  positive  issues  ; 
scepticism  may  be  a  phase  through  which  we  have  to 
pass,  but  the  final  result  will  be  the  recognition  of 
a  new  orthodoxy — the  orthodoxy  of  scientific  truth, 
which  discards  the  belief  in  the  letter,  but  preserves 
the  spirit,  and  stands  in  every  respect  as  high  above 
the  old  orthodoxy  as  astronomy  ranges  above  astrol- 
ogy- 

The  Bible,  which  is  unqualifiedly  that  collection  of 

books  in  the  literature  of  the  world  which  has  exer- 
cised the  most  potent  influence  upon  the  civilisation  of 
the  world,  is  not  wisely  read,  even  in  Evangelical 
countries,  and  where  it  is  read  it  is  mostly  misunder- 
stood. The  pious  exalt  it  as  the  word  of  God,  and 
believe  its  contents  as  best  they  can,  either  literally  or 
the  main  spirit  of  its  doctrines  ;  while  the  infidel  points 
out  its  incongruities  and  pillories  its  monstrosities. 
Need  we  add  that  the  mistaken  pretensions  of  the 
bigot  justify  the  caustic  sarcasm  of  the  scoffer?  But 
there  is  another  attitude  which  we  can  take  towards 
the  Bible.  Lt  is  that  of  a  reader  eager  to  learn  and 
impartial  in  investigation.  To  the  person  that  studies 
them  in  the  same  spirit  that  the  historian  studies  Greek 
and  Roman  literature,  the  Biblical  books  appear  as 
the  documents  of    the  religious  evolution  of  mankind. 


4344 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


Such  men  as  Goeti) 

appreciatively  '  ■■' 
words  of  prais 
of  wisdom  ar 
in  the  right 
ments,  sue 
mind,  but 
and  pra' 
turned 
meanir 
their   . 


f  .;Pd  Humboldt,  who  read  the  Bible 
■thout  piety,  so  called,  had  only 
.ound  in  it  an  inexhaustible  source 
ry.  Piety,  in  the  right  sense  and 
s  a  good  thing,  but  if  we  read  docu- 
le  Bible  contains,  not  with  an  open 
a  complete  submission  of  judgment, 
one  eye  on  the  Scriptures,  the  other 
neaven,  we  are  as  apt  to  distort  their 
render  ourselves  unfit  to  comprehend 
c  as  is  the  iconoclast,  who  goes  over  its 
pages  with  no  other  intention  than  in  quest  of  absurd- 
ities. 

The  people  of  Israel  were,  at  the  beginning  of 
their  history,  not  in  possession  of  a  pure  religion. 
Their  world-conception  was  apparently  not  much  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  their  neighbors.  Their  God  was  a 
tribal  Deity,  and  their  religion  was  henotheism,  not 
monotheism.  It  was  mainly  racial  tenacity  which 
prompted  them  to  serve  him  alone.  The  national 
party  clung  to  their  God  with  an  invincible  faith  which 
was  more  patriotic  than  religious.  Yet  this  fidelity  to 
the  national  God  was,  at  bottom,  a  profoundly  moral 
instinct ;  it  was  not  mere  superstition  but  contained  the 
germ  of  a  genuine  faith,  which  was  never  annihilated 
by  misfortunes,  but  only  modified  and  freed  from  its 
crude  misconceptions.  The  grander  conception  of 
monotheism  developed  slowly  through  a  long  series  of 
sad  experiences,  of  disappointments,  and  tribulations, 
from  henotheism,  until  it  became  entheism  in  Christ, 
who  said  God  is  spirit,  God  is  love,  and  when  he  was 
asked  where  his  father  was,  replied,  the  father  is  here 
in  our  hearts  ;   I  and  the  father  are  one. 

When  reading  the  Bible,  we  must  bear  in  mind 
that  the  God-idea  of  the  Israelites  was  not  free  from 
superstition,  and  we  shall  the  better  understand  the 
moral  element  which  was  present  in  it  from  the  begin- 
ning. The  prophets  and  priests  of  old  were  groping 
after  a  better  and  better  understanding  of  God,  and 
they  were  by  no  means  agreed  upon  his  nature  or 
name.  There  were  parties  among  the  prophets  as 
there  are  parties  now  in  our  churches,  and  one  theory 
attempted  to  overthrow  other  theories.  There  was  the 
national  party,  as  narrow  as  are  all  national  parties, 
and  its  representatives  regarded  everything  foreign  as 
defilement.  It  was  more  influential  than  any  other 
party,  and  Israel  has  been  punished  severely  for  its 
mistakes.  But  every  chastisement  served  only  to 
strengthen  the  conviction  in  the  justice  of  their  God, 
and  we  can  observe  how,  through  their  blunders  and 
errors,  the  people  of  Israel  began  to  learn  that  their 
God  was  not  the  tribal  deity,  but,  if  he  was  God  at 
all,  the  omnipotent  ruler  of  the  world  and  the  ulti- 
mate authority  of  moral  conduct,  whose  moral  com- 
mands must  be  obeyed  everywhere,  and  who  reveals 


himself  in  both  the  curse  of  sin  and  the  bliss  of  right- 
eousness. He  who  understands  the  laws  of  spiritual 
growth  can  appreciate  the  nobility,  the  genius,  the 
earnestness,  and  moral  greatness  of  the  authors  of  the 
Biblical  books,  without  being  blind  to  their  shortcom- 
ings and  faults. 

The  Bible  is  as  much  a  revelation  as  the  evolution 
of  the  human  race.  The  Biblical  books  are  the  docu- 
ments of  the  revelation  of  religion,  and  must,  in  order 
to  be  true,  contain  not  only  the  results  thus  far  at- 
tained, but  also  the  main  errors  through  which  the 
results  have  been  reached,  and  we  must  know  that  the 
world  has  not  as  yet  come  to  a  standstill.  The  Re- 
formation has  ushered  in  a  new  epoch  of  religious 
thought,  and  we  are  now  again  on  the  eve  of  a  new 
dispensation. 

One  of  the  errors  of  the  authors  of  the  Bible, — and 
he  who  understands  the  law  of  evolution  knows  that 
it  is  an  inevitable  error, — is  the  belief  in  miracles, 
which  is  prevalent  among  the  authors  of  the  writings 
of  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament.  The  sanctity  of 
the  Scriptures  has  caused  faithful  Christians,  who  would 
otherwise  not  be  guilty  of  credulity,  to  accept  without 
hesitation  the  report  of  the  miracles  of  the  Bible.  The 
belief  in  miracles  alone  proves  that  the  Biblical  books 
must  be  regarded  as  the  documents  of  the  religious 
evolution  of  the  people  of  Israel,  and  not  as  the  liter- 
ally inspired  word  of  God  ;  but  there  is  another  and  a 
stronger  evidence  which  is  the  lack  of  genuine  divinity 
and  even  of  moral  character  which  is  frequently  attrib- 
uted to  God  by  the  prophets  themselves. 

When  the  people  of  Israel  were  about  to  leave 
Egypt,  "they  borrowed  of  the  Egyptians  jewels  of 
silver,  and  jewels  of  gold,  and  raiment,"  with  the  pur- 
pose of  never  returning  them,  and  the  Bible  adds  : 

"And  the  Lord  gave  the  people  favor  in  the  sight  of  the  Egyp- 
tians, so  that  they  lent  unto  them  such  things  as  they  required. 
And  they  spoiled  the  Egyptians." 

All  the  old-fashioned  explanations  of  this  passage, 
that  the  Israelites  had  served  the  Egyptians  as  slaves 
without  return,  and  they  were  entitled  to  take  cun- 
ningly what  they  could  not  get  openly,  are  crooked 
and  unworthy;  for  God,  if  he  be  truly  God,  cannot  be 
a  patron  of  sneak-thieves.  If  God  undertakes  to 
straighten  out  the  injustice  of  the  Egyptians,  he  can- 
not do  it  by  sanctioning  robbery  and  fraud.  There  is 
but  one  explanation  of  this  passage,  that  the  author 
had  no  better  idea  of  God  than  a  former  slave  could 
attain  in  his  degradation  and  in  the  wretched  sur- 
roundings of  oppression  and  poverty.  Knavery,  the 
sole  means  of  self-defence  to  a  slave,  was  so  ingrained 
in  his  character,  that  his  God-conception  was  affected 
by  it.  The  God-idea  of  the  book  of  Exodus  has  been 
purified  since  those  days,  but  the  man  who  wrote  that 
passage  was  as  honestly  mistaken  about  it  as  is  many 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4345 


a  clergyman  of  to-day,  who  denounces  investigation 
as  ungodly  and  finds  no  salvation,  except  in  the  sur- 
render of  reason  and  science. 

There  are  several  competitive  trials  in  miracle-work- 
ing between  the  priests  of  other  gods  and  the  prophets 
of  the  Lord  of  Israel  mentioned  in  the  Bible,  in  which 
the  former  are  always  defeated  and  the  latter  are  vindi- 
cated. The  question  is,  Can  a  Christian  regard  these 
stories  as  legends  which  characterise  the  opinions  held 
in  those  distant  ages,  or  must  he  maintain  that  they  are 
historically  reliable  reports,  and  as  the  word  of  God 
even  truer  than  history,  if  that  could  be? 

Let  us  consider  one  of  them,  related  in  the  first 
book  of  Kings,  chapter  iS,  where  we  are  told  that  at 
the  time  of  a  severe  drought  Elijah  had  the  children 
of  Israel  and  four  hundred  prophets  of  Baal  gathered 
around  him  on  Mount  Carmel,  and  he  said  to  the 
people : 

"How  long  halt  ye  between  two  opinions?  if  the  Lord  be 
God,  follow  him  :  but  if  Baal,  then  follow  him." 

Elijah  then  takes  two  bullocks,  one  for  himself,  the 
other  one  for  the  prophets  of  Baal ;  both  are  killed 
for  sacrifice  and  laid  upon  wood,  without  putting  fire 
under  the  wood.  The  prophets  of  Baal  invoked  their 
God  in  vain,  although  they  cried  aloud,  and  had  to  bear 
the  ridicule  of  Elijah  ;  but  when  Elijah  prayed  to  God, 
"the  fire  of  the  Lord  fell  and  consumed  not  only  the 
burnt  sacrifice  and  the  wood,"  after  it  had  been  sur- 
rounded by  a  trench  and  soaked  three  times  with 
water,  but  also  "the  stones  and  the  dust,  and  licked 
up  the  water  that  was  in  the  trench." 

Now,  I  make  bold  to  say  in  the  name  of  all  that  is 
holy  and  in  the  name  of  truth,  that  no  educated  Chris- 
tian of  to-day  would  propose  to  repeat  Elijah's  experi- 
ment. God  would  not  perform  such  a  miracle  to-day 
as  he  is  reported  to  have  done  in  Elijah's  time,  and 
our  most  orthodox,  or  rather  so-called  orthodox,  theo- 
logians would  no  longer  dare  to  stake  the  reputation  of 
their  religion  on  trials  like  that,  for  they  would  misera- 
bl}'  fail.  And  even  if  they  succeeded  by  hook  or  by 
crook,  which  is  not  impossible  since  we  must  grant 
that  some  spiritualistic  mediums  are,  indeed,  marvel- 
lously successful  in  their  art,  would  we,  for  that  reason, 
be  converted  to  their  God-conception?  Not  at  all. 
God,  if  he  be  God  at  all,  cannot  be  a  trickster  or  a 
protector  of  sleight-of-hand. 

It  is  undeniable  that  our  conception  of  God  has 
changed,  and  even  the  so-called  old  orthodox  people 
are  affected  by  the  change,  although  they  are  to  a 
great  extent  unconscious  of  the  fact.  The  best  argu- 
ment, however,  that  the  present  God-conception  of 
Christianity  is  different  from  what  it  was  of  yore  lies 
not  in  a  changed  conception  of  miracles  (for  there  are 
many  Christians  who  still  imagine  they  believe  in  mira- 
cles in  the  same  way  as  did  the  prophet  Elijah);  the 


best  argument  lies  on  moral  grounds.     We  read  in  the 
same  chapter,  verse  40  : 

"And  Elija  said  unto  them  [the  people].  Take  the  prophets  of 
Baal  ;  let  not  one  of  them  escape.  And  they  took  them  ;  and  Elijah 
brought  thern  down  to   the  brook  Kishon,  and  slew  them  there." 

After  the  450  Prophets  of  Baal  had  been  slain,  the 
sky  became  black  with  clouds,  and  king  Ahab  who 
had  been  a  witness  to  these  events  had  to  hurry  home 
so  as  not  to  be  stopped  by  the  rain. 

The  prophets  of  Baal  were  slaughtered  not  be- 
cause they  had  committed  crimes,  but  because  they 
had  set  their  trust  in  Baal  and  not  in  Javeh.  It  is  true 
that  Baal-worship  was  very  superstitious,  but  would 
it  not  have  been  better  to  educate  the  erring  than  to 
kill  them  ?  The  truth  is  that  Elijah,  although  stand- 
ing on  a  higher  ground  than  the  prophets  of  Baal,  was 
not  yet  free  from  superstition  himself. 

Should  any  pious  Christian  be  still  narrow  enough 
in  his  intellectual  comprehension  to  believe  in  a  god 
of  rain-makers,  he  will  most  assuredly  not  believe  in 
the  god  of  assassins,  whose  command  is  :  slay  every- 
one with  the  sword  who  preaches  another  god. 

The  God  of  the  new  orthodoxy  is  no  longer  the  to- 
tem of  the  medicine-man  or  the  rain-maker  ;  he  is  no 
longer  the  idolised  personification  of  either  the  cunning 
of  the  slave  or  the  brutality  of  the  oppressor.  He  is 
the  superpersonal  omnipotence  of  existence,  the  irre- 
fragable order  of  cosmic  law,  and  the  still  dispensa- 
tion of  justice  which  slowly  but  surely,  without  any 
exception,  always  and  under  all  conditions,  makes  for 
righteousness. 

We  discard  the  errors  of  the  religion  of  the  medi- 
cine-man, but  we  must  not  forget  to  give  him  credit 
for  both  his  faith  and  honest  endeavors.  We  stand 
upon  his  shoulders  ;  his  work  and  experience  continues 
to  live  in  us.  He  changed  into  a  physician,  a  priest, 
a  scientist,  a  philosopher,  according  to  the  same  law 
of  evolution  which  transforms  a  seed  into  a  tree  and  a 
caterpillar  into  a  butterfly. 

Nothing  is  annihilated,  nothing  is  lost,  or  wiped  out 
of  existence,  making  it  as  if  it  had  never  been,  but 
everything  is  preserved  in  this  wonderful  and  labyrin- 
thian  system  of  transformations.  Everything  that  ex- 
ists now  and  everything  that  ever  has  existed  remains 
a  factor  in  the  procreation  of  the  future.  The  future  is 
not  radically  new,  it  is  the  old  transformed  ;  it  is  the 
past  as  the  present  has  shaped  it ;  and  if  the  present 
is  a  living  power  with  spiritual  foresight  and  ideals,  if 
it  is  the  mind  of  aspiring  man,  the  future  will  be  better, 
nobler,  grander.  There  is  no  reason  for  complaining 
over  the  collapse  of  the  old  orthodoxy,  for  that  which 
is  good  in  it  will  be  preserved  in  the  new  orthodoxy. 

We  read  in  the  Revelation  of  St.  John  (xxi,  5): 

"He  that  sat  upon  the  throne  said.  Behold!  I  make  all  things 


4346 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


new.     And  he  said  unto  me,  Write  :  for  these  words  are  true  and 
faithful." 

What  shall  be  the  attitude  of  religious  people  of 
to-day  in  the  face  of  such  passages  in  their  holy  Scrip- 
tures ?  Is  there  any  Christian  to-day  who  would  dare 
to  justify  Elijah?  There  are  a  few  ill-advised  people 
left  who  would  try  either  to  defend  his  intolerance  and 
still  cling  to  the  errors  of  their  traditional  belief.  Their 
God-conception  belittles  God,  and  lowers  the  moral 
standard  of  their  faith. 

To  escape  the  moral  degradation  of  religion,  we 
can  no  longer  shut  out  the  light  of  science,  we  must 
learn  to  understand  that  God  is  a  God  of  evolution, 
and  that  evolution  means  progress,  and  progress  is  the 
essence  of  life. 

The  development  of  the  world  is  God's  revelation, 
and  the  Bible  is  only  one  part  of  it.  God  is  greater 
than  the  Bible,  he  reveals  himself  also  in  Shakespeare 
and  in  Goethe,  in  Lamarck  and  Darwin,  in  Gutten- 
berg,  James  Watts,  and  Edison.  The  Bible  is  a  grand 
book,  it  is  a  collection  of  the  most  important  and  indis- 
pensable documents  of  the  religious  development  of 
mankind,  but  it  is  after  all  only  a  paltry  piece  of  God's 
revelation  which  has  to  be  deciphered  with  as  much 
trouble  and  painstaking  as  the  facts  of  natural  history 
that  confront  us.  And  the  development  of  religion  is 
by  no  means  at  an  end.  We  are  still  very  far  from 
having  worked  out  our  salvation  and  in  many  of  the 
walks  of  life  we  are  only  groping  for  the  right  path. 

Every  truth  found  by  science,  every  invention 
achieved  by  inventors,  every  social  improvement  made 
in  mutual  justice  aud  good-will,  every  progress  of  any 
kind  is  a  contribution  toward  maturing  the  one  reli- 
gion of  mankind  which  is  destined  to  be  the  cosmic 
faith  of  the  world,  which  will  be  truly  orthodox,  be- 
cause scientifically  true,  truly  catholic,  because  uni- 
versal, truly  authoritative  and  holy,  because  enjoining 
conformity  to  that  cosmic  revelation  of  life  in  which  we 
live  and  move  and  have  our  being.  p.  c. 


CONSERVATION  OF  SPIRIT. 

BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 

Man  is  a  kit  of  tools,  a  bundle  of  qualities,  pro- 
cesses, expressions,  versatile  varieties  of  manifesta- 
tions. He  is  all  adjectives,  for  that  which  is  not  ad- 
jective is  a  noun,  and  a  noun  is  what  the  word  im- 
plies— a  name. 

A  name  seems  of  all  things  the  least  tangible, — the 
most  of  an  airy  nothing.  But  the  value  of  a  word  is 
not  in  its  articulation,  but  in  its  meaning. 

The  spoken  word,  the  written  word,  the  printed 
word,  even  the  word  stored  up  in  the  phonograph  and 
kept,  perhaps,  as  some  may  be,  for  ages, — all  are  tem- 


poral, all  dependent  upon  some  material  medium  for 
this  life,  brief  or  long. 

But  the  meaning  of  a  word  certainly  as  enduring 
force,  more  provably  than  the  endurance  of  matter,  is 
immortal. 

Certainly,  as,  in  due  proportion  the  tiniest  move- 
ment of  the  least  molecule  on  earth  affects  Arcturus, 
that  gigantic  world,  so,  in  precisely  the  same  manner 
in  the  region  of  mentality  all  facts,  small  or  great, 
have  influence,  exactly,  accurately,  and  justly  pro- 
portionate to  their  value  to  other  related  facts  and  in 
the  co-ordination  of  the  entire  universe. 

There  is  a  principle  of  conservation  of  meaning  as 
of  energy.  The  time  shall  be  when  the  law  of  this 
principle  shall  be  as  accurately  formulated  as  that  of 
gravity — directly,  perhaps,  as  the  potency,  inversely 
as  some  power  of  understanding. 

A  fly  crawled  up  the  wall  in  Caesar's  palace,  and 
was  killed  by  a  menial.  There  and  then  the  fly  died. 
That  fly  is  immortal.  Its  constituent  particles  of  mat- 
ter were  resolved  into  and  reappeared  in  other  com- 
binations. If  it  was  midnight  in  Rome,  the  fly  pulled 
up,  as  it  crawled,  the  great  sun  underneath  the  world. 
If  it  was  noon  when  that  fly  fell  to  the  floor,  its  dead 
carcass  pulled  the  sun  in  the  heavens  down  with  it 
when  it  fell. 

These  are  facts  admitted  by  all. 

As  that  which  is  physical  and  that  which  is  ener- 
getic is  transmitted  but  never  lost,  has  influence  and 
value,  small  or  great,  in  due  and  great  proportion,  so 
is  it  with  that  which  is  spiritual. 

It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  there  was  any  signi- 
ficance in  the  crawling  of  a  fly  two  thousand  years  ago, 
and  yet  there  was  a  meaning  in  its  life  and  death. 

The  meaning  of  anything  may  seem  to  be  lost  in 
the  great  rabble  of  other  spirits,  but  inevitably,  iner- 
rantly  it  pursues  its  way  to  its  own  appointed  duty. 
Arcturus  may  not  feel  the  power  of  the  molecule,  but 
it  is  there.  All  that  ever  was,  though  in  the  rear  rank 
humbly,  has  joined  forever  the  grand  march  of  des- 
tiny. 

Spirit,  like  color,  is  in,  but  not  of,  matter.  The 
pigments, — chromes,  ochres,  sulphurets,  madder,  co- 
balt, these  are  not  colors;  they  are  only  the  means 
whereby  color  is  made  known  to  the  sense  of  color, — ■ 
their  "spirit"  to  our  "spirit." 

Color  is  in  position,  focus  angles,  and  the  spirit  of 
man  is  in  his  position,  in  his  relation  to  other  spirits 
and  to  all  spirit. 

If  the  meanest  thing  has  within  it  immortality;  if, 
as  Christ  said,  not  a  sparrow  falleth  to  the  ground 
without  the  Father,  shall  we  not  be  of  good  cheer? 
Are  we  not  of  more  value  than  many  mean  things  ? 
Shall  we  not,  as  Christ  did,  overcome  the  world  ? 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4347 


We  are  prone  to  think  too  highly  of  our  powers  ; 
apt  to  seek  plausible  pretexts  for  foisting  pet  fancies 
upon  the  world;  sedulous  in  maintaining  views  and 
winning  over  others  to  our  opinions. 

Cease  to  regard  the  material  and  the  ideal,  mind 
and  matter,  as  essentially  distinct.  They  are  always 
one,  and  the  spirit  that  animates  the  atom  is  a  func- 
tion of  the  divine  and  eternal  spirit. 

Reason  is  a  being  of  many  senses.  Say  not  that 
the  quest  for  truth  is  futile  till  you  have  tried  them  all. 
Perhaps  some  of  whose  potency  you  little  dream  are 
yet  untried.  The  astronomer,  balked  by  appalling 
distance,  gives  up  in  despair  his  search  for  the  paral- 
lax of  a  star,  and  lo!  the  spectroscope  is  invented  and 
tells  him  which  way  and  how  fast  that  star  travels  in 
space.  The  chemist  would  have  been  thought  mad  a 
hundred  years  ago  who  said  that  his  art  could  tell  the 
constituent  elements  in  Sirius  or  Algol.  The  answer 
comes,  and  it  is  nothing  but  a  name  now,  but  that 
name  is  Frauenhofer. 

Chemistry  is  a  body  of  principle  manifested  by  a 
chemist,  conscious  or  unconscious,  regulated  by  a  vo- 
lition or  automatic  bj'  means  of  processes  and  reagents 
making  and  determining  changes  in  substance. 

Mechanics  is  another  body  of  a  different  principle, 
working  through  a  personality,  or  impersonally  by  the 
agents  of  nature — wind,  waterfall,  earthquake,  or  light- 
ning. 

The  effects  in  both  cases  are  multitudinous,  the 
proximate  causes  more  or  less  traceable,  the  ultimate 
resolvable  into  a  mystery, — at  best  into  a  mystery 
of  certainty.  But  all  the  multiform  shapes  of  action 
ultimately  unite  in  two  great  overruling  mysteries, — 
gravity,  the  skeleton  of  the  power  of  the  universe,  and 
the  sunbeam,  its  vitality. 

There  was  a  time  in  the  world's  history, — when 
gods  were  many  and  truths  were  few, — that  all  the 
several  agencies  of  action  were  personified.  Doubt- 
less, if  the  old  form  of  mythic  thought  were  still  ex- 
istent, the  m}'th-maker  would  have  given  us  a  new 
legend  of  the  creation  of  the  chemic  god,  perhaps  the 
son  of  Hermes,  or  of  the  mechanical  god,  offspring  of 
Jupiter. 

And  it  is  in  the  highest  degree  probable  that  Apollo, 
in  his  capacity  as  Phoebus,  the  sun-god,  would  have 
usurped  the  very  throne  of  heaven  and  cast  out  his 
father  Jove  from  the  sovereignty  of  Olympus. 

However  we  have,  as  we  think,  outgrown  mythol- 
ogy; we  no  longer  ascribe  personality  to  the  universal 
adjectives.  We  moderns  do  not  speak  of  a  chemistry, 
a  mechanics,  or  a  mathematics.  The  indefinite  article 
has  been  expunged  from  our  nomenclature  except  in 
the  one  case  of  the  region  of  thought  known  as  reli- 
gion,— we  still  speak  confidently  and  mythologically 
of  a  God. 


To  the  theologian  as  to  the  mythologian  God  is 
still  personified  ;  God  is  still  an  indefinite  article. 

Truth  is  arrived  at  in  the  physical  sciences  by  pro- 
cesses of  induction,  whereby  fact  upon  fact,  increment 
after  increment,  a  series  more  or  less  extended,  en- 
ables the  physicist  to  construct  a  hypothesis  sufficiently 
broad  to  include  all  known  facts  and  sufficiently  plaus- 
ible fo  admit  the  acquiescence  of  all  minds. 

But  it  has  frequently  happened  that  after  a  work- 
ing hypothesis  has  been  formed  new  facts  have  been 
discovered  at  variance  with  theory,  and  which  neces- 
sarily demand  a  reconstruction  of  the  hypothesis. 

In  this  way  the  crude  notions  of  the  ancients  in 
regard  to  heat, — that  it  was  an  "element  "  gave  room 
in  modern  times  first  to  the  doctrine  of  "phlogiston  "; 
that  to  "caloric,"  and  that  in  turn  to  "mode  of  mo- 
tion." 

In  the  exact  sciences,  however,  truth  is  gotten  di- 
rectly by  the  assumption  of  principles  which  are  uni- 
versally received  as  true  by  all  minds.  Whether  in- 
nate or  not  they  are  positive  and  trustworthy  to  thought 
and  are  the  most  real  of  realities.  Upon  these,  as 
upon  a  solid  rock  foundation,  are  built  up  by  the 
method  of  progression  towards  truth  called  deduction, 
in  stable  equilibrium  the  known  truths  of  exact  science. 

Religion  is  either  scientific  or  unscientific,  that  is, 
it  is  either  truth  known  or  truth  unknown. 

If  it  be  not  truly  known  it  is  necessarily  valueless, 
for  unknown  truth  is  a  contradiction  and  on  its  face 
absurd. 

Progress  has  compelled  theology  to  alter  its  hy- 
pothesis in  consequence  of  the  discovery, — the  bring- 
ing to  light  the  hidden  things  of  new  facts  which  could 
not  be  made  to  conform  to  the  old  order. 

So  we  have  an  "Old  Testament,"  where  God  ap- 
peared as  a  "divine"  personality,  mysterious,  unap- 
proachable and  wrathful,  and  a  "  New  Testament, " 
where  he  comes  to  us  as  a  "humane  "  personality,  not 
less  mysterious  than  before,  but  now  approachable  and 
lovely. 

In  the  Old  Testament  we  had  the  "phlogiston" 
period  of  the  science  of  religion,  and  in  the  new  we 
have  its  period  of  "caloric." 

Another  illustration  :  the  arithmetic  is  the  science 
of  the  relations  of  numbers.  Here  number  is  sup- 
posed, and  properly,  to  be  an  individual  thing,  sepa- 
rate and  apart  from  all  other  things,  and  arithmetic  is 
the  science  of  the  relations  of  these  several  and  dis- 
tinct things.  Now  comes  algebra,  introducing  an  en- 
tirely new  element — the  unknown  quantity — in  the 
form  of  f.v)  the  cross,  —  a  quantity  which  while  un- 
known is  not  unknowable,  but  is  the  substance  of  the 
equation  ;  it  comes  not  to  destroy  the  law  of  number, 
but  to  fulfil  it. 

But  the  science  of  the  relations  of  number  does  not 


4348 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


end  here,  for  in  the  "revelation  "  of  Newton  we  have 
a  new  and  more  perfect  conception,  not  only  of  the  re- 
lation, but  of  the  very  nature  of  number.  In  the  arith- 
metic and  the  algebra,  number  was  individual,  in  the 
calculus  it  is  continuous  ;  the  nature  of  the  "spirit" 
of  number  is  made  manifest. 

In  the  Old  Testament  we  had  the  arithmetic  of  re- 
ligion ;  and  in  the  new  we  have  its  algebra. 

In  these  several  advances  nothing  that  was  vital  or 
essential  has  been  lost  ;  nothing  that  preceded  could 
have  been  spared.  The  facts  remain  intact ;  it  was 
only  the  hypothesis  that  required  restatement,  as  in 
the  theory  of  heat ;  and  in  mathematics  no  truth  has 
been  eliminated,  but  only  developed  in  the  light  of  ac- 
curacy. 

Observe  also  that  in  the  two  scientific  matters  we 
have  noticed  there  were  true  "  revelations,"  Archi- 
medes, Euclid,  Stahl,  Lavoisier,  Priestly,  Newton, 
La  Place,  Legendre,  each  after  his  kind  "revealed" 
truth.  It  required  a  chemist  to  reveal  chemical  truth 
and  a  mathematician  to  reveal  mathematical  truth,  so, 
in  like  manner  it  required  to  reveal  godly  truth  a  God. 

To  understand  chemistry,  you  must  be  chemically 
minded  ;  to  understand  mathematics  you  must  be  a 
mathematician  ;  and  to  understand  God  you  must,  in 
the  same  way,  be  godly. 

As  we  have  come  finally  to  look  upon  heat  as 
"mode  of  motion",  and  to  regard  number  as  continu- 
ous, so,  I  think,  it  is  not  only  possible  but  inevitable 
to  regard  the  things  of  spirit  in  the  light  of  science, 
and  of  exact  science. 

Evolution  is  true  of  the  spirit.  There  is  a  natural 
selection  and  a  survival  of  the  fittest. 

Truth  is  not  true  because  it  is  divine,  but  it  is  di- 
vine because  it  is  true. 


JOHN  BRIGHT  ON  WOMAN  SUFFRAGE. 

BY    THEODORE  STANTON, 

In  a  recent  number  of  The  Century  Magazine,  the 
Rev.  Dr.  Buckley  quotes,  in  an  article  against  the  con- 
ferring of  the  political  franchise  on  women,  from  my 
book,  Tlie  Woman  Question  in  Europe,  a  letter  ad- 
dressed to  me  several  years  ago  by  John  Bright,  in 
which  that  eminent  statesman  explains  why,  having  at 
first  voted  with  John  Stuart  Mill  in  favor  of  woman 
suffrage,  he  ever  afterwards  opposed  the  measure. 
This  episode  in  John  Bright's  career  has  never  been 
fully  told.  It  is  here  given  for  the  first  time,  and 
is  based  on  facts  drawn  from  the  most  trustworthy 
sources. 

Notwithstanding  John  Bright's  great  talents  and 
sympathetic  nature,  there  were  limitations  to  his  mind 
and  feelings  which  have  never  existed  in  the  case  of 
his   brother,  Jacob   Bright,  whose  sense  of  justice  is 


boundless.  It  is  possible  that  these  limitations  were 
to  some  extent  natural  in  the  elder  brother,  but  that 
they  were  greatly  fostered  and  developed  by  circum- 
stances connected  with  his  domestic  life  cannot  be  de- 
nied. Here  is  to  be  found  the  real  reason  why  John 
Bright  voted  against  the  woman  suffrage  bill  when  his 
brother  re- introduced  it  after  Mr.  Mill's  defeat  for  re- 
election to  Parliament. 

John  Bright  was  twice  married.  The  first  wife 
died  early  in  his  career,  even  before  the  Corn  League 
agitation  began.  Had  she  lived,  she  would  certainly 
have  supported  the  latter-day  movements  for  woman's 
emancipation.  "Her  mother,  her  grandmother,  and 
the  women  of  her  family, "  says  a  sister  of  John  Bright, 
"never  bowed  down  to  men  as  superior  to  women. " 
They  were  extremely  "advanced  "  for  their  time,  and 
I  should  not  be  far  wrong  if  I  said  that  they  were  al- 
ways looked  up  to  as  rightly  enjoying  authority.  This 
state  of  things  is  largely  explained  by  the  fact  that 
these  women  were  distinguished  ministers  in  the  So- 
ciety of  Friends. 

The  influence  which  this  first  wife  would  have  had 
on  John  Bright's  woman  suffrage  views  is  shown  by 
that  exercised  over  him  in  this  matter  by  his  second 
wife,  who  was  far  more  conservative  than  the  first  one. 
The  second  Mrs.  Bright  had,  however,  a  large  love  for 
medical  knowledge,  which  led  her  to  come  out  strongly 
for  the  medical  education  of  women,  an  innovation 
which  met  with  bitter  opposition  in  England.  It  is  to 
be  noted  that  John  Bright  shared  his  wife's  opinions 
on  this  subject.  So  great  was  her  influence  over  him, 
that  some  people  explained  his  change  of  mind  in  re- 
gard to  woman  suffrage  as  wholly  due  to  her,  and  went 
so  far  as  to  declare  that  on  her  death-bed  she  made 
him  promise  never  to  support  the  bill  again.  But 
there  is  not  the  shadow  of  a  foundation  for  this  story. 
In  the  first  place,  there  was  no  death-bed  in  the  usual 
acceptance  of  the  term.  She  died  suddenly  one  morn- 
ing after  breakfast,  without  a  moment's  notice,  while 
supposed  to  be  in  her  usual  health.  In  the  second 
place,  John  Bright  was  the  last  man  to  have  made 
such  a  promise,  and  his  wife  was  the  last  woman  to 
have  exacted  it  from  him. 

During  two  or  three  years  the  second  Mrs.  Bright 
served  on  the  Committee  of  Management  of  a  large 
school  in  Yorkshire,  which  was  chiefly  under  the  di- 
rection of  a  body  of  men.  One  of  her  sisters-in-law 
writes  me  :  "  She  often  expressed  surprise  at  the  great 
incompetency  of  the  men  for  the  duties  they  had  un- 
dertaken to  perform,  and  a  very  short  time  before  her 
death  remarked  to  me  in  the  presence  of  her  husband  : 
'I  feel  almost  ready  to  join  you  all  in  your  women's 
rights  movements,  I  have  such  continual  proof,  which 
is  really  astounding,  of  the  utter  unfitness  of  men  for 
duties  which  they  think  they  can  perform  without  the 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4349 


help  of  women.'  I  shall  never  forget  my  brother's 
significant  smile.      He  knew  she  spoke  the  truth." 

John  Bright  was  a  member  of  the  government  that 
passed  the  Contagious  Diseases  Acts,  "and,"  as  one 
of  his  near  relatives  says,  "was,  of  course,  morally  re- 
sponsible for  that  abominable  outrage  on  women's 
liberties."  These  Acts  were  unanimously  and  vio- 
lently opposed  by  his  three  daughters  and  two  sisters, 
which  greatly  upset  him.  It  was  just  at  the  time  of 
his  second  period  of  nervous  prostration,  caused  by 
overwork  and  anxiety,  that  he  found,  on  recovering, 
the  women  of  the  nation  roused  into  rebellion  against 
this  legislation.  He  was  much  startled  to  see  them 
appearing  on  public  platforms  in  order  to  debate  this 
painful  question,  and  his  wife,  who  devotedly  attended 
him,  increased,  by  her  conservative  views,  this  shock 
to  his  feelings. 

Many  other  examples  might  be  given  of  the  ten- 
dency of  the  second  Mrs.  Bright  to  hold  back  from  en- 
tering upon  the  new  departure  in  favor  of  women  and 
of  the  strong  effect  which  her  course  had  upon  her 
husband  when  he  was  called  upon  to  pronounce  upon 
these  same  measures  in  Parliament.  It  would  be  a 
mistake,  however,  to  suppose  that  John  Bright  him- 
self was  alwaj's  a  Liberal  so  far  as  women  questions 
were  concerned.  Several  examples  besides  his  posi- 
tion on  woman  suffrage  might  be  given  in  support  of 
this  assertion.  It  is  well  known,  for  instance,  how 
strongly  he  opposed  and  how  eloquently  he  denounced 
the  law  of  primogeniture  as  unjust  and  unequal,  and 
yet  by  his  will  he  left  his  daughters  only  one-half  what 
he  left  his  sons. 

In  his  treatment  of  women's  interests  John  Bright 
was  inconstant  not  only  in  regard  to  that  of  the  suf- 
frage. At  one  time  he  strongly  combated  the  Mar- 
ried Women's  Property  Bill,  for  he  disliked  marriage 
settlements.  But  when  his  daughters  came  to  marry, 
his  opinion  on  this  question  changed  :  he  saw  that 
the  onl}'  wa)'  to  avoid  such  settlements  was  to  give 
wives  the  control  of  their  own  property.  "  I  have  no 
doubt,"  one  of  the  members  of  his  family  once  wrote 
me,  "if  his  daughters  had  been  cursed  with  bad  hus- 
bands, he  would  have  seen  that  other  laws  also  re- 
quired alteration.  But  this  necessity  was  not  brought 
home  to  him." 

The  day  before  this  Bill,  which  became  a  law  in 
1882,  came  on  for  its  final  passage  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  John  Bright  was  lunching  with  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Jacob  Bright.  The  latter  asked  him  to  speak  for 
it.  "To  my  amazement,"  says  Mrs.  Jacob  Bright, 
"  he  replied  :  '  What  !  let  a  woman  have  her  own  prop- 
erty to  give  to  Dick,  Tom,  or  Harry,  or  to  whomso- 
ever she  pleases  to  give  it  !  It  is  a  monstrous  propo- 
sition ! '  I  was  silent  for  a  moment  unable  to  believe 
my  ears.      At  last   I   said  :    '  I  suppose,  then,  you  do 


not  think  it  at  all  a  "  monstrous  "  thing  that  a  man  has 
now  the  right  to  give  not  only  his  own  property  to 
Nan,  Poll,  or  Lucy,  but  his  wife's,  too?'  After  this 
passage  at  arms  there  was  a  dead  silence.  He  looked 
at  me  in  astonishment.  I  continued  :  '  I  suppose  you 
know  that  men  sometimes  actually  exercise  the  right 
they  have  to  make  away  with  their  wives'  money  ? 
No  answer  at  all.  But  on  looking  at  the  division  list, 
I  found  he  had  voted  for  our  Bill,  though  he  did  not 
accede  to  my  request  to  speak  for  it." 

John  Bright  seems  to  have  drawn  the  line  of  wo- 
men's voting  at  municipal  suffrage.  He  warmly  ad- 
vocated that  measure  and  once  said  to  Mrs.  Jacob 
Bright,  referring  to  his  sister,  the  late  Mrs.  Margaret 
Lucas,  who  was  an  ardent  woman  suffragist :  "  She  is 
a  householder,  she  pays  rates  in  her  own  name,  —  wh)', 
then,  should  she  not  vote?" 

Apropos  of  John  Bright's  position  on  "the  woman 
question,"  one  of  his  sisters  thus  writes  tenderly: 
"The  human  mind  can  be  full  of  contradictions.  His 
had  the  most  exalted  love  and  admiration  for  women 
as  domestic  ministers  to  all  that  was  beautiful  in  life, 
and  as  saint-like  preachers  of  righteousness,  for  he  be- 
lieved in  their  equality  with  men  in  all  religious  mat- 
ters ;  and  whilst  we  all  well  nigh  worshipped  him  for 
the  sweetness  and  tenderness  of  his  love,  we  forgave 
him  that  he  could  not  see  that  woman  needed  justice 
as  well  as  love,  for  in  his  society  we  seemed  to  possess 
everything." 


CORRESPONDENCE. 

The  Religion  of  Science. 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Open  Court  : 

If  ever  there  was  a  time  in  the  history  of  the  world  when  a 
divine  revelation  was  necessary  and  when  it  had  such  a  grand  op- 
portunity to  display  itself,  that  time  was  in  the  late  Parliament  of 
Religions.  But  not  a  solitary  religious  representative  was  able 
to  present  anything  more  than  his  specific  philosophy,  founded 
upon  subjectivity,  and  his  opinions  of  the  cosmos.  Even  the  great 
and  powerful  organisations  of  Christendom,  that  make  especial 
claims  to  divine  disclosures,  did  not  attempt  to  parade  one  before 
their  less  favored  brethren  of  heathendom,  so  called.  Their  failure 
to  produce  one  was  a  silent  confession  that  it  was  not  in  their 
power  to  reveal.  A  divine  revelation  in  that  vast  and  august  as- 
sembly of  masters  and  scholars,  where  every  learned  representa- 
tive of  a  sect  did  his  best  to  show  superiority  in  some  way,  would 
have  settled  the  question  at  once  as  to  which  sect  belonged  the 
honor  of  being  the  chief  custodian  of  the  only  true  doctrine  that 
God  had  revealed  to  mankind.  If  there  was  nothing  else  of  his- 
toric note  to  mark  that  great  Columbian  epoch,  there  was  this  : 
the  utter  collapse  of  that  arrogant  human  assumption  which  had 
so  long  passed  for  a  divine  revelation.  Let  every  one,  therefore, 
who  has  been  estranged  from  ecclesiasticism  by  intellectual  devel- 
opment and  natural  repulsion,  and  who  has  not  as  yet  found  a 
solid  place  for  his  feet,  take  courage  and  have  hope,  for  though 
that  false  light  has  gone  out — gone  out  where  it  expected  to  shine 
the  most — there  is  another,  a  better  and  a  brighter,  just  beginning 


4350 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


to  "  loom  up"  above  the  horizon  of  an  intellectual  dead  sea  and 
that  glorious  true  light  is  the  Religion  of  Science  built  firmly  upon 
the  monistic  rock  of  truth  for  authority.  John  Maddock. 


BOOK  REVIEWS. 

The  Work  of  Hertz.  By  Prof.  Oliver  Lodge,  D.  Sc,  LL.D., 
/•".  K.  S.  Abstract  of  a  Friday  Evening  Lecture  at  the  Royal 
Institution  of  Great  Britain.  London.  1894.  Pp.  29. 
After  a  tribute  to  Hertz's  genius  and  a  justification  of  his  pop- 
ular renown,  Profest-or  Lodge  proceeds  to  review  his  achieve- 
ments, which,  as  all  now  know,  consist  in  the  experimental  verifi- 
cation of  the  theories  of  Faraday  and  Maxwell  regarding  the  mode 
of  action  and  propagation  cfelectricity.  Hertz  invented  and  con- 
structed suitable  instruments  for  the  detection  of  electrical  radia- 
tion, and  was  enabled  by  them  to  analyse  the  state  of  the  supposed 
medium  of  electricity,  somewhat  as  we  pick  out  the  harmonics  of 
a  compound  musical  note  by  Helraholtz's  resonators.  He  proved 
in  this  way  the  /•erioJicily  of  electrical  action,  or  experimentally 
discovered,  as  we  say,  electric  oscillations.  By  his  great  inter- 
ference experiments  in  free  space  he  corroborated  nearly  all  that 
had  been  predicted  of  electrical  waves.  Only  the  principles  of 
his  method  are  here  detailed  by  Professor  Lodge  ;  the  chief  space 
of  the  lecture  is  dedicated  to  the  labors  of  his  successors  and  to 
the  newer  and  more  refined  methods  of  detecting  electrical  radia' 
tion,  to  which  Professor  Lodge  himself  has  contributed  much. 

Apropos  of  microphonic  electrical  detectors,  a  table  of  which 
is  given  in  the  lecture,  which  include  the  eye,  Professor  Lodge 
advances  a  new  raechanico-electrical  theory  of  vision — a  "wild 
and  hazardous  speculation  that,"  not  being  a  physiologist,  "  he  is 
not  to  be  seriously  blamed  for."  "I  wish  to  guer.s,"  he  says, 
"that  some  part  of  the  retina  is  an  electrical  organ,  say  like  that 
"of  some  fishes,  maintaining  an  electromotive  force  which  is  pre- 
' '  vented  from  stimulating  the  nerves  solely  by  an  intervening  layer 
"of  badly  conducting  material,  or  of  conducting  material  with 
"gaps  in  it;  but  when  light  falls  upon  the  retina  these  gaps  be- 
"come  more  or  less  conducting,  and  the  nerves  are  stimulated.  I 
"do  not  feel  clear  which  part  is  taken  by  the  rods  and  cones,  and 
"which  part  by  the  pigment  cells;  I  must  not  try  to  make  the 
"hypothesis  too  definite  at  present."  The  theory,  he  says,  is  in 
accord  with  some  of  the  principal  views  of  Hering,  meaning  He- 
ring's  view  that  darkness  is  a  positive  sensation,  not  cessation  of 
light.  "The  eye  on  this  hypothesis  is,  in  electrometer  language, 
"  heterostatic.  The  energy  of  vision  is  supplied  by  the  organism  ; 
"  the  light  only  pulls  a  trigger.  Whereas  the  organ  of  hearing  is 
"  idiostatic.  I  might  draw  further  analogies  between  this  arrange- 
"  ment  and  the  eye,  e.  g.,  about  the  effect  of  blows  or  disorder 
"  causinf  irregular  conduction,  and  stimulation,  of  the  galvanome- 
"  ter  in  the  one  instrument,  of  the  brain-cells  in  the  other." 
Appended  to  the  Lecture  is  a  list  of  Hertz's  publications. 

We  have  also  received  from  the  Royal  Institution  an  abstract 
of  a  lecture  on  Early  British  Kncfs  by  Dr.  J.  G.  Garson  of  the  An- 
thropological Institute.  It  is  an  interesting  comparative  survey 
of  the  civilised  state  of  Palaeolithic  and  Neolithic  man,  based 
chiefly  upon  the  skeletal  remains  of  Great  Britain. 


In  the  Proccetiings  of  I  he  Arislotelian  Society  for  the  Systematic 
Study  of  Philosophy,  Vol.  2,  No.  3,  Part  II,  (London,  Williams  and 
Norgate,  pp.  75,  price  2S.)  Mr.  W.  H.  Fairbrother  discusses  the 
philosophy  of  the  late  Professor  Green  of  Oxford,  warmly  repel- 
ling the  attacks  of  his  critics,  especially  Mr.  Balfour  and  Professor 
Selb.  In  the  symposium  on  the  Relation  Between  Thought  and 
Language,  Miss  E.  E.  Constance  Jones  and  Mr.  G.  F.  Mann  dis- 
cuss the  conventional  theories  regarding  the  "  senuous  or  mental 
equivalents"  of  words.  The  discussions  of  Mr  G.  F.  Stout  who 
also  took  part  in  the  symposium  seem  to  come  nearer  to  the  root 


of  the  problem ;  his  views  are  illustrated  by  apt  citations  from 
modern  philosophers.  The  place  of  Epictetus  in  philosophy  is 
considered  by  Mr.  R.  G.  Kyle.  In  the  second  symposium,  "On 
the  Nature  and  Range  of  Evolution,"  Mr.  H.  W.  Carr  adopts  a 
view  which  was  recently  well  set  forth  by  Mr.  D.  G.  Ritchie  in 
his  work,  Darivin  and  Hegel,  that  the  mental  processes  are  de- 
veloped by  natural  selection,  but  that  the  metaphysical  question  of 
the  nature  and  validity  of  knowledge  is  not  settled  by  this  insight. 
Mr.  G.  D.  Hicks,  who  follows  and  concludes  the  symposium,  dis- 
cusses the  question  with  special  reference  to  Lewes  and  Riehl,  the 
latter  of  whom  maintained  that  evolution  "is  not  itself  a  law,  but 
a  result  of  laws,  and  that  the  problem  is  not  to  find  an  explanation 
by  reference  to  evolution  but  to  explain  evolution  itself."  The 
last  paper  in  the  Proceedings  is  on  "  The  Immateriality  of  the  Ra- 
tional Soul,"  by  Dr.  Gildea.  At  the  end  of  the  number  a  copy  of 
the  rules  of  the  society  with  the  terms  of  membership  and  a  list  of 
the  officers  and  members  are  placed. 

JUST  PUBLISHED. 

Popular  Scientific  Lectures 

BY 

ERNST  MACH, 

Professor  of  Physics  in  the  University  of  Prague. 
Translated   by   THOMAS    J.    McCORMACK. 


Cloth,  Gilt  Top.     Exhaustively  Indexed.     Pages,  313. 

Price,  $1.00. 

Titles  of  the  Lectures;  (i)  The  Forms  of  Liquids;  (2)  The 
Fibres  of  Corti ;  (3)  On  the  Causes  of  Harmony  ;  (4)  The  Velocity 
of  Light ;  (5)  Why  Has  Man  Two  Eyes  ?  (6)  On  Symmetry  ;  (7)  On 
the  Fundamental  Concepts  of  Electrostatics  ;  (8)  On  the  Principle 
of  the  Conservation  of  Energy  ;  (9)  On  the  Economical  Nature  of 
Physical  Inquiry  ;  (10)  On  Transformation  and  Adaptation  in  Sci- 
entific Thought ;  (11)  On  the  Principle  of  Comparison  in  Physics  ; 
(12)  On  Instruction  in  the  Classics  and  the  Mathematico-Physical 
Sciences. 

The  Open  Court  Publishing  Company 

324  DEARBORN    STREET,  CHICAGO,  ILL. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 


"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

$t.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  384. 

BEHOLD!  I  MAKE  ALL  THINGS  NEW.     Editor 4343 

CONSERVATION  OF  SPIRIT.     Hudor  Genone 4346 

JOHN  BRIGHT  ON  WOMAN  SUFFRAGE.     Theodore 

Stanton 4348 

CORRESPONDENCE. 

The  Religion  of  Science.     John  Maddock 4349 

BOOK  REVIEWS 4350 


H-A 


The  Open  Court. 


A  ■WEEKLY  JOURNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  385.     (Vol.  IX.-2. 


CHICAGO,  JANUARY   10,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
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CopYBiGHT  BY  THE  OPEN  CouRT  PUBLISHING  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


AN  IMAGINARY  EXPERIMENT. 

BY   GEORGE   M.    Mt  CRIE. 

The  late  Miss  Constance  Naden,  in  one  of  her  col- 
lege essays,  entitled  Scientific  IJealisiii,  dwells  instruc- 
tivel}'  upon  the  supreme  function  of  the  human  brain 
in  the  differentiation  of  sensation.  Starting  with  the 
admitted  fact  that  the  same  stimulus,  applied  to  the 
different  sensory  nerves,  is  translated  into  the  special 
language  of  each — an  electric  shock,  for  example,  be- 
ing perceived  as  a  bright  scintillation,  a  loud  noise,  a 
smell  of  phosphorus,  or  an  acid  or  alkaline  taste — she 
goes  on  to  quote  Doctors  Luys  and  Rosenthal  to  the 
effect  that  the  excitement,  or  stimulus,  entering  the 
different  sensory  nerves,  is  strictly  uniform  in  character 
As  Dr.  Rosenthal  puts  it,  in  his  work  on  Muscles  aiui 
Nerves  (p.  283): 

"When  the  excitement  has  entered  the  nerve  it  is  always  the 
same.  That  it  afterwards  elicits  different  sensations  in  us  depends, 
again,  on  the  character  of  the  nerve-cells  in  which  the  nerve-fibres 
end.  .  .  .  The  sensations  which  we  receive  from  outward  impres- 
sions are,  therefore,  not  dependent  on  the  natu'e  of  those  im- 
pressions, but  on  the  nature  of  our  nerve-eel's.  We  feel  not  that 
which  acts  upon  our  body,  but  only  that  which  goes  on  in  our 
brain." 

Miss  Naden  continues  : 

"Thus,  if  light  could  be  transmitted  by  the  auditory,  and 
sound  by  the  optic  nerve,  color  would  affect  us  as  music,  and  vicf 
versa,  so  that  a  sonata  by  Beethoven  might  seem  a  picture  by  Ra- 
phael. We  might  then  literally  have  a  '  Symphony  in  Blue  and 
Silver,'  or  a  '  Nocturne  in  Black  and  Gold.'.  .  .  From  such  data  we 
may  draw  very  curious  conclusions,  which,  like  the  maihemati.ral 
definition  of  a  line  or  a  point,  will  possess  at  least  an  abstract  valid- 
ity, though  the  conditions  postulated  may  be  such  as  can  never 
exist  in  actual  experience.  Suppose  every  part  of  the  optic  thalami 
to  be  atrophied,  with  the  sole  exception  of  the  olfactory  ganglia 
and  the  corresponding  cerebral  area.  Now  imagine  that  all  the 
nerves  proceeding  from  the  various  peripheral  organs  were  made 
to  converge,  and  organically  united  with  the  surviving  ganglia. 
What  would  be  the  result  ?  The  world  would  seem  one  gre.it  odor. 
We  should  smell  with  eyes,  ears,  fingers,  and  tongue." — (Further 
Relitju^i  of  Constance  Xadc'n,  pp.  120,  215  ) 

This  noteworthy  conclusion  is  doubtless  in  full  ac- 
cord with  the  argument  of  the  distinguished  authoress. 
The  question  is,  is  it  not  significantly  suggestive  of 
something  more'>  Let  us  look  at  the  matter  a  little  more 
closely,  in  order  to  see  to  what  ultimate  conclusion 
this  illustration  of  what  may  be  called  the  Unification 
of  the  Senses  may  lead  us.      All  that  is  necessary  is  to 


grant  the  above-mentioned  experiment  as  tlicoretieally 
possible.  As  Miss  Naden  says,  it  may  never  exist  in 
actual  experience. 

Let  us  imagine,  then,  a  group  of  five  persons,  each 
of  whom,  in  accordance  with  the  conditions  of  the 
above-mentioned  experiment,  has  had  his  senses  fo- 
cussed  in  one.  Hhe  first  of  these  individuals  cognises 
the  universe  as  one  great  odor — every  sensation,  with 
him,  centres  in  the  olfactory  termination  of  the  cere- 
bral thalami.  The  second,  having  his  sensations  cen- 
tralised in  the  auditory  nerve-cells,  knows  the  universe 
only  as  a  concord  or  discord  of  sounds.  To  the  third, 
the  world  and  all  that  is  therein  is  wholly  visual.  With 
the  fourth,  everything  is  a  matter  of  taste  ;  while  the 
fifth  lives  in  a  sphere  made  up  of  tactile  impressions 
and  nothing  more. 

These  five  individuals,  each  possessing  one  sense, 
and  one  only,  represent,  jointly,  a  human  organism 
having  the  ordinary  number  of  senses.  The  testi- 
mony, however,  of  each  of  these  persons  varies  es- 
sentiall)'.  An  odor  is  nothing  like  a  sound,  nor  can 
a  tactile  impression  be  reconciled  with,  or  translated 
into,  a  visual  object.  The  very  conditions  of  the  ex- 
periment bring  us  to  the  conclusion  that  the  stimulus 
of  the  senses,  in  the  case  of  all  the  five  persons,  is 
reall}'  and  at  bottom,  uniform — one  and  the  same  in 
each  case,  and  that  the  difference  which  exists,  again 
in  each  case,  arises  internally,  not  externally. 

When  we  inquire,  then,  which  of  these  five  indi- 
viduals may  be  relied  upon  to  give  a  veracious  account 
of  the  universe-content,  the  answer  must  be  :  none  of 
them  !  The  stimulus  granted  uniform,  and  the  testi- 
mony of  each  of  the  five  being  equally  valid,  we  are 
driven  to  the  conclusion  that  none  of  them  give  a  re- 
liable account  of  the  universe-content  as  it  reallj^is, — 
in  each  case  it  is,  so  to  speak,  colored  with  the  single 
sense  which  each  of  them  possesses.  But  this  means 
that,  outside  the  sensorium  of  each  and  every  one  of 
us,  the  universe  is  composed  neither  of  sound,  color, 
odor,  taste,  or  tactile  impressions.  And  as  everything 
which  we  perceive  or  conceive  is  made  up  of  some  or 
all  of  these,  it  follows  that  the  universe- content,  out- 
side the  sensorium,  is  wholly  unknowable  and  incon- 
ceivable. In  a  word,  we  come  to  the  modified  agnos- 
ticism of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer.      Upon  the  hypothesis 


4?  5  2 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


of  a  stimulus  acting  directly  on  the  senses,  the  whole 
ground-work  of  modern  physics  and  nine-tenths  o^ 
modern  psychology  and  philosophy  is  built.  Yet  the 
foundation  upon  which  all  this  rests  is,  and  must  be, 
an  unknown  and  unknowable  one. 

Latter-day  science,  committed  irrevocably  to  the 
stimulus  theory — which  is  just  the  old  subject-object 
delusion  in  another  dress,  definitely  announces  the 
number  of  vibrations  of — nobody  knows  what,  which, 
impinging  upon  the  retinal  expanse,  produces  the  sen- 
sation of  light  of  a  certain  color.  This  is  assuming 
the  universe  content  to  consist,  so  far,  of  a  tactile  im- 
pression, or  rather  of  one  factor  of  a  tactile  impression. 
But,  as  we  have  just  seen,  of  tactile  impressions  the 
universe  cannot  consist,  and  what  one  factor  of  a  tac- 
tile impression  may  be  no  one  can  tell.  One  thing  is 
certain:  it  cannot  well  be  an  odor,  an  object  of  vision, 
a  taste,  or  a  sound.  What,  then,  can  it  be?  Agnos- 
ticism is  the  only  legitimate  ending  of  this  path.  There 
is  something  behind  phenomena  which  never  can  be 
known. 

The  above,  I  venture  to  affirm,  is  the  legitimate 
outcome,  the  only  logical  one,  of  the  stimulus  theory 
in  perception, — of  the  subject-object  theory  in  physics 
and  philosophy, — the  result  contains  an  unknown  and 
unknowable  quantity.  I  would  go  further,  and  say 
that  it  is  of  no  avail  to  attack  agnosticism,  or  to  decry 
its  logical  basis,  so  long  as,  in  one's  own  world-scheme, 
a  trace  of  the  fiction  of  subject-objectivity  is  suffered 
to  remain.  Subject-objectivity  is  the  counterpart  of 
animism.  Animism  looks  upon  all  matter  as  dead  un- 
less it  be  energised  by  an  indwelling  Ji?/// which  quick- 
ens it  from  ivitJiin.  Subject-objectivity  looks  upon  the 
human  organism  as  wholly  inert  unless  it  be  roused  by 
an  appulse  or  stimulus  from  without.  There  is  not 
much  difference  between  these  two  conceptions.  Both 
are  fictions  of  the  mind,  and  it  were  hard  to  say  which 
is  the  more  hurtful  of  the  two. 

For  my  own  part,  I  wholly  reject  the  stimulus  the- 
ory, with  its  agnostic  conclusion,  on  the  ground  that, 
in  a  rational  and  consistent  world-scheme,  there  is  no 
room  for  it.  There  is  no  gap  in  the  world-order  for  it 
to  fill.  I  find  the  universe  of  sense  to  be  in  such  inti- 
mate rapport  with  my  bodily  organism — "  nearer  than 
breathing,  closer  than  hands  or  feet " — that  to  inter- 
pose a  stimulus  is  an  intellectual  impossibility.  It 
amounts  to  postulating  a  stage  or  step,  where  there 
can  be  none,  between  brain  and  brain-function,  be- 
tween thinker  and  thought,  between  eye  and  vision. 
Take  the  case  of  the  concept  first,  for  example  that  of 
redness.  This  is  only  the  re  cognition  of  a  past  per- 
cept. No  one,  in  this  case,  seeks  to  interpose  a  stim- 
ulus between  the  brain  and  its  function.  In  the  case 
of  the  percept,  then,  which  is  only  an  intense  and  pres- 
ent concept,  why  should   any  stimulus  be  necessary? 


It  is  of  no  avail  to  say  that,  while  the  concept  is  im- 
material, the  percept  has  its  roots  in  materiality,  for 
this  is  only  introducing  another  concept — that  of  mat- 
ter to  adjust  the  supposed  difference.  Ultimately  the 
question  whether  the  world  as  felt  and  known  be 
"think  "  or  "  thing  " — percept  or  concept — is  an  idle 
one,  for  the  "  think  "  is  but  the  thing  thought,  and  the 
thing  but  the  embodied  thought,  in  an  intense  and  pres- 
ent form.  I  can  analyse  my  concepts,  tracing  them 
back  to  a  past  necessary  percept.  I  can  dissect  my 
percepts,  finding  no  breach  of  continuity  between  con- 
sciousness— my  consciousness — and  the  farthest  star. 
But  in  this  process  I  can  discover  no  gap  or  interval 
which  a  stimulus  might  be  supposed  to  fill.  Even  were 
there  such  a  hiatus,  I  am  unable  to  form  any  concep- 
tion of  a  vibration  or  appulse  such  as  that  which  sci- 
ence postulates.  No  man  hath  seen  a  vibration  at  any 
time,  and,  as  pointed  out  in  the  earlier  portion  of  this 
paper,  it  cannot  consist  of  anything  known  to  me. 
Such  intellectual  representations  of  the  unknown  may 
be  convenient  in  science,  but  they  should  never  be 
raised  to  the  rank  of  actually  existing  facts. 

A  very  fair  illustration  of  the  manner  in  which  the 
subject-object,  or  stimulus,  theory  besets  even  those 
who  would  reject  its  logical  consequences,  may  be 
seen  in  the  recent  article  entitled  "Erect  Vision," 
(The  Open  Court,  Oct.  25,  1894)  and  in  the  editorial 
remarks  thereon.  Throughout  article  and  comment 
alike,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  same  assumption  is 
made — one  not  warranted  by  the  facts — that  it  is  the 
retinal  image  which  is  perceived.  But  is  this  really 
the  case  ?  If  so,  considering  that  the  rods  and  cones 
of  the  Jacobean  membrane  are  generally  supposed  to 
be  the  prime  factors  of  vision,  does  it  not  seem  rather 
odd  thus  to  set  one  layer  of  the  retina  over  against  an- 
other, in  the  relation  of  subject  and  object  ?  Surely 
one  section  of  the  retina  cannot  see  another  section — 
for  that  would  be  equivalent  to  saying  that  the  former 
is  the  self,  and  the  latter  the  not-self  !  The  inverted 
retinal  image  is  not,  in  any  sense,  seen  or  perceived 
by  the  percipient  proper — it  is  only  visible  to  another 
person  looking  at  the  retina  of  the  percipient  in  a  re- 
flected light,  or  examining  an  excised  eye  upon  which 
a  reflexion  is  directed. 

The  rods  and  cones  of  the  retina  cannot,  however, 
at  this  time  of  day,  be  accorded  more  than  a  subordi- 
nate place  in  the  economy  of  vision.  As  we  have  al- 
ready seen,  the  retinal  apparatus  may  be  employed  to 
conduct,  inter  alia  the  sensation  of  sound  to  the  audi- 
tory region  of  the  cerebral  thalami.  Eye-gate  may 
become  ear-gate  on  occasion.  For  the  true  seat  of 
vision  we  must  look  to  the  appropriate  ganglia  of  the 
optic  thalami — the  "internal  eyes  "  of  M.  Hirth.  And 
herein  consists  the  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  the  inverted 
image  theory.     For  if  the  rods  and  cones  of  the  retina 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4353 


be  credited  with  scu-//!^^  the  inverted  image  on  the  ret- 
inal surface,  must  not  that  region  of  the  brain,  which 
is  more  directly  responsible  for  vision  see,  in  turn, 
what  is  seen  by  the  rods  and  cones  ? 

Again,  were  the  retinal  image  reall}'  seen  (erect  or 
inverted,  it  does  not  matter  which)  by  the  percipient 
proper,  the  so-called  stimulus  of  vision  would  be  prac- 
tically doubled.  There  would  be  ( i )  the  supposititious 
vibration,  affecting  the  retinal  layer,  and  (2)  the  ret- 
inal image  itself  affecting  the  supposed  subject. 

Perception,  however  regarded,  is  an  extremely  com- 
plicated process,  but  it  is  a  contiiitiuiii  nevertheless. 
The  percipient  "lives  along  the  line"  of  his  sensation. 
At  no  stage  can  we  legitimately  break  up  the  process 
into  factors,  and  say  that  this  section  acts  or  reacts, 
independenth',  upon  another.  As  well  might  we  seek 
to  interpose  a  subject-objectivity  between  the  sun  and 
its  light  and  heat.  The,  so-called,  sensed  object  is 
but  an  extension,  or  prolongation,  of  the  perceiving 
organism.  Just  as,  in  physics,  the  incessant  flux  of 
the  material  forbids  us  to  define  any  organism  as  really 
isolated  for  a  single  instant,  so,  in  philosophy,  the  flux 
of  perception  forbids  us  to  distinguish  the  felt  and 
known  as  object,  from  the  feeler  and  knower  as  sub- 
ject. 

THE  SOUL  AND  THE  ALL. 

Mr.  McCrie  alludes  in  his  interesting  article,  "An 
Imaginary  Experiment,"  to  Mr.  Glaser's  article  on 
"Erect  Vision,"  and  also  to  the  editorial  note  on  the 
same  subject — both  in  No.  374  of  The  Open  Court.  He 
says  : 

"  Throughout  article  and  comment  alike,  it  seems  to  me  that 
the  same  assumption  is  made— one  not  warranted  by  the  facts — 
that  it  is  the  retinal  image  which  is  perceived.  .  .  .  Does  it  not 
seem  rather  odd  thus  to  set  one  layer  of  the  retina  over  against  the 
other,  in  the  relation  of  subject  and  object  ?" 

This  gives  a  wrong  impression  of  the  proposition 
made  in  the  editorial  note  referred  to.  First,  we  can- 
not say  that  the  retinal  picture  is  perceived  or  seen  ; 
for  it  is  the  object  that  is  seen,  and  the  retinal  picture 
is  seeing;  but  that  is  not  all  :  "  sight,"  as  stated  in  the 
editorial  note  of  No.  374,  viz.,  the  perception  of  an  ob- 
ject through  the  organ  of  sight,  "does  not  consist  of  a 
sensation  in  the  retina  alone,  but  of  a  very  complex  pro- 
cess comprising  also  the  sensations  of  the  adjustment 
of  the  muscles  of  the  eye  and  a  co-operation  of  the 
memory  of  innumerable  other  experiences." 

The  picture  that  appears  in  consciousness  as  the 
perception  of  a  tree  or  a  house  standing  erect  before  us 
is  the  product  of  a  very  complex  cooperation,  not  only 
of  the  rods  and  cones  alone,  nor  of  a  ganglion  alone, 
either  in  the  thalamus  or  the  corpora  quadrigemina, 
nor  of  the  centre  of  vision  in  the  occiput,  but  of  all  of 
them.  The  retina,  however,  and  there  is  no  question 
about  it,  furnishes  the  pictorial  part  of  it.     The  retina 


is  seeing,  which  means  that  its  structures  are  agitated 
by  a  peculiar  commotion  which  according  to  its  nature 
is  accompanied  with  an  analogous  feeling. 
Mr.  McCrie  says  : 

"  For  the  true  seat  of  vision  we  must  look  to  the  appropriate 
ganglia  of  the  optic  thalami—  the  '  internal  eyes'  of  M.  Hirth." 

Where,  however,  is  the  proof  that  there  are  inter- 
nal eyes  in  addition  to  external  eyes?  By  eye  we  un- 
derstand the  organ  of  sight,  the  gate,  not  the  co-ordi- 
nating centre  of  sight-perception.  Professor  Hirth's 
expression  is  allegorical  and  may  have  a  proper  mean- 
ing in  its  context,  (for  Professor  Hirth  is  a  man  whose 
judgment  on  the  question  of  personality  appears  to  be 
sound,)  but  it  is  a  dangerous  simile  when  adduced  to 
explain  erect  vision.' 

There  is  no  internal  agent,  be  it  a  cerebral  structure 
or  a  psychic  entity,  which  is  looking  out  at  the  retinal 
image,  but,  on  the  contrary,  the  retinal  image  (which 
is  an  agitation  of  a  peculiar  form  in  the  nervous  sub- 
stance of  the  layer  of  rods,  and  cones)  enters  on  the 
paths  of  the  optic  nerve  and  travels  into  the  interior  of 
the  brain  :  the  agitation  of  the  retina  is  transmitted,  in 
the  same  way  and  according  to  the  same  mechanical 
laws,  as  waves  of  water,  or  of  air,  or  of  electricity,  are 
transmitted  ;  and  when  they  reach  the  various  stations 
in  which  former  waves  of  an  analogous  type  have  left 
traces,  they  stimulate  these  traces  to  a  renewed  activ- 
ity, so  as  to  revive  their  feelings.  Further,  the  retinal 
agitation  is  somewhere  coordinated  with  the  agitation 
of  other  sensory  nerves,  which  are  attached  to  the 
oculomotors  that  give  a  certain  position  to  the  eye  ball, 
laying  down  a  definite  direction  of  the  line  of  vision, 
which   may   be   upward,    or   downward,  or  sideways. 

A  spot  in  the  upper  region  of  the  retina  with  the 
eyeballs  turned  downward  is  felt  to  correspond  to  a 
point  in  the  direction  downward  which  is  the  root  of 
the  tree,  and  another  spot  in  the  lower  region  of  the 
retina  with  the  eyeballs  turned  upward  is  felt  to  indi- 
cate a  point  in  the  upward  direction  which  may  be  the 
top  of  the  tree.  Thus  the  site  of  the  object  is  properly 
determined  by  the  inverted  sentient  retina-image  and 
there  is  no  mystery  about  it.  The  problem  originates 
only  when  we  imagine  that  there  is  a  self  inside  who 
looks  at  the  retina  image. 

The  difficulty  that  does  not  exist  for  us,  ought  to 
possess  all  its  force  for  Mr.  McCrie. 

The  problem  of  the  nature  of  personality  lies  at  the 
bottom  of  all  psychological  problems,  so  also  of  the 
problem  of  erect  vision,  which  is  onl}'  a  misconception, 
originating  in  the  assumption  that  something,  or  some- 
body inside  the  brain,  the  ego,  a  self,  or  a  sentient 
ganglion,  or  one  of  the  cerebral  cells  in  the  centre  of 
vision,  is  looking  at  the  retinal  picture. 

1  See  L.  Arreat's  translation  of  Hirth's  work.  La  Vue  Plastiquc  (Paris  :  Al- 
can).     We  have  not  the  space  here  to  discuss  Professor  Hirth's  views. 


4354 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


The  soul  does  not  originate  in  the  interior,  thence 
to  proceed  to  its  various  gateways  of  sense  finally  to 
find  "an  extension  or  prolongation "  (these  are  Mr. 
McCrie's  very  words)  in  the  surrounding  world  of  ob- 
jects. On  the  contrary,  the  soul  is  born  in  the  place 
of  contact  where  subject  and  object  meet.  The  seat 
of  soul  is  first  in  the  senses.  The  soul  sits  in  the  eye 
and  especially  in  the  retina,  in  the  ear,  in  the  tongue, 
in  the  nose,  and  in  the  tip  of  the  finger.  Starting  from 
the  place  of  contact  with  objects  as  sensation,  the  soul 
builds  up  perception,  understanding,  judgment,  and 
reason. 

The  whole  structure  of  the  brain  and  all  the  marvel- 
lous functions  superadded  to  sensation  are  later  addi- 
tions— a  truth  which  in  its  physiological  formulation 
appears  in  the  statement  that  the  origin  of  the  nervous 
system,  together  with  the  muscles  or  the  motory  ap- 
paratus attached  to  it,  is  due  to  a  differentiation  of  the 
ectoderm,  the  outer  membrane  or  external  skin. 

Like  Mr.  McCrie  and  his  masters.  Dr.  Lewins  and 
Miss  Naden,  we  also  believe  in  the  oneness  of  object  and 
subject.  Subject  and  object  are  relative  terms.  There 
are  no  subjects  in  themselves,  for  every  subject  is  to 
other  existences  an  object.  We  also  believe  that  every 
psychical  process  is  a  continuum,  which  only  in  abstract 
thought  can  be  broken  up  into  factors.  The  heat  of 
the  sun  and  the  light  of  the  sun  are  separable  in  thought 
not  in  reality.  But  here  seems  to  be  the  difference  : 
To  Mr.  McCrie  the  soul  extends  its  nature  to  build  up 
the  universe,  while  in  our  conception  objects  of  the 
universe  impress  themselves  upon  sentiency,  where 
they  leave  memory-traces  and  thus  gradually  build  up 
the  soul.  His  monism  is  the  philosophy  of  an  all-em- 
bracing self,  a  view  which  Dr.  Lewins  calls  solipsism, 
or  hylo-idealism. 

Our  monism  is  the  recognition  of  the  all-being  of 
cosmic  existence,  of  which  the  soul  is  a  part  and  a  pro- 
duct. He  attains  a  unitary  world-view  by  denying  the 
existence  of  anything  except  self ;  we,  by  denying  the 
existence  of  anything  except  the  All,  and  parts  of  the 
All.  In  his  theory  the  All  is  a  creature  of  the  self  ;  in 
ours  the  self  is  a  creature  of  the  All.  There  the  All  is 
a  part  of  the  self,  and  self  is  the  sovereign  and  supreme 
ruler  of  all  things,  while  here  the  self  is  a  part  of  the 
All,  and  the  constitutional  nature  of  the  All,  its  laws 
and  cosmic  order,  are  the  ultimate  raison  d'etre  of  all 
things,  affording  us  the  methods  of  scientific  explana- 
tion and  the  standard  of  right  or  wrong. 

It  is  but  fair  to  add  that  our  disagreement  with  Dr. 
Lewins  may  after  all  be  a  difference  of  nomenclature 
Our  agreement  is  perhaps  closer  than  it  appears  to  one 
who  bases  his  judgment  mainly  upon  the  terms  em- 
ployed by  either  of  us.  Dr.  Lewins  is  a  very  keen 
and  astute  thinker,  and  we  regret  only  that  he  has  not 
sought  closer  contact  with  other  philosophers  and  the 


reading  public.  If  he  had  elaborated  his  philosophy 
in  a  systematic  shape,  we  should  better  understand  his 
expressions,  which  often  appear  paradoxical  to  the 
people  at  large  as  well  as  to  some  of  his  friends  and 
admirers.  p.  c. 


SCIENCE  AND  REFORM. 


OVER-I.EGISL.^TION. 

The  revelations  of  the  Lexow  Committee  illustrate  the  evils 
of  ring-rule  and  party-despotism,  but  still  more  strikingly  the  mis- 
chievous tendencies  of  Over-Legislation.  Our  code  of  State  laws 
— especially  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard — and  of  municipal  regula- 
tions are  still  burdened  with  the  relics  of  an  age  that  submitted  to 
a  system  of  preposterous  statutes,  enacted  for  the  protection  of  the 
clerical  interest,  and  the  attempt  to  enforce  such  restrictions  in 
the  sunl'ght  of  the  nineteenth  century  begets  a  widespread  mis- 
trust in  the  competence  of  our  legislative  principles  in  general 
The  natural,  and,  indeed,  almost  inevitable,  result  is  an  epidemic 
of  bribery.  Baffled  in  their  repeated  attempts  to  abolish  anachro- 
nistic by-laws,  the  masses  naturally  connived  at  methods  tending 
to  make  them  practically  inoperative.  That  iiiodus  vhwiidi,  how- 
ever, though  in  some  respects  perhaps  a  lesser  evil,  was  attended 
by  the  Nemesis  of  all  compromise  ethics.  The  temptation  of  ihe 
bribe-offerer  and  bribe-taker  and  the  consensus  of  public  tolerance 
begari  with  the  evasion  of  absurd  and  intolerably  oppressive  Sun- 
day laws,  and  from  harmless  Sunday  picnics  gradually  extended  to 
alcohol  orgies,  houses  of  ill-fame,  and  gambling-hells. 

MORAL  SUND.W  SPORTS. 

A  Mexican  correspondent  of  the  Associated  Press  set  all 
North  America  a-tittering  at  the  freak  of  a  wealthy  alcalde,  who 
treated  his  native  town  to  a.  mutnnsa  oi  two  vigorous  bulls,  "in 
honor  of  the  festival  of  Santa  Eulalia,  virgin  and  martyr,"  but  our 
Spanish-American  neighbors  can  quote  statistics  in  support  of  their 
claim  that  their  arena  sports  keep  idlers  out  of  the  rum-shops. 
From  a  certain  point  of  view  Phineas  Barnum's  "Great  Moral 
Show"  really  deserved  its  name,  and  a  revival  of  the  Olympic 
prize-contests,  with  preparatory  and  legally  encouraged  exeicises 
on  Sunday  afternoon  would  initiate  an  era  of  national  regenera- 
tion. "I  am  a  great  friend  of  public  amusements,"  said  Dr. 
Samuel  Johnson,  "  because  they  keep  people  from  vice."  Every 
baffled  attack  on  the  strongholds  of  vice  is,  indeed,  a  backset  to 
the  cause  of  moral  reform,  and  there  is  little  hope  of  progress  till 
our  philanthropists  recognise  the  truth  that  they  cannot  fight  the 
World  and  the  Devil  with  Sabboth-school  prize-pictures. 

CLIM.\riC  CURIOSA. 

The  "cold  continent "  would  be  a  pretty  appropriate  name 
for  the  New  World  of  Columbus.  The  paradoxes  of  our  winter 
climate  were  supposed  to  be  limited  to  the  region  extending  from 
the  thirty-fifth  parallel  to  the  borders  of  the  Arctic  Circle,  and 
Humboldt  in  his  meteorological  review  of  the  Atlantic  coast-lands 
asserts  that  "the  difference  between  the  east  and  west  shores  of 
that  ocean  (the  .-Vtlantic)  becomes  less  as  we  approach  the  thirtieth 
degree  of  northern  latitude,  and  almost  disappears  further  south." 
But  the  recent  ice-tornado  swept  from  Labrador  clean  down  to 
the  south  end  of  Florida,  and  on  the  morning  of  December  29 
every  signal-station  east  of  the  Mississippi  River  reported  frost 
weather.  At  Cedar  Keys  it  was  only  eighteen  degrees  above  the 
Fahrenheit  zero,  and  at  Tampa — "Sunny  Tampa  of  the  Gulf 
Coast" — the  mercury  was  down  to  sixteen  degrees,  i.  e.,  fifteen 
below  the  freezing-point,  and  ice  formed  to  the  thickness  of  three 
and  one-half  inches.     Now  the  parallel  ol  Tampa,  latitude  N.  28, 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4355 


is  that  of  the  Canary  Islands  and  Port  Cosseir,  on  the  Red  Sea, 
where  the  winter  climate  is  so  mild  that  the  children  ot  the  natives 
run  about  in  the  costume  of  the  Nereids  the  year  round.  Imagine 
the  amazement  of  those  aborigines  on  finding  their  tish-ponds 
frozen  a  quarter  of  a  foot  thick  some  fine  morning  !  The  thing 
would  be,  not  only  improbable,  but  impossible,  a  IhousonJ  Eng- 
lish miles  further  north,  on  the  shores  of  the  Bay  of  Naples,  where 
ice  forms  only  in  the  sh^pe  of  hailstones  or  tiny  pellets  at  the  base 
of  a  dew-drenched  palm-leaf.  In  Memphis,  Tennessee,  a  hundred 
miles  further  south  than  Tunis,  Africa,  they  had  eight  inches  of 
snow  and  a  blizzard  that  killed  pet  rabbits  in  their  hutches  and 
froze  semi-tropical  fruit  in  brick-built  store-houses.  The  discovery 
of  the  New  World  is  said  to  have  given  the  Caiicasian  race  a  new 
lease  of  life  ;  but  for  all  that  it  would  have  been  wiser  not  to  carry 
reliance  on  the  mercy  of  Providence  to  the  length  of  ruining  the 
Mediterranean  shore-lands  so  bop elestly. 

THE    POWER  OF  THE   PRESS. 

ilacaulay's  article  in  the  Edinburgh  Kc^'ieui  is  said  to  have 
diminished  the  sales  of  Robert  Montgomery's  poems  some  sixty 
per  cent.,  and  the  series  of  exposures  published  by  a  modern  Eng- 
lish review  under  the  title  "  Isis  Very  Much  Unveiled,"  threatens 
to  do  the  same  for  theosophical  publications  of  theJMahatma  type. 
The  expose  amusingly  illustrates  the  fact  that  distance  not  only 
"lends  enchantment  to  the  view,"  but  an  aspect  of  plausibility  to 
the  idea  of  enchantment.  Thousands  whose  organs  of  mental  di- 
gestion rejected  Cock  Lane  ghost-stories,  had  welcomed  the  chance 
to  satisfy  their  miracle-hunger  with  reports  from  distant  India.  A 
large  proportion  of  these  famished  would-be-believers  will  now 
have  to  fall  back  on  the  old  expedient  of  chronological  distance. 
"  I  do  wish  we  had  not  made  this  trip,"  said  the  candid  daughter 
of  a  Texas  millionaire,  who  had  tsken  his  family  to  the  Holy  Land  ; 
"  I  always  used  to  dream  of  Palestine  as  aland  where  strange 
things  might  have  happened,  because  it  was  so  far  away  and  per- 
haps so  different  from  home.  But  these  weeds  just  look  like  sage- 
brush and — excuse  the  remark — these  'hares'  are  just  like  our 
Bastrop  County  jack-rabbits."  The  Oriental  Isis,  unveiled,  re- 
veals many  propensities  of  a  Cook  County  medium. 

.\N   E.XPENSIVE  THEORY. 

Dr.  Robert  Koch  confesses  that  the  experiments  conducted  in 
testing  his  consumption  remedy  cost  500  days  in  time,  24,000  marks 
in  money,  and  the  lives  of  3,580  guinea-pigs.  The  fate  of  those 
martyred  rodents  derives  an  additional  shade  of  sadness  from  the 
fact  that  the  hypothesis  leading  to  their  sacrifice,  is  now  almost 
generally  discredited. 

"  SPELIN." 

The  followers  of  Mohammed  attribute  the  comparative  failure 
of  their  creed  to  the  fact  that  it  found  the  important  field  of  the 
North-.Aryan  countries  already  preoccupied,  and  Professor  Bauer's 
world-language  may  owe  its  slow  rate  of  progress  to  a  similar  cir- 
cumstance. He  appeared  rather  late  in  the  arena  of  competition, 
but  an  hour's  study  of  his  pamphlet  ought  to  suffice  for  the  cure 
of  a  Volapiik  devotee.  Bauer's  Speliii  combines  all  the  advan- 
tages of  the  Schleyer  system  (regularity  snd  phonetic  consistency) 
with  far  greater  simplicity  and  euphoniousness.  Volapiik  con- 
tains scores  of  disgustingly  cacophonous  words  of  seven  syllables 
— "compound  barbarisms,"  as  an  English  critic  calls  them,  Spelin 
few  words  of  more  than  three,  and  none  of  more  than  four,  sylla- 
bles. The  whole  system  is  founded  on  the  "short,  supple,  and 
universally  pronounceable "  plan  of  Count  Lesseps,  and  greatly 
facilitates  its  study  by  substituting  prepositions  for  declensions. 
The  only  drawback  on  its  numerous  advantages  seems  the  inven- 
tor's rather  singular  failure  to  obviate  the  bother  of  conjugations 
by  the  use  of  auxiliary  verbs.  Felix  L.  Oswald. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  PARLIAMENT  EXTENSION. 

Report  of  the  New  Year's  Reunion. 

The  Committee  of  the  World's  Congress  Extension  decided  to 
celebrate  in  a  New  Year's  reunion  the  work  of  the  World's  Fair 
Auxiliary,  which  found  its  crowning  success  in  the  World's  Par- 
liament of  Religions.  This  plan  was  decided  upon  a  few  days  be- 
fore Christmas,  but  in  spite  of  the  short  notice  the  meeting  held 
in  the  large  theatre  of  the  Auditorium  was  successful  p.lmost  be 
yond  expectation.  The  house  was  well  filled,  and  the  public  was 
very  attentive  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  for  more  than  two 
hours.  The  audience  apparently  did  not  consist  of  people  who 
had  come  from  sheer  curiosity,  but  were  earnest  and  showed  great 
enthusiasm  for  the  cause  which  had  induced  them  to  come. 

The  celebration  opened  with  Sebastian  Bach's  "  Fugue  of  St. 
Anne,"  which  was  played  by  Wilhelm  Middleschulte,  organist  of 
the  Cathedral  of  the  Holy  Name.  After  a  hymn  and  an  anthem 
sung  by  a  chorus  of  more  than  one  thousand  students,  under  the 
leadership  of  Prof.  William  L.  Tomlins,  Mr.  Bonney  explained 
the  purpose  of  the  World's  Congress  Extension,  which  was  to  con- 
tinue the  work  of  the  World's  Congress  .Auxiliary, 
"  To  make  tlie  whole  world  one  in  mental  aim. 

In  art.  in  science,  and  in  moral  power. 

In  noble  pnrpose,  and  in  worthy  deeds." 

Three  ladies  spoke  words  of  welcome,  Mrs.  Charles  Henrotin, 
Vice-President  of  the  Woman's  Branch  of  the  World's  Congress 
Auxiliary ;  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Boynton  Harbert,  Chairman  of  the 
Woman's  Committee  of  the  World's  Congress  Extension  ;  and 
Mrs.  Caroline  K,  Sherman,  Chairman  of  the  Woman's  Committee 
on  Science  and  Philosophy.  Mrs.  Henrotin  closed  her  remarks 
as  follows  : 

"In  this  festive  week,  and  on  the  threshold  of  a  new  year, 
certainly  we  who  represent  one  of  the  most  advanced  movements 
of  this  century  realise  the  'oeauty  of  the  life  which  is  opening  out 
to  the  world  ;  the  associate  mind,  the  many  hearts  beating  as  one 
for  good  and  noble  causes  ;  and  we  send  to  all  those  in  foreign 
lands,  who  visited  our  shores  and  communed  with  us,  our  frater- 
nal greetings  and  warmest  wishes  for  universal  peace,  and  that 
we  may  live  long  enough  to  realise  a  little  of  the  beautiful  possi- 
bilities, which  will  be  realised  when  all  the  nations  of  the  world 
will  counsel  together  for  peace,  and  the  workers  will  wed  art  to 
utility." 

Mrs.  Harbert  spoke  very  enthusiastically,  welcoming  all 
classes  represented  in  the  Worlds  Congresses,  and  expressed  the 
principle  under  which  they  should  co-operate  in  the  following 
words  : 

"Recognising  the  interdependence  and  solidarity  of  humanity 
we  will  welcome  light  from  every  source,  earnestly  desiring  to 
grow  in  knowledge  of  truth  and  the  spirit  of  love,  and  to  manifest 
the  same  by  helpful  service."  She  concluded  with  the  following 
verse  : 

"  Then  onward  march  in  Truth's  crusade, 

Earth's  faltering  ones  invoke  our  aid. 

The  children  of  our  schools  and  State 

This  coming  of  the  loving  wait. 

Oh,  doubting  hearts,  oh,  tempted  ones. 

The  shadows  lift,  the  sunshine  comes  ! 

Freedom  for  each  is  best  for  all. 

The  golden  rule  our  bugle-call. 

While  as  to  victory  on  we  move 

The  banner  over  us  is  love.' ' 

The  Rev.  Dr.  Gunsaulus  insisted  on  the  necessity  of  bringing 
man  out  of  his  insularity  and  out  of  his  narrowness,  to  let  him 
come  into  contact  with  the  world.  He  said  that  this  is  the  root  of 
all  culture,  art,  and  science  ;  and  this  must  be  our  aim,  to  produce 
the  world-man.  In  order  to  be  a  complete  man  one  mu.st  have  not 
only  the  Occident  but  the  Orient.  Our  universe  is  circular  in 
form.     The  only  West  we  have  left  is  actually  the  farthest  East — 


4356 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


Japan.     He  concluded  with  a  poem,  which,  we  understand,  was 
his  own,  on  the  circular  motion  of  progress. ^ 

Dr.  Henry  Wade  Rogers,  President  of  the  Northwestern  Uni- 
versity, said  that  the  two  greatest  educational  agencies  are  the 
Church  and  the  University,  one  the  mother  of  the  other,  and  both 
together  the  root  of  European  and  .\merican  civilisation.  If  you 
wish  to  know  the  future  you  should  become  acquainted  with  the 
work  in  which  our  universities  are  engaged,  and  the  growing  gen- 
erations will  be  guided  by  the  thoughts  that  animate  our  students. 
The  most  important  ideas  ventilated  at  present  in  colleges  are 
about  religious,  political,  and  civil  liberties.  Sociology  is  taught 
more  than  any  other  science.  William  von  Humboldt  once  de- 
clared that  whatever  we  wish  to  see  introduced  into  the  life  of  a 
nation  must  first  be  introduced  into  its  schools,  "^f  you  can  find 
out  what  the  college  men  are  thinking  to-day,  you  can  pretty  accu- 
rately determine  what  will  be  the  policy  of  to-morrow  ;  and  the 
American  scholar  of  to-day  is  studying  political  institutions  and 
the  problem  of  good  government  more  earnestly  than  he  has  ever 
done  since  the  Constitution  was  framed. 

Dr.  Harper  spoke  of  the  progress  of  mankind  through  higher 
education.  "  Mankind  of  to-day  is  different  from  what  it  was  two 
thousand  years  ago.  The  day  is  coming  when,  as  a  result  of  edu- 
cational agencies  of  every  kind,  intellectual  and  religious,  men  will 
beat  their  swords  into  ploughshares  and  their  spears  into  pruning- 
hooks,  and  nation  will  not  lift  sword  against  nation.  With  higher 
education  comes  higher  civilisation,  and  one  characteristic  of  the 
world-civilisation  will  be  international  and  universal  peace." 

Professor  Choyo,  of  the  University  of  Tokio,  spoke  in  Japa- 
nese, and  the  translation  of  his  address  was  read  by  Mr.  C.  O. 
Boring,  Chairman  of  the  Committee  of  Arrangements.  It  was  a 
glowing  tribute  to  Japan,  which  he  hoped  would  combine  the  civi- 
lisations of  the  East  and  of  the  West,  and  embody  all  the  good 
qualities  of  the  various  other  nations.  Hf:  expressed  especial 
thanks  to  the  United  States  of  America,  which  had  been  that 
power  to  which  Japan  was  mostly  indebted  for  progress. 

The  speeches  were  interrupted  by  Handel's  "Glory  to  God  in 
the  Highest,"  excellently  rendered  by  the  Students'  Musical  Club, 
under  Professor  Tomlins.  A  number  of  short  addresses  followed, 
by  the  Rev.  Drs.  Bristol  and  Jenkin  Lloyd  Jones  ;  Prof.  William 
Haynes,  Dean  of  Notre  Dame  University;  Dr.  John  M.  Coulter, 
President  of  Lake  Forest  University;  Dr.  R.  N.  Foster,  Chairman 
of  the  General  Committee  of  the  World's  Fair  Auxiliary  on  Science 
and  Philosophy;  and  Dr.  L.  P.  Mercer.  Every  one  of  them  spoke 
to  the  point,  and  we  may  add  that  Dr.  Bristol  and  Dr.  Coulter 
seemed  especially  strong  in  emphasising  the  monistic  idea  of  reli- 
gious thought. 

Among  the  messages  from  absent  friends  letters  were  read 
from  Cardinal  Gibbons,  Archbishop  Ireland,  H.  Dharmapala, 
Shaku  Soyen,  Zitsuzen  Ashitsu,  the  Rev.  Joseph  Cooke,  Prince 
Wolkonsky,  and  George  T.  Candlin,  Christian  missionary  to 
China. 

The  celebration  closed  with  that  most  powerful  religious 
pfean,  Handel's  "  Hallelujah,"  and  a  benediction  spoken  by  Dr. 
John  Henry  Barrows,  Chairman  of  the  World's  Parliament  of  Re- 
ligions. 

The  mere  fact  that  a  celebration  of  this  character  took  place, 
that  it  was  held  in  the  largest  theatre  of  Chicago,  which  is  perhaps 
the  largest  assembling  place  in  the  world,  that  it  was  frequented 
by  an  enthusiastic  crowd  of  most  intelligent  and  attentive  hearers, 
and  that  churchmen  of  all  denominations,  indeed  of  the  most  va- 
rious religions,  took  an  active  part  in  it  or  sent  their  cordial  greet- 
ings, is  a  most  auspicious  sign  of  the  times,  and  a  harbinger  of 
great  promise.  p.  c. 

IDr.  Gunsaulus  will  be  interested  in  reading  Dr.  Carl  Gustav  Carus's  ex- 
positions of  the  spiral  lines  of  progress  as  a  cosmic  law,  as  discussed  at 
lengtti  in  his  Physis. 


HEAVEN  AND  HELL. 

BY  WILLIAM  HERBERT  CARRUTH. 

The  preacher  paused  at  paragraph  eight, 

In  the  midst  of  Paradise  ; — 
From.  One  to  Six  he  had  painted  the  fate 

Of  the  victims  of  wilful  vice  ; — 
And  now  he  allured  to  a  nobler  life 

With  visions  of  future  bliss. 
Where  ease  shall  atone  for  present  strife. 

And  the  next  world  balance  this. 

But  ere  he  could  take  up  caput  Nine 

Some  one  opened  the  outer  door. 
And  heads  were  turned  down  the  main  aisle  line 

At  the  sound  of  feet  on  the  floor  ; 
A  woman  with  eyes  that  brooked  no  bar 

Strode  through  the  gallery  arch, 
In  her  right  hand  bearing  a  water  jar 

And  in  her  left  a  torch. 

The  preacher  lifted  his  solemn  eyes 

And  mildly  shook  his  head; 
He  gazed  at  the  woman  in  grieved  surprise 

Who  had  broken  his  sermon's  thread ; 
He  raised  his  voice  while  she  still  was  far 

And  hoped  to  stay  her  march  ; 
"What  would  you  here  with  your  water-jar. 

And  what  would  you  here  with  the  torch  ?" 

"A  shame."  she  cried,  "on  your  coward  creed  ! 

And  have  you  no  faith  in  man  ? 
I  bear  this  witness  'gainst  fear  and  greed, 

I  bnrn  and  quench  as  I  can : 
The  torch  I  bear  to  set  Heaven  afire 

And  the  water  to  put  out  Hell, 
That  men  may  cease  to  do  good  for  hire. 

And  the  evil  from  fear  to  quell." 

She  came  near  the  altar  and  swung  her  torch. 

And  dashed  the  water  around. 
Then  turned  and  passed  through  aisle  and  through  porch. 

While  the  people  sat  spell-bound. 
She  walks  the  earth  with  her  emblems  dire 

And  she  works  her  mission  well  : 
The  torch  to  set  high  Heaven  afire 

And  the  water  to  put  out  Hell. 


CORRESPONDENCE. 

Association  for  Advancement  of  Woman. 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Open  Court  : 

The  a.  a.  W.  (Association  for  Advancement  of  Woman)  held 
its  annual  congress  at  Knoxville,  Tenn.  For  three  days  private 
sessions  for  members  were  held  in  the  mornings  and  public  ones 
in  the  afternoons  and  evenings.  The  papers  and  discussions 
treated  of  matters  vitally  affecting  the  welfare  of  women.  The 
audiences  were  large  and  seemed  deeply  interested  in  these  sub- 
jects, which  were  new  to  many  of  them.  Although  the  matter  of 
woman  suffrage  was  not  the  special  topic  of  any  paper,  it  was  fre- 
quently alluded  to,  and  met  a  much  more  cordial  response  than 
was  anticipated.  But  the  amount  of  earnest  thought  and  liberal 
feeling  that  was  aroused  was  perhaps  most  fully  shown  by  the  in- 
vitations to  speak  on  Sunday.  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe  preached 
a  sermon  on  "  The  Eleventh. Hour  "  in  the  largest  and  oldest  Pres- 
byterian church  in  the  city,  to  an  audience  which  was  said  to  be 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4357 


the  largest  ever  gathered  there,  and  which  indeed  overflowed  its 
bounds.  In  the  evening,  Mrs.  H.  T.  Wolcott  was  invited  to  re 
peat  her  paper  on  "  Waifdom,"  given  at  the  congress,  in  a  Pres- 
byterian church.  As  this  paper  treated  questions  of  heredity  and 
moral  duty  in  a  very  brave  and  firm  manner,  it  was  certainly  an 
act  of  courageous  liberality  to  ask  for  its  repetition  in  a  church  of 
this  venerable  sect. 

Mrs.  Antoinette  Brown  Blackwell  was  also  invited  to  preach 
in  the  Congregational  church,  while  two  or  three  other  ladies  met 
a  small  company  of  earnest  men  and  women  who  were  endeavor- 
ing to  establish  a  Unitarian  church.  Their  proposed  platform  was 
quite  broad  enough  to  satisfy  the  Western  Conference.  So  the 
question  of  women's  right  to  speak  and  preach  in  the  churches 
seemed  to  find  a  very  practical  solution  in  this  Southern  city. 

The  equally  important  question  of  the  advancement  of  the 
colored  portion  of  our  population  did  not  receive  so  much  direct 
attention  here  as  elsewhere,  although  it  was  occasionally  referred 
to,  and  I  regret  to  say  that  we  had  no  time  to  visit  the  public 
schools  of  the  city,  as  we  much  desired  to  do.  On  Saturday,  how- 
ever, we  saw  at  Maryville,  about  twenty  miles  frorn  Knoxville.  a 
very  interesting  college.  It  is  co-educative  in  the  full  sense,  since 
it  admits  not  only  colored  people,  but  also  women  to  its  advan- 
tages. The  college  is  seventy-five  years  old  and  was  originally 
established  for  the  education  of  missionaries.  It  has  had  a  hard 
struggle  through  the  stormy  times  of  the  war,  but  is  now  reviving 
and  is  doing  very  good  work.  The  teachers  whom  we  saw  were 
active,  intelligent,  earnest  men  and  women.  The  number  of  col- 
ored pupils  is  very  small,  and  drawn  mostly  from  the  vicinity,  and 
they  appeared  to  be  well  treated.  But  the  great  value  of  the 
school  is  in  the  opportunity  it  offers  of  a  fairly  good  education  to 
the  poor  whites  of  the  neighboring  country  at  a  very  small  ex- 
pense. The  stories  told  of  the  eagerness  of  some  of  these  people 
to  get  an  education  are  very  touching.  One  girl  walked  nearly  a 
hundred  miles,  most  of  the  time  alone,  in  order  to  reach  Mary- 
ville. The  poverty  of  these  districts  is  very  severe,  and  its  effects 
might  be  seen  in  many  of  the  faces  before  us.  The  situation  of 
the  college,  on  a  high  hill,  is  very  delightful,  and  the  climate  most 
healthy,  so  that  families  have  removed  to  Maryville  for  the  benefit 
of  the  air  and  at  the  same  time  to  have  the  opportunity  to  live  and 
educate  their  families  at  small  expense.  The  tuition  is  only  ten 
dollars  per  year,  and  by  means  of  the  co-operative  club  board  is 
reduced  to  $1.25  per  week.  Other  incidentals  need  not  amount  to 
more  than  about  $20  per  year. 

While  there  is  undoubtedly  a  strong  evangelical  influence  in 
this  institution,  yet  as  it  meets  the  wants  of  a  large  class  of  very 
needy  pupils,  and  gives  to  them  much  broader  education  than  they 
would  elsewhere  receive,  I  cannot  but  count  it  among  the  helps  to 
progress  which  we  find  springing  up  everywhere.  I  should  also 
say  that  the  State  University  of  Tennessee  has  opened  its  doors  to 
women,  and  that  a  bright  class  of  thirty  six  girls  are  reaping  its 
advantages. 

So  we  left  East  Tennessee,  feeling  that  it  had  joined  the  great 
army  of  progress,  and  that  its  new  material  prosperity  would  be 
accompanied  with  moral  and  intellectual  advancement-  I  will 
not  delay  to  speak  of  the  great  refreshment  of  a  day  at  Chatta- 
nooga and  the  delightful  trip  to  Lookout  Mountain.  While  we 
remembered  the  fearful  fight  above  the  clouds,  we  rejoiced  that 
the  smoke  of  battle  had  passed,  and  did  not  grieve  that  the  smoke 
of  the  factory  was  rising  in  the  valleys,  giving  promise  of  new  in- 
dustrial life  and  happiness  to  a  redeemed  people. 

Again  Atlanta  was  a  surprise  and  delight  after  all  that  had 
been  said  of  its  rapid  progress.  That  it  will  become  the  Chicago 
of  the  South  seems  very  probable,  and  they  are  making  extensive 
preparations  for  an  international  fair  next  year. 

The  city  is  also  remarkable  for  the  institutions  for  the  educa- 
tion of  the  colored  people,  and  these  especially  engaged  our  atten- 


tion. Clark  University  is  admirable  for  the  extent  and  excellence 
of  its  mechanical  work,  and  we  saw  fine  specimens,  especially  of 
carriage-building  and  harness-making.  The  Theological  School, 
which  is  in  connexion  with  it,  is  the  most  highly  endowed  institu- 
tion of  its  kind  in  the  South,  and  appears  to  be  doing  a  great  work. 
We  are  so  accustomed  to  look  on  the  narrow  side  of  theology  as  a 
matter  of  doctrine  having  little  bearing  on  practical  life,  that  I 
think  that  we  do  not  always  sufficiently  estimate  the  value  of  this 
training  in  the  mental  and  spiritual  development  of  the  negro  race. 
When  I  heard  a  class  reciting  from  the  Greek  Testament,  I  real 
ised  for  the  first  time  what  a  step  in  theological  education  it  is  to 
know  the  Bible  as  a  translation,  instead  of  looking  upon  it  as  a 
direct  revelation  from  Heaven,  coming  down  to  us  in  the  very 
shape  in  which  we  have  read  or  heard  it  from  childhood.  An 
educated  ministry,  whatever  may  be  the  special  dogmas  which  in- 
dividuals may  profess  and  teach,  is  a  very  important  thing  for  the 
South,  and  along  with  the  educational  progress  will  come  the  ele- 
vation of  the  moral  standard,  which  is  confessedly  very  low  among 
the  class  of  preachers  who  have  taken  up  the  work  spontaneously 
to  satisfy  the  emotional  demands  of  the  negro  population  in  their 
days  of  suffering  and  ignorance. 

But  at  the  University  of  Atlanta  we  found  perhaps  the  high- 
est water-mark  of  intellectual  advancement  for  the  negro.  There 
is  much  misunderstanding  about  the  work  of  this  college,  for  many 
suppose  that  its  aim  is  to  give  a  showy  training  in  what  the  people 
used  to  call  "high  studies,"  to  the  neglect  of  a  sound  and  thor- 
ough practical  education.  On  the  contrary,  the  aim  is  very  clear 
and  definite,  to  fit  the  best  class  of  the  race  to  become  their  lead- 
ers in  intellectual  and  moral  education  and  in  industrial  work.  It 
is  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  encouraging  signs  of  the  work 
of  education  for  the  colored  people  that  the  different  colleges  have 
each  their  distinctive  merits,  thus  showing  a  real  vitality  and  the 
pursuit  of  methods  that  have  arisen,  not  from  old  theories,  but 
from  a  perception  of  immediate  needs. 

The  founders  of  Atlanta  University,  and  I  am  glad  to  say  that 
they  were  not  alone  in  doing  so,  very  early  saw  that  the  great  need 
of  the  people  \\  ould  soon  be  of  good  teachers  who  while  in  advance 
of  their  people  in  education  would  yet  understand  and  sympathise 
with  them.  It  was  also  important  to  establish  the  capacity  of  the 
negro  for  high  intellectual  work  and  to  set  an  example  that  would 
act  as  a  stimulus  through  the  whole  ranks  and  encourage  every 
one  to  hope  for  better  and  better  achievement.  This  course  was 
entirely  in  the  line  which  was  found  to  be  necessary  by  the  New 
England  Freedman's  Society  and  the  other  large  organisations. 
But  it  was  also  found  in  the  beginning  that  the  elementary  work 
was  so  deficient  that  in  order  to  train  good  teachers  a  preparatory 
department  was  added.  It  is  hoped  that  by  the  improvement  in 
the  public  schools,  which  is  largely  secured  by  this  very  normal 
work,  that  this  preparation  may  soon  be  left  to  them  and  the  work 
of  the  University  be  confined  to  the  higher  grades.  The  statistics 
show  that  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  graduates  are  engaged  in 
teaching,  others  in  preaching,  while  some  have  gone  into  other 
business  but  spread  the  sound  ideas  of  education  they  have  learned 
through  the  community. 

Industrial  work  has  also  been  added  to  the  course.  It  is  not 
carried  on  so  largely  as  at  Clarke  nor  is  there  so  much  agricultural 
work  as  at  Tuskegee,  but  the  work  done  has  been  of  the  most 
thorough  and  finished  character  and  shows  that  they  know  how  to 
apply  an  educated  brain  to  mechanical  work.  In  sewing  and  cook- 
ing the  girls  have  been  well  trained  and  it  is  said  that  the  effect 
not  only  upon  themselve.s  but  their  families  has  been  very  benefi- 
cial. It  is  with  the  greatest  regret  that  the  trustees  have  found 
themselves  obliged  to  suspend  this  industrial  wo^k  for  this  year 
owing  to  the  extreme  pressure  of  the  times  and  the  difficulty  of 
raising  money  to  meet  the  current  expenses.  The  ladies  visiting 
the  school  could  hardly  restrain   their  eagerness  to  restore  these 


4358 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


industries  when  they  saw  the  admirable  arrangements  for  teaching 
them  and  the  good  work  that  had  been  done.  In  no  way  could  the 
cause  of  Industrial  Education  be  so  well  and  cheaply  served  as  by 
setting  these  wheels  in  motion  again.  Atlanta  University  is  true 
to  the  great  principle  of  co-education  not  only  by  admitting  both 
men  and  women  to  its  privileges,  but  according  to  the  liberal  con- 
stitution of  the  society  which  first  established  it  by  making  no  dis- 
tinction in  color  or  race.  Unwilling  as  many  are  to  admit  it, 
this  is  really  the  keystone  of  the  whole  problem.  You  cannot  enter 
any  one  of  these  schools  without  seeing  that  it  is  impossible  to 
make  the  distinction,  unless  by  accepting  the  absurd  rule  that  one 
drop  of  black  blood  in  a  thousand  makes  a  colored  man,  and  nine 
hundred  and  ninety  nine  do  not  make  a  white  man.  It  is  only  on 
the  broad  firm  principle  that  every  man  must  be  judged  by  his 
character  and  his  deeds  that  a  democratic  soci-ty  and  a  prosper- 
ous commonwealth  can  be  founded. 

In  this  respect  Atlanta  and  Berea  and  all  other  schools  which 
maintain  this  standard  through  all  opposition,  are  doing  the  great- 
est service. 

There  is  already  a  jealousy  arising  in  many  minds  that  the 
colored  people  are  getting  the  advance  in  education,  and  while  it 
is  exciting  a  fierce  antagonism  among  the  illiterate  and  vulgar,  it 
is  stimulating  the  more  thoughtful  minds  to  take  more  interest  in 
the  lower  classes  of  the  white  population  and  to  enlarge  and  im- 
prove the  public  school  system  for  them.  Although  this  is  connected 
with  some  very  unfair  and  unwise  plans  of  legislation  in  regard  to 
the  public  colored  schools  it  yet  will  lead  to  important  results.  In 
an  educated  community  the  prejudices  of  race  will  die  away  much 
more  rapidly,  and  a  fair  competition  as  well  as  a  kind  co-opera- 
tion tends  to  enkindle  respect  and  affection  towards  others.  In 
this  connection  I  must  speak  of  the  admirable  good  taste  and  gen- 
tlemanly and  lady-like  deportment  which  prevails  throughout  this 
University.  It  is  no  mere  surface  polish  but  a  genuine  spirit  of 
simplicity,  good  feeling,  and  mutual  respect  for  others,  I  cannot 
leave  this  subject  without  a  brief  memorial  word  for  the  admir- 
able teacher  who  received  us  so  kindly,  and  made  our  visit  so  in- 
teresting and  profitable  to  us,  and  who  within  a  few  short  weeks 
afterwards  was  stricken  down  by  typhoid  fever  and  has  left  a  va- 
cancy which  it  will  be  very  hard  to  fill.  Professor  Hincks  was 
next  in  position  to  President  Bumstead,  and  in  the  long  absences 
of  the  latter,  unfortunately  made  necessary  by  the  need  of  collect- 
ing money  at  the  North,  he  took  charge  of  the  school  and  while 
admirably  fulfilling  its  work  he  made  himself  beloved  and  re- 
spected by  all,  as  one  of  the  teachers  wrote,  ' '  we  are  overwhelmed 
with  grief  at  Professor  Hincks's  death."  Of  the  private  loss  to 
his  family  and  circle  of  friends  I  will  not  try  to  speak. 

My  letter  is  already  long,  but  I  must  tell  of  our  visit  to  Tuske- 
gee,  the  final  goal  of  our  journey,  and  in  many  ways  the  most  inter- 
esting spot  of  all.  We  were  first  surprised  to  find  quite  a  large  and 
flourishing  town,  and  to  learn  that  it  had  been  an  educational 
centre  for  white  people  before  the  war.  The  Normal  and  Agri- 
cultural school  has  a  large  tract  of  land  and  many  excellent  build- 
ings mostly  erected  by  the  work  of  the  pupils.  Being  in  the  black 
belt,  so  called  not  because  of  tne  ignorance  or  poverty  of  the  peo- 
ple, but  because  the  colored  population  outnumber  the  whites,  it 
affords  in  many  respects  a  good  opportunity  for  bringing  up  these 
people  to  a  higher  industrial  and  social  condition  with  a  free  de- 
velopment of  their  own  powers.  But  it  is  exactly  here  that  the 
advantages  of  the  college  training  I  have  spoken  of  are  shown, 
nee  the  teachers  who  are  all  colored,  have  mainly  been  educated 
at  Atlanta,  Fiske,  or  similar  schools.  Mr.  Washington,  the  able 
and  accomplished  principal,  is  himself  a  graduate  of  Hampton. 
By  admirable  arrangements,  the  boys  can  carry  on  their  indusirial 
education,  with  a  small  amount  of  study,  and  lay  by  enough  to 
give  themselves  a  few  years  in  the  school,  so  that  at  the  end  of  the 
term  they  have  acquired  habits  of  industry  and  knowledge  of  some 


traie,  as  well  .ts  a  gr^od  use'ul,  intellectual  education,  and  have 
had  the  benefit  of  life  in  an  earnest,  well  ordered  community  where 
all  are  respected,  and  they  do  not  feel  lowered  in  their  own  eyes 
by  the  contempt  of  others.  Under  the  care  of  two  very  intelligent 
instructors,  they  are  practically  learning  to  struggle  with  all  the 
difficulties  of  their  poor,  worn  out  soil,  while  they  -ire  led  by  in- 
telligent experiments  in  new  products,  to  consider  its  future  pos- 
sibilities and  the  best  methods  of  supplying  the  people  around 
them  with  the  fiist  great  necessary  of  liTe,  abundant  and  suitable 
food.  Many  varieties  of  mechanical  work  ^re  also  carried  on  on 
the  same  principles  and  the  Utile  settlement  pres^  nts  a  most  pleas- 
ing spectacle  of  a  well-ordered  and  prosperous  community,  where 
all  are  working  for  the  common  good  and  working  out  great  prob- 
lems which  will  be  settled  for  the  benefit  of  the  whole  race. 

Withal  there  is  a  cheerful  air  of  happiness  and  an  outflow  of 
poetry  and  sentiment  characteristic  of  the  race,  which  gives  one  a 
sense  of  the  rich  addition  which  they  are  to  make  to  the  American 
stock.  I  shall  never  forget  the  Vieauty  of  the  morning  as  the  sun 
shone  into  my  window  and  lighted  up  the  November  landscape 
with  its  last  fading  colors,  when  suc'denly  like  the  songs  of  the 
oriole  and  the  robin  in  the  spring,  came  from  all  around  the  morn- 
ing song  of  the  people  expressing  their  welcome  to  us  and  their 
joy  on  the  new  day  opening  to  them.  It  was  a  prophecy  of  the 
new  life  of  this  people  redeemed  from  the  night  of  oppression  and 
ready  to  take  their  part  in  the  labor  and  the  joy  of  the  new  era 
that  is  coming.  Ednah  D.  Cheney. 


BOOK  NOTICES. 


Mr.  William  M.  Salter  has  published  the  first  number  of  a 
new  periodical  called  I  lie  Cmisd,  which  will  represent  the  interests 
of  The  Society  for  Ethical  Culture  of  Philadelphia- 


Mr.  Parke  Godwin's  Covimeinorative  AiUlrcsses  on  George  Wil- 
liam Curtis,  Edwin  Booth,  Louis  Kossuth,  John  James  Audubon, 
and  William  Cullen  Bryant  have  just  been  published  by  Harper 
&  Brothers,  New  York.  Parke  Godwin  is  one  of  the  most  classic 
writers  and  orators  of  North  America.  His  speeches  are  full  of 
thought,  distinguished  by  moral  earnestness,  soundness  of  judg- 
ment, and  a  lofty  nobility  of  sentiment;  they  are  worth  studying 
were  it  only  for  the  sake  of  their  artistic  adequacy  of  expression 
and  general  literary  perfection. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  385. 

AN  IMAGINARY  EXPERIMENT.    George  M.  McCrie.  4351 

THE  SOUL  OF  THE  ALL.     Editor 4353 

SCIENCE  AND  REFORM.  Over- Legislation.  Moral 
Sunday  Sports.  Climatic  Curiosa  The  Power  of  the 
Press.      An  Expensive  Theory.      "Spelin."      Felix  L. 

Oswald 4354 

THE  RELIGIOUS  PARLIAMENT  EXTENSION.  Re- 
port of  the  New  Year's  Reunion.     Editor 4355 

POETRY. 

Heaven  and  Hell.     William  Herbert  Carruth 435^ 

CORRESPONDENCE. 

Association   for   Advancement   of  Woman.     Ednah  D. 

Cheney 4357 

BOOK  NOTICES 43,58 


4-1 


The  Open  Court. 


A  M/'EEKLY  JOURNAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE 


No.   386.     (Vol.  IX.— 3.) 


CHICAGO,   JANUARY   17,   1895. 


j  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
I  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


CopyRiGHT  BY  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


THE  SOUL  AN  ENERGY. 

BY  C.    H.    REEVE. 

If  you  remember  that  you  are  conducting  a  journal 
"devoted  to  the  reHgion  of  science,"  you  will  see  that 
your  position  and  its  responsibility  is  one  of  the  pro- 
foundest  gravity.  You  may  uproot,  and  leave  desola- 
tion in  places  where  hope  flourished  abundantly  and 
content  reigned  supreme.  You  may  start  men  and 
women  to  moving  in  new  ways,  which  they  will  be  un- 
able to  fLillow,  while  unable  to  return  ;  and  must  be- 
come Ishmaelites,  wandering  in  the  deserts  of  hope- 
lessness, perhaps  despair.  For  this  reason  an  obli- 
gation rests  on  you  to  consider  the  suggestions  your 
own  teaching  prompts  your  readers  to  lay  before  you. 
It  is  in  this  sense  that  this  paper  is  sent  you.  Not  for 
the  press,  unless  you  desire  to  use  it,  but  in  response 
to  your  article  in  your  issue  of  September  20  of  last 
year.      And  it  may  not  be  unworthy  of  print. 

In  the  common  comprehension  the  word  "Soul" 
conveys  the  idea  of  a  disembodied  spirit,  having  con- 
sciousness and  immortality.  Specifically,  it  is  regarded 
as  ourselves,  as  individuals,  in  a  spiritual  form  exist- 
ing forever.  In  reality  soul  is  the  vital  force  in  an  or- 
ganism that  keeps  it  living  and  enables  it  to  perform 
the  functions  that  are  the  legitimate  outgrowths  of  its 
organisation.  Man  as  a  whole  is  a  "living  soul."  The 
real  soul  in  him  is  the  combination  of  forces  that  give 
him  life  and  consciousness  and  that  keep  him  living 
and  conscious.  If  he  be  an  idiot  he  is  a  mere  animal 
soul.  If  he  is  possessed  of  a  superior  mental  organ- 
ism and  be  highly  educated  he  is  an  intellectual  soul. 
If  his  perceptions  be  acutely  ethical  and  his  combina- 
tion of  faculties  be  such  as  to  prompt  highly  moral 
impulses  he  is  an  intellectual  moral  soul.  When  the 
vital  forces  that  sustain  life  fail  to  operate  he  ceases 
to  be  anything  but  a  dead  organism,  in  which,  differ- 
ent forces  instantly  begin  processes  of  disorganisation, 
and  the  creation  of  other  combinations  of  the  elements 
that  constituted  his  organism.  In  that  operation  all 
the  soul  there  is  exists  in  the  several  forces  that  are 
in  operation,  each  of  which  acts  intelligently  in  creat- 
ing and  maintaining  new  forms  of  life  in  each  new 
combination  formed  in  the  processes  of  dissolution. 
The  soul  in  ejch  exists  so  long  as  each  new  organism 
exists  and  no  longer.   Every  chemical  change  that  takes 


place  begets  a  new  life  in  each  new  combination  it 
forms,  to  live  so  long  as  that  action  continues,  whether 
it  be  instantaneous  or  lasting  for  long  periods,  and  the 
soit/ — the  spirit — is  the  force — separate  or  combined — 
that  maintains  the  action  and  enables  each  particle  of 
matter  to  perform  the  function  necessary  to  the  final 
end.i 

Nothing  can  exist  without  soul,  and  that  soul  is  the 
something  that  enables  it  to  exist.  The  human  mind 
cannot  conceive  of  anything  that  is  not  substantial. 
If  it  thinks  of  a  spirit  it  gives  it  a  human  form  and  hu- 
man attributes  ;  because  it  cannot  conceive  of  a  thing 
without  form,  nor  of  a  form  higher  than  the  human 
form,  nor  of  attributes  higher  than  human  attributes. 
By  way  of  comparison  it  exalts  those  attributes  when 
it  tries  to  conceive  of  a  superior  being,  as  of  God,  or 
angels,  or  spirits,  etc.,  but  it  is  not  able  to  go  beyond 
the  boundaries  of  its  own  knowledge,  even  in  imagina- 
tion. Its  creations  must  be  combinations  of  what  it 
has  knowledge  of  through  the  senses. 

No  human  being  can  know  what  mind  is,  because 
he  cannot  rise  superior  to  himself.  To  know  what  his 
mind  is  he  must  be  superior  to  himself  and  that  is  im- 
possible.- 

Now  I  will  go  to  the  extreme  limit  and  assert  that, 
everything  within  Iitiman  compreliension  is  substantial ; 
has  form,  originates,  exists,  operates  in  and  with  mat- 
ter, and  cannot  originate,  exist,  or  operate  without 
matter.  This  necessarily  includes  thoughts,  emotions, 
feeling,  sensation,  ideas,  words,  and  their  meaning, 
and  everything  connected  with  them.  They  are  born 
of  matter,  exist  in  matter,  and  are  never  separated 
from  matter.  They  are  as  much  an  outgrowth  of  mat- 
ter as  are  light,  caloric,  color,  aroma,  or  any  other 
thing  ;  they  cannot  be  separated  from  it  and  are  sub- 
stantial;  having  form  and  energy  as  matter  has. 
You  say : 

"Soul,  like  matter,  is  an  abstract  denoting  certain  facts  of 
reality,  and  there  are,  indeed,  things  which  are  neither  energy, 
nor  matter,  nor  form.  Take  the  iiit-aiiing  of  the  word  '  logic.'  Is 
it  matter  ?    No  !    Is  it  energy  ?    No  !    Is  it  form  ?    No  !    The  word 

1  In  theology  the  question  is,  Whether  the  intelligence  born  of  the  phys- 
ical organism  and  its  environments  during  life  here,  constituting  what  we  call 
mind,  continues  to  live  as  an  entirety,  and  finds  a  place  and  action  in  some 
other  form  of  organism  ?  But  that  is  beyond  finding  out,  and  speculation 
proves  nothing. 

-  Mind  is  the  supreme  elevation  of  organic  action. 


4360 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


when  uttered  presupposes  material  organs  which  cause  a  very  spe- 
cial air-vibration.  The  utterance  consumes  a  certain  amount  of 
energy,  and  the  pronounced  word  consists  of  a  peculiar  kind  of 
air-vibrations.  But  analysis  of  energy,  matter,  and  form,  will 
show  no  trace  of  the  meaning  of  the  word.  The  meaning  of  the 
word  is  its  soul." 

Let  us  look  at  this  statement  a  little.'  Words  are 
combinations  of  forms,  made  vital  by  sound,  in  vocal 
utterance,  by  one  individual,  used  to  make  impres- 
sions upon  other  individuals.  The  impressions  made 
on  the  hearer  by  the  sounds  create  an  impulse  in  him 
ending  in  thought.  At  no  stage  are  the  sounds  or 
words  separated  from  matter.  Energy  existing  in  the 
matter,  acting  within  and  through  the  physical  organ- 
ism, causes  vibrations  in  the  medium  surrounding  and 
existing  in  the  organism  making  the  sounds;  which 
cause  like  vibrations  of  the  organs  of  hearing  in  an- 
other human  organism,  making  impressions  on  the 
hearer  which  put  into  operation  more  energy-creating 
thought.  (Air  is  not  a  compact  body  as  is  commonly 
supposed  ;  but  consists  of  infinitely  minute  particles. 
In  comparison  with  their  size,  the  distance  between 
the  particles  is  as  great  as  that  between  the  planets 
compared  with  their  size,  it  has  been  asserted.  Those 
spaces  are  filled  with  some  other  medium,  and  the  vi- 
brations affect  this  as  well  as  the  air.)  Ideas  are  onl)' 
thoughts.  Perhaps  the  thought  following  the  impres- 
sions made  by  the  word  and  the  sounds  prompts  in  the 
hearer  words  in  reply;  and  the  same  process  operates, 
producing  more  thoughts  in  the  first  speaker.  Now, 
at  what  stage  of  the  process  is  matter,  energy,  and 
form  absent  ?  Every  particle  of  matter — including  air 
and  ether — has  form  in  which  energy  becomes  opera- 
tive, and  without  which  it  would  not  operate.  Every 
vibration  of  the  air  has  its  own  shape.  Each  shade  of 
sound  has  its  own  form  of  wave,  its  own  energy,  its 
own  motion,  involving  just  so  much  of  air  and  ether — 
unlike  any  other.  The  same  forms  and  energy  are 
continued  through  the  mechanism  of  the  ear,  the  aural 
nerve,  and  in  the  sensorium.  Each  and  all  have  per- 
fectly defined  form,  energy,  and  motion,  in  matter,  and 
no  other  combination  or  action  could  convey  the  sense 
for  it,  or  make  it  the  vehicle  for  the  same  conscious- 
ness. If  the  word  be  read  and  not  spoken,  substan- 
tial vibrations  through  the  eye  operate  in  like  man- 
ner. I  repeat — every  vibration  has  form,  is  in  matter, 
whether  in  the  vocal  organs,  the  air,  the  ear,  or  the 
sensorium  of  the  brain.  Every  thought  has  form  and 
energy,  is  a  part  of  the  brain  itself  while  existing  in 
the  sensorium,  and  the  action  of  the  several  energies 
are  consuming  tissues,  and  they  are  undergoing  more 
or  less  change  of  form  ;  and  with  each  change  there  is 
change  of  energy  and  motion.  Motion  exists  only  in 
suhstaiiee.      At  no  stage  of  action,  at  no  instant  of  time 

1  How  can  there  be  a  "thing,"  williout  energy,  or  matter,  or  form  ? 


are  the  words,  the  sounds,  the  impression  made,  the 
idea  conveyed,  tlie  thought  generated,  the  energy  ope- 
rating, and  the  responding  word,  sound,  impression, 
idea,  thought,  and  energy  operating,  separated  from 
matter;  having  energy  and  form,  and   all  in  matter.' 

The  conception  of  the  subject  or  thing  to  which  the 
word  has  reference  is  the  idea  born  of  the  impression 
made  by  the  sound  of  the  word,  and  that  idea  is  the 
thought  the  impression  creates  as  the  outgrowth  of 
the  impulse  following  action  in  the  organism  hearing, 
caused  by  the  sound.  Every  particle  of  matter  in  the 
person  hearing  the  word  and  affected  by  the  sound  of 
it  as  a  part  of  its  function,  adapts  itself  to  some  form 
in  the  reception,  gives  birth  to  energy  such  as  that 
form  will  permit,  and  forms  an  idea — thought — such 
as  his  specific  organism  will  admit  of  ;  and  makes  such 
response  as  that  idea  will  prompt  in  him.  Several  per- 
sons hearing  the  same  word  and  sound  might  each  have 
a  different  idea;  and  to  each  that  idea  would  be  the 
meaning  of  the  word  ;  or  if  not  comprehended  at  all, 
there  would  be  no  meaning.  There  would  only  be  an 
idea  that  they  did  not  comprehend  the  reference. 

The  soul  of  a  word  is  not  its  meaning,  but  it  is  the 
energy  inherent  in  its  use  at  the  time  when  used,  as  a 
means  of  creating  the  intended  impression  on  the 
organism  addressed.  Take  a  simple  illustration.  A 
horse  is  taught  to  back  by  pressure  on  his  jaw  with 
the  bit,  and  uttering  the  word  "back."  In  time  he 
comes  to  associate  the  motion  of  backing  with  the 
sound  of  the  word  and  will  back  without  the  pressure. 
(Any  other  sound  will  do  as  well.)  Here  the  matter 
in  the  horse  is  acted  on  by  the  sound,  and  the  meaning 
of  the  word  is  not  the  soul  at  all ;  but  the  soul  is  the 
office  the  word  performs.  The  putting  in  operation  in 
the  matter  in  the  horse  of  such  vibrations  as  will  cause 
the  forms  and  energy  that  will  end  in  the  motions  of 
backing.  The  impulse  it  prompts  in  the  horse  to  act 
in  a  specific  manner  ;  the  energy  it  rouses  in  the  brain 
of  the  horse  that  causes  him  to  move  backward.  Every- 
thing in  the  whole  process,  from  the  thought  that 
prompts  the  word  to  the  thought  that  prompts  the 
motion  has  matter,  form,  and  energy;  energy  and  form 
in  matter;  and  at  no  time  is  it  separated  from  matter, 
form,  and  energy.  Energy  cannot  act  in  matter  with- 
out form,  adapting  itself  to  the  matter  or  the  matter 
to  itself,  in  or  on  which  it  acts. 

It  is  impossible  for  the  human  mind  to  think  of  an 
abstraction  alone,  wholly  unconnected  with  the  matter 
from  which  it  is  taken.-'  The  word  is  only  a  means  of 
comparison  ;    just   as  concrete   is.      But   both  convey 

1  Every  thrill  of  hope  and  fear,  every  feeling  of  joy,  sadness,  anxiety,  etc., 
every  ecstasy,  is  only  brain  and  nerve-vibration,  and  each  has  its  own  form  of 
wave-motion,  and  its  own  pecnliar  energy,  by  which  the  matter  in  the  brain 
and  nerve  is  adapted  and  enabled  to  perform  the  function  of  transmitting  the 
feeling  or  sensation.     That  is,  has  form  and  energy. 

2  There  can  be  a  separation  to  consider  singly,  but  tHfe  part  it  is  separated 
from  enters  into  the  consideration  more  or  less. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4361 


ideas  relating  to  matter,  the  properties  of  matter,  the 
outgrowths  of  action  in  matter.  The  idea  conveyed 
by  the  word  "  abstract,"  immediately  connects  itself 
with  a  word  having  an  opposite  meaning,  and  must  do 
so  before  the  word  can  be  comprehended;  and  the 
opposite  deals  with  substance,  forms,  and  energy,  viz., 
reality.' 

What,  then,  is  the  soul  of  the  word  "logic"?  It  is 
its  power  to  impress  on  the  hearer  the  idea  of  an  irre- 
sistible force  in  demonstration.  That  words  are  so 
used  in  arranging  facts  as  to  demonstrate  an  undeni- 
able conclusion.  Or,  that  events  so  follow  each  other 
as  to  demonstrate  a  certain  cause.  The  facts  and  the 
cause  must  be  material.  A  word  may  mean  one  thing 
yet  convey  an  idea  of  a  different  thing,  or  ideas  of 
several  things.  Several  different  words  may  convey 
the  same  idea,  yet  have  different  meanings.  That 
power  is  the  soul  of  the  word.  A  look  or  a  motion 
may  do  the  same  thing  at  certain  times  and  under  cer- 
tain circumstances,  while  at  another  time  the  same 
look  or  motion  would  convey  no  such  idea.  The  soul 
of  it  is  in  its  power  to  do  it  when  the  conditions  serve ; 
giving  life,  vitality,  and  special  function,  at  that  time; 
when  matter,  form,  and  energy  will  admit  of  the  ope- 
ration of  the  function.  At  other  times  it  has  no  such 
soul.  The  look  or  motion  have  form  and  energy — in 
matter — and  both  are  substantial  :  and  the  idea  they 
convey  is  substantial  and  creates  energy  and  form  in 
the  subject  affected  by  them.  The  soul  is  the  power, 
or  faculty,  or  ability,  to  convey  the  meaning,  and  that 
exists  only  in  the  vitality — the  sovteihing  that  makes 
them  a  living  force  for  the  time  and  the  purpose. 

Take  a  plant  that  gives  off  an  odor.  Its  soul  is  in 
the  inherent  power  to  produce  that  odor.  Take  the 
odor.  Its  soul  is  in  the  power  to  impress  itself  on  the 
sense  of  smell.  To  one  without  the  sense  of  smell  it 
is  soulless.  The  soul  of  the  olfactory  nerve  is  in  its 
power  to  make  its  possessor  conscious  of  the  odor. 
Take  music.  Its  soul  is  its  power  to  impress  the  ani- 
mal organism.  Take  the  word  "space."  Its  soul  is 
in  the  power  to  convey  the  idea  of  space.  Yet  space 
is  substantial  and  is  filled  with  elements  that  make 
matter  and  make  the  conception  of  matter  possible. 
Take  space  itself  and  its  soul  is  its  capacity  to  contain 
matter.  There  can  be  no  conception  of  space  without 
giving  it  form  and  energy.  It  is  only  in  comparison 
with  matter  that  we  can  think  of  it  at  all,  and  that 
matter  is  in  motion  in  reality  and  in  our  thought.  Mo- 
tion includes  energy,  and  that  is  in  our  thought.  The 
space  between  bodies  of  matter  has  form  made  by  the 
matter,  with  constant  change  of  form.  Nutation  made 
by  the  planets  gives  forms.  Irregularities  in  space 
made  by  the  bodies  in  it,  whether  universal  space  or 

1  Soul  cannot  be  considered  purely  by  itself  without  connecting  it  in 
thought  with  the  body. 


finite  space.  The  sky,  a  room,  or  the  inside  of  a  hair. 
Space,  to  the  human  mind,  has  matter,  form,  and  en- 
ergy. 

Again  quoting  you  :  "Soul,  like  matter,  is  an  ab- 
stract, denoting  certain  facts  of  realit)'." 

But  the  word  can  be  used  only  as  an  expression  of 
comparison  and  it  cannot  be  thought  of  separate  from 
matter.  Reality  is  only  something  that  is  comprehen- 
sible in  comparison  with  something,  that  is  unreal.  A 
red  wafer  lying  on  a  slieet  of  white  paper  is  real.  Gaze 
at  it  steadily  a  short  time  and  there  will  be  a  blue 
wafer  beside  it.  For  the  time  the  blue  wafer  is  a  real- 
ity to  the  sensorium,  but  it  is  unreal  in  fact,  and  we 
conceive  of  the  reality  only  by  comparison  with  the 
unreality'.  (Yet  the  vibrations  of  the  retina  and  brain 
that  make  the  blue  wafer  apparent,  have  energy,  and 
form,  and  matter,  and  are  real.)  So  of  abstract.  We 
conceive  of  the  abstract  only  by  comparison  with  the 
concrete.  Leverrier,  taking  note  of  aberrations  in  the 
movements  of  Uranus,  was  impressed  with  an  idea 
that  it  might  be  caused  by  attraction  of  some  planet 
beyond  it.  Assuming  some  things  as  fact,  in  connex- 
ion with  others  known,  he  estimated  that  an  imaginary 
body  (if  real)  would  be  in  a  certain  place  at  a  certain 
time,  and  wrote  to  Dr.  Galle  at  Berlin  to  turn  the  Ob- 
servatory telescope  to  that  point  at  that  time.  Dr. 
Galle  found  Neptune  there.  This  was  abstraction  on 
the  part  of  Leverrier,  his  idea  living  in  thought 
only,  caused  by  impressions  made  by  the  irregular 
movements  of  Uranus.  His  hypotheses  and  calcula- 
tions were  all  in  thought,  the  thought  created  by  en- 
ergy, form,  and  matter,  in  Uranus  or  in  his  own  or- 
ganism. He  was  investigating  something  that  was, 
as  3'et,  unreal,  by  a  process  of  abstract  reasoning. 

But  in  comparison  with  known  realities  it  was,  pos- 
sibly, not  unreal.  Every  thought  had  form,  energy, 
and  was  an  outgrowth  of  matter  and  existed  in  matter. 
Every  figure  and  character  in  his  calculations  were 
real  —  having  form,  energy,  and  matter  —  involving 
form,  energy,  and  matter,  internal  and  external  to  his 
physical  organism,  but  in  and  connected  with  that  or- 
ganism, and  never  separated  from  it.  It  related  to 
supposed  matter  an  incomprehensible  distance  away. 
Development  through  the  telescope  made  the  abstrac- 
tion a  reality,  and  every  stage  of  movement  from  Le- 
verrier's  thought  to  Galle's  eye  at  the  telescope,  and 
Galle's  thought  following  the  impression  made  by  the 
sight  of  Neptune,  had  form,  and  energy,  and  matter — 
being  in  matter.  The  soul  of  Leverrier's  thought  was 
in  its  power  to  reach  the  unknown  by  abstract  reason- 
ing, based  on  and  compared  with  known  facts  devel- 
oped in  matter,  and  the  soul  of  the  telescope  was  in 
its  power  to  reveal  the  hidden  unknown,  all  being  ma- 
terial. 

No,  the  soul  is  not  in  the  ineaning  of  things,  but  in 


4362 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


the  power  that  makes  that  meaning  known.  The  soul 
is  the  life  of  the  thing.  The  soul  is  that  which  to  the 
mind  is  reality.  The  soul  of  superstition  is  its  power 
to  impress  itself  as  truth— as  real  and  not  imaginary. 
The  soul  of  man  is  the  combining  action  of  forces  that 
maintains  the  vitality  of  the  whole  organism,  physical 
and  mental  ;  and  when  those  forces  decay,  and  grad- 
ually or  suddenly  cease  to  act,  the  soul  begins  to  dis- 
appear or  totally  disappears. 

It  is  possible  that  electric  and  magnetic  energy  is 
the  soul  of  the  Universe,  organising  matter,  and  alter- 
nately disorganising  and  readjusting  in  new  forms,  or 
enabling  matter  to  do  so,  thus  maintaining  equilib- 
rium ;  but  it  must  operate  in  and  with  matter,  and 
must  have  form  adapted  to  the  function  it  performs, 
whatever  may  be  the  time,  and  place,  and  conditions. 

Whatever  can  make  an  impression  on  an  animal 
organism  has  existence — is  entity — has  substance, form, 
and  energy  :  is  manifested  in  and  through  matter  ;  its 
soul  is  that  which  makes  manifestation  possible.  This 
you  call  materialism,  and  it  is  a  truth  that,  human  per- 
ception can  take  no  note  of  anything  without  making 
it  material  in  thought,  and  giving  it  form  and  energy. 
All  matter  and  energy  has  consciousness.  The  forma- 
tive vessels  to  make  a  hair,  the  enamel  of  a  tooth,  a 
bone,  a  nerve  and  its  sheath,  and  every  integument, 
tissue,  and  fluid,  will  select  the  material  and  use  the 
energy  to  make  it,  shape  it,  in  its  proper  place,  and 
reject  all  other  material.  If  obstructed,  a  new  energy 
will  be  developed  to  avoid  or  dispose  of  the  obstruc- 
tion in  some  other  formation.  We  may  call  the  mys- 
teries of  action  in  matter  and  energy,  spirit,  supernat- 
ural, soul,  disembodied,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing ;  but 
we  can  have  neither  perception  or  conception  of  any- 
thing without  giving  it  energy,  form,  and  substance, 
and  that  is  the  limitation  of  our  faculties. 


IS  THE  SOUL  AN  ENERGY? 

THE   NATURE   OF   MEANING. 

In  going  over  Mr.  Reeve's  article  I  will  discuss  the 
problem  of  mind,  using,  as  much  as  possible,  his  own 
examples.  The  main  difference  of  view,  it  seems  to 
me,  lies  in  his  habit  of  imparting  to  all  ideas  "  energy, 
form,  and  substance";  he  still  reifies  ideas,  and  re- 
gards also  immaterial  features  of  reality  as  concrete 
objects.     To  him  : 

"The  soul  is  not  in  form  nor  in  the  iiieniiin^'oi  form,  but  in  the 
powff  that  makes  the  meaning  known." 

We  agree  with  Mr.  Reeve  that  form,  matter,  and 
energy  are  always  inseparably  connected  in  reality,  and 
we  grant  that  the  brain  is  material  and  that  its  action 
consumes  energj',  but  the  ideas  "soul  and  mind"  are 
abstractions  from  which  the  ideas  matter  and  energy 
are  excluded.    Matter  can  be  weighed  ;  energy  can  be 


determined  in  foot-pounds,  it  is  measured  by  the  work 
that  it  can  perform  ;  but  soul  cannot  be  either  weighed 
or  measured.      Soul  is  another  kind  of  abstraction. 

The  nature  of  the  soul  lies  in  the  form  of  its  or- 
ganism. The  superiority  of  a  human  brain  over  a 
horse's  brain  does  not  depend  upon  the  greater  quantity 
of  either  its  mass  or  its  activity,  but  consists  in  a  dif- 
ference of  form.  The  elementar}' forms  of  the  psychic 
constitution  of  living  beings  have  been  impressed  upon 
their  sentiencj'  by  the  surroimding  world.  These  forms 
have  been  wonderfully  increased  and  multiplied  through 
the  interaction  of  the  various  memory- traces,  until  they 
built  up  the  human  soul,  and  the  preservation  of  these 
forms  which  are  transferred  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion by  heredity  and  education  constitutes  the  basis  of 
further  progress  and  all  higher  evolution. 

The  soul  is  a  system  of  sentient  forms,  and  the 
difference  of  form  constitutes  a  difference  of  soul ;  but 
not  all  forms  are  soul-structures.  Soul-structures  are 
sentient  forms  and  a  characteristic  peculiarity  of  soul- 
structures  consists  in  their  significance  or  meaning. 
The  birth  of  mind  is  the  origin  of  meaning,  for  mean- 
ing is  the  purport  of  mentality  and  the  quintessence 
of  all  psychic  life. 

WHAT  MEANS  MEANING? 

Meaning  is  a  very  subtle  relation,  a  non-entity  to 
the  materialist,  but  all-iinportant  in  the  realm  of  mind. 
It  is  a  relation  between  an  object  and  an  analogous 
feeling.  A  certain  number  of  light-rays  strike  the  re- 
tina and  produce  a  commotion  in  the  layer  of  rods  and 
cones,  the  form  of  which  corresponds  to  the  form  of 
the  object  from  which  they  are  reflected.  This  sensa- 
tion produces  a  commotion  in  various  nerve-tracts 
and  rouses  in  the  organism  of  the  human  brain  the 
memories  of  prior  sensations — of  sensations  of  sight  as 
well  as  of  touch,  perhaps  also  of  hearing,  taste,  and 
smell,  as  the  case  may  be.  A  white-sensation  of  an 
oblong  quadrangle  rouses  a  word-combination  in  the 
centre  of  language  which  makes  the  organs  of  speech 
say,  "  This  is  a  sheet  of  paper,  and  this  sheet  of  paper 
lies  upon  the  table  at  a  certain  distance  from  the  eye." 
The  hands  are  ready  to  grasp  it  ;  the  fingers  antici- 
pate a  peculiar  feeling  of  touch,  and  a  great  number 
of  the  memories  of  former  experiences  as  to  its  quali- 
ties and  use  are  stirred  up,  which  may  find  expression, 
one  after  the  other,  in  appropriate  words.  What  a 
wealth  of  different  forms  of  feeling,  all  of  which  must 
be  regarded  as  accompaniments  of  exactly  correspond- 
ing nervous  actions  !  And  these  varying  forms  of  feel- 
ing are  connected,  as  it  were,  with  the  outer  world  by 
invisible  threads  ;  they  refer  to  various  realities  through 
a  contact  with  which  their  peculiarities  of  form  are 
conditioned.  As  the  result  of  a  continued  interaction 
among  the  memory-images  of  former  experiences  which 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4363 


are  constantly  stirred  by  new  sense-impressions,  a  feel- 
ing of  a  certain  kind  indicates  the  presence  of  definite 
conditions,  which,  as  a  whole,  are  called  an  object.  In 
a  word,  various  sensations  stand  for,  or  represent,  vari- 
ous things  or  qualities  of  things.  It  is  the  representa- 
tive element  of  the  diverse  forms  of  feeling,  which 
characterises  their  import  in  the  objective  world  and 
implies  that  they  are  more  than  a  mere  subjective  dis- 
play of  sense-images,  and  this  is  what  we  call  their  sig- 
nificance or  meaning.  The  meaning  of  sensations  and 
words  embodies  their  relation  to  the  universe  and  knits 
the  soul  to  the  All,  as  a  product  and  reflexion  of  which 
the  soul  appears  in  the  history  of  evolution. 

Mr.  Reeve  speaks  of  looks  and  motions  which  serve 
as  means  of  imparting  meaning.  They  are  in  the  same 
predicament  as  words  ;  they  are  symbols  by  which  two 
minds  communicate  ;  and  this  transference  of  thought 
through  the  vehicle  of  a  sign  may  be  called — like  the 
words  of  deaf  and  dumb  people — a  language  of  gesture. 

Language,  in  the  wider  sense  of  the  word,  com- 
prises such  acts  as  the  rider's  use  of  the  bridle,  the 
significance  of  which  is  understood  by  the  horse.  A 
dog  venturing  into  a  room  which  is  forbidden  to  him, 
comprehends  at  once  the  meaning  of  the  motion  of  his 
master's  hand  which  reaches  for  the  whip  and  he  will 
not  fail  to  obey  the  command  implied. 

Mr.  Reeve  seems  to  think  that  I  believe  in  mean- 
ings that  hover  about  like  ghosts.      He  asks  (p.  4360): 

"At  what  stage  of  the  process  [viz.,  of  speaking]  is  matter, 
energy,  and  form  absent  ?  " 

We  repl}',  matter,  energy,  and  form  are  nowhere 
absent.  We  say,  when  we  speak  of  the  words  of  a 
letter,  we  make  no  reference  to  the  paper  and  the  ink; 
and  when  we  speak  of  the  meaning  of  words,  we  mean 
their  representative  value  as  to  the  objects  which  they 
depict  and  make  no  reference  to  matter,  energy,  or 
form.      That  is  all. 

THE   POWER  OF   MIND. 

Mr.  Reeve  speaks  of  the  power  of  mind,  always 
maintaining  that  there  is  no  reality  without  matter  and 
energy.  But  we  must  not  forget  that  the  expression 
"  power  of  mind,"  is  nothing  but  a  figure  of  speech  ; 
the  phrase  does  not  mean  the  diminutive  amount  of  en- 
ergy consumed  in  the  brain,  the  nerves  and  muscles  of 
either  speaker  or  hearer;  it  means  the  definite  change 
which  a  mind  is  able  to  work  in  the  minds  of  others  by 
turning  their  attention  in  a  special  direction,  where  it 
is  perhaps  most  needed  to  avoid  danger  or  to  utilise 
the  forces  of  nature. 

Soul  is  not  energy  nor  does  it  create  force  out  of 
nothing,  nor,  as  Mr.  Reeve  expresses  it,  "  give  birth  to 
energy";  its  potency  consists  in  directing  and  marshal- 
ling the  energies  that  exist,  and  this  faculty  of  direction 
makes  mind  their  master. 


Mr.  Reeve  is  unquestionably  right  if  he  means  to 
say  that  mind  is  a  potent  (i.  e.  very  important)  factor  in 
the  world,  destined  to  effect  great  changes.  Words  pos- 
sess (metaphorically  speaking)  a  power,  and,  indeed, 
they  represent  the  most  formidable  power,  be  it  for  good 
or  for  evil,  far  greater  than  the  force  that  is  displayed 
in  explosions  of  dynamite  or  nitrogljcerine. 

The  Roman  poet  says  "-Mens  agitat  molem,  mind 
moves  mass,"  and  who  will  deny  that  mind  appears  in 
the  world  to  govern  its  affairs,  to  direct,  and  to  arrange. 
Mind  is  the  ruler  of  the  world  of  matter.  But  Mr. 
Reeve  is  mistaken  when  he  seeks  the  nature  of  the 
mind  in  the  energies  which  it  is  able  to  rouse  either  by 
stirring  other  minds,  or  by  using  the  marvellotis  store- 
house of  nature's  slumbering  forces.  The  nature  of  a 
word  is  and  remains  the  meaning  which  its  sound-form 
conveys.  Words  are  symbols  which  connect  with  a 
certain  form  of  sound  a  certain  significance  ;  and  the 
communication  of  the  sound,  through  a  transference  of 
its  form,  serves  as  the  vehicle  of  the  communication  of 
the  meaning,  which  consists  in  its  reference  to  some 
definite  reality. 

Speaking  creatures  have  acquired  the  habit  of  ac- 
companying certain  actions  with  certain  sounds  and 
the  pronunciation  of  the  sound  has  come  to  mean  the 
action.  Language  (i.  e.,  a  system  of  sound-forms  pos- 
sessing definite  meanings)  grows  more  and  more  per- 
fect, and  by  and  by  denominates  objects  and  all  the 
most  subtle  relations  which  play  an  important  part 
in  social  intercourse.  While  pronouncing  a  word,  a 
certain  amount  of  muscular  energy  is  consumed  which 
causes  the  air  to  vibrate  and  finally  throws  a  sense- 
irritation  into  the  auditive  nerve  of  the  hearer.  The 
irritation  of  the  nerve  rouses  the  cerebral  structures  of 
the  same  form  in  the  centre  of  hearing  which  possess 
either  the  same  or  a  similar  meaning  according  to  the 
common  experiences  of  both  the  speaker  and  the 
hearer. 

It  sometimes  happens  (as  Mr.  Reeve  rightly  says) 
that,  as  the  result  of  varying  experiences  or  of  a  differ- 
ent education,  the  same  word  is  not  understood  by  the 
hearer  in  the  sense  which  the  speaker  intends  to  con- 
vey and  a  misunderstanding  is  the  result.  But  in  all 
these  cases  the  soul  of  the  word  is  the  meaning  attached 
to  a  peculiar  form  of  feeling,  or  of  nervous  commotion 
that  is  required  in  thinking  or  pronouncing  the  word, 
and  the  energy  which  its  pronunciation  consumes  is  as 
incidental  as  the  ink  in  which  it  may  be  written. 

The  amount  of  energy  in  the  Niagara  falls  is  enor- 
mous in  comparison  to  the  energy  consumed  in  the 
brains  of  many  millions  of  people.  The  great  cataract 
is,  according  to  the  gravity  that  resides  in  its  mass,  a 
change  of  the  potential  energy  of  water  at  a  higher  level 
into  the  kinetic  energy  of  falling  water.  The  water  has 
no  intention  to  convey  meaning  :  its  peculiar  form  of 


4364 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


action  does  not  represent  surrounding  conditions  ;  the 
river  possesses  no  soul.  It  is  quite  true  that  a  certain 
amount  of  vital  energy  is  indispensable  for  a  health^' 
brain,  but  that  which  we  figuratively  call  "the  power 
of  genius  "  has  nothing  to  do  with  what  the  physicist 
calls  energy.  The  power  of  a  scientist  to  discover  un- 
known facts,  the  ability  of  a  philosopher  to  elucidate 
truths,  and  the  keenness  of  a  mathematician  to  solve 
problems,  have  no  mechanical  equivalent. 

TRUTH,   THE  IMPORT  OF  MEANING. 

It  is  very  important  for  a  speaker  and  a  writer  to 
consider  the  minds  of  other  people  which  he  rouses  for 
good  or  evil  ;  either  by  impressing  his  ideas  into  theirs 
or  exciting  their  antagonism  in  the  opposite  direction. 
But  of  greater  importance  is  the  truth  of  the  meaning 
of  mind. 

What  is  truth? 

The  representative  relations  of  the  various  soul- 
structures  may  be  so  as  to  tally  or  not  to  tally  with  its 
objective  conditions  ;  in  the  former  case  we  call  them 
true,  in  the  latter  untrue.  Our  words  and  word-com- 
binations symbolise  facts  either  real  or  imaginary,  and 
our  all-absorbing  aim  must  be  to  make  them  correct 
representations  of  the  realities  to  which  their  meaning 
has  reference. 

REAL  AND  MATERIAL. 

Mr.  Reeve  says  : 

"It  is  impossible  for  the  human  mind  to  think  o£  an  abstrac- 
tion alone,  wholly  unconnected  with  the  matter  from  which  it  is 
taken." 

We  say,  it  is  not  only  possible,  but  it  is  necessary 
to  think  some  abstractions  without  including  the  idea 
matter.  Take  as  an  instance  the  idea  of  mathematical 
points  and  lines.  What  Mr.  Reeve  means  is  that 
reality,  as  a  whole,  always  includes  matter,  energy, 
and  form — a  truth  which  we  have  never  denied. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  identify  "  material  and  real,"  for 
there  are  features  of  existence  that  are  real,  but  not 
material.  And  we  must  also  bear  in  mind  that  abstrac- 
tions do  not  denote  mere  fancies  or  nonentities.  Soul 
is  an  abstract  and  not  a  concrete  object  ;  yet  is  soul 
real. 

While  Mr.  Reeve  endows  adynamical  existences 
with  energy,  he,  on  the  other  hand,  attributes  conscious- 
ness to  all  matter  and  energy' — a  view  which  we  can- 
not accept.  We  grant  that  the  elements  of  conscious- 
ness are  present  in  everything  that  exists,  but  not  con- 
sciousness. 

Mr.  Reeve  probably  means  to  say,  and  if  this  be 
his  meaning  we  agree  with  him,  that  the  whole  world 
is  one  inseparable  whole  and  all  our  ideas,  matter, 
energy,  form,  consciousness,  etc.,  are  but  parts  of  it, 
features  that  have  been  abstracted  from  it  in  thought. 

1  See  line  S  in  the  last  paragraph  of  his  article. 


We  have  no  word  to  denote  the  various  parts  and 
features  of  reality  in  general,  except  such  words  as 
"things  or  somethings."  Sometimes  we  cannot  help 
using  the  word  "  thing  "  in  a  general  sense,  and  not  as  a 
synonym  of  "body, "or  "object, "or  "concrete  thing. " 
Therefore,  I  need  not  justify  myself  or  reply  to  Mr. 
Reeve's  criticism  in  his  footnote  on  page  4360,  where 
he  says : 

"How  can  there  be  a  thing  without  energy,  or  matter,  or 
form." 

The  context  in  which  I  used  the  word  "  thing  "  in  a 
general  sense,  and  the  instances  by  which  I  illustrate 
what  I  mean,  leave  no  doubt  about  the  meaning  of 
the  word,  which  is  sanctioned  by  common  usage.  I 
grant  there  are  no  concrete  objects  without  energy, 
matter,  or  form,  but  there  are  many  things  (i.  e.,  reali- 
ties or  real  features  of  existence)  from  the  conception 
of  which  the  notions  of  energy,  matter,  and  form  are 
excluded.  It  is  true  that  these  immaterial  realities 
(such  as  pure  forms,  feelings,  ideas,  the  meaning  of 
words)  are  not  things  in  themselves  ;  but  we  must  re- 
member that  matter  and  energy  are  neither  things  in 
themselves,  nor  are  they  objects,  i.  e.,  concrete  exist- 
ences, but  abstractions.' 

REAL  AND  UNREAL. 

Mr.  Reeve  touches  the  question  of  real  and  unreal. 
The  red  wafer  on  the  table  (or  rather  the  thing  which 
we  commonly  call  a  red  wafer),  of  which  Mr.  Reeve 
speaks,  is  a  fact ;  the  red  image  on  the  retina  is  also  a 
fact,  and  this  image,  when  telegraphed  to  the  brain, 
elicits,  by  its  combination  with  the  memories  of  several 
prior  experiences,  the  verdict,  "this  is  a  red  wafer," 
implying  that  it  is  a  substance  of  special  qualities,  re- 
flecting the  light  in  a  peculiar  way.  An  investigation 
of  the  wafer  with  the  help  of  other  senses,  will  prove 
that  all  our  anticipations  were  correct,  and  that  is  all 
we  mean  by  saying  the  wafer  is  real. 

Now  the  blue  after-image  appears  on  the  retina. 
The  blue  color-sensation  is  a  fact,  and  its  existence  is  as 
real  as  the  red  color-sensation  produced  by  the  red  wafer 
on  the  table.  The  nervous  irritation  of  this  blue  color- 
sensation  is  also  telegraphed  to  the  brain  where  it  en- 
ters into  relations,  in  the  same  way  as  the  red  image 
before,  with  memories  of  prior  experiences,  and  now  the 
verdict  appears,  "There  is  a  blue  wafer."  But  this  ver- 
dict, "There  is  a  blue  wafer, "  is  based  upon  a  false 
analogy,  and  the  blue  wafer,  which  is  actually  seen,  does 
not  exist  in  reality.  The  blue  wafer-sensation,  i.  e.  the 
after-image  is  real,  but  the  meaning  which,  by  a  combi- 
nation of  other  memories,  attaches  itself  to  the  blue  wa- 
fer image,  implying  that  a  blue  wafer  is  lying  on  the 

IThe  right  comprehension  of  the  nature  of  abstraction  is  of  great  impor- 
tance. We  refer  our  readers  to  an  article  of  ours  on  "Abstraction  "  which 
appeared  in  The  Open  Court.  No.  2S7  (Vol  VII,  p.  3569),  and  is  republished  in 
the  Printer  0/ Philosophy,  pp.  It8-I26. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4365 


table,  is  based  upon  a  fallacy.  When  the  hands  attempt 
to  grasp  the  blue  wafer  they  grope  through  the  empty 
air  and  do  not  find  it.  This  condition,  viz.,  that  the 
meaning  which  is  attached  to  a  certain  sensation,  or 
word,  or  combination  of  words,  will  not  be  verified,  and 
that  it  is  the  product  of  an  erroneous  inference  is  all 
that  the  word  "unreal"  means. 

ABSTRACT  AND   CONCRETE. 

We  have  to  add  here  that  real  and  unreal  are  a 
different  set  of  correlatives  from  abstract  and  concrete. 
All  abstracts,  if  they  are  true,  represent  realities  not 
less  than  concretes.  By  concrete  we  understand  ob- 
jects which  we  can  touch  and  the  limits  of  wliich  are 
defined.  A  table  is  a  concrete,  and  a  table  is  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  mass  in  a  definite  form  together  with 
the  energy  that  is  contained  in  it.  The  color  of  the 
table  is  not  a  concrete  thing,  it  is  an  abstract  ;  it  is  a 
part  of  the  table,  but  it  is  not  less  real  than  any  of  its 
other  parts. 

It  is  a  habit  of  thought,  traditionally  established,  to 
look  upon  abstracts  as  airy  nothingnesses.  But  they 
are  not.  On  the  contrary:  Abstracts  are,  as  a  rule, 
even  more  important  realities  than  the  crude  concrete 
objects  of  our  direct  sense-apperception.  The  soul  of 
man  is  not  a  concrete  object  of  sense-apperception,  it 
is  an  abstract,  and  yet  its  realit)-  is  indubitable,  and  it  is 
of  infinitely  greater  importance  than  material  realities.' 

The  sense-perceived  universe  of  matter  and  energy 
would  be  a  meaningless  jumble  if  it  were  nothing  but 
mass  in  motion.  The  appearance  of  mind  proves  that 
the  world  is  more  than  that.  The  ideas  of  matter  and 
energ}'  do  not  exhaust  all  the  traits  of  existence.  Ex- 
istence contains  also  the  elements  of  sentiency,  which 
blazes  up  in  the  consciousness  of  man,  and  the  actions 
that  take  place  are  such  as  to  allow  their  formulation 
in  what  we  call  natural  laws.  Natural  laws  are  ab- 
stractions; 3'et  they  are  not  phantoms,  but  descriptions 
of  reality.  The}'  portray,  if  they  are  true,  the  course 
of  nature  correctl}',  and  we  can,  relying  on  their  uni- 
versality, disclose  with  their  help  unknown  facts  that 
are  not  directly  perceptible.  Leverrier  observed  the 
disturbance  in  the  course  of  a  planet  and  inferred  that 
another  unseen  planet  must  have  been  the  cause  of 
the  disturbance.  Relying  on  the  universality  of  the 
laws  of  attraction,  he  concluded  from  a  number  of 
facts  positively  known,  the  existence  of  other  facts  not 
yet  known.  The  unknown  facts  are  not  unreal,  as  Mr. 
Reeve  says;  they  are  only  out  of  the  reach  of  our 
present  experience,  but  are  just  as  real  as  the  known 
facts.  When  afterwards  Galle  discovered  the  then 
unknown  planet  in  the  place  where  Leverrier  had  lo- 

1  We  cannot  agree  with  Mr.  Reeve's  definition  of  space,  whose  "  soul  "  is 
said  to  be  "  the  capacity  to  contain."  Space  is  real,  but  it  is  not  substan- 
tial. Space  is  not  a  box  that  contains  the  universe,  but  it  is  the  relational  of 
material  existences  ;  it  is  the  possibility  of  motion  in  all  directions. 


cated  it,  we  cannot  say  that  "the  abstraction  became 
a  reality,"  but  that  the  inference  made  was  justified. 
The  meaning  which  the  astronomer  attached  to  a  num- 
ber of  facts  found  its  verification. 

MIND   NOT  UNKNOWABLE. 

Mr.   Reeve  says  : 

"  No  human  being  can  know  what  mind  is.  because  he  cannot 
rise  superior  to  himself.  To  know  what  mind  is  he  must  be  su- 
perior to  himself,  and  that  is  impossible." 

We  reach  out  from  the  known  to  the  unknown, 
from  the  present  to  the  absent  and  also  to  the  future, 
from  the  sense-perceived  concrete  objects  to  the  in- 
visible interrelations  intelligible  only  b}'  acts  of  mental 
inference.  But  that  is  not  all.  We  can  transcend  our 
own  being.  It  is  not  true  that  in  order  to  understand 
a  thing  we  must  be  superior  to  it.  We  can  verj'  well 
understand  things  that  are  superior  to  ourselves,  for 
indeed  all  our  spiritual  being  consists  in  depicting  a 
reality  upon  which  our  life  in  all  its  details  and  with 
all  its  aspirations  depends.  This  great  All  in  its  won- 
drous harmony  and  awful  grandeur  is  the  God  whose 
behests  we  must  obey.  Its  boundless  infinitude  in  ils 
illimitable  eternality  is  unquestionably  our  superior, 
and  yet  what  is  science  but  our  constantly  increasing 
comprehension  of  its  numberless  m3'steries.  If  we  were 
able  to  understand  onl)'  what  is  inferior  to  ourselves, 
how  would  progress  be  possible?  And  progress  is  pos- 
sible ;  evolution  is  undeniable,  and  this  age  of  an  ad- 
vance in  all  directions  in  which  we  live  is  the  best 
evidence  of  the  possibility  that  we  can  not  only  under- 
stand realities  superior  to  ourselves,  but  that  we  can 
outgrow  and  transcend  our  own  inferiority  and  attain 
higher  and  ever  higher  planes  of  being,  in  which  we 
shall  be  superior  to  our  present  state  of  life.        p.  c. 


ROME  AND  SCIENCE. 

The  Chicago  Tribune  contains  a  brief  article  headed 
"  Crushing  Reply  to  Ingersoll,"  who  delivered  a  lec- 
ture on  the  Bible  on  last  Saturday  night  at  the  Metro- 
politan Opera  House  in  St.  Paul,  Minn.  Archbishop 
Ireland  spoke  on  Sunday  evening  on  the  same  sub- 
ject. He  eulogised  the  Scriptures  and  defied  the 
scoffer  to  ridicule  the  Bible,  Christianity,  and  along 
with  it  civilisation.      He  said  : 

"  How  is  it  that  Christendom  to-day,  as  during  the  last  two 
thcusand  years,  means  civilisation?  Where  Christ  is  not,  there 
is  barbarism  ;  there  is  servitude  of  the  weak,  despotism  of  the 
strong,  inhumanity  and  immorality." 

W^e  certainly  agree  with  the  Archbishop  that  due 
credit  must  be  given  to  Christianity  for  its  civilising 
influence  upon  Europe  and  America,  but  we  cannot 
join  him  when  he  says  "Where  Christ  is  not,  there  is 
barbarism."  Were  Plato  and  Aristotle  barbarians, 
was  Buddha  a  savage  ?     The  Archbishop  declares  : 


4366 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


■'The  words  most  glibly  repeated  by  unbelief— the  family, 
dignity  of  woman,  liberty,  fraternity— are  Christian  words,  and 
without  Christianity  they  would  be  meaningless.  Take  them  out 
of  your  world  of  unbelief." 

Without  denying  the  merits  of  Christianity  we  must 
not  forget  that  the  ideals  of  humanity  were  also  as- 
pired after  by  the  so-called  pagans.      Civilisation  is  a 
wider  concept  than  Christianity,  and  the  official  repre- 
sentatives of  Christianity  have  often  enough  opposed 
and  attempted  to  suppress  liberty  and  progress.     The 
Church  was,  upon  the  whole,  a  progressive  factor  dur- 
ing the  first  millennium   of  its  existence.      It  repre- 
sented a  more  rational  and  scientifically  higher  stand- 
point than  the  Teutonic  paganism  which  it  replaced, . 
and  it  stood  up  for  science  as  long  as  it  had  to  struggle 
for  its  existence.      It  became,  however,  a  reactionary 
power  as  soon  as  its  institutions  were  firmly  established. 
Scientific  advance,  political  liberty,  and  religious  inde- 
pendence had  to  be  attained  in  spite  of  the  Church  and 
under  a  constant  struggle  with  ecclesiastical  authority. 
The  Arabs  built  up  a  noble  civilisation  in  Spain,  while 
Christianity  was  still  steeped  in  barbarism,  and  modern 
civilisation  is  mainly  a  revival  of  the  classic  antiquity 
of  Greece,  which  took  its  deepest  roots  in  distinctly 
Protestant  countries.      The  leading  nations  are  with- 
out exception  distinctly  Protestant  nations — England, 
Germany,  North  America.    One  of  the  most  important 
causes  of  the  Sedan  of  France  lies  as  far  back  as  the 
edict  of  Nantes  and  the  night  of  St.  Bartholomew. 

The  Archbishop  is  one  of  the  most  progressive 
prelates  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  ;  and  he  says  : 

"What  will  unbelief  give  us?  It  replies,  'A  scientific,  ra- 
tional world,  beginning  with  itself  and  ending  with  itself.'  .  .  .  You 
give  us  a  scientific  world;  that  is,  you  give  us  a  material  world,  a 
humanity  without  a  soul  on  which  to  rise  to  the  skies,  a  humanity 
with  no  purpose." 

If  unbelief  gives  us  a  scientific  and  rational  world, 
let  us  by  all  means  accept  the  gift,  and  if  Christianity 
preaches  hostility  to  science  and  reason,  we  must  un- 
hesitatingly abandon  Christianity.  That  kind  of  Chris- 
tianity which  officially  preaches  an  unscientific  and 
irrational  world  cannot  be  the  true  religion.  If  there 
is  any  divine  revelation  it  is  science  ;  the  results  of 
science  (I  mean  proved  results  of  science  and  not  mere 
hypotheses  or  the  vagaries  of  pseudo-science)  are  the 
dicta  of  God.  The  ecclesiastical  rejection  of  Galileo 
does  not  refute  the  truth  of  his  propositions.  There  is 
nothing  catholic  except  science.  The  religion  of  science 
alone  is  what  the  Roman  Church  claims  to  be — truly 
orthodox  and  catholic. 

When  science  is  denounced  as  the  enemy  of  reli- 
gion, Colonel  IngersoU's  attacks  upon  Christianity  are 
justified,  and  all  denunciations  of  the  great  infidel  ora- 
tor will  only  serve  to  strengthen  him  and  his  partisans 
in  their  position.     The  words  of  Archbishop   Ireland 


prove  that  the  stirring  criticism  of  an  unbeliever  is 
needed  in  the  Church,  and  the  time  will  come  when 
Colonel  IngersoU's  reformatory  influence  upon  the  re- 
ligious life  of  Christianity  will  be  openly  recognised. 

p.  c. 


BOOK  NOTICES. 


At  last  Professor  Haeckel's  Confession  of  Fnilh  has  appeared 
in  English.  The  full  title  of  the  booklet  is  Monism  as  Connecting 
Religion  and  Science,  The  Confession  of  Faith  of  a  Man  of  Science. 
It  was  originally  an  informal  address  delivered  in  Altenburg  at  a 
meeting  of  thg  Naturforschende  Gesellschaft  des  Osterlandes.  In 
its  present  form,  however,  it  is  considerably  enlarged,  some  parts 
have  been  more  fully  worked  out,  and  copious  notes  treating  of 
the  mooted  questions  more  iir detail  and  containing  references  to 
the  literature  of  the  various  subjects,  have  been  supplied.  With 
respect  to  its  purpose,  it  was  the  author's  intention  first  "  to  give 
expression  to  that  rational  z'iew  of  the  world  which  is  being  forced 
upon  us  with  such  logical  rigor  by  the  modern  advancements  in 
our  knowledge  of  nature  as  a  unity";  and,  secondly,  to  "establish 
thereby  a  bond  hetiveen  religion  and  science."  "  In  monism,"  says 
the  author,  "  the  ethical  demands  of  the  soul  are  satisfied  as  well 
as  the  logical  necessities  of  the  understanding."  The  contents  of 
the  book  are  very  rich,  giving  in  broad  and  vigorous  outlines  a 
concise  sketch  of  the  state  of  modern  science  as  bearing  upon  the 
ultimate  problems  of  philosophy  and  religion,  but  more  especially 
of  the  knowledge  reached  in  the  more  elusive  subject  of  biology, 
in  which  Professor  Haeckel  is  such  a  distinguished  worker.  As 
the  book  received  editorial  discussion  in  The  Open  Court  (January, 
1893)  shortly  after  its  appearance  in  German,  and  as  its  excellences 
must  be  already  familiar  to  all  our  readers,  we  have  only  to  add 
that  it  has  found  in  Dr.  J.  Gilchrist  an  accurate  and  graceful 
translator.  The  stupendous  success  which  the  work  met  with  in 
Germany  may  be  gathered  from  the  fact  that  five  editions  of  it 
were  exhausted  in  five  months.  (London:  Adam  and  Charles 
Black.   New  York:   Macmillan  &  Co.   Pages,  117.   Price,  80  cents.) 


THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE   MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 


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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  386. 

THE  SOUL  AN  ENERGY.     C.  H.  Reeve 4359 

IS  THE  SOUL  AN  ENERGY  ?     Editor 4362 

ROME  AND  SCIENCE      Editor 4365 

BOOK  NOTICES 4366 


XsT} 


The  Open  Court. 


A   ^WEEKLY  JOURNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.   387.     (Vol.  IX.  — 4.) 


CHICAGO,   JANUARY  24,   1895. 


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Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


THE  FIRST  FRENCH  SOCIALIST. 

EV    M     D.    CONWAY. 

The  College  of  France  has  a  Professorship  of  the 
French  Revolution  :  a  Chair  of  the  same  kind,  espe- 
cially if  it  included  the  American  Revolution,  would 
be  much  more  useful  in  this  country  than  some  that 
are  super-endowed.  In  the  countries  called  civilised, 
many  of  the  finest  3'oung  men  and  women,  fresh  from 
schools  and  colleges,  are  plunging  into  all  manner  of 
schemes  for  reforming  the  world,  without  utilising  the 
experience  of  the  world.  They  prepare  for  themselves 
sad  disenchantments,  ending  in  reactions  and  cynical 
pessimism.  During  the  past  six  years,  or  from  the 
centenary  of  the  fall  of  the  Bastille,  there  has  hardly 
been  a  month  that  did  not  bring  the  hundredth  anni- 
versary of  some  event  in  France  whose  meaning  and 
instruction  are  reserved  for  to-day,  which  little  heeds 
them.  For,  as  Goethe  said,  "the  day  cannot  judge 
the  day":  it  requires  a  century  of  events  to  carry  the 
true  search-light  into  the  French  Revolution. 

This  year,  1895,  summons  before  the  historic  sense 
one  of  the  most  pathetic  figures  on  that  tragical  stage, 
— namely,  Francois  Babeuf.  This  first  Socialist,  now 
almost  forgotten  by  historj',  illustrated  in  his  brief  ca- 
reer the  humane  motives,  the  enthusiasms,  and  an- 
archical tendencies,  so  steadily  rgvealed  in  the  so- 
cialism of  to-da)',  which  is  derived  from  him  by  apos- 
tolic succession.  He  was  a  native  of  St.  Quentin,  born 
1764,  an  orphan  at  sixteen.  In  1790  he  was  editing 
at  Amiens  the  Correspondant  Picaid,  therein  writing 
fiery  articles  in  favor  of  the  Revolution.  Such  opin- 
ions were  too  advanced  for  that  region,  but  it  was  not 
safe  to  punish  them,  and  a  charge  of  forgery  was 
trumped  up  against  him.  He  was  acquitted,  and  in 
1793,  his  radicalism  becoming  more  popular,  he  was 
elected  administrator  of  the  Department  of  the  Somme. 
But  he  was  rather  too  independent  in  some  of  his 
criticisms  of  revolutionary  leaders ;  the  old  charge  was 
renewed,  and  he  was  sentenced  to  twenty  years  im.- 
prisonment.  He  escaped  to  Paris,  and  was  made 
Secretary  of  the  Relief  Committee  of  Commerce.  But 
he  denounced  the  atrocities  of  the  Committee  of  Pub- 
lic Safety,  and  therefor  was  of  course  imprisoned.  On 
the  wane  of  Robespierre's  power,  and  shortly  before 
his  fall,  Babeuf  was  released  by  the  Committee,  prob- 


ably because  they  knew  his  abhorrence  of  Robes- 
pierre, and  wanted  his  pen  to  aid  in  bringing  that  dic- 
tator to  the  guillotine.  But  the  leading  men  on  this 
Committee  were  quite  as  cruel  as  Robespierre,  and 
much  more  tricky,  and  they  had  no  intention  that 
Robespierrism  should  end  with  their  chief.  They  were 
disappointed  by  Babeuf,  now  widely  known  as  "Grac- 
chus Babeuf,"  as  he  had  named  himself ;  he  started  a 
Jonrtial  de  la  Liberie  de  la  Pressc,  and  severely  assailed 
this  Robespierrian  party.  But  early  in  1795  the  Gi- 
rondist party  rose  again,  and  the  Robespierrians  were 
dead,  fled,  or  exiled.  And  now  Babeuf  began  with  his 
socialistic  propaganda,  which  had  for  some  time  been 
the  thing  in  his  heart.  The  Girondists  were  republi- 
cans, and  they  were  alarmed  by  this  new  party  de- 
manding the  abolition  of  property.  So  they  suspended 
Babeuf's  journal,  and  he  was  for  a  short  time  impris- 
oned. Meantime  the  National  Convention,  which  had 
been  elected  to  form  a  Constitution,  and  for  nearly 
three  years  had  been  preventing  a  Constitution,  pre- 
pared one  which,  among  other  reactionary  features, 
instituted  a  property  qualification  for  suffrage.  Thomas 
Paine,  ill  as  he  was  after  ten  months'  imprisonment, 
endangered  his  convalescence  by  going  to  the  Con- 
vention and  pleading  against  this  property  provision, 
warning  them  of  the  danger  they  were  incurring.  "If 
you  subvert  the  basis  of  the  Revolution,  if  you  dis- 
pense with  principles  and  substitute  expedients,  you 
will  extinguish  that  enthusiasm  which  has  hitherto 
been  the  life  and  soul  of  the  Revolution ;  and  you  will 
substitute  in  its  place  nothing  but  a  cold  indifference 
and  self-interest,  which  will  again  degenerate  into  in- 
trigue, cunning,  and  effeminacy." 

The  "  Babouvists,"  as  Babeuf's  adherents  were 
called,  had  especially  petitioned  for  the  Constitution 
of  1793, — the  Constitution  framed  mainly  by  Paine 
and  Condorcet,  perhaps  the  nearest  thing  to  a  purely 
republican  Constitution  ever  written.  The  reactionary 
Constitution  was  nevertheless  adopted,  and  a  vast 
number  of  people  felt  it  as  an  outrage.  Of  these  Ba- 
beuf was  the  natural  leader,  and  a  very  dangerous  one. 
As  he  had  taken  the  name  of  the  Roman  tribune  who 
established  agrarian  law,  he  founded  a  new  journal, 
Tribun  du  Peiiplc,  which  became  the  voice  of  the  dis- 
contented.     And  now  the  old  Robespierrians  and  the 


4368 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


Royalists,  united  in  their  hatred  of  the  established 
government,  made  secret  overtures  to  Babeuf,  con- 
sented to  all  his  millennial  dreams,  and  with  him  or- 
ganised a  fraternity  called  "Equals,"  Although  the 
covert  Royalists  and  Robespierrians  meant  to  use  Ba- 
beuf as  a  tool,  the  movement  became  thoroughly  "  Ba- 
bouvist"  and  socialist,  and  at  the  close  of  1795  the 
"Equals"  had  in  Paris  as  many  as  17,000  members. 

Of  course,  no  such  army  as  that,  especially  of  vi- 
sionaries, could  gather  without  giving  battle.  Beside 
the  Club,  which  met  openly  in  the  Pantheon,  there 
was  a  secret  .society,  where  Babeuf  and  Lepelletier 
were  appointed  a  "Directory  of  Public  Safety."  Con- 
vinced that  their  mission  was  to  end  poverty  and  mis- 
ery, which  were  even  worse  than  under  the  monarchy, 
by  suppressing  all  inequality  of  possessions,  this  Di- 
rectory of  Public  Safety  resolved  to  supersede  the 
authorised  Directory  and  remove  the  Legislature.  The 
day  fixed  for  this  socialist  coup  d'etat  was  May  11,  1796. 
But  the  plot  was  betrayed  May  10,  Babeuf  arrested, 
and  his  papers  seized.  Among  these  was  a  proclama- 
tion of  the  new  socialistic  regime,  to  be  issued  after 
the  blow  was  struck.      It  declared  : 

"We  want  not  only  the  equality  of  the  'Rights  of 
Man';  we  wish  it  in  our  midst,  under  the  roof  of  our 
houses.  We  make  an}'  concessions  in  order  to  obtain 
it ;  for  it  we  shall  begin  afresh.  Perish,  if  need  be, 
all  the  arts,  provided  that  real  equality  is  left  us. 
Legislators  and  governors,  rich  and  unfeeling  propri- 
etors, you  try  in  vain  to  neutralise  our  holy  undertak- 
ing. You  say  that  we  wish  that  agrarian  law  which 
has  so  often  been  asked  from  you.  Be  silent,  ye  slan- 
derers !  The  agrarian  law,  or  division  of  land,  was  the 
sudden  desire  of  a  few  soldiers  without  principles,  of 
a  few  country  communities  inspired  by  instinct  and 
not  by  reason.  We  ask  for  something  more  sublime 
and  more  just, — the  common  good,  or  having  in  com- 
mon. Where  there  is  no  individual  property  the  land 
belongs  to  nobody,  its  fruits  belong  to  all.  You  fami- 
lies in  distress  come  and  sit  down  at  the  common  ta- 
ble, provided  by  Nature  for  all  her  children  !  People 
of  France,  open  your  eyes  and  heart  to  the  full  enjoy- 
ment of  happiness,  acknowledge  and  proclaim  the  Re- 
public of  Equal  Citizens  !  " 

Babeuf  and  his  intimate  disciple,  Darth(S,  probably 
the  best-hearted  of  all  the  conspirators,  were  alone 
sentenced  to  death.  The}'  stabbed  themselves,  or 
each  other,  in  prison,  but  did  not  die,  and  after  a 
night  of  anguish  were  carried  to  the  guillotine.  Such 
was  the  notable  coincidence  between  the  Roman  and 
the  French  Gracchus.  Nineteen  hundred  years  be- 
fore, the  tribune  Caius  Gracchus,  consecrated  to  the 
work  of  equalising  rich  and  poor,  escaped  from  the 
Senate  and  nobles  to  the  Grove  of  the  Furies  with  a 
single  servant,  who  slew  his  master  and  then  himself. 


In  the  winter  of  1 795-1 796  when  "  Gracchus  "  Ba- 
beuf was  planning  to  take  the  kingdom  of  heaven  by 
violence,  not  far  from  him  sat  "Common  Sense" 
Thomas  Paine,  equally  heavy-hearted  at  hearing  the 
cr}'  in  the  street,  "  Bread,  and  the  Constitution  of  '93.  " 
In  the  house  of  the  American  Minister,  Monroe,  he 
wrote  that  winter  his  pamphlet  "Agrarian  Justice,"  in 
which  he  maintained  that  all  human  beings  had  a  nat- 
ural right  in  the  bounties  of  the  earth.  But  the  land 
could  not  be  divided  between  them,  because  only  by 
culture  could  its  resources  be  sufficiently  increased  to 
support  mankind  ;  and  this  culture  had  so  combined 
the  soil,  in  which  all  have  some  natural  right,  with  the 
improvements  belonging  to  individuals,  that  they  can- 
not be  separated  without  injury  to  both.  Consequently 
the  share  of  each  in  the  earth  should  be  compensated 
by  an  equivalent.  All  landed  propert}',  in  passing  to 
heirs,  should  be  taxed,  and  a  fund  so  provided  for 
distribution.  A  hundred  years  ago  Paine  thus  pro- 
posed in  the  interest  of  the  people  that  inheritance 
duty  which  was  last  year  adopted  by  the  English  Par- 
liament. Amid  the  agitations  attending  the  Babeuf 
conspiracy  this  pamphlet  could  not  be  prudently  pub- 
lished. The  Babouvist  was  soon  followed  by  the  royal- 
ist conspiracy,  that  of  Pichegru,  on  whose  broken  back 
Napoleon  mounted  the  steps  that  led  to  his  throne. 
After  socialism,  royalism  ;  after  this,  military  despot- 
ism, which  is  the  only  realisable  form  of  socialism.  In 
publishing  his  pamphlet  "Agrarian  Justice,"  Paine  ad- 
dressed a  letter  to  the  Directory  and  the  Legislature, 
which  has  never  appeared  in  English,  and  may  well  be 
appended  to  the  story  of  the  first  socialist : 

"The  plan  contained  in  this  work  is  not  adapted 
for  any  particular  country  alone  :  the  principle  on 
which  it  is  based  is  general.  But  as  the  rights  of  man 
form  a  new  study  in. this  world,  and  one  needing  protec- 
tion from  priestly  impostures,  and  the  insolence  of  op- 
pressions too  long  established,  I  have  thought  it  best 
to  place  this  little  work  under  your  safeguard.  When 
we  reflect  on  the  long  and  dense  night  in  which  France 
and  all  Europe  have  remained  plunged  by  their  gov- 
ernments and  their  priests,  we  must  feel  less  surprised 
than  grieved  at  the  bewilderment  caused  by  the  first 
burst  of  light  that  dispels  the  darkness.  The  eye  ac- 
customed to  darkness  can  hardly  bear  at  first  the  broad 
daylight.  It  is  by  usage  the  eye  learns  to  see,  and  it  is 
the  same  in  passing  from  any  situation  to  its  opposite. 

"As  we  have  not  at  one  instant  renounced  all  our 
errors,  we  cannot  at  one  stroke  acquire  knowledge  of 
all  our  rights.  France  has  had  the  honor  of  adding  to 
the  word  Liberty  that  of  Equality  ;  and  this  word  sig- 
nifies essentially  a  principle  that  admits  of  no  grada- 
tion in  the  things  to  which  it  applies  ;  but  equality  is 
often  misunderstood,  often  misapplied,  and  often  vio- 
lated. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4369 


^'■Liberty  and  Property  are  words  expressing  all  those 
of  our  possessions  which  are  not  of  an  intellectual  na- 
ture. There  are  two  kinds  of  property.  Firstly,  nat- 
ural property,  or  that  which  comes  to  us  from  the 
Creator  of  the  Universe, — such  as  the  earth,  air,  wa- 
ter. Secondly,  artificial  or  acquired  property,  —  the 
invention  of  men.  In  the  latter  equality  is  impossi- 
ble ;  for  to  distribute  it  equally  it  would  be  necessary 
that  all  should  have  contributed  in  the  same  propor- 
tion, which  can  never  be  the  case  ;  and  this  being  the 
case,  every  individual  would  hold  on  to  his  own  prop- 
erty as  his  right  share.  Equality  of  natural  property 
is  the  subject  of  this  little  essay.  Every  individual  in 
the  world  is  born  therein  with  legitimate  claims  on  a 
certain  kind  of  propert)',  or  its  equivalent. 

"The  right  of  voting  for  persons  charged  with  exe- 
cution of  the  laws  that  govern  society  is  inherent  in  the 
word  libert}',  and  constitutes  the  equality  of  personal 
rights.  But  even  if  that  right  of  voting  were  inherent 
in  propert}',  which  I  deny,  the  right  of  suffrage  would 
still  belong  to  all  equally,  because,  as  I  have  said,  all 
individuals  have  legitimate  birthrights  in  a  certain 
species  of  propert}'.  I  have  always  considered  the 
present  Constitution  of  the  French  Republic  as  the 
best  organised sxstem  the  human  mind  has  yet  produced. 
But  I  hope  my  former  colleagues  will  not  be  offended 
if  I  warn  them  of  an  error  which  has  slipped  into  its 
principle.  Equality  of  the  right  of  suffrage  is  not 
maintained.  This  right  is  in  it  connected  with  a  con- 
dition on  which  it  ought  not  to  depend;  that  is  with 
the  proportion  of  a  certain  tax  called  'direct.'  The 
dignity  of  suffrage  is  thus  lowered  ;  and,  in  placing  it 
in  the  scale  with  an  inferior  thing,  the  enthusiasm  that 
right  is  capable  of  inspiring  is  diminished.  It  is  im- 
possible to  find  any  equivalent  counterpoise  for  the 
right  of  suffrage,  because  it  is  alone  worthy  to  be  its 
own  basis,  and  cannot  thrive  as  a  graft,  or  an  appen- 
dage. 

"Since  the  Constitution  was  established  we  have 
seen  two  conspiracies  stranded, — that  of  Babeuf,  and 
that  of  some  obscure  personages  who  decorate  them- 
selves with  the  despicable  name  of  'royalists.'  The 
defect  in  principle  of  the  Constitution  was  the  origin 
of  Babeuf's  conspiracy.  He  availed  himself  of  the  re- 
sentment excited  by  this  flaw  ;  and  instead  of  seeking 
a  remedy  by  legitimate  and  constitutional  means,  or 
proposing  some  measure  useful  to  society,  the  con- 
spirators did  their  best  to  renew  disorder  and  confu- 
sion, and  constituted  themselves  personallj'  into  a  'Di- 
rectory,' which  is  formally  destructive  of  election  and 
representation.  They  were,  in  fine,  extravagant  enough 
to  suppose  that  society,  occupied  with  its  domestic  af- 
fairs, would  blindly  yield  to  them  a  directorship  usurpe  d 
b}'  violence. 

"  The  conspiracy  of  Babeuf  was  followed  in  a  few 


months  by  that  of  the  royalists,  who  foolishly  flattered 
themselves  with  the  notion  of  doing  great  things  by 
feeble  or  foul  means.  They  counted  on  all  the  dis- 
contented, from  whatever  cause,  and  tried  to  rouse,  in 
their  turn,  the  class  of  people  who  had  been  following 
the  others.  But  these  new  chiefs  acted  as  if  they 
thought  societ}'  had  nothing  more  at  heart  th.an  to 
maintain  courtiers,  pensioners,  and  all  their  train,  un- 
der the  contemptible  title  of  roj'alty.  My  little  essay 
will  disabuse  them,  by  showing  that  society  is  aiming 
at  a  very  different  end — maintaining  itself. 

"We  all  know,  or  should  know,  that  the  time  dur- 
ing which  a  revolution  is  proceeding  is  not  the  time 
when  its  resulting  advantages  can  be  enjoyed.  But 
had  Babeuf  and  his  accomplices  taken  into  considera- 
tion the  condition  of  France  under  this  constitution, 
and  compared  it  with  what  it  was  under  the  tragical 
revolutionary  government,  and  during  the  execrable 
Reign  of  Terror,  the  rapidity  of  the  alteration  must 
have  appeared  to  them  very  striking  and  astonishing. 
Famine  has  been  replaced  by  abundance,  and  by  the 
well-founded  hope  of  a  near  and  increasing  prosperity. 

"As  for  the  defect  in  the  Constitution,  I  am  fully 
convinced  that  it  will  be  rectified  constitutionally,  and 
that  this  step  is  indispensable  ;  for  so  long  as  it  con- 
tinues it  will  inspire  the  hopes  and  furnish  the  means 
of  conspirators  ;  and  for  the  rest,  it  is  regrettable  that 
a  Constitution  so  wisely  organised  should  err  so  much 
in  its  principle.  This  fault  exposes  it  to  other  dangers 
which  will  make  themselves  felt.  Intriguing  candi- 
dates will  go  about  among  those  who  have  not  the 
means  to  pay  the  direct  tax  and  pay  it  for  them,  on 
condition  of  receiving  their  votes.  Let  us  maintain 
inviolably  equality  in  the  sacred  right  of  suffrage  ;  pub- 
lic security  can  never  have  a  basis  more  solid.  Sahit 
et  Frateniitc.  Your  former  colleague, 

Thom.as  Paine." 

Even  while  Paine  wrote  the  dangers  were  thicken- 
ing. Seventeen  thousand  heads  in  Paris,  which  had 
shared  Babeuf's  hatied  of  a  Constitution  disfranchising 
the  poor,  were  not  cut  off  with  the  head  of  their  leader  ; 
the}-  remained  to  welcome  any  leader  able  to  behead 
the  Directory  in  its  turn.  The  Corsican  saw  this  ;  he 
said  "The  people  do  not  care  for  liberty,  they  want 
equalit}',"  and  equalised  them  by  turning  them  into  an 
army. 

PROFESSOR  HAECKEL'S  NEW  PHYLOGENY.i 

BY  THOMAS  J     m'C0RM.-\CK. 

Prof.  Ernst  H.-\eckel  writes  in  a  letter  to  the  edi- 
tor of  The  Open  Court,  accompanying  an  advance  copy 
of  his  Sxsfenidtische  Phxlogcnie  :    "This  work  embodies 

1  Systematische  Fhylogenie  dfr  Protisten  tntd  PJlanzcit,  Von  Ernst  Haeckel, 
Jena.  Erster  Tlieil  des  Enlwurfs  einer  systematischen  Phylogenie.  Berlin: 
George  Reinier.     1894.     Pages,  400  ;  Price,  10  M. 


4370 

in  compendious  form  the  results  of  thirty  years  of 
study  and  research";  and  we  propose  to  present  here 
in  a  few  serial  articles,  after  a  short  prefatory  account 
of  the  work  as  a  whole,  translations  of  a  few  selections 
treating  important  general  questions. 

The  word  ' '  phylogeny  "  means  the  ancestral  history 
of  the  race,  as  distinguished  from  ontogeny,  the  life-his- 
tory of  the  inilividiial.  Professor  Haeckel's  Phylogeny 
is  the  first  attempt  at  a  broad  reconstruction  of  the 
historical  development  of  the  organic  world  on  the 
basis  of  the  data  lately  furnished  by  Paleontology, 
Ontogeny,  and  Morphology.  The  idea  of  the  Phylog- 
eny was  first  broached  in  a  general  way  in  the  author's 
General  Morphology  (1866)  and  afterwards  expounded 
in  popular  form  in  his  widely  known  Natural  History 
of  Creation.  The  complaint  was  made,  and  justly, 
says  Professor  Haeckel,  that  the  phylogenetic  hypoth- 
eses there  advanced  lacked  the  necessary  scientific 
demonstration.  To  furnish  that  demonstration  is  the 
purpose  of  the  present  work,  a  task  rendered  possible 
by  the  recent  tremendous  accumulation  of  zoological 
and  botanical  material. 

The  philosophical  and  historical  point  of  view  of 
the  author  has  not  changed  since  1866,  being  the  same 
as  that  adopted  in  the  General  Morphology.  It  is  his 
effort  to  reach  a  rigorous  and  scientific  knowledge  of 
organic  forms,  and  of  the  causes  that  produced  them, 
by  the  study  of  the  intimate  causal  relations  obtaining 
between  phylogeny  and  ontogeny.  Adhering  to  the 
fundamental  biogenetic  law,  which  he  first  promul- 
gated, he  enters  the  lists  as  an  outspoken  antagonist 
of  that  newest  movement  in  embryology,  which,  as 
evolutional  mechanics,  seeks  to  explain  the  facts  of 
ontogeny  physically  and  directly,  without  reference  to 
the  history  of  the  race.  In  the  struggle  now  raging 
anent  the  theory  of  heredity,  Professor  Haeckel's  posi- 
tion is  thus  clearly  determined.  Weismann's  molecu- 
lar theorj'  of  the  continuity  of  the  germ-plasm  he  rejects 
in  toto,  as  unsubstantiated  by  facts  and  philosophically 
unsound.  In  contradistinction  to  that  theory,  he  up- 
holds the  doctrine  of  progressive  heredity,  citing  count- 
less examples  to  demonstrate  the  heredity  of  acquired 
characters.  A  good  resume  of  his  views  on  this  point 
was  published  some  time  ago  in  The  Open  Court,  No. 

338. 

The  present  work  is  not  a  text  book,  but  presup- 
poses a  good  preparatory  knowledge  of  natural  history 
and  biology.  We  translate  only  the  passages  of  gen- 
eral interest.  The  volume  before  us,  which  is  the  first 
part  of  the  work,  treats  of  protists'   and   plants,  and 

1  Protists,  or  Protista,  one  of  the  kingdoms  of  animated  nature,  which 
Haeckel  proposed  in  1866  as  embracing  all  tliose  lower  forms  of  life  which  can 
be  regarded  neitlier  as  true  plants  nor  as  true  animals.  It  includes  only  uni- 
cellular organisms  as  distinguished  from  the  second  organic  kingdom,  or  His- 
tones,  which  comprises  all  multicellular  organisms.  This  division  of  animated 
nature  rests  upon  morphological  distinctions;  the  ordinary  division  intQ 
plants  and  animals  rests  upon  physiological  differences. 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


will  be  followed  before  the  close  of  1895  by  two  other 
parts,  on  \'ertebrate  and  Invertebrate  Animals. 

ON  THE  METHODS  OF  PHVLOGENV. 

As  is  the  case  in  all  true  sciences,  two  different 
methods  must  be  employed  for  the  solution  of  the 
problems  of  Phylogeny — the  empirical  method  and  the 
philosophical  method.  First,  by  the  empirical  method 
we  must  acquire  as  extensive  a  knowledge  as  possible 
of  the  phylogenetic  facts ;  then,  on  the  basis  of  the 
facts  obtained  we  must  proceed,  by  the  philosophical 
method,  to  a  knowledge  of  the  phylogenetic  causes. 
Neither  method,  however,  can  be  used  alone;  on  the 
contrary,  loth  must  be  kept  steadily  before  the  mind. 
For  acquiring  really  valuable  results,  observation  and 
reflexion  must  go  constantly  hand  in  hand.  Only  by 
noting  this  precept  is  the  high  scientific  import  of  an- 
cestral history  to  be  appreciated.  If  our  mind  dis- 
covers in  the  observation  of  the  marvellous  facts  of 
phylogeny  an  inexhaustible  source  of  highest  pleasure 
and  most  varied  inspiration,  on  the  other  hand,  it  de- 
rives from  a  knowledge  of  the  productive  causes  the 
highest  satisfaction  for  its  intellectual  needs. 

EMPIRICAL  PHVLOGENV. 

It  is  the  purpose  of  empirical  phylogeny  to  acquire 
as  comprehensive  a  knowledge  as  possible  of  the  facts 
furnished  in  such  inexhaustible  abundance  by  the  three 
great  archives  of  the  ancestral  history  of  the  race — by 
Palaeontology,  Ontogeny,  and  Morphology.  The  more 
numerous  the  sound  observations  in  these  three  pro- 
vinces are,  the  deeper  the  analysis  of  them  is  pushed, 
the  more  distinct  and  less  equivocal  the  establish- 
ment of  all  details  is,  the  more  valuable  will  be  the 
experimental  results  reached.  By  the  great  progress 
made  in  recent  years  in  the  collection  of  materials  and 
in  the  perfection  of  technical  methods  of  investigation 
our  empirical  horizon  has  been  extraordinarily  wi- 
dened. On  the  other  hand,  we  have  been  made  to 
feel  the  more  vividly  by  this  extension  that  our  em- 
pirical knowledge  of  this  limitless  domain  will  forever 
bear  a  fragmentary  character  and  exhibit  deplopable 
gaps.  Collect  in  the  future  as  many  fossils  as  we  will, 
learn  the  ontogenetic  histories  of  as  many  embryos, 
the  complicated  phj'sical  structure  of  as  many  species 
of  animals  and  plants  as  we  may,  still  these  "phjlo- 
genetic  facts  of  the  present  "will  alwa}'s  bear  a  ridicu- 
lously small  proportion  to  the  countless  forms,  now 
absolutely  vanished,  which  the  historical  development 
of  the  organic  terrestrial  world  of  forms  has  called  into 
existence  in  the  millions  of  years  that  are  past.  Hence, 
for  timid  and  illiberal  naturalists  to  proclaim  it  unper- 
missible,  to  venture  upon  the  enunciation  of  phylo- 
genetic hypotheses  and  theories  before  all  the  facts 
bearing  upon  the  question  are  sufficiently  known,  is  to 
give   up  definitively  all  research  whatever  of  a  phyla- 


THE     OF»EN     COURT. 


4371 


genetic  character.  Happily,  our  phylogenetic  records 
speak  for  every  thoughtful  and  penetrating  inquirer  a 
more  eloquent  language  than  is  suspected  by  their  op- 
ponents. Profounder  reflexion  and  a  critical  compari- 
son of  the  empirical  materials  alone  are  required  for 
reaching  a  highly  satisfactory  knowledge  of  the  phylo- 
genetic processes. 

PHILOSOPHICAL   PHVLOGENV. 

On  philosophical  phylogeny  or  speculative  ances- 
tral history  falls,  accordingl}',  the  task  of  erecting,  on 
the  basis  of  the  knowledge  thus  empiricall)'  won,  a 
towering  fabric  of  hypotheses,  of  bringing  into  causal 
relationship  the  isolated  facts,  and  of  proceeding  from 
a  knowledge  of  productive  causes  to  the  construction 
of  a  comprehensive  //wory  of  ancestral  development. 
The  general  principles  which  it  applies  in  this  task  are 
the  same  as  those  employed  in  all  other  true  sciences. 
First,  by  extensive  critical  comparison  and  combina- 
tion of  related  experiences  it  must  gain  an  inductive 
knowledge  of  the  province  in  question.  Since,  how- 
ever, owing  to  the  incompleteness  of  the  empirical 
material,  such  knowledge  must  ever  be  limited  in  ex- 
tent, it  must  also  employ  unstintedl}'  the  deduitive 
method.  In  keeping  thus  constantly  before  it  the  full, 
broad  extent  of  its  task,  by  connecting  together  into 
a  natural  whole  through  appropriate  synthesis  the  in- 
dividual details  analyticall}'  reached,  its  efforts  for  ob- 
taining a  satisfactor}'  glimpse  into  the  great  natural 
laws  of  the  origin  and  disappearance  of  organic  forms, 
are  rewarded. 

It  would  be  absurd,  of  course,  to  require  of  phil- 
osophical phylogeny  the  credentials  of  an  "exact" 
science,  for  she  is  and  must  remain  in  the  very  nature 
of  the  case  an  "historical"  science.  Nevertheless, 
whosoever  possesses  the  least  appreciation  for  the 
value  of  historical  research  generally,  whosoever  lets 
that  pass  as  scientific  knowledge,  such  a  person  can- 
not fail,  on  careful  study,  also  to  be  convinced  of  the 
high  scientific  importance  of  philosophical  phylogen}'. 
It  will  suffice  to  refer  to  the  most  important  of  all  our 
phylogenetically  acquired  results,  to  the  answer  to  that 
question  of  all  questions,  the  question  of  "man's  place 
in  nature,"  and  of  his  origin.  We  have  reached  by  in- 
duction a  settled  conviction  of  the  unity  of  the  verte- 
brate type  ;  by  deduction  we  infer  from  this,  with  the 
same  certainty,  that  man  also,  being  a  true  vertebrate 
animal,  is  derived  from  the  same  type. 

MONLSTIC   PRINCIPLES   OF   PHYLOGENY. 

The  main  fundamental  principles  controlling  our 
analysis  of  the  phenomena  and  our  knowledge  of  their 
causes  are  the  same  in  phylogeny  as  in  the  other  nat- 
ural sciences,  and  special  reference  to  their  monistic 
character  here  will  no  doubt  seem  supererogatory. 
But  it  is  essential,  nevertheless,  because  with  respect 


to  a  part  of  the  phenomena  to  be  here  investigated, 
dogmatic  and  dualistic  prejudices  and  even  mj'stical 
views  are  largely  upheld.  For  example,  this  is  true  of 
the  problem  of  archigonj','  or  the  original  spontaneous 
generation  of  life,  of  the  origin  of  adaptive  organisa- 
tions, of  the  origin  of  the  psychical  life,  of  the  creation 
of  man,  etc.  Many  naturalists  still  regard  these  and 
similar  difficult  questions  of  phylogeny  as  insoluble, 
or  the}'  assume  for  their  explanation  supernatural  and 
dualistic  dogmas  which  are  totally  incompatible  with 
true  monistic  principle.  Especial!}-  does  that  old 
tcleological  view  of  the  world  count  to-da}'  numerous 
adherents  which  seeks  to  explain  the  procedure  of 
phylogenesis  from  a  premeditated  "  tendenc}'  to  an 
end,"  or  b}-  a  "  plan  of  adaptive  creation,"  or  "  phylo- 
genetic vital  force,"  and  the  like.  All  these  dualistic 
and  vitalistic  theories  logically  lead  either  to  totally 
obscure  mystical  dogmas  or  to  the  anthropomorphic 
conception  of  a  personal  creator — of  a  demiurge  who 
sketches,  in  the  manner  of  a  clever  architect,  "  build- 
ing plans"  for  his  organic  creations  and  afterwards 
executes  them  in  the  style  of  the  different  "species." 
By  their  very  nature  these  teleological  dogmas  are  ut- 
terl}'  incompatible  with  the  accepted  mechanical  prin- 
ciples of  a  sound  natural  science.  More  than  that, 
they  have  been  rendered  entirely  superfluous  and  com- 
pletely overthrown  hy  the  theory  of  natural  selection, 
which  has  definitivel}'  solved  the  great  riddle  of  how 
the  adaptive  arrangements  of  organised  life  could  be 
produced  by  non-purposefuUy  acting  natural  mechan- 
ical processes.  Teleological  mechanics  has  here  dem- 
onstrated the  fact  of  incessant  self-  regulation  in  the  his- 
torical development  of  every  single  organism  as  also  of 
all  organic  nature.  This  purely  monistic  principle  is 
the  philosophical  load-star  of  our  ph3'logeny. 

CAUSES  OF  PHYLOGENESIS. 

The  import  of  the  stupendous  progress  which  has 
been  made  in  our  comprehension  of  nature  through  the 
establishment  of  the  mechanico-monistic  and  the  refu- 
tation of  the  teleologico  mjstical  principles,  is  no- 
where more  forcibly  revealed  than  in  our  knowledge 
of  the  phylogenetic  causes.  As  such,  are  recognised 
to  day  only  real  mechanical,  or  efficient,  causes  ;  all 
so  called  teleological  or  final  causes  are  rejected.  Be- 
fore the  discovery  of  the  principle  of  selection,  phi- 
losophers fancied  the}'  could  not  get  along  without 
final  causes  ;  to-day  these  appear  to  us  not  only  as  use- 
less and  uncalled  for  but  as  downright  misleading.  Just 
as  the  unbiased  investigation  of  the  facts  of  ethnology 
has  compelled  us  to  give  up  the  paramount  idea  of  a 
"moral  world-order"  dominant  in  history,  so  the  un- 
prejudiced study  of  phylogeny  has  forced  us  to  aban- 

\Archigony,  from  two  Greek  words  meaning  "primordial  origin,"  here  re- 
ferring to  the  first  spontaneous  generation  of  life  as  due  to  natural  mechanical 
causes,  and  not  in  the  old  sense  of  ^ent-ratio  cequivoca. 


437^ 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


don  the  idea  of  a  "wise  plan  of  creation"  in  the  or- 
ganic world.  The  theory  of  natural  selection  has 
proved  that  the  "struggle  for  life  "  is  the  great  uncon- 
sciously acting  regulator  of  the  evolution  of  the  race, 
and  that  in  a  twofold  way:  first,  as  a  competitive  strug- 
gle for  the  necessities  of  life  ;  and  secondly,  as  a  strug- 
gle for  existence  against  foes  and  dangers  of  all  kinds. 
Natural  selection  exhibits  its  creative  activity  in 
the  struggle  for  existence  by  means  of  two  physiolo- 
gical functions  of  organisms — heredity  (as  a  constituent 
aspect  of  propagation)  and  adaptation  (as  a  change  in 
metabolism  and  in  nutrition).  These  two  "forma- 
tive functions"  (each  operating  with  numerous  modi- 
fications of  activity)  are  everywhere  found  acting  upon 
one  another — heredity  as  a  conservative,  adaptation  as 
a  progressive  factor.  As  the  most  important  outcome 
of  that  reciprocal  action  we  regard  progressive  heredity, 
or  the  "heredity  of  acquired  characters."  Use  and 
disuse  of  organs,  change  of  relation  to  the  external  or- 
ganic world,  direct  influence  of  inorganic  environments, 
crossing  in  sexual  propagation,  and  other  mechanical 
causes,  operate  incessantly  in  this  process  of  selection. 

COXTIXUITY   OF   PHVLOGEN'ESIS. 

Like  the  historical  development  of  the  inorganic 
earth,  so  that  of  the  inorganic  world  of  forms  is  an  un- 
interrupted uniform  process.  The  method  of  this  pro- 
cess is  a  purely  mechanical  one,  free  from  all  conscious 
teleological  influences,  and  the  mechanical  causes  of 
this  continuous  process  have  been  at  all  times  the 
same  as  to-day  ;  only  the  conditions  and  relations  in 
which  these  causes  have  operated  together  are  subject 
to  a  slow  and  constant  change,  and  this  change  itself 
is  a  consequence  of  the  mechanical  cosmogenesis,  of 
the  great  unconscious  developmental  process  of  the 
All.  And  these  grand  monistic  principles  of  continuity 
and  of  actualism,  of  mechanical  causality  and  natural 
unity,  hold  just  as  good  for  phylogeny  as  for  geology. 

In  apparent  contradiction  to  these  "eternal,  rigid, 
and  glorious  laws  "  both  the  geological  process  in  the 
order  of  the  sedimentary  strata  of  the  earth's  crust, 
and  the  simultaneous  phylogenetic  process  in  the  order 
of  the  species  of  its  organic  inhabitants,  show  numer- 
ous gaps,  breaks,  and  interruptions.  Nevertheless, 
here  as  there  this  apparent  discontinuity  of  the  his- 
torical transmutations  rests  either  upon  the  incom- 
pleteness of  our  empirical  knowledge  or  upon  secon- 
dary modifications  which  have  destroyed  or  obscured 
the  primary  conditions. 


RELIGION  IN  JAPAN. 

BY  C.    PFOUNDES. 

Japan's  indigenous  cultus,  known  to  Occidentals  as 
Shintoism,  is  a  compound  of  ancestral  and  hero  wor- 
ship, in  which  the  worthies  of  myth  and  legend  find  a 
place  amongst  historical  personages.     The  forefathers 


of  the  imperial  family,  and  not  a  few  of  the  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty-three  Mikados,  from  Jin-mu  to  the 
present,  in  unbroken  line  for  more  than  twenty-five 
and  a  half  centuries,  are  included.  The  writer  has  re- 
cently visited  the  burial  place  of  Jin-mu  Ten  O  and 
many  others. 

There  are  shrines  in  numerous  places  tliroughout 
the  empire,  where  divine  honors  are  paid  to  the  prin- 
cipal deities  of  this  class  by  a  constant  stream  of  pil- 
grims. 

With  the  introduction  of  Chinese  literature,  came 
many  modifications  in  Japanese  ideas,  religion,  and 
politics,  as  also  in  their  moral  philosophj-  and  the  art 
of  government  ;  this  was  no  mere  servile  copj'ing  and 
was  effected  several  centuries  before  Buddhism  gained 
a  footing  in  the  land. 

The  imperial  prince  Shotoku  Tai-shi  (A.  D.  582- 
621)  was  a  zealous  promotor  of  Buddhism;  he  orig- 
inated a  movement  for  the  thorough  examination  and 
reorganisation  of  Shintoism,  and  materially  aided  in  its 
amalgamation  with  Buddhism. 

Shin  may  be  translated  divine  spirit,  and  to  as  path 
or  way. 

As  the  various  schools  of  Buddhist  teaching  be- 
came established  in  Japan,  Aryan  ideas  on  morals, 
philosophy,  metaphysics,  etc.,  percolated  through  the 
Turanian  strata  of  the  old  system,  and  permeating  the 
life  of  the  people,  became  closely  identified  with  it. 

The  philosophy  of  Lao-tze,  and  of  its  later  students, 
the  Taoists,  crossed  to  Japan,  bringing  with  it  some 
more  recent,  and  less  admirable  traits. 

With  the  advent  of  Europeans  in  Japan,  three  cen- 
turies ago,  another  phase  was  entered  on  ;  and  not- 
withstanding the  strenuous  efforts  of  the  defunct  Shogu- 
nate,  the  Tokugana  regime,  to  obliterate  Christianity, 
there  remained  permanent  traces  of  the  infiltration, 
especially  of  the  efforts  of  the  Roman  Catholic,  chiefly 
Jesuit,  priests,  who  had  been,  for  a  brief  period  so  suc- 
cessful in  proselytising. 

During  the  period  in  which  the  country  was  closed 
to  the  outer  world,  a  period  of  more  than  two  centu- 
ries, ingress  and  egress  were  equally  impossible  ;  the 
Hollanders  were  the  only  medium,  and  that  through 
official  channels. 

With  the  opening  of  certain  ports  to  foreign  trade, 
which  was  brought  about  by  Commodore  Perr3''s  expe- 
dition, commenced  a  struggle  between  the  people  and 
the  officials,  between  the  popular  craving  for  knowl- 
edge of  the  outer  world  and  the  official  anxiety  to  check, 
or  at  least  control  and  direct  all  communication  be- 
tween foreigners  and  natives. 

With  the  collapse  of  the  Shogunate  ended  this 
struggle,  so  far  as  it  was  official,  and  the  old  prejudices 
slowly  faded  away. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4373 


Then  ever5'thing  foreign  became  the  fashion  :  for  a 
time  imitation  of  the  foreigner  was  the  craze. 

The  abohtion  of  the  Buddhist  religion,  at  least  in 
its  outward  form,  as  also  the  destruction  of  the  temples, 
was  seriously  contemplated.  Buddhism  was  found, 
however,  to  be  too  firmly  rooted  in  the  life  of  the  peo- 
ple, to  be  thus  flippantly  dealt  with.  The  instigators 
were  a  small  percentage  of  inexperienced  schoolmen 
and  students  with  the  merest  smattering  of  Western 
knowledge,  and  only  very  superficially  educated  even 
according  to  native  ideas  in  the  literature,  history,  and 
religion  of  their  country;  they  were  mostly  provincial 
young  clansmen. 

This  was  the  foreign  Christian  missionaries'  oppor- 
tunity. A  few  who  had,  from  a  long  residence,  learned 
the  vernacular,  and  gained  some  influence,  strove  hard 
to  have  Christianity  officially  recognised  ;  and  large 
numbers  of  missionaries  flocked  to  Japan  from  Europe 
and  from  America. 

As  residence  in  the  interior  was  restricted  by  treaty, 
the  increasing  number  of  missionaries  at  the  treaty 
ports  became  a  difficulty;  and  in  order  to  gain  access 
to  the  interior  they  offered  to  teach  in  the  schools,  for 
very  little  salar)',  or  none  at  all.  The  article  • '  foreign 
teacher"  became  cheap,  and  has  been,  since,  a  "drug 
on  the  market." 

Schools  were  built  with  the  money  subscribed  in 
Europe  and  America  ;  but  it  is  a  well-known  fact  that 
onl}'  a  small  percentage  of  the  pupils  become  really 
converted  to  Christianity,  or  rather  to  one  or  other  of 
the  numerous  creeds  of  the  many  sects  represented  ; 
the  most  zealous  natives  being  those  actually  in  re- 
ceipt of  a  salary,  or  other  inducement,  or  who  hope  to 
receive  some  ultimate  material  benefit. 

A  notable  result  of  the  activity  of,  and  the  compe- 
tition amongst,  the  foreign  Christian  missionaries,  was 
the  awakening  of  the  Buddhists  from  their  indifference. 
A  strong  outward  pressure  is  now  arousing  the  Bud- 
dhist priesthood  from  their  old  apathy. 

Efforts  are  being  made  to  increase  the  number  of 
the  preparatory  seminaries  of  the  various  sects,  where 
the  acolytes  are  trained  and  drafted  for  the  theological 
colleges  at  the  chief  centres  of  the  sects.  As  means  . 
and  circumstances  permit,  the  course  of  study  is  being 
widened  and  improved  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of 
the  more  narrow-minded  and  bigoted,  and  in  the  face 
of  the  indifference  of  those  who  do  not  see  beyond  their 
own  narrow  sphere,  and  whose  energy  is  exhausted  in 
the  perfunctionary  routine  service  of  their  own  small 
circle. 

Anything  like  co-operation  is  at  present  very  diffi- 
cult, not  only  between  the  several  sects,  but  even 
amongst  the  sub-sects  that  are  distinguished  only  by- 
details  of  church  government  and  minor  routine. 

Since  the  writer's  arrival  in  Japan  eighteen  months 


ago,  he  has  been  moving  about,  visiting  the  principal 
towns  and  centres  of  population,  lecturing  to  the  na- 
tives in  the  Buddhist  temples,  speaking  the  vernacu- 
lar, which  he  learned  when  visiting  the  country  for- 
merly— viz. .  in  1863-1865,  1866-186S.  1873-  1876.  Lec- 
turing and  lodging  in  the  temples  of  the  different  sects, 
opportunit}'  has  been  afforded  him  of  meeting  and  con- 
versing with  the  priests  and  the  principal  members  of 
their  congregations  throughout  the  whole  country. 

Notwithstanding  the  national  characteristic  suspi- 
cion and  dislike  of  foreigners  by  the  old  people,  and 
the  envious  and  jealous  feeling  prompting  a  hostile 
and  discourteous  attitude  of  the  younger  men,  \-et  in 
spite  of  my  being  an  alien  there  has  been,  on  the  whole, 
much  kindly  feeling  and  hospitality  shown  to  me.  The 
criticisms  that  it  is  incumbent  upon  a  conscientious 
lecturer  to  offer  have  been  received  in  good  part,  and 
ni}'  sympathy  with  the  national  aspirations  has  been 
enthusiastically  reciprocated. 

The  exceptional  experience  thus  gained,  has  been 
altogether  independent  of  the  medium  of  an  interpreter 
or  go-between. 

The  writer  is  of  opinion  that  Buddhism  has  too 
firm  a  grip  on  the  Japanese,  as  well  as  other  Asiatic 
peoples,  to  be  lightly  set  aside  ;  it  has  entered  too  com- 
pletely into  their  dail}'  home  life.  In  every  house  there 
is  the  family-altar  in  the  principal  living-room,  whereon 
are  the  memorial  tablets  of  forebears  and  departed  rela- 
tives. The  emotional  needs,  the  sentiments,  hopes, 
and  fears,  of  the  present,  and  of  the  future,  all  centre 
round  the  Buddhist  cult. 

In  the  Jo-do — and  its  offshoot  the  Shiu-shiii — the 
name  of  the  Amitabha  Buddha  is  continually  invoked  ; 
faith  in  the  saving  help  and  power  of  this  personifica- 
tion of  the  ideal  of  the  illimitable  life  (immortality) 
and  boundless  intellectual  illumination  (all-permeat- 
ing, ever-enduring  mental  light);  and  hope  of  re-birth 
in  that  purer,  happier  hereafter  over  which  this  Bud- 
dha is  believed  to  preside. 

The  term  Jo-do  is  the  Sukhavati  of  the  Sanskrit, 
Shin-shin  may  be  translated  as  new  sect,  but  b}'  its  fol- 
lowers a  character  that  means  "  true  "  is  used. 

In  the  Zen  (from  the  Sanskrit  Dhyana)  sect  the 
Shak}'a  Buddha  is  mostly  revered,  and  the  principle 
is  "abstract  and  profound  meditation,  "in  fact,  "think- 
ing out "  the  great  problem  for  one's  self. 

The  Ten-dai  so  called  from  Mount  Tien-tae,  in 
China,  where  the  chief  monastery  is  situated,  teaches 
from  the  Saddharma-pundarika  Sutra,  known  to  Occi- 
dentals as  "the  Lotus  of  the  good  Law;  and  the 
Nichiren,  an  offshoot,  called  after  its  founder,  repeats 
the  title  of  the  sutra,  in  Chino-Japanese,  as  an  invoca- 
tion. Mysticism  enters  somewhat  into  this  sect.  The 
Shin-gon  (in  Sanskrit,  Mantra,  or  "true  words  "j  sect, 
partakes  largely  of  post-Buddhistic  Indian  observances 


A 


4374 


THK     OPEN     COURT. 


received  through  China.  There  is  considerable  activ- 
ity now  amongst  its  leaders,  and  a  desire  to  place  it  in 
the  van,  educationally'  and  otherwise. 

There  are  several  other  schools,  not  forming  in- 
fluential separate  sects,  whose  teachings,  however,  en- 
ter, more  or  less,  into  all,  e.  g.  the  Discipline  of  the 
Vina3'a  division  of  the  canon,  and  others  that  take  spe- 
cial sutra,  such  as  the  Kegon,  or  Aralam  saka  sutra, 
the  garland  of  flowers  of  the  Buddha  Shakj'a  muni's 
teaching  ;  also  several  sastra,  or  later  scriptures,  dis- 
courses, commentaries,  and  controversies,  as  between 
the  Malta  yaiia,  or  Major  \'ehicle,  and  the  Hiiia  yaiia  or 
Minor  Vehicle,  as  well  as  three  of  the  intermediate  or 
moderate  schools. 

Thus  whilst  faith  in  an  exterior  saving  power  largely 
prevails,  the  Mahayana,  with  its  salvation  open  to  all, 
the  doctrine  of  discipline,  good  works,  and  even  ascetic 
practice,  also  enters  into  Japanese  religious  theory, 
though  in  practice  to  a  limited  extent. 

The  native  mind,  with  a  few  notable  exceptions,  is 
too  prone  to  take  the  world  easily,  to  enjoy  life,  and 
get  out  of  it  as  much  pleasure  as  is  attainable  with  the 
least  expenditure  of  physical  or  mental  energy. 

The  Japanese,  as  a  people,  are  not  at  all  inclined  to 
take  life  over  seriously,  like  the  sour  and  prim  round- 
head of  old  ;  more  of  the  spirit  of  the  curly-pated  rollick- 
ing cavalier  is  in  them  ;  and  the  most  popular  preacher 
is  he  who  can  enliven  a  dull  subject  by  a  joke,  or  wit- 
ticism, and  illustrate  a  difficult  question  by  a  humorous 
story. 

One  touch  of  nature  makes  the  whole  world  kin, 
here  as  elsewhere ;  and  the  moral  lecturer  is  most 
effective,  if  he  draws  upon  the  daily  life  of  his  audience 
for  his  parable's  material. 

The  results  of  the  efforts  of  the  foreign  missionaries, 
are  for  the  most  part  destructive,  rather  than  construc- 
tive ;  to  tell  these  natives,  "that  they  live  in  a  fools' 
paradise,"  is  worse  than  unkindness,  unless  a  more 
solid  structure  can  be  offered,  and  in  such  a  form  that 
it  will  be  accepted  as  a  full  equivalent,  as  an  ample 
sulistitute  for  that  swept  away.  Sympathy  for,  not  hos- 
tility to,  a  creed  is  the  better  way  to  get  at  it,  if  we 
wish  to  make  it  better  ;  especially  such  a  creed  as  Bud- 
dhism, with  its  long  history  of  peaceful  conquest,  non- 
oppressive  and  kindly  propaganda,  its  message  of  sym- 
pathy and  hope,  which  has  been  the  refuge  of  a  large 
portion  of  the  world's  people,  in  one  or  anothex  form, 
and  which,  if  not  the  oldest,  is  yet  founded  upon  the 
most  ancient  doctrine,  and  far  outnumbers  the  votaries 
of  any  other  form  of  religion. 

Has  Buddhism  a  future  in  Japan  and  elsewhere? 


NOTES. 

Mr.  C.  Pfoundes,  the  author  of  the  article  "  Religion  in  Ja- 
pan," lectured  in  the  United  States,  1876-1877,  at  Bowdoin,  Yale, 
Boston  Art  Club,  etc.,   on  Japanese  affairs,  and  in  London  and 


Provinces  1879  et  seq.;  he  was  elected  Fellow  of  the  following  and 
other  Societies  :  Royal  Geographical  Society,  Royal  Asiatic  So- 
ciety, Royal  Society  of  Literature,  Royal  Historical  Society,  Royal 
Colonial  Institute,  and  member  of  Anthropological  Society,  Society 
of  Arts,  Society  of  Economy  and  Fine  Arts  ;  and  also  by  right  of 
his  service  as  a  naval  officer  to  the  Royal  United  Service  Institute. 
Since  his  arrival  in  Japan  he  has  been  initiated  by  special  cere- 
mony, the  first  foreigner  thus  admitted,  to  the  Ten-dai,  the  Jo-do, 
and  the  Shingon  sects,  and  to  the  esoteric  arena  of  the  latter,  and 
authorised  to  wear  the  insigjnia  of  a  Buddhist  preacher.  He  also 
has  been  presented  with  medals  by  a  number  of  Japanese  Buddhist 
societies.     About  the  ceremonies  he  writes  as  follows  : 

1.  Ten-dai  sect.  On  Mount  Hiye,  overlooking  Lake  Biwa  on 
one  side  and  the  city  of  Kioto  on  the  other,  there  are  numerous 
temples,  and  near  the  summit  the  Terrace  of  obligations  (Sanskrit, 
Silo)  of  the  Mnhayana,  the  major  vehicle,  the  only  one  in  Japan 
(There  were  three  of  the  Hina  or  minor,  one  remains  at  Nara.) 
Here  priests  of  Ten-dai  are  inducted  by  special  ceremony. 

2.  Shin-gon  (Sanskrit,  Mantra)  or  true  words.  On  Mount 
Koya  to  the  eastward  of  Nara,  are  groups  of  temples  of  this  sect, 
and  the  head  centre.  The  .second  grade,  "  sprinkling,"  (Sanskrit, 
Abhisheka)  or  baptism,  called  in  Japanese  Ji  into  kwaii  jo,  a  mystic 
(esoteric)  rite,  for  preachers  and  apostles,  or  missionaries,  the 
grade  alone  being  exclusively  for  aged  bonzes  of  the  sect. 

3.  The  Hi-mitzu  basalzu-kai  of  the  Shingon.  Admission  to 
the  Bodhisattsva  of  the  esoteric  doctrine. 

4.  The  Obligation  of  the  Joiio  (pure  land).  The  undefiled 
p.iradise  presided  over  by  the  Amitabha  Buddha,  whose  aid  is  in- 
voked by  the  followers  of  this  doctrine  of  Buddhism. 

N.  B.  Japanese  sects  and  sub-sects  may  be  classified  as  fol- 
lov/s  : 

1.  Zen,  from  Sanskrit  Dhyana,  the  Contemplative  sect. 

2.  Shingon,  Mantra,  true  words. 

3.  Ten-dai  and  its  offspring,  the  Nichiren. 

4.  Jo-do  and  its  offshoot,  the  Sliin. 

The  other  schools  are  of  minor  importance  and  their  teaching 
common  to  all,  and  do  not  form  separate  church-organisations. 
There  are  numbers  of  independent  and  small  groups,  but  all  come 
under  the  doctrines  of  the  above  named. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  387. 

THE  FIRST  FRENCH  SOCIALIST.     Moncure  D.  Con- 
way    4367 

PROFESSOR  HAECKELS  NEW  PHYLOGENY.   Thos 

J.    McCORMACK  .  .  .'. 4369 

RELIGION  IN  JAPAN.     C.  Pfoundes 4372 

NOTES 4374 


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A  "ijyEEKLY  JOXJENAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  388.     (Vol.  IX.-5  ) 


CHICAGO,   JANUARY  31,   1895. 


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ANIMAL  RIGHTS  OF  PROPERTY. 

BY  E.    P.    POWELL. 

The  acknowledgement  of  property  rights  among 
animals  is  as  defined  as  are  their  habits  of  thrift.  If 
)'0u  have  ever  been  familiar  with  bees  you  will  have 
learned,  not  only  that  the}'  are  curiously  industrious, 
but  that  their  social  laws  are  very  distinct  as  to  prop- 
erty. No  bee  dares  to  interfere  with  the  products  of 
another's  labor.  Fifty  hives  placed  alongside  include 
fifty  distinct  families,  without  a  case  of  interference. 
But  when  there  is  a  famine  in  the  bee-land,  a  colony 
will  organise  a  raid  ;  and,  rushing  out  with  intense 
ferocity,  will  attack  another  hive,  and  either  kill  or  be 
killed.  When  the  invasion  is  successful,  the  honey  of 
the  destroj'ed  family  is  carefully  transferred  to  the  hive 
of  the  robbers.  In  this  case  the  occupants  of  the  other 
hives  do  not  interfere,  but  go  on  with  their  daily  occu- 
pations. The  sting  of  a  bee  during  one  of  these  bat- 
tles is  peculiarly  poisonous.  I  was  myself  nearly 
killed  by  a  sting  of  this  sort  some  years  ago.  It  cre- 
ated a  torpor  and  then  an  eruption  over  the  whole 
body.  The  raids  of  this  sort  seem  to  be  recognised  by 
the  bees  as  legitimate  under  stress  of  special  hunger. 
But  it  is  also  true  that  the  hives  assaulted  are  weak 
ones,  and  probabilities  are  carefully  taken  into  account. 
The  bee-keeper,  when  a  robbery  is  indicated  by  a 
vicious  noise,  instantly  removes  the  hive  that  is  at- 
tacked to  a  distance.  Such  wars,  it  is  possible,  may 
have  a  basis  of  provocation,  hard  to  detect.  But  in 
either  case  we  see  that  possession  of  property  is  recog- 
nised as  giving  a  natural  right ;  and  that  bees  will  not 
interfere  with  the  established  right,  unless  driven  by 
extreme  hunger,  or  possibly  a  cause  not  discoverable. 
The  exceptions  are  few  and  rare.  The  open  hive  is 
slightly  guarded  ;  the  owners  are  busy  producers, 
without  fear  of  marauders. 

The  bee  stands  in  this  respect  as  a  fair  example  of 
a  general  acknowledgement  of  property  rights  among 
other  creatures.  If  you  have  happened  to  brush 
against  a  dwarfed  thorn-bush,  or  other  plant  on  which 
green  aphis  are  feeding  in  August,  you  have  most 
probably  been  instantly  assaulted  by  a  number  of  ants. 
These  belong  to  a  black  variety  that  in  general  is  ex- 
tremely peaceable  and  timorous.  But  in  this  one  case 
they  rush   at  you  in  a  state   of  excitement,  and  bite 


with  ferocious  malignity.  The  fact  is,  you  have  come 
upon  a  bit  of  private  property.  These  aphidse  are 
"ant  cows";  and,  wherever  found,  are  taken  posses- 
sion of  by  the  ants  and  very  highl)'  prized.  A  sweet 
juice  exudes  from  their  sides,  which  the  ants  eat  with 
avidit}'.  Sometimes  the  glands  are  pressed  by  their 
mandibles  to  compel  the  exudation.  These  aphida 
are  not  seldom  kept  and  fed  by  ants.  You  have  in- 
truded accidently  on  ant  property  and  broken  ant-law. 
The  severe  punishment  inflicted  would  be  visited  on 
any  creature  that  had  happened  in  your  place.  The 
recognition  of  property  rights  is  exactly  the  same  as 
with  bees.  Robbery  is  a  recognised  institution,  but 
its  existence  establishes  the  full  recognition  of  the 
rights  of  ownership. 

Dogs  and  cats  recognise  all  property  as  common, 
until  in  use,  or  in  cache.  When  a  piece  of  meat  is  once 
under  a  cat's  paw,  it  does  not  matter  that  she  is  the 
weaker,  her  right  of  possession  becomes  a  moral  right, 
and  will  be  recognised.  The  same  is  largely  true  of 
dogs  ;  but  peaceable  possession  is  more  often  to  be 
determined  by  a  fight.  Between  dogs  and  cats  the 
same  idea  of  right  holds.  I  had  a  curious  instance 
recently;  having  set  down  a  dish  of  milk  and  bread  to 
my  collie,  she  declined  to  touch  it.  But,  noticing  her 
distaste,  I  lifted  the  dish,  and  set  it  down  before  one 
of  the  cats,  two  feet  away.  The  cat  no  sooner  sniffed 
it  than  the  collie,  with  an  ominous  growl,  leaped  after 
her  property.  She  did  not  wish  to  eat  it,  but  she,  for 
the  present,  owned  it.  Even  I  had  no  rights  over  it. 
Do  these  domestic  animals  learn  from  us  these  notions 
of  possession  as  the  measure  of  property  ?  I  think  not ; 
for  we  do  not  hold  them  of  many  things.  At  the  table, 
to  be  sure,  we  have  a  special  claim  over  what  has  been 
placed  on  our  plates.  We  have  a  special  right  of  a 
temporary  sort  to  tools  in  use.  Communism  is  just 
along  the  edge  of  our  individualism ;  but  there  is 
clearly  a  distinct  feline  sentiment  displa}'ed  when  three 
cats  jump  for  a  single  tidbit,  and  evidently  consider  it 
open  to  all,  until  the  teeth  or  claw  of  one  is  well  in 
the  piece  of  meat;  when  it  is  claimed  with  a  defiant 
growl,  and  all  the  rest  withdraw  quietly,  even  though 
stronger. 

If  you  look  in  your  barn-yard  for  a  verification  of 
this  principle  you  will  find  it  greatly  modified,  or  ab- 


4376 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


sent  altogether.  There  is  absolute  communism  in  a 
flock  of  hens  ;  only  the  cocks  claim  property  rights. 
This  is  asserted,  not  only  over  the  hens,  but  over  food. 
The  family  moves  in  this  case  together.  Food  is 
grabbed  for  by  each  one,  without  the  least  considera- 
tion of  any  other.  The  sick  are  robbed,  and  picked, 
and  kicked  out  of  existence.  This  is  the  primitive 
human  family  in  some  respects,  and  seems  to  show  the 
patriarchal  system  as  fowls  would  have  it.  But  occa- 
sionally individualism  manifests  itself.  I  saw  a  curious 
case  in  a  small  black  topknot  hen  some  years  ago. 
She  assumed  special  rights  to  go  with  me  into  the 
corn  house  for  rations;  and  these  rights  she  enforced 
against  much  heavier  fowls.  On  one  occasion  a  stout 
bullying  hen  seized  a  mouthful  from  the  tip  of  the  bill 
of  my  little  black  friend.  She  immediately  took  in  the 
situation.  Retiring  behind  a  wagon-wheel,  she  watched 
eagerly  that  insulting  enemy.  At  last  the  foe's  head 
came  just  in  line,  and  quick  as  a  flash  the  small  hen 
flew  out,  and  gave  it  a  sound  kick  with  both  heels, 
and  then,  talking  proudly,  and  with  a  satisfied  air, 
went  on  with  her  dinner. 

Cows,  as  near  as  I  can  discover,  recognise  no  rights 
of  property  whatever,  beyond  what  is  enforced  by 
strength  ;  horses  do.  They  are  still  fully  in  the  com- 
munal state,  accustomed  to  feeding  at  large,  wherever 
pasturage  can  be  secured.  They  will  recognise  slightly 
their  own  mangers,  but  have  next  to  no  regard  for 
their  neighbors'  rights.  The  bull  is  the  only  individual. 
Horses,  on  the  contrary,  assert  and  allow  quite  a  de- 
gree of  property  in  possession.  I  have  a  very  plain, 
quiet  mare  who  will  allow  no  one  to  meddle  with  her 
oats  after  they  are  once  inside  her  stall.  But  she  has 
her  friendships;  and  some  years  ago  would  allow  a  pet 
sheep  to  jump  into  her  manger  and  eat  with  her  ;  each 
taking  a  mouthful,  and  then  withdrawing  the  head  for 
the  other. 

Spencer  limits  a  dog's  idea  of  property  to  a  tangi- 
ble object,  like  a  coat  or  hat ;  but  I  have  carefully 
tested  the  capacity  of  different  animals  to  judge  of  the 
limits  of  my  property,  and  of  our  associate  rights.  The 
dog,  the  horse,  the  cat,  easily  distinguish  such  prop- 
erty limits.  I  reside  in  the  middle  of  nine  acres.  On 
some  sides  the  fences  have  been  entirely  removed  and 
there  are  no  hedges  there.  But  my  horse,  allowed  to 
feed  loosely  about,  respects  the  boundaries ;  unless 
tempted  by  the  shortness  of  home  forage.  She  is 
capable  of  temptation,  but  will  course  the  nine  acres, 
among  hedges,  gardens,  shrubbery,  with  a  degree  of 
knowledge  and  honesty  that  is  up  to  the  average  hu- 
man. So  it  is  with  my  collie.  She  has  recognition  of 
every  boundary  of  my  property;  but  never  considers 
the  higliway  in  any  sense  unlike  the  human  conception 
of  it.  My  neighbor's  hound  had  less  intelligent  recog- 
nition of  limits   when  young,  but   has  learned   great 


accuracy  as  to  his  personal  range  and  the  limit  of  his 
duties.  Who  shall  say  that  these  creatures  never 
think  over  these  matters?  When  watching  with  defi- 
ance an  intrusion,  and  resenting  it,  what  is  the  opera- 
tion of  the  dog's  brain  ? 

The  blunders  made  in  handling  data,  by  as  good 
authorities  as  Herbert  Spencer,  are  often  misleading. 
Undertaking  to  base  morals  on  animal  actions,  he  tells 
us  that  for  a  hen  which  refuses  to  sit  upon  eggs  we 
have  a  feeling  of  aversion.  Suppose  Mr.  Spencer  were 
informed  that  we  have  purposely  bred  hens  to  be  non- 
setters  ;  that,  economically,  it  is  one  of  the  highest 
achievements  of  poulterers  to  have  secured  the  Leg- 
horn, who  will  rarely  attend  to  maternity  ?  Again  he 
says  a  dog  which  surrenders  its  bone  to  another  with- 
out a  struggle  we  call  a  coward,  a  word  of  reprobation. 
Yet  I  have  repeatedly  seen  animals  yielding  the  pos- 
session of  acknowledged  property  evidently  from  mo- 
tors very  unlike  cowardice.  I  had  a  cat  that  would 
not  eat  from  a  dish  of  milk  until  its  mate  was  hunted 
up  to  eat  with  him.  This  was  not  owing  to  fear,  be- 
cause it  was  the  stronger  of  the  two.  In  more  cases 
than  one,  I  have  seen  cats  bring  mice  or  birds  to 
younger  cats,  not  their  own  kittens.  I  had  a  huge 
Maltese,  who  did  not  refuse  to  let  a  smaller  cat  take 
away  some  of  his  prey.  This  was  not  fear  nor  cow- 
ardice, but  generosity  and  largeness  of  spirit.  It  was 
not  apparently  unlike  the  dog-sentiment  that  refuses  to 
fight  with  a  smaller  animal.  But  at  times  the  quiet 
dignity  with  which  he  yielded  a  mouse  seemed  to  say, 
"I  am  so  much  more  capable,  and  able,  and  strong, 
I  can  afford  to  be  taxed  for  the  community."  I  am  not 
concerned  about  the  ethical  laws  derived  by  Mr.  Spen- 
cer from  this  presentation  of  data,  but  with  the  animal 
idea  of  property  alone.  I  am  sure  not  only  of  the 
recognition  of  property  rights,  but  that  these  rights  of 
possession  are  often  waived  for  altruistic  and  com- 
munistic motives.  "Justice,"  as  we  would  term  it, 
gives  way  to  "humanity."  The  effect  of  such  action 
on  animals  and  animal  life,  if  it  could  be  conserved 
and  taken  advantage  of,  would  be  the  evolution  of  ad- 
vanced animal  morals.  In  fact,  we  have  something 
of  this  sort  going  on  :  for  our  admiration  of  a  noble 
cat  or  dog  is  pretty  sure  to  add  to  its  days,  while  a 
clawing,  selfish  creature  is  equally  sure  to  be  hated, 
and  probably  killed.  The  result  will  not,  in  all  cases, 
be  to  secure  the  survival  of  the  fittest  as  dogs  and  cats, 
but  the  fittest  as  companions  to  human  beings.  The 
extent  to  which  this  moral  selection  has  gone  is  shown 
in  the  fact  that  faithless  wolves  have  given  us  a  prog- 
eny that  is  above  all  faithful.  The  same  is  true  of 
other  animals. 

Communal  property  underlies  and  precedes  indi- 
vidual property,  but  it  also  follows  the  same.  So  we 
shall  be  exceedingly  interested,  if  we  can  find  among 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4377 


lower  creatures  a  large  degree,  or  any  degree,  of  asso- 
ciated property  rights.  Yonr  mind  reverts  readily  to 
the  bees  and  ants.  The  storage  of  the  squirrels  and 
beavers  is  also  largelj'  of  the  same  character.  But  we 
are  not  accustomed  to  look  for  anything  of  this  kind 
among  larger  animals.  The  cat  that  gives  her  mouse 
away  is  evidentl}'  S3'mpathetic,  but  does  not  recognise 
property  as  vested  in  her  friend,  without  gift.  A  friend 
of  mine  tells  me  of  a  dog  she  knew  that  was  pecu- 
liarly pugnacious,  and  especially  allowed  no  other  dogs 
near  his  kennel.  One  day  he  appeared  with  a  very 
lame  dog,  which  he  led  to  his  kennel,  and  kept  there 
for  several  days,  digging  up  his  rdrZ/fs  of  food,  and 
taking  it  freelj'  to  the  invalid.  Here  is  a  recognition, 
as  in  the  previous  case  of  the  cat,  of  a  right  over  and 
above  property  possession  :  the  duty  of  sharing  prop- 
erty with  the  helpless.  But  this  is  individualism,  and 
not  communism,  you  sa)'.  It  is  the  communistic  or 
socialistic  development  of  individualism.  It  is  shar- 
ing, not  because  all  have  a  common  right  in  the  prop- 
erty by  nature,  but  because  they  have  a  claim  in  ethics. 
This  stage  of  sharing  is  slowlj-,  very  slowly,  developed 
out  of  and  beyond  human  individualism.  Our  com- 
munal stage  was  the  common  trough,  common  hall, 
common  tools,  common  land,  and  in  such  communism 
the  weaker  went  to  the  wall  when  there  was  a  lack  of 
abundance.  Individualism  looks  forward  to  a  claim 
of  the  weaker  on  our  strength,  our  health,  our  wealth. 
It  finall}'  defines  itself  ethically  in  the  Golden  Rule. 
Its  god  is  found  in  the  poorest  of  our  neighbors.  Piet}' 
is  neighborliness.  This  evolution  of  individualism  is 
a  necessity.  A  grand  individual  is  grand  only  in  his 
capacity  to  share.  Socially  the  better  must  care  for 
the  worse  ;  the  stronger  for  the  weaker.  Our  whole 
State  system  as  well  as  Church  system  moves  onward 
toward  humanity,  fellowship,  unity,  co-operation,  in- 
ternationalism, fraternalism.  It  is  not  without  much 
pleasure  that  we  find  this  ethical  communism  in  ani- 
mals. I  have  an  authenticated  report  of  a  gander  that 
took  to  a  blind  horse  and  accompanied  him  all  day, 
leading  him  to  the  best  pasturage  and  to  water. 


RELIGION  IN  JAPAN. 


BY  C.    PFOUNDES. 


Buddhism  in  Japan  is  too  firmly  implanted  amongst 
the  vast  mass  of  forty  odd  millions  of  people  to  be 
lightly  brushed  away.  With  experience  of  official  re- 
sponsibility and  the  cares  of  government  under  the 
new  transient  conditions,  wiser  counsels  prevailed  ; 
many  of  the  best  men  of  the  old  rt;gime  came  into 
office,  and  a  superior  class  of  clansmen  appeared  in 
the  van  of  the  restoration,  desiring  progress  and  the 
betterment  of  their  country.  The  power  of  the  priest- 
hood was  felt  and   recognised,  and  whilst  in   politics 


their  interference  was  very  properly  prohibited,  the 
value  of  their  good-will  was  felt.  Mischievous  med- 
dling ceased,  and  the  people  were  left  to  follow  their 
own  inclinations,  home  or  foreign,  Shinto  or  Christian, 
Buddhist  or  what  not. 

Whilst  individual  foreign  missionaries  have  made 
friends  and  gained  some  influence,  yet  as  a  body  they 
are  not  held  in  high  esteem.  Their  relations  with  the 
foreign  colonies  at  the  treaty  ports,  which  consist  of 
persons  of  many  nations  and  various  degrees  of  edu- 
cation, are  not  so  cordial  as  to  lead  the  natives  to  sup- 
pose that  the  class  from  which  missionaries  are  re- 
cruited are  held  in  high  respect  in  their  own  lands. 

At  the  same  time  the  natives  that  visit  the  mis- 
sionaries see  something  of  foreign  domestic  life.  The 
tone  of  the  homes,  the  comfortable  houses,  the  family 
relations  of  the  Protestant  missionaries,  all  contrast 
with  the  comparative  wretchedness  of  the  native  home 
life  (of  the  lower  classes),  and  excites  the  envy  of  those 
who  cannot  imitate  it.  The  missionaries'  wives  and 
their  female  domestics  work  in  the  girls'  schools,  gain 
some  influence,  and  do  some  good  in  teaching  the  fu- 
ture wives  and  mothers  and  in  busying  themselves 
with  match-making  between  the  young  people  sup- 
posed to  be  favorably  inclined  towards  Christianity. 

With  the  aid  of  schools,  medical  mission  work,  and 
other  institutions,  numbers  of  foreign  missionaries, 
representing  many  different  sects  of  Christianity  from 
various  parts  of  Europe  and  America,  still  reside,  on 
sufferance,  throughout  the  islands. 

"The  bread  cast  upon  the  waters"  does  not  always 
return;  the  seed  spread  broadcast  does  not  give  the 
harvest  desired,  more  often  bearing  fruit  other  than 
that  intended,  for  the  native  students  have  their  own 
ideas  and  ways  of  applying  what  is  presented  to  them. 

One  result  is  a  reaction  and  consequent  activity 
amongst  the  Buddhists,  and  a  growing  desire  not  to 
be  left  behind  in  the  competition. 

Out  of  the  chaos  of  indigenous  and  foreign  reli- 
gious and  philosophical  literature  perused,  new  ideas 
arise;  no  foreigner  can  foresee  the  end,  and  no  two 
Japanese  agree  as  to  the  ultimate  outcome  of  it  all. 
The  "smart"  writer  or  lecturer  of  the  day  is  followed 
by  another  who,  in  his  turn,  gains  transient  notoriety. 

The  indigenous  cultus,  Shintoism  and  Buddhism, 
as  modified  by  the  Japanese  during  the  dozen  or  more 
centuries  of  its  e.xistence  in  the  country,  are  still 
closely  allied  and  together  form  a  very  solid  founda- 
tion for  any  superstructure  of  the  future.  Buddhism, 
in  its  entirety  as  a  system,  lends  itself  readily  to  the 
course  of  events  from  age  to  age,  so  that  in  the  future 
there  is  no  doubt  of  its  adaptation  to  the  needs,  aspi- 
rations, and  sentiments  of  the  people. 

With  the  proper  education  of  careful])'  selected 
aspirants  for  sacerdotal  office,  a  generation  or  so  would 


4378 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


produce  great  advances  in  liberality  and  would  regu- 
late objectionable  features  to  the  limbo  of  oblivion. 

There  is  a  special  feature  of  Japanese  Buddhism 
that  is  unique  and  of  sufficient  importance  to  warrant 
notice,  the  more  so  as  it  probably  forms  an  important 
factor  of  the  future. 

The  Jodo  Shin  Skin  sect,  the  new  Jodo,  now  called 
S/iiN,  or  true,  sect,  consisting  of  several  branches,  the 
East  and  West,  the  Butzukoji,  Takada,  and  Koshoji, 
with  several  other  smaller  sects,  include  a  large  per- 
centage of  the  temples  and  followers  of  Buddhism  in 
Japan.  Office  is  practicallyhereditary;  failing  male 
issue,  a  husband  is  adopted  for  the  daughter,  being 
almost  invariably  selected  from  the  same  order,  to  fill 
vacancies.  As  numerous  progeny  is  common,  many 
lay-families,  well-to-do  farmers  and  traders,  by  inter- 
marriage become  closely  related,  and  the  position  of 
incumbents  in  the  temples  of  the  sect  occupy  a  some- 
what parallel  social  position  to  the  Church  of  England 
parson  in  aristocratic  old  England,  where  "blood  is 
thicker  than  water,"  and  family-ties  mean  "taking 
care  of  Dowb." 

Whatever  objections  there  may  exist,  to  a  heredi- 
tary sacerdotal  class,  whether  from  the  Asiatic,  for- 
eign, Christian,  or  Buddhist  standpoint  the  facts  still 
remain,  that  the  greater  respectability  of  the  Shinshiu 
incumbents,  their  social  position,  family  ties,  and  con- 
sequent greater  influence  are  important  points  not  to 
be  lost  sight  of. 

In  other  sects,  scions  of  noble  lineage,  are  "set- 
tled," and  too  numerous  offspring  of  those  by  birth 
"  near  the  throne,"  are  got  rid  of  and  future  legitimate 
offspring  checked,  by  placing  these,  male  and  female, 
in  the  monasteries  of  one  or  other  of  the  celibate  sects, 
a  policy  that  also  binds  the  priesthood  of  these  sects 
to  the  reigning  dynasty. 

In  the  Shin-shiu  the  noble  offspring  of  both  sexes 
are  adopted  into  or  married  to  the  heads  of  the  sect  or 
sub-sect,  thus  adding  to  the  prestige  thereof;  and  the 
children,  when  numerous,  are  "settled  out"  in  the 
principal  monasteries,  the  incumbents  thus  being 
linked  by  family  ties. 

The  personal  interest  in  the  temple,  the  congrega- 
tion, and  the  neighborhood  is  thus  very  strong,  and 
continuous  from  parent  to  child  ;  practical  freedom 
from  anxiety  as  to  old  age  is  removed  and  entire  de- 
votion to  the  sect  secured. 

The  very  best  results  may  be  hoped  in  the  future 
from  the  young  men  of  this  sect,  notwithstanding  its 
sectarian  narrowness  and  limitations  of  creed ;  the 
very  simplicity  of  which  makes  it  acceptable  to  the  il- 
literate class  of  toilers,  the  laborer,  agriculturist,  etc., 
and  popular. 

The  best  and  truest  friends  of  Buddhism  in  gen- 
eral, and  of  this  sect  in  particular,  will  do  well   to  get 


a  good  knowledge  of  all  the  objections  that  may  be 
advanced  against  the  hereditary  system,  and  to  spread 
it  as  widely  as  possible  amongst  the  future  incumbents 
of  office,  so  that  one  and  all  may  carefully  avoid 
those  characteristics  that  arouse  hostile  feeling  and 
give  ground  for  antagonistic  criticism,  all  of  which 
readers  of  T/ic  Open  Court  are  familiar  with.  Because 
a  youth  is  sure  to  succeed  his  father  upon  death  or  re- 
tirement in  old  age,  that  is  no  reason  he  should  be 
dilatory  in  his  studies  ;  or  that  he  should  "give  him- 
self" airs  as  a  "  person  of  superior  birth,"  or  look  upon 
his  position  as  a  sinecure  to  which  it  has  been  his  good 
fortune  to  be  born,  and  therefore  "  take  things  easy" 
and  go  through  his  duties  and  the  routine  services  in 
a  half-hearted  perfunctory  spirit. 

The  sect  has  established  schools  ;  and  sent  some 
of  its  people  abroad  to  study  at  a  very  considerable 
cost.  These  number  among  them  such  well  known 
and  scholarly  names  as  B.  Nanjio,  M.  A.  Oxon.,  R. 
Akamatzu,  and  many  others,  through  whose  efforts 
the  study  of  Sanskrit  is,  after  many  centuries,  again 
being  taken  up  in  Japan. 

Japan  is  undoubtedly  at  present  the  most  impor- 
tant Buddhist  centre  ;  and  in  the  future  may  become 
to  Buddhism  what  Rome  was  to  Christianity.  As  Ja- 
pan has  not  suffered  by  foreign  conquest  as  other  lands 
have,  Ceylon  etc.  for  instance,  the  Buddhism  received 
from  the  mainland  still  remains  intact ;  the  oldest 
temples  still  exist  ;  and  the  teaching  is  yet  unchanged 
and  unalloyed.  And  as  the  bonzes  are  intellectually 
the  superiors  of  those  in  other  countries  and  far  better 
taught,  we  may  look  upon  the  future  as  hopeful  if 
proper  attention  be  given  to  the  education  of  the 
youths  destined  to  become  the  officiating  clergy  in  the 
temples  and  homes  of  the  people. 

In  Japan  may  be  seen  "  the  meeting  of  the  waters  " 
from  the  east  and  from  the  west — the  old  and  the  new. 
Asiatic,  Aryan,  and  Turanian,  the  European  and  later 
the  American  ;  education,  science,  philosoph)',  and 
religion. 

America,  too,  has  become  the  common  meeting- 
ground  for  all  the  aspirations  and  ideals  of  the  old 
civilisation  and  the  progressive  practical  ideas  of  the 
new,  as  shown  in  its  liberalism  in  religion  and  in  its 
recent  congresses.  The  general  feeling  is,  to  glean 
from  all,  to  gather  from  all  sources.  The  echo,  and 
the  counter  echoes,  east  to  west,  and  west  to  east  re- 
sound about  the  globe.  And  who  shall  gainsay  the 
truth  that  we  can  teach  and  learn,  and  impart  fresh 
energy  to  the  old  that  reciprocates  by  giving  us  the 
old-time  wisdom  ;  like  ballast  for  the  clipper,  so  that 
more  canvas  may  be  spread  and  more  rapid  progress 
attained.  The  platform  has  been  made  free  to  the 
Asiatic,  Buddhist,  Hindu,  and  Mohammedan  alike  ; 
the  pulpit  is  open  to  all,  and  every  one  who  has  a  mes- 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4379 


sage  to  deliver  and  is  competent  to  set  it  forth,  may 
do  so.  And  nevermore  can  platform  or  pulpit  be  closed ; 
hereafter  it  will  be  the  narrow  sectarian,  the  little- 
minded  bigot,  the  pitiable  fanatic  alone  who  shall  re- 
fuse the  open  hand  of  fellowship  to  all  alike.  And 
in  the  near  future  the  true,  liberal  Buddhist,  when 
weighed  in  the  balance  will  not  be  found  wanting. 


NAMES. 

"  what's  in  a  name  ?  " — Shakes/ieare. 
"  In  verbis  simus  faciles,  duinmodo  con- 

veniaraus  in  re." — Latin  Proverb. 
"  In  verbis  simus  difficiles.  ut  convenia- 

inus  in  re." — [.atiu  Proz'crb. 

Akout  three  months  ago,  Mr.  John  Maddock  of 
Minneapolis  sent  me  for  publication  in  Tlie  Open  Court 
a  letter  which  accidentally  remained  unnoticed.  My 
attention  was  only  recently  called  to  it  by  Mr.  Mad- 
dock's  inquiry,  whether  or  not  I  was  willing  to  publish 
it.  Finding  that  the  letter  contains  a  criticism  of  an 
editorial  remark  made  in  reply  to  a  former  letter  of 
his,  I  deem  it  proper,  for  the  sake  of  justice,  to  pub- 
lish this  belated  rejoinder.  The  issues  raised  by  Mr. 
Maddock  deserve  an  elaborate  discussion,  for  they  in- 
volve principles  of  great  importance. 

This  is  the  letter  : 

"You  say,  '  Names  are  not  as  definite  as  Mr.  Maddock  seems 
to  think.'  If  not,  then  what  are  we  going  to  do  in  order  to  'de- 
velop Christianity  and  lead  it  on  in  the  path  of  progress'?  What 
form  of  Christianity  must  we  develop  ?  I  can  readily  understand 
how  you  can  stand  for  a  religion  of  science  and  accept  truths  ex- 
pressed by  atheism.  Buddhism,  'modest  agnosticism,' and  Chris 
tianity,  but  I  fail  to  see  how  you  can  stand  for  truth  and  yet  be 
called  by  another  name.  How  can  we  '  make  it  easy  to  our  broth- 
ers who  are  lagging  behind  to  reach  truth,'  if  we  indulge  in  such 
confusion  of  words  ?  Our  brothers — atheists,  agnostics,  and  unbe- 
lievers, so  called — though  no  more  so  than  millions  who  profess  to 
know — are  continually  asking,  '  What  is  Christianity  ?'  Now  would 
it  not  be  just  for  a  religion  of  science  to  give  them  a  true  defini- 
tion of  it,  instead  of  taking  the  position  that  names  need  not  be 
definite  ? 

"You  have  had  the  courage  and  manliness  to  launch  forth,  in 
this  age  of  conflict,  a  religion  of  science  with  truth  for  authority; 
and  have  been  generous  enough  to  invite  criticism.  How  are  we 
going  to  have  'a  correct,  complete,  invariable,  and  comprehensive 
statement  of  facts,' if  different  things  can  be  labelled  alike  ?  If 
truth  is  to  be  authority,  we  must  have  truthful  labels  for  all 
things.  There  is  a  vast  difference  between  allowing  all  men  a 
right  to  their  own  opinions  (which  I  do)  and  in  allowing  that  all 
opinions  can  be  labelled  as  truth.  If  Christianity  is  something 
definite,  I  cannot,  from  the  position  of  truth  for  authority,  con- 
scientiously allow  a  Calvinist  to  take  the  name  of  Chiistian  in  a 
matter  of  doctrine.  Such  a  one  is  simply  a  Calvinist.  If  some 
people  have  forged  the  name  of  Christ  '  to  deceive  many,'  it  is  the 
bounden  duty  of  the  assembly  of  science  to  expose  the  fallacy,  not 
to  bolster  it  up.  It  is  a  distinction  between  Christianity  and  all 
the  isms  (that  possess  the  forgery)  that  this  inquiring  and  demand- 
ing age  demands,  and  must  have,  before  there  can  be  further  pro- 
gress. Instead  of  labelling  our  brothers  '  who  are  lagging  behind' 
atheists,  agnostics,  and  unbelievers,  it  is  our  solemn  duty  to  give 
them  definitions  which  are  clear  and  comprehensive.     I  respect- 


fully ask,  (though  it  is  unpleasant  to  do  so,)  does  the  founder  of 
the  religion  of  science  shrink  from  giving  a  clear-cut  definition  of 
Christianity?  Washington  must  cross  the  Delaware  in  this  regard. 
The  assembly  of  science  must  have  a  solid  place  for  its  feet  ;  it 
must  have  a  truthful  label  ;  it  cannot  logically  stand  upon  an  in- 
definite definition,  It  is  the  absence  of  a  fundamental  truth  (and 
this  clears  every  man's  skirts  of  unbelief)  which  makes  the  atheist, 
the  agnostic,  and  the  unbeliever  possible.  The  religion  of  science 
cannot  be  a  witness  for  itself.     There  must  be  corroboration. 

"John  Maddock. 
"P.  S. — The   'bruised  reeds'   must  be  broken,   '  the  smoking 
flax'  of  this  age  must  be  fanned  into  life,  so  that  truth  will  shine 
victoriously.  J.  M." 

In  the  editorial  note  made  in  No.  369  of  The  Open 
Court  in  reply  to  Mr.  Maddock's  letter,  "  The  Names 
of  the  Disciples  of  Truth,"  I  said  : 

"  Names  are  not  as  definite  as  Mr.  Maddock  seems  io  think,' 
but  I  did  not  say  as  he  paraphrases  my  opinion  : 

"  Names  need  not  be  definite." 
For,  on  the  contrary,  I   believe  in   making  names  as 
definite  as  possible. 

Mr.  Maddock  challenges  me: 

"I  respectfully  ask,  (though  it  is  unpleasant  to  do  so,)  does 
the  founder  of  the  religion  of  science  shrink  from  giving  a  clear- 
cut  definition  of  Christianity  ?  Washington  must  cross  the  Dela- 
ware in  this  regard.  The  assembly  of  science  must  have  a  solid 
place  for  its  feet  ;  it  must  have  a  truthful  label ;  it  cannot  logically 
stand  upon  an  indefinite  definition." 

Mr.  Maddock's  request  would  be  in  place  if  I  had 
proclaimed  any  intention  of  preaching  Christianity; 
but  as  I  have  never  attempted  to  do  so,  I  do  not  under- 
stand why  I  shall  be  bound  to  define  it  any  more  than  I 
should  define  Buddhism,  or  Confucianism,  or  anything 
else.  I  must  confess  that  I  do  not  understand  the  per- 
tinence of  the  question  in  its  relation  to  the  "solid 
place  for  the  feet  of  the  assembly  of  science."  There 
are  more  than  three  hundred  million  Christians  now 
living  in  the  world,  and  it  is  an  impossibility  to  make 
them  agree  on  a  definition  of  the  essentials  of  their 
faith.  All  I  can  do  is  not  to  take  the  definition  of  the 
majority  as  binding  and  allow  all  of  them  the  freedom 
of  their  conscience. 

If  Mr.  Maddock  wants  to  know  whether  or  not  I 
call  myself  a  Christian  in  the  sense  in  which  the  name 
is  commonly  used,  I  say  "No;  I  am  not  a  Christian.  I 
am  neither  a  member  of  any  Christian  church,  nor  do 
I  believe  that  the  Christian  Scriptures  are  either  the 
sole  or  an  infallible  guide  to  truth." 

Nevertheless,  I  reserve  my  right  to  call  myself  a 
Christian,  or  a  Buddhist,  or  a  Freethinker,  or  anything 
else,  if  these  various  names  are  not  used  in  a  sense 
that  is  exclusive.  I  have  no  objection  to  being  called 
a  Christian,  because  certain  ideas  or  habits,  commonly 
regarded  as  typically  Christian,  have  become  part  of 
my  soul,  provided  I  may  at  the  same  time  be  entitled 
to  call  myself  a  Buddhist,  or  a  Freethinker,  or  a  Kant- 
ian, or  an  Aristotelian,  or  what  not. 


438o 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


The  label  which  I  have  adopted  for  my  religion  is 
not  Christianity,  but  the  Religion  of  Science,  and  I 
have  laid  down  my  definitions  without  equivocation  in 
editorial  articles  as  well  as  in  other  publications,  espe- 
cially The  Primer  of  Philosophy,  The  Religion  of  Scienee, 
Homilies  of  Seieiiee,  and  The  Ethical  Problem. 

Mr.  Haddock's  zeal  for  the  name  of  truth  and  his 
hostility  toward  any  other  name  that  might  contain 
either  an  aspiration  after  the  truth  or  a  pretence  of  its 
possession,  implies,  in  my  opinion,  a  great  danger — 
the  danger  of  narrowness.  The  Religion  of  Science 
should  be  broad,  its  representatives  must  be  just  to- 
wards others,  and  the  movement  ought  to  come  as  a 
fulfilment  of  all  religious  aspirations,  not  as  their  de- 
struction. 

My  whole  contention,  made  in  my  discussion  with 
Messrs.  Martin,  Thurtell,  and  Maddock,  has  been  and 
is  still  that  the  name  "Christian"  is  used  in  various 
senses,  and  the  right  or  wrong  usage  of  the  name  de- 
pends upon  the  meaning  which  is  attached  to  it.  We 
have  no  right  to  brand  a  Unitarian  who  has  ceased  to 
believe  in  miracles  and  in  the  Godhead  of  Jesus  as 
either  inconsistent  or  a  hypocrite  for  calling  himself  a 
Christian,  because  we  happen  to  define  Christianity 
forsooth  as  "a  belief  in  the  supernatural." 

Mr.  Maddock  asks  : 

"  How  are  we  going  to  have  a  correct  .  .  .  statement  of  facts, 
if  different  things  can  be  labelled  alike  ? " 

I  do  not  say  that  different  things  should  he  labelled 
alike,  but  the  fact  is  they  are  sometimes  labelled  alike 
by  many  different  people,  and  our  endeavor  must  be 
to  understand  what  people  mean.  Not  the  words  and 
names  lead  to  truth,  but  a  right  comprehension.  Noth- 
ing is  gained  by  calling  ourselves  disciples  of  Truth,  or 
adherents  of  the  Religion  of  Science,  if  we  do  not  know 
what  truth  is  and  how  it  can  be  acquired.  Nor  is  any 
harm  done  by  calling  ourselves  disciples  of  Christ, 
Buddha,  Plato,  or  anybody  else,  if  we  trust  that  our 
selected  master  represents  and  teaches  the  truth — un- 
varnished and  pure.  A  Calvinist  calls  himself  a  Chris- 
tian, because  he  trusts  not  only  that  Calvin's  interpre- 
tation of  Christianity  is  correct  but  also  that  Chris- 
tianity is  the  truth.  Why  shall  we  not  give  credit  for 
honest  intentions  to  people  who  differ  from  us. 

When  I  meet  old-fashioned  orthodox  Christians  I 
always  have  trouble  in  convincing  them  that  Freethink- 
ers are  honest  about  their  convictions  ;  and  when  I 
meet  Freethinkers  I  again  find  a  deep-seated  suspicion 
that  all  religious  people  are  hypocrites.  I  wish  to  state 
here  for  the  benefit  of  Freethinkers  that  I  have  not  as 
yet  met  a  serious  Christian  who  did  not  honestly  be- 
lieve his  sectarian  conception  of  Christianity  to  be  the 
truth. 

So  much  about  the  unequivocal  right  of  everybody 
to  call  himself  a  Christian  or  a  Mohammedan,  as  he 


thinks  best,  and  to  define  his  creed  by  stating  what  he 
regards  as  its  most  essential  doctrine. 

Our  own  advice  for  the  use  of  names  is  to  employ 
them  appropriately  as  the  case  may  be  but  always  in 
such  a  way  that  no  ambiguity  can  arise.  The  word 
"  Christian  "  as  defined  by  the  dictionaries  means  : 

1.  "A  believer  in  and  follower  of  Jesus  Christ  ;  a  member  of  a 
Christian  Church. 

2.  "One  who  exemplifies  in  his  life  the  teachings  of  Christ. 

3.  "A  member  of  a  nation  which  as  a  whole  has  adopted  some 
form  of  Christianity. 

4.  "  A  civilised  human  being  as  distinguished  from  a  savage 
or  a  brute'  [Colloq,,  Eng.].' 

Such  are  the  commonly  adopted  definitions  of  the 
word  Christian.  Mr.  Maddock  is  no  Christian  ac- 
cording to  definition  i,  but  he  is  unequivocally  a 
Christian  according  to  definition  3.  I  grant  that  defi- 
nition 4  is  an  imposition,  which,  however,  is  not  with- 
out a  flavor  of  himior. 

When  the  pious  monk  in  Lessing's  grand  drama 
"  Nathan  the  Wise  "  hears  the  story  of  the  Jew,  he  ex- 
claims : 

"  Nathan,  you  are  a  Christian." 

And  Nathan  very  appropriately  replies  : 

"  Tliat  which  makes  me  to  you  a  Cliristian,  makes  you  to  me  a  Jew." 

Subhadra  Bhikshu,  the  author  of  a  Buddhist  Cate- 
chism, writes  : 

"Whoever  lives  according  to  the  Buddha  doctrine  is  a  Bud- 
dhist whether  or  not  he  belongs  to  a  Buddhist  congregation," 

Who  will  deny  that  what  to  the  Buddhist  is  specif- 
ically Buddhistic,  to  the  Jew,  Jewish,  and  to  the  Chris- 
tian, Christian,  is  much  more  alike  than  most  of  them 
imagine  ? 

To  properly  definp  Christianity  and  to  distinguish 
the  essential  from  the  accidental  is  a  task  which  has 
been  done  over  and  over  again  by  every  generation, 
and  to  give  a  fair  exposition  of  the  red  thread  which 
connects  all  the  various  definitions  and  of  the  causes 
which  govern  their  changes,  would  be  to  write  a  his- 
tory of  Christianity.  The  language  which  we  use  is 
not  made  by  us,  by  you  or  by  me,  or  by  any  single 
man;  but  it  is  inherited,  and  the  usage  of  names  is  but 
one  small  part  of  language.  The  name  Christian  has 
not  been  chosen  by  the  various  individual  Christians 
of  to-day,  but  has  been  received  by  tradition.  The 
firstChristians  called  themselves  "disciples,"  by  which 
name  they  meant  nothing  short  of  what  Mr.  Maddock 
calls  "disciples  of  truth."  The  name  Christian,  first 
used  in  Antioch  (Acts  xi,  26),  was  a  nickname  which 
was  proudly  adopted,  as  the  outlawed  Dutch  when  re- 
belling against  Spanish  oppression  accepted  the  con- 
temptuous name  Giieuses  (beggars),  or  as  freethink- 
ers of  to-day  call  themselves  infidels  (the  faithless). 
Every  Christian  philosopher  has  tried  his  hand  at  the 

1  See  Ci'titury  Dictionary,  p.  985,  s,  v.  Christian. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4381 


problem  of  what  constitutes  the  fundamental  truth 
that  called  Christianity  into  existence,  and  their  en- 
deavors together  with  the  changes  they  wrought  in  the 
minds  of  the  Christian  peoples  are  the  material  of 
what  we  call  the  evolution  of  Christianity.  Any  one 
who  takes  the  trouble  to  study  the  history  of  Chris- 
tianity will  find  that  it  has  grown  and  developed  as  a 
child  does  from  infancy  into  boyhood  and  youth  ;  that 
there  is  a  continued  aspiration  which  is  a  yearning  for 
truth  with  definite  moral  ideals,  such  as  an  all-compre- 
hensive charity  including  the  love  of  enemies  and  a 
readiness  of  resigning  personal  ambition  and  worldly 
pleasures.  This  evolution  of  Christianity  is  not  as  yet 
at  an  end  but  continues.  The  truth  is,  the  same  evo- 
lution takes  place  in  all  other  religions,  and  all  of  them 
develop  with  more  or  less  consciousness  of  their  aim 
toward  the  common  goal  of  a  Religion  of  Science. 

Herder,  himself  a  prominent  Christian  clergyman 
in  Germany  (he  was  Superintendent-General  of  the 
Lutheran  Church  in  the  Duchy  of  Saxe-Weimar),  said 
of  Christianity  in  his  "  Ideas  for  the  History  of  Man- 
kind "  that  it  appeared  at  once  with  the  pretension  of 
being  a  cosmic  religion,  but  contained  at  the  time  of 
its  origin  many  ingredients  which  had  to  be  discarded. 
It  went  slowly  through  all  the  stages  of  childhood, 
barbarism,  idolatry,  and  sensuality,  it  became  more 
and  more  matured,  but  we  have  as  yet  seen  only  the 
beginning  of  its  career.      He  says  : 

■ '  The  doctrine  of  Christianity  must  become  like  a  clear  stream, 
which  precipitates  and  deposits  all  those  national  and  particular 
opinions  which  cling  to  it  like  sediments  held  in  its  waters.  Thus 
the  first  Apostles  of  Christianity  dropped  their  Jewish  prejudices 
when  they  prepared  the  idea  of  the  Gospel  for  all  the  nations  ; 
and  this  purification  of  Christianity  must  he  continued  in  this  cen- 
tury. Many  forms  have  been  broken  ;  others  will  have  to  go  too. 
not  through  external  violence  but  through  an  inner  thriving  germ." 

What  is  commonly  called  the  Christian  civilisation 
is  the  sum  total  of  the  culture  produced  by  those  na- 
tions who  have  adopted  Christianity  and  recognise 
Jesus  Christ  as  their  teacher  and  moral  authority. 
Mr.  Maddock  is  as  much  as  I  myself  and  all  freethink- 
ers a  product  of  this  so-called  Christian  civilisation, 
and  we  can  as  little  cut  loose  from  it  as  from  our  phys- 
ical ancestry.  We  cannot  begin  the  world  over  again 
but  must  continue  the  work  of  the  civilisation  at  the 
point  on  which  we  stand.  It  will  be  wise  to  mind  the 
lesson  of  Goethe's  poem,  who,  on  analysing  his  own 
personality,  finds  that  personality  consists  of  tradition. 
He  says  : 

"  Would  from  tradition  free  myself, 
Original  I'd  be  I 
Yet  great  the  undertaking  is 
And  trouble  it  heaps  on  me. 

"  Were  I  indigenous,  I  should 
Consider  the  honor  high, 
But  strange  enough  !  it  is  the  truth, 
Tradition  myself  am  I." 


Christianity  contains  still  great  possibilities,  and  I 
for  one  am  not  as  yet  prepared  to  regard  it  as  dead 
simply  because  it  does  not  grow  with  the  rapidity 
which  Mr.  Maddock's  and  my  own  impatience  requires. 
If  I  see  Christians  endeavoring  to  purify  their  Chris- 
tianity, I  do  not  feel  that  their  undertaking  is  hopeless 
because,  as  some  freethinkers  think,  Christianity  is 
in  its  very  nature  bigotry  and  superstition,  but  I  tell 
them  what  their  Christianity  must  be  in  order  to  be 
the  Religion  of  Truth.  I  tell  them,  to  denounce  sci- 
ence is  irreligious,  for  science  is  the  method  of  finding 
the  truth  ;  science  is  holy,  and  if  there  is  any  reve- 
lation that  is  trustworthy,  it  is  the  revelation  of 
science. 

When  Mr.  Maddock  asks,  "What  forms  of  Chris- 
tianity must  we  develop?"  I  reply,  "We  must  en- 
courage all  aspirations  of  scientific  inquiry.  The  light 
of  science  will  purify  Christianity,  for  science  is  the 
furnace  in  which  the  ore  is  melted,  so  as  tq  separate 
the  dross  of  error  from  the  pure  gold  of  truth  ;  and  I 
hope  that  Mr.  Maddock  is  not  blind  to  the  facts,  first, 
that  Christianity  contains  many  seeds  of  truth  and 
noble  aspirations,  and,  secondly,  that  there  are  in- 
numerable Christians  who  search  for  the  truth  in  an 
honest  spirit,  and  they  will  find  it.  I  only  remind  the 
reader  of  the  noble-hearted  band  of  scholars  who  repre- 
sent what  is  commonly  called  the  Higher  Bible  Criti- 
cism. If  some  searchers  for  truth  express  the  truth  in 
the  language  which  tradition  imposes  upon  them,  while 
others  break  loose  from  tradition  and  declare  that  they 
can  no  longer  call  themselves  Christians,  who  will 
blame  them?     Not  I,  for  one. 

The  two  Latin  maxims  which  are  placed  as  mot- 
toes at  the  head  of  this  article  seem  to  contradict  one 
another,  and  yet  they  are  both  good  rules,  and  it  is 
quite  possible  to  obey  both  at  the  same  time.  The 
one  is  :  Itt  verbis  siiniis  faciles  duinmodo  convcniamus  in 
re.  The  other  :  ///  verbis  simiis  difficiles,  lit  conveniamus 
in  re.  In  English  :  "  Don't  let  us  quarrel  about  words 
if  we  but  agree  in  substance,"  and  "Let  us  carefully 
weigh  our  words,  so  that  in  the  end  we  may  agree  in 
substance." 

These  two  maxims  are  good  principles  to  guide  us 
in  our  investigation  of  truth  and  in  the  comparison  of 
our  own  views  with  those  of  others.  On  the  one  hand, 
we  must  be  scrupulously  exact  when  defining  the 
words  which  we  use  and  also  when  recapitulating  or 
discussing  the  propositions  of  others;  we  must  never 
lose  sight  of  the  meaning  which  the  speaker  intends  to 
convey.  On  the  other  hand,  we  must  not  be  sticklers 
for  words,  or  peculiar  definitions  of  words;  for  very 
frequently  those  who  use  the  same  words  agree  by  no 
means  as  to  the  substance  of  their  respective  proposi- 
tions, while  others,  whose  nomenclature  or  methods  of 
presentation   varies,   may  very  well   be   of  the   same 


4382 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


opinion,  and  would  at  once  join  hands,  if  each  one 
took  the  trouble  to  translate  the  other's  modes  of 
speech  into  his  own  language.  p.  c. 

THE  SECRET  OF  SUCCESS. 

Sir  Edwin  Arnold  attributes  the  triumph  of  the  Japanese  in 
the  present  war  to  their  religion.  The  C/iicago  Ez^-ning  Journal 
quotes  from  an   article  of  his  in   the  Chautauquau  the  following 

passage : 

"Sir  Edwin  Arnold  attributes  the  triumph  of  Japan  to  her  re- 
ligion. In  the  fortunes  of  the  present  war  the  world  beholds— if  it 
will  look  deeper  than  to  what  satisfies  shallow  critics— the  im- 
mense significance  of  leading  national  ideas.  We  have  suddenly 
found  ourselves  gazing  upon  a  prodigious  collision  between  powers 
founded  on  Confucianism  and  Buddhism  respectively— since  be- 
hind the  disgraceful  defeat  of  the  troops  and  ships  of  Peking  are 
the  unspirituality,  narrowness,  and  selfishness  of  the  old  agnos- 
tic's philosophy  ;  while  behind  the  success  of  Japan  are  the  glad 
and  lofty  tenets  of  a  modified  Buddhistic  metaphysic,  which  has 
mingled  with  Shintoism  to  breed  reverence  for  the  past,  to  incul- 
cate and  to  produce  patriotism,  loyalty,  fearlessness  of  death,  with 
happiness  in  life,  and  above  all,  self-respect.  It  is  this  last  qual- 
ity which  is  the  central  characteristic  of  the  Japanese  men  and 
women,  and  round  about  which  grow  up  what  those  who  do  not 
love  the  gentle  and  gallant  race  called  "vanity,"  and  many  other 
foibles  and  faults.  Self-respect,  which  Buddhism  teaches  to  every 
one,  and  which  Confucius  never  taught,  makes  the  Japanese  as  a 
nation  keep  their  personal  honor— except  perhaps  in  business  af- 
fairs—as clean  as  they  keep  their  bodies  ;  and  has  helped  to  give 
them  the  placid  and  polite  life,  full  of  grace,  of  charm,  and  of  re 
finement,  which  contrasts  so  strongly  with  the  ill-regulated,  strug- 
gling existence  of  the  average  Chinese.  Self  respect— w/sK/vzrn 
(iw('«3z/™— has  also  largely  given  them  their  brilliant  victories  of 
this  year;  that  temper  of  high  manhood  which  Confucianism  has 
taken  away,  by  its  cold  and  changeless  disbeliefs,  from  the  other- 
wise capable,  clever  and  indefatigable  Chinamen. 

"In  a  word,  the  picture  passing  before  our  eyes  of  unbroken 
success  on  one  side  and  helpless  feebleness  and  failure  on  the 
other — which  was  numerically  the  stronger — is  a  lessen  for  the 
West  as  well  as  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  the  East.  It  teaches 
trumpet-tongued,  how  nations  depend  upon  the  inner  national 
life,  as  the  individual  does  upon  his  personal  vitality." 

The  doctrine  of  anatman  which  is  the  denial  of  the  metaphys- 
ical soul-entity  naturally  makes  mankind  readier  to  accept  new 
ideas.  In  peace  it  favors  progress  and  in  war  it  makes  men  more 
courageous. 

CORRESPONDENCE. 


with  them  in  this  present  war  ;  and  we  eagerly  look  into  the  daily 
papers  for  fresh  news.  There  is  no  paper  in  India  which  is  not 
admiring  the  Japanese.  Kedarnath  Basu. 


INDIA  AND  JAPAN. 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Open  Court  : 

I  read  with  great  pleasure  Mr.  Nobuta  Kisbimoto's  letter  re- 
lating to  the  present  war  between  Japan  and  China,  published  in 
your  Opeit  Court,  Nov.  i.  We  Hindus  are  taking  great  interest 
in  the  affairs  of  Japan— the  Great  Britain  of  Asia.  The  progress 
the  Japanese  nation  has  made,  in  so  short  a  time,  is  quite  start- 
ling. The  Japanese  people  has  set  one  of  the  grandest  lessons  to 
the  world  in  the  history  of  civilisation  in  this,  their  present  war. 
We  are  eager  to  learn  something  more  about  their  history  of  na 
tional  progress  than  what  we  have  already  learned  from  stray 
newspaper  articles.  The  people  here  greatly  appreciated  Mr. 
Kishimoto's  articles  on  Buddhism  which  appeared  from  time  to 
time  in  'The  Open  Court.  We  Hindus  take  great  interest  in  Japan's 
national  improvement,  we  admire  them,  and   our  sympathies  are 


BOOK  NOTICES. 

We  have  recently  received  reprints  of  two  interesting  articles 
by  M.  F.  Picavet,  entitled  The  Experimental  Seienee  of  the  Thir- 
teenth Century  in  the  Occident  (republished  from  the  Moyen  Age, 
Paris,  Emile  Bouillon.  67  Rue  de  Richelieu,  8  pages)  and  M.  Theo- 
dule  Rihot  in  the  Contemporary  French  Philosopher  series  (from  the 
Revue  Bleue,  Paris,  19  Rue  des  Saints-Peres,  pages  23).  The  former 
is  a  resume  with  comments,  of  M.  Berthelot's  recent  works  on 
the  history  of  Alchemy.  The  thirteenth  century  was  as  impor- 
tant, says  M.  Picavet,  in  the  history  of  science  as  in  that  of  theol- 
ogy and  philosophy,  continuing  without  interruption  the  Renais- 
sance of  the  ninth  century.  With  the  meagre  materials  received 
from  Greek,  Latin,  Byzantine,  and  Arabian  sources,  it  constructed 
a  grand  philosophy  competent  to  rescue  a  theology  attacked  from 
all  quarters  ;  it  produced  the  manual  arts  which  reached  such  per- 
fection in  the  cathedrals  and  town  halls;  it  created  the  statues, 
the  tapestries  and  the  other  marvellous  works  of  art  so  well  known 
to  us.  Leonardo  of  Pisa  went  further  in  arithmetic  and  algebra 
than  Diophantus  and  was  only  surpassed  by  Fermat  four  centuries 
later.  In  the  experimental  sciences  Roger  Bacon  did  not  stand 
alone,  but  a  whole  school  of  alchemists  flourished  contemporane- 
ously with  him.  The  works  of  these  men  are  not  by  any  means 
the  mere  drivel  of  charlatans  but  in  many  instances  give  indica- 
tions of  real  scientific  methods  pursuing  right  ends.  Listen  to  this 
s\a\.emeni  Irora  Geher's  Summa  perfectionis  magisterii:  "It  is  not 
we  who  produce  these  effects  but  Nature;  we  simply  dispose 
the  materials  and  the  conditions  ;  she  acts  of  her  own  accord,  we 
are  merely  her  ministers."  To  these  Western  alchemists  we  owe 
our  knowledge  of  alcohol,  nitric  acid,  vitriol,  aqua  regia.  In  this 
special  field  the  West  became  a  source  of  knowledge  even  for  the 
Greek  Orient. — The  second  pamphlet,  on  M.  Ribot,  is  a  biography 
and  sketch  of  the  intellectual  career  of  the  famous  psychologist. 
Probably  this  is  the  only  obtainable  account  of  M.  Ribot's  activ- 
ity, and  should  be  consulted  by  readers  interested  in  his  works.  /'. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

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DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 


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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  388. 

ANIMAL  RIGHTS  OF  PROPERTY.     E.  P.  Powell...   4375 

RELIGION  IN  JAPAN.     C.  Pfoundes 4377 

NAMES.     Editor 4379 

THE  SECRET  OF  SUCCESS 4382 

CORRESPONDENCE. 

India  and  Japan.     Kedarnath  Basu 4382 

BOOK  NOTICES .,  . . .  4382 


'i  I 


The  Open  Court. 


A  "W7EEKLY   JOURNAL 

DEMOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.   389.     (Vol.  IX. -6) 


CHICAGO,   FEBRUARY  7,   1895. 


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WOMAN  IN  RECENT  FICTION. 

BY  WILLIAM   M.   SALTER. 

The  Heavetily  Twins  and  Trilbv  bring  up  difficult 
and  delicate  questions.  I  can  well  understand  the 
shrinking  of  those  who  would  prefer  not  to  deal  with 
them.  And  yet  if  there  are  certain  things  that  are 
true,  certain  thoughts  which  men  and  women  ought  to 
have,  and  if,  for  lack  of  utterance,  the  world  is  more  or 
less  ignorant,  misguided,  and  suffers — then  there  is  a 
certain  virtue  in  speaking  plainly,  so  be  the  speaker  is 
clean  and  pure  in  heart. 

It  is  well,  at  times,  to  be  frank.  Our  object  in  life 
should  not  be  to  get  through  with  as  little  pain  as  pos- 
sible, but  to  do  our  duty.  We  may  not  talk  about 
some  things,  we  may  wish  to  be  ignorant  of  them — but 
unfortunately  that  does  not  make  them  any  less  ex- 
istent, and  not  noticing  them  may  be  only  giving  them 
leave  to  grow  more  rankly  in  the  dark.  Is  it  the  high- 
est ideal  of  womanhood  to  have  no  knowledge  of  what 
is  bad  and  impure,  to  live  in  some  other  world  than 
this  actual  one,  to  have  no  hand  in  its  contests  be- 
cause of  their  dust  and  heat  ?  Is  it  even  the  highest 
ideal  of  sainthood  to  live  this  peaceful,  protected  ex- 
istence ?  I  am  afraid  that  there  is  a  kind  of  moral  Epi- 
curianism,  and  that  what  the  author  of  The  Heavenly 
Twins  says  of  certain  "gentle  mannered,  pure-minded 
women  "  is  not  unjustified. 

"They  kept  their  tempers  even  and  unruffled  by  never  allow- 
ing themselves  to  think  or  know  .  .  .  anything  that  is  evil  of  any- 
body. .  .  .  They  seemed  to  think  that  by  ignoring  the  existence  of 
sin,  by  refusing  to  obtain  any  knowledge  of  it,  they  somehow 
helped  to  check  it;  and  theycould  not  have  conceived  that  their 
attitude  made  it  safe  to  sin,  so  that  when  they  refused  to  know 
and  to  resist,  they  were  actually  countenancing  evil  and  encourag- 
ing it." 

And  hence,  she  adds,  "the  kind  of  Christian  charity 
from  which  they  suffered  was  a  vice  in  itself." 

Both  these  books  deal  plainly  and  unequivocally 
with  a  kind  of  evil,  a  type  of  character,  the  mention 
of  which  is  ordinarily  shunned.  In  the  one  case  it  is 
a  man,  in  the  other  a  woman.  And  yet  in  The  Heav- 
enly Twins  it  is  the  estimate  and  treatment  of  the  man 
by  a  serious  woman  that  is  the  central  object  of  inter- 
est. Let  us  consider  this  book  first.  One  need  not 
admire  it  altogether  to  find  its  treatment  of  this  theme 


brave,  strong,  and  in  a  high  sense  womanly.  I  do  not 
speak  of  it  from  a  literary  standpoint.  I  am  free  to 
confess  it  is  of  unpardonable  length,  and  I  could  hardly 
in  conscience  ask  any  friend  to  read  it  all.  I  do  not 
admire  the  twins,  after  whom  the  book  is  named,  and 
which,  to  my  mind,  would  have  been  better  without 
them ;  they  seem  impossible  creatures,  hardly  even 
"the  natural  consequence  of  an  unnatural  state  of 
things"  (to  quote  an  apology  once  made  for  them) — 
and  the  most  charitable  interpretation  of  their  fantas- 
tical tricks  and  speeches  is  that  they  were  the  true 
children  of  their  poor  father,  who  never  quite  knew, 
not  what  to  say,  but  "what  not  to  say."  The  author, 
too,  gives  us  occasionally  some  rather  foolish,  one- 
sided generalisations  about  men  ;  she  is  sarcastic,  a 
little  spiteful,  and  even  peevish  at  times  ;  sometimes 
in  contemplating  her  pictures  of  fashionable  society, 
we  have  a  little  the  feeling  which  Heine  once  ex- 
pressed in  his  characteristic  manner,  "all  the  world's 
a  hospital,  and  all  the  men  and  women  merely  pa- 
tients." Then  it  must  be  confessed  that  she  strikes 
rather  a  high  key  at  times  in  speaking  of  woman.  The 
spirit  of  God  has  been  transferred  from  priests  to  wo- 
men, she  appears  to  think.  "  The  truth  has  all  along 
been  in  us,"  she  has  said  since  in  a  magazine  article  ;' 
and,  then  again,  blending  the  old  and  the  new  ideas 
with  charming  ingenuity,  "  it  is  the  woman's  place  and 
pride  and  pleasure  to  teach  the  child,  and  man  morally 
is  in  his  infancy."  "  It  is  for  us,"  she  roundly  declares, 
"to  set  the  human  household  in  order,"  and  (as  if  to 
prepare  us  for  the  unexpected)  "we  are  bound  to 
raise  the  dust  while  we  are  at  work."  And  yet  who 
can  take  offence  at  this  audacity  when  it  is  shown  in 
so  unselfish  a  cause?  And  in  all  seriousness,  who  will 
not  allow  for  exaggerations  and  overstatements  in  a 
youthful  writer  who  has  other  marks  of  sterling  worth  ? 
It  is  an  honest  moral  nature  Sarah  Grand  reveals  in 
this  book  of  hers.  She  has  positive  ideas  of  right  and 
wrong.  She  is  incapable,  as  she  once  says  of  one  of 
her  characters,  of  the  confusion  of  mind  or  laxity  of 
conscience,  which  denies,  on  the  one  hand,  that  wrong 
may  be  pleasant  in  the  doing,  or  claims,  on  the  other, 
with  equal  untruth,  that  because  it  is  pleasant  it  must 
be,  if  not  exactly  right,  at  all  events  excusable.      It  is 

^ North  American  Review,  March,  1S94. 


4384 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


refreshing,  in  these  daj's  when  the  moral  consciousness 
is  often  blurred,  and  the  difference  between  vice  and 
virtue  reduced  to  a  vanishing  point,  to  have  the  homely, 
old-fashioned  truth  repeated.  She  is  evidently  a  per- 
son like  her  heroine,  who  loves  purity  and  truth,  and 
loathes  degradation  and  vice.  Once  there  comes  from 
her  a  noble  statement  as  to  the  moral  content  of  the 
religion  of  the  future.  It  must  be  a  thing,  she  says, 
about  which  there  can  be  no  doubt,  and  there  are  only 
the  great  moral  truths,  perceived  since  the  beginning 
of  thought,  but  hard  to  hold  as  principles  of  action, 
because  the  higher  faculties  to  which  they  appeal  are 
of  slower  growth  than  the  lower  ones  which  they 
should  control  —  it  is  in  these,  the  infinite  truths, 
known  to  Buddha,  reflected  by  Plato,  preached  by 
Christ,  undoubted,  undisputed,  even  by  the  spirit  of 
evil,  that  religion  must  consist,  and  is  steadily  growing 
to  consist,  while  the  questionable  man-made  gauds  of 
sensuous  service  are  gradually  being  set  aside. 

The  ideal  of  a  husband  which  Sarah  Grand  pre- 
sents, is  a  man  whom  a  woman  can  reverence  and  re- 
spect from  end  to  end  of  his  career,  especially  in  re- 
gard to  his  relations  with  her  own  sex.  The  key-note 
of  her  book  is  struck  in  this  passage  from  her  heroine's 
note-book,  written  after  reading  those  novels  which 
she  had  heard  her  father  declare  "true  to  life  in  every 
particular  and  for  all  time  " — Roderick  Random  and 
Tom  Jones.      It  is  particularly  a  propos  of  the  latter. 

"Another  young  man,  steeped  in  vice,  although  acquainted 
with  virtue.  He  also  marries  a  spotless  heroine.  Such  men  mar- 
rying are  a  danger  to  the  community  at  large,  The  two  books 
taken  together  show  well  the  self-interest  and  injustice  of  men,  the 
fatal  ignorance  and  slavish  apathy  o£  women  ;  and  it  may  be  good 
to  know  these  things,  but  it  is  not  agreeable." 

This  passage  gives  us  the  secret  of  her  character 
and  of  her  subsequent  history.  Evadne — this  is  the 
heroine's  name — is  not  advanced  or  masculine  or  pecu- 
liar in  any  way,  save  in  being  thoughtful.  She  has 
rather  a  dread  of  "peculiar  views"  or  of  "views"  of 
any  kind;  she  does  not  wish  to  be  out  of  sympathy 
with  her  fellow- creatures  and  have  them  look  suspi- 
ciously at  her — she  would  rather  even  share  their  ig- 
norance and  conceit  and  be  sociable,  she  says,  than 
find  herself  isolated  by  a  superiority,  however  real. 
Her  mother  writes  to  a  friend  that  Evadne  has  never 
caused  her  a  moment's  anxiety  in  her  life,  except  such 
as  every  mother  must  feel  for  a  daughter's  health  and 
happiness  ;  she  speaks  of  the  careful  education  Evadne 
has  received,  of  the  way  the  girl's  father  has  devoted 
himself  to  the  task  of  influencing  her  in  the  right  di- 
rection in  matters  of  opinion,  of  her  deeply  religious 
disposition,  of  the  further  fact  that  she  is  perfectly  in- 
nocent, at  eighteen  knowing  nothing  of  the  world  and 
its  wickedness,  and  is  therefore  eminently  qualified  to 
make  somebody  an  excellent  wife.     The  only  trouble 


about  Evadne,  from  a  conventional  point  of  view,  is, 
we  may  say,  that  she  has  done  a  little  thinking  and 
studying  for  herself,  an  evidence  of  which  we  see  in 
the  passage  from  her  note-book  which  I  have  already 
quoted.  If  was  her  habit,  the  author  tells  us,  to  take 
everything  an  grand  scriei/x,  and  when  other  people 
were  laughing  she  would  be  gravely  observant  as  if 
she  were  solving  a  problem.  She  was  not  a  great 
reader,  but  a  good  one.  She  was  told  by  her  father 
that  women  were  apt  to  be  inaccurate,  and  she  tried 
to  have  distinct  accurate  ideas  of  whatever  subject  she 
took  up.  She  studied  science,  and  anatomy  and  phys- 
iology, and,  possessing  a  mind  of  purity  as  well  as  of 
strength,  she  was  never  corrupted  but  only  enlightened 
by  what  she  read.  A  proper,  conventional,  reveren- 
tial, yet  withal  serious  minded  and  not  wholly  ignorant 
English  girl  of  the  upper  middle-class — such  is  the 
portrait  which  the  author  draws. 

And  now  the  incidents  of  her  career,  her  history, 
begin.  She  was  susceptible  to  beauty,  whether  in  na- 
ture or  in  the  ritual  of  the  Anglican  Church,  and  by 
her  constant  and  devout  attendance  at  a  little  church 
not  far  from  her  home,  attracts  the  attention  and  the 
more  than  friendly  interest  of  its  young  celibate  priest, 
—  but  she  could  not  marry  him  :  that  would  have 
seemed  a  sort  of  sacrilege  to  her  reverential  eyes  at 
the  time.  And  then  a  man  appears  on  the  scene  to 
whom  she  feels  that  she  might  give  herself.  She  had, 
indeed,  before  this  made  her  future  husband  a  subject 
of  prayer,  and  with  delightful  naivetci  (which  shows 
plainly  enough  how  slightly  "emancipated  "  she  was) 
had  asked  for  some  sign  by  which  she  should  know  him. 
He  is  a  handsome  Major,  with  taking  manners — and 
withal  a  good  churchman,  never  missing  a  service.  Her 
mother  tells  a  friend  that  she  is  quite  in  love  with  him 
herself — adding,  "  He  was  rather  wild  as  a  young  man, 
but  he  has  been  quite  frank  about  all  that  to  my  hus- 
band, and  there  is  nothing  now  we  can  object  to."  In 
the  midst  of  the  joy  that  has  come  to  her,  Evadne  is  not 
without  her  serious  thoughts  and  one  day  she  asks  her 
father  if  he  considers  him  in  every  way  a  suitable  hus- 
band for  her.  "In  all  respects,  my  dear,"  he  an- 
swered heartily.  "He  is  a  very  fine,  manly  fellow." 
"There  was  nothing  in  his  past  life  to  which  I  should 
object?"  she  ventured  timidly.  "Oh,  nothing,  noth- 
ing," he  assured  her.  "  He  has  been  perfectly  satis- 
factory about  himself,  and  I  am  satisfied  that  he  will 
make  you  an  excellent  husband."  And  so,  trusting  in 
this  equivocal  assurance — which,  of  course,  meant  only 
one  thing  to  her,  while  covering  something  very  dif- 
ferent in  her  father's  mind — she  with  a  glad  and  un- 
suspicious heart  married  him. 

Then  comes  the  revelation.  Before  she  leaves  the 
house  after  the  ceremony,  she  learns  by  a  letter  that 
was  delayed  in  reaching  her  of  his  disreputable  past 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4385 


life.  She  leaves  the  house  with  him,  pale,  with  set 
lips,  and  at  the  station,  while  he  is  off  for  a  moment 
making  an  inquirj',  she  gets  into  a  hansom — and  drives 
off.  It  is  a  woman  stung  by  the  imposition  that  has 
been  practised  on  her — a  woman,  a  wife  (if  3-ou  will) 
in  revolt. 

I  have  described  the  situation  at  such  length,  that 
it  may  be  clearly  before  our  eyes.  How  plain!)-  it  is  a 
problem  in  ethics  !  And  how  feeble  are  the  ordinary 
notions  with  respect  to  it.  The  father  storms  and 
threatens  the  lunatic  asylum  or  the  law.  Later  on  he 
laughs  at  the  idea  of  her  wanting  a  "  Christ  like  "  man 
for  a  husband.  The  mother,  true  to  her  mother's 
heart,  sa3's  she  must  go  to  her,  but,  being  forbidden 
that  by  her  husband,  writes  to  her  as  her  "poor  mis- 
guided child  "  and  entreats  her  to  return  to  her  right 
state  of  mind  at  once.  "  I  don't  den)'  that  there  tor/c 
things  in  George's  past  life,"  she  wrote,  "which  it  is 
very  sad  to  think  of,  but  women  have  alwa3's  much  to 
bear.  It  is  our  c-i-oss,  and  you  must  take  up  yours  pa- 
tiently and  be  sure  that  you  will  have  your  reward." 
And  then  she  berates  her  daughter's  informant  and 
says  she  could  see  her  wliippcd  for  destroying  such 
bright  prospects  of  happiness.  How  pitiful,  how  shal- 
low such  judgments  are — and  yet  after  all,  I  fear,  how 
common  !  Even  her  aunt,  in  whose  house  she  finds  a 
loving  refuge,  can  only  say,  "Don't  make  me  think  of 
it.  ...  If  I  ever  let  myself  dwell  on  the  horrible  de- 
pravity that  goes  on  unchecked,  the  depravity  which 
you  say  we  women  license  bj'  ignoring  it  when  we 
should  face  and  unmask  it,  I  should  go  out  of  my 
mind.  I  do  know — we  all  know  ;  how  can  we  live  and 
not  know  ?  But  we  don't  think  about  it — we  can't — 
we  dare'nt" — and  so  her  recourse  is  to  turn  the  mind 
away  and  keep  it  filled  forever  with  holy  and  beautiful 
thoughts. 

In  contrast  with  all  this  evasion  and  rage,  how 
straightforward,  how  calm,  how  dignified,  how,  in  the 
great  sense,  womanly,  was  Evadne's  attitude  !  She 
went  off,  not  to  run  awa}',  but  to  think.  Should  it  be 
strange  and  wonderful  to  us  that  a  woman  should  have 
some  sense  of  the  dignit}'  of  her  own  being  and  what 
was  due  to  it  ?  I  was  once  acquainted  with  a  man  of 
whom  it  used  to  be  said  that  he  did  not  even  know  when 
he  was  insulted.  If  we  do  not  find  such  a  lack  of  a  sense 
of  one's  own  significance  admirable  in  a  man,  is  it 
really  any  more  admirable  in  a  woman?  Is  self-efface- 
ment her  true  policy,  bearing,  brooking,  enduring  all 
things — and  is  self  development,  self-expansion,  the 
peculiar  privilege  of  man?  What  chivalrous  man  will 
say  so?  Is  woman  not  human?  Has  she  not  the 
common  ends  and  rights  of  humanity?  If  man  may 
rebel,  may  not  she?  If  she  is  wronged,  shall  she  not 
feel  it,  resent  it?  Is  she  bound  to  bear  the  cross  any 
more   than   he — especially  when   it  is  a  cross   of   his 


manufacture  ?  For  myself,  I  admire  absolutely  Evad- 
ne's attitude  in  this  stage  of  her  history.  She  is  not 
anxious  after  a  "second-hand  sort  of  man."  It  does 
not  exactly  appeal  to  her  either,  a  young  inexperienced 
woman,  when  she  is  told  that  it  is  her  duty  to  reform 
the  man  she  lias  ignorantly  married.  She  thinks  such 
cases  are  for  the  clergy,  who  have  both  experience 
and  authority,  and  not  for  young  wives  to  tackle.  She 
asks  her  mother  whether  she  would  counsel  a  son  of 
hers  to  marry  a  society  woman  of  the  same  character 
her  husband  has  turned  out  to  be  for  the  purpose  of  re- 
forming her,  and  dares  to  add  that  a  woman's  soul  is 
every  bit  as  precious  as  a  man's.  And  so  she  refuses 
to  sacrifice  herself.  She  thinks  she  sees  that  the 
world  is  not  a  bit  better  for  centuries  of  self  sacrifice 
on  woman's  part,  and  proposes  now  to  sacrifice  the 
man  instead  of  the  woman.  No,  the  word  "submit," 
she  once  declares,  "is  of  no  use  to  me.  Mine  is  rclu-l. 
It  seems  to  me  that  those  who  dare  to  rebel  in  every 
age  are  they  who  make  life  possible  for  those  whom 
temperament  compels  to  submit.  It  is  the  rebels  who 
extend  the  boundaries  of  right  little  by  little,  narrow- 
ing the  confines  of  wrong,  and  crowding  it  out  of  ex- 
istence." To  my  mind,  truer  words  were  never  spoken. 
I  must  pass  over  briefly  the  later  stages  in  Evadne's 
histor}'.  But  the  one  of  which  I  have  already  spoken 
is  the  most  significant  one  in  the  book.  She  does  in- 
deed, owing  to  her  mother's  imploring  entreaty,  con- 
sent to  live  in  the  same  house  with  her  husband,  but 
not  as  his  wife.  She  conforms  thus  to  outward  stan- 
dards of  respectability.  Once,  later  on,  there  may  be 
a  question  whether  she  was  not  too  determined  in  her 
unwillingness  to  accept  him  ' — as  to  this,  opinions  will 
differ;  but  he  himself  bore  the  same  loose  character 
up  to  this  time  and  after.  She  was  weak  enough  to 
promise  him  never  to  take  any  part  publicly  in  any 
question  of  the  day — and  for  this  was  cramped  into  a 
narrow  groove  and  condemned  to  a  sort  of  neutral  ex- 
istence, which  took  the  life  and  spirit  out  of  her. 
There  is  a  pathetic  and  indeed  tragic  interest  in  her 
later  life.  She  became  the  "  type  of  a  woman  wasted" 
— and  makes  us  realise  what  a  serious  world  it  is  we 
live  in,  and  what  a  power  our  own  and  others'  acts 
have  in  determining  our  fate.  Tlie  inspiring  part  of 
her  life  is  the  first  part — and  I  could  wish  that  every 
woman  and  every  man,  yes,  particularly  every  man, 
should  read,  say  the  first  hundred  or  hundred  and  fifty 
pages  of  the  book.  Their  lesson  cannot  be  forgotten, 
and  it  is  a  lesson  that  men  need.  If  a  man  does  not 
get  a  new  respect  for  woman,  even  if  it  be  coupled 
with  a  new  shame  over  himself,  I  am  greatly  mistaken. 
And  woman?  Once  Evadne  and  her  husband  have  a 
frank  interchange  of  thought — (for  he  is  by  no  means 
a  brute,  but  just  like  a  hundred  other  men).      "Did 

1  Book  III,  chap.  14. 


4386 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


it  never  occur  to  you  that  a  woman  has  her  ideal  as 
well  as  a  man?"  she  said  :  "that  she  loves  purity  and 
truth,  and  loathes  degradation  and  vice  more  than  a 
man  does?"  "  Theoretically,  yes,"  he  answered  ;  "but 
you  find  practically  that  women  will  marry  any  one. 
If  they  were  more  particular,  we  should  be  more  par- 
ticular, too."  That  is  a  part  of  the  lesson  of  this  brave 
book,  and  so  it  is  a  book  for  women  as  well. 

When  we  turn  to  Trilby,  we  meet  a  different  prob- 
lem altogether.  And  since  the  book  has  been  so  much 
more  widely  read,  and  is  still  fresh  in  everybody's 
mind,  I  can,  perhaps,  proceed  to  speak  directly  of  the 
issues  involved  in  it.  Everybody  is  charmed  by  the 
book,  and  yet  some  good  people  seem  to  be  afraid  of 
it.  They  think,  for  instance,  that  a  glamour  is  thrown 
over  artist  life  in  Paris  that  is  apt  to  be  dangerous. 
One  wise  critic  says  that  no  high-spirited  girl  would 
fail  to  be  captivated  by  the  bewitching  picture  of  Bo- 
hemian life  in  Trilby  and  to  wish  to  start  off  and  estab- 
lish herself  in  just  such  a  circle,  where  only  wit,  gen- 
erosity, and  artistic  tastes  (the  emphasis  is  evidently 
on  "only"  and  means  these  things  and  not  morals)  are 
necessary  to  good  fellowship.^  But  "bless  you,  good 
madam,"  I  am  tempted  to  say,  "  have  you  not  read 
the  book  carefully  enough  to  see  that  the  artists  we 
really  love  in  it  (or,  indeed,  know  much  of  anything 
about)  not  only  nowise  lead  immoral  lives,  but  that 
one  of  them  is  fairly  shocked  even  at  the  heroine's 
sitting  as  a  model  for  the  nude,  and  that  she  herself 
never  alludes  to  the  real  immorality  of  her  past,  save 
in  a  confession  of  shame,  and  that  this  and  all  the 
other  references  to  it  in  the  book  would  hardly  cover 
more  than  two  or  three  out  of  the  over  four  hundred 
pages?"  How  can  a  picture  of  pure,  clean,  honorable 
men  throw  a  dangerous  glamour  over  anybody  or  any- 
thing ? 

The  fact  is,  the  charm — at  least,  the  moral  charm 
and  beauty — of  the  book  is  in  the  story  of  the  power  of 
three  good  men  to  redeem  and  lift  up  and  transform  a 
woman  who  had  gone  astray.  And  this  is  accom- 
plished not  on  set  purpose,  not  by  preaching,  much 
less  by  cant,  but  by  the  simple  force  of  their  manli- 
ness, their  truth,  and  their  good-will,  by  the  silent  un- 
conscious influence  of  their  personality.  "You  have 
changed  me  into  another  person — you  and  Sandy  and 
Little  Billee,"  she  wrote  to  Taffy,  as  she  was  taking 
herself  off  in  pursuance  of  her  promise  never  to  see 
Little  Billee  again  ;  here  I  find  the  great  lesson  of  the 
book  —  and  this  whether  Du  Maurier  meant  there 
should  be  any  lesson  or  not.  At  first  a  careless, 
thoughtless,  winning,  friendly,  happy-go-lucky  crea- 
ture, doing  what  she  knew  to  be  wrong  at  times  and 
yet  not  deeply  affected  by  it ;  and  at  last,  awakened, 
conscious  of  herself,  conscious  of  her  person  and  of 

1  K.  U.  C.  in  Outlook,  Oct.  6,  1S94. 


shame  as  she  had  never  been  before,  conscious  and 
bitterly  repentant  of  her  wrong-doing  in  the  past,  and 
making  no  e.xcuse  for  it,  unwilling  even  to  smoke  her 
innocent  little  cigarettes  any  more,  they  reminded  her 
so  of  things  and  scenes  she  now  hated — a  new,  trans- 
formed woman.  Of  course,  if  our  code  of  morals  is 
that,  if  a  woman  commits  a  certain  sin  she  is  abso- 
lutely and  forever  lost,  then  must  Trilby  seem  an  im- 
moral book  to  us;  but  if  we  believe  that  no  one  act 
can  damn  a  man,  or  a  woman  either,  that  there  are 
possibilities  of  good  even  in  the  worst — and  surely 
then  in  those  who  are  short  of  that  dread  extreme — in 
a  word,  if  we  look  on  men  and  women  in  a  humane, 
great  minded  way,  or  as  Jesus  did,  then  must  this 
story  of  an  awakening  and  deepening  of  the  moral  na- 
ture in  a  careless  girl  not  only  charm  us  by  the  fasci- 
nating way,  the  artlessness  which  is  itself  art,  in  which 
it  is  told,  but  move  us,  inspire  us,  and  edify  us  as  well. 
For  myself,  I  see  no  blurring  of  moral  issues  in 
the  book.  If  Trilby's  wrong-doing  does  not,  per- 
chance, seem  to  us  at  times  to  be  treated  by  Du  Mau- 
rier with  quite  the  seriousness  it  deserves,  this  is  only 
in  keeping  with  the  lightness  of  his  touch  in  dealing 
with  every  subject — love  and  life  and  even  death  in- 
cluded ;  it  does  not  mean  that  while  other  things  are 
grave,  this  is  not  grave,  in  his  eyes. 

"  A  little  work,  a  little  play 
To  keep  us  going — and  so,  good  day! 

A  little  warintlj,  a  littk-  light 

Of  love's  bestowing — and  so,  good  niglit ! 

A  little  fun,  to  match  the  sorrow 

Of  each  day's  growing — and  so  good  morrow  1 

A  little  trust  that  when  we  die 

We  reap  our  sowing  !  and  so,  good-bye  !  " 

In  these  exquisite  lines  that  close  the  book  what 
lightness  of  touch  !  What  playfulness  almost,  even  in 
dealing  with  the  last  and  gravest  theme  !  And  yet  who 
will  deny  the  gravity  of  thought  behind  the  bantering 
manner?  Must  a  man  A'// us  he  is  serious  to  make  us 
credit  the  possibility  of  his  being  so?  Little  Billee's 
analysis  or  divination  of  Trilby  at  the  outset  was,  it 
must  be  remembered,  a  well  of  sweetness,  somewhere 
in  the  midst  of  it  the  very  heart  of  compassion,  gen- 
erosity, and  warm  sisterly  love,  and  under  that — alas  ! 
at  the  bottom  of  all — a  thin,  slimy  layer  of  sorrow 
and  shame.  One  thing  is  not  the  same  as  another, 
bad  is  not  good,  an}'  more  than  good  is  bad,  in  his 
eyes.  The  glory  of  Little  Billee  and  of  any  great 
moral  nature,  of  one  who  does  not  with  one  sin  cover 
and  blot  out  a  whole  character,  is  that  he  sees  the 
good  with  the  bad,  that  he  is  not  a  poor,  blind  bigot, 
that  he  loves  what  is  lovely  even  though  there  be 
other  unlovable  things  that  he  does  not  love  at  all. 
Nor  was  Trilby's  thought  of  herself  really  confused  or 
uncertain.      One  critic  says  that  she  is  pictured  as  a 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4387 


person  who  "has  lost  her  virtue  and  yet  retains  her 
innocence,"  that  the  stor)'  is  one  "  of  a  pure  soul  un- 
tainted by  a  polluted  life  "  ^ — something  of  course, 
confusing  and  dangerous.  But  the  critic  is  mistaken. 
She  is  not  a  iVa////kint/,  knowing  not  good  and  evil. 
She  saj-s  in  so  many  words  writing  to  the  Laird,  "It 
makes  me  almost  die  of  shame  and  miser}'  to  think  of 
it  ;  for  that's  not  like  sitting.  I  knew  how  wrong  it 
was  all  along — and  there's  no  excuse  for  me,  none." 
The  fact  is  that  such  critics  have  not  observed  ;  it  is 
so  surprising  to  find  even  the  mention  of  a  forbidden 
theme  in  a  respectable  English  novel,  that  the}'  think 
of  nothing  else  and  have  not  even  attended  to  the  ex- 
act wa}'  in  which  it  is  mentioned. 

Do  3'ou  mean  then,  I  may  be  asked,  that  a  woman 
can  sin  and  be  forgiven,  forgiven  not  only  to  go  to 
heaven  or  into  a  nunnery,  but  forgiven  so  as  to  be  good 
for  something  on  the  earth?  Yes,  that  is  just  what  I 
mean.  Are  not  men  forgiven  for  lapses  from  virtue? 
And  shall  we  sa\',  women  cannot  be?  Strange,  is  it 
not,  that  women  themselves  are  most  prone  to  sa}' so, 
that  sisterly  charity  is  sometimes  the  last  thing  they 
think  of — that  the}'  will  pardon  their  broilwrs  and  yet 
are  only  too  ready  to  leave  their  own  sex  out  in  the 
cold  !  Little  Billee's  mother  would  not  forgive  Trilby 
for  any  practical  purpose  such  as  he  had  in  mind,  the 
clergyman  would  not — this  is  the  tone  of  the  world 
and  of  the  religion  that  has  been  captured  by  the  world. 
And  across  it  all  and  athwart  it  all  comes  the  indig- 
nant cry  of  Little  Billee,  "What  a  shame,  what  a  hid- 
eous shame  it  is  that  there  should  be  one  law  for  the 
woman  and  another  for  the  man  !  "  For  myself  I  think 
it  would  have  offended  nothing  but  conventional  stand- 
ards if  Little  Billee  had  married  Trilby — and  I  can  see 
no  benefit  for  Trilby  or  Little  Billee  or  his  mother  or 
anybody  in  his  mother's  interference.  Dear,  well- 
meaning  woman  that  she  was — no  one  can  upbraid 
her  ;  and  yet  the  best  intentions,  if  they  do  not  accord 
with  right  and  justice,  do  not  save  us  or  keep  us  from 
working  injury  in  the  world.  Two  lives  irrevocably 
blighted — such  was  the  result  of  her  misguided  moth- 
erly zeal.  "Everything  seems  to  have  gone  wrong 
with  me,"  Trilby  writes  in  her  last  sad  letter  to  Taffy, 
"and  it  can't  be  righted" — which  does  not  mean  that 
she  was  in  the  least  sorry  for  her  great  act  of  renun- 
ciation or  had  any  idea  that  in  the  circumstances  she 
had  done  more  than  her  duty.  She  seems  rather  to 
give  another  instance  of  that  moving  "to  choose  sub- 
limer  pain  "  of  which  George  Eliot  wrote — and  to  show 
that  in  those  quarters  where  we  least  expect  it  there 
are  those  transcendent  possibilities  that  make  human- 
ity potentially  divine.  And  Little  Billee  was  never 
thereafter  the  same.  He  was  pleasant  and  sweet  to 
live  with,  but  never  the  same.      He  dies  prematurely. 

1  The  Outlook  (editorial). 


She  does  the  same — after  having  fallen  a  prey  to  the 
weird  influence  of  Svengali.  There  is  as  much  that  is 
sad  as  glad  in  the  book.  It  is  partly  the  sadness  of 
the  tangle  of  things — and  yet  in  how  great  measure 
the  result  of  mischievous  interference,  of  sacrificing 
the  great  moralities  of  life  for  the  small,  of  immolating 
love  on  the  altar  of  convention  !  Ah,  to  put  away  the 
false  gods  and  to  find  the  true  ones  in  this  uncertain 
world,  to  have  the  gift  to  find 

"  Where  real  right  doth  lie, 
And  dare  to  take  the  side  that  seems 
Wrong  to  man's  blindfold  eye," 

to  have  the  instinct  that  can  tell 

"  That  God  is  on  the  held  when  He 
Is  most  invisible  !  " 

I  think  Du  Maurier's  book  will  be  a  contribution  to 
the  moral  illumination  of  man,  that  all  who  read  it  (un- 
less they  read  with  bandaged  eyes)  will  see  somethings 
more  clearly  thereafter  than  they  did  before. 

And  so  whether  we  consider  one  book  or  the  other, 
I  do  not  think  our  thoughts  of  women  will  be  lowered 
by  them.  One  shows  us  woman  in  honorable  rebel- 
lion ;  the  other  reveals  possibilities  in  woman  where 
they  would  ordinarily  be  discredited.  Both  really  en- 
large woman  and  make  her  more  sacred  in  our  eyes. 


PROFESSOR  GREEN'S  BRIDGE. 1 

EV  GEORGE  M.   MC  CRIE. 

Dr.  Carus  calls  Professor  Green's  opinion  re  the 
Oxford  Bridge  "a  conundrum,"  asking  what  the  Pro- 
fessor understands  by  a  bridge,  whether  "the  sense- 
image  which  appears  in  the  eye,  ....  or  that  objec- 
tive something,  the  presence  of  which  is  indicated  in 
the  vision  of  the  bridge."  This  query  affords,  I  think, 
a  very  fair  example  of  that  vicious  duplication  of  the 
objective,  which  subject-objectivity  always  involves. 
There  is  really — for  each  person — but  one  bridge — the 
bridge  each  one  sees  and  has  it  in  his  power  to  cross. 
But  it  would  seem  that,  according  to  the  editor  of 
The  Open  Court,  there  are  for  each  person  two  bridges. 
First,  there  is  the  bridge  of  the  sense-image  appear- 
ing in  the  eye  yet  seen  to  lie  [where  it  is  not]  "out- 
side the  body" — and  second,  "that  objective  some- 
thing, the  presence  of  which  is  indicated  in  the  vision 
of  the  bridge."  What  the  "objective  something"  is, 
I  cannot  understand.  If  it  be  the  actual  bridge,  then 
the  "sense-image"  is  clearly  superfluous.  If  it  be 
not  the  actual  bridge,  what  then  is  it  ? 

For  my  own  part,  and  as  a  monist,  I  prefer  to  go 
direct  to  the  bridge — my  bridge,  and  mine  only — in 
something  of  the  same  sense  as  the  rainbow  which  I 
view  is  mine  alone,  inasmuch  as,  owing  to  my  position 
as  observer,  no  one  else  can  see  it  at  the  same,  but  at 

let.  the  editorial  criticism  following  my  article  "The  Barriers  of  Person- 
ality" (The  Open  Court,  No.  371,  p.  4239,  and  No.  371.  p.  4243.) 


4388 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


a  necessarily  different  angle.  Self,  again,  is  not  the 
limitary  bodily  organism,  it  is  the  bodily  organism 
plus  everything  cognised  by  it,  which  is  everything. 
That  we  may  not  step  out  of  this  enclosure,  is  self- 
evident. 

RAINBOWS  AND  BRIDGES. 

A  FEW  days  after  the  publication  of  Mr.  George  M. 
McCrie's  article  we  received  an  additional  note,  which 
we  take  pleasure  in  presenting  to  our  readers,  under 
the  title  "Professor  Green's  Bridge." 

Professor  Green's  problem  is  a  conundrum  so  long 
as  the  meaning  of  the  term  "bridge"  remains  unde- 
fined. If  we  understand  by  bridge,  in  analogy  with  the 
many-colored  rainbow,  the  sense-perceived  image  only 
and  not  the  objective  thing,  no  one  will  question  the 
propriety  of  saying  that  every  one  who  looks  at  the 
bridge  has  a  bridge  of  his  own.  Every  spectator  has 
a  rainbow  of  his  own  ;  or,  speaking  more  correctly, 
every  rainbow  is  a  part  of  every  spectator's  mind.  But 
"now  suppose  we  speak  with  a  physicist  on  the  physical 
phenomenon  which  takes  place  before  us  when  we  see 
a  rainbow,  and  he  were  to  call  a  rainbow  a  great  bundle 
of  ether-vibrations  starting  from  the  sun  and  suffering 
refraction  in  the  clouds,  who  would  deny  that  there  was 
but  one  rainbow,  and  that  all  the  sense-perceived  rain- 
bow-images on  the  retinas  of  spectators  were  only  so 
many  effects  of  those  ether-vibrations? 

Every  spectator  has  two  rainbow-images, — one  in 
each  eye.  But  inherited  habit  and  personal  experience 
weld  the  two  images  into  one  so  that  a  healthy  man  is 
unconscious  of  seeing  things  double,  and  double  vision 
has  become  the  symptom  of  a  morbid  condition. 

The  usage  of  the  term  "light "  in  the  subjective 
sense  has  been  more  and  more  adopted  b}'  both  physi- 
cists and  psychologists,  so  that  the  proposition  has 
been  made  to  discard  the  use  of  the  term  "light"  in 
physics  and  limit  it  to  the  language  of  psychology  and 
physiological  psychology.  But  names  that  apply  to 
objects,  such  as  tables,  chairs,  bridges,  houses,  are, 
according  to  common  usage,  not  applied  to  the  sense- 
perceived  effects  of  those  various  realities,  but  to  the 
realities  themselves.  According  to  common  parlance 
we  should  say  that  there  is  but  one  bridge,  but  as  many 
bridge-images  as  there  are  eyes  looking  at  the  bridge, 
and  as  many  bridge-percepts  as  there  are  minds  ^  per- 
ceiving the  bridge. 

Mr.  McCrie,  for  his  part,  calls  the  bridge,  in  anal- 
ogy with  the  rainbow,  what  we  should  call  either  the 
bridge-image  or  the  bridge-conception.  His  self  is 
what  we  should  call  either  our  sense-perceived  sur- 
roundings or  our  world-conception, — perhaps  both. 
According  to  him,  the  denial  of  the  existence  of  what 

3  By  "  mind  "  I  understand  here  the  ensemble  of  the  psychic  life  of  a  think- 
ing organism. 


we  should  call  the  objective  world  is  an  essential  part  of 
monism  ;  he  cannot  understand  what  is  meant  by  the 
physical  ether-vibrations,  the  presence  of  which  con- 
ditions the  rainbow  in  the  eye;  and  the  bridge  as  an 
object  independent  of  our  sensation  and  perception 
is  to  him  a  redundant  entity.  His  self  is  the  entire 
world,  but  how  the  increase  of  his  world  is  to  be  ex- 
plained, how  his  self  can  originate  and  disappear,  re- 
mains a  mystery. 

I  may  add  here  that  the  so  called  idealists,  Berke- 
ley and  Fichte,  are  by  no  means  the  subjectivists  that 
they  are  generally  supposed  to  be  ;  that  their  idealism 
is  due  to  a  peculiar  philosophical  nomenclature,  and  it 
is  doubtful  whether  any  thinker  has  ever  seriously  de- 
nied the  existence  of  an  objective  reality.  If  Mr. 
McCrie  seriously  insists  upon  being  a  subjectivist,  he 
stands  very  isolated. 

Supposing,  we  adopt  his  view 'that  there  are  as 
many  bridges  as  there  are  spectators  of  the  bridge, 
and  that  there  is  nothing  else  than  these  subjective 
bridge-conceptions  of  the  spectators,  or,  in  a  word, 
that  there  is  no  objective  bridge  :  there  would  be  no 
criterion  of  truth,  for  truth  is  the  correctness  of  a  rep- 
resentation which  presupposes  the  existence  of  the 
representative  image  or  idea  and  the  represented  ob- 
ject. Further,  there  would  be  no  connexion  among 
the  various  selves,  for  each  self  would  be  sovereign  in 
its  own  sphere,  without  any  connecting  link  with  other 
selves.  A  self's  conception  of  a  thing  would  be  the 
thing,  or,  as  Dr.  Lewins  says,  the  tJiiiig  is  the  think. 
Every  self  would  be  its  own  God  and  universe,  and 
we  should  be  astonished  only  at  the  impotence  of  our 
omnipotence,  for  a  think  does  not  always  act  as  we 
think.  It  possesses  a  nature  of  its  own,  and  we  have 
to  fashion  our  thoughts  to  suit  it.  There  is  another 
strange  phenomenon  :  Through  the  instrumentality  of 
language  one  self  can  compare  his  own  thinks  with 
those  of  other  selves,  and  we  can  alter  our  own  and 
other  people's  thinks  so  as  to  meet  with  fewer  and  ever 
fewer  disappointments.  What  is  that  something  which 
disappoints  or  fulfils  our  expectations?  We  call  it 
reality.  According  to  Mr.  McCrie's  solipsism,  it  has 
no  existence.  Lastly,  consider  the  transiency  of  the 
various  selves,  for  experience  teaches  that  every  indi- 
vidual has  a  beginning  and  an  end;  that  it  is  limited 
by  birth  and  death.  Existence  would  be  nothing  but 
the  bubbling  up  of  innumerable  empty  mirages.  There 
would  be  no  preservation  of  the  contents  of  our  selves, 
and  all  being  would  be  a  meaningless  dream. 

The  existence  of  the  objective  world  is  not  an  idle 
assumption  which  can  be  so  easily  disposed  of  as  Mr. 
McCrie  thinks.  It  accounts  at  least  for  the  origin, 
growth,  and  complications  of  the  phenomena  of  the 
self,  which  solipsism  is  unable  to  answer.  Object  and 
subject  are   different,   yet   are  they   inseparably   one. 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4389 


Neither  does  the  distinction  between  self  and  world 
constitute  a  dualism,  nor  can  their  identification  be  re- 
garded as  the  basis  of  monism.  Monism  (as  we  under- 
stand it)  means  unity,  not  singleness  ;  it  means  har- 
mony of  the  laws  of  being  and  conformity  of  all  truths; 
it  means  that  all  things,  our  own  self  included,  are 
parts  onl}'  of  the  great  immeasurable  All  of  existence, 
in  which  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being,      p.  c. 


APHORISMS. 

BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 

A  WORD  in  the  head  is  worth  two  in  the  mouth. 

There  are  two  ways  to  avoid  drowning  in  a  sea  of  metaphys- 
ics ;  to  be  able  to  swim  or  so  big  you  touch  bottom  ;  to  be  either 
very  good  or  very  clever. 

Some  people  have  excellent  faculties  and  powerful  imagina- 
tions, but  not  the  knowledge  to  utilise  these  powers  to  advantage. 
They  have  a  good  mill,  but  little  or  no  grist. 

Life  is  like  the  bee  ;  it  offers  bcth  honey  and  a  sting. 

*  "  * 

The  only  vengeance  a  good  man  desires  is  to  have  his  enemies 
know  that  he  was  right. 

•X- 

Christianity  is  the  kindergarten  of  the  religion  of  science. 
Christ  is  God  made  easy. 

-X-  * 

It  is  better  to  be  infidel  with  Christian  principles  than  Chris- 
tian with  infidel  conduct. 

If  you  have  real  faith  no  fact  can  daunt  you.  After  Daniel 
came  out  of  the  den  of  lions  he  wasn't  to  be  scared  by  a  cat. 

It  is  one  thing  to  be  indifferent  and  quite  anoth>;r  be  be  inde- 
pendent ;  one  to  be  "on  the  fence"  and  another  to  be  on  the  ful- 
crum. 

-X- 

*  ■» 

It  is  better  to  be  dubious  of  the  doubtful  than  credulous  of 
the  impossible. 

*  « 

And  yet  the  inconceivable  is  sometimes  the  inevitable. 

What  inveterate  liars  are  the  senses.  A  blue  illusion  hangs 
over  us  ;  a  motionless  illusion  rushes  below  us.  The  eye  says  of 
the  rainbow's  hues — they  are  seven.  Science  corrects  the  eye  for 
its  chromatic  aberration  and  tells  us  they  are  but  three. 

First  or  last  science  will  prove  herself  worthy  of  her  name — 
known  truth. 

*  » 

It  is  difficult,  sometimes  impossible,  and  not  always  desirable 
to  love  your  enemies.  If  he  hunger  feed  him,  if  he  thirst  give  him 
drink.  That  is  well  enough.  But  if  his  enmity  takes  the  shape 
of  deva.stating  the  community  see  to  it  that  he  is  put  where  he  can 
eat  and  drink  in  safety — to  the  community. 

Some  I  have  known  so  philanthropic  as  to  love  their  enemies 
better  than  their  friends,  whose  charity  begins  and  stays  far  from 
them  of  their  own  household. 


The  truth  always  comes  speaking  with  authority.  What  is 
there  more  dogmatic  than  algebra,  as  conceited  as  geometry  ? 

*  * 

Bewail  his  fate  as  much  as  you  please  who  struggles  with  ad- 
versity, and  moralise  over  the  happy  tho'  humble  home  and  the 
tender  welcome  and  the  sweet  kiss  at  nightfall  to  the  weary  toiler, 
I  tell  you  more  men  than  one  would  think  go  from  the  bosom  of 
their  office  where  all  is  peace  to  a  cold,  heariless,  and  censorious 
family. 

If  we  taxed  wisdom,  and  let  each  one  assess  himself,  what  a 
big  revenue  the  State  would  have. 

•X  ^  v!- 

The  prompt  man  has  a  right  to  be  slow  when  there  is  no 
hurry. 

Some  people  claim  to  love  God  who  are  really  in  love  with 
themselves.  The  real  article  of  love  casts  out  fear  and  self  and 
everything  else  ;  but  some  are  like  the  little  boy,  who,  when  asked 
if  he  loved  his  sister,  said  he  loved  Nelly  ever  so  much.  "As 
much  as  pie?"  "Oh!  better  than  pie;  but — not  as  much  as 
jelly." 

Some  minds  require  an  element  of  mystery  in  their  religion. 
Explain  religion  and  you  have  spoiled  it  for  them.  They  seem  to 
feel  that  if  it  were  not  quite  so  true  it  would  be  truer. 

I  am  fond  of  religion.  But  I  do  not  admire  that  sort  which 
doubts,  or  is  distrustful  of  the  natural,  inevitable  outcome  of  hon- 
est inquiry.  Perhaps  for  the  same  reason  I  never  took  any  interest 
in  a  trotting-match.  When  I  go  to  a  race  I  don't  fancy  seeing 
horses  at  a  gait  not  quite  as  fast  as  they  could  go  if  they  tried. 

Who  keeps  no  chickens  isn't  worried  when  he  sees  a  hawk. 

Nothing  pleases  the  average  human  being  better  than  to  get 
hold  of  a  convincing  argument  for  disregarding  a  distastfu!  morsel 
of  moral  law. 

^-         '^         .s 

Justice  is  Janus-faced — a  devil  to  the  evil,  a  God  to  the  godly. 

As  the  case  is  with  a  block  of  ice, — it  is  first  ice,  then  water, 
then  vapor,  and  then  gases,  so  with  thought ;  first  a  guess,  then 
opinion,  then  fact,  then  principle.  It  is  only  when  matter  is  re- 
solved into  its  elements  and  thought  into  principle  that  either  be- 
comes stable.  Generally,  the  more  tenuous  anything  becomes  the 
more  enduring.      "  Spirit  "  is  that  which  is  eternal. 

*  * 

It  is  good  law  that  a  dealer  may  puff  his  wares,  but  must  not 
lie  about  them.  Science  is  known  truth,  and  the  scientist  is  he 
who  knows.  In  the  science  of  religion  shall  the  law  fail  ?  Shall 
the  "pious"  always  continue  to  say  that  which  he  doubts?  Shall 
he  forever  vend  goods  for  "all  wool,"  knowing  them  to  be  part 
cotton  ? 

Before  you  purchase  insist  upon  your  right  to  burn  a  shred  or 
two,  or  even  to  use  the  microscope  of  honest  investigation. 

*  * 

Scepticism  is  often  the  cloak  in  which  ignorance  masquerades. 

It  matters  little  of  what  material  the  lattice  is  made  on  which 
the  vine  climbs  upward. 

If  the  vine  can  find  the  sun  the  rose  will  bloom. 


Some  sorts  of  prejudice  are  justifiable.  It  is  right  to  be  preju- 
diced against  prejudice, — a  very  different  thing  from  being  illib- 
eral, which  you  ought  not  to  be  even  to  illiberality. 


Call  yourself  Christian,  or  Buddhist,  or  Freethinker,  or  what 
you  will ;  but  the  result  of  the  deeds  of.  the  body,  unified  in  char- 
acter, are  more  important  than  the  name. 


4390 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


Character  is  soul ;  the  flesh  perishes,  the  several  actions  go 
out  like  candles,  one  by  one  ;  but  the  soul  cannot  perish. 

*  * 

Chlorine  is  a  stifling  gas,  sodium  a  metal  ;  neither  o!  any  value 
as  a  life-sustainer.  But  sodium  chloride  (common  salt)  is  a  neces- 
sity to  man. 

Nitrogen  is  a  deadly  stifler,  oxygen  a  wild  exhilarator  ;  me- 
chanically combined  in  fit  proportion  you  breathe  and  live  because 
of  the  atmospheric  air  their  union  makes. 

* 

So  in  like  manner  individual  characteristics  must  perish  that 

character  may  live. 

* 

*  * 

Natural  selection  and  survival  of  the   fittest   are  as  potent  in 

the  region  of  "mind"  as  in  that  of  "matter";  and  they  are  equally 

potent  in  the  region  of  spirit. 

* 

He  who  is  just  does  not  need  to  study  logic  or  law. 

*  "         * 

John  of  Patmos  adopted  Christianity  because  he  had  seen 
Christ ;  Job  was  a  follower  of  Christ  before  Christianity  existed 
as  a  fact.  Epictetus  was  a  Christian  without  knowing  it,  and 
there  are  "infidels"  living  to  day  who  have  accepted  Christianity 
by  rejecting  it. 

BOOK  NOTICES. 

T/ic-  IVord  of  the  Spirit.  By  Jenkin  Lloyd  Jones.  A  taste- 
fully p^pr'r-bound  booklet  containing  the  following  five  sermcns  : 
To  the  Nation  ;  To  the  City;  To  the  Church  ;  To  the  Home  ;  and 
To  tl-.e  Indivic'ual.  Interspersed  between  the  sermons  are  ap. 
propriate  quotations  from  Emerson,  Whittier,  Holmes,  Brown- 
ing, and  Mary  Howitt.  Mr.  Jones's  utterances  are  aglow  with  op- 
timism, and  will  afford  encotiragement  to  many  despondent  hearts. 
He  strikes  powerfully  and  courageously  at  the  root  of  many  mod 
ern  vices  and  wrongs,  and  all  of  us  should  heed  his  appeals.  The 
book  is  dedicated  to  James  and  Ruth  Gardner.  (Chicago  :  Unity 
Publishing  Company,  175  Dearborn  St.  Pages  113.  Price,  5c 
cents.)  

A  new  and  unique  psychological  publication  is  announced  for 
March  under  the  title  U Annie  Psychologique,  to  be  edited  by  Prof. 
H.  H.  Beaunis  and  Dr.  A.  Binet,  with  the  collaboration  of  other 
distinguished  psychologists.  It  will  consist  of  four  parts:  the 
first  giving  a  very  complete  and  detailed  account  of  the  various 
works  on  psychology  that  have  appeared  in  1894,  with  diagrams, 
tables,  etc.,  and  so  made  as  to  dispense  with  reference  to  the 
sources ;  the  second  being  a  bibliographical  index,  containing 
twelve  hundred  items,  of  all  works  appearing  in  1894  that  touch 
the  histology,  anatomy,  and  physiology  of  the  nervous  system, 
pathology,  etc.,  etc.;  the  third  part  being  a  publication  in  full  of 
the  articles  which  are  the  fruit  of  the  work  of  the  Sorbonne  labora- 
tory, of  which  M.  Binet  is  the  director  ;  while  the  fourth  part  re- 
fers to  observations,  experiments,  new  instruments,  etc.  The  sub- 
scription price,  if  paid  to  M.  Binet  direct,  will  be  seven  francs  per 
volume  (carriage  extra),  but  ten  francs  if  bought  separately  in  the 
book  shops. 

Memoirs  of  the  International  Congress  of  Antliropology.  Edited 
by  C.  Staniland  Wake.  (Chicago;  The  Schulte  Publishing  Co., 
i894^Pp.,  375  Price,  $5.00.)  This  work  is  published  at  a  great 
expense  of  time  and  money,  and  reflects  much  credit  upon  the 
editor.  The  International  Congress  of  Anthropology  formed  one 
of  the  series  of  congresses  held  during  the  recent  World's  Fair  in 
Chicago,  and  was  presided  over  by  Dr.  Daniel  G.  Brinton  and  by 
Prof.  F.  W.  Putnam,  who  was  in  charge  of  the  government  eth- 
nological exhibit.     The  present  memoirs,  with  the  exception  of  a 


brief  editorial  preface,  are  made  up  wholly  of  the  addresses  and 
papers  read  before  or  presented  to  the  Congress.  The  subjects 
cover  a  broad  field,  and  are  generally  of  an  interesting  character. 
We  append  here  a  few  titles  :  The  Nation  as  an  Element  in  An- 
thropology; The  Anthropology  of  the  North  American  Indian  ; 
Aboriginal  American  Mechanics  ;  The  Antiquity  of  the  Civilisa- 
tion of  Peru  ;  Cave-Dwellers  of  the  Sierra  Madre.;  On  Various 
Supposed  Relations  Between  the  American  and  Asian  Races ; 
Primitive  Scales  and  Rhythms;  The  Germ  of  Shoreland  Pottery; 
The  Fall  of  Hochelaga  ;  The  Scope  and  Method  of  the  Historical 
Study  of  Religions  ;  etc.  Not  all  the  papers  presented  to  the  Con- 
gress seem  to  have  been  published,  but  a  list  of  those  omitted, 
with  the  names  of  the  authors,  is  given  in  the  editor's  preface.  It 
is  to  be  regretted  that  the  price  of  the  book  is  so  high,  as  its  con- 
tents would  probably  have  secured  it  a  considerable  circulation 
had  it  been  published  in  a  cheap  and  popular  form.  ft. 


M.  Lucien  Arreat,  the  well-known  French  critic,  psychologist, 
and  literary  correspondent  of  The  Monist,  has  just  published  a 
delightful  psychological  study  entitled  Memory  and  Imagination 
(Paris,  r895.  Felix  Alcan.  Pages,  168.  Price,  fr.  2.50).  Mem- 
ory and  imagination,  he  contends,  are  connected  by  insensible 
gradations.  More  or  less,  we  all  have  memory,  but  we  have  not 
all  the  same  memory.  Also,  be  our  calling  what  it  may,  we  all  of 
us  possess  some  degree  of  imagination,  but  not  all  the  same  imagi- 
nation. As  our  images  are,  so  is  our  imagination.  This  is  the 
rule,  and  M.  Arreat  illustrates  and  confirms  it  by  the  examination 
of  four  intimately  related  mental  types — painters,  musicians,  poets, 
and  orators.  This  group  alone  is  studied.  Their  images  rest 
ch'efly  upon  "perceptions."  In  the  two  groups  left  unstudied, 
the  images  are  based  on  symbols,  as  in  scientists,  musicians,  etc  , 
and  on  practical  notions,  as  in  merchants,  peasants,  artisans,  and 
the  like.  M.  Arreat's  researches  throw  much  light  on  psychologi- 
cal theory,  but  are  no  less  important  on  the  practical  side.  They 
merit  the  attention  of  all  educators.  fi. 


We  have  received  Nos  i,  2,  and  3,  Series  1894,  of  the  iVaeh- 
richten  von  der  kbnigl.  Gesellschafl  der  IVissenschaften  zii  Gottingen. 
Fhilologiseh-historische  Klasse.  The  contributions  will  claim  the 
attention  only  of  specialists. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 


N.  B.  Binding  Cases  for  single  yearly  volumes  of  The  Open  Court  will 
be  supplied  on  order.     Price,  75  cents  each. 


CONTENTS  OF  NO.  389. 

■WOMAN  IN  RECENT  FICTION.    William  M.  Salter.  4383 

PROFESSOR  GREEN'S  BRIDGE.     George  M.  McCrie.  4387 

RAINBO'WS  AND  BRIDGES.     Editor 4388 

APHORISMS.     HuDOR  Genone 4389 

BOOK  NOTICES f 4390 


^  ( 


The  Open  Court. 


A  'SSTEEKLY   JOURNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.   390.     (Vol.  IX.-7.) 


CHICAGO,   FEBRUARY   14,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
/  Sinfile  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co  —Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


SPIRITUALISING  CLAY. 

BY  S.    MILLIN&TON   MILLER,    M.    U. 

I  STOOD  in  front  of  the  studio  of  Karl  Bitter,  the 
Vienno- American  Sculptor,  in  New  York,  and  watched 
a  heavy  dray  back  up  to  the  pavement  preparatory  to 
delivering  its  load  of  plastic  ceramic.  The  entire  bot- 
tom of  the  long  cart  was  littered  with  misshapen,  dis- 
torted, lumps  of  grayish  clay,  which,  to  the  mind's 
eye,  assumed  all  sorts  of  fantastic  likenesses;  resem- 
blances to  low  physical  types,  and  to  grotesque  natural 
forms. 

I  passed  through  the  door,  up  stairs,  and  back  into 
the  great  working-room,  with  upper  air  spaces  open 
right  up  to  the  skylight.  In  a  small  wooden  frame 
(2j4  X  3}4  feet),  on  the  wall,  I  saw  one  of  the  panels 
for  the  front  gate  of  Trinity  Church,  New  York,  "Cast- 
ing Down  Their  Golden  Crowns  Around  the  Glassy 
Sea."  It  showed  a  thick  veil  rent  in  twain  like  the 
paper-covered  hoop  through  which  the  equestrienne 
leaps  from  her  running  horse  in  the  circus,  and  torn, 
and  bulging  out  with  the  vehemence  of  the  light  from 
the  Throne.  The  ragged  rims  of  vapor  had  collapsed 
into  heavy,  rounded,  and  yet  fleecy  stumps  of  mist. 
To  the  right  stood  the  angel  whose  voice  was  the 
trumpet  that  called.  And  at  her  feet  crouched  the 
lion  with  front  paws  inverted  ;  a  picture  of  utterly  sub- 
jugated ferocity. 

On  a  small,  plain  throne,  his  arms  half  raised  and 
extended — with  no  specialisation  of  features — majesty 
expressed  by  the  indefinable  dignity  of  the  pose  alone 
— the  King  sat.  And  around  him  on  the  margins  of 
the  Sea  of  Glass  the  four  and  twenty  elders  bowed 
their  Kingly  heads,  and  cast  down  their  heavy  golden 
crowns. 

I  had  seen  the  leadish,  doughy,  spiritless  earth  in 
the  cart,  and  but  a  step  had  carried  me  where  I  had 
found  it  transformed  into  the  divinest  shapes  of  pic- 
torial art.  The  mystic  change  had  been  wrought  by 
mind  moving  upon  the  formlessness  of  the  damp  clay. 
And  I  cannot  tell  in  which  transition  stage  this  crude 
material  bore  the  largest  tribute  to  the  transcendent 
power  of  the  sculptor;  whether  in  the  heavy,  shape- 
less masses  in  the  cart,  or  in  the  splendid  prostrate 
circle  of  adoring  Kings. 

Nor  can  I  help  comparing  that  cart-load  of  clayey 


potentialities,  to  the  feeble-minded  children  as  received 
by  one  of  the  various  institutions  for  their  develop- 
ment. The  transcendentalist  would  tell  you  that  he 
saw  many  imbecile  heads  with  faces  in  that  motley 
dray  full  of  clods.  The  microscopist  would  imagine 
a  multi-magnified  series  of  brain-cell  likenesses. 

"  A  touch— a  word — a  tone  half  caught — 
He  softly  felt  and  handled  them, 
Flavor  of  feeling— scent  of  thought — 
Shimmer  of  gem." 

"Suppose  I  want  to  buy  a  dynamo,  as  power  for 
an  electric  light,  or  for  the  movement  of  machinery," 
said  Dr.  Walter  E.  Fernald  (I  am  clothing  his  idea 
with  my  words),  the  Superintendent  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts State  Asylum  for  Feeble  Minded  Children,  at 
Waverly,  Mass.,  "Here  is  one  which  is  cheap  but 
limited  in  its  possibilities.  It  can  only  feed  so  many 
lights,  or  will  only  give  me  so  much  horse  power. 
Here  is  one  larger,  perhaps,  but  not  noticeably  so, 
which  is  warranted  to  support  ten  times  the  circuit, 
and  to  develop  ten  times  the  gauge  of  physical  motive 
energy.  I  examine  them  closely  and  I  find  the  differ- 
ence of  the  two  to  consist  in  the  complexity  of  their 
coils  of  wire.  The  lesser  power-dynamo,  with  fewer 
volts,  has  coarser  coils  and  fewer  of  them.  Whereas 
the  more  powerful  developer  of  energy  consists  of  end- 
less and  delicate  windings  and  layers  of  wire." 

It  is  just  so  with  the  brain  of  the  feeble-minded 
child.  Dr.  A.  W.  Wilmarth,  the  former  pathologist 
of  the  Pennsylvania  Institute  for  Feeble- Minded  Chil- 
dren, at  Elwyn,  Pa.,  made  one  hundred  autopsies,  and 
in  fifty  per  cent,  of  them  traced  the  cause  of  imbecility 
to  prenatal  inflammatory  disease.  But  otherwise  he 
found  no  startling  differences  or  defects  in  brain-struc- 
tures— or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  in  cell-structure. 
As  a  general  rule  the  brains  of  idiots  are  smaller  than 
those  of  the  normal  and  are  misshapen,  but  this  is  be- 
cause they  are  not  used  and  is  not  due,  in  the  vast 
bulk  of  cases,  to  any  such  thing  as  cranial  pressure. 

The  central  nervous  system  consists  practically  of 
ingoing  fibres  from  the  various  organs  of  sense,  and  of 
nerve-cells  for  receiving  and  retaining  impressions  ob- 
tained from  these  fibres.  B3'some,  as  yet  unexplained 
power,  of  co-ordination  these  cells  combine  these  im- 
pressions and  evolve  new  combinations  of  them,  which 
are  manifested  to  other  individuals  by  impulses  sent 


4392 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


through  a  set  of  out  going  fibres  to  the  various  organs 
of  motion. 

It  is  possibly  a  prevalent  misapprehension  that 
small  brains  have  been  caused  by  small  skulls.  That 
the  development  of  the  former  has  been  arrested  by 
the  premature  ossification  of  the  sutures  of  the  latter. 
But  this  is  not  the  case.  The  bony  tables  of  the  skull 
have  contracted  so  as  to  fit  down  closely  upon  a  nat- 
urally attenuated  brain. 

Dr.  W.  W.  Keen,  of  Philadelphia,  who  has  prob- 
ably performed  more  operations  upon  the  skull  for 
epilepsy  and  kindred  affections  than  any  other  surgeon 
in  America,  does  not  regard  the  outcome  of  operations 
for  the  relief  of  idiocy  pure  and  simple  as  brilliant. 
He  has  performed  comparatively  few  of  them,  of 
course,  in  a  general  sense,  and  the  results,  as  above 
stated,  have  not  made  him  hopeful.  Idiocy  is  in  truth 
a  vice  of  the  whole  system.  It  cannot,  therefore,  be 
said  that  surgical  relief  for  idiocy  is  either  frequently 
employed,  or  really  promising  when  it  is  found  neces- 
sary. 

What  Dr.  Wilmarth  has  noted  has  been  a  less  com- 
plex structure  in  the  originating  centres  in  the  grey 
matter,  and  in  the  connecting  fibres  of  the  brains  of 
idiots.  Such  children  have  what  is  known  as  imper- 
fect power  of  co-ordination.  They  can  perform  rough 
labor,  such  as  throwing  a  ball,  or  kicking  a  door,  but 
they  cannot  thread  a  needle,  or  write,  or  pick  pins  out 
of  a  small  box.  In  other  words,  they  can  accomplish 
one  uncomplicated  muscular  action,  but  they  cannot 
compass  a  movement  depending  upon  the  subtle  by- 
p;ay  of  a  smaller,  or  greater  number  of  muscles.  This 
kind  of  a  muscular  performance  is  an  education  in 
store  for  them. 

Miss  Camilla  E.  Teisen,  who  was  formerly  em- 
ployed in  John  Keller's  Institute  for  Feeble-Minded 
Children,  in  Copenhagen,  Denmark,  and  who  is  now 
settled  down  as  chief  instructress  in  the  Pennsylvania 
Institute  at  Elwyn,  has  very  kindly  answered  a  num- 
ber of  pertinent  questions  which  I  propounded  to  her. 

It  should  be  premised  that  in  most  cases  of  idiocy 
the  moral  sense  and  the  physical  senses  are  about 
equally  deficient,  and  with  this  is  joined  a  general  lack 
of  nervous  and  muscular  co-ordination  and  tonicity. 
Many  children  have  shaking,  or  tremulous,  hands  and 
feet.  One  instance  was  noted  of  a  baby  whose  body 
folded  up  (at  neck  and  waist)  like  a  triple  screen  when 
lifted  out  of  bed.  Many  such  children  have  their  in- 
stinctive power  over  the  involuntary  muscles  more  or 
less  absent. 

One  striking  type  of  such  children  is  the  Mongolian 
(a  descriptive  epithet),  with  red  eyes  set  far  apart,  a 
snout-like  nose,  short  blunt  fingers,  a  peculiar  flatness 
of  the  back  of  the  head,  very  poor  teeth,  spongy  hands 
and   feet,  a  thick  tongue  full  of  deep  transverse  fur- 


rows, and  a  deep  muffled  voice.  In  point  of  fact,  the 
student  of  ethnology  will  find  among  the  pupils  of  a 
large  institution  for  the  feeble-minded  strikingly  illus- 
trative types  of  all  the  different  races  of  men  from 
lowest  savagery  to  the  very  grades  nearest  to  racial 
perfection. 

Autopsies  of  the  brains  of  such  children,  could  they 
be  performed,  would  show  probably  no  absence  of 
cells  or  connecting  fibres,  but  more  or  less  simplicity 
of  structure  accompanying  the  more  or  less  pronounced 
type  of  idiot,  as  the  case  may  be.  No  absence  of  the 
media  of  thought,  but  simply  a  lack  of  development. 

Miss  Teisen  regards  the  sight  and  hearing  of  feeble- 
minded children  as  the  senses  most  frequently  defec- 
tive. She  thinks  sight  the  most  important  sense  to 
develop,  and  that  most  easily  developed.  She  feels 
assured  of  development  in  other  directions  as  soon  as 
the  idea  of  color  dawns  upon  the  child's  mind.  Accord- 
ing to  her  experience,  the  development  of  one  sense 
is  accompanied  by  improvement  of  the  other  senses. 
And  yet  exceptional  cases  have  presented  themselves 
to  her  notice  where  the  development  of  one  sense  has 
seemed  to  leave  the  others  stationary.  Miss  Teisen 
has  found  it  impossible  to  reach  the  moral  sense  with- 
out a  fair  development  of  the  physical  senses.  Im- 
provement of  the  physical  senses  has  been  usually 
shown  to  improve  the  habits  and  manners.  A  child 
that  distinguishes  sound  and  appreciates  music  will 
not  be  likely  to  howl  and  scream,  and  a  child  that  feels 
the  influence  of  color  is  far  less  inclined  to  tear  its 
clothes. 

Miss  Teisen  makes  one  statement  of  unusual  in- 
terest. She  says  that  many  of  the  children  of  the  low- 
est grade  have  perfect  sight,  which  their  minds  cannot 
use.  This  very  striking  announcement  opens  the  way 
to  the  question  as  to  whether  the  structure  of  the  image- 
field  of  sight,  together  with  both  afferent  and  efferent 
nervous  fibres  (the  carriers  to  and  from  the  brain)  may 
not  in  many  cases  be  approximately  perfect,  and  the 
great  and  perhaps  only  dcsidcratiun  exist  in  the  original 
centres  of  apprehension  and  action — the  grey  tissue 
cells  of  the  brain  itself. 

As  a  commentary  upon  Miss  Teisen's  views,  I  may 
add  the  very  interesting  statement  of  Dr.  Fernald, 
that  the  reason  why  sound  and  color  give  so  much 
pleasure  to  the  feeble-minded  is  that  the  simplicity  of 
their  brain  and  nerve  fibre  requires  a  greater  blow  of 
sense,  so  to  speak,  to  affect  it  pleasurably.  The  idiotic 
child  has  the  peculiarity  (shared  with  it  by  Alexander 
the  Third  and  the  composer  Bach)  that  he  is  most 
affected  by  loud  music.  In  the  same  way,  fulness  and 
force  of  color  give  the  greatest  pleasure  to  his  eyes, 
such  as  the  gorgeous  crimson  rose,  or  the  serried 
stalks  of  full-petalled  sunflowers,  or  huge  beds  of  bril- 
liant feathery  chrysanthemums. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4393 


Dr.  Fernald  cares  for  the  teeth  of  the  Waverly 
children  among  his  other  duties,  and  tells  me  that  not 
only  do  some  such  children  enjoy  being  pricked  with 
pins,  but  that  after  having  one  tooth  extracted,  with 
what  would  in  the  normal  child  be  attendant  causes  of 
severe  and  prolonged  pain,  his  mentally  undeveloped 
patient  will  frequently  return  and  beg  him  to  extract 
some  more  teeth  as  a  favor. 

It  will  be  seen  almost  without  my  referring  to  it 
that  mind  and  matter  are  very  intimately  related  in 
this  territory — this  borderland.  I  have  found  it  hard 
not  to  have  used  the  words  correlatively.  It  appears 
that  perfect  sensation  and  subtle  thought  are  found 
accompanying  complexity  of  brain-cell  structure  and 
of  nerve-fibre  tissue.  That  deficient  sensation  and 
imperfect  brain-power  are  always  accompanied  by  sim- 
plicity of  nerve- fibre  and  of  brain-structure.  Can  it 
not,  therefore,  be  consistently  said  that  absence  of 
mind  follows  absence  of  brain-tissue  and  nerve-fibre, 
or  absence  of  structure  in  such  fibre  or  tissue?  Or  will 
my  friends,  the  logicians,  accuse  me  of  confounding  a 
part  with  the  whole  ?  However  that  may  be,  the  nearer 
we  get  to  the  roots  of  the  raist'/i  ifctre  of  imbecility, 
the  more  we  are  confronted  with  a  state  of  things, 
which  has,  to  say  the  least,  a  strong  souproii  of  the 
physical  basis  of  mind. 

One  of  the  earliest  practical  experimentalists  in 
this  interesting  field  was  Dr.  E.  Sequin,  father  of  the 
distinguished  New  York  specialist.  Early  in  this  cen- 
tury, under  his  French  masters,  Itard  and  Esquirol, 
Sequin  studied  the  mental  phenomena  of  S  wild  boy 
captured  in  the  woods  of  Aveyron  and  watched  the 
dawnings  of  his  imprisoned  mind.  In  1842  this  bene- 
factor of  the  race  became  an  instructor  in  the  Bicetre, 
in  Paris,  where  he  labored  with  superhuman  patience 
to  foster  and  develop  the  sparks  of  intellect  in  hun- 
dreds of  afflicted  pupils.  The  first  State  school  in 
America  was  opened  in  Massachusetts  under  the  man- 
agement of  Dr.  S.  G.  Howe,  and  another  one  at  Al- 
bany, N.  Y.,  in  1851.  In  1856,  this  same  Dr.  Sequin, 
a  political  refugee,  associated  himself  with  James  B. 
Richards  in  the  management  of  the  Pennsylvania 
School  at  Germantown. 

The  first  meeting  of  the  movement  which  resulted 
in  the  establishment  of  the  present  Pennsylvania  Train- 
ing School  for  Feeble  Minded  Children  was  held  in 
the  office  of  the  late  James  J.  Barclay,  on  February  10, 
1853.  Among  those  present  were  Bishop  Alonzo  Pot- 
ter, Dr.  Alfred  L.  Elwyn,  Dr.  George  B.  Wood,  Judge 
G.  W.  Stroud,  S.  Morris  Wain,  Dr.  Robley  Dunglison, 
and  the  present  secretary,  Franklin  Taylor.  In  1853, 
the  school  was  located  in  two  rented  houses  under  the 
management  and  care  of  James  B.  Richards.  In  1854, 
Mr.  Richards  carried  some  of  the  children  he  had  in- 
structed to  Harrisburg  and  secured  an  appropriation 


of  Sio,ooo.  In  1855,  a  property  on  Woodbine  Avenue, 
Germantown,  was  bought  for  Si5,ooo,  and  seventeen 
children  moved  into  their  new  home.  In  1856,  Dr. 
Sequin,  as  already  stated,  was  associated  with  Mr. 
Richards,  but  the  institution  fell  into  financial  straits, 
and  Dr.  Joseph  Parrish  was  chosen  to  lead  "the  for- 
lorn hope." 

A  second  appropriation  of  $50,000  in  1857,  by  the 
Legislature,  set  the  institution  again  on  its  feet,  and 
the  present  site  of  the  Central  Department  was  pur- 
chased at  Elwyn,  into  which  the  pupils  were  moved  in 
1859.  In  1S61,  the  south  wing  was  completed,  and 
various  legacies  and  donations  pouring  in  during  the 
following  years  have  brought  the  institution  up  to  its 
present  standing  and  capacity.  Dr.  Isaac  N.  Kerlin, 
the  greatest  authority  in  America  on  the  treatment  and 
care  of  this  afflicted  class,  was  elected  superintendent 
and  chief  physician  in  1863.  He  died  on  October  25, 
1893.  His  death  was  a  great  shock  in  philanthropic, 
educational,  and  public  circles.  Since  his  death  the 
office  of  superintendent  has  not  existed.  The  chief 
physician  is  Dr.  Martin  W.  Barr,  a  man  of  wide  ex- 
perience and  peculiar  fitness. 

The  chief  instructors  of  the  mentally-deficient 
abroad  at  present  are  John  Keller,  of  Denmark;  Lip- 
pisted,  of  Norway;  Bourneville,  of  France  ;  Langton 
Dun,  Shuttleworth,  and  Beade,  of  England;  and  Ire- 
land, of  Prestonpans,  Scotland.  The  institutions  of 
the  Scandinavian  countries  are  considered  among  the 
most  thorough  in  Europe.  Much  attention  is  paid  to 
manual  work  at  Thorshaug,  Norway,  and  Mariestad, 
Sweden.  The  institutions  at  Daldorf,  Berlin,  Alster- 
dorf,  and  Hamburg  are  the  most  noted  German  insti- 
tutions where  the  education  of  the  feebleminded  is 
carried  on,  although  there  are  many  small  asylums  in 
Germany  for  the  relief  of  this  class  of  children.  In 
England  the  asylums  at  Earlswood  and  at  Darenth  and 
the  Royal  Albert  Asylum  at  Lancaster  are  the  largest 
and  most  noted. 

In  size,  administration,  and  general  care  of  the 
feeble-minded  the  American  institutes  are  in  advance 
of  those  of  the  Old  World.  One  distinctive  feature  of 
the  institutions  of  this  country  is  that  they  aim  to  pro- 
vide "homes"  rather  than  "asylums"  for  the  defec- 
tive. There  are  twenty-five  schools  for  the  feeble- 
minded in  a  general  way,  and  about  100,000  imbe- 
ciles in  this  country.  Only  one-sixteenth  of  these 
receive  education.  The  Pennsylvania  asylum  for  the 
mentally  defective  at  Elwyn,  near  Philadelphia,  has 
the  largest  number  of  pupils — 943.  Its  facilities  are 
also  fully  equal,  if  not  superior,  to  those  of  other 
schools.  Next  in  point  of  size  comes  the  institution 
at  Columbus,  Ohio.  California  has  built  a  school  for 
an  accommodation  for  1,000  inmates,  but  it  has  not 
yet  gathered  them  in.      The  Massachusetts  State  Asy- 


4394 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


lum  at  Waverly,  under  the  very  enlightened  and  pro- 
gressive control  of  Dr.  Fernald,  has  440  pupils,  eight 
buildings,  and  an  estate  comprising  100  acres. 

What  1  have  said  about  the  causes  of  idiocy  and 
the  sensorial  and  mental  conditions  which  accompany 
it,  have  in  themselves  gone  far  towards  an  explanation 
of  the  method  of  education  employed  for  improving 
the  afHicted.  Let  us  suppose  the  brain  of  a  typical 
imbecile  to  be  the  central  office  of  a  great  municipal 
telephone  system,  an  office  with  the  potentiality  of  do- 
ing an  enormous  and  complex  amount  of  business. 
But  the  rules  governing  the  service  of  the  various 
operators  are  inadequate  and  badly  enforced,  and  the 
girls  themselves  idle  and  gossipy,  and  heedless  of  their 
duties.  Let  us  also  suppose,  if  such  a  thing  is  pos- 
sible, that  the  conductivity  of  all  the  innumerable  little 
wires  leading  off  and  in  every  whither  is  defective  to 
the  last  degree. 

What  do  we  find  to  be  the  general  state  of  affairs? 
The  subscribers  have  to  call  loudly,  have  to  shout  to 
overcome  the  deficiency  of  conduction  in  the  wires, 
and  they  have  to  keep  on  shouting  a  long  time  to  se- 
cure the  undivided  attention  of  the  operator  in  the 
central  office,  and  this  operator,  at  last  aroused,  has  to 
raise  her  voice  to  the  utmost  limit  in  answering.  And, 
owing  to  all  the  obstacles,  the  message  which  she 
sends  out  in  some  other  direction  is  unintelligible  and 
has  to  be  repeated  several  times. 

It  is  just  so  with  the  mind  of  the  imbecile.  Its 
brain,  or  central  office,  is  poorly  equipped  to  start  off 
with,  and  the  wires  (afferent  nerves)  connecting  it  with 
the  external  world  (its  subscribers),  are  of  a  low  power 
of  conductivity,  so  that  the  sensation  which  an  exter- 
nal object,  a  sound  or  color,  makes  upon  the  mind  is 
dim  and  inadequate,  and  the  voluntary  movements 
which  the  out- going  wires  (efferent  nerves)  excite  in 
the  muscles,  i.  e.,  which  they  bid  them  perform,  are 
slow  and  faulty. 

The  education  of  the  imbecile  is  one  requiring, 
therefore,  an  infinite  number  of  repetitions  of  a  mes- 
sage, which  at  the  outset  must  be  unusually  sharp  and 
clear  and  unconfusing.  If  it  is  the  sight  and  hearing 
which  are  to  be  improved  the  pupil  is  placed  in  a  dark 
room,  and  into  the  darkness  a  single  ray  of  light  is  ad- 
mitted. And  when  this  rather  startling  and  antithesal 
phenomena  has  caught  and  riveted  the  child's  atten- 
tion, by  repetition,  a  slide  is  passed  through  the  beam 
of  light  with  sharply  defined  forms  painted  or  engraved 
upon  it.  Simple  forms,  too,  such  as  the  square,  or 
triangle,  or  star.  Then  the  names  of  these  figures  are 
clearly  and  distinctly  and  repeatedly  pronounced,  the 
name  sounded  each  time  the  object  is  exhibited.  This 
is,  of  course,  an  example  of  the  necessities  of  an  ex- 
treme case — a  very  apathetic  and  unobservant  child. 
Usually  it  will  be  sufficient  to  exhibit  objects  by  lifting 


them  from  the  table  and  simultaneously  telling  their 
names.  This  must  be  done  over  and  over  again,  un- 
til the  nerve-fibres  and  brain  cells  are  stimulated  into 
readier  action  and  developed  into  fuller  and  more  per- 
fect performance  of  normal  functions. 

The  imbecile  child's  brain  is  improved  in  just  the 
same  way  that  the  biceps  muscles  of  Sandow  are  more 
and  more  enlarged.  This  is  done  by  the  repeated  use 
of  small  dumb-bells  at  first  and  then  by  the  gradual 
substitution  of  heavier  and  heavier  weights.  Touch 
is  the  finest  and  most  indispensable  sense,  as  shown 
by  the  investigations  of  Darwin  and  other  naturalists. 
So  its  perfection  should  be  the  most  impaired  of  all 
the  senses  of  an  imbecile,  and  this  is  doubtless  the 
case.  As  touch  is,  however,  the  sense  whose  defec- 
tiveness would  be  the  most  hidden  from  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  observer,  little  is  known  of  its  condition  in 
idiots.  They  are,  however,  unquestionably  lacking  in 
the  fine  distinctions  of  touch  in  the  normal. 


THE  QUESTION  THAT  HAS  NO  ANSWER. 

BY  W.   H.    GARDNER. 

"  Once  we  hear  the  hopeless — He  is  dead 
So  far  as  flesh  hath  knowledge,  all  is  said.' 

If  in  the  quiet  grave  we  rest 

In  sleep  so  dreamless  and  profound. 
That  naught  can  vex  us  with  a  sound : 

Then  death  beyond  all  things  were  best. 

But  who  can  tell  us  if  the  tomb 

Which  holds  the  body's  sad  remains. 
Binds  fast  the  soul  within  its  chains 

Of  deep  impenetrable  gloom  ? 

Can  no  dear  friend  whom  we  loved  here. 
And  who  loved  us  with  perfect  love. 
Come  from  the  grave  his  love  to  prove 

And  teach  us  what  to  hope  or  fear? 

Can  no  sweet  voice  we  always  miss 
Counselling  ever  for  the  right. 
Low  whisper  in  the  silent  night 

The  secrets  of  the  drear  abyss? 

Can  no  stern  warrior,  who  has  gain'd 
A  vengeful  throne  by  spilling  blood 
And  striding  upward  through  the  flood, 

Show  what  bourne  he  has  attained  ? 

Or  patriots  all,  since  Ilion's  pride. 
Obedient  to  o'erwhelming  fate 
Met  death  before  the  Scaean  gate. 

Tell  wherefore  they  lived  and  died  ? 

Can  marble  bust  or  pillared  urn 

That  give  in  deathless  verse  the  praise 
Due  noble  dead  of  long  past  days 

Say  where  their  heroes  now  sojourn  ? 

Or  lasting  records  of  the  past, 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4395 


Deep  graved  in  adamantine  stone, 
To  mark  some  chieftain  of  renown, 
Tell  wliere  now  his  lot  is  cast  ? 

Can  the  beauteous  flowers  that  tlirive 
On  juices  sucked  up  from  the  heart, 
To  any  one  the  tale  impart 

Whether  the  soul  may  still  survive  ?  • 

Or  maggots  feasting  on  the  brain, 

That  wriggle  through  the  charnel  clay 
And  come  up  to  the  light  of  day, 

The  grave's  dread  secret  e'en  explain  ? 

Ah  no  !   death's  adamantine  portal 

Holds  fast  its  secrets  evermore  ; 

And  when  we  pass  through  that  dread  door. 
It  shuts  the  light  from  every  mortal. 
And  though  with  aching  brain  we  learn. 

The  mystic  lore  of  every  age  : 

And  knowledge  taught  by  seer  and  sage, 
The  secret  ne'er  can  we  discern. 

But  why  the  future  try  to  scan. 

When  all  the  present  we  can  know 

Is  that  we  suffer — nor  can  show 
From  whence  we  came,  nor  how  began. 
We  see  no  cause  why  we  should  be 

Brought  helpless,  wailing,  and  alone 

Into  a  world  unasked,  unknown. 
To  sink  like  rain-drops  in  the  sea. 

We  toil  from  birth  to  death  along 
The  rough  and  stormy  path  of  life  ; 
And  if  victorious  in  the  strife 

O'er  all  our  compeers  in  the  throng. 

What  gain  we  if  we  persevere 

With  will  and  courage  undiminished. 
If  we  know  the  race  when  finished 

Brings  us  to  a  common  bier? 

If  life  to  us  then  means  the  same 
As  to  the  motes  that  dance  a  day 
In  summer-sun  and  pass  away: 

What  are  worth  our  dreams  of  fame? 

Life's  bitter  cup  why  should  we  quaff. 
And  'luring  pleasures  all  discard. 
When  our  only  guerdon  or  reward 

Is  at  last  a  dubious  epitaph  ? 


DEATH  IS  SILENT,  BUT  LIFE  SPEAKS. 

We  take  pleasure  in  presenting  to  our  readers 
Major  W.  H.  Gardner's  beautiful  poem,  "The  Ques- 
tion That  Has  No  Answer,"  which  is  a  thanatopsis 
worthy  of  careful  reflexion.  The  question  which  the 
poet  raises  in  his  lines  has  been  asked  again  and  again 
by  many  earnest  searchers  for  the  truth,  and  it  will 


find  an  echo  in  the  hearts  of  all  those  who  are  anxious 
about  the  fate  of  the  soul  after  death.  The  pro- 
posal of  the  question  as  Major  Gardner  formulates  it 
comes  perhaps  to  every  one  of  us  at  a  certain  phase  of 
our  development.  It  is,  nevertheless,  a  wrong  formu- 
lation of  the  problem,  and  if  there  is  no  answer  to  the 
question  it  is  due  to  an  error  hidden  in  the  question 
itself,  and  must  not  be  attributed  to  an  insolvable 
mystery  in  the  nature  of  things. 

The  error  is  natural  and  therefore  quite  common  ; 
it  is  as  natural  as  are  all  the  various  well-known  sense- 
illusions,  so  called,  in  which,  by  a  peculiar  complica- 
tion of  circumstances,  our  judgment  is  inevitably  led 
astray.  The  faithful  portrayal  of  this  illusion  and  the 
attitude  of  the  human  heart  with  its  eternal  question- 
ing, what  becomes  of  the  soul  in  death,  is  one  of  the 
beauties  of  the  poem. 

That  which  leads  our  judgment  astray  is  the  ma- 
terialistic tendency  of  our  mind.  In  all  our  experi- 
ences and  observations  we  are  in  the  habit  of  regard- 
ing matter  as  the  thing  itself  and  all  other  qualities  as 
the  properties  of  matter. '  Matter  appears  to  us,  and 
naturally  so,  as  the  substance  of  existence,  and  matter 
is  said  to  /ttssess  extension,  form,  color,  weight,  or 
force.  Every  quality  that  is  not  matter  appears  to  us 
non-existent  and  has  value  only  so  long  as  it  is  thought 
of  as  /u'/'/i^  />i>ssi'ssei/  by  matter.  A  closer  considera- 
tion of  the  nature  of  things,  however,  discloses  the 
truth  that  matter  is  as  much  a  quality  as  form  ;  matter 
is  as  much  a  pure  abstract  as  force  or  color  ;  it  is  no 
thing  in  itself  which  is  endowed  with  a  higher  kind  of 
reality.  That  feature  which  we  call  matter,  it  is  true, 
endures,  when  we  con^^ider  the  whole  universe,  in  all 
changes,  but  so  does  energy,  so  does  pure  space. 
Limiting  our  consideration  to  an  individual  living  be- 
ing, we  find  that  matter  is  neither  preserved,  nor  is  it 
that  feature  on  which  the  continuity  and  identity  of 
the  organism  depend.  The  conservation  of  matter  only 
signifies  that  matter  is  one  of  the  most  general  abstrac- 
tions. But  it  is  actually  a  fallacy  to  consider  the  marble 
of  a  bust  as  more  real  than  its  form.  A  fact  is  a  fact ; 
a  thing  is  or  is  not ;  and  there  is  no  degree  of  more  or 
less  of  existence  or  of  reality.  It  is  quite  true  that 
one  fact  may  be  more  or  less  valuable,  more  or  less 
important,  of  greater  or  less  concern;  but  then,  it  will 
be  seen  that  form  always  takes  the  preference  :  the 
bust  is  all,  and  the  marble  incidental. 

After  the  fashion  of  the  same  logical  fallacy  that 
considers  matter  as  the  thing  in  itself  and  everything 
else  as  the  properties  of  matter,  man  naturally  but  er- 
roneously regards  his  body  as  his  self,  and  his  senti- 
ments, thoughts,  and  plans  as  affections  and  passing 
dispositions  of  his  body — as  mere  properties  of  no  ac- 

1  See  in  the  last  Monist  Mr.  Lester  F.  Ward's  article  "  The  Natural  Stor- 
age of  Energy"  and  the  editorial,  "  Mind  Not  a  Storage  of  Energy." 


4396 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


count.  He  who  cherishes  this  view  will  naturally  think 
that  after  death  he  himself  is  buried  in  the  tomb. 

Socrates  considers  the  recognition  of  the  difference 
between  body  and  soul  as  paramount.  He  argued  that 
"false  words  are  not  only  evil  in  themselves,  but  they 
infect  the  soul  with  evil."  The  body  is  buried,  but 
"the  soul,"  he  said,  using  the  mythological  terms  of 
his  age,  "joins  the  happy  state  of  the  blessed." 

The  passage  reads  in  Phaedo,  according  to  Jowett's 
translation  (Vol.  H,  p.  263),  as  follows: 

"  Said  Crito  :  And  in  what  way  shall  we  bury  you  ?" 

[Socrates  replied  ;] 

"In  any  way  that  you  like;  but  you  must  get  bold  of  me, 
and  take  care  that  I  do  not  run  away  from  you.  Then  he  turned 
to  us,  and  added  with  a  smile; — I  cannot  make  Crito  believe  that 
I  am  the  same  Socrates  who  have  been  talking  and  conducting  the 
argument;  he  fancies  that  I  am  the  other  Socrates  whom  he  will 
soon  see,  a  dead  body — and  he  asks.  How  shall  he  bury  me  ?  And 
though  I  have  spoken  many  words  in  the  endeavor  to  show  that 
when  I  have  drunk  the  poison  I  shall  leave  you  and  go  to  the  joys 
of  the  blessed, — these  words  of  mine,  with  which  I  was  comforting 
you  and  myself,  have  had,  as  I  perceive,  no  effpct  upon  Crito. 
And  therefore  I  want  you  to  be  surety  for  me  to  him  now,  as  at 
the  trial  he  was  surety  to  the  judges  for  me  ;  but  let  the  promise 
be  of  another  sort ;  for  he  was  surety  for  me  to  the  judges  that  I 
would  remain,  and  you  must  be  my  surety  to  him  that  I  shall  not 
remain,  but  go  away  and  depart ;  and  then  he  will  suffer  less  at 
my  death,  and  not  be  grieved  when  he  sees  my  body  being  burned 
or  buried.  I  would  not  have  him  sorrow  at  my  hard  lot,  or  say  at 
the  burial,  Thus  we  lay  out  Socrates,  or,  Thus  we  follow  him  to 
the  grave  or  bury  him  ;  for  false  words  are  not  only  evil  in  them- 
selves, but  they  infect  the  soul  with  evil.  Be  of  good  cheer  then, 
my  dear  Crito,  and  say  that  you  are  burying  my  body  only,  and 
do  with  that  whatever  is  usual,  and  what  you  think  best." 

A  solution  of  the  problem  of  immortality  must  not 
be  expected  from  death,  but  from  life.  The  dead  can- 
not return  to  reveal  the  secrets  of  life,  and  if  they 
could  return  they  would  have  nothing  to  tell. 

The  first  mistake  of  the  conception  to  which  Major 
Gardner  has  given  so  pregnant  an  expression  lies  in 
the  first  line  of  the  poem  where  the  poet  says  :  "  If  in 
the  quiet  grave  we  rest."  The  truth  is  that  our  soul 
shall  never  rest  in  the  grave,  and  when  a  man  speaks 
about  himself  he  means  his  soul,  not  his  body.  "The 
tomb,"  as  the  poet  says,  "holds  the  body's  sad  re- 
mains," but  it  does  not  "bind  fast  the  soul  within  its 
chains  of  deep,  impenetrable  gloom."  What  other  in- 
formation could  a  dead  body,  when  it  returns  from  the 
grave,  give  us  but  of  its  decay?  The  lesson  which  it 
conveys  would  be  that  we  must  not  seek  the  purport 
of  life  in  the  transient  but  in  the  enduring  features  of 
our  being. 

What  is  the  nature  of  our  soul  ? 

Our  soul  is  a  peculiar  form  impressed  into  the  sen- 
tiency  of  our  living  organisation.  The  events  which 
are  experienced  in  the  contact  with  the  surrounding 
world  are  recorded,  and  every  trace  that  is  left  abides 
as  a  living  memory-image,  representing  the  respective 


facts  which  their  diverse  forms  portray.  The  soul, 
accordingly,  is  a  system  of  sentient  forms,  having  ref- 
erence to  the  various  phenomena  of  the  objective 
world.  The  elements  of  the  soul  are  meaning-endowed 
feelings  of  various  kinds.  The  variety  of  kind  depends 
upon  the  difference  of  form  of  the  nervous  structures 
and  their  activities,  while  the  meaning  is  that  which 
sets  them  eii  rapport  with  the  realities  of  the  objective 
world  whose  impressions  they  bear. 

It  is  strange  that  man  naturally  regards  the  ma- 
terial in  which  a  form  has  taken  shape  as  its  essential 
nature.  It  is  true  that  there  are  no  pure  forms,  but  it 
is  also  true  that  there  is  no  pure  matter.  A  cube  is  a 
cube,  and  a  globe  is  a  globe,  whether  it  be  made  of 
lead  or  of  iron,  or  of  gold.  A  statue  of  Zeus,  such  as 
Phidias  made  it,  is  a  representation  of  the  god  whether 
we  cast  it  in  bronze  or  hew  it  from  marble  ;  if  we  but 
reproduce  it  faithfully  in  all  its  smallest  details  it  will 
be  a  duplicate  of  the  famous  work  of  Phidias.  A  seal 
which  is  impressed  into  sealing-wax,  presents  the  form 
of  the  seal,  and  if  the  wax  into  which  the  impression 
has  been  made,  be  broken,  the  seal  can  reproduce  the 
impression  again  and  again.  Nothing  is  lost  if  one 
impression  is  destroyed,  so  long  as  the  seal  is  pre- 
served from  which  new  copies  can  be  had  without  diffi- 
culty. In  the  same  way  the  soul-structures  of  the  hu- 
man mind  can  be  reproduced.  The  physical  organism 
is  renewed  by  heredity  and  human  ideals  are  impressed 
into  the  growing  generations  by  education.  The  indi- 
vidual is  a  copy  only  of  its  soul  structures.  The  copy 
may  be  destroyed,  but  all  the  various  soul-structures, 
the  soul  itself,  the  essential  character  of  the  man,  can 
be  built  up  again  in  other  bodies.  Forms  can  be  du- 
plicated. Says  Jesus  :  "Destroy  this  temple,  and  in 
three  days  I  will  raise  it  up,"  in  saying  which  he  al- 
luded to  the  temple  of  his  body. 

Whether  or  not  and  in  what  way  the  soul  survives 
the  body  is  a  question,  the  answer  to  which  must  be 
expected  from  life  and  not  from  death.  The  grave  re- 
mains deaf  to  our  question,  and  the  dead  give  no  re- 
ply. The  "bourne"  that  "the  stern  warrior"  has 
attained,  the  place  where  our  heroes  "now  sojourn" 
and  the  cause  "wherefore  they  lived  and  died"  are 
not  unsolvable  problems.  The  victory  which  a  hero 
won  is  a  victory  of  life  which  continues  in  life  ;  the 
hero  is  the  cause  with  which  he  identified  himself, 
and  he  lives  in  his  cause,  even  though  he  may  have 
suffered  death  in  his  service  to  it.  His  body  lies  on 
the  bier,  not  his  ideals  and  aspirations,  not  his  soul, 
not  he  himself.  Our  heroes  live,  and  it  is  they  which 
constitute  the  kingdom  of  heaven  upon  earth,  and  if 
you  ask  where  its  place  is,  we  answer  with  Christ  : 
"It  is  within  us." 

The  poet  gives  expression  to  the  sad  mood  of  resig- 
nation ;  he  says  : 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4397 


"  But  why  the  future  try  to  scan, 
When  all  the  present  we  can  know 
Is  that  we  suffer." 

Is  not  the  future  disclosed  more  and  more  b)'  our 
comprehension  of  the  past  ?  Does  not  our  better 
knowledge  give  us  information  concerning  the  origin 
of  our  life  from  the  first  appearance  of  amoeboid  sub- 
stance to  our  present  state  of  being,  and  do  we  not 
make  plans  and  shape  ideals  to  build  a  better  and  ever 
better,  a  grander  and  a  nobler  future  ?  Is  the  future 
fate  of  life  really  shrouded  by  a  veil  that  cannot  be 
lifted  ?  Science  lifts  the  veil  little  by  little  and  we  can 
be  fully  assured  that  we  can  live  for  a  cause  which  is 
worth  all  our  sufferings,  for  we  do  not  "  sink  like  rain- 
drops in  the  sea."  Our  souls  are  treasured  up  and 
form  the  living  stones  of  the  temple  of  the  future  ; 
our  souls  continue  to  exist  in  the  souls  of  the  genera- 
tions to  come  ;  they  will  be  potent  and  indestructible 
factors  in  the  evolution  of  the  future.  Life  leaves  us 
not  without  an  answer,  and  the  language  in  which  life 
speaks  is  unmistakable.      The  poet  asks  : 

"  Can  the  beauteous  flowers  that  thrive 
On  juices  sucked  up  from  the  heart, 
To  any  one  the  tale  impart 
Whether  the  soul  may  still  survive  ?  " 

Let  facts  speak.  The  ultimate  resume  of  science  is 
the  truth  of  evolution,  which  teaches  that  life  of  to-day 
is  but  the  stored-up  life  of  the  past.  The  souls  of  our 
ancestors  have  not  gone  to  the  grave  but  continue  in 
their  posterity.  They  are  preserved  in  the  present 
generation.  The  experiences  of  all  preceding  lives 
have  been  impressed  into  the  race,  and,  so  far  as  they 
are  fitted  to  survive,  they  continue  with  us  as  a  living 
part  of  mankind  as  it  is  to-day.  We  yearn  for  life, 
and  we  are  anxious  to  insure  the  immortality  of  our 
soul.  This  aspiration  of  man  may  be  expressed  in  the 
words  of  the  poet  of  the  "  Song  of  Songs  "  :  "  Set  me 
as  a  seal  upon  thine  heart,  as  a  seal  upon  thine  arm"; 
and  every  endeavor  made  for  progress  or  in  the  inter- 
est of  discovering  truth  is  a  fulfilment  of  this  prayer 
addressed  to  the  God  who  lives  in  evolution  ;  we  are 
set  as  seals  upon  the  heart  and  as  seals  upon  the  arm 
of  Him  to  whom  we  all  shall  be  gathered  together  with 
our  fathers,  and  in  whom  we  continue  to  be  after 
death  as  living  citizens  of  the  Great  Spirit  Empire,  of 
that  spiritual  All-being  who  represents  the  coming  of 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  which  is  being  built  up  in 
the  hearts  of  men.  p.  c. 


GOVERNOR  ALTQELD'S  MESSAGE. 

Governor  Altgeld's  biennial  message  and  also  the  biennial 
report  of  labor  statistics  have  created  a  great  deal  of  critical  and 
even  bitter  comments  in  the  daily  press.  We  disagree  with  the 
Governor  on  several  points  and  have  the  impression  that  his 
opinion  as  to  the  interference  of  federal  troops  and  the  conduct 
of  federal  courts,  whatever  just  complaints  it  may  be  based  upon, 
is  but  one  side  of  the  question  :  nevertheless  we  respect  in  him  a 
man  who  honestly  and  manfully  stands  up  for  his  convictions,  and 


is  not  afraid  of  becoming  thoroughly  unpopular  through  attending 
to  what  he  understands  to  be  his  duty.  We  must  consider  that  dur- 
ing the  late  railroad-strike  new  problems  were  presented  in  the  po- 
litical evolution  of  our  nation,  which  had  not  been  foreseen  in  the 
laws  of  our  country.  We  do  not  wish  to  enter  here  into  details,  but 
call  attention  only  to  some  valuable  propositions  made  in  the  mes- 
sage. Governor  Altgeld  has  perhaps  good  reasons  to  feel  offended 
at  the  various  insults  which  he  has  received  from  the  public  press 
during  his  governorship,  but  we  believe  that  if  he  had  shown  less 
irritation,  his  propositions  would  be  more  effective.  Let  us  hope 
that  the  good  seeds  which  he  sows  will  thrive  and  that  the  time 
will  come  when  both  his  honesty  and  ability  will  find  ample  recog- 
nition. 

Concerning  the  administration  of  justice,  Governor 'Altgeld 
says : 

"We  borrowed  our  system  of  jurisprudence  from  England 
more  than  a  century  ago,  when  it  was  loaded  down  with  absurd 
distinctions  and  formalities.  We  have  clung  tenaciously  to  its 
faults,  while  England  long  ago  brushed  them  aside.  Three-quar- 
ters of  a  century  ago  that  country  began  to  reform  its  judicial  pro- 
cedure by  wiping  out  all  useless  distinctions  and  formalities  and 
making  all  procedure  simple  and  disposing  of  each  case  promptly 
on  its  merits,  and  their  appellate  courts  now  revise  cases  only 
when  it  is  shown  that  an  actual  injustice  has  been  done  and  not 
simply  because  some  rule  or  useless  formality  has  been  disregarded. 
As  regards  the  administration  of  justice,  we  are  to-day  three- 
quarters  of  a  century  behind  that  country  from  which  we  borrowed 
our  s)stem.  We  may  be  great  in  politics,  but  do  not  yet  lead  the 
way  in  statesmanship.  The  whole  system  should  be  revised  and 
simplified  so  that  it  will  give  our  people  more  prompt  and  speedy 
justice  and  less  fine-spun  law." 

As  to  the  conditions  surrounding  the  police  and  justice  courts 
of  Chicago,  Governor  Altgeld  says:  "They  are  a  disgrace,  and 
we  will  not  rise  to  the  demands  of  the  occasion  if  we  do  not  devise 
some  remedy  for  these  evils.  I  call  attention  to  the  subject  of 
permitting  any  officer  connected  with  the  administration  of  justice 
to  keep  fees.  This  is  the  very  foundation  upon  which  the  whole 
structure  of  fraud,  extortions,  and  oppression  rests.  No  man's 
bread  should  depend  upon  the  amount  of  business  he  can  'drum 
up'  around  a  so-called  court  of  justice." 

The  settlement  of  the  labor  troubles  has  received  the  Gov- 
ernor's careful  attention.     He  says  : 

"  In  recent  years  we  have  repeatedly  had  labor  disturbances 
in  the  form  of  strikes  and  lock-outs  that  almost  paralysed  the 
country.  It  will  no  longer  do  to  say  that  this  is  the  business  of 
employer  and  employe,  for  while  these  are  fighting,  innocent 
non-combatants  may  be  ruined.  The  question  of  dealing  with 
these  conditions  is  a  most  difficult  one,  and  no  complete  remedy 
has  yet  been  devised.  Many  advocate  compulsory  arbitration, 
but  no  practical  method  of  enforcing  a  decree  or  award  in  every 
case  of  this  character  has  yet  been  found.  There  is,  however, 
no  difficulty  in  the  way  of  making  a  compulsory  investigation 
in  every  case,  and  this  alone  would  be  a  great  preventative  as 
well  as  corrective.  This  method  has  been  tried  elsewhere  and  has 
worked  well.  Promptly  ascertaining  and  making  public  the  actual 
conditions  in  each  case  arouses  a  moral  sentiment  that  often  forces 
a  settlement,  and  the  fear  of  such  an  investigation  will  sometimes  do 
this.  I  strongly  urge  legislation  on  this  subject,  and  I  would  sug- 
gest that  the  law  would  provide  for  a  new  board  in  each  case, 
allowing  each  party  to  select  an  arbitrator,  and  the  two  thus  se- 
lected to  name  the  third,  or,  if  they  disagree,  then  let  the  county 
judge  name  the  third.  If  a  permanent  board  was  created,  the 
more  powerful  interests  would  soon  seek  to  get  their  friends  ap- 
pointed on  it,  and  no  matter  what  it  did  it  would  soon  lose  the 
confidence  of  the  workers  and  of  the  public,  and  with  this  its  use- 
fulness would  be  gone." 


4398 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


We  see  no  reason  why  Governor  Altgeld's  proposition  should 
not  be  acceptable  to  all  concerned.^ 

The  Spring  Valley  enterprise,  which  receives  the  Governor's 
severe  criticism  for  the  "  wolfish  greed"  of  the  Company,  should 
receive  a  careful  and  official  investigation,  the  more  so  as  pub- 
lic excitement  has  subsided,  and  it  would  be  possible  now  to  make 
an  impartial  investigation. 

We  advise  both  those  who  are  friends  of  the  Governor  and 
those  who  are  either  indifferent  or  his  enemies  to  read  his  biennial 
message.  A  free  copy  will  be  sent  to  every  one  who  applies  for  it 
at  the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  Springfield,  111.  p.  c. 


CORRESPONDENCE. 

EVOLUTION  AND  RELIGION. 

To  the  Edi/or  of  The  Open  Court  : 

You  say,  "Mr.  Maddock's  request  [for  you  to  define  Chris- 
tianity] would  be  in  place  if  I  had  proclaimed  any  intention  of 
preaching  Christianity."  I  was  led  to  make  the  request  by  the 
following  from  your  pen  in  No.  370  of  The  Open  Court,  page  4238  : 
"  There  is  no  sense  in  attempting  to  destroy  Christianity;  our  aim 
must  be  to  develop  it  and  lead  it  on  the  path  of  progress  to  truth." 
My  request,  therefore,  was  in  place,  because  to  develop  it,  some- 
thing more  must  be  disclosed  — a  new  departure  must  be  taken. 
From  this  standpoint  the  pertinency  of  the  question,  in  its  rela- 
tion to  the  solid  place  for  the  feet  of  the  assembly  of  science  can 
easily  be  understood.  If  Christianity  is  the  doctrine  to  be  devel- 
oped, there  must  be  new  definitions  of  its  principles  given  that 
will  harmonise  with  those  of  the  cosmos. 

You  say,  also,  that  "Mr.  Maddock's  zeal  for  the  name  of 
truth  and  his  hostility  toward  any  other  name  that  might  contain 
either  an  aspiration  after  the  truth!  or  a  pretence  of  its  posses- 
sion, implies,  in  my  opinion,  a  great  danger — the  danger  of  nar- 
rowness." My  zeal  for  truth  is  such  that,  according  to  cosmic 
principles  and  sound  logic,  I  cannot  permit  a  counterfeit  note  to 
be  called  genuine  ;  hence,  if  the  doctrine  which  Jesus  Christ 
preached  has  a  true  definition  of  its  own,  the  theories  of  Calvin, 
Arminius  &  Co.  are  counterfeits.  Counterfeit  notes  cannot  be 
endorsed  as  genuine,  because  the  counterfeiter  stamped  them 
' '  United  States  note " ;  they  must  have  all  the  genuine  marks  upon 
them  and  must  be  made  of  the  right  material.  We  can  "give 
credit  for  honest  intentions  to  people  who  differ  from  us,"  but  we 
cannot  allow  that  they  are  right  in  calling  themselves  Christians 
when  we  know  that  they  are  mistaken  by  the  facts  in  the  case.  As 
the  world  is  flooded  with  the  counterfeit,  there  must  be  narrow- 
ness at  the  start  of  the  genuine.  The  question  is  not  what  the  as- 
sembly of  science  will  permit  other  people  to  call  themselves,  be- 
cause it  will  not  have  any  dogmatic  jurisdiction  over  any  one  out- 
side of  its  own  walls  ;  but  within  its  pale,  logic  and  truth  will  be 
dogmatic  and  these  will  force  all  adherents  of  truth  to  speak  of 
people  just  as  the  facts  give  authority.  The  doctrine  of  the  as- 
sembly of  science  will  be  broad  enough,  and  will  do  justice,  not 
only  to  people  who  have  religious  aspirations,  but  to  all  mankind 
whether  they  have  religious  aspirations  or  not.  It  is  plain  to  be 
seen,  Mr.  Editor,  that  no  correct  definition  can  be  given  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  that  plain  statements  <■<;«  be g.i'en  of  what  Calvinistic 
and  Arminian  theologians  have  taught.  How  then  can  any  one 
consistently  call  himself  a  follower  of  that  which  he  knows  not  ? 
In  an  assembly  where  authority  stands  for  truth  and  tradition  for 
fact  there  might  be  a  little  consistency  in  a  man  calling  himself  a 
Christian  when  he  is  really  a  Calvinist ;  but  where  truth  is  author- 

1  In  connexion  with  Governor  Altgeld's  idea  of  settling  labor  troubles  by 
courts  of  arbitration,  we  remind  our  readers  of  an  article  written  two  and  a 
half  years  ago  in  No.  260  of  The  Open  Court,  by  the  publisher  when  discussing 
the  Homestead  affair,  the  main  difference  being  that  this  proposition  is  more 
favorable  for  the  strikers  than  that  of  Governor  Altgeld. 


ity  he  must  bow  to  it  and  not  be  double  tongued.  In  the  language 
of  Herder,  according  to  your  own  quotation,  if  Christianity  is  any- 
thing definite  in  itself,  it  "must  become  a  clear  stream."  We 
must  get  rid  of  the  mud.  We  will  get  rid  of  it  by  evolution's  puri- 
fying influences.  While  "  we  cannot  begin  the  world  over  again, 
but  must  continue  the  work  of  the  civilisation  at  the  point  on 
which  we  stand,"  we  must  stand  upon  something  more  than  that 
upon  which  the  teachers  of  the  present  age  do,  and  we  must  also 
cut  loose  from  the  counterfeits  and  superstitions  of  our  ancestry. 
How  else  can  progress  come  ?  While  we,  who  are  critically  hostile 
to  ecclesiasticism,  are  in  a  continuous  and  natural  sense  a  product 
of  our  superstitious  ancestry,  yet  in  the  sense  of  evolution  we  are 
an  offshoot  from  it  of  a  different  type,  and  therefore  must  present 
a  different  phase  of  doctrine  before  those  who  are  about  to  follow 
where  truth  leads.  If  Goethe's  personality  consisted  of  tradition, 
he  was  unfit  for  a  leader  in  the  van  of  evolution.  Such  a  one  is 
not  my  criterion  ;  the  facts  of  evolution  show  that  the  traditions 
and  superstitions  of  our  ancestry  are  fast  becoming  ob=:oIete.  Our 
ancestors  did  not  produce  us  ;  they  were  merely  vehicles  for  our 
evulution.  Tradition  and  superstition  are  not  the  parents  of  light 
and  truth. 

It  is  between  two  stones  we  get  the  grist.  Let  the  grinding, 
therefore,  go  on,  and  let  the  high  grades  be  separated  from  the 
low.  John  Maddock. 


NOTES. 

We  have  received  from  distant  friends  some  very  beautiful 
presents.  The  Right  Rev.  Sliaku  Soyen  of  Kamakura  sent  us  a 
set  of  pictures,  artistically  done  in  Japanese  style,  representing 
the  deeds  of  bravery  performed  by  the  Japanese  in  the  present  war 
against  Chini,  and  almost  simultaneously  we  have  received  from 
Piofessor  Haeckel  two  busts  made  of  himself  by  Gustav  Heroh', 
a  sculptor  of  Frankfort-on  the-Main,  an  enthusiastic  believer  in 
monism  and  an  admirer  of  the  eminent  scientist.  The  busts  show 
Professor  Haeckel  in  somewhat  different  attitudes,  and  one  of 
them  is  especially  admirable  :  but  they  are  both  full  of  life  and 
show  Haecki  Is  personality  to  full  advantage.  We  must  confess 
that  Herold's  bus;s  compare  favorably  with  the  marble  bust  of  the 
Roman  artist,  Kopf,  a  photograph  of  which  has  been  published  in 
the  Haeckel  Memorial.  The  busts  arrived  in  a  broken  condition, 
but  wt  re  restored  to  their  original  beauty  by  the  hands  of  an 
American  artist.  The  box  sent  by  Professor  Haeckel  contained, 
besides  the  two  busts,  a  very  good  picture  of  himself  (6x10),  which, 
for  the  benefit  of  our  readers,  we  shall  reproduce  on  some  future 
occasion,  and  also  a  very  good  copy  of  Gabriel  Max's  picture  of 
the  Pithecanthropos  Family,  dedicated  to  Professor  Haeckel. 

THE    OPEN    COURT. 

"THK  MONON,"  ^Z\  DEARBORN  ST., 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS.  POST  OFFICE  DRAWER  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,   Editor 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION; 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  390. 

SPIRITUALISING  CLAY.     S.  Millington  Miller 4391 

POETRY. 

The  Question  That  Has  No  Answer.     W.  H.  Gardner.  4394 

DEATH  IS  SILENT,  BUT  LIFE  SPEAKS.     Editor..  4395 

GOVERNOR  ALTGELD'S  MESSAGE.     Editor 4397 

CORRESPONDENCE. 

Evolution  and  Religion.     John  Maddock 4398 

NOTES 4398 


^l 


The  Open  Court. 


A   WEEKLY  JOURNAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.   391.     (Vol.  IX.-S.) 


CHICAGO,   FEBRUARY  21,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
(  Single  Copies.  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.— Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  RivinR  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


A  SERMON  THAT  MADE  HISTORY. 

BY  MONCURE  D.    CONWAY. 

Before  me  is  a  pamphlet,  its  paper  toned  by  time, 
bearing  this  title  :  "  Religion  and  Patriotism  the  Con- 
stituents of  a  Good  Soldier.  A  Sermon  Preached  to 
Captain  Overton's  Independent  Company  of  Volun- 
teers, raised  in  Hanover  County,  Virginia,  August  17, 
1755-  By  Samuel  Davies,  A.  M.,  Minister  of  the  Gos- 
pel there.  Philadelphia,  Printed:  London;  Re  printed 
for  J.  Buckland,  in  Pater-noster  Row,  J.  Ward  at  the 
King's  Arms  in  Cornhill,  and  T.  Field  in  Cheapside. 
1756."'  Samuel  Davies,  though  canonised  by  his  de- 
nomination as  "  the  apostle  of  Presbyterianism  in  \^ir- 
ginia,"  is  known  to  unsectarian  history  mainlj'  by  a 
prophetic  note  in  this  pamphlet  concerning  George 
Washington.  This  note  has  been  often  quoted,  but 
in  every  instance  that  I  have  seen  incorrectly  dated, 
and  deprived  of  some  of  its  significance  by  loss  of  its 
connexion.  It  was  not  a  part  of  the  sermon,  but  a 
footnote  added  when  the  sermon  was  printed  (1756). 
The  sermon  was  delivered  in  a  time  of  humiliation  and 
panic.  Braddock  had  just  been  defeated  under  cir- 
cumstances involving  disgrace  to  the  British  and  peril 
to  the  Virginians.  "Our  Territories,"  cries  the 
preacher,  "are  invaded  by  the  Power,  and  Perfidy  of 
France  ;  our  Frontiers  ravaged  b}'  merciless  Savages, 
and  our  Fellow-Subjects  there  murdered  with  all  the 
horrid  Arts  of  Indian  and  Popish  Torture.  Our  Gen- 
eral [Braddock],  unfortunately  brave,  is  fallen,  an  Army 
of  1300  choice  Men  routed,  our  fine  Train  of  Artillery 
taken,  and  all  this  (^Oh  mortifying  Thought!)  all  this 
by  4  or  500  dastardly,  insidious  Barbarians."-  He 
says  the  Colony  had  been  unmanned  by  a  "  stupid  se- 
curity," and  after  the  disaster  fell  "into  the  opposite 
Extreme  of  unmanly  Despondence,  and  Consterna- 
tion." It  is  observable  that  at  this  time  (August  17, 
1755)  nothing  was  publicly  known  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Colonel  Washington  (then  in  his  twenty-fourth 
year)  to  relieve  him  of  the  general  disgrace  of  the 
army  whose  retreat  he  had  commanded.  The  preacher 
sees  in  the  "  50  or  60  "  volunteers  before  him  the  only 
hopeful  sign.  "Our  Continent,"  he  says,  "is  like  to 
become  the  Seat  of  War;  and  we,  for   the  future  (till 

1 1  am  indebted  to  Mr.  W.  F.  Havemeyer  of  New  York  for  the  use  of  this 
rare  pamphlet. 


the  sundry  European  Nations  that  have  planted  Col- 
onies in  it,  have  fixed  their  Boundaries  by  the  Sword) 
have  no  other  Way  left  to  defend  our  Rights  and  Priv- 
ileges. And  has  God  been  pleased  to  diffuse  some 
Sparks  of  this  Martial  Fire  through  our  Country  ?  I 
hope  he  has  :  And  though  it  has  been  almost  extin- 
guished by  so  long  a  Peace,  and  a  Deluge  of  Luxury 
and  Pleasure,  now  I  hope  it  begins  to  kindle  :  And 
may  I  not  produce  you,  my  Brethren,  who  are  engaged 
in  this  Expedition  as  Instances  of  it?"  It  is  at  the 
end  of  this  last-quoted  sentence  that  an  asterisk  points 
to  the  famous  footnote,  from  which  in  citations  the 
first  thirteen  words  are  generally  dropped.  The  whole 
footnote  reads:  "As  a  remarkable  Instance  of  this,  I 
may  point  out  to  the  Public  that  heroic  Youth  Colonel 
Washington,  whom  I  cannot  but  hope  Providence  has 
hitherto  preserved  in  so  Signal  a  Manner,  for  some 
important  Service  to  his  Country." 

This  prophetic  footnote,  as  I  have  intimated,  has 
lost  some  of  its  significance  by  quotation  as  part  of  the 
Sermon  of  1755  instead  of  the  pamphlet  of  1756.  For 
in  that  year  following  Braddock's  defeat  not  only  had 
the  facts  showing  Colonel  Washington's  courage  and 
skill  come  out,  but  the  incompetency  of  British  officers 
to  defend  the  Colony  (of  whose  frontiers  they  were 
ignorant)  been  demonstrated.  For  the  first  time  the 
need  of  a  \'irginian  commander  was  felt, — in  which 
may  now  be  discerned  a  first  step  in  American  Inde- 
pendence. In  confirmation  of  this  I  will  here  insert  a 
passage  from  a  manuscript  history  of  Virginia  by  Ed- 
mund Randolph,  first  Attorney-General  of  the  United 
States,  entrusted  to  my  editorial  care  by  the  Virginia 
Historical  Societ)'. 

"A  new  arrangement  of  rank,  which  humiliated 
the  provincial  officers  of  the  highest  grade  to  the  com- 
mand of  the  lowest  commissioned  officer  of  the  crown, 
rendered  his  continuance  in  the  regiment  too  harsh  to 
be  endured.  He  retired  to  Mount  Vernon,  which  his 
brother  by  the  paternal  side,  passing  by  his  own  full 
blood,  had  bequeathed  to  him.  His  economy,  with- 
out which  virtue  itself  is  always  in  hazard,  afforded 
nutriment  to  his  character.  But  he  did  not  long  in- 
dulge in  the  occupation  of  his  farm.  General  Brad- 
dock, who  had  been  sent  by  the  Duke  of  Cumberland, 
the  commander  in  chief,  to  head   the  forces  employed 


4400 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


against  the  Indians  and  French,  invited  him  into  his 
family  as  a  volunteer  aid-de-camp.  The  fate  of  that 
brave  but  rash  general,  who  had  been  taught  a  system 
unpliant  to  all  reasoning  which  could  accomodate  it- 
self to  local  circumstances  and  exceptions,  might  have 
been  averted  if  Washington's  advice  had  been  received. 
As  it  was,  he,  in  his  debilitated  state,  could  accomplish 
nothing  more  than  by  his  own  valor  to  lead  from  the 
field  of  slaughter  into  security  the  remains  of  the  Brit- 
ish army.  Washington  was  now  no  longer  forbidden 
by  any  rule  of  honor  to  accept  the  command  of  a  new 
regiment,  raised  by  Virginia.  In  his  intercourse  with 
Braddock,  and  his  first  and  second  military  ofifices,  he 
had  continued  to  add  to  the  inferences  from  his  former 
conduct  instances  of  vigilance,  courage,  comprehen- 
siveness of  purpose,  and  delicacy  of  feeling  ;  and,  in 
the  enthusiastic  language  of  a  Presbyterian  minister, 
he  was  announced  a  hero  born  to  be  the  future  saviour 
of  his  country." 

Randolph  wrote  this  about  fifty-four  years  after 
Davies's  sermon  was  printed.  It  will  be  seen  that  he 
had  not  the  preacher's  exact  words  before  him,  and 
probably  the  sermon  had  long  ceased  to  circulate  ;  but 
the  prophecy  in  it  concerning  Washington  had  grown, 
and  had  become  a  tradition.  It  will  be  seen,  however, 
that  Davies's  words  which  might  have  been  prophecy 
in  1755  were  in  1756  a  declaration  of  public  policy. 
An  issue  had  come  before  the  colony  :  the  preacher 
was  aiming  to  raise  up  a  Virginian  above  the  incom- 
petent officers  sent  over  by  the  crown,  and  had  to 
name  his  man.  And  such  was  the  position  and  power 
of  Davies  at  that  moment  that  his  words  concerning 
the  youthful  Colonel  could  hardly  fail  to  do  a  great 
deal  towards  the  policy  which  fulfilled  his  prophecy. 
It  was  a  tremendous  lift  to  the  youth  at  a  critical  junc- 
ture, when  he  might  easily  have  abandoned  the  mili- 
tary career  altogether,  such  heavy  losses  and  humilia- 
tions had  he  suffered.  He  had  indeed  written  to  his 
brother  John  Augustine  Washington  that  he  would 
never  again  enter  the  army  on  the  former  terms,  but  was 
prepared  to  serve  his  country  as  a  common  Virginian 
volunteer.  (I  have  not  the  letter  by  me,  but  it  will  be 
found  in  Ford's  IVn'tiiigs  of  IVasliington  :  I  give  its 
substance.)  It  was  at  this  moment  that  the  cheer  was 
raised  by  the  Presbyterian  "  apostle." 

Samuel  Davies  was  not  a  Virginian  by  birth,  but 
had  come  into  the  colony  to  propagate  Presbyterian- 
ism.  It  was  held  illegal  at  the  time,  1748,  or  there- 
about, to  establish  dissenting  churches,  and  the  im- 
pression made  by  this  apostle's  eloquence  troubled  the 
lawful  clergy  to  such  an  extent  that  an  injunction  was 
issued  against  Davies.  It  is  a  curious  incident  that 
it  should  have  fallen  to  Peyton  Randolph,  presently 
first  president  of  the  Continental  Congress,  to  defend, 
in  the  outset  of  his  career,  the  cause  of  intolerance. 


At   the   age  of  twenty-seven  (1748)   he  had  become 
King's  Attorney  in  Virginia,  and  this  was  his  first  im- 
portant case.    Samuel  Davies,  who  conducted  his  own 
case,   pleaded  the  Act  of  Toleration.     The  attorney 
claimed  that  the  Toleration  Act  was  for  England,  and 
did  not  extend  to  Virginia.      "Then,"  repHed  Davies, 
"neither  does  the  Act  of   Uniformity  extend  to  Vir- 
ginia."    The  case  was  sent   to  England  for  decision, 
and  Davies  was  sustained.     This  triumph,  together 
with   his   fervid  eloquence,  and  the  somnolent  condi- 
tion of  the  colonial  church  establishment,  made  him 
the  religious  leader  of  the  colony.     He  so  excited  the 
religious  spirit  in  Virginia  that  even  many  vestrymen 
were  stirred  into  sympathy;  among  others,  the  elder 
Madison,  who,  probably  because  William  and  Mary 
College  had  become  a  centre  of  rationalism,  sent  his 
son   James   (afterwards   President)   to    Princeton, — a 
circumstance    which    influenced    the   history   of   this 
country.      And  here  I  will  quote  again  Edmund  Ran- 
dolph's manuscript,  which  contrasts  the   established 
church  (his  own)  and   Presbyterianism  in  Virginia  at 
the  beginning  of  the  American  Revolution  : 

"The  Presbyterian  clergy  were  indefatigable.  Not 
depending  upon  the  dead  letter  of  written  sermons, 
they  understood  the  mechanism  of  haranguing,  and 
have  often  been  whetted  in  dispute  on  religious  lib- 
erty, as  nearly  allied  to  civil.  Those  of  the  Church  of 
England  were  planted  on  glebes,  with  comfortable 
houses,  decent  salaries,  some  perquisites,  and  a  spe- 
cies of  rank  which  was  not  wholly  destitute  of  unction. 
To  him  who  acquitted  himself  of  parochial  functions 
those  comforts  were  secure,  whether  he  ever  converted 
a  Deist,  or  softened  the  pangs  of  a  sinner.  He  never 
asked  himself  whether  he  was  felt  by  his  audience. 
To  this  charge  of  lukewarmness  there  were  some  shin- 
ing exceptions,  and  there  were  even  a  few  who  did 
not  hesitate  to  confront  the  consequences  of  a  revolu- 
tion which  boded  no  stability  to  them." 

This  is  the  testimony  of  one  who  to  the  end  of  his 
life  remained  a  devout  Episcopalian,  as  indeed  did 
Davies's  disciple,  Patrick  Henry,  who  might  have  re- 
mained a  storekeeper  in  Hanover  had  not  the  "apos- 
tle "  settled  there.  Of  Henry,  Randolph's  manuscript 
says  : 

"  [His]  enthusiasm  was  nourished  by  his  partiality 
for  the  dissenters  from  the  established  church.  He 
often  listened  to  them  while  they  were  waging  their 
steady  and  finally  effectual  war  against  the  burthens 
of  that  church,  and  from  a  repetition  of  his  sympathy 
with  the  history  of  their  sufferings  he  unlocked  the 
human  heart,  and  transferred  into  civil  discussions 
many  of  the  bold  licences  which  prevailed  in  the  re- 
ligious." 

When  George  Mason  had  prepared  his  Bill  of 
Rights,  the  article  on  religious  liberty  was  confided  to 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4401 


the  motion  of  Patrick  Henr}',  who  combined  member- 
ship in  the  establishment  with  a  soul  of  dissent. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  arm  thrown  around 
Colonel  Washington  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  the 
arm  of  Samuel  Davies,  was  a  powerful  one.  In  sig- 
nalling a  Mrginian  as  hero  and  leader,  the  potent 
popular  apostle  unwittingly  dealt  the  first  heavy  blow 
to  British  supremacy  in  that  colony,  and  prepared  the 
way  for  American  leadership  in  all  colonies.  He  was 
not  animated  by  anti-British  sentiment:  his  horror 
was  the  danger  of  subjugation  by  a  papal  power, 
France  :  his  cry  was  for  a  competent  defender. 

In  the  State  archives  at  Paris  I  lately  found  a  letter 
written  in  1776  by  a  French  agent  in  America  to  his 
government,  in  which  he  says,  "  Presbyterianism  is 
the  soul  of  this  revolution."  It  is  remarkable  how 
many  of  our  revolutionary  and  republican  fathers  were 
inspired  by  Presbyterian  preachers.  Henry  sat  at  the 
feet  of  Davies,  Burr  at  those  of  the  Rev.  Aaron  Burr, 
Madison  at  those  of  Witherspoon,  Hamilton  at  those 
of  Knox  in  the  West  Indies  and  Mason  in  New  York. 
Presbyterianism  had  a  tremendous  score  to  settle  with 
the  British  government.  The  time  for  settlement  had 
not  arrived,  however,  when  Davies  uttered  his  patri- 
otic sermon  in  1755.  He  is  perfectly  loyal,  but  ar- 
raigns the  moral  and  religious  condition  of  the  whole 
country.      I  conclude  with  a  characteristic  passage  : 

"O  my  country,  /s  not  thy  wickedness  great,  and 
thine  iniquities  infinite?  Where  is  there  a  more  sinful 
spot  to  be  found  on  our  guilty  globe  ?  Pass  over  the 
land,  take  a  survey  of  the  inhabitants,  inspect  into 
their  conduct,  and  what  do  you  see?  what  do  you 
hear  ?  You  see  gigantic  forms  of  vice  braving  the  skies, 
and  bidding  defiance  to  heaven  and  earth,  while  reli- 
gion and  virtue  is  obliged  to  retire,  to  avoid  public 
contempt  and  insult.  You  see  herds  of  drunkards 
swilling  down  their  cups  and  drowning  all  the  man 
within  them.  You  hear  the  swearer  venting  his  fury 
against  God  and  man,  trifling  with  that  name  which 
prostrate  angels  adore,  and  imprecating  that  damna- 
tion, under  which  the  hardiest  devil  in  hell  trembles 
and  groans.  You  see  avarice  hoarding  up  her  useless 
treasures,  dishonest  craft  planning  her  schemes  of  un- 
lawful gain,  and  oppression  unmercifully  grinding  the 
face  of  the  poor.  You  see  prodigality  squandering 
her  stores,  luxury  spreading  her  table  and  unmanning 
her  guests;  vanity  laughing  aloud  and  dissolving  in 
empty  unthinking  mirth,  regardless  of  God  and  our 
country,  of  time  and  eternity;  sensuality  wallowing  in 
brutal  pleasures,  and  aspiring  with  inverted  ambition, 
to  sink  as  low  as  her  four-footed  brethren  of  the  stall. 
You  see  cards  more  in  use  than  the  Bible,  the  back- 
gammon table  more  frequented  than  the  table  of  the 
Lord,  plays  and  romances  more  read  than  the  history 
of  the  blessed  Jesus.     You  see  trifling  and  even  crim- 


inal diversions  become  a  serious  business;  the  issue 
of  a  horse-race  or  a  cock-fight  more  anxiously  attended 
to  than  the  fate  of  our  country.  You  see  thousands  of 
poor  slaves  in  a  Christian  country,  the  property  of 
Christian  masters,  as  they  will  be  called,  almost  as 
ignorant  of  Christianity  as  when  they  left  the  wilds  of 
Africa." 

With  which  brave  count  in  a  long  indictment  I 
take  leave  of  this  historic  sermon  of  an  almost  forgot- 
ten forerunner  and  inspirer  of  famous  leaders. 


THE  GENERAL  PHYLOQENY  OF  THE  PROTISTS.i 

BY  PROF,    ERNST  HAECKEL. 
THE  BEGINNING  OF  PHYLOGENY. 

The  development  of  the  world  of  organic  forms  on 
the  terrestrial  globe  has  not  gone  on  from  eternity, 
but  had  a  finite  beginning.  For  the  organic  life  upon 
our  planet  could  not  have  begun  until  the  temperature 
on  the  solidified  crust  of  the  molten  terrestrial  ball 
had  so  far  cooled  off  as  to  permit  the  aqueous  vapors 
of  the  atmosphere  to  condense  into  liquid  water.  For 
the  rise  and  preservation  of  organic  life,  liquid  water 
is  as  indispensable  as  is  the  formation  of  those  peculiar 
nitrogenous  and  albuminous  carbon-compounds  which 
we  group  together  under  the  notion  of  plasma-bodies. 
The  simplest  living  organism  cannot  subsist  without  a 
granule  of  glutinous,  semifluid  plasma  containing  li- 
quid water  in  the  characteristic  aggregate,  viscid  state. 
The  condition  precedent  of  all  beginning  of  organic 
life  on  earth  is  the  appearance  at  some  period  in  the 
terrestrial  history  of  the  appropriate  physical  condi- 
tions, especially  a  moderate  temperature  between 
freezing  and  boiling  point.  As  the  organic  bodies  of 
nature  consist  of  the  same  substances  as  the  inorganic, 
and  as  they  are  dissolved  again  on  their  death  into  the 
same  substances,  we  must  assume  by  the  law  of  the 
conservation  of  matter  that  the  former  have  sprung 
out  from  the  latter  by  some  natural  process,  which  pro- 
cess is  archigony. 

Astronomy  and  cosmogony,  geology  and  physiol- 
ogy, compel  us  with  mathematical  certitude  to  adopt 
the  foregoing  assumption,  and  necessitate  at  the  same 
time  a  division  of  the  history  of  our  planet  into  two 
main  chapters — an  inorganic  and  an  organic  terrestrial 
history.  The  latter  coincides  in  point  of  time  with 
the  ancestral  history  of  the  race.  For  we  must  assume 
that  with  the  very  first  beginning  of  organic  life  and 
with  the  rise  of  the  first  living  plasmic  bodies,  was 
begun  that  uninterrupted  chain  of  transformations  of 
plasmic  individuals,  to  investigate  which  is  the  task 
of  phylogeny. 

The  period  in  which  the  oldest,  simplest  organisms 
first  began  the  marvellous  exhibitions  of  organic  vital 
motion  and  transformation,  is  probably  not  different, 

1  Being  Paragraphs  31,  32,  33,  and  34  of  the  new  Systemaiische  Phylogenie. 


4402 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


or,  if  at  all,  only  remotely  so,  from  that  in  which  the 
earliest  oceanic  waves  started  their  geoplastic  plaj', 
and  by  the  formation  of  mud  laid  the  first  founda- 
tions for  the  oldest  Neptunian  sediments  of  the  earth's 
crust.  Hence,  since  the  latter  are  called  the  Lauren- 
tian  sediments,-  we  may  place  the  beginning  of  the 
archizoic'  age,  or  the  first  principal  division  of  the  or- 
ganic history  of  the  earth,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
period  in  which  the  lowest  and  oldest  Laurentian  mud 
layers  —  the  Hypo-Laurentian  sediments — were  de- 
posited. 

ARCHIGONY  OR  EQUIVOCAL  GENERATION. 

Of  the  various  hypothetical  theories  respecting  the 
origin  of  organic  life  on  earth,  which  until  very  re- 
cently were  at  fierce  war  with  one  another,  one  only 
has  proved  itself  tenable  and  not  at  variance  with  the 
fundamental  principles  of  modern  physics  and  physi- 
ology ;  namely,  the  hypothesis  of  archigony  or  "  equiv- 
ocal generation"^  (understood,  be  it  remarked,  in  a 
definite  and  7>e?y  restricted  sense).  This  hypothesis, 
which  we  hold  to  be  the  only  natural  one,  is  made  up 
of  the  following  assumptions  :  (i)  the  organisms  with 
whose  spontaneous  generation  organic  life  began  were 
moners  or  probionts — "organisms  without  organs," 
very  small  homogeneous  plasmic  bodies  devoid  of  an- 
atomical structure.  (2)  The  vital  powers  of  these 
primordial  moners,  which  were  made  up  of  like  mole- 
cules of  plasma,  were  restricted  to  assimilation  and 
growth  ;  if  the  growth  went  beyond  a  certain  limit  of 
cohesion  the  tiny  granule  was  split  up  into  two  frag- 
ments (the  beginning  of  propagation  and  hence  of 
heredity).  (3)  The  homogeneous  plasm  of  this  moner- 
body  arose  from  inorganic  combinations  as  an  albu- 
minate, by  a  synthetic  chemical  process  :  from  water, 
carbonic  acid,  and  ammonia — possibly  with  the  co- 
operation of  certain  acids — nitric  acid,  cyanic  acid, 
and  others. 

The  supposition  of  archigony,  as  thus  sharply  de- 
fined, is  the  only  hypothesis  that  explains  scientifically 
the  generation  of  organic  life  on  our  planet.  It  must 
not  be  confounded  with  those  varied  and  mostly  un- 
scientific hypotheses  which  have  been  put  together 
from  time  immemorial  under  the  vague  designation  of 
generatio  a:qiiivoia  or  spontanea.  For  our  modern  hy- 
pothesis of  archigony,  which  accords  perfectly  with  the 
latest  advances  of  physics  and  chemistry,  nothing  is 
required  save  the  assumption  that  the  physico-chem- 
ical process  of  plasmodomy^  or  "carbon  assimilation,'' 
the  synthesis  of  plasma  from  simple  inorganic  combi- 
nations (water  and  ammonium  carbonate),  took  place 
for  the  first  time  upon  the  first  appearance  in  the  his- 

^Arckizoic,  relating  to  the  first  life. —  Tr. 

2  The  same  as  "  spontaneous  generation  " — the  supposed  origin  of  living 
from  non-living  matter. —  Tr. 

^Plasviodomy,  from  two  Greek  words  meaning  the  building  up  of  plasma, 
referring  to  the  process  observable  in  plants.  —  Tr. 


tory  of  the  earth  of  the  conditions  favorable  for  it.  The 
same  process  which  the  vegetal  plasma  of  every  green 
assimilating  plant-cell  daily  performs  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  sun's  light,  must,  at  some  time  or  other, 
have  begun  spontaneously,  when  in  the  beginning  of 
the  Laurentian  period  the  requisite  physical  and  chem- 
ical conditions  were  established.  This  first  spontane- 
ous formation  of  albumen  did  not,  in  all  probability, 
take  place  in  the  open  water  of  the  primeval  Lauren- 
tian ocean,  but  somewhere  on  its  coast,  where  the  fine 
porous  earth  (mud,  sand,  clay),  afforded  favorable 
conditions  for  some  intense  molecular  interaction  be- 
tween the  solid,  liquid,  and  gaseous  substances. 

The  physical  conditions  of  life  on  the  surface  of  the 
earth  were  at  the  beginning  of  organic  life  beyond 
doubt  very  different  from  what  they  are  at  present. 
The  hot  atmosphere  of  the  earth  was  saturated  with 
aqueous  vapors  and  carbonic  acid  gas  ;  solar  light  and 
electricity  operated  under  different  conditions  from 
what  they  do  to  day ;  the  tremendous  masses  of  carbon 
which  were  subsequently  fixed  by  the  vegetable  world 
in  organised  forms,  then  existed  only  in  inorganic 
combinations.  We  may  assume  as  very  probable 
that  the  archizoic  conditions  favoring  archigony  lasted 
for  a  long  period,  and  that  accordingly  moners  were 
generated  repeatedly  by  archigony  at  many  different 
places  of  the  earth's  surface  and  at  many  different 
times.  Whether,  however,  these  processes  of  primi- 
tive spontaneous  generation  continued  in  subsequent 
times,  say,  after  in  the  Palaeozoic  era  a  rich  Fauna  and 
Flora  had  developed,  is  extremely  doubtful,  as  is  also 
the  question  whether,  as  some  assume,  the  same  pro- 
cesses are  still  being  repeated  to-day.  However,  even 
if  the  archigony  of  moners  7oere  constantly  repeated 
to-day,  the  process,  owing  to  the  minute  size  and  the 
homogeneous  constitution  of  the  archigonous  plasma 
granules,  would  probably  be  inaccessible  both  to  ob- 
servation and  to  experiment. 

Theoretically,  the  following  five  stages  may  be  dis- 
tinguished in  the  hypothetical  process  of  archigony: 
(i)  By  synthesis  and  reduction  are  produced  from  sim- 
ple and  solid  inorganic  combinations  (water,  carbonic 
acid,  ammonia,  nitric  acid),  nitrogenous  carbon  com- 
pounds; (2)  the  molecules  of  these  nitro-carbonates 
assume  the  peculiar  arrangement  which  is  characteris- 
tic of  the  albumen  bodies,  in  the  broad  sense;  (3)  the 
albumen  molecules,  enclosed  in  aqueous  envelopes, 
come  together  and  form  crystalline  aggregates  of  mole- 
cules— pleons  or  micellas;  (4)  the  crystalline  albumi- 
nous micellae  (which  are  microscopically  invisible) 
unite  into  aggregates,  arranging  themselves  regularly 
within  the  same,  and  so  form  homogeneous  micro- 
scopically visible  plasma- granules,  or  plassonella  ;  (5) 
the  plassonella  grow  and  increase  by  division  ;  and  the 
products  of  the  division  remaining  united,  larger  indi- 


XHE    OPEN     COURT. 


4403 


vidual   plasma-bodies   of    homogeneous   composition, 
moners,  are  formed. 

MONERS  AND  MICELLAE. 

Moners  we  term  exclusively  those  microscopically 
visible,  lowest  organisms  whose  homogeneous  plasma- 
body  shows  as  yet  no  trace  of  being  composed  of  dif- 
ferent constituents  and  possesses  no  anatomical  struc- 
ture. This  last  never  arises  except  as  the  result  of  vital 
activity,  and  consequently  could  not  have  been  present 
in  the  oldest  living  beings.  Organisation  is  always 
the  effect  of  the  plasma-function,  not  its  first  cause. 
By  archigony  only  moners  could  be  produced — struc- 
tureless "organisms  without  organs." 

In  saying  that  moners  are  structureless,  we  must 
expressly  add  that  the  designation  is  to  be  understood 
anatomically  and  histologically  only,  and  not  physi- 
cally; that  is  to  say,  we  are  unable,  with  any  of  our 
anatomical  or  microscopical  instruments,  to  discern 
the  least  difference  of  formal  composition  in  the  homo- 
geneous plasma  of  the  moner  body.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  must  assume  theoretically  that  a  very  com- 
plicated molecular  structure  exists  in  every  micella  of 
it.  For,  chemically  considered,  the  simplest  albumi- 
nous molecule  is  an  extremely  composite  formation. 
Still,  those  delicate  structural  relations,  like  the  mole- 
cules themselves,  lie  far  without  the  limits  of  our  mi- 
croscopic observation.  When  we  think  what  physio- 
logical peculiarities  are  imprinted  in  the  smallest  and 
simplest  visible  protists  (bacteria,  monads,  etc.),  we 
are  led  to  infer  some  corresponding  complexity  of  their 
chemical  molecular  constitution.  Yet  whatever  that 
is,  it  is  totally  without  the  reach  of  our  present  optical 
knowledge. 

It  is  implied  in  this  that  we  attribute  no  origi- 
nal, optically  observable,  fundamental  structure  to  the 
plasma,  as  has  been  attempted  in  recent  theories  by 
the  assumption  of  a  granular  or  spumous'  structure. 
The  assumption  of  the  modern  granular  hypothesis 
that  the  small  homogeneous  granules  observable  in  the 
cytoplasm  of  many  cells  are  the  true  elementary  par- 
ticles of  all  cells,  is  as  erroneous,  in  our  opinion,  as 
that  of  the  opposed  spumous  hypothesis  which  asserts 
that  the  honey-combed,  foamy  structure  visible  in  the 
vacuolised  cytoplasm-  of  many  cells  is  a  fundamen- 
tal elementary  structure  originally  appurtenant  to  the 
plasm.  Both  the  granular  and  the  spumous  forma- 
tions we  regard  as  secondary  products  of  the  plasma 
differentiation. 

Moreover,  express  caution  is  necessary,  not  to  con- 
found the  hypothetical  molecular  micellar  structure  of 
the  plasma  with  its  frame-structure,  which  we  can  ob- 

ISfutnous,  foam-like. 

2  Cytoplasm,  cellular  substance,  usually  regarded  as  synonymous  with 
protoplasm;  in  Haeckel's  terminology  the  plasma  of  the  cellular  boiiy  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  plasma  of  the  cellular  nucleus,  which  is  called  karyo- 
plasm. — TV. 


serve  with  powerful  microscopes  in  the  reticular  plasma 
of  many  cells  or  in  the  free  plasma-net  of  rhizopods. 
Of  the  various  hypotheses  that  have  been  advanced 
regarding  the  minuter  consistence  of  the  plasma,  we 
regard  the  micellar  hypothesis  or  its  modification,  the 
plastidular  hypothesis,  as  the  one  that  comes  nearest 
to  the  truth.  According  to  that  theory,  the  constituent 
micellae  arrange  themselves  in  the  homogeneous  plasma 
in  chains  alongside  one  another  (like  the  C/iromaceic, 
Bacteria,  and  other  protists  that  form  threads  by  cate- 
nation),  and  these  plasma  filaments  or  micellae- chains 
form  a  network  or  framework  whose  meshes  or  inter- 
stices are  filled  with  water.  This  micellar  hypothesis 
explains  most  simply  one  of  the  most  important  physi- 
cal or  physiological  properties  of  the  plasma  —  its 
"solid-liquid  aggregate  condition"  and  its  power  of 
imbibition.  We  maj'  regard  the  infinite  manifoldness 
of  the  "  configuration  of  this  ideoplasm-net "  as  the  ele- 
mentary cause  of  the  infinite  variety  of  all  organic 
forms.  However,  this  micellous  plasma-framework 
lies  far  without  the  limits  of  our  optical  knowledge, 
in  the  simplest  moners  as  in  all  other  organisms. 

PLASSON  AND  PLASMA. 

All  the  active  vital  functions  of  organisms  are  asso- 
ciated with  one  unvarying  group  of  chemical  com- 
binations, called  in  the  broadest  sense  of  the  term 
plasma-bodies.  The  rise  of  the  countless  different  forms 
which  the  vegetable  and  animal  world  assumes  is  al- 
ways the  result  of  the  plasticity  or  formative  action  of 
the  plasma,  that  albuminoid  nitrocarloiiate  which  is 
involved  in  unceasing  transformation  and  is  capable 
of  numberless  modifications.  This  fundamental  rela- 
tion is  a  special  case  only  of  the  highest  physical  law, 
that  of  the  conservation  of  substance.  It  is  formulated 
as  follows:  The  plasma  is  the  active  material  basis  of 
all  organic  vital  phenomena  ;  or  conversely,  organic 
life  is  a  function  of  the  plasma.  With  respect  to  an- 
cestral history  this  fundamental  principle  may  be  ex- 
pressed thus :  phylogeny  is  the  history  of  plasmo- 
genesis. 

In  the  great  majority  of  all  organic  bodies  that  can 
be  subjected  to  direct  investigation  to-day,  the  plasma 
confronts  us  in  many  different  modifications  and  ap- 
pears as  a  highly  developed  product  of  countless  phylo- 
genetic  molecular  transformations  effected  in  the  an- 
cestors of  the  present  organisms  during  many  millions 
of  years.  This  follows  also  from  the  fact  that  nearly 
all  elementary  formations  with  few  exceptions  appear 
to  us  as  cells,  that  is,  as  plastids  or  elementary  organ- 
isms whose  plasma  now  consists  of  two  essentially  dif- 
ferent plasmatic  substances — viz.,  of  karyoplasm  or 
nucleus,  and  of  cytoplasm  or  celleus.  The  complex  re- 
lations which  obtain  between  these  two  main  constit- 
uents of  the  cell-organism,    and  which   appear  most 


4404 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


prominently  in  the  phenomena  of  karyokinesis^  and 
mitosis'^  consequent  upon  cell  division,  and  the  al- 
most universal  distribution  of  these  constant  relations 
throughout  the  whole  plant  and  animal  kingdom  (the 
lowest  forms  of  plant  and  animal  life  alone  excepted), 
show  distinctly  that  the  differentiation  of  the  plasma 
into  nucleus  and  celleus,  or  into  karyoplasm  and  cyto- 
plasm is  extremely  ancient.  It  probably  began  in  the 
Laurentian  period  in  the  first  stage  of  organic  life  from 
functional  adaptation,  and  was  then  transmitted  by 
progressive  heredity  to  all  descendants. 

This  is  corroborated  by  the  fact  that  plastids  de- 
void of  nuclei  still  exist  as  independent  organisms  of 
the  lowest  rank — in  the  plant  kingdom  {JJhromacea, 
Ph\lomonera)  as  well  as  in  the  animal  {Bacteria,  Zo- 
omonera).  We  must  regard  these  as  survivals  of  that 
most  ancient  Laurentian  moner  group  which  arose  by 
archigony,  and  with  which  organic  life  on  earth  be- 
gan. As  the  absence  of  a  nucleus  in  these  simplest 
elementary  organisms  is  to  be  regarded  as  original  and 
hereditary,  it  appears  appropriate  to  call  plastids  pos- 
sessing no  nucleus  cytodes,  as  contrasted  with  true  cells 
or  nucleate  plastids.  The  plasma  of  cytodes,  there- 
fore, may  be  appropriately  termed  plasson,  or  "for- 
mative" vital  substance  in  its  most  primitive  form. 
Its  relation  to  cells  may  be  formulated  in  this  phylo- 
genetic  proposition  :  when  the  homogeneous  plasson 
of  the  moners  first  differentiated  itself  into  the  inner 
solider  karyoplasm  and  into  the  outer  softer  cytoplasm, 
the  first  real  (nucleate)  cell  was  produced  from  the 
simple  cytode. 

PITHECANTHROPOS. 

PiTHECANTHROPOs  (or  ape-man)  is  the  name  of  an 
oil-painting  made  by  no  less  an  artist  than  Gabriel  Max. 
The  hand  that  painted  one  of  the  sweetest  modern 
Madonnas  has  ventured  to  execute  a  more  difficult 
work  by  presenting  to  us  an  ideal  picture  of  the  an- 
cestor of  man.  Reproductions  have  been  made  by 
Hanfstengel  in  several  sizes  and  are  now  to  be  had 
at  our  art-stores. 

At  first  sight  the  picture  is  almost  repulsive,  as  it 
shows  a  man,  a  woman,  and  a  child  naked  and  in 
apelike  ugliness ;  but  it  gains  on  one's  imagination 
the  more  its  finer  details  are  studied.  One  is  impressed 
very  soon  with  the  moral  strength  of  this  Pre-Adamitic 
family.  The  features  of  both  parents  indicate  that  the 
struggle  for  existence  is  hard,  but  that  they  are  fight- 
ing the  battle  of  life  courageously  and  boldly.  The 
odds  are  great,  but  they  have  strength  to  conquer 
them. 

Gabriel  Max  was  equal  to  the  great  task  of  show- 
ing man  at  the  beginning  of  his  career  in  a  low  state, 

IKaryokinesis,  a  series  of  minute  changes  in  the  nucleus  of  tlie  living  cell 
when  splitting  up. — TV. 

^Mitosis,  a  subdivision  of  minute  granular  bodies  in  the  plasma. —  TV. 


but  he  understood  how  to  make  us  comprehend  that 
he  represents  not  the  downfall  to  a  state  of  degrada- 
tion, but  the  rise  to  a  higher  and  nobler  development 
of  life.  We  can  plainly  see  that  these  creatures,  half 
animals,  half  men,  contain  in  their  aspirations  the 
grand  possibilities  of  humanity. 

Whether  or  not  the  picture  is  correct  in  all  its  de- 
tails, from  the  standpoint  of  the  most  recent  results  of 
anthropology,  is  of  small  concern  ;  whether  or  not  the 
hair  of  the  woman's  head  is  too  long,  whether  or  not 
the  thumb-like  great  toes  are  in  place,  whether  or  not 
the  color  of  the  eyes  is  what  it  most  probably  was 
in  the  average  individual  of  those  distant  ages,  whether 
or  not  the  term  alalus  or  speechless  is  applicable  to 
the  pithecanthropes  need  not  concern  us  much  ;  there 
is  unquestionably  scope  enough  left  for  suggestions  of 
all  kinds.  This  much  is  certain,  that  the  artist  has  un- 
derstood how  to  portray  the  ancestors  of  man  at  the 
moment  when  their  souls  were  blossoming  out  into 
that  fuller  mentality,  which,  with  its  intellectual  depth 
and  moral  breadth,  we  call  human.  p.  c. 


A  JAPANESE  TRANSLATION  OF  "THE  GOSPEL  OF 
BUDDHA." 

A  FEW  days  ago  we  received  from  the  Right  Rev. 
Shaku  Soyen,  of  Kamakura,  Japan,  the  first  copy  of 
the  Japanese  edition  of  The  Gospel  of  Buddha.  It  is  a 
handsome  volume,  neatly  printed  in  Japanese-Chinese 
characters,  made  up,  not  in  the  old-fashioned  Chinese 
style,  but  in  a  modern  form  according  to  European 
custom.  As  in  Hebrew  Bibles,  the  beginning  is  where 
we  should  look  for  the  end.  Two  hundred  and  thirty- 
two  pages  of  English  text  cover  three  hundred  and 
fifty-two  of  the  Japanese  version.  The  copy  in  our 
hands  has  been  bound  in  black  paper,  with  the  title 
in  gold  on  the  face  and  at  the  back  of  the  book  ;  it 
opens  easily  at  every  page — a  characteristic  which 
our  Western  books  rarely  possess,  for  they  close  vigor- 
ously, unless  they  are  held  open  with  great  effort, 
like  the  spring  of  a  fox-trap.  The  preface,  covering 
eight  pages  in  Japanese,  is  written  by  Shaku  Soyen, 
and  from  the  English  translation  which  he  kindly  for- 
warded us,  we  reproduce  the  following  passages  : 

"  Sakyamuni  was  born  in  India  about  three  thousand  years 
ago,  but  Buddhism  existed  long  before  his  birth  ;  Mato  and  Horan 
introduced  the  sacred  books  into  China  when  the  country  was 
governed  by  the  Gokan  dynasty,  but  Buddhism  existed  long  be- 
fore their  introduction  ;  Scimei  ■  presented  a  Buddhist  image  and 
the  sacred  book  to  our  Imperial  court  in  the  reign  of  Emperor 
Kimmei,  but  Buddhism  existed  long  before  this  present,  for  Bud- 
dhism is  not  an  invention  of  Sakyamuni,  but  the  Truth  of  the 
world. 

"The  Truth  of  the  world  is  not  conditioned  by  time  and  space; 
it  is  infinitely  great  and  infinitely  small  ;  it  can  embrace  the  whole 
universe,  while  it  may  be  hidden  in  a  hair. 

1  During  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Kimmei,  in  the  year  555,  A.  D.,  the  King 
of  Kudara  in  Korea  sent  to  Japan  an  envoy,  bearing  an  image  of  Buddha  and 
a  copy  of  the  Sutras. — History  of  the  Empire  of  Japan,  p.  47. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4405 


"  Shintoism,  Confucianism,  Brahmanism,  Christianity,  and 
Mohammedanism,  when  considered  from  the  standpoint  of  our 
Buddhist  religion,  are,  in  my  opinion,  but  larger  or  smaller  planets 
revolving  around  this  brilliant  sun  of  the  Truth,  though  each  of 
them  claims  to  constitute  a  solar  system  of  its  own,  quite  different 
from  others.  For  who  is  Confucius  but  another  Bodhisattva  that 
appeared  in  China  ;  and  Jesus  and  Mohammed  are  Arhats  in  the 
West.  Some  religious  doctrines  are  inferior  to  and  less  deep  than 
others,  and  they  were  all  preached  according  to  the  needs  of  the 
time  in  which  their  founders  were  born  ;  but  as  far  as  they  are 
consistent  with  the  Truth,  they  may  freely  find  their  place  within 
our  Buddhist  doctrines. 

"If  Brahmanism  had  not  arisen  in  India,  Buddhism  would 
never  have  come  into  e.\istence  ;  if  Confucianism  had  not  taken  a 
strong  hold  on  the  minds  of  the  Chinese  people,  it  would  never 
have  found  its  way  into  that  empire;  if  Shintoism  had  not  had  its 
worshippers  in  our  country,  it  would  never  have  risen  in  the  land 
of  the  "  Rising  Sun  ";  lastly,  if  Christ  had  not  appeared,  nor  Mo- 
hammed, there  would  have  been  no  Buddhism  in  the  countries 
where  those  religious  teachers  are  worshipped  !  For  all  these  re- 
ligions, I  make  bold  to  say,  are  nothing  but  so  many  conductors 
through  which  the  "  White  Light  "  of  Buddha  is  passing  into  the 
whole  universe. 

' '  The  advanced  state  of  modern  science  has  contributed  a  great 
deal  to  make  truth  more  and  more  clear,  and  there  are  many  signs 
in  the  Western  civilisation  that  it  will  welcome  Buddhism.  Origi- 
nating from  the  indefatigable  researches  of  some  Sanskrit  schol- 
ars, a  new  interest  has  been  excited  in  the  West  to  investigate  the 
Eastern  literature,  history,  and  fine  arts.  Since,  in  addition,  a 
new  and  powerful  interest  in  comparative  religion  has  become 
more  and  more  general,  the  time  is  at  hand  in  which  Western 
scholars  begin  to  see  how  brilliantly  our  Buddhism  shines  in  all 
its  glory.  This  is  partly  shown  by  the  results  of  that  great  event 
the  late  Parliament  of  Religions  in  America. 

"Many  Buddhist  scriptures  have  been  translated,  both  from 
Sanskrit  and  Chinese,  by  Western  scholars,  and  a  dozen  of  books 
relating  to  Buddhism  have  also  made  their  appearance,  but  only  a 
few  of  them  are  read  in  our  country.  They  are  Max  Miiller's 
Nirvana,  Olcott's  A  Buddhist  Catechism,  Arnold's  The  Light  of  Asia, 
Swedenborg's  Buddhism.  Swedenborg  entered  the  realm  of  Bud- 
dhism from  his  deep  mysticism,  Arnold  from  his  beautiful  poeti- 
cal thoughts,  Olcott  from  his  mighty  intellectual  power,  and  Max 
Miiller  from  his  extensive  knowledge  of  the  elegant  Sanskrit  liter- 
ature. Every  one  of  them  shines  in  his  special  department,  ac- 
cording to  the  peculiar  excellence  of  his  genius.  But  as  for  the 
first  and  ultimate  truth  of  Buddhism,  I  am  not  sure  whether  or 
not  they  have  thoroughly  understood  it. 

"  Now  in  our  country  there  exists  the  complete  translation  of 
the  Buddhist  Tripitaka,  which  have  been  constantly  read  by  spe- 
cialists for  at  least  one  thousand  years.  But  their  commentaries 
having  become  enormously  numerous  and  their  doctrines  having 
become  more  and  more  subtile,  the  completeness  of  the  Tripitaka 
which  was  a  joyous  pride  to  the  ancients,  has  now  caused  many 
complaints  among  the  scholars  of  to-day  who  are  at  a  loss  how  to 
begin  their  study.  Thus  an  eager  demand  for  a  concisely  com- 
piled work  on  Buddhism  has  arisen  throughout  the  country,  which 
it  is  our  duty  to  satisfy.  I  hope  this  general  demand  will  be 
satisfied  by  Dr.  Carus's  work. 

"The  reasons  why  I  publish  this  Japanese  translation  of  The 
Gospel  of  Buddha,  which  has  been  done  in  a  very  easy  style  by 
T.  Suzuki,  a  fellow  of  the  Takuhakuyen,  are  : 

"  (i)  To  make  our  readers  know  how  much  our  Buddhism  is 
understood  by  Western  scholars  ;  (2)  to  point  out  to  beginners  a 
short  road  of  studying  Buddhism  ;  (3)  to  teach  the  masses  the  life 
of  Sakyamuni  and  give  them  an  outline  of  the  general  doctrines 
of  Buddhism." 


SCIENCE  AND  REFORM. 


WEATHER  SAINTS. 
The  employees  of  our  Go\ernment  weather-observations  often 
need  the  qualifications  of  a  saint,  as  well  as  of  a  prophet.  There 
are  moralists  who  denounce  the  occasional  failure  of  a  prediction 
as  a  breach  of  contract,  and  rival  observers  who  resent  the  publi- 
cation of  the  official  bulletin  as  a  personal  insult.  "  There  is  no 
end  of  complaints,"  said  the  manager  of  the  Pittsburg  signal  sta- 
tion in  an  interview  with  a  press  correspondent.  "People  rush 
in  here  and  tell  us  that  their  thermometers  showed  fifteen  degrees 
below  zero,  when  three  and  one-half  was  actually  the  lowest.  They 
talk  with  the  emphasis  of  personal  conviction  and  would  lose  their 
temper  altogether  if  I  should  try  to  explain  the  causes  of  the  dis- 
crepancy. The  main  cause  is  'calibration,'  or  faulty  construction 
of  the  mercury  tube" — illustrating  his  meaning  by  two  drawings, 
one  representing  the  strictly  parallel  lines  of  a  correct  instrument, 
the  other  resembling  a  river  that  widens  into  a  lake  and  again  as- 
sumes its  natural  volume — the  tube  of  the  twenty  cent  thermome- 
ter that  produces  results  the  bureau  cannot  hope  to  approach. 
"  These  inequalities  do  the  mischief,"  said  the  observer.  "If  the 
tube  widens  at  a  certain  point  the  mercury  will  move  up  and  down 
slowly.  If  it  is  unduly  contracted,  it  will  show  big  extremes  of 
temperature.  The  cheapest  thermometer  we  use  costs  $3.50.  Noth- 
ing cheaper  is  reliable.  These  people  come  rushing  in  here.  Their 
thermometers  show  one  hundred  and  six  degrees  and  they  are 
proud  of  it.  We  can't  rake  up  a  hundred.  Winter  brings  no  re- 
lief. Cheap  thermometers  and  their  owners  rush  to  the  opposite 
extreme."  Yet  courteous  treatment  of  well-dressed  visitors  is  one 
of  the  principle  office-rules. 

THE  ALCOHOL  PROBLEM. 

A  few  weeks  ago  a  committee  of  Americati  reformers  an- 
nounced their  intention  to  investigate  the  liquor  problem  on  the 
inductive  principle  of  inquiry,  by  a  series  of  personal  experiments 
and  an  impartial  comparison  of  the  results.  The  list  of  their  mem- 
bers includes  such  names  as  Prof.  F.  G.  Peabody,  J.  J.  McCook, 
Felix  Adler  and  President  Low  of  Columbia  College — the  chair- 
man of  the  committee.  The  proximate  object  of  the  inquiry  is  the 
"effect  of  moderate  drinking, "  and  a  widely  distributed  circular 
invites  replies  to  the  following  questions  :  i.  "Is  the  regular  con- 
sumption of  a  moderate  quantity  of  whiskey,  wine,  or  beer  con- 
ducive to  the  maintenance  of  health  and  working  power  in  any 
class  of  men  ?  If  so,  in  what  class,  and  what  is  the  average  quan- 
tity thus  useful  ?  " — 2.  "  What  is  the  quantity  of  whiskey,  wine,  or 
beer  which  the  average  man  in  good  health  may  consume  daily 
without  special  risk  of  injuring  his  health  ?  Does  this  vary  in  con- 
nexion with  variations  of  age,  of  climate,  or  of  occupation,  and 
what  are  those  variations  ? " — Considering  the  frequency  of  desul- 
tory methods  applied  to  the  study  of  the  drink  evil,  the  plan  of  the 
proposed  investigation  really  seemed  to  promise  important  results, 
but  by  a  strange  oversight — or,  shall  we  say,  failure  to  recognise 
the  chief  significance  of  the  intemperance  peril,  the  circular  in- 
cludes no  reference  to  the  question  which  De  Quincy  discussed  so 
impressively  in  his  Confessions  of  an  Opium  Eater,  viz. ,  the  frequent 
progressiveness  of  apparently  harmless  stimulant  habits.  Like  the 
moderate  use  of  opium,  hashish,  arsenic,  tobacco,  and  chloral,  the 
"moderate  drinking"  of  alcoholic  liquors  implies  the  risk  of  a 
craving  for  a  gradual  increase  of  the  dose — a  fact  explaining  the 
apparent  paradox  that  abstinence  from  all  tonic  drugs  is  easier 
than  temperance. 

A  DOOMED   NATION. 

Whatever  may  be  the  temporary  outcome  of  the  Inter-Mon- 
golian war,  its  military  record  will  seal  the  doom  of  the  Chinese 
Empire  as  an  independent  organisation.  No  such  odds  in  the 
numerical  strength  of  belligerents  were  ever  heard  of  since  the 
close  of  the  Seven  Years'  War,  nor  such  uniform   success  of  the 


4406 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


minority  since  Bonaparte's  first  Italian  campaign.  King  Frederic, 
like  the  Japanese  invaders,  entered  the  field  against  tenfold  odds, 
but  was,  on  the  average  beaten  in  every  third  battle.  And  though 
Napoleon  gained  sixteen  following  victories,  his  force  in  northern 
Italy  never  amounted  to  less  than  one-half  of  his  Austrian  adver- 
saries, and  he  was,  moreover,  backed  by  the  resources  of  a 
country  quite  as  rich  and  populous  as  Austria  and  those  of  her 
Italian  sympathisers  taken  together.  In  1S13  he  fought  as  one 
against  five,  and  was  not  only  worsted  but  ruined.  The  present 
population  of  the  Japanese  archipelago  has  been  estimated  at 
35,200,000  ;  that  of  the  Chinese  Empire  at  372,500,000,— the  pro- 
portion being  almost  exactly  that  of  France  in  her  present  extent, 
against  all  Europe  combined,  or  of  Chile  against  all  the  rest  of 
South  America.  A  nation  so  easily  beaten,  has  forfeited  its  hope 
of  peace.  The  result  of  the  first  Silesian  war  was  the  signal  for  a 
general  attack  upon  the  heritage  of  the  Empress  Queen.  The  vic- 
tories of  the  Visigoths  were  followed  by  a  mass-invasion  of  other 
warlike  tribes,  and  the  success  of  the  Japanese  aggressors  will  ulti- 
mately lead  to  the  downfall  of  the  South  Mongolian  colossus. 

JURY  FREAKS. 
The  occasional  abuse  of  a  time-honored  institution  should  not 
be  allowed  to  justify  the  demand  for  its  abolishment ;  still  it  must 
be  admitted  that  every  now  and  then  a  glaring  case  of  mis-trial 
seems  to  illustrate  the  correctness  of  Schopenhauer's  arguments 
for  the  modification  of  the  old  English  jury-system.  A  few  years 
ago  a  young  man  of  Uniontown,  Pennsylvania,  waylaid  and  mur- 
dered a  lawyer  who  bad  killed  his  father  in  self  defence.  It  was 
proved  that  the  vendetta  outrage  had  not  been  committed  in  a 
moment  of  passion,  since  its  perpetrator  had  prepared  its  success 
by  a  week  of  daily  target-practice,  but  the  jury  nevertheless  en- 
dorsed the  act  by  rejecting  the  plea  of  emotional  insanity  and 
acquitting  the  assassin  on  general  principles.  As  a  natural  con- 
sequence, their  protege  came  to  regard  himself  a  privileged  per- 
sonage and  recently  tested  the  tolerance  of  his  fellowmen  by  two 
additional  murders,  the  first  of  them  committed  on  so  frivolous  a 
pretext  that  only  the  uncommon  strength  of  the  local  bastille 
saved  the  young  bloodhound  from  the  vengeance  of  the  infuriated 
populace.  A  less  tragic,  but  in  some  respects  still  more  remark- 
able, case  occurred  last  month  in  Pittsburgh,  where  the  attending 
physician  of  a  charity  hospital  was  convicted  on  a  preposterously 
absurd  charge  of  malpractice.  The  plaintiff,  a  pauper  and  alien, 
had  been  admitted  to  the  hospital  through  the  special  kindness  of 
the  commissioners,  and  rewarded  the  doctor  who  had  treated  a 
compound  fracture  of  his  thigh  bone  by  suing  him  on  the  plea 
that  the  transaction  had  resulted  in  shortening  the  injured  leg  an 
inch  and  a  half.  It  was  proved  that  the  defendant  had  not  re- 
ceived a  cent  of  compensation,  either  from  the  patient  or  the 
managers  of  the  hospital.  It  was  also  proved  by  compurgators  of 
unquestionable  competence  that  the  result  of  the  cure  was  much 
more  favorable  than  could  have  been  expected  from  a  record  of 
averages;  yet,  in  spite  of  all  these  facts,  and  in  spite  of  their  em- 
phatic indorsement  in  the  final  charge  of  the  court,  the  intelligent 
jury  brought  in  a  five-thousand-dollar  verdict  for  the  plaintiff. 

SPECIALTY  LITERATURE. 
The  enormous  increase  of  the  reading  public  within  the  last 
fifty  years  has  evolved  an  astonishing  number  of  "  specialty  peri- 
odicals." In  the  United  States  we  have  a  Granite-Cuticrs'  Jour- 
nal, a  Modern  Crernatist,  a  Cementarian,  and  an  American  Journal 
of  Nmnisinaliis,  and  Dr.  T.  J.  Bernardo,  London,  England,  pub- 
lishes a  monthly  devoted  to  the  '-study  of  the  proper  treatment 
of  feeble-minded  children." 

POSTHUMOUS  HERO-WORSHIP. 
A  French  statesman  shrewdly  ascribes  the  recent  revival  of 
Napoleon-worship  to  the  incapacity  of  his  would-be  imitators. 


"  The  masses, "  he  says,  "need  an  ideal,  and  seeing  nothing  but 
imbecility  in  gorgeous  uniforms  all  around,  the  vision  of  the  vic- 
tor of  Marengo  in  his  gray  battle-cloak  naturally  rises  before  their 
inner  eye."  In  France  and  Belgium  there  has  been  a  simultaneous 
resurrection  of  Voltaire-worship,  in  Austria  of  Kossuth-veneration. 
The  idea  of  universal  progress  is  a  very  pleasant  one,  but  it  can 
do  no  harm  to  admit  that  in  many  parts  of  Europe  the  intellectual 
meteor-shower  of  1775-1820  has  been  followed  by  an  almost  star- 
less night,  in  which  the  thoughts  of  men  naturally  turn  to  the 
bright  memories  of  the  past. 

VICTIMS  OF  NICOTINE. 

The  liiterateitr  Stevenson  is  supposed  to  have  weakened  his 
constitution  by  mental  overwork,  but  the  main  cause  of  his  pre- 
mature death  was  probably  his  excessive  fondness  for  tobacco. 
Two  years  ago  he  already  confessed  that  the  bill  of  his  cigar- 
dealer  amounted  to  $450  a  year,  and  during  the  last  six  months  of 
his  life  he  smoked  an  average  of  forty  cigarettes  per  day,  and  often 
as  many  as  eighty  in  twenty- four  hours.  This  hobby  had  afflicted 
him  with  chronic  insomnia,  which  in  turn  he  tried  to  cure,  or  at 
least  palliate,  by  smoking  all  night,  till  narcosis  of  the  brain 
brought  on  a  sort  of  stupefaction  and  temporary  loss  of  conscious- 
ness— for  weeks  his  nearest  approach  to  refreshing  slumber.  Dr. 
McCarthy  of  Liverpool  warned  him  a  year  ago  that  he  was  burn- 
ing the  candle  of  life  at  both  ends — fpr  in  the  midst  of  his  misery 
he  tried  to  attend  to  his  literary  labors,  but  he  stuck  to  nicotine 
as  the  only  specific  for  the  mitigation  of  his  nervousness.  For 
similar  reasons  Ex-President  Grant  and  Crown  Prince  Friedrich 
of  Prussia  felt  themselves  unable  to  adopt  the  advice  of  their 
physicians  when  their  passion  for  cigars  had  resulted  in  a  chronic 
irritation  of  the  respiratory  organs. 

Felix  L.  Oswald. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor 


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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  391. 

A    SERMON    THAT    MADE    HISTORY.     Moncure  D. 

Conway 4399 

THE  GENERAL  PHYLOGENY  OF  THE  PROTISTS. 

Ernst  Haeckel 4401 

PITHECANTHROPOS.     Editor 4404 

A  JAPANESE   TRANSLATION   OF    "THE    GOSPEL 

OF  BUDDHA."    Editor 4404 

SCIENCE  AND  REFORM.  Weather  Saints.  The  Alco- 
hol Problem.  A  Doomed  Nation.  Jury  Freaks.  Spe- 
cialty Literature.  Posthumous  Hero-Worship.  Victims 
of  Nicotine.     Felix  L.  Oswald 4405 


A  -1 


The  Open  Court. 


A   ^WTEEKLY   JOUENAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  392.     (Vol.  IX,-9.) 


CHICAGO,   FEBRUARY  28,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
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Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


THOUQHTS  OF  COMFORT. 

BY  THE  LATE  COUNT  HELMUTH  VON   MOLTKE. 
(translated  by  t.  J.  m'cormack.) 

Man  feels  himself  a  complete  whole,  detached  from 
the  rest  of  the  world,  and  outwardly  separated  from  it 
by  the  husk  of  the  body,  which  serves  here  on  earth  as 
the  dwelling-place  of  the  soul.' 

Nevertheless,  I  am  disposed  to  see  in  this  whole, 
functions,  intimately  connected  and  ruled  by  the  soul, 
which  possess  independent  existence. 

First,  from  the  obscurity  of  birth,  the  body  is  de- 
veloped. Its  nature  is  incessantly  at  work  in  the 
growth  of  the  child,  already  preparing  in  him  the  abode 
of  higher  organs.  The  body  reaches  the  acme  of  per- 
fection ere  half  the  period  of  its  duration  has  elapsed, 
and  from  its  surplus-power  creates  new  life.  Thence- 
forward there  is  falling  off  and  weary  endeavor,  onl}', 
to  preserve  its  existence. 

During  probably  a  third  part  of  our  life^  namely, 
that  passed  in  sleep,  the  bod}'  receives  no  commands 
from  its  mistress,  but  the  pulsations  of  the  heart  con- 
tinue uninterrupted,  the  substances  change,  and  respi- 
ration is  performed — all  without  our  willing. 

The  servant,  even,  can  rc/iel  against  his  mistress, 
as  when  a  cramp  painfully  contracts  our  muscles.  But 
the  pain  is  the  cry  for  succor  and  support,  when  the 
vital  function  of  the  body  has  lost  its  mastery  over 
the  dead  matter — which  we  feel  as  the  sickness  of  our 
vassal. 

In  all,  we  must  look  upon  the  body  as  a  part  of 
our  being,  but,  yet,  as  something   alien  to  ourselves. 

But  is  not,  at  least,  the  soul,  the  ego  proper,  a  unity 
and  an  indiscerptible  whole  ? 

Slowly  unfolding,  reason  rises  to  ever  higher  and 
higher  perfection  up  to  old  age,  so  long  as  the  body 
does  not  leave  it  in  the  lurch.  Judgment  expands  with 
the  fulness  of  experience,  but  memory,  that  handmaid 
of  thought,  disappears  earlier,  or  rather  loses  its  capa- 
city of  absorbing  new  matter.  Marvellous,  this  power 
of  preserving,  in  a  thousand  drawers  that  open  instan- 
taneously at  the  mind's  bidding,  all  that  has  been  ac- 
quired, learned,  and  experienced  from  earliest  youth  ! 

1  In  the  first  draft  the  words  follow  here  ;  "  In  spite  of  the  intimate  union 
of  the  two  into  a  whole,  a  certain  dualism  is  unmistakable  "  This  passage  is 
omitted  in  the  later  versions 


It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  old  age  often  gives  the 
impression  of  dulness,  but  it  is  impossible  for  me  to 
think  here  of  a  real  obscurity  of  reason,  for  reason  is 
a  bright  spark  of  the  divine,  and  even  in  insanity  the 
obscurity  shows  only  outwardly.  A  deaf  man,  striking 
the  right  notes  on  an  instrument  out  of  tune  may  be 
conscious  of  playing  correctly,  whilst  all  around  hear 
only  confused  discords. 

Reason  is  absolute  sovereign  ;  she  recognises  no 
authority  above  her  ;  no  power,  not  even  we  ourselves, 
can  compel  her  to  assume  as  incorrect  what  she  has 
recognised  to  be  true. 

£  pur  si  inuove  .' 

The  thinking  mind  soars  through  the  infinite  dis- 
tances of  the  shining  stars  ;  it  casts  its  lead  into  the 
unfathomable  depths  of  the  smallest  life ;  nowhere 
does  it  find  barriers,  everywhere  itua,  the  immediate 
expression  of  divine  thought. 

A  stone  falls  on  Sirius  according  to  the  same  law 
of  gravity  as  upon  the  earth.  Arithmetical  ratios  un- 
derlie the  distances  of  the  planets,  the  chemical  mix- 
ture of  the  elements  ;  everywhere  the  same  causes  pro- 
duce the  same  effect.  Nowhere  is  there  caprice  in 
nature  ;  everywhere,  order. 

The  origin  of  things,  reason  cannot  comprehend  ; 
but  nowhere  is  she  at  variance  with  the  law  that 
regulates  all.  Reason  and  the  order  of  the  world  con- 
form, one  to  another  :  they  must  be  of  the  same  origin. 

Though  the  imperfection  of  all  created  things  leads 
reason  into  ways  that  depart  from  the  truth,  still  truth 
is  her  only  aim. 

Reason,  it  is  true,  comes  into  conflict  with  many 
venerable  traditions.  Reason  objects  to  miracles, 
"Faith's  favorite  offspring"  [as  Goethe  calls  them], 
and  cannot  be  convinced  that  omnipotence  in  attain- 
ing its  ends  should  find  it  necessary  to  abolish  in  in- 
dividual instances  the  laws  that  rule  nature  for  eter- 
nity. Yet  the  doubts  of  reason  are  not  directed  against 
religion  but  only  against  the  form  in  which  religion  is 
offered  to  us. 

Christianity  has  raised  the  world  from  barbarism 
to  civilisation.  It  has  abolished  slavery  after  centuries 
of  effort,  has  ennobled  labor,  emancipated  woman,  and 
opened  a  vista  into  eternity.  But  was  it  the  letter 
of  its  doctrines    the  dogma    that  oroduced  this  bless- 


44o8 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


ing?  Men  can  agree  on  all  things  except  on  such  to 
which  human  powers  of  comprehension  do  not  extend, 
and  concerning  just  such  conceptions  men  have  quar- 
reled eighteen  hundred  years,  have  devastated  the 
world,  from  the  extermination  of  the  disciples  of  Arius 
on  through  the  Thirty  Years'  War  to  the  fagots  of  the 
Inquisition,  and  what  has  been  the  outcome  of  all  these 
struggles? — the  same  difference  of  opinion  as  before  ! 

We  may  take  dogmas  as  we  take  the  assurance  of 
a  trusted  friend,  without  putting  them  to  the  test.  But 
the  kernel  of  all  religions  is  the  morality  which  they 
teach,  and  purest  and  most  comprehensive  of  all  is  the 
Christian. 

And  yet  men  speak  of  dry  morality  with  a  shrug, 
and  lay  the  main  emphasis  on  the  form  in  which  it  is 
given.  I  am  afraid  that  the  zealot  in  the  pulpit,  who 
will  persuade  where  he  cannot  convince,  preaches 
Christians  out  of  the  church. 

Must  not  every  sincere  prayer,  whether  it  be  di- 
rected to  Buddha,  Allah,  or  Jehovah,  reach  the  same 
God,  save  whom  there  is  none  other?  Does  not  the 
mother  hear  the  entreaty  of  the  child  in  what  language 
soever  it  lisps  her  name? 

Reason  is  at  no  point  in  conilict  with  morals.  The 
good  is  in  the  end  the  reasonable  ;  but  acting  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  good  is  not  dependent  upon  reason. 
Here  the  governing  soul,  the  soul  of  feeling,  determines 
volition  and  conduct.  To  her  alone,  not  to  her  two 
vassals,  has  God  given  the  two-edged  sword  of  free- 
will— that  gift  which  according  to  the  Writ  leads  to 
bliss  or  to  damnation. 

But  a  trusty  counsellor  has  been  provided  to  us. 
Independentl}'  of  ourselves,  he  holds  his  commission 
from  God  himself.  Conscience  is  the  incorruptible 
and  infallible  judge  who  pronounces  at  every  moment 
his  verdicts,  if  we  will  but  listen,  and  whose  voice  ulti- 
mately reaches  even  him  who  has  closed  his  heart  to 
its  warning,  strive  against  it  how  he  may. 

The  laws  that  human  society  has  imposed  upon  it- 
self bring  only  conduct  before  their  judgment  seat,  not 
thought  and  sentiment.  Even  the  various  religions 
exact  different  requirements  among  different  peoples. 
One  requires  the  sanctification  of  Sunday,  another  of 
Friday  or  Saturday.  The  one  permits  enjoyments 
that  the  other  forbids.  Nevertheless,  between  what  is 
permitted  and  what  is  prohibited  a  broad  field  of  free- 
dom is  left,  and  it  is  here  that  conscience  with  more 
delicate  sensitiveness  lifts  its  voice.  It  tells  us  that 
every  day  should  be  consecrated  to  the  Lord,  that  even 
legal  interest  wrested  from  the  oppressed  is  wrong. 
In  a  word,  it  preaches  ethics  in  the  breasts  of  Chris- 
tians and  Jews,  of  heathens  and  savages.  For  even 
among  the  most  uncultured  races,  to  whom  the  light 
of  Christianity  has  not  shone,  the  fundamental  notions 
of  good  and  bad  accord.      They,  too,  denounce  breach 


of  faith  and  lies,  treachery,  and  ingratitude  as  bad. 
For  them,  too,  the  bonds  uniting  parents,  children,  and 
kin  are  holy.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  in  the  universal 
depravity  of  the  human  race,  for  however  much  ob- 
scured by  crudeness  and  illusions,  the  germ  of  the  good, 
the  sense  of  the  noble  and  the  beautiful,  lies  in  every 
human  breast,  and  conscience  dwells  in  it,  that  points 
out  the  right  way. 

Is  there  a  more  cogent  proof  of  the  existence  of 
God  than  this  feeling  of  right  and  wrong  which  is 
common  to  all,  than  this  agreement  of  one  law,  in  the 
physical  as  in  the  moral  world;  save  that  nature  must 
follow  undeviatingly  this  law,  whilst  it  is  given  to  man, 
because  he  is  free,  to  infringe  it. 

Body  and  reason  serve  the  governing  soul,  but  they 
also  assert  rights  of  their  own  :  they  are  co-determina- 
tive, and  thus  the  life  of  man  is  a  constant  struggle 
with  himself.  If  in  that  struggle,  and  hard  pressed 
from  within  and  without,  the  voice  of  conscience  does 
not  always  determine  man's  resolutions,  yet  must  we 
hope  that  the  Lord  that  created  us  imperfect,  will  not 
demand  of  us  the  perfect. 

For  hard  and  great  is  the  outward  pressure  on  man 
in  his  conduct,  diverse  are  his  original  endowments, 
unequal  his  education  and  position  in  life.  It  is  easy 
for  the  child  of  fortune  to  abide  in  the  right  path,  and 
rarely  does  temptation  befall  him,  at  least  such  as 
leads  to  crime  ;  difficult,  on  the  other  hand,  is  it  to  the 
hungering,  uncultured  man,  agitated  by  passions.  All 
this  must  fall  heavily  in  the  scales  in  deciding  on  guilt 
and  innocence  before  the  universal  judgment-seat,  and 
here,  moreover,  mercy  becomes  justice,  two  ideas  that 
otherwise  exclude  each  other. 

It  is  more  difficult  to  conceive  nothing  than  some- 
thing, especially  if  that  something  has  once  existed  ; 
more  difficult  to  conceive  cessation  than  continuance. 
It  is  impossible  that  this  mundane  life  should  be  a 
finality.  We  have  not  asked  for  it.  It  was  given  to 
us,  imposed  upon  us.  A  higher  destiny  must  be  ours 
than  to  renew  forever  and  ever  the  circuit  of  this  sor- 
rowful existence.  Are  the  riddles  that  surround  us 
never  to  be  explained,  to  solve  which  the  best  men 
have  labored  their  whole  lives  long  ?  For  what  are  the 
thousand  threads  of  love  and  friendship  that  bind  us 
to  the  present  and  the  past,  if  there  be  no  future,  if 
all  ends  with  death? 

But  what  is  it  we  can  take  with  us  into  this  fu- 
ture ? 

The  functions  of  our  mundane  vestment,  the  body, 
have  ceased,  the  materials  that  even  in  life  constantly 
change  enter  new  chemical  combinations,  and  the 
earth  holds  fast  all  that  belongs  to  it.  Not  a  grain  is 
lost.  The  Writ  promises  us  the  resurrection  of  a 
transfigured  body;  and  certainly  a  separate  existence 
without  limitation   is  inconceivable;  nevertheless,  in 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4409 


this  promise,  it  is  likely,  only  the  continuance  of  indi- 
viduality is  to  be  understood,  in  contradistinction  to 
pantheism. 

That  reason  and  with  it  the  knowledge  we  have 
laboriously  won  shall  accompan}-  us  into  eternity,  it  is 
permitted  us  to  hope  ;  perhaps,  too,  the  recollection 
of  our  earthly  sojourn.  Whether  that  is  to  be  wished 
for  is  another  question.  What,  if  some  time,  our  whole 
life,  our  thought  and  conduct  should  lie  spread  out 
before  us,  and  we  should  become  ourselves  our  own 
judges,  incorruptible,  merciless  ! 

But  above  all,  sentiment  must  remain  with  the 
soul  if  it  is  immortal!  Friendship  is  based  on  recipro- 
city; in  friendship,  reason,  too,  is  heard.  But  love  can 
exist  without  being  requited.  Love  is  the  purest,  the 
divine  flame  of  our  being. 

Now,  the  Writ  tells  us  we  shall  love  God  before 
all,  an  invisible,  utterly  incomprehensible  being,  who 
causes  us  joy  and  happiness  and  also  self-denial  and 
pain.  How  can  we  do  that,  otherwise  than  by  obej'ing 
his  commands  and  loving  our  fellowmen  whom  we  see 
and  know. 

If,  as  the  Apostle  Paul  writes,  some  time  faith  is  to 
be  transmuted  into  knowledge,  hope  into  fulfilment, 
and  love  onl}'  sliall  obtain  ;  we  may  be  permitted  to 
hope  we  shall  confront  the  love  of  a  lenient  judge. 

Creisau,  October,  1890. 


MOLTKE'S  RELIGION. 

There  is  no  thoughtful  man  but  has  tried  to  an- 
swer the  great  questions  of  life  :  "  What  are  we,  where 
is  the  root  of  our  being,  and  what  is  our  destiny  after 
death  ?  "  The  great  battle-thinker.  Count  Helmuth  von 
Moltke,  the  German  field-marshall  who  never  lost  a 
battle  in  three  great  wars,  was  a  deeply  religious  man. 
In  the  last  year  of  his  life  he  wrote  down  his  thoughts 
on  religion,  calling  them  Tros/gt-Jankiii,  or  thoughts 
of  comfort,  which  he  left  his  family  as  a  precious  tes- 
tament, embodying  his  views  of  reconciliation  between 
knowledge  and  faith  (^Versoh>ni?ig  zwisthen  JVi'sseit  11  mi 
Glaiibcn).  How  serious  the  venerable  nonagenarian 
was  in  these  Trostgcdaiikcn  appears  from  the  fact  that 
he  worked  them  over  several  times  ;  he  kept  them  on 
his  desk  in  Creisau  and  read  them  again  and  again, 
improving  their  form  and  adding  corrections.  There 
are  four  complete  drafts  which  are  slightly  different 
in  several  parts,  but  all  of  them  written  in  his  own  firm 
hand-writing,  and  we  can  observe  in  the  changes  how 
he  weighed  every  sentence  into  which  he  cast  his  ideas. 
We  present  to  our  readers  in  an  English  translation 
the  latest  version,  which  in  style  and  thought  is  the 
most  matured  form  of  his  reflexions  on  religion. 

In  his  Tros/gfJaiikt-ii  Moltke  accepted  with  pious 
reverence  the  spirit  of  the  religion  of  his  childhood, 
the  moral  kernel  of  which  he  recognised    as  pure  and 


nowhere  in  conflict  with  reason.  But  with  critical  dis- 
crimination he  set  aside  the  dogmas  of  Christianity. 
"  Reason,' '  he  said,  "  objects  to  miracles,  and  yet  our 
doubts  are  not  directed  against  religion  itself  but  only 
against  the  traditional  form  of  religion."  He  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  "reason  is  unquestionably  sover- 
eign ;  she  recognises  no  authority  above  herself  ;  no 
power,  not  even  we  ourselves,  can  force  her  to  assume 
to  be  incorrect  that  which  she  recognises  as  true." 
And  this  statement  was  made  with  a  conscious  con- 
sideration of  the  irrationality  of  religious  dogmas,  for 
Moltke  adds  the  weighty  words  attributed  to  Galileo 
when  his  inquisitors  had  succeeded  in  making  him  re- 
tract the  conclusion  of  scientific  investigation,  E  pur  si 

IIIIIOVC. 

Moltke's  religion  is  still  imbued  with  the  traditional 
dualism  which  represents  life  after  death  as  a  mysteri- 
ous existence  in  a  transfigured  body  ;  but  he  avoids  any 
speculation  on  this  subject  and  limits  his  interest  to 
the  thought  that  "our  earthly  life  cannot  be  a  final- 
ity ;  we  must  have  a  higher  destiny  than  the  constant 
repetition  of  the  circuit  of  this  miserable  existence. " 
Moltke  takes  comfort  in  the  scriptural  promise  of  res- 
urrection, which  he  understands  simply  to  mean  "the 
preservation  of  our  individuality." 

We,  who  no  longer  think  of  heaven  as  a  Utopia,  re- 
ject the  dualism  implied  in  the  conception  of  the  soul 
as  a  distinct  entity,  but  appreciate,  nevertheless,  the 
great  General's  belief  in  a  preservation  of  our  individ- 
ualit}^  Indeed,  "  it  is  more  difficult "  (as  Moltke  says) 
"to  think  the  nothing  than  the  something,  annihilation 
than  continuation  ;  "  and  the  science  of  evolution  jus- 
tifies his  trust,  not,  indeed,  in  the  dualistic  sense  in 
which  he  understands  it,  but  in  a  monistic  sense  which 
is  free  from  the  mystical  vagaries  and  not  less  noble 
and  inspiring.  Science  teaches  us  that  the  individu- 
ality of  our  soul  is  preserved  in  the  following  genera- 
tions. The  pantheistic  notion  that  the  soul  continues 
to  exist  after  death  in  the  .same  way  as  the  energ)'  and 
substance  of  the  body  are  preserved,  that  it  is  scat- 
tered, we  know  not  where,  so  as  to  lose  its  definite 
character,  is  wrong  ;  for  all  the  individual  features  are 
transmitted,  partly  by  heredity,  partly  through  educa- 
tion by  example  and  instruction.  The  soul  is  treasured 
up  in  the  evolution  of  life. 

"And  ever  the  appropriated  gain, 
In  stern  heredity's  bequeathment  held, 
From  generation  unto  generation, 
Following  fast,  is  yielded  to  the  years  " 

Life  on  earth  does  not  consist  of  isolated  souls,  but 
forms  one  great  whole  which  marches  onward  in  the 
path  of  progress.  The  soul  of  a  man  is  the  greater 
the  more  it  contains  of  the  spirit  of  the  whole  which 
consists  of  the  hoarded-up  soul-treasures  of  all  past 
generations,  and  not  one  individn.ality  whose  life  has 


44IO 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


been  a  part  of  this  evolution  can  be  lost.    Hence  Schil- 
ler's advice  : 

"Art  thou  afraid  of  death  ?  Thou  wishest  for  life  everlasting. 
Serve  as  a  part  of  the  whole,     when  thou  art  gone,  it  remains." 

Taking  a  view  of  life  which  eliminates  all  mysti- 
cism and  confines  itself  to  purely  scientific  results,  we 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  old  dualistic  world- 
conception  with  its  religious  dogmas  of  heaven  and 
hell,  God  and  Satan,  soul  and  immortality  are  allegor- 
ical formulations  of  conditions  that  have  definite  equiv- 
alents in  reality.  When  accepted  literally,  religious 
dogmas  are  self-contradictory  and  even  absurd,  but 
when  understood  as  symbols  representing  ideas  which 
in  their  abstract  purity  are  difficult  to  communicate, 
we  cannot  deny  their  significance  and  truth. 

What  is  true  of  the  dogma  of  the  immortality  of 
the  soul  is  equally  true  of  the  belief  in  God.  While 
no  scientific  man  is  able  to  retain  the  idea  of  a  dualistic 
God  who,  in  spite  of  the  conclusions  of  reason,  would 
overthrow  by  his  miracles  the  cosmic  laws  of  existence, 
we  insist  most  positively  on  the  truth  that  the  physical 
and  moral  world-order  which  science  reveals  to  us  in 
the  formulation  of  so-called  natural  laws  and  which 
appears  in  our  moral  aspirations  is  not  a  mere  subjec- 
tive ideal  but  an  objective  reality,  which  in  its  omni- 
presence constitutes  the  ultimate  authority  of  conduct 
and  is  the  deity  after  whom  all  the  religions  of  the  earth 
grope  if  haply  they  might  feel  after  him  and  find  him. 

p.  c. 

SCIENCE  OF  SPIRIT. 

BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 

It  is  very  curious,  but  no  one  seems  to  think  of 
"spirit"  except  either  as  an  immaterial  substantial 
shape,  or  as  a  thing  so  tenuous  as  to  be  a  practical 
negation  of  all  things  or  anything. 

Now,  as  it  happens,  in  the  very  constitution  and 
fabric  of  everything  this  principle  holds  good  always 
and  everywhere — that  the  more  tenuous  things  get  the 
more  stable  they  become. 

A  block  of  ice  holds  its  life  by  the  frail  tenure  of 
climate  or  condition  of  its  environment. 

If  the  environment  of  temperature  rises  ever  so 
little  above  the  point  of  freezing  it  is  a  question  of 
time  only  how  long  it  will  be  before  the  solid  dies. 

The  block  of  ice  becomes  a  bucketful  of  water. 

And  the  water  becomes  vapor,  and  the  vapor  in  its 
turn,  if  the  conditions  serve,  is  resolved  into  its  con- 
stituent gases,  and  the  divorced  elements  hydrogen 
and  oxygen  go  their  several  ways  to  coquette  with 
new  paramours,  and  form,  as  the  fancy  nature  has 
given  moves  them,  more  or  less  enduring  alliances. 

Solids,  liquids,  vapors,  gases,  elements,  each  after 
his  kind,  each  fulfilling  his  functions;  each  amenable 
to  his  own  laws  of  being,  and  each  seeking  always  in 


his  own  way  a  stable  equilibrium  through  reconcilia- 
tion with  that  universal  of  which  he  constitutes  a 
part. 

To  be  at  peace  with  his  environment  is  the  constant 
effort  of  all  that  exists,  from  the  primordial  cell  to 
man  ;  from  the  intelligent  atom  to  the  intelligent  God. 

In  the  great  flux  of  forces  in  the  universe  the  spirit 
of  being  is  the  meaning  of  its  action,  that  which  on 
this  planet  culminates  in  man,  the  meaning  of  whose 
existence  consists  of  his  factors, — motive  in  his  voli- 
tion and  result  in  his  character. 

The  spirit  of  volition  is  that  which  impels  to  a 
change  of  relation.  This  spirit  is  not  necessarily  con- 
scious ;  it  is  not  necessarily  free.  In  the  effort  of  the 
element  to  seek  "affinity"  it  seems  to  be  purely  me- 
chanical ;  in  the  endeavor  of  the  monad,  the  instinct 
of  the  dog,  and  the  conscience  of  an  enlightened  man 
it  is  found  in  various  degrees,  reaching  forth  towards 
that  perfect  condition  where  mechanical  action  gives 
invariably  the  most  perfect  result,  or  where  choice  be- 
ing free  inevitably  chooses  the  best. 

The  atom  is  intelligent  because  it  always  chooses 
inerrantly.  Whether  that  choice  is  a  blind  and  unre- 
sisting yielding  to  destiny,  or  a  deliberate  balancing  of 
reasons,  the  result,  being  constant,  is  trustworthy,  and 
being  trustworthy,  is  right. 

The  lower  we  descend  in  the  scale  of  creation,  the 
more  and  more  absolute  and  inerrant  becomes  the 
spirit  of  volition,  which  finds  apparent  perfection  in 
the  ultimate  atom. 

The  higher  we  rise  the  more  and  more  freedom  of 
volition  seems  to  grow  possible,  and  more  and  more 
choice  seems  to  tend  away  from  absolute  right. 

Man  claims  to  have  what  he  calls  a  conscience,  and 
there  are  some  who  by  that  assumption  consider  the 
human  species  as  of  a  different  order,  as  made  of  finer 
clay  than  the  rest  of  animal  creation. 

Manifestly  Carlyle  was  nobler  than  a  cat,  Shake- 
speare greater  than  a  dog,  and  Emerson  more  intel- 
lectual than  an  elephant. 

But  the  same  spirit  of  volition  is  in  all,  and  it  is 
simply  that  principle  which  impels  upward  or  perhaps 
compels  downward,  which  tends  towards  absolute  right 
or  away  from  right.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  the 
supernatural  ;  but  there  is  high  and  low,  good  and 
evil,  and  the  "spiritual"  is  the  highest  and  best  de- 
velopment of  the  natural. 

As  solids,  liquids  and  gases  differ  ;  as  solids,  areas 
and  lines  differ  ;  as  colors  differ,  so  man  differs  from 
the  brute,  and  the  brute  from  the  vegetable,  and  the 
vegetable  from  the  mineral. 

There  is  an  ill-defined  frontier  always  and  a  con- 
tinuous merger,  or  progression,  but,  each  in  his  own 
domain,  has  a  proper  and  distinct  individuality. 

Intellectual  or  scientific  right  is  a  condition  of  facts 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


44 1 1 


and  their  relations  ;  but  moral  right  is  a  condition  of 
relations  of  facts.  The  former  is  found  by  laborious 
investigation ;  the  latter  b)'  the  dictates  of  feeling. 

There  is  but  one  right,  one  Truth,  but  there  are 
the  two  paths  to  truth  :  the  rigorous  logic  of  reason 
and  the  imperial  incentive  of  emotion. 

It  is  this  imperial  incentive  in  man,  which,  not  con- 
tent or  unable  to  execute  the  self- evident  decrees  of 
the  majesty  within,  delegates  its  godlike  powers  to 
some  creed  or  scheme  or  plan  or  church  or  system, 
and  sometimes  from  education,  sometimes  from  inher- 
itance, sometimes  from  sheer  letharg)'  or  cowardice, 
becomes  the  obsequious  servant  of  credulity. 

Destiny  is  either  tj'rant  or  slave ;  man  either  her 
minion  or  her  master. 

Destiny  and  divinity  are  one,  except  as  man's  mo- 
tive submits  or  commands. 

To  what  end,  then,  are  the  rites  of  religion?  Are 
they  all  futile  ? 

No  ;  religious  systems  are  figures  of  thought  as 
allegories,  metaphors,  and  parables  are  of  speech ; 
they  are  figures  for  multitudes,  as  in  common  speech 
every  one  speaks  figuratively  and  only  seldom  di- 
rectly. 

The  spirit  of  emotion  is  found  in  that  form  of  ex- 
pression, and  those  symbols  which  best  convey  to  the 
individual  his  ideal  of  the  eternal. 

Few  there  are  capable  of  thinking  abstractly,  and 
yet  abstract  thought  is  the  equivalent  of  pure  feeling. 

Thought  is  not  made  for  slavery;  the  brain  is  not 
an  empire  but  a  democracy.  If  it  submits  to  the  des- 
pot Credulity,  it  is  unworthy  of  freedom. 

The  condition  of  men's  minds  on  the  subject  of  re- 
ligion is  the  same  now  as  it  was  hundreds  of  years 
ago  regarding  physical  science. 

Then  authority  was  supreme,  and  the  humble  in- 
vestigator was  the  serf  of  custom. 

We  are  yet  in  these  matters  in  the  era  of  phlogis- 
ton, astrology,  and  alchemy. 

The  divine  right  of  creeds  and  theologies,  priests, 
ministers,  and  books  must  go  the  way  of  the  divine 
right  of  kings. 

The  great  central  ideas  of  the  Christian  religion  : 
an  angry  God  and  a  vicarious  atonement,  are  not,  as 
rational  thought,  unacclimated  to  the  air  of  philosophic 
certainty,  declares,  untrue  ;  on  the  contrary,  they  are, 
of  all  things  of  which  the  human  mind  can  form  con- 
ception, most  supremely  true. 

But  they  are  true  in  a  rational  and  scientific  sense, 
not  in  an  irrational,  dogmatic,  bigoted  sense. 

The  whole  world  teems  with  testimony  of  the  angry 
god.  He  is  that  intolerant,  implacable,  unyielding 
power  which  nature  displays  whenever  vexed  or 
crossed.  Violate  what  is  called  a  "law"  of  nature 
and  woe  to  him  who  violates.      The   earthquake,  and 


the  tempest,  and  the  avalanche  ;  the  arctic  cold  ;  the 
equatorial  fever  heat,  the  savage  beast,  and  the  venom 
of  plant  and  serpent.  These  are  some  emissaries  of 
that  Satanic  power  which  lies  in  wait  to  devastate  and 
destroy,  and  mocks  when  our  fear  cometh. 

But  for  every  ill  that  nature  has  for  us,  nature  has 
provided  also  the  good  ;  for  every  bane  its  antidote. 
Some  of  these  specifics  for  evil  man  has  discovered  ; 
others  remain  yet  undiscovered. 

The  object  of  life  and  the  sole  legitimate,  intel- 
ligible, rational  reasons  of  living  is  to  lessen  the  evil 
and  increase  the  good,  not  only  to  replenish  the  earth 
by  making  it  first  arable  and  then  fruitful,  but  by  over- 
coming wrong,  by  mastering  hate,  by  conquering  na- 
ture in  all  those  hydra-headed  shapes  she  takes  to  al- 
lure us,  to  foil  us,  and  to  destroy  us. 

From  the  dawn  of  history  man  has  been  engaged 
in  this  great  business  of  subduing  and  overcoming. 
The  more  animal  he  is  the  more  he  devotes  himself  to 
the  work  of  the  animal — the  sensual  life,  the  repro- 
duction of  his  kind,  the  replenishment  of  the  world — 
but  as  he  advances  in  the  path  of  being,  as  his  greater 
powers,  one  by  one,  slowly,  like  wings,  unfold,  he  be- 
comes prepared  for  better,  and  purer,  and  loftier 
flights.  The  more  godly  he  becomes  the  more  he  de- 
votes himself  and  his  energies  and  talents  to  the  sub- 
duing of  the  world,  to  the  slow  and  sure  uplifting  of 
his  race  towards  perfection,  so  that  finally  all  may  be, 
as  they  of  right  ought  to  be,  in  the  image  of  God. 

In  this  sublime  advance  how  seemingly  futile  were 
the  beginnings  !  how  slow  the  march  !  how  illusory 
the  aim  !   how  far  away  the  end  ! 

Yet  science,  rich  with  the  spoils  of  time,  can  now 
show  in  her  sacred  treasure-house  innumerable  tro- 
phies of  the  past, — trophies  won  by  bloody  battles 
with  savage  forces  of  nature  and  with  mistaken  and 
misunderstanding  men. 

Her  armies  conquering,  not  to  plunder  or  to  devas- 
tate, have,  one  by  one,  annexed  greater  and  greater 
extents  of  territory,  imposing  upon  these  new  domin- 
ions not  tribute  but  beneficence. 

So  earth  has  come  in  some  few  respects  to  blossom 
as  the  rose,  and  in  all  the  broad  dominions  where  the 
banner  of  Truth  has  flown  the  buds  have  bloomed  of 
culture,  of  refinement,  of  dignity,  and  peace,  and 
plenty. 

Science  has  either  triumphed  or  is  on  its  triumphant 
march  in  every  region  save  one. 

The  region  of  "spirit,"  strong  in  the  fastnesses  of 
tradition,  impregnable  in  the  multitude  of  the  min- 
ions of  ignorance  refuses  to  welcome  her  legions. 

Mythology  governs  still,  and  the  myth-god  reigns 
supreme. 

The  myth  is  the  mental  expression  for  the  religious 
feeling  of  an  epoch.    It  is  the  condensation  of  thought 


4412 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


from  the  warmth  of  emotion  on  the  cool  heiglits  of  in- 
tellect. 

The  ancient  Greek  myth  represented  accurately 
the  consensus  of  the  emotions  of  the  race  in  its  child- 
hood. 

The  Mosaic  myth  represents  with  surprising  ac- 
curacy the  expanding  youth  of  mankind  ;  its  better  co- 
herence of  thought,  its  concentration  towards  the  per- 
fection of  principle. 

This  form  of  the  myth  was  in  full  dominance  over 
the  Hebrew  mind  when  a  great  reformer — Jesus  Christ 
— came,  not  to  destroy  the  law,  but  to  fulfil  it,  by 
giving  to  it  a  perfect  significance. 

The  Christian  myth,  divested  of  all  the  apparatus 
of  narrative,  of  miracle,  of  the  supernatural,  is  simply 
the  significance  of  motive. 

Far  from  being  a  negation,  spirit  is  the  one  thing, 
the  only  thing  that  is  infallibly  destined  to  an  immor- 
tality of  existence. 

Truth  may  be  beyond  reason,  but  it  cannot  be  con- 
trary to  reason. 

Hate  nothing  but  wrong,  despise  nothing  but  error, 
defy  nothing  but  malice,  and  envy,  and  lust,  and  all 
other  slaves  of  the  vindictive  god.  So  shall  you  in- 
evitably rise  to  the  height  and  breathe  the  purer  air  of 
the  universal  spirit  in  whose   likeness  you  are  made. 

The  spirit  of  sobriety  v/as  consistent  in  that  ancient 
ascetic  of  weak  stomach,  loathing  strong  drink  who 
yet  for  his  soul's  sake  made  himself  an  inebriate  in 
honor  of  Bacchus. 

The  spirit  of  love  is  found  rather  in  that  which 
chastens  than  in  that  which  indulges.  And  the  Christ 
spirit,  when  we  have  it,  shall  show  us  clearly  that  the 
life  and  death  of  the  God-man  for  the  race  is  a  type  of 
perfect  and  perpetual  character  that  lives  and  dies  not 
for  itself  but  for  all. 

When  all  really  believe  what  now  a  few  do  believe 
and  many  profess ;  when  that  belief  shall  have  virtue 
and  knowledge  added  unto  it,  and  prejudice  and  super- 
stition eliminated  from  it,  then  life  shall  overcome 
death,  and  the  Truth  shall  prevail. 

But  this  must  be  wrought  out  patiently,  serenely, 
earnestly,  for  as  man  came  with  ignorance,  so  by  man 
shall  come  wisdom;  and  as  by  man  came  death  by  man 
comes  also  the  resurrection  from  the  dead. 


"THE  MODERN  HABIT  OF  THOUGHT." 


BY    ATHERTON    BLIGHT. 


If  it  is  true,  as  Carlyle  said,  that  the  most  impor- 
tant thing  about  a  man  is  his  religion,  then  the  weekly 
perusal  of  The  Open  Court  should  be  our  duty  as  well 
as  a  great  pleasure.  For  where  shall  we  find  the  reli- 
gion of  the  cultured,  thoroughly  emancipated  "mod- 
ern man  "  more  clearly  and  admirably  presented  ? 


You  have  been  good  enough  from  time  to  time  to 
allot  me  some  of  your  valuable  space  to  call  attention 
to  one  or  two  books  or  reviews  bearing  upon  the  great 
subject  of  your  life-work,  which  may,  perchance,  have 
escaped  the  notice  of  some  of  your  readers.  With 
your  kind  permission  I  should  like  to  say  a  word  or 
two,  first,  about  an  interesting  article  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century  for  December,  1894,  by  the  Duke  of  Argyll, 
entitled  "Lord  Bacon  versus  Professor  Huxley. "  The 
old  question  of  the  distinction  between  the  natural  and 
the  so-called  supernatural  is  the  gist  of  the  article. 
The  writer  says  ".  .  .  .  he  adopts  and  dwells  upon  a 
separation  between  what"  is  called  'the  natural '  and 
the  'supernatural'  which  is  perhaps  the  grossest  of 
ail  the  fallacies  of  modern  philosophy."  Further  on 
the  Duke  adds,  and  what  he  says  is  very  significant, 
"For  myself  I  must  declare  that  I  do  not  believe  in 
'the  supernatural ' — that  is  to  say,  I  do  not  believe  in 
any  existence  outside  of  what  we  call  Nature,  which 
is  not  also  an  existence  inside  of  it,  and  even  filling  it 
to  the  very  brim."  What  more  do  we  ask?  Is  not 
this  the  teaching  of  Dr.  Carus  ?  If  the  thoroughly 
orthodox  Duke  of  Argyll  will  surrender  the  "super- 
natural," or,  which  is  the  same  thing,  include  it  in  the 
"  natural,"  the  battle  is  won. 

But  I  fear  that  our  congratulations  are  premature. 
The  Duke  would  call  many  things  "natural"  which 
we  should  be  obliged  to  rule  out.  Doubtless  he  would 
call,  from  his  point  of  view,  the  whole  miraculous  ac- 
count of  the  birth  and  life  of  Christ  as  recorded  in  the 
Gospels,  "natural."  Even  to  the  narrative  of  what 
took  place  after  the  crucifixion  ;  "and  the  graves  were 
opened  and  many  bodies  of  the  saints  which  slept 
arose,  and  came  out  of  the  graves  after  his  resurrec- 
tion, and  went  into  the  holy  city,  and  appeared  unto 
many."  What  a  mental  confusion  is  here.  Never- 
theless, let  us  be  grateful  to  the  Duke  of  Argyll  for  de- 
claring that  he  does  not  believe  in  the  "  supernatural." 
The  whole  article  is  well  worth  reading. 

Secondly,  let  me  mention  an  important  notice  by 
Lord  Farrer  in  the  Contemporary  Revieiv,  for  June, 
1894,  of  Kidii's  Socia/  Evolution.  Mr.  Kidd  main- 
tains that  "religious  beliefs  are  essentially  supra-ra- 
tional or  extra-rational  ;  and  a  rational  religion  is  a 
scientific  impossibility."  To  this  extraordinary  state- 
ment Lord  Farrer  replies,  ".  .  .  .  Passing  to  the  his- 
tory of  Christianity  he  admits  that  in  its  earlier  period, 
indeed  for  some  fourteen  or  fifteen  centuries,  the  supra- 
rational  element  contained  in  it  produced  a  great  va- 
riety of  excesses  and  of  evils.  Is  it  fair  to  treat  these 
as  merely  adventitious  growths,  proving  only  its  na- 
tive vigor?  Is  it  not  quite  as  reasonable  to  conclude 
that  they  were  the  natural  consequences  of  an  essen- 
tially false  and  bad  element  in  the  organisation — viz., 
the  subjection  of  human  reason  to  the  supra-rational?" 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4413 


The  whole  article  is  conceived  in  an  admirable  vein 
and  full  of  the  spirit  and  tendency  of  Tlic  Open  Court. 

Thirdly,  in  the  Popular  Sciciico  Monthly  for  Octo- 
ber, 1894,  there  is,  in  my  opinion,  a  very  remarkable 
article  by  Prof.  Wm.  H.  Hudson,  entitled  "Poetry 
and  Science."  Every  one  truly  interested  in  the  great 
work  of  Till'  Open  Court  should  read  it  and  ponder  it. 
Professor  Hudson  begins,  "  In  his  able  and  suggestive 
essay  on  '  Cosmic  Emotion  '  the  late  Professor  Clif- 
ford pointed  out  the  significant  fact  that  in  the  devel- 
opment of  thought  the  feelings  never  quite  keep  pace 
with  the  intellect."  It  is  quite  impossible  to  make 
any  quotations  from  the  article — every  word  of  it  must 
be  read.  How  clear  it  is  now  to  many  of  us  that  in 
religion,  which  is  the  highest  poetry,  our  feelings  lag 
behind  our  intellect.  Is  not  this  the  complete  key  to 
the  orthodox  position  ?  I  cannot  forbear  transcribing 
the  closing  sentence  of  Professor  Hudson's  charming 
essay,  "The  business  of  the  poet  in  his  capacity  of 
spiritual  teacher  is  to  help  us  to  clothe  fact  with  the 
beauty  of  fancy ;  not  to  try  to  force  fancy  into  the 
place  of  fact.  Let  us  understand  what  is  scientifically 
true,  socially  right,  and  our  feelings  will  adjust  them- 
selves in  due  course.  It  is  for  science  to  lead  the  way, 
and  the  highest  mission  of  the  poet  is  ever  to  follow 
in  the  wake,  and  in  the  name  of  poetry  and  religion 
claim  each  day's  new  thought  as  his  own." 

Fourthly,  in  the  Contemporary  Revie7o  for  Decem- 
ber, 1894,  there  is  a  very  interesting  confirmation  of 
the  burden  of  the  teaching  of  our  learned  editor,  in  an 
article  by  Professor  Seth,  called  "A  New  Theory  of 
the  Absolute."  Allow  me  a  quotation,  "  Hegel  was 
right  in  seeking  the  Absolute  within  exj>erience  and 
finding  it,  too  ;  for  certainly  we  can  neither  seek  it 
nor  find  it  anywhere  else.  The  truth  about  the  Abso- 
lute which  we  extract  from  our  experience,  is,  doubt- 
less not  the  final  truth.  It  may  be  taken  up  and  su- 
perseded in  a  wider  or  fuller  truth,  and  in  this  way  we 
might  pass  in  successive  cycles  of  finite  existence  from 
sphere  to  sphere  of  experience,  from  orb  to  orb  of 
truth.  But  even  the  highest  would  still  remain  a  finite 
truth,  and  fall  infinitely  short  of  the  truth  of  God." 
As  a  reply  to  the  so-called  agnosticism  of  Professor 
Huxley  and  the  unknowable  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer 
the  whole  article  is  admirable  and  very  suggestive. 

Fifthly.  In  the  Nineteenth  Century  for  October, 
1894,  there  is  a  curious  article  by  Prof.  Max  Miiller, 
called  "The  Alleged  Sojourn  of  Christ  in  India."  At 
the  close  of  the  article  Professor  Miiller  says:  "All 
this,  no  doubt,  is  very  sad.  How  long  have  we  wished 
for  a  real  historical  life  of  Christ  without  the  legendary 
halo,  written  not  by  one  of  his  disciples,  but  by  an  in- 
dependent eye-witness  who  had  seen  and  heard  Christ 
during  the  three  years  of  his  active  life  and  who  had 
witnessed  the  crucifixion  and  whatever  happened  af- 


terwards? And  now  when  we  seemed  to  have  found 
such  a  life,  written  by  an  eye-witness  of  his  death, 
and  free  as  yet  from  any  miraculous  accretions,  it  turns 
out  to  be  the  invention  of  a  Buddhist  monk  at  Hiniis, 
or,  as  others  would  have  it,  a  fraud  committed  by  an 
enterprising  traveller  and  a  bold  French  publisher." 
So  then  a  distinguished  scholar  in  a  popular  magazine 
tells  us  in  the  simplest  way  that  we  have  "  no  real  his- 
torical life  of  Christ  without  the  legendary  halo."  And 
yet  what  an  elaborate  superstructure  have  theologians 
built  upon  a  foundation  of  little  or  no  historical  value. 
It  is  high  time  to  press  home  in  season  and  oat  of  sea- 
son the  modern  critical,  scientific  historical  method  of 
reasoning  so  ably  upheld  by  The  Open  Court. 

Sixthly.  A  friend  of  mine  sent  me  the  other  day  a 
deeply  interesting  little  book  by  Bernard  Bosanquet, 
called  The  Civilisation  of  Christendom  and  Other  Stud- 
ies, being  the  first  volume,  I  think,  of  a  promised 
"Ethical  Library,"  published  by  Swan  Sonnenschein 
&  Co.,  London.  The  chapters  on  "Some  Thoughts 
on  the  Transition  from  Paganism  to  Christianity," 
"The  Civilisation  of  Christendom,"  "Old  Problems 
Under  New  Names,"  and  "  Are  We  Agnostics  ?  "  are 
as  good  serious  and  thoughtful  reading  as  I  have  en- 
joyed for  a  long  time.  I  will  give  one  quotation  from 
"Old  Problems  Under  New  Names,"  "Do  we  seri- 
ously imagine  that  man's  soul,  the  much  exercised 
mind  of  each  separate  person  when  most  he  feels  his 
separateness,  has  become,  as  Mr.  Swinburne  tells  us, 
man's  only  God  ?  Should  we  not  run  the  risk  of  justly 
appearing  ridiculous  if  we  maintained  this  to  be  so  ? 
....  The  old  problem  of  the  conflict  in  man's  nature 
remains  a  fact  under  every  new  name.  In  the  greater 
life  of  the  world,  and  more  especially  of  mankind, 
there  is  something  which  the  animal  individual  may 
or  may  not  make  his  own,  a  princ^Ie  on  which  he 
may  or  may  not  lay  hold,  a  direction  in  which  he  may 
or  may  not  set  his  face.  .  .  .  But  if  we  think  that  the 
will  to  be  good  grows  up  as  a  matter  of  course  in  every 
man,  and  maintains  itself  in  his  mind  without  help 
from  a  greater  power  than  his,  then  we  are  in  a  fool's 
paradise,  and  have  still  much  to  learn  from  the  Cath- 
olic Church.  .  .  .  When  we  read  of  God  and  sin  we 
must  not  think  complacently  to  ourselves  that  '  we 
have  changed  all  that.'  " 

Those  who  welcome  The  Open  Court  every  week 
with  keen  interest  will  surely  appreciate  this  admirable 
work. 

One  more  book  and  I  am  done.  A  2Podern  Zoro- 
astrian,  by  S.  Laing.  It  has  been  published  several 
years.  If  it  should  have  escaped  the  notice  of  some 
of  your  readers  I  am  sure  they  will  thank  me  for  men- 
tioning it.  One  quotation  from  the  introductory  chap- 
ter, "  Science  and  miracle  have  been  fighting  out  their 
battle  during  the  last  fifty  years  along  the  whole  line. 


4414 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


and  science  has  been  at  every  point  victorious.  .  .  . 
The  result  of  these  discoveries  has  been  to  make  a 
greater  change  in  the  spiritual  environment  of  a  single 
generation  than  would  be  made  in  their  physical  en- 
vironment if  the  glacial  period  suddenl)'  returned  and 
buried  Northern  Europe  under  polar  ice.  The  change 
is  certainly  greater  in  the  last  fifty  years  than  it  had 
been  in  the  previous  five  hundred,  and  in  many  re- 
spects greater  than  in  the  previous  five  thousand." 

All  this  is  very  encouraging  and  strikingly  con- 
firmatory of  the  position  so  boldly  taken  and  so  nobly 
maintained  by  The  Open  Court  now  for  some  years. 
Yet  we  must  not  forget  that  a  writer  in  the  Contem- 
porary Review  at  the  time  of  Taine's  death  warned  us 
that  there  is  a  reaction  setting  in  in  France  against  the 
onl\  true  tiiethoil  of  reasoning,  viz. :  the  scientific,  his- 
torical method  of  which  the  distinguished  French  his- 
torian was  a  bright  light.  Think  of  Dr.  Alfred  Russell 
Wallace  with  his  so-called  spiritualism,  and  Mr.  St. 
George  Mivart  with  his  The  Happiness  in  Hell  in  the 
scientific  world,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  with  his  Impregna- 
ble Rock  of  Holy  Scripture  in  the  literary  world.  As  a 
watchword  for  the  new  year  let  us  always  remember  : 

"  Wo  inimer  miide  Fechter 
Sinken  im  muthigen  Strauss, 
Es  kommen  frische  Geschlechter 
Und  fechten  es  ehrlich  aus." 

Cannes,  January,  1895. 


BOOK  NOTICES. 


Mathematicians  may  be  interested  in  the  Pioiktrechnung  und 
projeklive  Geoineti  ie  of  Dr.  Hermann  Grassmann  of  Halle,  son  of 
the  famous  mathematician  of  Stettin.  The  first  part,  twenty-eight 
pages,  all  we  have  so  far  received,  treats  of  Puuktrechiuoig.  (Re- 
print from  the  Festsdirift  c/er  lateinisclien  Hatiptsehule,  Hahe  "'t- 
tenberg,  1894.)  

Life  ill  Ancient  Egypt.  By  Adolf  Erman.  Translated  by  H. 
M.  Tirard.  (London  and  New  York  :  Macmillan  &  Co.  1894. 
Pages,  570.  Price,  $5.oo.)  A  fascinating  volume,  elegantly  pub- 
lished. It  constitutes  a  complete  compendium  of  the  leading  facts 
■  of  ancient  Egyptian  civilisation,  and  is  richly  and  appropriately 
illustrated.  Though  designed  especially  for  the  general  reader,  it 
will  serve  the  purposes  of  historical  students  who  have  not  much 
time  to  spend  upon  the  subject.  The  work  was  well  received  in 
German,  and  as  it  is  fluently  translated,  and  stands  practically 
without  a  rival,  should  meet  with  equal  success  in  English. 


Under  its  competent  commissioner.  Dr.  W.  T.  Harris,  the 
United  States  Bureau  of  Education  is  doing  excellent  work.  We 
have  received  recently  the  Report  of  the  Commissioner  for  the 
year  1890-1S91 — Vol.  I,  Part  i.  It  gives  the  statistics  of  our 
State  common-school  systems,  interesting  reports  of  secondary 
education  in  New  Zealand,  of  education  in  France,  Great  Britain, 
Russia,  Japan,  Italy,  Corea,  Hawaii,  and  of  the  systems  of  legal 
education  in  nearly  all  the  countries  of  the  world,  with  a  bibliog- 
raphy of  the  subject.  Appended  is  a  full  report  of  the  status  of 
colleges  of  agriculture  and  the  mechanical  arts  in  the  United 
States.  A  glance  at  the  tables  of  contents  of  Parts  II  and  III  re- 
veals the  incredible  amount  of  work  that  is  doing  in  this  statistical 
department   of  the  government,  and   which   no  one  seems  to  be 


aware  of.  Every  variety  of  information  is  to  be  found  here  con- 
cerning the  educational  condition  of  the  country.  We  may  add 
that  the  Bureau  of  Education  is  also  publishing  as  circulars  of  in- 
formation and  under  the  title  of  "  Contributions  to  American  Edu- 
cational History,"  edited  by  Herbert  B.  Adams,  a  series  of  vol- 
umes ranging  from  two  hundred  to  four  hundred  pages  on  the 
history  of  education  in  the  different  States.  We  have  lately  re- 
ceived the  "  History  of  Edubation  in  Delaware,"  "Higher  Educa- 
tion in  Iowa,"  "Higher  Education  in  Tennessee,"  and  "The  His- 
tory of  Education  in  Connecticut."  The  last-mentioned  series  is 
the  work  of  Dr.  Harris's  predecessor,  N.  H.  R.  Dawson. 


Tlie  Speeiat  Kinesiology  of  Educationat  Gymnastics.  By  Baron 
Nils  Posse,  M  G.  With  276  Illustrations,  and  an  Analytic  Chart. 
Pages,  380.  Price,  $3  00.  Baron  Posse,  who  was  a  special  Swed- 
ish Commissioner  to  the  World's  Columbian  E.xhibition,  is  a  grad- 
uate of  the  Royal  Gymnastic  Central  Institute  of  Stockholm,  and 
in  this  country  at  least  is  the  most  prominent  representative  of 
what  is  known  as  the  Swedish  system  of  educational  gymnastics, 
which  phrase  constituted  the  original  title  of  the  book,  now  in  its 
third  edition.  In  a  popular  sense  the  new  title  is  not  an  improve- 
ment upon  the  old.  But  it  expresses  better  the  nature  of  the  work, 
the  author  claims.  The  word  "kinesiology"  means  literally  the 
science  or  art  of  motion,  and  is  employed  in  the  present  case  to 
denote  the  mechanics,  effects,  and  classification  of  special  gym- 
nastic exercises.  Its  subject-matter  has  remained  the  same  ;  for, 
according  to  the  author,  Swedish  gymnastics,  as  initiated  by  Ling, 
having  been  derived  scientifically  from  mechanics,  anatomy,  phys- 
iology, and  psychology,  and  subjected  to  the  rigorous  scrutiny 
of  scientists  all  over  the  world,  nnist  be,  and  is  par  excellence,  the 
basis  of  all  rational  gymnastics.  In  this  sense  it  is  opposed  to  the 
eclectic  school  which  takes  from  all  and  is  worse  than  none.  The 
views  of  Baron  Posse  seem  to  be  in  accord  with  physiological  and 
anatomical  theory  and  not  at  variance  with  common  sense.  They 
have  the  advantage  of  being  founded  on  scientific  principles,  which 
is  an  e.^ceedingly  rare  quality  in  this  field,  and  are  stated  in 
simple  and  clear  terms.  The  illustrations  are  profuse  and  self- 
explanatory.  A  useful  appendix,  charts,  and  glossary  are  ap- 
pended.    (Boston,  1894,  Lee  cS:  Sbepard,  10  Milk  St.) 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNIO.N  : 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

N.  B.  Binding  Cases  for  single  yearly  volumes  of  The  Open  Court  will 
be  supplied  on  order.    Price,  75  cents  each. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  392. 

THOUGHTS    OF    COMFORT.     Count    Helmuth    von 

MOLTKE 4407 

MOLTKES  RELIGION.     Editor 4409 

SCIENCE  OF  SPIRIT.     Hudor  Genone 4410 

"THE  MODERN  HABIT  OF  THOUGHT."     Atherton 

Blight 4412 

BOOK  NOTICES 4414 


The  Open  Court. 


A    WEEKLY   JOURNAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  393.     (Vol.  IX.  — 10  ) 


CHICAGO,   MARCH   7,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year, 
f  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.— Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


FREDERICK  DOUGLASS. 

BY  F.    M.   HOLLAND. 

No  M.'^N  died  more  characteristically.  There  stood 
"the  Douglass  in  his  hall,"  ready  to  go  and  lecture  to 
the  people  whom  he  did  much  to  free,  and  talking 
with  such  interest,  about  the  suffragists,  who  had  that 
day  escorted  him  to  their  platform,  as  an  honored 
pioneer,  that  when  he  dropped  on  his  knees  and  clasped 
his  hands,  his  wife  thought  it  was  only  such  mimicry 
as  had  always  been  his  delight.  He  had  passed  away 
without  pain,  before  she  realised  her  loss. 

He  was  busy  to  the  last  in  plans  for  elevating  the 
colored  race  ;  and  none  of  his  speeches,  printed  re- 
cently, came  so  plainly  from  his  heart  as  the  address, 
at  the  Tuskegee  Commencement  in  1892,  when  he  re- 
minded his  hearers  that  they  had  not  been  so  liberally 
dealt  with  at  emancipation  as  the  Russian  serfs,  and 
added,  "Even  the  Israelites  were  better  off  than  we. 
When  they  left  Egypt,  God  told  them  to  spoil  the 
Egyptians  ;  and  I  believe  the  Jews  have  been  in  the 
jewelry  business  ever  since."  He  went  on  to  say,  "Get 
knowledge,  then,  and  make  money.  Learn  trades  as 
you  are  doing  here.  Aristotle  and  Pericles  are  all 
right  ;  get  all  that,  too  ;  but  get  money  besides,  and 
plenty  of  it."  ...  .  "You  commune  with  the  soil  here. 
The  earth  has  no  prejudice  against  color."  ....  "Well, 
go  on,  I  sha'n't  be  with  you  long.  You  have  heights  to 
ascend,  breadths  to  fill,  such  as  I  never  could,  and 
never  can."  The  protest  against  Ij-nching,  published 
soon  after  in  the  North  American  Review,  shows  the 
fire  and  force  of  his  best  work.  That  same  year,  1892, 
he  took  particular  pleasure  in  showing  his  visitors  a 
portrait  of  "  the  Afro  Australian  pugilist,"  Peter  Jack- 
son, adding,  "  I  consider  him  one  of  the  best  mission- 
aries abroad." 

His  devotion  to  a  race  still  deeply  wronged  did  not 
hinder  his  playing  the  fiddle  to  his  guests,  or  telling 
how  fond  he  was  even  then  of  \'ictor  Hugo  and  Du- 
mas, Scott,  Burns,  Longfellow,  and  Whittier.  His 
memory  of  slavery  was  not  so  bitter  as  to  hinder  his 
getting  a  clerkship  at  Washington,  in  1890,  for  his 
master's  daughter.  His  interest  in  woman  suffrage, 
for  which  he  was  one  of  the  earliest  agitators,  con- 
tinued so  intense,  that  it  is  said  to  have  hastened  his 
death  ;  and  Mrs.  Stanton  says,  "  He  was  the  onl}'  man 


I  ever  knew  who  understood  the  degradation  of  dis- 
franchisement for  women." 

His  last  letter  to  me  spoke  thus  of  a  period  in  his 
life  which  has  been  sadly  misunderstood,  "When  I 
believed  the  non-voting  theory  of  Mr.  Garrison,  I  was 
a  Garrisonian  indeed  and  in  truth.  I  was  loyal  and 
faithful  at  all  points  ;  and  when  I  ceased  to  believe  as 
he  did,  I  frankly  and  modestly  told  him  so  in  open 
convention.  The  first  remark  with  which  my  state- 
ment was  met  by  Mr.  Garrison  was  this,  '  There  is 
roguery,  somewhere.'  There  was  no  mistaking  the 
meaning  of  that  remark  ;  and  coming  from  any  one 
else,  it  would  have  been  resented  on  the  spot."  .... 
"My  reverence  for  Mr.  Garrison  surpassed  that  for 
any  one  then  living  ;  but  my  own  soul  was  more  to 
me  than  any  man.  I  passed  by  the  insulting  remark, 
and  went  on  to  give  the  reasons  for  the  change  in  my 
opinions.  What  these  reasons  were  you  already  knov/.  " 
....  "  I  do  not  think  that  the  grand,  old  anti-slavery 
pioneer  went  to  his  grave,  thinking  there  was  any 
'roguery'  in  me.  If  he  did,  I  was  not  alone  in  this 
bad  opinion  of  his.  No  man,  who  ever  quitted  the 
Garrisonian  denomination,  was  permitted  to  leave 
without  a  doubt  being  cast  upon  his  honesty.  That 
was  one  of  the  Liberator's  weapons  of  war  ;  and  it 
was  a  weapon  which  never  rusted  for  want  of  using. 
There  are  spots  on  the  sun  :  but  it  shines  for  all  that ; 
and  Garrison  with  all  his  harshness  of  judgment  is  Gar- 
rison still,  and  one  of  the  best  men  of  mothers  born." 

In  the  presidential  campaign  that  year,  Mr.  Doug- 
lass held,  as  he  had  always  done,  that  it  was  not  only 
the  duty  but  the  interest  of  the  Republicans  to  make 
protection  of  the  colored  race  their  foremost  issue. 
He  was  sagacious  enough  to  admit,  after  Mr.  Cleve- 
land's election,  that  the  country  was  not  going  to  ruin, 
and  that  there  was  not  likely  to  be  "any  marked  and 
visible  difference  "  in  the  condition  of  colored  people 
at  the  South.  He  also  predicted  that  there  would  not 
be  much  change  in  the  tariff.  His  superiority  to  po- 
litical prejudice  is  shown  by  a  fact,  stated  thus  in  the 
New  York  Evening  Post  : 

"In  March,  1S94,  Csesar  Celso  Moreno  sent  to  Frederick 
Douglass  a  copy  of  a  circular  he  had  issued  in  behalf  of  the  native 
Hawaiians  in  their  resistance  to  the  aggressions  of  the  whites.  It 
drew  forth  the  following  letter  from  Mr.  Douglass  : 


44i6 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


"  My  dear  Sir:  I  have  duly  received  )'our  pamphlet  on  the 
Hawaiian  question,  and,  though  much  in  a  hurry  in  preparing  to 
leave  town,  I  must  stop  to  thank  you  for  this,  as  I  think,  valuable 
contribution  to  the  cause  of  truth  and  justice.  It  is  my  opinion 
that  but  for  the  unwarrantable  intermeddling  of  our  citizens  Queen 
Liliuokalani  would  now  be  on  the  throne.  The  stories  afloat  in- 
tended to  blacken  the  character  of  the  Queen  do  not  deceive  me. 
The  device  is  an  old  one,  and  has  been  used  with  skill  and  effect 
ever  since  Caleb  and  Joshua  saw  the  grapes  of  Canaan.  We  are 
the  Jews  of  modern  times,  and  when  we  want  the  lands  of  other 
people,  such  people  are  guilty  of  every  species  of  abomination  and 
are  not  fit  to  live.  In  our  conduct  to-day  we  are  but  repeating  our 
treatment  towards  Mexico  in  the  case  of  Texas.  Our  citizens 
settled  in  Texas  under  promise  of  obedience  to  the  laws  of  Mexico, 
but  as  soon  as  they  were  strong  enough  they  revolted  and  set  up  a 
government  for  themselves  to  be  ultimately  added  to  the  United 
States.  In  whatever  else  President  Cleveland  may  have  erred, 
history  will  credit  his  motion  and  commend  the  object  he  has  aimed 
to  accomplish.  I  am  Republican,  but  I  am  not  a  'Republican 
right  or  wrong.'  " 

A  painful  struggle,  between  loyalty  to  his  party  and 
duty  to  himself,  is  recorded  in  the  articles  which  he 
published  in  the  North  Ainerican  Review,  in  Septem- 
ber and  October,  1891,  after  resigning  his  position  as 
Minister  in  Hayti.  The  premature  termination  of  his 
service  there  was  not  due  to  any  fault  of  his,  or  any 
dissatisfaction  among  the  Haytians.  They  trusted  and 
honored  him  from  the  first;  and  he  was  followed  into 
retirement  by  their  invitation  to  represent  them  as 
Commissioner  at  the  World's  Fair.  When  the  anni- 
versary of  their  declaration  of  independence  was  cele- 
brated on  January  2,  1893,  by  the  dedication  of  their 
pavilion  at  Chicago,  he  took  the  lead  at  the  ceremony. 
That  same  day  he  delivered  a  lecture  in  which  he  gave 
this  explanation  of  the  unwillingness  of  Hayti  to  cede 
what  he  calls  her  Gibralter  to  this  country,  even  at  his 
request:  "  Hayti  is  black  ;  and  we  have  not  yet  for- 
given Hayti  for  being  black,  or  forgiven  the  Almighty 
for  making  her  black."  He  exulted  in  the  progress 
she  is  making,  and  told  how  much  she  did,  to  show 
that  the  colored  race  is  not  fit  for  slavery,  by  conquer- 
ing her  own  independence  from  Napoleon. 

Among  other  incidents  of  his  long  visit  to  Chicago 
was  his  playing  the  fiddle  and  dancing  the  Virginia 
reel  at  the  opening  of  the  New  England  Log  Cabin. 
He  was  the  orator  on  "Colored  American  Day," 
August  25  ;  and  he  did  much  to  make  it  a  success  by 
persuading  his  people  to  disregard  the  foolish  advice, 
that  they  should  show  their  indignation  at  many  wrongs 
by  staying  away. 

They  showed  their  gratitude  for  fifty-four  years  of 
constant  labor,  for  their  emancipation  and  enlighten- 
ment, by  the  almost  unmanageable  crowds  which 
poured  through  the  Methodist  Church,  the  largest 
colored  one  in  Washington,  on  Monday,  February  25. 
Prominent  among  the  decorations  was  an  imposing 
medallion  of  roses,  orchids,  and  palms,  presented  by 
the   Haytian   legation   as  a  tribute  from  the  black  Re- 


public. The  mayor  and  aldermen  of  Rochester,  New 
York,  where  Mr.  Douglass  had  once  lived  in  neglect, 
stood  next  morning  in  the  dense  crowd,  which  had 
gathered  to  escort  his  body  to  the  Central  Presbyterian 
Church  ;  and  four  ex-mayors  were  among  the  honorary 
pall  bearers.  The  address  was  delivered  by  the  Uni- 
tarian pastor,  the  Rev.  W.  C.  Gannett,  who,  like  Doug- 
lass, is  a  free  religionist;  and  the  last  rites  were  in 
Mount  Hope  Cemetery. 

His  name  was  taken  from  that  of  the  noble  fugitive 
in  "The  Lady  of  the  Lake."  We  are  reminded  of  the 
grand  scene  between  another  Douglas  and  Marmion, 
when  we  read  what  our  orator  did  in  London.  He 
had  made  such  a  powerful  speech  that  noblemen  were 
crowding  to  shake  hands  with  him.  With  them  came 
an  eminent  clergyman  from  America  ;  but  Douglass 
stepped  back,  drew  himself  up  to  his  full  height,  over 
six  feet,  and  said:  "No,  sir;  if  we  had  met  thus  in 
Brooklyn,  you  would  never  have  dared  to  take  my 
hand;  and  you  shall  not  do  it  here."  This  was  in 
1846,  when  his  position  in  America  had  been  that  of 
Shakespeare's  Douglas, 

"  Confident  against  the  world  in  arms." 

He  was  the  foremost  man  of  the  colored  race;  and 
the  only  question  is,  how  much  of  his  greatness  was 
due  to  his  white  blood?  I  think  that  the  present  Gov- 
ernor of  Massachusetts  is  right  in  calling  him  a  white 
American.  He  belonged,  both  mentally  and  morally, 
to  the  race  which  founded  our  nation  and  keeps  it  free. 
His  writings  are  often  deficient  in  order  and  concise- 
ness; but  this  ma}'  be  fully  explained  by  his  utter  lack 
of  education,  and  his  absorption,  for  some  years,  in 
preparations  for  platform  oratory.  The  courage  with 
which  he  resisted  his  master,  made  himself  free,  and 
fought  against  mobs,  was  thoroughly  Anglo  Saxon.  If 
all  colored  men  had  been  as  intractable,  it  would  have 
been  as  difficult  to  keep  them  long  in  slavery  as  to 
tame  the  leviathan.  If  there  were  anything  of  the 
negro  in  him,  it  was  his  sympathy  with  all  the  suffer- 
ing and  oppressed,  his  genial  courtesy,  and  his  open- 
handed  generosity;  but  this  last  trait  did  not  prevent 
his  leaving  a  fortune  estimated  at  a  quarter  of  a  mil- 
lion. Few  white  men  have  such  independence  of  in- 
tellect and  logical  power,  as  led  him  to  emancipate 
himself,  not  only  from  the  disunionism,  which  he  had 
been  taught  by  Garrison,  whom  he  loved  and  honored 
above  all  other  men,  and  which  he  had  himself  been 
proclaiming  on  the  platform,  but  also  from  the  creed 
which  he  had  tried  to  propagate  while  still  a  slave. 
His  capacity  for  leading  and  organising  is  beyond  all 
question.  He  may  not  have  been  an  original  thinker; 
but  they  are  rare.  It  is  a  pity  that  his  social  position 
was  so  largely  determined  by  the  darkness  of  his  skin, 
instead  of  the  whiteness  of  his  intellect.  He  is  soon 
to  have  a  statue  in  Rochester;  but  it  would  be  remem 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4417 


bering  him  more  suitably  to  take  care  to  give  all  mem- 
bers of  the  mixed  race  the  best  places  which  they  are 
qualified  to  fill. 


THE  ISRAELITISH  PROPHECY. 

BY  PROF.    CAKL  HEINRICH  CORMLL. 

We  all  use  the  word  '-prophet,"  and  have  some 
sort  of  idea  as  to  what  we  mean.  But  if  we  were  asked 
what  we  meant,  the  answer  would  be  :  that  is  quite 
clear  and  intelligible.  A  prophet  is  a  man  who  pre- 
dicts the  future.  This  is  plainl)-  indicated  in  the  name  : 
7TIJO  means  "before,"  and  q}t]l-ii  "I  sa}'";  hence,  tt/jo- 
(pi/Ti/>.  prophet,  means  a  foreteller.  And  this  will  ap- 
parentl}'  be  confirmed  by  the  subject,  for  all  the  so- 
called  prophets  of  the  Old  Testament  busied  them- 
selves with  the  future,  and  according  to  the  popular 
view  their  special  duty  and  importance  consists  in 
having  foretold  the  coming  of  Christ.  But,  however 
widespread  this  view  ma}'  be  and  however  generally 
the  interpretation  be  accepted,  it  is  nevertheless  in- 
correct, and  in  no  wise  just  to  the  character  and  to  the 
importance  of  the  Israelitish  prophec}-.  That  this  can 
never  have  been  the  original  conception  of  the  Israe- 
lites, may  be  thoroughly  proved  by  an  irrefutable  et\- 
mological  argument.  The  Semitic  languages  in  general 
do  not  possess  the  power  of  forming  compound  words  ; 
consequentl}',  the  idea  of  foretelling  cannot  be  ex- 
pressed in  them  by  any  simple  word.  Even  the  Greek 
word  Trpoqjt'fTi/S,  in  spite  of  its  obvious  etymology,  does 
not  possess  this  meaning  ;  the  men  who  foresee  and 
foretell  the  future  the  Greek  calls  /.lavTiS;  to  call  Kal- 
chas,  or  Teiresias,  proplietes  would  have  been  wrong  in 
Greek. 

If  we  wish  to  gain  a  clear  understanding  of  the  Is- 
raelitish prophec}',  we  must  first  of  all  determine,  what 
the  Israelites  themselves  understood  by  a  prophet. 
We  find  nowhere  in  the  Old  Testament  a  clear  defini- 
tion of  the  term  ;  we  must  therefore  seek  to  arrive  at 
its  interpretation  by  another  way.  And  that  way  is  the 
etymological.  In  no  language  are  words  originally  mere 
empt}'  sounds,  conventional  formula'  ;  the\'  are  alwa3's 
proper  names.  Man  seizes  upon  some  salient  fea- 
ture, some  characteristic  property  of  the  thing  to  be 
defined,  and  names  and  defines  the  thing  according  to 
it.  Thus  the  science  of  language  grants  us  an  insight 
into  periods  and  times  far  back  of  all  historical  tradi- 
tion, and  we  can,  on  the  basis  of  the  science  of  lan- 
guage, reconstruct  the  history  of  civilisation  and  the 
ethics  of  those  most  remote  periods,  for  the  names  of  a 
language  are  the  precipitates  of  the  culture  and  moral 
views  of  the  people  inventing  them. 

When  the  generic  word  for  father  in  all  Indo-Ger- 
manic  languages  denotes  the  supporter  and  bread- 
winner, it  is  to  be  seen  clearly  from  this  fact  that  the 
old  Ar3'ans  looked  upon  fatherhood  not  merely  as  a 


natural  relationship,  but  as  a  moral  duty,  that  to  them 
the  father  was  not  in  the  first  place  a  begetter,  but  also 
the  food-giver,  the  supporter,  the  protector  and  pro- 
vider of  his  family,  that  the  original  heads  of  families 
of  the  Indo- Europeans  were  not  rude  savages,  but  men 
of  deep  ethical  feeling,  who  already  had  higher  moral 
perceptions  than  the  average  man  of  the  present  day. 
And  when  our  word  daii^^litcr  {Tochter),  which  can  be 
traced  through  a  number  of  Indo-Germanic  languages, 
and  therefore  belongs  to  the  general  Indo-Germanic 
primitive  stock,  means  in  reality  the  milker,  we  may 
again  draw  from  this,  very  important  conclusions  re- 
specting the  civilisation  of  those  early  times  :  we  ma}- 
conclude  that  the  heads  of  the  Indo-Germanic  tribes 
were  engaged  in  raising  cattle,  and  that  all  the  work 
was  carried  on  by  the  family  itself,  that  the  institution 
of  slavery  was  entirely  foreign  to  them,  for  which  we 
have  the  further  positive  proof  that  the  Indo-Germanic 
languages  possess  no  word  in  common  for  this  idea, 
that  it  did  not  yet  exist  when  they  separated  from  one 
another.  And  now,  to  take  two  examples  from  the 
Semitic  group  of  languages  which  is  immediately  occu- 
pying our  attention,  when  the  generic  Semitic  word  for 
king,  iiielck,  denotes,  according  to  the  root-meaning 
still  preserved  in  the  Aramaic,  the  -'counsellor'';  when 
the  generic  Semitic  word  for  God,  <■/,  denotes  etymo- 
logicall}'  the  --goal,"  that  is,  him  or  that  to  which  all 
human  longing  aspires  and  must  aspire  ;  when,  there- 
fore, by  this  word  for  God  religion  is  defined  by  the 
early  Semites  as  a  problem  for  man  and  as  a  promise 
of  its  final  solution,  it  follows  with  irrefutable  clearness 
that  the  much  defamed  and  much  despised  Semites, 
are  in  no  wise  such  an  inferior  race,  or  such  worthless 
men,  as  is  unfortunately  at  the  present  day  the  fashion 
to  depict  them. 

Let  us  after  this  short  digression  direct  our  atten- 
tion to  the  attempt  to  explain  the  ancient  Israelitish 
notions  of  the  character  of  a  prophet  by  etymology. 
Here,  however,  we  must  point  out  the  ver}-  important 
fact,  that  with  the  original  etymological  sense,  the  real 
meaning  of  the  word  at  the  time  we  actuall}'  meet  it, 
is  very  far  from  determined,  for  both  language  and 
single  words  have  their  history.  Thus,  the  word  iiiar- 
slial  means  etymologically  a  "groom"  or  "hostler," 
3'et  at  the  present  da}'  we  understand  by  this  word 
something  quite  different  from  a  groom.  It  is  the  task, 
in  fact,  of  the  history  of  language  and  of  civilisation  to 
show  how  out  of  the  primitive  etymological  significa- 
tion the  actual  traditional  meaning  has  been  developed. 

The  Hebrew  language  calls  the  prophet  nahi.  It 
immediately  strikes  us,  that  this  word  has  as  little  an 
obvious  Hebrew  et}'mology  as  the  word  kohcii  (priest) 
or  as  the  specific  Israelite  name  of  God,  which  we  are 
in  the  habit  of  pronouncing  Jehovah.  Now,  if  we  are 
unable  to  explain  the  word  nabi  satisfactorily  from  the 


44i8 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


Hebrew,  a  most  important  conclusion  follows:  the 
word  cannot  be  specifically  Israelitish,  and  must  have 
been  transplanted  to  Israel  before  the  historical  period. 
We  must  therefore  turn  to  the  other  Semitic  languages 
for  information,  and  must  assume  that  the  home  of  the 
word  in  question  is  to  be  sought  for  in  that  branch  of 
the  Semitic  group,  where  the  etymology  is  still  plain 
and  lucid.  We  still  meet  with  the  root  naba'a  in  the 
Assyrian-Babylonian  and  in  the  Arabic.  In  Assyrian 
it  simply  means  "to  speak,"  "to  talk,"  "to  announce," 
"to  name, "  the  substantive  derived  from  it  meaning 
"announcement,"  "  designation  ";  from  it  comes  also 
the  name  of  the  well-known  Babylonian  god  Nebo, 
Babylonian  Nabu,  which  is  to  be  found  as  the  first  part 
of  a  large  number  of  Babylonian  names,  such  as  Nabo- 
polassar  and  Nebuchadnezzar  ;  whilst  it  also  follows 
from  the  original  root  that  this  Babylonian  god  Nabu, 
is  the  god  of  wisdom,  of  science,  of  the  word,  and  of 
speech,  whom  the  Greeks  identified  with  Hermes,  and 
after  whom  even  to  the  present  day  the  planet  Mercury 
is  named. 

Considered  by  the  light  of  this  Assyrian-Bab3'lonian 
etymology  the  Hebraic  nabi  would  have  the  meaning 
of  speaker,  and  that  can  thoroughly  satisfy  us  ;   for  in 
former  days  the  efficacy  of  a  prophet  was  entirely  per- 
sonal and  oral.      But    every  orator  is  not  a  preacher, 
and  not  every  one  who  speaks,  a  prophet  ;  therefore 
in   this  Assyrian-Babylonian  etymology  the  most  im- 
portant point  is  lacking,  namely,   the  marking  of  the 
characteristic  quality  of  the  prophetic  speech.   We  ob- 
tain this  through   the  Arabic.      The  primitive  Semitic 
type  has  been  preserved  most   purely  in  the  Arabic, 
and  the  Arabic  language  has  therefore  for  the  scientific 
investigation  of  the  Semitic  languages  the  same  impor- 
tance, as  has  Sanskrit  for  the  Indo-Germanic,  and,  in- 
deed, a  much  higher  one,  for  Arabic  is  more  closel}' 
related   to   the  primitive  Semitic,  than  is  Sanskrit  to 
the  primitive   Indo-Germanic.      Now,  the  Arabic  has 
also  the  root  naba'a,  but  never  in  the  general  sense  of 
"  speaking,"  as  in  the  Assyrian-Babylonian,  but  in  the 
thoroughly  special  sense  of  '  'proclaiming,"  ' '  announc- 
ing," naba'a  or  anba'a  being  he  who  proclaims  some- 
thing determined,  or  has  to  carr}^  out  some  mandate. 
The  specific  significance  lies  therefore   in  the  Arabic 
root,  that  this  speaker  discourses  not  of  himself,  nor  of 
anything  special  to  himself,  but  on   some  distinctive 
instigation,  or  as  agent  for  some  other  person  ;  accord- 
ing to  this  the  nabi  would  be  the  deputed  speaker,  he 
who  has  to  declare  some  special  communication,  who 
has  to  deliver  some  message,  and  here  we  have  lighted 
upon  the  very  essence  and  pith  of  the  matter. 

That  a  trace  of  this  fundamental  signification  has 
been  preserved  in  the  Hebrew,  can  be  proved  from  a 
ver}'  characteristic  passage  in  Exodus.  Moses  has  de- 
clined the  charge  to  appear  before  Pharaoh,  saying  : 


"  I  am  not  eloquent  .  .  .  but  I  am  slow  of  speech  and 
of  a  slow  tongue."  And  then  God  says  to  him  that  his 
brother  Aaron  can  speak  well,  he  shall  be  his  spokes- 
man, and  this  is  thus  expressed :  "  Behold,  I  have 
made  thee  a  god  to  Pharaoh,  and  Aaron,  thy  brother, 
shall  be  X\\y  prophet :  thou  shalt  speak  all  that  I  com- 
mand thee,  and  Aaron,  thy  brother,  shall  speak  unto 
Pharaoh."  Thus  Aaron  is  prophet  to  Moses,  because 
he  speaks  for  him ;  he  is  his  spokesman.  Who  it  is 
that  gives  the  charge  and  speaks  in  the  prophet,  so 
called,  is  not  far  to  seek  :  it  is  God.  And  with  this 
meaning  the  technical  sense  of  the  Greek  word  npo- 
qjijrr]?  agrees  in  the  most  wonderful  manner.  Accord- 
ing to  the  Greeks  the  npocpt'iTijS  is  he  who  interprets 
and  renders  into  clear,  intelligible  language  the  incom- 
prehensible oracles  of  the  gods  :  at  Dodona,  the  rust- 
ling of  the  sacred  oak  of  Zeus  ;  at  Delphi,  the  inar- 
ticulate utterances  and  ecstatic  cries  of  the  Pythia.  In 
the  same  sense  also  Pindar  can  describe  himself  as  a 
prophet  of  the  muse,  because  he  only  speaks  what  the 
muse  inspires  in  him.  Thus  in  the  Hebrew  nabi  we 
have  him  who  speaks  not  of  himself,  but  according  to 
higher  command,  in  the  name  and  as  the  messenger  of 
God  to  Israel  ;  in  the  Greek  7Tpoq)j]Ti]5,  him  who  trans- 
mits and  explains  to  those  around  him  the  oracles  of 
the  gods. 

Thus  is  the  conception  of  the  prophet,  as  he  ap- 
pears to  us  in  the  Israelitish  books,  thoroughly  ex- 
plained. All  these  men  have  the  consciousness  of 
not  acting  in  their  own  personal  capacities,  of  not  pro- 
nouncing the  sentiments  of  their  own  minds,  but  as 
the  instruments  of  a  Higher  Being,  who  acts  and  speaks 
through  them  ;  they  feel  themselves  to  be,  as  Jeremiah 
expresses  it  once  in  an  especially  characteristic  verse, 
"the  mouth  of  God." 

As  the  Arabic  language  gives  us  the  only  satisfactory 
explanation  of  the  word,  we  must  suppose  Arabia  to 
be  the  home  of  prophecy,  and  as  a  fact  the  visionary 
and  ecstatic  elements  which  attach  to  prophesying, 
and  which  the  Israelitish  prophecies  alone  overcame 
and  shook  off,  savors  somewhat  of  the  desert ;  the  first 
great  prophet  of  whom  we  find  an  account  in  the  Old 
Testament,  Elijah,  was  not  a  native  of  Palestine  proper, 
but  came  from  the  country  east  of  Jordan,  the  boun- 
dary-land, where  it  has  been  proved  that  a  strong  mix- 
ture of  Arabic  blood  existed.  Besides  the  other  neigh- 
boring tribes  had  also  their  prophets.  In  the  history 
of  Elijah  we  meet  with  the  Phoenician  prophets  of 
Baal,  and  Jeremiah  also  speaks  of  prophets  in  all  the 
surrounding  countries. 

That  the  word  nabi  has  in  fact  had  a  histor)',  and 
that  prophesying  was  looked  upon  originally  as  some- 
thing extraneous,  is  distinctly  testified  to  us  in  a  very 
remarkable  passpge.  If  we  glance  over  the  history  of 
Israel,    the  prophet  Samuel,  after  Moses,  appears  as 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4419 


the  most  important  personage.  Now  Samuel,  in  the 
oldest  records  we  have  concerning  him,  is  never  called 
prophet,  but  always  "seer,"  and  some  later  hand 
has  added  the  invaluable  explanatorj'  remark  that  that 
which  then  was  called  prophet,  was  known  in  Israel  in 
olden  times  as  "  seer." 

What  in  those  older  days  was  understood  bj' 
prophet,  we  learn  from  the  narrative,  where  it  is  an- 
nounced to  Saul  as  a  sign  :  "And  it  shall  come  to  pass 
that  when  thou  art  come  thither  to  the  cit)-.  that  thou 
shalt  meet  a  company  of  prophets  coming  down  from 
the  high  place  with  a  psaltery  and  a  tablet  and  a  pipe 
and  a  harp  before  them,  and  they  shall  prophesy:  And 
the  spirit  of  the  Lord  shall  come  upon  thee,  and  thou 
shalt  prophesy  with  them."  And  as  it  came  to  pass 
all  the  people  of  Gibea  asked  in  astonishment,  "Is 
Saul  also  among  the  prophets?  "  which  does  not  mean: 
"  How  is  it  that  such  a  worldlj'-minded  man  finds  him 
self  in  the  company  of  such  pious  people?  "  but  is  to 
be  interpreted  as  meaning  :  "  How  comes  a  person  of- 
such  distinction  to  find  himself  in  such  low  company?  " 
In  these  prophets  of  the  time  of  Saul,  the  first  mention 
we  ever  have  of  them,  we  have  the  type  of  the  original 
appearance  which  prophesying  assumed  on  Canaanite 
soil  ;  the}'  are  men  after  the  manner  of  Mohammedan 
fakirs,  or  dancing  and  howling  dervishes,  who  make 
known  their  religious  exaltation  through  their  eccen- 
tric mode  of  life,  and  thus  it  comes  that  the  Hebrew 
word  hilhnabbe,  which  means  "to  live  as  a  prophet,'' 
has  also  the  signification  "to  rave,  to  behave  in  an 
unseemly  manner." 

The  genuine  counterpart  of  the  ecstatic  fakirs  may 
be  found  in  the  priests  of  Baal  at  the  time  of  Elijah, 
who  danced  round  the  altar  of  Baal  shouting  and  cut- 
ting themselves  with  knives,  in  order  to  produce  an  im- 
pression on  their  god.  Such  prophets  lived  together 
in  Israel  until  a  very  late  date  in  guilds,  the  so-called 
schools  of  the  prophets.  They  wore  a  coarse,  hairy 
cloak  as  the  garb  of  their  order,  and  existed  on  char- 
ity, a  species  of  begging-friars,  and  evidently  were  not 
regarded  with  great  respect.  To  Ahab  they  but  proph- 
esy that  which  was  pleasing  to  him  to  hear,  and  as  one 
of  them  came  into  the  camp  unto  Jehu  with  a  message 
from  Elisha  to  anoint  him  king,  his  friends  asked  him 
"wherefore  came  this  mad  fellow  to  thee?"  Amos 
likewise  objects  almost  with  scorn  to  being  placed  on 
the  same  level  with  these  begging  prophets,  "  I  was  no 
prophet,  neither  was  I  a  prophet's  son  :  but  I  was  a 
herdsman  and  a  gatherer  of  s^xamore  fruit." 

Rudiments  of  this  originally  ecstatic  race  are  still 
to  be  found  even  among  the  great  prophets,  as  when 
it  is  recorded  of  Elijah  that  he  outran  the  king's  chariot 
going  at  full  speed  on  the  road  from  Karmel  to  Jezreel, 
or  when  Elisha  caused  a  harper  to  play  so  as  to  arouse 
through  music  the  prophetic  inspiration.    Even  among 


the  prophets  whose  writings  have  come  down  we  find 
traces  of  violence  and  eccentricity  in  their  actions  and 
behavior. 

If  we  compare  a  Hosea  or  Jeremiah  with  those  sav- 
age dervishes,  the  examination  of  prophetism  will  show 
the  same  result  that  is  observable  evervwhere,  that  all 
that  Israel  borrowed  from  others  it  so  regenerated  and 
stamped  with  its  own  identity,  that  it  becomes  diflicult 
to  recognise  in  the  beauteous  Israelitish  creation  and 
transformation  any  trace  of  the  original.  For  this  rea- 
son one  should  not  be  loath  to  recognise  the  many 
foreign  elements  in  the  religion  of  Israel  ;  in  doing 
so  we  do  not  lower  it,  but  quite  the  contrar}',  we  grant 
to  it  a  testimon)'  of  highly  developed  vital  power  and 
invincible  capacity  of  assimilation.  Israel  resembles 
in  spiritual  things  the  fabulous  king  Midas  who  turned 
everything  he  touched  into  gold. 


THE  INSTITUTIONAL  CHURCH. 

BY  CELIA   I'ARKER  WOOLLEY. 

Wf,  live  in  a  self-regardful  age,  one  of  whose  ad- 
vantages is  that  we  may  observe  from  the  outside  the 
operation  and  growth  of  those  forces  and  tendencies 
of  the  times  to  which  we  also,  in  common  with  the  rest 
of  mankind,  own  ourselves  subject.  We  are  both 
spectator  and  participant  in  the  drama  of  events  going 
on  about  us,  and  bear  at  the  same  time  a  passive  and 
active  relation  to  the  new  ideals  everywhere  taking 
shape.  Perhaps  we  are  nowhere  more  sensible  of  this 
double  attitude  of  the  mind  than  in  the  mingled  obser- 
vation and  participation  of  the  religious  changes  of 
the  age.  No  age  has  furnished  more  earnest  or  intel- 
ligent discussion  of  the  great  themes  of  religion  than 
ours,  or  won  a  more  encouraging  response  in  a  general 
awakening  of  all  minds  to  the  fundamental  questions 
of  belief  and  duty.  We  often  unthinkingly  pronounce 
this  a  materialistic  age,  but  there  never  was  a  time 
when  men  were  bestowing  more  deep  and  sincere  at- 
tention on  the  nature  of  the  soul-life  and  the  just 
claims  of  their  fellow-beings  than  now.  It  is  because 
the  rapid  growth  of  opinion  on  all  these  matters  shows 
us  how  much  we  have  yet  to  learn,  that  we  are  self- 
distrustful. 

The  Parliament  of  Religions,  though  an  event  of 
less  than  two  years'  distance,  has  already  afforded  us 
a  new  date  to  reckon  from.  We  are  accustomed  to 
sum  up  its  results  in  the  words  "fraternity"  and 
"unity,"  to  indicate  the  remarkable  growth  in  reli- 
gious tolerance  and  mental  hospitality  which  this  gath- 
ering from  all  climes,  nations,  and  creeds  witnessed  ; 
but  another  result  quite  as  important  is  found  in  the 
increasing  practicality  of  our  religious  ideals.  One 
result  bears  close  logical  connexion  with  the  other. 
Once  remove  the  barriers  of  thought  and  bring  men 
together  upon  the  basis  of   their   common  love  of  the 


4420 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


good  and  their  love  of  each  other,  and  hfe  gains  not 
only  in  spiritual  uplift,  but  in  moral  earnestness. 
Every  day  sees  a  closer  identification  in  the  speech 
and  action  of  men  of  the  religious  life  with  the  moral 
life,  every  day  lets  us  hear  a  fresh  and  more  emphatic 
demand  from  some  quarter  for  a  church  that  shall  best 
express  the  brotherhood  of  man.  New  ideals  of  church 
life  are  set  forth  ever)'  Sunday  from  the  pulpit,  the 
main  appeal  and  argument  of  which  is  no  longer 
"Save  yourself  from  some  impending  doom  of  divine 
wrath  threatening  you  in  the  future,"  but  "  Save  your 
fellow-creature  from  his  present  doom  of  ignorance, 
suffering,  and  crime."  The  church,  as  a  refuge  of  the 
saved,  is  an  anomaly  and  hindrance  to  the  world's 
growth,  but  the  church  as  a  place  of  united  work  and 
fellowship  for  all  the  needy  souls  of  earth,  is  just  com- 
ing into  view.  The  educational  uses  of  the  church  are 
being  rapidly  developed,  but  in  quite  other  ways  than 
are  illustrated  in  the  doctrinal  teachings  of  the  pul- 
pit. To-day  man}'  helpful  adjuncts  to  the  church  life 
are  found  outside  the  pulpit,  though  they  may  be  in- 
spired and  kept  alive  through  its  influence  ;  in  the 
Sunday-school,  the  teacher's  class,  the  Unity  club, 
Chatauqua  Circle,  Christian  Endeavor  Society,  or  Ep- 
worth  League,  which  add  so  much  to  its  functional 
range  and  usefulness.  Agencies  like  these  have  been 
found  to  excel  the  church  itself  in  their  power  to  win 
the  young  people,  to  turn  their  thoughts  from  frivolous 
to  earnest  subjects.  So  greatly  have  the  divisions  of 
church  work  multiplied  under  these  and  other  names 
that  the  minister  is  no  longer  the  only  worker  there, 
often  he  is  not  the  hardest  worker. 

The  situation,  however,  is  one  that  will  inevitably 
compel  him  to  harder  work  ;  for  this  quickening  of  the 
life  currents  throughout  the  general  body  of  the  church 
inevitably  creates  its  own  demands  of  the  pulpit,  and 
if  rightly  received  stimulates  it  as  nothing  else  can. 
The  average  congregation  is  much  nearer  the  pulpit's 
standard  in  culture  than  it  was  fifty,  twenty-five,  or 
even  ten  years  ago.  All  this  is  but  welcome  news  to 
the  true  preacher,  challenging  his  best  powers.  This 
modern  activity  of  the  congregation  will  both  deepen 
and  rationalise  the  life  of  the  church.  The  numerous 
activities,  benevolent,  literary,  missionary,  and  social, 
connected  with  the  religious  life  will  broaden  far  be- 
yond the  present  boundaries  of  its  work  and  influence. 
Already  a  phrase  has  been  coined  to  describe  this  new 
ideal  of  tl:e  church,  the  "  Institutional  Church."  The 
phrase  is  not  altogether  happy,  but  it  serves  to  point 
the  direction  in  which  we  are  moving.  The  church, 
under  this  title,  is  no  longer  the  scene  of  one  man's 
labors,  set  above  and  apart  from  his  kind,  the  vice- 
gerent of  the  Almighty;  but  it  is  rather  an  aggregation 
of  mutually  dependent  and  helpful  parts,  a  voluntary 
union,  a   company  of   trustful    friends   bound  together 


by  a  common  aspiration  and  a  common  need  ;  co- 
workers for  large  and  universal  ends  of  love  and  right- 
eousness, not  the  maintenance  of  a  particular  sect  or 
organisation.  The  Institutional  Church,  like  Briareus, 
reaches  a  hundred  arms  in  all  directions,  but  for  pur- 
poses of  human  helpfulness,  not  in  a  wanton  and  cruel 
display  of  strength.  The  Institutional  Church  is  bent 
on  saving  men  now  and  here  from  immediate  loss  and 
destruction  that  follow  ignorance;  and  the  salvation 
processes  are  changed  to  suit  this  new  end.  It  is 
neither  miracle  nor  grace  that  will  save  here,  but 
knowledge  and  love.  This  new  thought  of  the  church 
will  place  it,  as  has  been  said,  among  the  educational 
forces  of  the  community;  it  will  vie  with  the  school- 
room in  influence  and  interest.  It  aims  not  at  the  de- 
velopment of  a  single  set  of  faculties  or  ideas  called 
the  spiritual,  but  at  manly  growth,  the  extension  of 
moral  power  in  the  world. 

At  first  it  may  seem  that  so  bold  and  radical 
a  thought  of  the  church  can  have  no  place  except 
with  the  followers  of  a  rational  creed,  but  I  suspect 
we  should  have  hard  work  to  prove  this.  The  Insti- 
tutional Church  is  making  its  way  under  both  ortho- 
dox and  heterodox  guidance.  It  will  flourish  wherever 
there  is  found  a  sincere  love  of  man  for  man.  I  fancy 
if  we  were  to  undertake  an  investigating  tour,  we 
should  find  this  church  already  well  under  way  at 
many  of  the  missionary  joints  in  our  large  cities. 
The  evangelistic  spirit,  which  we,  as  liberals,  distrust, 
does  not  work  wholly  after  unreal  or  specious  ends ; 
the  methods  it  engenders  are  often  far  more  practical 
than  those  found  in  some  of  our  liberal  churches.  The 
evangelistic  spirit  is  something  the  liberal  church  has 
always  suffered  in  its  absence;  it  should  be  preserved, 
as  faith  and  devotion  should  be  preserved  everywhere. 
The  Institutional  Church,  rightly  conceived,  will  gain, 
rather  than  lose,  in  spiritual  fervency  and  consecra- 
tion from  this  infusion  of  a  more  practical  aim.  It 
stands  for  life,  not  dogma,  for  character,  not  creed,  for 
the  faith  based  in  human  experience  and  winning  uni- 
versal testimony  for  itself  in  the  heart  of  man.  It  is 
the  church  of  work,  of  united  happy  effort,  of  present 
sanctification,  present  achievements  and  rewards,  and 
is  thus  the  builder  of  the  future. 


SCIENTIFIC  IMMORTALITY. 

BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 

In  a  recent  article  in  The  Open  Court  I  endeavored 
to  translate  into  intellectual  equivalents  the  fulness 
of  feeling  by  which  one  of  the  countless  number  of 
personalities  became  and  is  aware  of  himself,  of  his 
relation  to  the  great  principle  of  personality  and  there- 
fore of  his  place  in  nature  and  his  motive  in  being. 

In  my  article  on  "  The  Absolute  "  the  categorj'  was 
enunciated  as  primal,  final,  and  conclusive  :  Relation, 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4421 


or  that  which  is  ;  Action,  or  that  which  does  ;  and 
Voi.iTiDN,  or  that  which  desires. 

A  clear  understanding  of  the  meaning  and  certainty 
of  this  category  is  essential  to  an  accurate  understand- 
ing of  the  corollaries  thereto  and  the  logical  deductions 
therefrom. 

The  region  of  Relation  is  equivalent  to  that  of 
pure  mathematics.  Matter,  about  which  so  many  have 
speculated  only  to  find  themselves  baffled,  becomes 
abstractly  some  kind  of  relation.  Let  us  leave  it  there. 
The  old  chemistry  had  much  to  say  of  ultimate  atoms, 
the  new  deals  with  absolute  relations.  Avoid  all  opin- 
ions, and  neither  adopt  the  physical  hypothesis  of 
gross  materialism,  nor  the  transcendental  negativism 
of  those  who,  denying  the  very  existence  of  matter, 
make  the  solid  earth  a  dream. 

Because  the  material  is  a  reality  of  relation,  there- 
fore it  is  real. 

In  another  article,  "The  Conservation  of  Spirit," 
I  made  allusion  to  a  fly  which  was  killed  on  the  wall 
of  Caesar's  palace,  and  said  of  the  fly  that  it  died,  and 
also  that  it  wa's  immortal.  The  fly  died.  By  that  is 
meant  that  the  mechanism  of  activity  ceased  its  cus- 
tomary relations,  and  causes  of  that  special  form 
ceased  to  produce  natural  effects.    The  fly  is  immortal: 

1.  Its  bodil}'  constituents  appear  eternally  in  other 
forms. 

2.  The  effect  of  its  forces  continues  as  a  factor  in 
the  universe. 

3.  The  effect  of  the  "  spirit  "  or  meaning  of  its  life 
continues  to  exert  influence  in  exact  proportion  to  its 
value. 

In  the  first  case  the  immortalit)'  is  of  "matter"  ; 
it  is  a  function  of  Relaiion.  In  the  second  the  im- 
mortality is  of  "force";  it  is  a  function  of  Altiox,  or 
change  of  relation.  In  the  third  the  immortality  is  of 
"  spirit ";  it  is  a  function  of  \'()i,n n  ix,  which  in  perfec- 
tion is  right  desire,  good  will,  or  at  the  other  extreme, 
the  impulse  howsoever  accjuired  to  changes  of  rela- 
tions. 

God  says,  I  love.  This  is  equivalent  to  saj'ing,  m)' 
desire  is  perfect.  The  fly  said,  I  am  impelled,  which 
is  equivalent  to  saying,  I  have  no  control  over  my  de- 
sire. Some  men  always  say,  I  am  impelled.  Some  are 
able  to  say,  on  brief  and  rare  occasions,  I  desire  right 
freely.  All  at  times  are  simply  and  automatically  im- 
pelled, are  creatures  of  impulse.  Few  are  able  to 
say,  I  am  consciously,  lovingly  impelling. 

It  is  only  as  we  freely,  consciously,  lovingly  choose 
the  right  that  we  are  godly,  and  he  only  whose  life's 
motive  impells  towards  the  right  is  entitled  to  con 
sider  himself  made  in  the  image  of  God. 

The  "soul"  of  a  fly,  and  that  of  a  man,  and  that 
of  God  himself  differ,  not  in  the  least  in  kind,  but  only 
in  degree. 


The  "soul"  is  the  meaning. 

1  speak.  Somehow,  somewhere  out  of  the  depths 
of  m}'  being,  either  originated  by  me,  or  the  resul- 
tant of  all  antecedent  influences  impressed  upon  me, 
thought  focussed  itself,  and  like  a  fulminate  respon- 
sive to  the  friction  primer,  suddenly'  burst  its  pent 
barriers,  and  in  the  twinkling  of  an  e3'e,  through  all 
the  evolutionar)'  stages  of  molecular  motion  of  the 
brain,  nervous  energy  of  the  nerves  of  sensation,  and 
muscular  movements  and  vibrations  of  tongue,  teeth, 
palate,  larynx,  lungs,  diaphragm, — all  the  apparatus 
of  sound — the  sentence  whose  real  substance  I  have 
thought  was  born  as  speech. 

A  moment,  and  all  is  over.  The  multitudinous 
preparations  ;  the  drilling  of  the  awkward  squads  of 
conscript  forces  ;  the  arming  of  energies  ;  the  marshal- 
ling in  arms  of  facts  ;  the  commissariat  of  veins  and 
arteries,  the  stretchers  of  dead  and  ambulances  of 
worn  and  wasted  tissues  ;  all,  each  in  turn  has  done 
its  work,  till  on  the  field  of  the  lips  the  battle  of  sense 
has  been  fought  to  its  conclusion.  I  have  done  speak- 
ing ;   I  have  said  my  say. 

The  life  of  the  sentence  I  have  uttered  was  formed 
in  the  thought  which  out  of  the  vasty  deep  called  it 
into  being  ;  but  it  was  not  in  the  actions  and  reactions 
which  gave  it  medium  for  the  larger  life  and  oppor- 
tunity for  perfect  existence. 

The  meaning  of  what  we  say  only  begins  to  live 
when  its  material  life  is  finished,  when  on  the  ear  of 
the  hearer  impinges  the  pulsing  particles  of  air,  gal- 
leons freighted  with  rich  cargoes  of  ideas  ;  landed  at 
the  wharfs  of  the  tympanum  ;  carted  thence  through 
the  streets  of  the  celestial  city  of  the  intellect  ;  stored 
in  the  graneries  of  reason,  to  be  distributed  to  the 
famished  faculties,  to  each  as  needful,  to  each  his  fit- 
ting share. 

All  happenings,  great  or  small,  have  their  person- 
alities. Salamis  had  a  soul  and  Marathon  a  meaning. 
The  soul  of  Salamis  was  not  Themistocles,  nor  that 
of  Marathon  Miltiades.  The  meaning  of  Waterloo 
was  not  Wellington,  but  the  pacification  of  Europe. 
The  spirit  of  Gettysburg!!  was  not  Meade  nor  Han- 
cock, but  that  here  on  this  rostra  the  final  argument  of 
force  was  uttered  and  the  debate  for  freedom  decided 
in  the  affirmative  by  the  fiat  of  destin}'. 

Nothing  really  begins  to  live  until  its  activities  are 
ended.  More  and  more,  greater  and  ever  greater  and 
grander,  those  things  which  ought  to  survive  do  sur- 
vive, and  grow  and  gather  life  more  and  more  abund- 
antly ;  those  lives  which  deserve  life,  live;  those  men 
whose  actions  command  immortality  become  immortal. 

These  are  the  spirits  of  the  just  made  perfect. 

Man  is  a  republic  and  not  an  empire.  His  person- 
ality is  an  elective  executive,  not  an  imperator  with 
purchased  powers,  nor  a  king  with  divine  rights. 


& 


V 


<^^ 


4422 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


All  life  extends  and  endures  forever.  All  happen-  truth  and  attend  and  follow  because  it  is  truth  that 
ings  have  eternity  for  their  habitat  and  infinity  for  speaks,  then  shall  also  be  realised  fully  and  completely 
their  goal.  in  no  mystical  sense,  but  as  absolutely  as  an  axiom, 

But  to  their  relations,  as  in  pure  mathematics,  there      that   mortal  life  is  only  an  expression  of  immortality, 
is  a  plus  and  minus  infinity;  the  result  of  that  which       "And  let  him  that  heareth  say,  come.      And  let  him 
is  unworthy,  is  like   the  waves  that  ripple  away  from      that  is  athirst  come.      And  whoever  will,  let  him  take 
a  pebble  cast  into  the  water,  in   ever  diminishing  in-      the  water  of  life  freely." 
tensity,  ever  widening  circles. 

Such  is  the  life  of  the  fly  that  died  in  the  palace  of 
the  Cajsars  ;  such  is  all  ignoble  life. 

The  life  of  man  from   the  cradle  to  the  tomb  is  a 
long  speech  ;  of  some  a  mere  sequence  of  phrases,  dis- 


NOTES. 

Through  the  kindness  of  M.  F.  de  Gissac,  we  have  received 
M.  Gassaud's  discourse  on  the  movement  inaugurated  by  M.  de 
Quatrefages.     We  learn  from  it  that  the  main  objection  which 
this  great  anthropologist,  the  Agassiz  of  France,  had  to  Darwin- 
connected,  discordant  ;    of  others  only  "a  tale  told  by       ism  was  that  he  regarded  it  as  a  degrading  materialism  full  of  deso- 


an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury  signifying  nothing." 

But  he  who  speaks  in  sentences,  inevitably  lives  in 
exact  and  mathematical  proportion  to  the  worth  and 
value  of  the  meaning  of  what  he  has  said.  He  lives 
also  in  the  result  of  his  actions,  and  in  the  effects  which 


late  affirmations  and  paradoxes.  He  found  religious  comfort  in 
the  idea  of  the  unity  and  permanence  of  the  race,  which  led  him 
to  discard  what  he  believed  to  be  a  gratuitous  hypothesis.  We 
can  understand  the  attitude  of  Quatrefages  if  we  consider  that 
Darwinism  first  appeared  as  an  application  and  generalisation  of 
Malthusian  principles.     But  we  have,  with  a  deeper  insight  into 


his  motives  have  had  upon  the  universe,  proportionate       the  theory  of  evolution,  learned  to  appreciate  its  spiritual  and  re- 


to   the  influence  and   to   some   power   of   the   oppor- 
tunity. 

As  to  what  is  called  life,  whether  of  the  fly  or  of 
the  man,  the  objection  may  be  made  that  at  death, 
when  the  material  particles  are  resolved  into  other 
forms,  they  cease  to  exist. 


ligious  importance,  which  is  now  removing  fast  the  main  obstacles 
to  its  general  acceptance. 


Mr.  Theodore  Stanton  writes  us,  apropos  of  his  article  "John 
Bright  on  Woman  Suffrage,"  which  appeared  in  this  paper  on 
January  3,  that  it  contained  an  error  in  fact.  Mr.  Bright  never 
voted  against  the  Woman  Suffrage  Bill  whilst  it  was  in  his  brother's 
hands.  He  did  not  vote  at  all,  and  used  to  say  he  never  would  so 
The    analogy   of   the    spoken    sentence    holds   good       long  as  it  was  fathered  by  Jacob  Bright.      But  the  latter  lost  his 


always.  The  form  of  matter  conveying  the  rhythms 
of  sounds  and  rests  of  motion  deterinines  the  ideas 
conveyed.  The  "soul"  of  speech  is  in  the  thought 
and  its  larger  life  is  in  the  effect  of  the  words. 

An  e.xact  recombination  of  matter  and  motion  would 
inevitably  effect  a  resurrection   of  fly  or  man,  as  the 


seat  for  a  season  in  1874,  and  the  Bill  passed  into  the  hands  of  a 
Conservative.  Then  he  voted  and  spoke  against  the  measure. 
Several  members  of  the  Bright  family  have  seen  Mr.  Stanton's 
article  since  it  appeared  in  our  columns,  and  this  is  the  only  error 
they  find  in  it. 


THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


Macmillan  &  Co.  are  publishing  a  complete  translation  of  the 
Pali  Jataka  or  "  Buddha  Birth-Stories,"  which  are  supposed  to  be 
repetition  of  the  spoken  word  is  a  resurrection  of  the  the  oldest  collection  of  folk-lore  stories  in  existence.  They  will 
Jjjg^_  be  translated  from  the  Pali  under  the  superintendence  of  Prof.  E. 

B.-  t    rt     ■  t  <.i     t        T  1-1  1-1        B.  Cowell,  and  will  be  published  in  seven  or  eight  volumes.     The 

ut  immortality  IS  not  that, — Lazarus  like, — which  ,      ,,  ,  ,  . 

first  volume,  translated  by  Robert  Chalmers,  is  nearly  ready,  while 
would    revive    the    flesh,  but    rather   that   certainty   of      ,^^  ^.^^^j,  by  W.  H.  D.  Rouse,  and  third,  by  H.  T.  Francis  and 
spiritual  existence,  by  which,  in  the  thoughts  and  lives      r   a.  Neil,  are  in  active  preparation, 
we  have  influenced,  in  the  many  mansions  of  the  eter- 
nal house,  we  may  go  on  from  glory  to  glor}',  reaping 
exactly  as  we  have  sown. 

Some  may  find  in  this  nothing  but  desolation,  the 
death  of  personality,  the  destruction  of  consciousness, 
the  philosophy  of  annihilation,  the  religion  of  despair. 

But  here  is  hope,  not  despair,  the  substance  and 
evidence  of  the  eternal;  for  "the  spirit  quickeneth; 
the  flesh  profiteth  nothing  :  the  words  that  I  speak 
unto  you,  they  are  spirit  and  they  are  life. " 

When  it  is  realised  entirely  that  the  region  of 
thought  commonly  called  of  religion  or  of  the  spirit 
has  an  exact  boundary;  when  it  is  thoroughly  under- 
stood that  as  there  is  a  science  of  mechanics  or  o 
chemistry,  so  also  there  is  a  science  of  religion;  when 
men  dismiss  forever  the  goblins  and  demons  and  phan- 
toms and  opinions  of  their  childish  past ;  when  with- 
out fear,  favor,  or  affection  they  harken  to  tlie  voice  of 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  393. 

FREDERICK  DOUGLASS.     F.  M.  Holland 4415 

THE    ISRAELITISH     PROPHECY.     Prof.  Carl  Hein- 

RICH  CORNILL 4417 

THE      INSTITUTIONAL     CHURCH.       Celia    Parker 

WOOLLEY 4419 

SCIENTIFIC  IMMORTALITY.     Hudor  Genone 4420 

NOTES 4422 


A.-1 


The  Open  Court. 


A.    WEKKLY    JOUHNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.   394.     (Vol.  IX.-ii.) 


CHICAGO,   MARCH   14,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
/  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  PROTISTA.' 

BV  PROF.    ERNST  HAECKEI-. 
SIGNMl'ICATION. 

Bx  J'/c'/Zs/^-,  or  simple-celled  beings,  we  understand 
all  organisms  that  do  not  form  organic  tissues.  Op- 
posed to  them  are  the  his/i'in's,  or  multicellular  organ- 
isms, which  do  form  tissues.-  In  the  latter,  large 
numbers  of  cells  are  always  united  together,  so  as  to 
accomplish  common  aims  by  concerted  effort  ;  these 
have  received  by  the  resultant  division  of  labor  different 
forms.  In  the  great  majority  of  protists  the  developed 
organism  retains  for  life  the  formal  value  of  a  simple 
cell;  they  are  permanent  monobionts.'  Nevertheless, 
in  many  classes  of  the  protist  kingdom  we  meet  with 
the  beginnings  of  social  organisation  :  many  cells  of 
the  same  kind  remain  united  together  and  form  a 
ca'tiobiiim — a  cell-mass,  cellular  colony,  or  cellular  so- 
ciety. By  the  establishment  of  a  division  of  labor 
among  the  associated  cells  of  such  cienobionts,  the 
first  transition  to  the  histones  is  effected,  all  of  which 
are  originally  sprung  from  the  protists. 

Whilst  the  double  kingdom  of  histones  is  univer- 
sall)'  divided  into  two  large  main  groups,  the  plant 
and  animal  kingdoms,  the  corresponding  division  of 
the  protist  kingdom  encounters  serious  obstacles.  In 
the  ta.xonomicaH  practice  of  the  day,  one  half  of  the 
protist  kingdom,  that  in  which  the  nutritive  changes 
are  vegetable,  is,  without  exception  almost,  classed  with 
the  plant  kingdom  ;  the  other  half,  in  which  the  nutri- 
tion is  animal,  with  the  animal  kingdom.  In  the  bio- 
logical text-books  the  first  is  commonly  treated  by  the 
botanists,  the  second  by  the  zoologists.  But  although 
this  classification  conforms  to  tradition  and  the  estab- 
lished division  of  labor  between  botany  and  zoology, 
and  in  all  likelihood  will  long  be  retained  in  practice, 
yet  in  a  phylogenetic  point  of  view  it  is  fundamentally 
untenable. 

THE   PL.AXT  AND   AXniAL    KINGDOMS. 

The  customary  and  traditional  division  of  the  or- 
ganic world  into  the  two  kingdoms  of  plants  and  ani- 
mals was  attended  with  no  difficulty  as  long  as  biolog- 

1  Being  §§  35-38  of  the  new  Phylogenie. 
'iHtstone,  from  a  Greek  word  meaning  ".ut-h,  or  f issue— Tr. 
^MoHobionts,  leading  solitary  lives. —  7"r. 
^Taxonomical,  relating  to  classification. —  Tr. 


ical  research  restricted  itself  exclusively  or  chiefly  to 
the  histones  -to  the  higher  multicellular  tissue-build- 
ing organisms.  On  the  one  side  the  plant-kingdom 
from  tlie  Ali^ir  up  to  the  angiosperms  appeared  to  the 
botanist  as  a  perfect  natural  unity  ;  on  the  other  side, 
zoologists  also  found  no  difficult}'  in  defining  and  cir- 
cumscribing the  animal  kingdom  in  a  consistent  man- 
ner, although  the  multiplicity  of  its  main  groups  and 
the  differences  between  the  lower  infusoria  and  the 
higher  animal  groups  were  much  greater. 

Matters  took  a  different  turn,  however,  from  the 
beginning,  and  especially  since  the  middle  of  the  pres- 
ent century,  when  our  knowledge  of  the  lower  animal 
forms  was  extended  and  made  more  thorough.  Since 
1838,  especially,  when  the  cellular  theory'  was  estab- 
lished, and  shortly  afterwards,  large  numbers  of  lower 
organisms  were  proved  to  be  permanent  unicelhilar 
forms,  the  sharp  traditional  division  between  the  plant 
and  animal  kingdoms  has  been  greatly  obliterated  and 
is  now  only  artificially  tenable.  True,  a  large  num- 
ber of  lower  plants  were  with  little  or  no  thought  left 
by  the  botanists  as  "unicellular  Algic"  in  the  exten- 
sive class  of  -J/gir.  But  the  acuter  zoologists  regarded 
it  as  impossible,  as  early  as  1848,  to  leave  the  uni- 
cellular protozoa  (infusorians  and  rhizopods)  in  the 
traditional  way  among  the  Worms  or  Zoophytes  as  the 
lowest  animals  ;  tlie  protozoa  "were  separated  from  the 
remaining  animal  types  and  made  an  independent 
type.  Extremely  grave  difficulties,  on  the  other  hand, 
resulted,  for  the  more  rigorous  limitation  of  the  proto- 
zoan type,  from  the  fact  that  numerous  unicellular  or- 
ganisms were  known  which  form  a  perfect  transition 
from  the  animal  to  the  plant  kingdom  and  unite  in 
themselves  the  characters  of  the  two  great  kingdoms, 
or  show  them  alternately  in  different  periods  of  their 
lives.  In  vain  the  attempt  was  made  in  numerous  es- 
says to  establish  a  sharp  and  definite  limit  between 
the  two  kingdoms. 

A  new  direction  was  given  to  all  these  attempts 
when  the  theory  of  descent  was  introduced  as  a  con- 
trolling principle  of  explanation  into  biology  (in  1859), 
and  the  import  of  the  "natural  system"  as  a  genea- 
logical tree  of  organic  forms  was  recognised.  When 
we  ourselves  undertook  in  1866  the  first  attempt  to 
solve  this  grand  problem,  now  clearly  stated,  and  to 


44^4 


T"HE     OPEN     COURT. 


arrange  the  main  large  groups  of  the  animal  and  plant 
kingdom  phylogenetically  as  natural  types,  we  arrived 
at  the  conviction  that  in  tlie  two  large  kingdoms  most 
of  the  groups  formed  phylogenetic  unities  and  that  all 
classes  could  be  traced  back  to  a  few  or  perhaps  to  a 
single  ancestral  group,  and  that  in  addition  to  them 
there  still  remaineil  a  large  number  of  the  very  lowest 
forms  of  life  which  could  not  be  distributed  without 
arbitrary  violations  either  in  the  animal  kingdom  or  in 
the  plant  kingdom.  F"or  these  lowest  natural  and 
mostly  unicellular  organisms  we  founded  our  kingdom 
of  Protista. 

We  were  put  in  a  position  to  give  a  sharper  delim- 
itation of  our  Protist  kingdom  after  we  had  found  in 
1872  in  our  gastrfua  '  theory  a  means  of  sharply  dis- 
tinguishing by  clear  definitions  unicellular  protozoa 
from  multicellular  metazoa.  The  protozoa,  or  "prim- 
itive beings,"  are  either  simple  cells  or  loosely  joined 
communities  of  cells  (^ccenobia),  that  is  "individuals 
of  the  first  or  of  the  second  order  "  ;  they  possess  no 
intestinal  passage,  and  form  no  blastoderms  nor  tis- 
sues. The  metazoa,  or  tissue-animals,  are  multicellu- 
lar creatures  which  in  the  developed  condition  appear 
as  persons  or  cormi  (as  "individuals  of  the  third  or 
fourth  order  "  j;  they  possess  a  nutritive  intestinal  cav- 
ity and  form  blastoderms  and  tissues.  As  all  metazoa 
develop  individually  from  one  and  the  same  germinal 
form,  the  ■^astnila^-  we  may  also  derive  them  phylo- 
genetically from  a  corresponding  ancestral  form,  the 
gastraa.  The  hypothetical  gastrasa  must  itself  have 
proceeded  from  a  branch  of  the  protozoa  ;  on  the  other 
hand  the  great  majority  of  these  unicellular  animals 
(especially  rhizopods  and  infusorians)  belong  to  inde- 
pendent stocks  and  possess  no  direct  connexion  with 
the  metazoa. 

Far  more  difficult  than  this  natural  division  of  the 
animal  kingdom  into  protozoa  and  metazoa  is  the  cor- 
responding division  of  the  plant  kingdom  into  Proto- 
phxla  and  Metaphyta  (1874).  Here,  too,  the  same 
essential  difference  subsists,  in  principle.  The  proto- 
phyta  or  "primitive  plants,"  are  mostly  permanent 
simple  cells.  Even  when  connected  together  in  so- 
cieties of  cells,  or  cct-nobia,  they  form  no  tissues,  no 
true  "thallus. "  The  metaphyta,  or  tissue-plants,  on 
the  other  hand,  form  a  multicellular  parenchyma  or 
tissue,  which  in  the  lower  metaphyta  (in  most  of  the 
thallophyta)  assumes  the  indifferent  shape  of  the  thai 
lus,  and  in  the  higher  metaphyta  (in  the  cormophjta) 
the  differentiated  form  of  the  culmus  or  cormus.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  transitional  forms  between  the  tis- 
sueless  protophyta  and  the  tissue  forming  metaphyta 


\G(tstr(tii,  tlie  hypotlu'lical  ancestral  foi  tn  of  all  imilticellular  or  iiietazoic 
animals. —  T>\ 

'iGastrula,  a  common  germinal  form  in  metazoa.  From  its  presence  in 
different  metazoic  types  Haeckel  deduced  his  gastra^a-tfieory. —  Tr. 


are  more  numerous  and  continuous  than  those  be- 
tween the  protozoa  and  metazoa.  Here,  as  there,  ac- 
cordingly, we  shall  have  to  establish  ideally  in  our 
"natural  system"  some  sort  of  artificial  limits.  In 
the  plant  kingdom,  however,  this  unavoidable  logical 
border-line  will  appear  more  artificial  and  forced  than 
in  the  animal  kingdom.  To  fix  that  barrier  and  to 
reach  a  just  appreciation  of  the  differences  between 
protophyta  and  protozoa  it  will  first  be  necessary  to 
show  clearly  the  relationship  between  Plasinodoina  and 
P/asiiniptiaxa- 

I'LASMODOMA  AND  PLASMOPHAGA. 

All  attempts  at  discovering  a  definite  morphologi- 
cal, anatomical,  or  ontogenetic  character  for  distin- 
guishing the  plant  kingdom  from  the  animal  kingdom 
have  failed  or  proved  themselves  utterly  hopeless ;  for 
numerous  protists  exhibit  such  indifferent  morpho- 
logical characters,  or  show  such  neutral  relations  to 
the  two  great  kingdoms,  that  they  can  be  ranked  with 
'neither  without  violence.  It  is  different  when  we  turn 
to  the  significant  /•Iiysio/ogu-at  difference  between  the 
two  kingdoms,  upon  which  rests  the  constant  preser- 
vation of  equilibrium  of  all  organic  nature.  The  plants 
a.rePiasmodoma,  or  plasma- formers  {P/asmaterta).  They 
exhibit  synthetic  metabolism, '  and  under  the  influence 
of  solar  light,  possess  the  power  of  manufacturing 
plasson  or  plasma  from  simple  and  solid  inorganic 
combinations.  The  very  lowest  plant-cells,  if  they  are 
truly  such,  know  how  to  build  up  by  this  synthesis  the 
complex  albuminous  bodies  or  nitro-carbonates  which 
are  known  to  constitute  the  indispensable  material 
substratum  of  every  active  vital  activity,  without  ex- 
ception. The  animals,  on  the  other  hand,  are  P/irs- 
i/iophaga,  or  plasma-destroyers  (P/asiiiahta).  As  they 
do  not  possess  the  plasmodomous  power  they  must 
draw  their  plasma  directly  (as  herbiverous  animals) 
from  the  plant  kingdom.  In  performing  the  acts  and 
fimctions  of  life,  and  in  oxidising  their  tissues,  they 
break  up  the  plasma  and  decompose  it  again  into  the 
simple  inorganic  unions  out  of  which  the  plants  origi- 
nally composed  it  (water,  carbonic  acid,  ammonia, 
nitric  acid,  etc. ). 

The  analytic  nutrition  of  tlie  animal  kingdom  is 
fundamentally  opposed  to  the  synthetic  nutrition  of 
the  plant  kingdom.  It  is,  moreover,  of  the  greatest 
importance,  as  the  opposed  modes  of  transformation 
of  energy  in  the  two  great  kingdoms  of  inorganic  na- 
ture by  means  of  it  are  closely  connected.  The  plants 
are  ;-(i//C(7/(;«  organisms  and  transform  the  kinetic  en- 
ergy of  the  solar  light  by  reduction  into  the  chemical 
potential  energy  of  organic  combinations,  by  absorbing 

1  Metabolism. — For  this  uncoutfi  English  word!  in  German  the  simple  term 
Stojff'ivecJtsel  is  used,  which  means  literally  change  or  irans/ormni ion  of  sub- 
stance, referring  to  the  chemical  changes  in  the  body  accompanying  nutrition, 
as  assimilation  and  dissimilation. —  Tr. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4425 


carbonic  acid  and  ammonia,  and  eliminating  nitiogen. 
Conversely,  the  animals  are  (;.v/(//.f/«i,'-organisms.  They 
transform  the  potential  energies  of  organic  combina- 
tions into  the  kinetic  energy  of  heat  and  motion  (mo- 
lecular and  nervous  work),  by  taking  in  nitrogen  and 
eliminating  carbonic  acid  and  ammonia.  Accordingly, 
the  difference  between  the  two  great  kingdoms  of  or- 
ganic nature  is  essentially  a  physiologico-chemical 
difference,  and  rooted  in  the  chemical  constitution  of 
its  plasma.  The  reducing  and  carbon-assimilating  or 
plasmodomous  phytoplasm  is  just  as  characteristic  of 
animals  as  the  oxidising  and  non-assimilating  or  plas- 
mophagous  zooplasm  is  of  plants. 

Two  results  of  the  highest  significance  for  phylog- 
eny  flow  from  these  chemico-physiological  relations  : 
(i )  the  plant-organism  with  its  synthetic  vegetal  meta- 
bolism is  older  than  the  animal  organism  with  its  ana- 
lytic animal  metabolism;  for  reducing //n'/<'//<?.fOT  alone 
could  originally  (at  the  beginning  of  organic  life)  and 
directly  arise  by  archigohy  from  inorganic  combina- 
tions. (2)  The  3'ounger  animal  organism  proceeded 
secondaril)',  as  it  were,  from  the  older  plant- organism  ; 
for  the  oxidising  zooplasm  of  the  first  could  arise  only 
secondarily  from  the  phytoplasm  alread)'  existent — 
being  effected  by  means  of  that  significant  change  in 
the  organic  metabolism,  which  we  shall  denote  by  the 
single  word  wctasitistn,  or  change  of  nutrition. 

METASI  1  ISM. 

By  metasitism,  or  metatrophy,  (change  in  mode  of 
nutrition,)  we  understand  that  important  physiologico- 
chemical  process  which  may  be  briefly  defined  as 
the  historical  transformation  of  the  synthetic  phyto- 
plasm into  the  analytic  zooplasm.  This  significant 
process,  a  veritable  '-reversal  of  the  primitive  and 
original  metabolism"  was  polyphyletically'  accom- 
plished, and  independently  at  different  times  in  differ- 
ent groups  of  plants  ;  for  not  only  do  man}-  lower  but 
also  numerous  higher  groups  of  plants  show  individual 
forms,  which  have  acquired  metasitism  by  functional 
adaptation  and  transmitted  it  by  progressive  heredity 
to  their  descendants,  who  thus  graduall}'  acquired  en- 
tirely different  physiological  and  morphological  prop 
erties. 

Now,  this  change  in  the  mode  of  nutrition  is  of  the 
highest  importance  for  the  protist  kingdom,  because  it 
has  plainly  repeated  itself  hpre  many  times  since  the 
primordial  epoch.  In  the  very  oldest  and  lowest  group 
of  moners,  whose  simple  plasma-body  possessed  no 
nucleus,  we  find  by  the  side  of  carbon  assimilating 
phytomoners,  non-assimilating  zoomoners.  The  indi- 
vidual groups  of  the  synthetic  protophyta  correspond, 
for  the  most  part,  so  perfectly  with  the  individual  divi- 
sions  of   the   analytic   protozoa   that    the    poiyphjletic 

'^  PolyphyUiically,  in  several  lines  of  descent. —  Tr, 


origin  of  the  latter  from  the  former  is  unmistakable. 
Numerous  examples  of  this  might  be  stated,  tending 
to  demonstrate  that  all  true  protozoa,  being  plasmo- 
phagous,  are  originally  derivetl  from  protophyta,  wliich 
are  plasmodomous. 

It  would  be  the  ph)'logenetic  task,  then,  of  a  true 
natural  system  of  Protista,  to  make  this  polyph^-letic 
process  clear  in  all  its  details,  and  to  demonstrate  the 
descent  of  the  individual  protozoan  groups  from  their 
protophj-te  ancestors.  But  the  complete  solution  of 
this  highly  complicated  task  appears  utterly  hopeless, 
as  here,  more  than  elsewhere,  the  incompleteness  of 
the  phylogenetic  facts  is  extremely  great. 

BYRON. 

BV    F.    M.    HOLLAND. 

Lowell  says  in  the  Fa  hit'  for  Critics,  that  the  depths 
of  Bryant's  heart  would  have  opened  to  the  man  who 
could  have  palmed  himself  off  for  a  mountain  ;  but 
this  might  have  been  said  even  more  justly  of  the  poet 
who  was  among  the  first  to  teach  Europe  the  grandeur 
of  those 

'■  Palaces  of  Nature,  whose  vast  walls 
Have  throned  Eternity  in  irv  halls 
Of  colli  sublimity," 

Br^-ant's  favorite  mountains  were  the  Berkshire 
Hills,  whose  summits  give  such  views  of  green  forests 
and  quiet,  happy  villages,  as  reward  the  climber  with 
an  expanding  heart  and  kindred  with  a  loftier  world. 
Byron's  spirit  expanded  with  the  sight  of  the  glacier 
and  the  sound  of  the  avalanche.  He  could  not  climb 
above  them,  as  he  lets  his  Manfred  do  in  desperate 
misanthropy.  He  could  only  look  beyond  them  to 
peaks  ever  white  with  the  snows  of  centuries,  but  he 
always  saw  them  with  "  a  loving  eye,"  as  he  represents 
the  imprisoned  patriot,  Bonivard,  looking  from  the 
dungeon's  little  window  at  Chillon.  Nothing  is  more 
characteristic  of  Byron  than  the  "fierce  and  far  de- 
light" in  which  he  becomes  "a  portion  of  the  tem- 
pest," among  "the  joyous  Alps,"  at  night,  and  shares 
the  "mountain-mirth."  What  Bryant  says  of  "The 
Hurricane"  is  comparatively  tame;  and  his  "Hymn 
of  the  Sea"  pictures  the  ocean  in  much  milder  aspects 
than  those  famous  lines  which  close  "  Childe  Harold." 
No  one  has  written  more  fitly  of  -'The  Gladness  of 
Nature  ";  but  to  read  about  its  grandeur  we  must  turn 
to  Byron.  It  is  he  who  has  taught  our  century  to  love 
the  mountains,  which  its  predecessors  found  merely 
dangerous  and  disagreeable. 

How  little  there  was  of  narrowness  and  misan- 
thropy in  his  delight  in  nature,  is  proved  by  the  full 
perception  of  the  majest}-  of  architecture  and  sculp- 
ture, shown  in  the  last  canto  of  "Childe  Harold,"  and 
also  b}'  the  might\'  power  of  his  narrative  and  dramatic 
poems.      His   gi\ing   his   life   to    help  to  make  Greece 


4426 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


independent  is  one  of  many  instances  of  that  "pas- 
sionate feeling  for  mankind,"  of  which  John  Morley 
says:  "It  was  this  which  made  Byron  a  social  force." 
How  mighty  that  force  was  may  be  judged,  not  only 
from  the  final  triumph  of  republicanism  in  France,  as 
he  predicted,  but  from  the  speedy  success  of  the  move- 
ments for  Catholic  emancipation  and  parliamentary 
reform,  which  he  advocated  in  the  House  of  Lords. 
\'enice  has  found  more  fortunate  champions  than  the 
Doge  whom  Byron  praised  for  dying  to  set  the  people 
free.  His  zeal  for  reform  and  freedom  might  justify 
comparison  with  Whittier  ;  we  could  not  sa}'  justly  of 
Byron  what  Lowell  did  of  Bryant : 

'  Thtif's  iiu  doubt  but  liu  stiinds  in  supiuuie  ice-olatiuli." 

One  of  the  points  where  both  the  American  poets 
differ  most  plainly  from  Byron  is  religion.  For  him 
the  Church  was  only  a  Niobe,  weeping  over  her  per- 
ishing tithes.  The  main  theme  of  "Cain,  a  Mystery," 
is  the  difficulty  of  reconciling  the  sin  and  suffering  in 
human  life  with  the  goodness  of  "the  prayer-exacting 
Lord."  The  first  draft  of  "  Childe  Harold  "  denied 
the  probability  of  immortality,  (see  note  on  Canto  II, 
Stanza  8,)  and  the  poet's  own  philosophy,  if  he  had 
any,  may  be  detected  in  the  speech  ascribed  to  the 
demon  in  "The  Deformed  Transformed": 

■'  This  is  the  consequence  of  giving;;  matter 
The  power  ot  thought.     It  is  a  stubborn  substance, 
And  thinks  chaotically,  as  it  acts. 
Ever  relapsing  into  its  first  elements." 

Byron's  irreligion  was  increased  by  indignation  at 
the  support  of  despotism,  everywhere  in  Europe,  by 
the  clergy.  These  and  other  leaders  of  public  opinion 
in  England  were  provoked  by  his  political,  as  well  as 
religious  heresies  ;  and  his  separation  from  his  wife 
gave  occasion  for  raising  such  a  storm  of  unpopularity 
as  drove  him  into  lifelong  exile.  This  made  his  poetry 
not  only  more  bold  and  fiery  than  before,  Imt  more 
bitter  and  licentious.  Chastity  is  largely  due  to  the 
repression  of  animal  passion  by  social  and  domestic 
authority.  Byron's  loss  of  the  influence  of  his  wife 
and  sister,  with  his  departure  from  imder  the  control 
of  English  society,  led  to  his  falling  below  even  the 
conventional  standard  of  purity.  That  standard  was 
much  lower  then  than  now,  and  lower  in  Italy  where 
Byron  sojourned  than  in  England  ;  but  he  sank  lower 
still.  No  man,  however  gifted,  can  emancipate  him- 
self from  obedience  to  society  without  running  great 
risk  of  falling  below  its  standard.  It  is  a  serious  prob- 
lem how  we  can  let  Mrs.  Grundy  keep  us  virtuous, 
without  letting  her  make  us  timid  and  commonplace. 
It  is  pleasant  to  turn  from  the  life  of  Byron  to  those 
of  Emerson,  and  Spinoza,  of  Epicurus,  D'Holbach, 
Bentham,  and  Bradlaugh,  of  James  and  John  Stuart 
Mill.  Other  great  names  might  be  added  ;  but  these 
are  enough  to  show  that  no  one  philosophy  is  the  only 


guide  of  genius  to  virtue.  The  men  just  mentioned 
had  this  in  common,  that  each  loved  his  own  cause  too 
devoutly  to  indulge  in  such  reckless,  indiscriminate 
satire,  as  Byron  wrote  from  first  to  last.  Blessed  is 
the  man  who  is  loyal  to  a  high  ideal. 


EDUCATION  IN  ETHICS. 

BV   DR     R.    W.    CONANT. 

WirHuui  ethics  among  the  common  people  no 
civilisation  can  stand.  \'alor,  knowledge,  wealth  build 
a  nation,  virtue  must  preserve  it.  Gloriously  have  we 
rounded  out  the  first  ascending  half  of  a  nation's  his- 
tory, and  it  seems  to  us  incredible  that  such  glory  can 
ever  become  as  dust  and  ashes.  Yet,  spite  of  it  all, 
we  are  to-day  suffering  in  common  with  the  rest  of 
the  civilised  world  from  a  perilous  retrograde  meta- 
morphosis ;  the  great  gifts  of  civilisation  are  being 
turned  against  it  by  those  who,  wittingly  or  unwit- 
tingly, work  for  its  destruction. 

At  the  same  time,  never  was  a  greater  parade 
made  of  "rights"  and  moral  law.  Rioters  do  not 
steal,  they  only  "take  that  which  the  world  owes 
them,"  or  "they  right  the  wrongs  of  the  poor,"  or 
"they  deliver  Labor  from  under  the  grinding  heel  of 
Capital."  So  sacred  are  these  causes  that  they  sanc- 
tify murder,  arson,  and  pillage.  This  modern  phase 
of  brigandage  is  the  most  dangerous  of  all.  Now  that 
thousands  of  men  and  women  have  become  fully  in- 
oculated with  the  notion  that  they  are  really  wronged 
by  the  present  state  of  society,  their  belief  acquires 
all  the  moral  momentum  which  a  genuine  conviction 
always  imparts.  However  absurd  their  ideas  may 
seem,  it  is  a  great  mistake  to  underestimate  either 
their  sincerity  or  their  force.  This  constitutes  the 
chief  cause  for  alarm,  not  poverty,  nor  ignorance,  nor 
tariffs,  nor  trusts,  but  that  sur/i'/v  /s  full  of  mora!  per- 
verts.     Here  is  the  frenzy  of  1793,  without  its  excuse. 

If  an  enlightened  religious  conscience  could  be 
made  the  moral  guide  of  even  a  majority  of  men,  all 
might  be  well,  and  this  argument  pointless.  But,  un- 
fortunately, we  are  further  from  such  a  consummation 
to  day  than  one  hundred  years  ago,  and  it  is  futile  to 
try  to  blink  the  fact  that  the  chasm  widens  daily.  Re- 
ligion alone  has  failed  as  signally  to  cure  our  socio- 
logical ills  as  that  other  much-trusted  antidote,  uni- 
versal education.  Either  religion  or  education  with- 
out ethics  is  dangerous.  Let  us  indeed  have  all  the 
religion  and  all  the  education  possible,  but  above  and 
beyond  all  that  the  great  mass  of  the  people  must  be 
leavened  by  an  ethical  spirit;  they  must  have  clearer 
moral  perception,  stronger  love  of  right.  For  too 
many  "Thou  shaft  not  be  found  out  "  constitute  all 
the  law  and  the  prophets. 

To  the  Church  has  been  relegated  in  all  ages  the 
inculcation  of  ethics,  under  the  mistaken  notion  that 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


442^ 


they  were  in  some  way  sacred  and  not  to  be  separated 
from  religion.  Particularly  has  this  been  true  in  the 
United  States.  Sin  has  been  regarded  as  the  outwork- 
ing of  innate  and  total  depravity,  a  mysterious  some- 
thing originating  with  the  Devil,  a  necessary  corollary 
of  Eden  and  the  Fall,  involving  an  elaborate  doctrinal 
system  for  purging  away  the  moral  disease  under  the 
direction  of  the  Church.  But  this  view  is  narrow,  in- 
sufficient, and  illogical. 

That  it  is  insufficient  is  amply  proven  b\'  the  course 
of  events  ;  that  it  is  illogical  may  to  some  minds  re- 
quire proof.  Doubtless  very  many  worthy  people  may 
be  scandalised  by  the  proposition  to  secularise  instruc- 
tion in  morals.  Yet  there  is  nothing  supernatural  nor 
mysterious  about  right  and  wrong,  either  in  essence 
or  origin,  as  a  brief  anah'sis  will  suffice  to  show. 

The  sole  standard  of  right  is  enlightened  conscience, 
or  the  moral  sense  brought  to  the  highest  pitch  of  de- 
velopment by  experience,  inspiration,  and  revelation. 
The  moral  sense  is  a  product  of  sociological  evolution 
just  as  much  as  the  artistic.  The  beautiful  allegory 
of  a  sinless  Eden  of  supernaturall)'  pure,  heaven-pro- 
tected beings,  of  whom  we  are  the  degenerate  descen- 
dants, can  no  longer  be  seriouslj-  entertained.  We 
know  now  that  man  was  at  first  even  lower  than  the 
beasts,  that  he  maintained  a  wretched  and  precarious 
existence  in  the  pre-historic  wilderness,  possessed  of 
as  much  moral  sense  as  a  megatherium.  But  he  had 
what  no  other  creature  had  :  a  glow-worm  of  intelli- 
gence, which,  flickering  almost  to  extinction,  was 
fanned  by  the  necessities  of  existence  to  the  contri- 
vance of  rude  weapons  and  implements  of  stone. 
Slowly  and  painfully  man  rose  from  his  sub-brutish 
condition  to  the  tribal  state,  and  from  the  tribal  and 
family  relations  were  shed  upon  his  benighted  soul 
the  first  faint  glimmerings  of  reciprocal  obligations 
and  rights.  From  mutual  help  in  work  and  war  and 
woe  sprang  sympathy,  and  in  these  two,  rights  and 
sympathy,  lies  the  potentiality  of  the  whole  moral  law. 
Do  unto  others  as  you  would  that  they  should  do  to 
you. 

But  antedating  both  of  these,  coexistent  with  man 
himself,  was  a  third  element  :  worship,  modifying  the 
ethical  sense  ultimately  by  the  presentation  of  the 
loftiest  motive,  and  so  evolving  tha  religious  con- 
science. But  the  root  of  worship  was  fear.  Amid 
the  mysteries  and  dangers  of  the  prehistoric  world, 
terrified  by  the  play  of  unseen  forces,  superstitious 
fear  and  worship  became  an  earl}'  and  ineradicable 
element  of  man's  nature  in  the  effort  to  propitiate 
higher  powers. 

Here  are  the  three  components  of  the  religious 
conscience  —  worship,  sympathy,  and  rights;  three 
fair  lilies  whitening  upward  from  the  mire  of  man's 
terror,  selfishness,  and  want.      This  ability  to  distin- 


guish right  from  wrong,  joined  with  a  wish  to  do  the 
right  "in  His  name,"  is  a  product  of  evolution  like 
any  other  high  faculty  of  the  soul,  a  natural  and  neces- 
sary outcome  from  the  premises,  man's  spiritual  na- 
ture acting  on  and  stimulated  by  his  environment. 
Finally  Jesus  of  Nazareth  by  his  supreme  sacrifice 
and  matchless  precept  vivified  the  torpid  and  per- 
verted moral  sense  of  that  part  of  the  world  called 
Christian. 

Pari  passu  with  the  evolution  of  the  moral  sense 
proceeds  the  evolution  of  sin.  For  what  is  sin  but  a 
natural  propensity  indulged  or  perverted  in  defiance 
of  the  moral  sense  ?  Gluttony  is  over-eating,  drunken- 
ness is  overdrinking,  profanity  is  worship  desecrated, 
sensuality  is  sexuality  rampant,  and  so  through  all  the 
countless  variations  of  wrong  which  human  ingenuity 
has  been  able  to  devise.  Vice  is  simply  virtue  vitiated. 
Hence  the  ethical  sense  is  just  as  proper  a  subject  for 
development  by  secular  instruction  as  the  artistic  or 
mechanical. 

It  is  no  relfection  on  the  Church  that  unaided  she 
is  unable  to  make  head  against  the  insidious  demorali- 
sation which  makes  the  wrong  appear  the  better  rea- 
son. Too  long  has  the  State  put  forth  all  its  power  to 
develop  the  mechanical  and  intellectual  and  done  ab- 
solutely nothing  for  the  ethical.  The  perception  of 
the  true,  the  good,  and  the  beautiful  is  no  more  in- 
tuitive than  arithmetic;  it  is  the  fruit  of  education, 
both  individual  and  racial,  and  is  the  sure  and  strong 
foundation  upon  which  the  superstructure  of  religion 
should  be  reared.  Straightway  rise  the  wraiths  of 
sectarianism  and  infidelity,  and  shake  their  warning 
fingers  !  But  instruction  in  ethics  need  not  include  in- 
struction in  religion,  and  in  the  public  schools  it 
should  not.  The  sphere  of  tlie  Church  is  the  pulpit, 
the  Sundaj'-school,  and  the  family;  in  the  schools  it 
has  no  place.  The  fear  of  State  church  has  been  car- 
ried to  a  dangerous  extent ;  Church  and  State  should 
be  equal  allies. 

The  general  character  of  public-school  instruction 
in  ethics  may  be  outlined  thus  : 

It  should  begin  at  the  beginning,  and  should  be 
co-ordinate  with  every  study  in  the  course,  at  least, 
since  it  transcends  all  in  importance. 

There  should  be  no  Sundaj'-school  flavor  about  it, 
but  the  instruction  should  be  on  strictly  scientific  lines, 
equally  as  in  mathematics. 

Special  stress  should  be  laid  upon  the  meanness  of 
non-moral  words  and  acts.  A  boy  wfio  rather  scorns 
to  be  considered  "good  "  will  resent  with  all  the  pride 
of  his  nature  the  slightest  imputation  of  meanness. 
Instruction  in  ethics  should,  of  course,  be  adapted  to 
the  grade  of  the  pupil.  For  the  very  little  folk  only 
the  simplest  principles  and  illustrations  will  be  appro- 


4428 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


priate ;  but  just  here  the  foundations  must  be  laid 
with  special  care. 

Year  by  year  the  subject  should  be  unfolded,  until 
in  the  highest  grades  it  would  be  time  to  explain  the 
basic  principles  of  ethics  and  their  applications  in  all 
varieties  of  human  rights  and  obligations. 

According  as  an  object-lesson  is  always  the  most 
effective,  so  should  all  instructors  be  themselves  of 
the  highest  possible  character. 


CHAPTERS  FROM  THE  NEW  APOCRYPHA. 
"His  Garment's  Hem." 


BY  HUDOR  GENOME. 


While  Jesus  tarried  at  Jerusalem  there  came  unto 
the  city  a  certain  man  from  the  country  beyond  Jordan. 

Who,  having  heard  of  the  fame  of  Jesus,  (or  had 
seen  his  star  in  the  East)  had  come  to  Jerusalem  for 
to  worship  him. 

And  it  came  to  pass  while  he  went  into  the  gate  of 
the  city  there  stood  at  the  gate  a  soldier  of  the  Roman 
band. 

And  he  asked  the  soldier  straightway  concerning  Je- 
sus, if  he  knew  him. 

Then  saith  the  soldier,  I  have  never  seen  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  whom  ye  call  the  Christ  ;  but  nevertheless 
I  know  him,  for  I  was  sick  and  he  healed  me  ;  I  am 
the  centurion's  servant. 

Then  the  stranger,  understanding  not  the  meaning 
of  what  had  been  said  unto  him,  went  on  his  way  into 
the  city. 

And  while  he  stood  in  the  market  place  there  drew 
nigh  unto  him  a  ruler  of  the  Synagogue,  whom  he  also 
asked  if  he  knew  Jesus. 

Then  answered  the  ruler,  truly  if  thou  hadst  known 
me  thou  hadst  not  asked  ;  for  I  am  Jairus,  whose 
daughter  was  raised  as  from  the  dead. 

Verily  I  cannot  tell  thee  his  abiding  place,  but  I 
know  him  for  what  he  hath  done. 

Now  was  the  stranger  very  sorrowful  to  find  none 
to  tell  him  where  Jesus  abode  ;  but,  as  he  went  on 
through  the  streets  of  the  city  he  met  a  man  rejoicing, 
and  giving  thanks. 

And  he  saith  unto  him,  Sir,  I  would  see  Jesus; 
knowest  thou  where  I  may  find  him  ? 

And  the  man  answering  saith,  I  know  not  where 
he  tarrieth  ;  but  this  I  know  that  I  myself  have  found 
him,  for  whereas  I  was  blind,  now  1  see. 

And  while  he  went  on  his  way  rejoicing  the  stranger 
sought  Jesus  further  ; 

And  when  he  had  come  to  the  uttermost  parts  of 
the  city  there  stood  a  woman  in  the  way  ; 

Her  also  he  asked  concerning  Jesus. 

She  saith   unto  him.  Verily  I  know  him,  for  I  had 


an  issue  of  blood,  and  this  day  drew  nigh  unto  him  in 
the  press,  and  I  but  touched  the  hem  of  his  garment 
and  was  made  whole. 

The  stranger  saith  again  unto  her,  Knowest  thou 
where  he  dwelleth  ?     But  she  could  not  tell  him  : 

And  he  went  his  way,  yet  the  more  sorrowful,  and 
wondering  that  of  all  whom  Jesus  had  healed  of  their 
infirmities  none  could  say  where  he  dwelt. 

Now  while  he  sought  it  became  nightfall,  and  at 
the  gate  of  the  city  a  man  saith  unto  him,  Seekest  thou 
Jesus,  that  is  called  the  Christ  ? 

Behold  him  yonder  ;  for  he  goeth  even  now  with 
one  of  his  disciples  toward  Bethany. 

And  the  stranger  beholding  Jesus  afar  off  ran  after 
him  with  great  joy,  saying,  I  have  found  the  Christ 
who  shall  heal  my  infirmit}' ;  who  shall  bid  me  see  ;  I 
shall  touch  the  hem  of  his  garment. 

But  the  darkness  gathered,  insomuch  that  he  saw 
not  the  way  clearly, 

And  as  he  .ran  he  heard  a  great  cry  behind  him, — 
Save  me,  I  perish. 

Then  would  he  have  turned  him  about  to  help  him 
who  had  called. 

But  he  bethought  him  that  if  he  tarried  there  the 
darkness  would  gather. 

And  while  he  tarried  again  he  heard  the  voice, 
Save  me,  I  perish. 

And  he  forgot  Jesus,  and  turned  his  back  upon 
him  and  ran  and  came  unto  him  who  was  in  trouble, 
and  he  helped  him,  and  put  him  upon  his  beast,  and 
he  went  his  way. 

Meanwhile  the  darkness  had  gathered,  and  it  was 
night. 

And  the  stranger  was  sore  distressed  ;  and  he  lifted 
up  his  voice  and  cried,  saying.  Woe  unto  me  because 
I  have  lost  Jesus. 

But  even  while  he  spoke  a  being  clad  in  white  and 
shining  garments  appeared  in  the  way; 

And  saith  unto  him.  Be  of  good  cheer.  Thou  hast 
not  lost  Jesus,  for  I  am  he. 

Forasmuch  as  thou  didst  hear  the  voice  of  thy 
brother  thou  didst  hear  my  voice. 

Behold  now,  arise,  and  go  thy  way,  and  thy  in- 
firmity shall  be  healed  and  thou  shalt  see. 

For  whoso  helpeth  him  who  is  in  sorrow,  sickness, 
need,  or  any  other  adversity,  helpeth  me  and  Him 
that  sent  me. 

So  fulfilling  that  petition  which  I  taught  my  dis- 
ciples, saying.  Thy  kingdom  come. 

Go  ye  therefore  into  all  the  world  and  preach  this 
gospel  to  every  creature  : 

For  I  am  indeed  come  to  preach  deliverance  to  the 
captive  and  recovery  of  sight  to  the  blind  ; 

But  wheresoever  thy  duty  is  there  am  I  in  the  midst 
of  it. 


THE     OPEN     COLTRT. 


4429 


The  Sin  of  the  Nations. 

Now,  A  certain  Herodian,  who  was  among  them 
whom  Jesus  confounded  with  a  penny, 

Came  unto  him  privily  by  night,  and  saith  unto 
him  : 

Master,  I  was  with  them  this  day  who  asked  thee 
if  it  were  lawful  to  render  tribute  unto  C;esar  ; 

And  I  heard  thee  say.  Inasmuch  as  the  penny  hath 
Caesar's  image  and  superscription  that  they  should 
render  therefore  unto  C;rsar  the  things  that  be  Cee- 
sar's. 

Behold,  the  people  are  despoiled  by  the  publicans; 
they  give  tithes  of  all  they  possess  ; 

And  their  masters  bear  rule  over  them. 

They  take  reward  against  the  innocent;  they  de- 
vour widows'  houses  ; 

And  keep  back  by  fraud  the  hire  of  them  who  reap 
down  their  fields. 

Tell  me.  Master,  is  the  penny  Cssar's? 

Then  Jesus,  answering,  saith  unto  the  Herodian, 
Why  didst  thou  not  say  these  things  unto  me  in  the 
day;  and  why  comest  thou  privily  by  night? 

Verily,  I  know  why  thou  hast  come  privily,  for 
thou  fearest  the  powers  that  be.  And  the  powers  that 
be  are  ordained  of  God. 

For  God  is  spirit,  and  giveth  to  every  man  the  re- 
ward of  his  own  doing. 

Unto  the  peaceful  He  giveth  peace ;  unto  the 
righteous  He  giveth  righteousness  ;  unto  the  faithful 
He  giveth  faith  ; 

And  unto  the  nations  also  He  giveth  rulers  and 
governors. 

And  the}'  shall  rule  the  people  with  a  rod  of  iron. 

For  the  sin  of  their  slavery  is  upon  them  :  upon 
the  sinner  the  sin  of  himself,  and  upon  the  nations 
their  sin. 

Lo!  now,  I  say  unto  thee,  seek  peace,  cleave  to 
righteousness,  be  ye  faithful  ; 

Remember  the  fatherless  ;  plead  the  cause  of  the 
widow;  heal  the  brokenhearted. 

And  this  is  my  cause,  —  the  cause  of  Him  that  sent 
me,  that  I  have  made  mine  own  : 

To  point  the  way,  to  live  the  life,  and  that  in  me 
the  truth  should  live. 

Lo!  the  day  cometh  when  the  nations  shall  be 
purified  ;  when  they  shall  not  make  war  any  more, 
and  none  shall  molest  or  make  afraid. 

For  with  m\'  stripes  shall  the)-  be  healed,  and  I 
shall  be  an  example  unto  them, 

In  a  way  they  think  not,  and  in  a  time  they  wot 
not  of. 

But  peace  shall  prevail  because  of  the  sword,  and 
mere}'  shall  come  because  of  the  death  of  the  just. 

For  witiiout  shedding  of  blood  is  no  remission  of 
the  sin  of  the  nations. 


God  is  not  the  God  of  the  dead,  but  of  the  living. 

And  when  ni)'  Gospel  shall  be  published  among  all 
nations  ; 

The  crooked  shall  be  made  straight,  and  the  rough 
ways  shall  be  made  smooth  ; 

And  I  will  pour  out  my  spirit  upon  all  flesh  ;  and 
in  my  righteousness  shall  the  nations  be  exalted. 

And  I  will  put  down  all  rule  and  all  authority  and 
power,  and  God,  even  the  living  (jod  that  abideth  in 
you,  shall  be  all  in  all. 


BABU  PRATAPA  CHANDRA  ROY. 

(Died  January  11.  i.S<j5-) 

We  have  just  received  the  sad  news  of  the  death  of  Babu  Pra- 
tapa  Chandra  Roy.  CLE,  of  India,  the  translator,  editor,  and 
publisher  of  the  M^ilinhliamld,  one  of  the  most  enthusiastic  and 
patriotic  of  Hindus.  He  died  at  his  residence,  i  Rajah  Gooroo 
Dass'  street,  Calcutta,  at  i  A  M.  Friday,  January  11,  in  his  fifty- 
third  year.  The  widOA'  of  the  deceased  is  anxious  to  bring  the 
work  of  her  husband  to  completion,  and  requests  his  friends  to 
aid  her  in  this  task,  which  appears  to  her  as  a  sacred  obligation. 
Unfortunately,  thfre  is  very  little  property  left  besides  the  house 
in  which  the  late  Hindu  scholar  lived  and  where  the  office  of  the 
Datavya  Bharala  Karyalaya  is  located.  .A.ny  one  who  is  an.\ious 
to  obtain  a  copy  of  the  translation  of  the  Mjhabliarata  should  apply 
at  once,  as  in  a  few  months  it  will  probably  no  longer  be  possi 
ble  to  supply  orders.  Remittancts  should  be  made  to  Sundari 
Bala  Roy,  i  Rajah  Gooroo  Dass'  street,  Calcutta. 

.■\s  to  the  life  of  Pratapa  Chandra,  which  is  probably  little 
known  outside  of  India,  we  make  the  following  statement  as  made 
by  his  friend  and  helpmate  Kisori  Mohan  Ganguli.  Pratapa  Chan- 
dra was  born  in  Sanko  in  the  District  of  Burdwan  where  he  re- 
ceived his  rudimentary  education  in  Patshaia.  He  came  to  Cal- 
cutta at  the  age  of  sixteen  and  happened  to  find  er.iployment  with 
Babu  Kali  Prasanna  Singha,  a  Hindu  mill'onaire  who  issued  for 
gratuitous  distribution  the  first  Bengali  translation  of  the  Maha- 
bharala.  The  amiability  and  intelligence  of  the  youth  attracted  the 
attention  of  his  master  who  made  him  his  cashier  and  showed  an 
unbounded  confidence  in  him.  .Vs  his  work  was  not  hard  he 
watched  the  progress  of  his  master's  translation,  who  died  soon 
after  its  completion.  With  the  small  sum  which  Pratapa  Chandra 
had  saved  he  opened  a  small  book-shop,  which  soon  became  very 
popular.  Many  poor  boys  used  to  visit  his  shop  because  he  gave 
them  permission  to  read  the  books  on  his  shelves.  After  school 
hours  his  shop  looked  like  a  little  reading-room,  .^fter  ftight  years 
of  business,  having  earned  some  money,  he  resolved  to  issue  a  new 
Bengali  translation  of  the  Maliabliarata  which  he  carried  out  suc- 
cessfully. .\t  this  time  some  domestic  calamity  affected  him  deeply 
and  made  him  incapable  of  attending  to  his  business.  He  roved 
about  without  a  plan  through  Northern  Bengal.  Finding  that  his 
edition  of  the  Malmbharnta,  cheap  though  it  was,  was  beyond  the 
reach  of  many  of  his  countrymen,  he  decided  to  devote  his  labors 
to  the  education  of  his  people,  and  in  work  of  this  kind  to  forget 
his  sorrow.  Having  still  on  hand  about  one  thousand  copies  of 
the  Miilinbharatd,  he  resolved  to  give  them  away  to  deserving  men. 
But  his  charity  produced  a  result  which  he  did  not  anticipate. 
Some  of  the  recipients  sold  the  volumes  to  booksellers,  who  sold 
them  for  a  higher  price  than  be  had  originally  charged.  Taking 
the  advice  of  some  of  his  friends,  he  established  the  Datavya  Bha- 
rata  Karyalaya,  and  commenced  a  new  edition  of  the  Bengali  .)/<;- 
Iiabliaratii.  Many  copies  were  given  aw-ay  to  persons  who  would 
not  sell  them  again.  Otherwise  he  charged  the  low  price  of  Rs.  6  6 
for  a  copy.  The  result  was  that  his  publishing  office  became  well 
known  in  India  and  many  thousand  copies  of  various  Indian  works 


4430 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


were  distributed  partly  gratis  and  partly  for  the  mere  expense  ut 
publishing  tbem.  Pratapa  Chandra  was  especially  charitable  to 
schoolboys.  If  any  youngster  applied  for  a  copy  of  the  Mahahha- 
rata,  in  Bengali.  Sanskrit,  or  English,  he  could  never  refuse. 

Whenever  injured  by  anybody,  he  never  retaliated,  firmly 
convinced  that  his  opponent  had  been  misled  by  inaccurate  infor- 
mation. He  always  tried  to  see  him  and  explain  matters.  If  he 
spoke  with  anybody  for  five  minutes  he  would  surely  make  of  him 
a  friend  for  ever  afterwards.  He  was  a  rigid  Hindu  in  religion. 
His  regard  for  the  sacred  books  of  the  Hindu  religion,  especially 
the  Brahmanas,  was  unbounded.  He  also  had  a  high  respect  for 
the  officials  of  the  government,  for  he  took  them  to  represent  his 
sovereign.  The  study  of  the  Rajadharma  had  filled  him  with  the 
belief  that  for  the  happiness  of  mankind  the  institution  of  kings 
was  the  principal  means,  an  idea  in  agreement  with  passages  in 
the  Matuibharatii,  which  represent  the  king  as  a  portion  of  the 
Deity.  He  frequently  complained  of  the  tone  of  some  of  the  In- 
dian newspapers,  both  vernacular  and  English.  When  officials 
were  censured,  he  claimed  that  the  difficulties  of  administration 
are  always  great.  On  the  other  hand,  those  English  papers  that 
took  delight  in  villifying  the  character  of  the  natives  of  India  al- 
ways gave  him  much  pnin  His  services  to  the  cause  of  literature 
were  officially  recognised  by  the  bestowal  of  the  title  C.  I.  E.  on 
him,  an  honor  which  he  accepted,  always  thinking  that  he  had  not 
sufficient  means  to  keep  up  its  dignity.  He  had  been  ailing  for  a 
year,  and  was  confined  to  his  room  the  last  six  months.  When  he 
saw  that  his  end  was  approaching  his  friends  gave  him  hope,  but 
he  knew  better.  His  greatest  regret  was  that  he  could  not  live  to 
complete  his  work.  On  the  evening  of  Thursday,  January  lo,  of 
this  year,  his  breathing  became  hard,  and  he  gave  notice  to  his 
attendants  that  he  would  not  survive  the  night.  He  gave  his  las 
directions  calmly  and  without  agitation,  took  leave  of  his  relatives 
and  friends,  one  by  one,  and  expressed  his  obligations  to  the  man- 
ager of  the  Karyalaya  tor  the  loving  zeal  with  which  the  latter  had 
served  him.  His  conviction  was  firm  that  his  many  friends  and 
countrymen  would  never  permit  his  work  to  be  suspended  at  the 
stage  at  which  it  had  arrived.  About  an  hour  before  his  death  he 
asked  those  about  him  to  chant  the  name  of  Hari,  telling  them 
that  they  should  not  cease  till  he  had  expired,  and  when  they  com- 
menced the  dying  man  joined  with  his  feeble  voice.  He  then 
seemed  to  fall  asleep  quietly,  and  the  clock  struck  one  when  he 
expired. 

BOOK  NOTICES. 

Mr.  T,  Fisher  Unwin,  of  London,  just  publishes  the  auto- 
biography of  George  Jacob  Holyoake  in  a  third  and  cheaper  edi- 
tion. Mr.  Holyoake  is  an  agitator  of  the  ideal  type,  and  his 
printed  reminiscences  of  the  personages  and  stirring  events  of  his 
time  will  rank  high  among  the  original  materials  of  history.  The 
title  of  the  volume  is  Sixty  Years  of  nn  Agilatnr's  Life.  (Two 
large  volumes.     Price,  3s  6d.) 


W.  T.  Stead,  editor  of  the  Xfview  of  Revie^cs,  will  issue 
monthly  an  extra  penny  supplement  to  the  Review  of  Reviews, 
which  is  to  contain  the  contents  of  the  various  magazines,  so  as  to 
be  a  vade  mectitii  of  the  reading  public  of  all  classes,  and  will  enable 
them  at  once  to  select  such  monthlies  as  will  be  of  interest  to 
them.  The  Review  of  Reviews  appears,  Mr.  Stead  says,  when  the 
sale  of  the  monthlies  is  practically  over.  The  Review  of  Reviews 
will  continue  as  before,  and  the  supplement,  which  will  not  be 
critical,  but  simply  explanatory,  will  fill  an  important  want  of  the 
reading  public. 

T/ie  English  Revolution  of  the  Twentieth  Ceitttiry.  A  Pros- 
pective History.  With  an  Introduction,  and  edited  by  Henry 
Lazarus,    author   of  LanJlorJisin .     (London  :   T.    Fisher   Unwin. 


iScj4  Pages,  463.)  The  manuscript  of  this  history  purports  to 
be  the  work  of  a  young  man  of  genius,  culture,  deep  insight,  and 
broad  sympathy,  but  irredeemably  the  victim  of  the  disjointed 
economical  condition  of  modern  society,  whom  Mr.  Lazarus  meets 
by  accident  in  the  slums  of  London.  It  portrays  the  conditions 
which  precede  and  follow  the  supposed  social  revolution  of  the 
twenlieih  century.  The  history  is  detailed  and  rather  bulky,  and 
as  it  is  not  essentially  different  from  other  attempts  of  this  charac- 
ter, the  request  to  read  it  through  before  passing  a  judgment  upon 
it,  is  rather  a  severe  demand  upon  a  critic's  time. 


7.11  logii/ne  soeinle,  by  M.  G.  Tarde.  (Paris,  Felix  Alcan,  1895. 
Pp.  464  Price,  fr.  7.50.)  M.  Tarde  is  known  in  France,  and  by 
scholars  of  all  nations,  as  the  author  of  several  high-class  works 
on  comparative  criminology  and  sociology.  He  is  a  champion 
of  the  views  opposed  to  Lombroso's  daring  theories,  and  by  the 
powerful  advantages  that  come  from  exact  juridical  training  and 
wide  practical  experience  is  a  very  dangerous  antagonist.  His  work 
in  the  field  of  comparative  criminology  was  recently  rewarded  by 
his  being  called  to  take  control  of  the  French  National  Bureau  of 
Civil  and  Criminal  Statistics.  Perhaps  his  most  widely  known 
work  is  'J'he  l.nws  of  Imitation,  in  which  he  sought  with  much 
power  and  ingenuity  to  reduce  the  rules  of  social  action  to  phe- 
nomena of  imitation — an  idea  the  force  of  which  will  be  at  once 
apparent.  That  work  shows  how  the  social  tissues  are  formed, 
rather  than  the  social  body;  how  the  social  eloth  is  manufactured 
rather  than  the  national  garment.  The  present  work  is  occupied 
with  showing  how  those  tissues  are  arganisetl,  how  that  cloth  is  cut 
and  sown,  or  ra'.her,  how  it  cuts  and  sews  itself.  Formerly,  so- 
ciolcgy  was  connected  with  biology  ;  M.  Tarde  connects  it  with 
ps\  ihology.  His  view  is  that  society  is  comparable  not  to  an  or- 
ganism but  to  a  privileged  organ — to  the  brain.  The  social  life, 
he  says,  is  a  mighty  exaltation  of  the  cerebral  life.  Sociology  is 
collective  psychology.  Throughout  the  whole  work  "1.  Tirde's 
ingenious  and  suggestive  views  concerning  the  laws  of  imi.  'ion 
and  invention  are  to  be  traced  as  the  guiding  threads  of  the  dis- 
cussions. For  the  general  reader,  few  works  on  the  subject  uill 
compare  with  this  for  interest.  He  will  find  here  a  wealth  of  il- 
lustration and  rare  material,  appositely  grouped,  and  will  come 
from  the  perusal  of  the  work  with  satisfaction  and  enlarged  judg- 
ment. /'. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET, 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.   HEGELER,   Publisher. 


DR.   PAUL  CARUS,   Editor 


ThKMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

$).00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  394. 

THE  KINGDOM   OF  PROTISTA.     Ernst  Haeckel 4423 

BYRON,     F,  M.  Holland 4425 

EDUCATION   IN   ETHICS.      Dr    R.  W,  Conant 4426 

CHAPTERS   FROM   THE    NEW   APOCRYPHA,      "His 
Garment's   Hem,"     The   Sin   of    the   Nations,      Hudor 

Genone 4428 

BABU   PRATAPA  CHANDRA  ROY 4429 

BOOK  NOTICES 4430 


The  Open  Court. 


A.    WEEKLY   JOURNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.   395.      (Vol.  IX.  — 12.) 


CHICAGO,    MARCH   21,    1895. 


*  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
I  Single  Copies.  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.— Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


RECENT   BRAIN   SURGERY    IN    ITS    PSYCHOLOGICAL 
BEARINGS. 


BV   S.    MILLINGTON    MILLER,    .M      D 


It  is  only  necessary  to  glance  over  the  pages  of 
the  great  American  monthlies,  (which  lead  the  world, ) 
to  learn  that  the  present  age  is  one  of  splendid  ma- 
terial and  mechanical  improvement.  Scarcely  a  month 
passes  without  the  publication  of  some  startling  in- 
vention or  of  some  wonderful  amelioration  of  the  ma- 
terial ills  of  mankind. 

But  while  the  advance  in  engineering,  electrical 
appliances,  and  other  mechanical  items  of  progress, 
are  well  known  to  the  population  at  large,  there  is 
another  sphere  in  which  achievement  has  been  so  re- 
markable as  almost  to  stagger  the  imagination,  and 
which  is  less  widely  known.  Partly  from  its  technical 
character,  and  parti}'  because  a  certain  amount  of 
close,  serious  thought  is  necessary  to  understand  its 
tremendous  significance. 

I  refer  to  the  increasing  dominion  over,  and  modi- 
fication of,  /ka/  entity  or  those  twins,  or  whatever  else 
they  may  be — Brain  and  Mind. 

Even  in  a  period  after  the  middle  of  this  century 
the  brain  was  regarded  as  an  organ  with  a  single  func- 
tion— the  function  of  thought.  It  was  not  supposed 
to  possess  any  centres  of  localised  action  entirely  dis- 
tinct in  character  and  situation.  The  heart  was  known 
as  a  machine  which  pumped  the  blood  through  the 
body,  and  the  lungs  as  a  great  reformatory  institution 
where  its  impurities  were  removed.  The  stomach  and 
the  liver  acted  as  units.  Did  one  thing,  each  of  them, 
and  nothing  else. 

But  within  recent  years  it  has  been  discovered  that 
the  brain,  besides  well-authenticated  centres  of  sight, 
smell,  taste,  hearing,  etc.,  has  also  an  endless  number 
of  well-defined  motor- centres,  each  of  which  controls 
the  movement  of  a  strictly  limited  portion  of  the  hu- 
man body.  One  centre  produces  motion  of  the  face  ; 
another  motion  of  the  shoulder  ;  another  motion  of  the 
elbow;  another  motion  of  the  wrist ;  and  still  others 
— motion  of  the  thumb  and  of  the  fingers. 

That  the  subject  ma}'  be  thoroughly  understood,  it 
should  be  stated  at  the  outset  that  the  nervous  system 
of  man  consists  of  certain  ingoing  fibres  which  carry 
the  impulses  of  sight,  of  hearing,  of  smell,  and  of  taste 


to  their  individual  brain-centres.  In  the  grey-matter 
cells  of  these  centres,  by  some  process  at  present  en- 
tirely unknown,  the  particular  sensation  thus  carried 
is  elaborated  into  thought,  and  these  thoughts  send 
messages  through  a  certain  second  set  of  fibres — con- 
necting sense  centres  with  motor  centres  —  the  grey- 
matter  cells  of  sense  with  the  grey-matter  cells  of  mo- 
tion or  action.  From  these  latter  centres  commands 
are  issued  through  the  efferent  nerves  to  the  various 
muscles.  Thus  the  legs,  arms,  hands,  head,  etc.,  are 
moved. 

8  5-t 


M.^P    OF    THE    HUMAN    SKULL.  SHOWING    LOCATION    OF    CENTRES    OF    MOTION 
AND    SENSATION. 

I  am  walking  some  day,  we  will  suppose,  in  late 
Spring,  or  early  Summer,  in  the  woods,  or  through  the 
fields,  and  my  eye  lights  upon  a  bush  covered  with 
exquisite  so?iietiiings.  An  impulse  of  sense  mounts, 
like  lightning,  through  the  optic  nerve  to  the  sight- 
centre  in  the  brain.  There  a  process  called  thought 
is  carried  on  ;  memory  is  invoked  ;  and  that  cell,  or 
those  cells,  as  the  case  may  be,  decide  that  the  objects 
which  grow  on  that  bush  are  flowers — wild  roses. 
And  by  a  certain  association  of  ideas  the  conclusion  is 
also  reached  that  they  have  a  delicious  fragrance. 
Then  a  command  is  carried  from  this  sight-centre, 
along  the  fibres  of  connexion  to  the  motor- centres  of 
the  arm,  hand,  and  body  generally,  and  these  second 
centres  bid  me  stoop  down  and  pluck  the  rose,  and 
lift  it.  and  smell  it. 


443? 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


This  is  the  general  process  by  which  motion  of  va- 
rious kinds  becomes  a  more  or  less  immediate  result 
of  sensation.  And  this  is  about  as  popular  an  explana- 
tion of  the  great  intricacy  of  the  actions  as  I  can  for- 
mulate. 

If  the  reader  will  closely  examine  the  accompany- 
ing illustration,  showing  the  now  well  localised  func- 
tions of  the  brain,  he  will  find  food  for  some  very 
lively  thought.  The  broad,  wavy  black  line  running 
almost  vertically  represents,  as  he  will  notice,  the 
"fissure  of  Rolando,"  which  is  the  great  motor-axis 
of  the  brain.  I  mean  to  say  that  it  crosses  all  the  va- 
rious motor  points  of  action  in  the  brain.  It  is  well 
known  that  touch  is  at  once  the  finest  and  the  most 
indispensable  of  all  the  senses.  This  particular  sense 
lias  the  general  name  of    "  Sensation  "  in  the  picture. 

Darwin's  white  cats  with  blue  eyes  illustrate  this 
fact  very  nicely.  If  any  one  has  ever  possessed  a  lit- 
ter of  these  animals  they  will  no  doubt  have  noticed 
that  they  are,  for  some  time  after  birth,  very  imper- 
fectly, if  at  all,  gifted  with  the  senses  of  sight  and 
hearing.  In  after  life  such  kittens  invariably  become 
blind.  Approach  such  a  litter  ;  shout  at  the  top  of 
your  voice  ;  make  all  kinds  of  extravagant  and  threat- 
ening motions  before  the  eyes  of  the  little  animals, — 
nothing  can  disturb  the  serenity  of  their  repose.  But 
blow,  gently,  across  their  backs, — moving  the  fine  fur 
like  the  bending  waves  of  wheat  before  the  wind, — 
and  in  an  instant  ever)'  kitten  in  that  basket  is  a  pic- 
ture of  active,  moving  life. 

Well,  if  this  sense  of  touch  is  the  most  important 
and  the  finest  of  all  the  senses,  we  should  find  it  most 
Intimately  and  most  centrally  situated  as  regards  the 
various  centres  of  motion.  It  only  takes  a  glance  at 
the  illustration  to  show  that  this  is  the  case.  And  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  any  one  can  readily  understand  why 
this  must  be  so. 

A  coal  has  fallen  out  of  the  fire  on  the  carpet.  Its 
red  hue,  indicative  of  burning  heat  to  the  eye,  has  dis- 
appeared. It  is  growing  cold.  But  it  is  still  quite 
hot  enough  to  destro}'  tissue  rapidly.  I  stoop  down, 
very  foolishly,  and  pick  it  up.  In  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye  those  afferent  nerves  of  my  arm  and  hand  have 
carried  a  startling  message  of  "fire"  to  the  "sensa- 
tion "  centre  in  my  brain.  With  equal  rapidity  a  mes- 
sage flashes  across  the  short  intervening  space  to  the 
"hand-centre  "  of  motion.  And,  ever  so  much  quicker 
than  the  wind,  the  command  flies  down  through  neck 
and  shoulder  and  arm  to  my  hand,  "drop  that  coal." 
It  is  done,  and  though  my  fingers  tingle  for  some  time, 
there  has  been  no  material  destruction  of  my  flesh. 

Take  the  centre  of  sight  again.  You  will  notice 
that  it  is  also  very  medially  located  as  regards  the 
motor-centres,  though  not  quite  so  near  to  them  as  to 
the  seat  of  "sensation."     This  is  another  instance  of 


the  wonderful  prevalence  of  design  in  nature  and  in 
man.      I  mean  in  the  building  of  nature   and  of  man. 

I  am  walking  along  the  street  in  front  of  a  building 
that  is  being  torn  down,  and  perhaps  beneath  some 
scaffolding.  I  look  up.  A  brick  has  escaped  the  in- 
terfering boards,  and  is  falling  right  down  on  my  head. 
Again  the  sense  of  sight,  and  again  the  quick  com- 
mands which  it  elicits.  What  are  they?  First,  "move 
the  head  ";  second,  "  protect  it  with  the  arm  or  hand  "; 
third,  "run'  as  fast  as  you  can."  This  is  the  exact 
sequence  of  the  muscular  actions.  And  if  you  will 
notice  the  picture  again  3'ou  will  see  that  the  motor- 
centres  bear  just  this  proportionate  relation,  as  regards 
distance,  to  the  centre  of  sight. 

As  hearing  is  a  sense  which  does  not  require  such 
instantaneous  or  such  admirably  correlated  muscular 
action,  it  will  be  noticed  that  its  centre  is  not  so  cen- 
trally located  as  regards  the  motor  centres.  And  it 
will  not  require  any  great  amount  of  reasoning  to  see 
why  it  should  be  placed  just  where  it  is. 

How  have  all  these  facts  of  sense  and  motor  local- 
ity been  discovered?  Mainly,  if  not  altogether,  by  vivi- 
section of  the  brain  of  the  monkey  and  the  dog,  and 
by  electric  excitation  of  all  the  exposed  surfaces  of  the 
brain,  from  time  to  time,  until  it  was  learned  that 
touching  a  certain  portion  of  brain-tissue  with  the  pole 
of  the  battery  produced  action  in  a  well-defined  por- 
tion of  the  body.  It  is  now  well  ascertained  that  the 
motor- centres  in  the  human  brain  are  almost  identi- 
cally the  same,  as  regards  location,  as  those  in  the 
brain  of  the  dog  and  monkey.  I  have  had  an  illustra- 
tion reproduced  of  the  brain  of  the  latter,  showing  the 
various  other  important  fissures  and  giving  the  indi- 
vidual and  particular  motor  centres  with  more  com- 
pleteness. 

What  has  been  the  advantage  of  brain  vivisection 
to  humanity?  We  all  know  how  wave  after  wave  of 
reprobation  has  surged  over  this  country  and  England, 
from  time  to  time,  intended  to  overwhelm  the  poor 
vivisectionists.  How  all  kinds  of  tear-compelling 
narrative  and  of  quaintly  adroit  argumcnta  aJ  homines 
have  been  employed,  to  prevent  experiments  upon 
animals.  It  ought  to  be  well  known,  however,  and  I 
think  it  is  well  known  to-day,  that  animals  thus  ope- 
rated upon  are  as  tenderl}'  adjusted  and  as  carefully 
etherised  as  the  millionaire's  daughter,  and  that  just 
as  much  watchful  care  is  exercised  to  mitigate  suffer- 
ing after  the  operation,  and  to  hasten  the  animal's  re- 
covery. And  in  the  next  place,  optTatioiis  upon  tlic 
l>rain  are  almost  ahsolittclv  painless.  Isn't  it  strange 
that  so  little  suffering  should  attend  the  severance  of 
the  very  sane/a  sanetoriim  of  life  and  thought.  Still, 
it  is  so. 

And  what  have  these  experiments  enabled  great 
surgeons  to  do  for  suffering  man  himself?     I  will  try 


THE     OPEN     COUKX. 


44 


J  J 


and  explain  all  the  marvellous  wonder  the)'  have 
wrought  by  detailing  two  operations,  performed  re- 
spectively by  Dr.  Robert  Weir,  of  New  York,  and  by 
Dr.  W.  W.  Keen,  of  Philadelphia. 

Case  I.  A  gentleman  thirty-nine  years  of  age  had 
always  been  perfectly  healthy  until  a  certain  attack  of 
malarial  fever  occurred,  accompanied  with  a  good  deal 
of  pain.  One  day,  as  he  rose  to  go  to  the  window,  his 
wife  noticed  a  spasm  of  the  right  cheek  and  neck, 
which  did  not  involve  the  arm,  nor  was  consciousness 
lost.  In  1886,  (two  or  three  similar  attacks  having 
occurred  in  the  interval,)  he  fell,  unconscious,  and  bit 
his  tongue.  These  attacks  were  all  accompanied  with 
twitching  of  the  right  arm  and  hand  and  right  side  of 
the  face.  His  memory  became  impaired  and  his 
speech  thick.  No  injury  had  ever  been  received  on 
his  head,  nor  was  anything  abnormal  observed  even 
when  his  head  was  shaved.  Gradually  his  right  hand 
and  arm  became  weak,  and,  as  a  result,  his  hand- 
writing degenerated.  This  weakness  of  the  right  arm 
slowly  increased,  and  along  with  it  a  weakness  of  the 
right  leg,  and,  as  a  consequence  of  the  increasing  par- 
alysis of  his  face,  "drooling"  at  the  right  side  of  the 
mouth  set  in. 

Dr.  Weir  e.xamined  him,  at  Dr.  Seguin's  request, 
and  both  of  them  reached  a  diagnosis,  chiefly  based 
upon  the  facts  already  given,  that  the  man  had  a  small 
tumor  situated  as  above  described,  and  on  November 
17,  1S87,  the  skull  was  opened  at  the  junction  of  the 
arm  and  face  centres.  This  operation  was  witnessed 
by  Dr.  Keen.  Nothing  abnormal  was  seen  on  the  sur- 
face of  the  brain.  Yet  so  confident  was  Dr.  Weir  of 
the  correctness  of  the  diagnosis  that  he  boldly  cut  into 
the  brain  substance,  and  from  its  interior  removed  a 
tumor  of  the  size  of  a  hazelnut  by  means  of  a  small  sur 
gical  spoon.  The  man  made  a  perfect  recovery.  When 
e.xamined  microscopically,  the  tumor  was  found  to  be 
of  a  malignant  character. 

Now  just  consider  what  an  absolutely  fantastic 
thing  that  operation  was — wonderful  in  its  boldness, 
more  wonderful  in  its  perfect  success.  Dr.  Weir  had 
nothing  at  all  to  guide  him  except  certain  facts  and 
his  ability  to  reach  an  accurate  idea  of  the  exact  posi- 
tion from  the  various  ss'mptoms  and  the  fixed  order  in 
which  they  followed  each  other.  Doubtless  he  had 
often  experimented  upon  the  brains  of  dogs  and  mon- 
keys. And  his  great  experience  in  that  line  showed 
him  exactly  what  impairment  of  bodily  function  fol- 
lowed the  excitation  of  certain  limited  localities  in  the 
dog's  or  monkey's  brain.  The  slightest  error  in  cal- 
culation from  these  facts  to  his  final  surgical  action 
would  have  certainly  entailed,  not  only  the  possibility 
of  great  damage  to  other  sound  centres  in  this  gentle- 
man's brain,  but  also  great  hazard   of   the  very  life  it- 


self of  the  patient.  This  gentleman  recovered  rapidly 
and  entirely,  and  lived  for  four  years  without  any  re- 
currence of  the  disagreeable  symptoms  above  de- 
scribed. But  then  the  tumor,  which  was  malignant 
(and  malignant  disease  is  a  vice  of  the  whole  system), 
returned,  and  finally  destroN'ed  his  life. 

Case  2.  This  case  can  be  found  in  the  records  of 
the  Orthopedic  Hospital  and  Infirmary  for  Nervous 
Diseases  in  Philadelphia,  Record  Book,  S.  I.,  p.  123. 
A  young  girl  of  about  twenty-one  was  admitted  to  the 
infirmary  in  October,  1S91.  She  said  that  her  attacks 
of  epilepsy  from  which  she  had  suffered  for  two  years 
and  a  half,  always  began  in  the  right  thumb.  This 
fact  having  been  verified,  it  was  decided  to  remove 
the  centre  for  the  thumb,  for  the  same  reason  as  in  the 
last  case,  i.  e.,  to  stop  the  very  beginning  of  the  fit. 
It  was  especially  desired  to  remove  only  the  centre  for 
the  thumb,  and  not  that  for  the  hand,  in  order  not  to 
interfere  more  than  was  necessary  with  the  usefulness 
of  her  hand,  upon  which  she  depended  for  her  sup- 
port, as  she  was  a  mill  girl.  This  was  an  unusual  and 
minute  attempt  at  localisation,  and  a  very  severe  test 
of  the  accuracy  of  the  mapping  of  the  brain  by  vivi- 
section. On  October6,  i8gi,  the  "  fissure  of  Rolando  " 
was  first  located,  and  a  disk  of  bone  an  inch  and  a 
half  in  diameter  was  removed,  the  centre  of  it  being 
two  and  five  eights  inches  to  the  left  of  the  middle 
line.  Both  the  bone  and  the  brain,  when  exposed, 
seemed  to  be  normal.  The  fissure  of  Rolando  was 
seen  crossing  the  middle  of  the  opening,  tlownward 
and  forward.  By  the  battery  the  brain  was  stimulated 
at  certain  definite  points  until  the  thumb-centre  was 
recognised,  and  also  the  face-centre,  which  lay  some- 
what below  it,  and   the  wrist-centre,  which  lay as  it 

ought  by  experiments  on  the  monkey's  brain — a  little 
above  it.  Each  of  these  centres  was  recognised  by 
the  movement  of  the  part  supplied  by  it  (thumb,  face, 
wrist)  when  the  centre  was  touched  by  the  poles  of 
the  battery.  Stimulation  of  the  thumb-centre  pro- 
duced a  typical  epileptic  fit,  such  as  she  had  suffered 
since  her  admission,  beginning  in  the  thumb,  as  she 
had  asserted.  The  portion  of  the  brain  corresponding 
to  the  thumb-centre,  a  piece  about  half  an  inch  in  di- 
ameter, was  removed,  and  by  the  battery  it  was  de- 
termined that  the  portion  removed  was  the  whole  of 
the  thumb  centre.  She  recovered  promptly  and  with- 
out disturbance  from  the  operation.  It  was  necessary 
in  this  case  to  be  unusually  accurate,  and  not  to  re- 
move any  portion  of  the  brain  other  than  the  centre  for 
the  thumb,  and  for  three  reasons  :  First,  if  too  much 
were  removed  upward  and  backward,  the  wrist  and 
fingers  would  be  paralysed  ;  second,  if  too  much  were 
removed  forward,  the  muscles  of  the  face  would  be  in- 
volved ;  third,  a  little  further  down  lies  the  centre  for 
speech,  and   had   this  part  of  the  brain  been  injured, 


4434 


THE     OPEN     COUR1\ 


this  important  faculty  would  have  been  destroyed, 
thus  producing  serious  and  unnecessary  trouble. 

Note  now  the  accuracy  of  experimental  cerebral 
localisation.  As  soon  as  the  patient  had  recovered 
from  the  ether  and  was  in  suitable  condition,  her  abil- 
ity to  move  the  face  and  hand  was  attested.  All  the 
muscles  of  the  face  were  entirely  intact,  and  could  be 
moved  with  absolute  ease.  Her  speech  was  also  un- 
affected. 

Now  just  consider  for  a  moment  what  a  thought- 
exciting  operation  this  very  simply  described  "feat" 
really  was.  It  would  not  be  very  hard — if  we  likened 
the  brain  to  an  apple,  and  if  we  were  convinced  that 
a  certain  limited  portion  of  that  apple  were  rotten,  by 
its  manifestations  on  the  skin,  to  cut  into  the  substance 
of  the  fruit  and  remove  carefully  and  absolutely  every 
whit  of  the  discolored  tissue.  We  would  have  the  eye 
to  guide  in  the  operation.  But  in  this  instance  and  in 
this  operation  upon  the  substance  of  the  bpain,  there 
was  no  such  visual  assistance.  Had  there  been,  he 
were  a  poor  surgeon  who  could  not  with  his  scoop  re- 
move all  that  was  defective  and  exactly  all — and  per- 
petrate no  encroachment  upon  sound  brain-substance. 

But  the  apple  and  its  rotten  portion  fails  utterly  to 
convey  an  explicit  idea  of  just  what  a  marvellous  thing 
was  done  in  this  instance.  We  will  liken  the  human 
brain  again  to  an  apple.  And  we  have  ascertained, 
by  certain  scientific  experiments,  —  no  matter  what, — 
that  there  is  a  certain  well  defined  portion  of  that  apple 
which  is  bitter  to  the  taste.  It  is  only  this  bitter  part 
that  must  be  removed.  Not  an  io/a  of  the  sweet  fruit- 
flesh  must  be  removed.  But  all  of  the  bitter  part  has 
to  come  away.  And  there  are  tremendous  penalties 
inflictable  upon  the  cutter  if  he  removes  more  or  if  he 
removes  less  ;  he  must  remove  only  what  is  bitter. 

And  this  is  just  what  Dr.  Keen  did  to  perfection. 
If  he  had  left  any  of  the  diseased  thumb-centre  be- 
hind, there  would  have  been  an  uninterrupted  sequence 
of  mitigated  epileptic  attacks — not  so  severe,  perhaps, 
still  prevalent.  If  he  had  removed  any  portion  of  the 
sound  surrounding  brain-substance,  there  would  have 
been  paralysis  of  the  fingers — permanent  paralj'sis  — 
following  a  slip  on  that  side  ;  and  permanent  paral}  sis 
of  the  elbow,  or  shoulder  following  a  slip  upon  that. 

Now  do  you  know  of  anything  more  wonderful  in 
its  microscopical  exactness  than  this  operation  in  the 
whole  realm  of  modern  mechanical  advance  ? 

The  results  of  these  operations  on  the  brain  liave 
had  some  very  curious  tendencies.  The  operators 
have  found  (I  should  have  stated  previously  that  these 
sense  and  motor-centres  exist  in  duplicate  in  the  human 
brain,  that  is,  that  there  is  one  of  each  for  each  side 
of  the  body)  that  the  paralysis  of  motion  which  attacks 
certain  limited  parts  of  the  body  immediately  after  the 
removal  of  brain-substance,  while  marked  at  first,  soon 


begins  to  disappear,  and  in  time,  for  some  marvellous 
reason,  is  almost  as  perfect — I  mean  the  motion  is  al- 
most as  perfect — as  it  was  before  the  operation. 

Now  what  is  the  exact  significance  of  this?  Does 
it  indicate  that  the  brain — as  a  healthy,  constantly  de- 
veloping and  self-propagating  body — has  deliberately, 
though  gradually,  supplied  a  new  motor-centre  in  the 
place  of  that  removed  ?  We  cannot  tell.  The  only 
way  in  which  we  could  find  out  would  be  by  means  of 
a  post-mortem  performed  upon  that  patient,  for  in- 
stance, whose  thumb-centre  had  been  removed,  and 
whose  thumb  had  in  time  reacquired  its  power  of  mo- 
tion, and  who  had  later  died  a  natural  death.  And 
this  field  is  entirely  too  new  a  territory  for  any  such 
instances  of  death  naturally  succeeding  such  opera- 
tions to  have  occurred. 

But  then  there  is  another  way  of  looking  at  the 
subject.  What  is  known  as  the  Vicariate,  or  "Mutual 
Aid  Socieiyof  the  Senses"  is  a  well  established,  phys- 
ical law.  I  mean  to  say  that  when  one  sense  is  lost  the 
other  senses  seem  to  struggle  forward  with  absolutely 
headlong  haste  to  act  as  a  kind  of  crutch  to  their  dis- 
abled sister.  The  deaf  child  learns  to  hear  with  its 
eyes.     The  blind  child  learns  to  see  with  its  fingers. 

Again,  I  want  to  call  your  attention  to  the  preva- 
lence of  this  "  Vicariousness,"  even  in  the  physical 
tissues  of  the  body.  One  eye  becomes  blind,  from  in- 
jury or  disease.  In  a  short  time  the  powers  of  the  other 
eye  seem  to  be  doubled,  and  soon  the  man  or  woman 
has  just  as  good  sight  to  all  intents  and  purposes  as 
they  had  before.  Or  one  arm,  or  one  leg,  is  ampu- 
tated. It  would  seem  as  if  the  very  cutting  of  the 
knife  acted  as  a  stimulant  to  the  muscle-cells  in  the 
opposite  member.  And  the  one  leg,  or  the  one  arm, 
of  the  maimed  man  becomes  able  in  a  very  short  time 
to  bear  twice  as  much  weight,  or  to  lift  twice  as  much 
weight,  as  it  did  or  could  when  it  had  a  fellow  member 
to  help  it  in  almost  every  action.  It  is  not  at  all  im- 
probable that  this  same  "  Vicariousness  "  exists  in  the 
brain,  and  that  the  centres  of  one  side  (when  those  of 
the  other  are  removed  or  destroyed)  find  or  build  new 
fibres  of  connexion  to  the  other  side  of  the  organ.  And 
that  these  fibres  in  some  way  become  continuous  with 
the  efferent  nerve  on  the  disabled  side. 

Some  very  remarkable  operations  have  been  per- 
formed on  animals  which  may  hereafter  produce  very 
important  results.  Two  dogs  have  been  etherised  at 
the  same  time,  and  identical  portions  taken  from  the 
brain  of  each  dog  and  transferred  to  that  of  the  other 
dog.  These  portions  of  brain-substance,  thus  trans- 
planted, have  flourished  in  the  new  soil  and  have  at 
least  caused  no  disintegration  of  brain  action.  It  is  as 
yet  a  problem  as  to  whether  the  brain  tissue  of  lower 
animals  can  be  transferred  to  the  brain  of  man,  and 
whether  after  it  has  established  itself  in  its  new  site  it 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4435 


will  properly  perform  its  functions.  The  motor  cen- 
tres of  animals  are  the  only  ones  which  can  be  so  trans- 
planted, for  thus  far  the  sense-centres  of  animals  have 
not  been  found  to  be  identical  with  those  of  man. 

In  closing,  I  would  refer  to  the  verj'  remarkable 
case  reported  by  Dr.  McEwen,  of  Glasgow.  I'his  was 
that  of  a  man  who  suffered  from  "psj'chical  blindness," 
or  "  mind  blindness."  His  sense  of  sight  was  not  im- 
paired, but  his  mind  was  not  able  to  translate  what  he 
saw  into  thought.  Dr.  McEwen  located  the  lesion  in 
the  "angular  gyrus,"  and  found,  on  removing  a  button 
of  bone,  that  a  portion  of  the  inner  layer  of  this  bone 
had  become  detached  and  was  pressing  on  the  brain. 
One  corner  of  it  was  imbedded  in  the  brain-substance. 
The  button  of  bone  was  removed,  and  after  detaching 
the  splinter,  replaced  in  its  proper  position.  The  man 
recovered  his  health  and  all  his  faculties. 


SCHOLAROMANIA. 

A  SCHOLAR  is  a  man  who  has  been  trained  in  schools 
and  devotes  his  life  to  the  investigation  of  subjects, 
which,  when  firmly  established,  are  again  to  be  taught 
in  schools.  Thus  the  word  is  applicable,  not  so  much 
to  students  of  the  natural  sciences,  as  to  men  of  let- 
ters, to  historians,  and  philologians  passing  their  lives 
in  the  studj-,  the  classroom,  and  library.  The  pro- 
fession of  the  scholar  is  one  of  the  very  highest  and 
noblest,  for  scholarly  research  deals  mainly  with 
mental  facts  which  are,  as  it  were,  the  essence  of  life: 
the  records  of  the  past,  the  old  languages,  and  the 
historical  facts  of  bygone  ages  embody  the  very  souls 
of  our  ancestors. 

While  our  opinion  of  a  genuine  scholar  can  scarcely 
be  too  high,  we  frequently  meet  in  life  scholars  that 
are  warped.  There  are  schoolmasters  who  cannot 
understand  how  their  model  pupils  prove  failures  in 
life,  while  the  bad  boy  makes  a  great  hit ;  and  there 
are  professors  whose  learnedness  consists  in  a  kind  of 
mental  library-dust  that  has  settled  upon  their  souls. 
Wilhelm  Busch,  the  German  humorist,  calls  a  certain 
type  of  historians,  scavengers  who  collect  the  otfal  of 
the  past. 

It  is  the  constant  indoor  life,  the  lack  of  acquain- 
tance with  the  real  needs  of  practical  life,  and  the  close 
confinement  to  a  special  mode  of  work,  that  tends  to 
make  scholars  one-sided,  and  if  professional  pride  and 
personal  vanity  are  added,  a  peculiar  disease  originates, 
which,  in  one  word,  we  call  sckolaronuuiia. 

The  main  tenor  of  scholaromania  is  a  dim  notion, 
not  always  clearl}-  pronounced,  that  the  world  exists 
for  the  sake  of  the  scholar,  and  not  the  scholar  for  the 
sake  of  the  world.  The  scholaromaniac  declares  that 
science  must  be  pursued  for  science's  sake  alone, 
textual  criticism  being  an  end  in  itself.  No  intellectual 
aspirations  have  a  title  to  existence,  except  scholarly 


inquiries,  and  all  books  that  are  not  historical  or  philo^ 
logical  are  worthless  chaff. 

Genuine  scholars  are  rarely  scholaromaniacs,  for 
their  horizon  is  not  limited  ;  they,  as  a  rule,  have  seen 
the  world  that  lies  beyond  the  classroom,  and  they 
know  that  scholarship  is  not  an  end  in  itself,  but  that 
it  serves  some  definite  and  very  important  purpose  in 
the  world  at  large.  It  is  exactly  this  insight  in  which 
the  scholaromaniac  is  lacking. 

Such  were  my  thoughts  when  I  read  a  review  by 
Prof.  J.  Estlin  Carpenter  on  T/w  Gos/e/  of  Buddha. 
Professor  Carpenter  is  a  scholar,  but  he  apparently 
suffers  from  scholaromania,  for  he  condemns  the  book 
because  the  treatment  of  the  subject  is  not  in  his  line  ; 
it  is  neither  philological  nor  historical,  but  serves  an- 
other purpose.  Since  the  book  does  not  comply  with 
the  demands  of  the  scholarly  Professor,  he  puts  it  down 
as  worthless  "stuff." 

Here  is  his  critique  of  The  Gospel  of  Buddha,  which 
appeared  in  the  latest  issue  of  The  New  World: 

"  This  volume  belongs  to  a  class  of  well-meaning  but  wholly 
misleading  books.  The  compiler  has  read  diligently,  but  without 
any  perception  of  the  historical  development  of  the  religion  which 
he  endeavors  to  exhibit.  In  a  series  of  one  hundred  sections  he 
attempts  to  portray  the  life  and  the  teaching  of  the  Buddha.  The 
bulk  of  his  material,  so  he  informs  his  readers  in  the  preface,  '  is 
derived  from  the  old  Buddhist  Canon'  E\  ery  student  of  Bud- 
dhism knows  that  the  sacred  collections  vary  in  different  coun- 
tries, not  only  in  bulk,  but  in  age  and  in  doctrine.  Of  this  fun- 
damental fact  Dr.  Carus  takes  no  notice,  though  he  admits  the 
existence  in  Buddhism  of  innumerable  sects-  They  are  distin 
guished,  he  says,  mainly  by  peculiar  superstitions  or  ceremonial 
rites  ;  he  ignores  the  far  more  significant  differences  of  metaphys- 
ical and  ontological  speculation.  Accordingly,  he  places  side  bv 
S'de  extracts  from  books  separated  by  hundreds  of  years  in  date 
and  by  still  wider  intervals  of  philosophic  thought,  as  though  they 
all  alike  represented  the  teachings  of  the  founder  of  Buddhism. 
He  describes  this  process  ss  the  arrangement  of  the  'Gospel  of 
Buddha'  into  harmonious  and  systematic  form,  and  claims  to  take 
up  '  an  ideal  position  upon  which  all  true  Buddhists  may  stand  as 
upon  common  ground.'  Who  would  accept  a  Gospel  of  Christ 
compiled  from  writings  of  the  first,  fourth,  and  thirteenth  centu- 
ries, let  us  say,  of  our  era  ?  A  table  of  reference  at  the  close  of 
the  volume  does  indeed  enable  the  student  to  track  most  of  the 
passages  cited  ;  but  there  is  no  indication  that  the  sources  thus 
enumerated  are  of  the  most  diverse  origin,  and  in  many  cases  des- 
titute of  all  historical  value  for  the  purpose  for  which  they  are 
here  employed  ;  and  nothing  can  justify  the  strange  amalgamation 
of  fragments  of  the  most  various  ages  within  the  same  section,  as 
though  they  represented  continuous  teaching.  Nor  does  it  seem 
to  us  excusable  to  prefix  pious  hymns  or  add  explanatory  tags  of 
the  compiler's  own  composition  in  a  book  that  professes  to  be  a 
historical  summary.  Who  that  knows  anything  of  the  real  signifi 
cance  of  Gotama's  teaching  can  tolerate  such  stuff  as  this  :  '  Bud- 
dha is  the  truth;  let  Buddha  dwell  in  your  heart.  That  of  your 
soul  which  cannot  or  will  not  develop  into  Buddha  must  perish, 
for  it  is  mere  illusion  and  unreal.  You  can  m-ake  your  soul  im- 
mortal by  filling  it  with  truth.' 

■'The  compiler  has  been  struck  with  the  ethical  nobleness  of 
many  Buddhist  sayings.  His  spirit  is  excellent,  but  his  method  is 
execrable. " 


4436 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


It  is  a  matter  of  course  that  the  picture  I  have 
drawn  in  The  Gospel  of  Buddha  is  not  historical  in  the 
sense  in  which  the  word  "  historical "  is  commonly 
used.  The  collection  which  I  have  made  is  not  re- 
stricted to  "the  teachings  of  the  founder  of  Bud- 
dhism," and  I  have  made  no  attempt  at  critically  sift- 
ing that  which  is  well  authenticated  from  that  which 
is  legendary.  That  may  be  madness,  in  the  eyes  of  a 
scholaromaniac,  but  there  is  method  in  it ;  and  Pro- 
fessor Carpenter  should  have  found  it  out  himself. 
I  am  not  quite  so  ignorant  as  Professor  Carpenter 
thinks,  and  possess  sufficient  scholarly  training  to  dis- 
tinguish between  historically  reliable  and  unreliable 
accounts.  But  I  embodied  with  good  purpose  much 
that  a  historian  would  have  to  reject.  And  yet  I  can 
claim  that  the  picture  of  Buddha,  as  it  appears  in  The 
Gospel  of  Buddha,  is  not  unhistorical.  It  is  historical 
in  a  higher  sense  of  the  word,  for  it  represents  Bud- 
dha, such  as  a  tradition  of  two  thousand  years  has 
moulded  him,  as  he  lives  to-day  in  the  minds  of  some 
of  his  noblest  followers. 

Buddha,  such  as  he  lives  in  the  imagination  of  the 
world,  is  a  prince,  the  son  of  a  powerful  king;  but  in 
fact,  Gautama  Shakyamuni  who  is  now  worshipped  as 
Buddha,  was  the  son  of  a  wealthy  land  owner.  In  the 
same  way  Christ  is  David's  son,  and  any  Gospel  which 
would  represent  him  as  the  presumable  son  of  a  Gali- 
lean carpenter  of  Nazareth,  as  probably  being  of  very 
humble  ancestry,  would  not  depict  Christ  such  as  he 
lives  in  Christian  tradition.  There  is  a  difference  be- 
tween Christ  and  Jesus,  and  there  is  the  same  differ- 
ence between  Buddha  and  Gautama. 

The  scholarly  Professor  does  not  appear  to  be  at 
home  in  the  textual  criticism  of  the  New  Testament. 
The  Gospel  according  to  St.  John,  which  must  be  recog- 
nised as  genuinely  Christian,  possesses  little  historical 
value  ;  it  does  not  describe  Jesus  of  Nazareth  as  he 
really  lived  and  moved  about.  Yet,  in  spite  of  Pro- 
fessor Carpenter's  opinion  that  no  one  would  accept  a 
Gospel  of  Christ  compiled  without  historical  criti(]ue, 
(for  that  is  the  purport  of  his  remark),  the  Gospel  ac- 
cording to  St.  John  has  become  the  most  valuable  sa- 
cred book  of  the  Cliurch  ;  and  deservedly  so,  for,  in- 
deed, it  possesses  an  exceedingly  high  historical  value 
in  so  far  as  it  helped  to  make  history.  It  depicts,  not 
Jesus,  but  Christ,  such  as  he  lived  in  the  hearts  of  the 
early  Christians  of  Asia  Minor. 

The  Old  Testament,  the  Gospel  of  the  Israelites, 
is  actually  ' '  compiled  from  writings  separated  by  hun- 
dreds of  years  in  date,"  and  embodies  a  great  variety 
of  philosophical  thoughts,  which  are  often  not  even 
harmonious. 

Any  one  who  wishes  to  read  a  Christian  Gospel 
should  read  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  John,  but  any 
one  who  wishes  to  know  the  historical  facts  concerning 


Jesus  must  study  the  works  of  those  theological  schol- 
ars who  have  critically  investigated  the  subject  ;  the 
most  comprehensive  statement  being  Prof.  H.  J.  Holtz- 
mann's  text-books  for  students  of  the  New  Testament. ^ 
In  the  same  way,  any  one  who  wishes  to  know  the 
historical  facts  about  Gautama  Shakyamuni  must  con- 
sult Oldenberg's  well-known  book  on  Buddha  or  Rhys 
Davids's  Manual  of  Buddhism.  And  any  one  who  wants 
to  read  the  sources  of  the  old  Buddhism  must  study 
the  old  Pali  texts,  which,  with  the  co-operation  of  Pro- 
fessor Carpenter,  become  every  year  more  accessible 
to  the  Western  world. 

Professor  Lanman  sent  me  a  few  months  ago  ad- 
vance sheets  of  a  book  on  Buddha  and  Buddhism,  by 
Henry  Clarke  Warren,  which  contains  the  literal  trans- 
lation of  such  passages  as  I  utilised  in  The  Gospel  of 
Buddha,  and  I  advise  every  one  who  has  read  The  Gos- 
pel of  Buddha  to  acquire  Mr.  Warren's  book.  Mr. 
Warren's  book  is  in  many  respects  similar  to  The  Gos- 
pel of  Buddha,  but  it  differs  in  one  point  which  is  of 
paramount  importance  :   it  serves  another  purpose. 

On  reading  the  original  records  and  comparing 
them  with  my  version  in  The  Gospel  of  Buddha,  it  will 
be  found  that  while  I  remained  faithful  to  the  spirit 
of  the  founder  of  Buddhism,  and  while,  at  the  same 
time,  I  considered  the  evolution  of  his  doctrine  in 
both  schools,  the  Hinayana,  so  called,  and  the  Ma- 
hayfina,  I  introduced  certain  changes,  which,  slight 
though  they  may  be,  are  not  without  consequence. 
They  were  made  with  a  definite  purpose,  and  are 
neither  errors  nor  adulterations.  They  are  purifica- 
tions, pointing  out  the  way  of  reform  in  the  line  of  a 
higher  development  of  Buddhism,'-  which  is  actually 
represented  in  Buddhistic  countries,  in  the  same  way 
as  there  have  always  been  advocates  of  reform  and 
progress  in  the  various  Christian  churches.  The  Gospel 
of  Buddha  is  not  a  representation  of  Buddhism  in  its 
cradle,  but  it  represents  Buddhism  Up  to  D.ate,  in  its 
nobler  possibilities.  This  was  my  aim,  and  if  I  failed 
in  it,  let  the  critic  speak  out  boldly.  But  there  is  no 
sense  in  denouncing  the  book  because  it  is  not  such 
a  work  as  Professor  Carpenter  would  have  written. 

No  better  evidence,  that  I  have  succeeded  at  least 
to  some  extent,  in  my  aspiration,  could  be  given  than 
the  fact  that  a  Japanese  edition  of  The  Gospel  of  Bud- 
dha, translated  bj'  T.  Suzuki,  appeared  almost  imme- 
diately after  the  publication  of  the  English  edition.^ 

\  Hand-Coin}nent  ir  ziint  Neitcn  Tfsiitmciit,  containing  Synopiiker,  and 
A/'Osictgcschichte,  and  Lrhrlniclt  dey  historiscli-kritiscllen  Eitlleitltng  in  das 
A'euc  Testament,  tlie  former  reviewed  in  Vol.  II,  No.  2,  the  latter  in  Vol.  III. 
No.  I,  of  The  Monist. 

2  For  a  brief  account  on  the  reform  movement  of  the  Japanese  Buddhism 
see  Busse,  Mitteilungen  der  Deutsclien  GeseUschaft  fur  Natuy-  und  I'olker- 
kiinde  Osiasiens  in  Tokio,  50.  Heft,  pages  439-512. 

■TWhiie  going  to  press,  I  am  informed  that  Mr.  Kaiiichi  Ohara,  of  Otsu, 
Omi,  editor  of  the  Ski-Do  Kivai-Ho-Koku,  whicli  means  "Journal  of  the  So- 
ciety for  the  Propagation  of  the  Doctrine  of  Enlightenment,"  has  undertaken 
to  translate  The  Gospel  of  Buddha  into  Chinese. 


THE     OPEN     COUKX. 


44  3  > 


H.  R.  H.  Prince  Chandradat  Chudhadharu,  the  cho- 
sen delegate  of  Siamese  Buddhism  at  the  World's  Re- 
ligious Parliament,  writes  on  the  receipt  of  advance 
sheets  of  the  book  : 

",  ..As  regards  the  contents  of  the  book,  and  as  far  as  I 
could  see,  it  is  one  of  the  best  Buddhist  scriptures  ever  published. 
Those  .vho  wish  to  know  the  life  of  Buddha  and  the  spirit  of  his 
dharma  may  be  recommended  to  read  this  work  which  is  so  ably 
edited  that  it  comprises  almost  all  knowledge  of  Buddhism." 

The  Malid-bvdin  Journal  q{  Calcutta,  edited  by  H. 
Dharmapala  and  representing  Cejlonese  Buddhism, 
republished  a  number  of  chapters  from  The  Gospel  of 
Buddha  and  called  attention  to  it  in  editorial  notices; 
while  a  Japanese  priest  of  rank,  the  Right  Rev.  Shaku 
Soj'en  of  Kamakura,  writes  in  an  appreciative  letter  : 

"  Your  valuable  book  rightly  claims  to  be  the  mother  of  Truth. 
We,  the  followers  of  Buddha,  nay  of  the  Truth,  cannot  but  sym- 
pathise with  your  noble  aspirations." 

Prof.  Carpenter  seems  to  imagine  that  the  past  ex- 
ists only  for  the  historian,  and  the  old  Pali  texts  have 
no  other  use  than  to  be  edited  and  translated,  or  criti- 
cally commented  upon.  To  him  the  records  of  the 
past  are  mere  material  for  philological  exercises.  To 
me,  while  writing  The  Gospel  of  Jh/ddha,  the  editing 
of  the  Digha  Nikaya  and  other  Buddhist  Suttas  is 
mere  material  for  a  practical  kind  of  work  which  finds 
its  purpose  in  the  religious  needs  of  the  living  present. 

The  hod-carrier  hoots  at  the  mason  ;  for  he  thinks 
that  hod-carrying  alone  is  legitimate  work. 

I  have  expressly  declared  in  the  preface  that  "the 
present  volume  is  not  designed  to  contribute  to  the 
solution  of  historical  problems,"  but  it  "has  been 
written  to  set  the  reader  athinking  on  the  religious 
problems  of  to-day" \  it  is  intended  "to  become  a  fac- 
tor in  the  formation  of  the  future,"  and  the  hope  is 
expressed  that  "it  will  serve  both  Buddhists  and 
Christians  as  a  help  to  penetrate  further  into  the  spirit 
of  their  faith,  so  as  to  see  its  full  width,  breadth,  and 
depth." 

In  consideration  of  these  statements  made  in  the 
preface  of  the  book,  it  is  more  than  a  gross  neglect,  it 
is  a  misrepresentation  on  the  part  of  my  critic,  to  de- 
clare that  TJie  Gospel  of  Buddha  "professes  to  be  a 
historical  summary." 

How  often  has  the  author  of  the  fourth  Gospel  been 
reviled,  because  his  work  is  not  historical  in  the  sense 
which  we  expect  of  the  books  of  modern  historians! 
But  how  unfair  is  the  reproach!  St.  John  (or  whoso- 
ever wrote  the  fourth  Gospel)  was  no  historian  and  had 
no  intention  of  writing  history.  He  told  the  life  of  Jesus 
in  the  light  of  Philo's  Logos-conception.  He  cared 
little  for  the  correctness  or  critical  verification  of  de- 
tails, but  he  was  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  Christian- 
it}',  which  he  wedded  to  the  philosophy  of  his  age.      I 


have  endeavored  (as  stated  in  The  Gospel  of  Buddha) 
"to  treat  the  material  about  in  the  same  way  as  the 
author  of  the  fourth  Gospel  of  the  New  Testament  used 
the  accounts  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,"  the  sole  difference 
being  that  the  author  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John  im- 
personates one  of  his  favorite  saints,  which  was  quite 
a  common  method  in  the  time  in  which  he  lived,  while 
I  have  avoided  anything  that  might  appear  as  a  mys- 
tification of  the  public,  and  have  openly  given  an  ac- 
count concerning  both  the  sources  of  the  book  and  the 
purpose  for  which  it  has  been  written.  The  avoidance 
of  a  critical  attitude  in  the  Christian  Gospel  writers  is 
instinctive,  while  in  ni}'  Buddhistic  Gospel  it  is  de- 
liberate. 

What  shall  we  say  of  a  reviewer  who  gives  a  false 
coloring  to  the  character  of  a  book,  disregarding  all 
that  has  been  said  in  its  preface,  and  then  condemns 
it,  because  it  is  not  what  he  wants  it  to  be,  by  speaking 
of  the  book  as  "such  stuff,"  and  calling  its  method  of 
presentation  "execrable"?  The  review  is  un worth)' of 
the  dignity  of  that  noble  old  institution  in  which  Pro- 
fessor Carpenter  is  employed  as  a  teacher  ;  it  is  un- 
worthy of  genuine  scholarship,  and  unworthy  also  of 
the  magazine  in  which  it  has  been  published. 

But  obviously  Professor  Carpenter's  strictures  sim- 
ply prove  his  own  miscomprehension,  for  which  I  can 
find  no  other  excuse  than  the  myopic  pedantry  of  a 
scholaronianiac,  who,  unacquainted  with  the  real  prob- 
lems of  life,  imagines  that  no  books  on  the  past  can 
be  written  except  historico-critical  investigations. 

P.  c. 

CORRESPONDENCE. 

"THE  OPEN  COURT"  DENOUNCED  AS  LEARNED 

NONSENSE. 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Open  Court  : 

The  wisdom  of  this  world  is  runing  mad.  "  Truth,"  said  the 
great  Voltaire,  "  has  inalienable  rights.  Just  as  it  is  never  out  of 
season  to  search  for  it,  so  it  can  never  be  out  of  season  to  defend 
it."  I  wish  to  say,  the  great  mass  of  humanity  are  the  recipients 
of  profound  ignorance.  And,  many  of  those  who  are  endevoring 
to  enlighten  the  common  heard,  are  themselves  the  embodiment 
of  ignorance.  I  am  tired  and  weary  of  so  much  learned  nonsense; 
but  what  dose  it  avail  ?  I  want  you  to  be  candid  with  me,  and 
pleas  explain  why  you  publish  Tlie  Open  Court ;  is  it  to  lead  men 
out  of  ignorance  into  absilute  knowledge,  or  is  it  to  desseminate 
ignorance  ?  [i]  In  fact,  what  do  you  mean  by  such  garbage  and 
stuff  as  the  following  ;  "  We  yearn  for  life,  and  we  are  anximis  to 
insure  the  immortality  of  our  soul. "[2]  I  would  ask;  have  you 
not  life  already  ?  If  so,  why  yearn  for  that  which  you  already 
possess?  We  read  in  the  "Book  of  fable"  "  He  that  believeth 
on  me,  though  he  wer  dead,  )et  shall  he  live."  Then  again, 
the  wise  man  said:  'consider  the  estates  of  the  sons  of  men;' 
"For  that  which  befalleth  the  sons  of  men  befalleth  beasts: 
even  one  thing  befalleth  them  :  as  the  one  dieth  so  dieth  the 
other  ;  yea,  they  have  all  one  breath  ;  so  that  a  man  hath  no 
preeminence  above  a  beast ;  for  all  is  vanity.  All  go  unto  one 
place,     all   are   of  the   dust,    and   all   turn    to   dust  again.     Who 


4438 


THK     OPEN     COLTRX. 


knoweth  the  spirit  of  man  that  goeth  upward,  and  the  spirit  of 
beast  that  goeth  downward  to  the  earth  ?  (The  fool  of  course) 
(Eccl.  iii,  19-21).  For  to  him  that  is  joined  to  all  the  living  there 
is  hope  ;  for  a  living  dog  is  better  than  a  dead  lion.  For  the  liv- 
ing know  that  they  shall  die  ;  but  the  dead  know  not  anything, 
neither  have  they  any  more-  a  rdcari/ ;  for  the  iiwnioyy  of  them  is 
forgotten.  Also  their  love,  and  their  hatred,  and  their  envy  is 
now  perished  ;  neither  have  they  any  more  a  portion  forever  in 
anything  that  is  done  under  the  sun  "  (ix,  4-6). [3]  Do  you  be 
Have  this  ?  What  do  you  wish  to  convey  by  the  phrase  :  ' '  Set  me 
as  a  seal  upon  "  thine  liearl"  ^s  a  seal  upon  thine  arm  "  etc.  Is 
the  "  heart  "  the  organ  of  individuality,  or,  is  it  the  organ  by  which 
the  blood  is  regulated  in  its  flow  through  the  arterial  and  venus 
system  ?  You  say  we  are  "  set  as  seals  upon  the  heart  and  as  seals 
upon  the  arm  of  Him  to  whom  we  all  shall  be  gathered  togeother 
with  our  fathers,  and  in  whom  we  continue  to  be  "after  death" 
as  living  citizens  of  the  Great  Spirit  Empire,  of  that  spiritual  All- 
being  who  represents  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  which 
is  being  built  up  in  the  hearts  of  men."  Let  me  ask  you  here  with 
all  honesty  and  kandor,  can  a  kingdom  be  built  up  in  the  heart  of 
men  ?  Is  the  heart  the  organ  and  seat  of  intelligence,  sympathy, 
love  or  emotions  ?  [4]  Pleas  answer  this,  and  state  how  much 
science,  wisdom  and  learning,  it  requires  to  think  and  pen  such 
consimate  nonsense.  How  much  will  the  readers  of  The  Open 
Court  learn — how  much  will  they  be  benefited  by  such  logic  as  you 
have  dealt  out  in  the  foregoing?  Once  more,  whare  is  heaven, 
and  what  dose  heaven  mean  in  the  strick  sense  of  the  term  ?  Is 
it  not  an  abstrack  noun,  meaning  in  gramatical  parlence,  a  condi- 
tion and  nothing  more  ?  You  say,  "Let  facts  speak,  I  say  so 
too.  But  how  much  facts  do  we  find  in  your  statements  ?  Noth- 
ing but  wild  and  fare  fetched  fancies  of  a  human  mind,  falsely 
cultivated  in  modern  lore.  Do  you  or  any  living  human  being  ab- 
silutely  know  any  thing  about  the  immortality  of  man  ?  If  you 
do,  let  us  hear  or  have  the  facts,  and  not  fancies  generated  in  idle 
speculation  and  vain  hypothesis. 

Yours  for  the  love  of  truth,  and  the  advancement  of  human 
wisdom.  S.  Murphy,  M.  D. 

P.  S.  I  hope  you  will  publish  this  communication  and  make 
your  reply.  If  I  am  in  an  error,  I  hope  to  be  set  right.  Criti- 
cism, is  the  mother  of  sound  wisdom.  Let  us  lay  aside  heathem- 
ism  and  all  false  phraisiology.  Let  us  lay  the  foundations  for  a 
higher  and  nobler  tipe  of  mankind.  S.  M. 

Atchison,  Kans. 

[i.  We  publish  The  Open  Court  to  set  people  athinking  on  the 
religious  problem  and  trust  that  some  of  our  readers  will  find,  as 
we  do,  a  solid  basis  for  religion  in  science. 

2.  By  "  immortality  "  we  understand  the  continuance  of  life. 
It  is  quite  true  that  we  have  life  now,  but  having  life  we  are  anx- 
ious to  preserve  it  in  that  form  which  we  have  in  the  course  of 
evolution  laboriously  obtained. 

3.  The  Solomonic  passage  concerning  the  common  fate  of 
beasts  and  men  after  death  is  well  known  to  us,  and  we  have 
quoted  it  in  an  article  on  "Immortality  and  Science."' 

As  to  the  continuance  of  our  loves  and  hates,  our  aspirations 
and  ideals,  and  all  those  features  of  our  being  which  constitute 
what  is  called  soul,  we  differ  from  Ecclesiastes.  The  dispositions 
of  our  spiritual  existence  are  transferred  to  posterity  by  heredity, 
example,  and  education.  They  remain  a  factor  in  the  world  of 
life  and  constitute  that  immanent  immortality  which  can  be  de- 
nied only  by  those  who  misunderstand  the  proposition  or  are  blind 
to  the  facts  upon  which  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  based.  Evo- 
lution is  possible  only  through  the  hoarding  up  of  the  souls  of  the 
past  and  utilising  the  experiences  and  adaptations  of  bygone  ages 
for  the  struggles  of  the  living  present. 

1  7"//t-  Open  Court,  p.  3023,  republished  in  Homilies  of  Science,  p.  175. 


4.  Our  correspondent  announces  himself  on  his  letterheads 
and  envelopes  as  a  doctor  and  director  of  an  "Eleclro-Hydro  Mes- 
sopathic  and  American  Health  Institute,"  that  "  opens  the  doors 
to  health."  This  may  be  the  reason  for  his  objection  to  the  alle- 
goric expression  "heart"  in  the  sense  of  "sentiment." 

Dr.  Murphy's  correspondence  would  have  lost  a  great  deal  of 
its  originality  if  we  had  altered  his  orthography.  So  we  let  him 
write  "absilute,"  "consimate,"  "  strick,"  etc.  He  has  read  and 
returned  the  proof. — Ed.] 


IMMORTALITY. 

BY  VIROE. 

Return  to  the  dust  whence  thou  camest ; 

O,  body  of  mine  to  the  dead  ; 
O,  taper  that  flarest  and  flamest. 

To  end  with  the  fuel  that  fed. 

Restore,  O  my  soul,  the  lost  jewel  ; 

Arise  from  the  gloom  of  the  dead ; 
The  taper  that  ends  with  its  fuel 

Shall  live  in  the  light  it  has  shed. 


NOTES. 

The  latest  statistics  of  India  show  that  among  the  inhabitants 
of  the  country  there  is  one  convicted  criminal  to  every  274  Euro- 
pean Christians,  to  every  509  Euro-Asiatics  (the  children  of  Euro- 
pean fathers  and  native  mothers),  to  every  yog  native  Christians, 
to  every  1361  Hindu  Brahmans,  and  to  every  37S7  Buddhists.  Ac- 
cordingly, as  a  matter  of  fact,  European  Christians  furnish  com- 
paratively the  greatest  amount  of  criminals  and  Buddhists  the 
fewest. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,   Editor 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION. 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 


N.  B.  Binding  Cases  for  single  yearly  volumes  of  The  Open  Court  will 
be  supplied  on  order.     Price,  75  cents  each. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  395. 

RECENT    BRAIN    SURGERY  IN   ITS  PSYCHOLOGI- 
CAL BEARINGS.     S.  Millington  Miller 4431 

SCHOLAROM ANIA.     Editor 4435 

CORRESPONDENCE. 

7'he    Open     Court    Denounced    as    Learned    Nonsense. 
[With  Editorial  Comment  ]      S.  Murphy,  M.  D 4437 

POETRY. 

Immortality.     Viroe 4438 

NOTES 4438 


A.- 


The  Open  Court 


A   WEEKLY   JOURNAL 

DEVOTED   TO   THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  396.     (Vol.  IX.-13  ) 


CHICAGO,   MARCH   28,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
/  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.— Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


THE  CELLULAR  SOUL.' 

BY   PROF.     ERNST  HAECKEL. 
THE   PHYLOGF.XV   OF  THE   CEl.LSOUl.. 

The  physiological  natural  phenomena  that  are  in- 
cluded under  the  notion  of  "soul"  and  "psychical 
activities"  are  of  unusual  phylogenetic  interest  in  the 
protist  kingdom,  not  only  as  touching  comparative 
psychology,  but  as  bearing  also  on  the  fundamental 
problems  of  biology  generally.  Whereas  in  man  and 
the  higher  animals,  owing  to  a  primeval  phylogenetic 
division  of  labor  among  the  cells,  the  soul  appears  as 
a  function  of  the  nervous  system  ;  in  the  protists,  on  the 
other  hand,  as  with  the  plants,  it  is  still  associated 
with  thp  plasma  of  the  cell  as  a  whole.  Special  tissues 
and  organs  of  the  psychic  activity  are  here  as  yet  not 
difierentiated.  In  individual  groups  only,  especially 
in  the  ciliates,  which  are  very  highly  perfected  protozoa, 
has  the  ergonomy'-'of  the  plastidule  within  the  unicel- 
lular organism  been  sufficiently  developed  phylogeneti- 
cally  as  to  justify  calling  separate  portions  of  them 
psychical  organella'':  for  example,  to  mention  only 
striking  instances,  the  differentiated  motor  organoids 
of  the  Algetta  and  Infusoria  (whips  and  hairs ),  the  myo- 
phane^  fibrillar  of  the  higher  ciliates,  the  tentacular 
protrusions  or  feelers  of  many  infusorians,  the  eye- 
spots  and  chromatella  ■'  of  the  colored  protists  as  organs 
sensitive  to  light,  etc. 

Although  the  fundamental  psychical  phenomena  of 
the  protist  kingdom  are  throughout  unconscious,  never- 
theless, by  critical  comparison  a  long  succession  of 
phylogenetic  stages  of  development  may  be  distin- 
guished in  the  different  groups.  This  is  as  true  of  the 
motor  phenomena  (unconscious  volitional  processes) 
as  of  the  sensory  processes,  likewise  unconscious, 
which  we  reason  back  to  from  the  comparative  obser- 
vation of  the  first-named.      When   motor  phenomena 

I  From  the  new  Phytogcnic.     By  iiKpK. 

'iErgonomy,  division  of  labor. —  Tr, 

<iOrganella,  the  plural  diminutive  form  of  organ.  It  is  the  term  nearly  al- 
ways used  by  Professor  Haeckel ;  but  in  this  article  the  word  organoid  will  be 
used  to  denote  primitive  and  imperfect  apparatus  that  do  not  deserve  tlie 
name  of  organ.  — '/"r. 

^Myopkane,  muscular. —  Tr. 

oChrofnatelia,  the  pigmentary  i''>'<i7;«/cj  in  the  coloring  matter  of  protists  as 
distinguished  from  the  chromatophores  which  should  be  employed  to  desig- 
nate vi\iO\G  pigment  cells. — TV. 


are  not  observable,  as  is  the  case  with  most  protophyta' 
then,  we  can  draw  only  very  uncertain  conclusions  re- 
specting the  quality  and  quantity  of  their  sensory  func- 
tions. Formidable  obstacles  are  offered  here  by  the 
closed  solid  cellular  membrane  which,  as  in  the  meta- 
phyta,'-'  often  prevents  a  reflex  motion  of  the  plasma 
from  becoming  visible  as  a  change  of  form. 

Still,  critical  comparison  readily  shows  that  the 
psychological  deportment  of  even  vegetable  protists  is 
not  essentially  different  from  that  of  animal  protists. 
The  plasmodomous  Masiigota  show  exactly  the  same 
phenomena  of  sensation  and  motion  as  the  plasmo- 
phagous  Flagcllata  which  have  sprung  from  them  by 
metasitism  ;  and  the  same  is  true  of  the  zoospores  of 
Meletliallia  and  Siphoiidv.  The  Bacteria  and  Ciiyfri- 
diiia  (still  commonly  regarded  as  "primitive  plants") 
show  in  their  lively  motions  and  sensations  more  of 
the  animal  character  than  the  closely  allied  Gregarince 
and  Ama-bina  (which  are  usually  regarded  as  "primi- 
tive animals ").  Furthermore,  in  most  protists  the 
motor  state  {kinesis)  alternates  with  a  motionless  state 
of  repose  {^paulosis) ;  in  the  latter  condition  all  protists 
appear  as  much  like  plants  as  in  the  former  they  ap- 
pear like  animals,  and  this  holds  true  of  protozoa  as 
well  as  of  protophyta. 

The  general  biological  conclusions  to  which  the 
phylogeny  of  the  cellular  soul  of  the  protists  leads  us, 
supply  the  following  foundations  for  a  monistic  ps)'- 
chology;  (i)  the  psychical  activity  of  the  protists, 
which  in  the  lowest  protophyta  expresses  itself  in  the 
simplest  conceivable  form,  and  in  the  most  perfected 
protozoa  (the  Ci/ia/a)  in  a  highly  developed  form,  anal- 
ogous to  that  of  the  higher  animals,  is  in  all  cases  a 
function  of  the  plasma.  (2)  A  continuous  and  unin- 
terrupted ascending  succession  of  phylogenetic  devel- 
opmental stages  connects  the  simplest  protist  forms  of 
the  cellular  soul  with  its  most  highly  developed  pro- 
tist forms.  (3)  Similarly,  the  psychic  life  of  the  lower 
histones,  nietaphyta  as  well  as  metazoa,  differs  only 
quantitatively  from  that  of  their  protist  ancestors. 
(4)  In  the  lower  protists  the  psychical  processes  of  the 
homogeneous  plasma-body  are  identical  with  the  chem- 

1  Protophyta,  primitive  plants,  uyticclltilar  organisms  with  vegetable  meta- 
bolism.—  Tr. 

IMetaphyta.  higher  plants,  jiculticrllular  organisms  with  vegetable  meta- 
bolism.—  Tr. 


4440 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


ical  molecular  processes,  which  ditter  only  quantita- 
tively from  chemical  processes  in  inorganic  nature. 
(5)  Consequently,  the  psychical  processes  in  the  pro- 
tist  kingdom  form  the  bridge  which  connects  the  chem- 
ical processes  of  inorganic  nature  with  the  psjchic  life 
of  the  highest  animals  and  of  man. 

PHVLOGENV   OF  'rHF,  MOTOR  ORGANOIHS. 

The  motor  phenomena  observable  in  the  protist 
organism  fall  primarily  under  two  heads — internal  and 
external  changes.  Internal  motor  phenomena  are  for 
theoretical  reasons  to  be  assumed  as  universal  in  the 
plasma  of  the  protists,  as  also  in  that  of  all  other  or- 
ganisms ;  for  the  most  important  vital  activities,  par- 
ticularly nutrition  and  metabolism,  as  also  propaga- 
tion, are  necessarily  accompanied  with  certain  local 
alterations  of  the  smallest  plasma-particles,  and  with 
displacements  of  the  plastidule.  These  internal  mo- 
tions of  the  plasma  become  visible  in  many  larger  pro- 
tists, particularly  when  the  plasma  forms  vacuoles,' 
and  is  swollen  out  by  its  copious  absorption  of  water 
into  a  foamy  bag.  The  empty  cavity  of  this  bag  or 
cyst  is  usually  traversed  by  a  reticular  framework  of 
plasma,  the  ramified  filaments  of  which  slowly  change 
their  shape  and  connexion  and  are  joined  at  one  end 
to  a  thin  parietal  layer  of  plasm  spread  out  over  the 
inner  surface  of  the  cell's  integument  and  at  the  other 
end  with  a  delicate  central  or  perikaryotic-  layer  en- 
closing the  nucleus.  Minute  granules,  ordinarily  dis- 
tributed in  large  numbers  throughout  the  plasma,  indi- 
cate the  direction  and  velocity  of  these  interior  plasma- 
streamings.  Among  protophyta  the  streamings  are 
very  distinctly  observable  in  the  large- celled  Miirra- 
cytete,  Conjugate,  and  Diatonea',  as  also  in  large  Siplio- 
iieii-.  They  appear  in  exactly  the  same  form,  among 
protozoa  in  the  larger  cells  of  the  Fungilli  as  also  in 
many  rhizopods  and  infusorians. 

Plasma-contractions,  which  are  very  abundant  in 
protists,  rest  on  the  uniform  internal  motions  of  a  vis- 
cous plasma,  which,  as  the  result  of  the  definite  mass- 
displacements  of  the  particles,  produce  at  the  same 
time  a  change  in  the  form  of  the  whole  cell.  In  the 
higher  infusoria  the  regular  repetition  of  such  contrac- 
tions in  constant  directions  produces  the  differentiation 
of  myophanes  or  muscullar  fibrilla;,  which  act  exactly 
like  the  muscles  of  metazoa  (the  stalk-muscles  of  the 
]'ortin'lhr,  the  longitudinal  muscles  of  the  Stentors, 
etc.). 

External  motor  phenomena,  usually  accompanied 
with  local  displacements  of  the  cells,  occur  very  ex- 
tensively, both  in  vegetal  and  in  animal  protists.  Or- 
dinarily they  are  produced  by  special  motor  organoids, 
which  appear  on  the  surface  of  the  cell,  and  which  are 

Wacuotcs,  little  empty  spaces  in  the  pUsnja  of  protists.  —  Tr. 
-Pfrjkaryotic,  enveloping  the  nncleiis.—  Tr. 


classified  under  the  general  name  of  plasmopodia  or 
plasma-feet:  they  are  either  sarcopods  or  vibrators. 
Motion  by  cellular  pedicles  or  footlets,  sarcants  or  sar- 
copods, is  characteristic  particularly  of  the  large  main 
class  of  RJiizopoda.  Here,  from  the  surface  of  the  cy- 
tosoma,  or  cell-body  {c  el  It- its),  issue  processes  of  vary- 
ing form,  size,  and  number:  now  simple  and  usually 
short,  blunt,  shapeless  footlets,  or  lobopods,  as  in  the 
Lo/niui.  now  branched,  long  and  thin  rootlets,  or  pseu- 
dopods,  as  in  most  Rhizopoda.  In  many  other  protists 
vegetal  and  animal,  amceboid  motions,  with  the  forma- 
tion of  lobopods,  also  occur  for  brief  periods,  particu- 
larly in  the  early  developmental  stages. 

The  second  chief  group  of  external  motor  phe- 
nomena are  termed  vibratile  motions,  being  produced 
by  the  vibrations  of  permanent  vibratile  hairs,  or  vi- 
brants,  found  at  definite  spots  on  the  surface  of  the 
cytosoma.  In  contrast  to  the  slow  and  inert  motions 
of  the  variable  sarcopods,  the  swings  of  the  vibrants 
are  generally  quick  and  energetic.  There  are  two 
classes  of  vibrants,  known  respectively  as  flagella  or 
mastigia,  (literally,  whips,  lashes)  and  cilia  (minute 
hairs).  The  flagella  are  long,  thin  filaments,  usually 
longer  than  the  cell  itself,  springing  separately  or  in 
pairs,  very  rarely  in  large  number  '  n  a  siufTle  roint 
of  the  body  of  the  cell.  Among  tue  protop  ;ytB  tlie 
flagella  are  characteristic  of  the  large  class  c.  ''•. 

of  which  the  iMas/igo/a  swim  about,  both  in  tht  ;'.'- 
ful  and  the  developed  state,  by  means  of  them,  but  the 
Mcllethallia  and  Siplwni'cc  only  in  the  youthful  state  (as 
zoospores).  Hardly  to  be  distinguished  from  the  for- 
mer, among  the  protozoa,  are  the  FlagcUata.  which 
likewise  possess  permanent  flagellate  filaments ;  in 
many  Arcliezoa,  Fiingilli,  and  Rliizopoda,  they  occur  in 
a  transitory  form  only,  in  youth  (as  zoospores).  Owing 
to  their  near  affinity,  the  vegetal  Masiigota,  and  the 
animal  Flagellala  descended  from  them,  have  of  late 
been  frequently  classed  together  as  Masiigopliora.  But 
their  relationship  to  the  true  Algir  {Metap/tyta)  and  to 
the  Sponghc  (Mf/azoa)  is  just  as  close. 

Less  extensive  and  less  important  than  flagellate 
motion,  is  ciliate  motion.  This  is  effected  by  the 
agency  of  very  numerous  short  and  minute  hairs,  or 
cilia,  which  vibrate.  It  is  chiefly  characteristic  of  that 
protozoan  group  in  which  the  animal  vital  activities 
reach  the  highest  stage  of  psychological  development 
— viz.,  in  the  Cilia  fa,  or  eyelash  infusoria.  Sometimes 
the  whole  surface  of  the  cellular  body  is  covered  with 
thousands  of  short  eye-lashes,  and  sometimes  a  por- 
tion only  of  it  is  covered.  Their  near  relatives,  the 
Acinela  (Si/ttoria),  possess  such  a  ciliate  equipment 
only  in  the  youthful  and  natatory  state.  Possibly  a 
girdle  of  such  minute  cilia  is  also  found  among  the 
Diaiomae  and  some  other  allied  protophyta  (Casmaria). 
At  least,  their  swimming  motions  are  explained  most 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4441 


easily  upon  this  assumption.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
also  possible  that  they  are  produced  by  other  physical 
causes  as  yet  unknown  to  us,  as  are  the  peculiar  vi- 
brator}' or  sliding  motions  of  many  ChromaiCic  and  Al- 
garuc. 

These  various  motor  organs  are  turned  to  very  defi- 
nite account  in  the  classification  and  phylogeny  of  the 
protists.  But  it  is  to  be  observed  that  they  frequently 
merge  into  one  another.  For  example, — and  this  often 
occurs, — the  amceboid  motion  of  certain  protists  passes 
into  flagellate  motion  (in  m3.ny  A Ige It tc  and  Rhizopodd), 
and  widely  different  motor  states  succeed  one  another 
(in  the  Myceiozoa  and  Radiolaria).  Also,  it  is  not  to 
be  forgotten  that  vibratile  epithelia  often  develop  in- 
dependently in  Metazoa,  being  flagellate  in  some  cases, 
and  ciliate  in  others. 

PHYLOGENY  OF  THE   SENSORY   ORG.\NOII>S. 

The  sensory  phenomena  of  the  protists  are  without 
exception  unconscious,  like  the  will  that  evokes  their 
motions.  All  protists  are  irritable  and  react  in  differ- 
ent degrees  upon  external  irritations.  All  are  sensi- 
tive to  mechanical,  electrical,  tliermal,  and  chemical 
excitations,  and  most  of  them  to  light.  On  the  other 
hanu,  aco'.bticai  .luli  are  apparently  not  perceived 
bv  protists.  The  reaction  of  the  plasma,  from  which 
we  draw  our  inferences  regarding  the  effect  of  the  irri- 
tation, is  generally  unconscious  motion,  or  reflex  mo- 
tion in  the  broad  sense.  But  in  addition  to  these 
motor  effects  due  to  excitations,  //(p//?/!- '  changes  of 
the  plasma  may  be  used  as  a  measure  of  the  strength 
of  the  irritations  perceived, — so,  for  example,  the  for- 
mation of  chromatella  due  to  the  effects  of  solar  light. 

In  the  lower  protists  all  plasma-particles  of  the  uni- 
cellular organism  appear  to  be  equal!}'  sensitive  ;  but 
in  the  higher  forms  more  or  less  differentiation,  or  even 
a  localisation  of  sensibility,  is  demonstrable.  The 
ectoplasm-  usually  reacts  more  energeticall}'  than  the 
endoplasm,^  and  the  latter  more  powerfully  than  the 
karyoplasm.''  In  many  protozoa  (also  in  the  similar 
motile  flagellate  cells  of  protophyta)  the  solider  ecto- 
plasm is  differentiated  into  a  sensitive  pellicle,  com- 
parable physiologicall)'  to  the  dermal  tegument  of 
metazoa,  as  the  original  universal  "sensory  organ." 
Finally,  at  definite  points  in  many  protists  are  devel- 
oped what  is  called  "sensitive  organoids,"  compara- 
ble, as  specific  sensory  apparatus,  to  the  sensilli  of 
the  metazoa.  We  may  regard  as  such,  with  more  or 
less  certaint}',  the  external  plasma-protuberances  (sar- 
cants  and  vibrants),  the  chromatella,  and  the  chemo- 
tropic  organs. 

I  Trophic,  nutritive. —  7>  . 

"i  Ectoplasm,  the  outer,  solider,  liyaline  protoplasm   of  the  celi-body. —  r» . 
^  Endoplasm,  the  inner,  softer,  granular  protoplasm  of  the  cell-bod,. —  Tr. 
^  Karyoplasm,  t\ie  original   hom'r  geneous  nucleate  substance  (roin  which 
the  nucleus  is  developed. —  Tr, 


In  all  protists  forming  plasmopods,  these  external 
motor  organs  also  probably  act  as  tactile  organoids. 
Their  sensibility,  like  their  motility,  can  be  traced 
through  a  long  succession  of  phylogenetic  stages.  At 
the  lowest  stage  stand  the  lobopodia  of  the  Aiiiahina, 
at  the  highest  the  hairlets  of  the  Ciliata.  Between 
the  two,  the  various  pseudopods  of  the  Rliizopoda  and 
the  whips  of  the  Algcttic  and  Ftagcllala  show  manifold 
gradations  both  of  sensibility  and  motility.  In  some 
highly  advanced  infusoria  (both  FlagcUata  and  Ciliata), 
are  developed,  even,  special  tactile  hairs,  which  dis- 
charge functions  similar  to  the  tentacles  of  the  meta- 
zoa. 

As  organs  of  liglit  may  be  regarded  the  green  chro- 
matella of  the  protophytes,  as  also  the  so-called  "ocu- 
lar spots"  of  many  infusoria.  That  the  former  are 
unusually  sensitive  to  light  is  at  once  evident  from 
their  significant  plasmodomous  function.  Also,  the 
red  ocelletti,  or  eye- spots,  of  many  protozoa  are  sensi- 
tive to  light,  although  their  physiological  utility  is 
still  doubtful.  In  a  few  infusoria  only  is  a  refringent 
body  associated  with  the  ocellus,  so  that  it  can  at  all 
be  reasonably  adjudged  a  cellular  eye  (  Cytoplitltalmus). 

As  clienioorganoids,  may  be  classified  all  those  lo- 
calised portions  of  the  bodies  of  protists  that  are  espe- 
cially sensitive  to  certain  chemical  excitations.  Thus, 
in  many  Mastigophora,  flagella  probably  perform  the 
functions  of  chemo-sensory  organs  as  well  as  of  motor 
and  tactile  organs.  In  the  infusoria  that  receive  their 
food  through  a  permanent  mouth-orifice,  that  orifice 
itself,  with  the  parts  about  it,  (in  the  Ciliata,  prob- 
abl}'  the  hairlets  of  the  buccal'  corona)  is  endowed 
with  a  chemotropism-  that  can  be  characterised  as 
"taste"  or  "smell."  Physiological  experiments  also 
show  that  in  the  flagellate  zoospores  of  protophyta 
(AlgcttiC),  and  in  infusoria  also,  certain  parts  of  the 
body  are  especially  sensitive  to  chemical  excitations 
(for  example,  to  the  taste  of  malic  acid),  and  ma}', 
therefore,  be  designated  chemo-organoids.  This  is 
most  distinctly  shown  in  the  copulation  of  zoospores, 
where  the  mutual  attraction  is  plainly  mediated  by 
smell,  and  consequently  can  be  characterised  as  the 
effect  of  a  special  erotic  (honotropisni. 

With  respect  to  erotic  organoids,  they  too  are  to  be 
plainly  distinguished.  More  especially  is  the  nucleus 
to  be  considered  here. 

PHYLOGENY  OK  THE  ORG.\NS  OF  NUTRITION. 

The  significant  difference  obtaining  between  the 
plasmodomous  protophyta  and  the  plasmophagous 
protozoa  with  respect  to  nutrition,  was  examined  in 
detail  in  the  preceding  article.      It  relates  chiefl}-  to  the 

iBuccai.  pertaining  to  the  mouth  (literall).  perlainme   to  the  cheek    ~Tr, 

'i-Chemotropism,  attraction  for  chemical  stimuli,  a  word  formed  after  the 

analogy  of  heiictrop'sm.  in  virtue  of  which  plants  cur^eor  turn  towards  the 

llKl.l,-7V, 


4442 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


chemistry  of  metabolism.  The  phytoplasm  of  the  veg- 
etal protists  forms  by  synthesis  and  reduction  from 
simple  inorganic  compounds,  new  plasm  ;  the  zoo- 
plasm  of  animal  protists  does  not  possess  this  power, 
but,  receiving  the  plasma  from  the  others,  retransforms 
it  again  by  analysis  and  oxidisation  into  water,  carbonic 
acid,  and  ammonia. 

Much  less  important  than  this  difference  of  meta- 
bolism in  protists  is  the  difference  of  their  mode  of  re- 
ceiving nutriment,  which  is  still  frequently  set  up  as 
the  capital  distinction  between  animals  and  plants. 
In  maintaining  this  distinction  it  is  in  most  cases  in- 
correctly stated  that  animals  take  their  nourishment 
in  solid,  and  plants  in  liquid  form,  and  that,  accord- 
ingly, animals  are  distinguished  by  the  possession  of 
a  buccal  aperture  or  mouth.  Bat  there  are  many  ani- 
mals, both  protozoa  and  metazoa  (particularly  para- 
sites), which  take  only  liquid  nourishment  from  their 
environment  by  endosmosis,  and  which  lack  a  mouth 
altogether — Bactt-ria,  Fiingi/li,  and  Opalinu'  among  the 
protozoa,  and  Cfstnidir  and  Acanthoccplicla  among  the 
metazoa.  Even  in  the  higher  metazoa,  by  retrogres- 
sive growth  of  the  intestine,  a  root-like  endosmotic 
nutritive  apparatus  can  develop,  similar  to  the  miceli- 
dium  of  the  Fiingillciia  and  the  mycellium  of  Fi/iixi, 
as  also  in  the  Rhizocephala  which  are  descended  from 
highly  organised  Cnis/ncfa. 

In  the  rhizopods  also,  liquid  plasma- food  can  be 
directly  incepted  by  endosmosis  through  the  surface  of 
the  naked  cytosoma,  but  in  addition  these  protozoa 
possess  the  power  of  incepting  solid  and  permanently 
formed  nutritive  bodies  through  any  part  of  the  sur- 
face of  the  celleus,  where  the  sarcants,  or  non-perma- 
nent protuberances,  flow  together  over  the  incepted 
particles.  Here,  too,  no  permanent  mouth-orifice  ex- 
ists as  yet.  This  is  first  formed  in  the  infusoria,  F/a 
gellaia  as  well  as  Ciliata.  Most  infusoria  possess  at 
a  definite  spot  a  cellular  mouth  (cytosl<niia).  Many, 
even,  grow  a  special  auxiliary  organ  for  the  inception 
of  food,  a  cellular  gullet  {cytopharynx),  a  canal  in  the 
ectoplasm  through  which  the  particles  are  ingested 
and  carried  to  the  endoplasm.  In  Noctiluia  a  lip,  with 
a  flap  of  flagella,  serves  as  a  special  organ  for  the 
inception  of  food  ;  in  the  Clioanoflagcllala,  a  funnel- 
shaped  collar.  The  Acincta  (Suctorid)  are  distinguished 
by  their  peculiar  suction-tubes.  For  ejecting  indiges- 
tible substances  a  special  waste-conduit  {lylopygc)  is 
employed  in  many  ciliates. 

A  special  excretory  organ  for  dissimilation  is  pos- 
sessed by  many  protozoa  in  the  systolette,  or  so  called 
contrattih-  vesicle.  Ordinarily  this  appears  as  a  spheri- 
cal hollow  cavity,  performing  regular  pulsations  and 
with  a  definite  position  in  the  plasma.  On  contraction 
it  discharges  liquid  outwards,  and  on  dilation  it  incepts 
liquid   inwards  or  from  the  plasma.      Frequently  sys- 


tole and  diastole  follow  alternately  and  at  regular  in- 
tervals several  times  in  a  minute.  Sometimes  two  or 
more  systolettes  are  present,  contracting  alternately. 
Further,  special  canals  may  proceed  from  them,  suck- 
ing up  juices  from  the  plasma.  Whilst  contractile 
vesicles  are  very  frequent  in  fresh  water  protozoans, 
(in  Lohosa,  Heliozoa,  FlagiPlaia,  Ciliata,)  they  occur 
only  rarely  in  marine  protists.  Phylogenetically  the 
permanent  systolettes  are  mostly  derived  from  non- 
permanent  vacuoles,  such  as  appear  almost  everywhere 
in  the  plasma  under  certain  conditions. 

The  plasmodomous  organoids  are  the  chromatella 
of  the  protophytes — those  significant  "pigment-gran- 
ules," which  as  reductive  plasma-particles  possess  the 
property  of  producing  plasma  from  inorganic  com- 
pounds by  synthesis.  We  have  seen  above  {TJie  Open 
Court,  No.  394,  page  4424)  that  this  power  of  plas- 
niodomy  or  the  assimilation  of  carbon  is  possessed 
only  by  true  protophytes  and  is  wanting  in  all  true 
protozoa.  If  we  are  determined  to  draw  an  artificial 
and  technical  border-line  between  these  two  sub-king- 
doms of  Pro/is/a,  it  is  possible  only  by  means  of  this 
difference  of  metabolism.  Originally  in  the  lowest 
protophyta,  the  plasmodomous  pigmentary  matter  is 
distributed  throughout  the  whole  plv'oojasni  as  in 
the  diffusely  colored  Chromaceic.  In  mosl.c/,  theoiher 
plants,  on  tlie  other  hand,  it  is  associated  with  definit':- 
and  permanently  shaped  plasma-parts — witii  liie  cnro- 
matella  or  chromatophores.  (This  last  term  should 
be  used  in  its  original  signification  only,  for  entire  pig- 
ment cells  of  animals,  not  for  separate  parts  of  cells.) 
In  many  lower  protozoa,  besides  the  nucleus,  there  is 
only  a  single  chromatellum  present  in  each  cell ;  but  in 
most,  numerous  chromatella  are  found  (as  in  the  meta- 
phyta).  In  addition  to  the  common  plasmodomous 
pigment,  chlorophyll,  other  pigments  (yellow,  red, 
brown,  and,  less  frequently,  violet  and  blue)  occur, 
which  modify  and  obscure  the  green  coloring  (the  dia- 
toniine  of  the  yellow  DiatoiiiCiC  and  PcriJinca,  the  has- 
mochrome  of  many  red  Paiiloiomeic,  the  phycocyanine 
of  Chi'oinaccd',  etc.). 


SOUVENIRS  OF  THE  CUBAN  REVOLUTION. 

BV    THEODORE  STANTON. 

Carlos  Manuel  de  C^spedes,  born  at  Bayamo, 
Cuba,  in  1819,  was  educated  both  in  his  native  island 
and  at  the  University  of  Barcelona,  Spain.  His  de- 
testation of  bad  government  showed  itself  early  in  his 
career,  for,  implicated  with  General  Prim  in  a  conspir- 
acy to  overthrow  Queen  Isabella,  he  was  forced  to  flee 
Spain.  Having  travelled  extensively  in  Europe,  he 
returned  to  Cuba,  practised  at  the  bar  with  much  suc- 
cess, was  imprisoned  on  two  or  three  occasions  on 
account  of  his  political  opinions,  and  finally,  on  Octo- 
ber 10,  1868,  having   gathered  together  a  few  follow- 


XHK     OPEN     COURT. 


4443 


ers  on  his  own  sugar-plantation,  he  freed  his  numerous 
slaves,  declared  war  on  Spain,  and  for  more  than  five 
years  continued  to  be  the  heart  and  soul  of  a  heroic 
but  unfortunate  struggle  for  Cuban  independence.  Be- 
trajed  b\'  a  former  slave,  President  De  C(5spedes  was 
shot  by  the  Spaniards  on  February  27,  1S74,  and.  its 
leader  dead,  the  uprising  was  soon  afterwards  sup- 
pressed. While  the  revolution  was  in  progress,  Mnie. 
De  Cespedes  resided  in  New  York,  and  to  her  were 
addressed  a  long  series  of  letters  by  her  husband  in 
Cuba,  which  letters  were  to  have  been  published  last 
winter  by  the  family,  and  from  which  the  following 
extracts  are  made. 

These  letters  are  full  of  accounts  of  narrow  escapes 
from  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  Spaniards.  In  one, 
dated  September  13,  1871,  we  read  : 

"On  August  17  we  were  informed  that  the  enemy  was  ap- 
proaching, and  we  prepared  to  break  camp,  having  first  sent  out 
pickets.  While  engaged  in  arranging  a  hat,  which  your  brother 
had  given  me  in  exchange  for  mine,  we  were  surprised  by  the  firing 
o£  our  pickets.  Thereupon  every  man  ran  to  his  horse.  I  snatched 
up  my  hat,  scissors,  ribbons,  and  all,  and  left  the  ranch.  Once 
outside.  I  found  that  my  mulatto  valet  was  in  such  a  nervous  state 
that  he  could  not  bridle  the  horse.  The  animal,  frightened  by  the 
reports  of  the  rifles,  each  moment  growing  nearer,  reared  up  and 
ed  to  break  away  I  aided  the  mulatto  to  hold  him.  urged 
ihc  '1  ■  to  „ .  in,  showed  him  how  to  slip  the  bridle  on  easily, 
■'■ji;  '  0  iiiuant  till  everything  was  ready,  though  he  entreated 
wi'hout  the  bridle.  But  this  was  only  the  beginning  of 
my  trouble.  When  wewere  ready  to  start,  the  guide  could  not  be 
found.  Fortunately,  an  officer  knew  the  way  out  of  the  plantation, 
and  we  began  to  gallop  through  immense  meadows,  twisting  about 
in  many  directions  so  as  to  put  the  enemy  off  of  our  track,  and  at 
last  we  were  out  of  danger,  But  if  the  Spaniards  had  not  been  so 
stupid  and  cowardly,  they  could  have  done  us  serious  harm  that 
day.  They  had  only  to  surround  the  place  and  chase  us  through 
the  fields.  But  simply  the  fire  of  our  pickets,  which  caused  them 
four  deaths  and  some  wounded,  stopped  their  advance,  and  they 
did  not  dare  to  go  further.  The  next  day  they  revenged  themselves 
by  burning  the  ranch  and  searching  the  premises.  However,  they 
did  not  capture  a  man.  nor  a  gun,  nor  a  paper.  The  archives  of 
the  Secretary  of  State  alone  are  missing,  and  we  know  that  they 
have  been  found  and  hidden  by  Cubans." 

Another  dangerous  experience,  though  of  an  en- 
tirely different  nature  from  the  one  just  related,  is 
found  in  the  following  letter,  dated  on  the  same  daj'  of 
the  same  month,  but  a  \ear  later,  as  the  foregoing 
letter  : 

■'  We  continued  our  journe}"  on  the  morning  of  August  22,  ad- 
vancing further  and  further  into  the  Sierra,  so  that  we  soon  began 
to  hear  again  the  song  of  the  nightingale.  On  that  day  my  arm 
was  once  more  dislocated,  and  I  got  wet  through  and  through  by 
the  rain,  because  an  indi\'idual,  meaning  to  do  me  a  favor,  changed 
his  cape  for  mine,  his,  I  found  later,  leaking  badly.  As  my  clothes 
dried  on  me.  I  got  a  headache,  which  lasted  till  the  next  day  and 
was  the  cause  of  another  misadventure  which  befell  me. 

"At  one  of  the  fords  of  the  Contra  Maestre,  the  river-bottom 
is  paved  with  large,  smooth,  slippery  stones.  In  order  not  to  wet 
my  feet  on  account  of  my  headache,  I  decided  to  cross  without  dis- 
mounting. My  horse  was  a  new  one,  and,  as  he  entered  the  water, 
began  to  show  signs  of  fear,  and   from   the  start  refused  to  follow 


the  others.  In  fact,  he  soon  became  quite  unmanageable.  I  pulled 
the  bridle  and  spurred  him.  He  thereupon  slipped  and  fell  on  his 
right  side,  giving  me  a  severe  blow  on  the  knee,  which  was  caught 
beneath  him.  The  animal  tried  to  get  up,  but  stumbled  again, 
throwing  me  against  a  stone,  cutting  my  cheek  open,  bruising  my 
mouth,  and  breaking  off  the  points  of  two  teeth.  At  this  moment 
I  fortunately  succeeded,  by  a  violent  effort,  in  freeing  myself  from 
the  saddle  and  the  trappings.  The  horse  finally  got  across  the 
stream,  but  not  till  he  had  fallen  several  more  times  and  completely 
soaked  the  saddle.  Not  wishing  to  resume  the  wet  seat,  and 
drenched  to  the  skin,  I  made  the  rest  of  the  journey  on  foot,  hav- 
ing to  wade  through  various  streams,  brooks,  and  rivulets  before 
reaching  a  farm-house,  where  I  changed  clothing  and  got  dry,  But 
imagine  my  suffering  next  morning,  when,  on  starting  out  early,  I 
found  my  face  cut,  my  cheek  and  mouth  swollen,  my  gums  and 
teeth  aching,  my  arm,  my  leg,  my  hand,  in  short,  my  whole  body 
in  pain  !  " 

Like  Columbus  of  old,  President  De  Cespedes  is 
continually  astonished  at  the  fertility  which  reigns  in 
the  West  Indies.  Several  of  his  letters  dwell  thereon. 
Take  the  following  extract  as  an  example  : 

"The  resources  of  Cuba  are,  for  us,  inexhaustible,  and  the 
Spaniards  will  never  be  able  to  reduce  by  famine  those  who  prefer 
to  endure  all  sorts  of  privations  rather  than  suffer  themselves  to 
come  under  the  cruel  Spanish  yoke  again.  Do  not  think  that  I  ex- 
aggerate. I  have  heard  our  soldiers  say  that  they  would  sooner 
turn  cannibals  than  become  Spaniards.  In  that  case,  they,  of 
course,  count  on  eating  the  flesh  of  their  enemies,  like  the  Caribs. 
How,  then,  is  it  possible  for  the  tyrants  to  imagine  that  they  can 
subdue  such  men  ?  Have  we  not,  besides,  a  species  of  palm-tree 
called  nianiicii — our  forests  are  full  of  them — from  which  we  can 
extract  salt  ?  The  Spaniards,  therefore,  may  go  on  losing  their  time 
destroying  our  salt-pits  and  the  machinery  with  which  we  manu- 
facture salt.  Our  trees  provide  us  with  it !  Were  it  not  for  the 
innate  shiftlessness  of  the  Cubans,  they  could  provide  themselves, 
in  this  same  way,  with  everything  needful.  In  fact,  necessity  has 
begun  to  stimulate  them  in  this  direction." 

The  following  extract  from  a  letter  dated  February 
29,  1872,  opens  with  a  description  of  the  beautiful 
scener}'  of  the  island  and  closes  with  another  reference 
to  the  abounding  natural  food  : 

"On  the  i6th  of  this  month  we  left  La  Guira.  The  road  at 
first  presented  nothing  of  particular  interest.  I  walked  a  good  part 
of  the  way  in  order  to  fatigue  my  horse  as  little  as  possible.  Next 
day  we  did  not  encounter  many  hills,  but  those  we  did  meet  with 
were  perhaps  the  highest,  as  they  certainly  were  the  stoniest,  we 
have  so  far  had  to  climb.  Before  reaching  Los  Pinares  we  traversed 
a  defile  with  a  terrible  precipice  on  one  side  and  at  the  summit  w-e 
enjoyed  a  most  magnificent  view,  the  sweet  perfumes  of  pine  trees 
and  wild  flowers,  and  a  very  agreeable  temperature.  That  day  we 
had  beautiful  scenery  all  around  us,  the  finest  of  our  travels,  and 
the  background  of  all  was  the  Sierra  Maestra,  which  we  gazed  at 
from  the  top  of  the  Nipe.  We  afterwards  came  down  the  latter 
mountain  by  a  long  narrow  trail  so  rough  and  rugged  that  at  each 
moment  w'e  trembled  lest  our  horses  should  roll  down  on  account 
of  the  numerous  stones  with  which  it  was  strewn.  But  there  is 
nothing  impossible  for  us  to-day.  Pain,  sun,  cold,  hunger,  naked- 
ness, lack  of  arms  and  ammunition,  the  bullets  of  our  foes. — noth- 
ing can  frighten  us  !  During  these  long  marches  we  suffered  much 
but  never  ceased  admiring  our  fertile  Cuba.  Without  knowing  it, 
we  were  walking  in  the  midst  of  food.  The  wild  yam,  better  and 
more  nutritious  than  the  cultivated  species,  grew  on  all  sides  of  us. 
Some  of  us  took  advantage  of  the  knowledge  of  this  fact  and  sup- 


4444 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


plied  ourselves  with  a  store  of  this  vegetable.  But  soon  we  were 
surrounded  again  with  abundance  and  all  forgot  the  miseries  of  the 
past." 

This  extract  from  the  same  letter  gives  one  or  two 
curious  glimpses  of  the  fugitive  President's  surround- 
ings : 

"After  four  days  of  marching  we  reached  a  ranch  on  the  Ta- 
cajo  plantation.  During  the  evening  I  was  serenaded  by  two  musi- 
cal parties.  The  first  consisted  of  an  accordion  and  the  second  of 
a  Colombian  who  plays  on  a  leaf,  accompanied  by  an  alahal  and 
guitar  alternately.  The  women  here  are  warlike.  They  wish  to 
march  to  the  front  and  bear  arms  the  use  of  which  is  familiar  to 
them.  One  of  them,  named  Isabel  Vega,  has  been  wounded  twice 
by  the  Spaniards." 

Of  course  we  are  given  many  accounts  of  battles 
and  the  other  catastrophies  which  accompany  war. 
This  extract  is  from  a  letter  of  May  ii,  1872  ; 

"At  the  fight  at  Alcala  a  cannon-ball  fired  at  us  by  the  Span- 
iards felled  a  palm-tree  which  crushed  four  of  their  own  men  to 
death. 

"At  Colorado  a  corporal  strayed  from  the  main  body  of  the 
Spanish  army,  and  putting  aside  his  gun,  stretched  himself  on  the 
ground  to  rest.  A  tiuija  who  was  on  the  watch,  sprang  on  him, 
disarmed  him  and  was  leading  him  off  to  prison  when  the  captive, 
beginning  to  show  signs  of  resistance,  was  killed  on  the  spot.  The 
captor  appropriated  to  himself  a  fine  rifle,  one  hundred  and  twenty 
cartridges,  a  belt,  three  suits  of  new  clothes,  a  hat,  new  shoes,  etc. 
On  seeing  himself  so  splendidly  equipped,  the  iiujja  immediately 
marched  away  to  enlist  in  the  Cuban  army.  His  name  is  Pedro 
Cayo  and  he  is  certainly  a  remarkable  man.  What  do  you  think 
of  that  ?  Thus,  the  bulls  at  Montaner,  the  bees  at  Lono  [references 
to  events  mentioned  in  former  letters],  the  palm-trees  at  Alcala  and 
the  majas  at  Colorado,  all  wage  war  against  the  Spaniards  in 
Cuba  !  " 

This  time — the  extract  is  from  a  letter  written  at 
Cintra,  on  November  7,  1872 — the  Spaniards  are  the 
aggressors  and  a  Cuban  the  sufferer  and  hero  at  the 
same  time  ; 

• '  From  this  spot  we  are  able  to  see  the  place  where,  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war,  a  horrible  tragedy  was  enacted.  Juan  Cintra, 
to-day  a  colonel  in  the  Cuban  army,  was  then  suffering  with  rheu- 
matism in  the  legs  ;  but  on  hearing  the  Spaniards  approach,  he  ran 
out  of  the  house,  rifle  in  hand,  and  made  for  the  nearest  wood,  with 
the  soldiers  at  his  heels.  When  the  foremost  was  about  to  lay 
hands  on  him,  Cintra  suddenly  turned  and  shot  him  down.  He 
then  resumed  bis  running.  Soon  the  pursuers  were  almost  upon 
him  again  and  once  more  he  wheeled  about  and  felled  the  nearest. 
By  this  time  he  had  reached  the  woods,  when  his  legs  refused  to 
carry  him  any  further.  So  dropping  down  behind  a  tree,  he  handled 
his  rifle  with  such  deadly  effect  that  the  Spaniards  retired.  Taking 
advantage  of  this  respite,  Cintra  dragged  himself  painfully  on  all 
fours  to  the  top  of  a  neighboring  hill,  and  crossing  to  the  other  side, 
hid  himself  and  rested.  From  his  place  of  concealment  he  could 
distinguish  loud  voices,  screeching  and  the  report  of  rifles  in  the 
direction  whence  he  had  escaped.  When  all  was  silent  once  more, 
he  cautiously  descended  from  the  hill,  and  on  emerging  from  the 
trees  the  first  sight  to  meet  his  horrified  eyes  was  the  mutilated 
body  of  his  mother  lying  at  the  entrance  to  a  narrow  path,  near 
her  the  corpse  of  his  wife,  and,  further  on,  those  of  his  children, 
while  the  house  itself,  now  reduced  to  cinders,  covered  the  charred 
1  (-mains  of  several  other  victims." 

A  propos  of  the  efforts  made  by  the  friends  of  Cuba 


to  get  General  Grant  to  recognise  the  Republic,  Presi- 
dent De  C^spedes  says  in  a  letter  dated  February  18, 
1872  : 

"  Many  stories  have  been  put  in  circulation  here  concerning 
the  attitude  of  the  United  States  towards  Spain.  Some  people  be- 
gan to  again  blindly  believe  that  the  Republic  would  favor  us, — 
such  is  the  sympathy  for  the  American  nation  that  exists  in  this 
country  and  so  logical  would  it  be  for  the  United  States  to  side 
with  an  American  people  struggling  to  secure  institutions  similar 
to  theirs,  endeavoring  to  throw  off  the  yoke  of  a  European  mon- 
archy and  thus  aiding  more  and  more  in  the  realisation  of  the  idea 
of  'America  for  Americans.'  But  I  have  not  shared  these  pleasant 
hopes.  I  have  continued  to  fear  that  the  Washington  Government 
would  not  abandon  a  policy  adhered  to  hitherto  in  this  Cuban- 
Spanish  question,  but  would  persist  in  remaining  neutral,  quieted 
by  some  new  and  false  promise  sent  out  from  Madrid  by  a  corrupt 
and  feeble  race,  treading,  in  order  to  cover  up  its  wicked  tracks, 
the  crooked  path  which  Macchiavelli  traced  for  those  of  its  kind." 

On  January  i,  1872,  the  President  writes  cheer- 
fully in  these  words  : 

"  This  is  New  Year's  Day,  the  fifth  since  our  Declaration  of 
Independence,  and  we  still  find  ourselves  united,  alive,  and  well. 
We  could  not  help  recalling  the  promise  of  the  saucy  Diai-io  Je  la 
Marina  that  we  would  all  be  exterminated  before  the  end  of  the 
year  which  has  just  expired,  and  that  it  made  my  poor  tongue  the 
special  object  of  its  venomous  attack,  declaring  it  to  be  the  duty  of 
every  Spanish  soldier  to  tear  it  out  because  I  was  reported  to  have 
called  them  cowards.  Fortunately  nothing  has  come  of  these  threats 
and  I  have  still  enough  tongue  left  to  respond  to  all  the  compli- 
ments which  have  been  paid  me  this  New  Year." 


THE  IMPORT  OF  INDIVIDUAL  IMPETUS. 

John  Dewey,  Professor  of  Philosophy  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Chicago,  has,  in  The  Dial,  favored  a  book 
of  mine  with  a  review,  which,  though  appreciative, 
suffers  from  a  serious  misunderstanding  not  of  the 
book  itself  but  of  the  importance  which  special  ideas 
and  individual  thinkers  may  possess.  Professor  Dewey 
writes  : 

"  Mr.  Carus,  in  his  Primer  of  Philosophy ,  has  put  before  us  in 
a  thoughtful,  yet  easily  grasped  form,  an  attempt  to  combine  the 
data  and  methods  of  modern  science  with  certain  metaphysical 
concepts,  resulting,  as  he  says,  in  a  reconciliation  of  philosophies 
of  the  types  of  Mill's  empiricism  and  Kant's  apriorism.  This 
spirit  of  synthesis  and  mediation  is  prominent  throughout  the 
book,  which  is  thoroughly  worth  reading  and  study. 

"  It  is  doubtful,  however,  if  it  will  fulfil  the  pious  wish  of  the 
author  and  set  the  stranded  ship  of  philosophy  afloat  again  ;  in- 
deed, were  the  ship  of  philosophy  stranded,  I  doubt  the  ability  of 
the  united  efforts  of  the  whole  race  to  get  it  afloat.  It  is  wiser  to 
think  of  the  ship  of  philosophy  as  always  afloat,  but  always  need- 
ing, not,  indeed,  the  impetus  of  any  individual  thinker,  but  the 
added  sense  of  direction  which  the  individual  can  give  by  some 
further,  however  slight,  interpretation  of  the  world  about." 

The  second  paragraph  made  me  pause,  and  there 
are  three  statements  which  I  wish  to  make.  First, 
Professor  Dewey's  remark  gives  the  impression  of 
boastfulness  on  my  part.  Secondly,  it  depicts  the 
present  condition  of  philosophy  altogether  too  favor- 
ably; and  thirdly  Professor  Dewey  underrates  the  ini- 


THE:    OPEN     COURT. 


4445 


portance  which  one  individual  thinker  and  one  individ- 
ual idea  may  have  in  the  evolution  of  thought. 

As  to  the  first  point  I  can  assure  Professor  Dewey 
that  he  is  mistaken,  except  he  would  consider  as  arro- 
gance my  opinion  on  the  present  school-philosophies 
which  are  overawed  by  traditional  authority  and  do  not 
dare  to  break  the  fetters  imposed  upon  them  by  the 
errors  of  the  past ;  but  in  that  case  to  have  an  indepen- 
dent opinion  on  an  important  subject  and  pronounce 
it  boldly  would  always  be  arrogance.  And  this  leads 
at  once  to  the  second  point. 

I  submit  in  the  Primer  of  Philosophy  the  solution  of 
a  problem,  which  at  present  is  commonly  regarded  as 
insoluble,  thus  producing  a  stagnancy  of  thought  that 
makes  itself  sorely  felt  in  all  the  fields  of  intellectual 
labor,  in  philosophy,  in  the  various  sciences  and  in 
religion. 

It  may  be  wiser  for  a  Chinese  imperial  officer  to 
think  of  the  ship  of  state  as  always  afloat,  but  the  ques- 
tion is  whether  it  is  truer.  It  may  be  more  convenient 
for  a  professor  of  philosoph}-  to  think  that  we  have  only 
to  paddle  along  in  the  old  rut  and  that  no  extra  effort  is 
needed  ;  but  it  is  surprising  to  hear  Professor  Dewey 
say  so.  If  all  philosophers  thought  like  that,  how 
be  possible,  and  how  could  we  free 
he  errors  of  the  past  ?  Is  it  really  justi- 
Jiauic;  ,o  disni  ■  with  a  shrug  the  aspiration  of  reform 
Kjii  Liic  auic  giuuud  that  it  is  only  "  the  impetus  of  an 
individual  "  ?  There  is  sometimes  more  truth  in  the 
voice  crying  in  the  wilderness  than  in  the  great  noise 
of  the  millions  living  in  the  metropolis. 

Is  Professor  Dewey  not  aware  of  the  fact  that  more 
than  three  quarters  of  the  philosophical  literature  of 
to-day  is  threshing  straw  ?  The  waste  of  paper  and 
also  of  the  time  of  our  students  is  in  itself  not  worse 
than  any  other  loss  of  economical  values  ;  but  the  er- 
rors which  enter  into  the  minds  of  the  growing  genera- 
tion of  scientists,  clergymen,  and  the  public  at  large 
are  far  more  injurious.  Can  there  be  any  doubt  about 
the  stagnanc)'  of  our  philosophical  atmosphere  ?  As 
one  symptom  among  many  others  I  mention  the 
posthumous  work  of  the  late  Professor  Romanes, 
Thouglits  on  Religion.  The  main  idea  of  the  book, 
which  will  be  greatly  appreciated  by  all  those  reaction- 
ary spirits  who  antagonise  science,  is  the  desolate  hope- 
lessness of  philosophical  inquiry  concerning  all  the 
main  issues  of  religion,  which  are,  whatever  side  we 
take,  the  most  important  problems  of  life. 

Among  our  philosophers  there  are  Hegelians,  Kant- 
ians,  followers  of  Mill,  Spencerians,  and  also  those 
who  have  no  opinion  whatever.  Every  one  thinks  and 
writes  in  the  terms  of  his  master,  ignoring  the  rest, 
and  all  are  separated  by  the  dividing  lines  of  princi- 
ples. Must  not  under  such  conditions  an  investiga- 
tion of  the  principles  themselves  be  the  work   most 


needed,  which,  if  successful,  will  remove  the  boundaries 
among  the  schools  and  show  the  old  problems  in  a  new 
light?  Is  such  an  attempt  without  avail  unless  it  pro- 
ceed from  the  masses? 

This  leads  me  to  the  third  point. 

Professor  Dewey  deprecates  the  importance  of  in- 
dividuality, as  an  impulse-giving  factor.  What  is  in- 
dividuality? It  is  a  definite  formation,  different  from 
other  formations  by  its  peculiarity  of  form  ;  variety  of 
form  is  a  variety  of  individuals  ;  and  there  are  indi- 
vidual ideas  as  much  as  individual  men  and  individual 
plants  and  crystals.  The  history  of  thought  is  not 
simply  the  sum-total  of  many  equivalent  ideas,  but 
their  organised  entiret}-;  and  in  the  organism  of  human 
thought  different  ideas  are  of  different  importance. 
One  specific  idea  may  have  existed  for  centuries,  but 
remained  unheeded  until  conditions  arose  under  which 
it  gained  a  dominating  influence  so  as  to  stamp  its  in- 
dividuality upon  a  whole  race.  The  development  of 
philosophy  and  science  teaches  us  the  wonderful  power 
of  individual  thought,  for  the  rise  of  one  idea  in  the 
head  of  one  individual  man  can  produce  a  revolution 
in  the  world  for  better  or  for  worse. 

The  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness  may  lead  the 
world  to  nobler  heights. 

The  fundamental  principle  upon  which  the  moral- 
it}'  of  a  Confucius  rests,  viz.,  an  exaggerated  reverence 
for  the  past,  involving  a  love  of  ceremony  and  an  awe 
of  traditional  authority,  has  acted  as  a  break  upon  the 
national  development  of  China  so  that  Chinese  civili- 
sation of  to  day  is  about  the  same  as  it  was  two  thou- 
sand 3ears  ago.  There  is  danger  in  the  complaisant 
idea  that  all  is  well,  and  that  we  have  simply  to  drift 
along  in  modest  reverence  of  the  slow  but  general 
progress  of  the  craft  on  which  we  are  embarked. 

The  masses  of  mankind  are  always  indifferent  and 
must  be  leavened  by  the  impetus  of  individuals.  Even 
science  is  not  so  much  promoted  as  preserved  by  the 
mass  of  its  professional  representatives  ;  and  this  is 
the  truth  which  in  an  exaggerated  form  Schopenhauer 
propounds  in  his  altogether  too  bitter  denunciations 
of  philosophers  by  profession. 

Prof.  John  Dewey  is  one  of  the  most  prominent 
representatives  of  philosophy  in  our  country  and  has 
done  much  valuable  work.  He  holds  a  very  influential 
chair  at  the  new  University  of  Chicago,  which  is  fast 
becoming  the  great  intellectual  centre  of  the  West. 
He  has  contributed  to  both  The  Open  Court  and  The 
Monisi  articles  of  merit,  aad  I  recognise  in  him  a 
strong  independent  thinker;  but  with  all  deference  to 
his  deserts,  I  must  reject  his  views,  that  "the  ship  of 
philosophy  is  always  afloat  and  that  it  needs,  not,  in- 
deed, the  impetus  of  any  individual  thinker,  but  the 
added  sense  of  direction  which  the  individual  can  give 


4446 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


by  some  further,  however  sHght,  interpretdlion  of  the 
world  about." 

It  is  possible  that  Professor  Dewey  only  meant  to 
say  that  the  book  which  he  reviewed  did  not  possess 
the  merit  claimed  by  its  author  ;  but,  in  fact,  he  de- 
nied the  effectiveness  of  the  most  important  factor  in 
the  evolution  of  mankind — individual  impetus. 

If  Professor  Dewey's  maxims  were  right,  there 
would  be  no  great  leaders  in  the  world  of  thought,  no 
organisers,  no  reformers,  but  only  a  crowd  of  indifferent 
thinkers,  the  best  among  whom  possess  little  if  any 
preference  a\'er  the  rest ;  and  the  history  of  philoso- 
phy would  be,  like  a  coral  reef,  an  all  but  uniform  ac- 
cumulation of  many  average  minds.  p.  c. 


"A  NEW  GOSPEL  OF  LABOR." 

The  author  of  this  book  informs  us  in  the  Intro- 
duction that  years  ago  he  attended  to  some  public 
business  at  Washington,  D.  C,  making  it  necessary 
for  him  to  wait  several  times  upon  the  President  (which 
President  is  not  stated)  and  he  says  : 

"Encouraged  by  the  President's  urbanity  and  evident  desire 
to  do  right,  in  the  matter  which  I  had  to  lay  before  him,  by  the 
people,  I  asked,  at  the  last  interview  I  was  granted,  for  permis^ion 
to  submit  to  him  a  question  regarding  the  labor-troubles  which  at 
that  time,  through  the  prevailing  industrial  depression,  occupied 
the  public  mind  to  a  great  extent. 

"  The  consent  having  kindly  been  given,  I  said  :  '  Mr.  Presi- 
dent, are  you  aware  of  the  fact  that  great  discontent  is  existing 
among  our  working  people  ? '  He  replied  :  '  Yes  ;  I  know  there 
is  ;  but  I  do  not  know  the  cause  of  it and  I  have,  conse- 
quently, come  to  the  conclusion,  that  the  American  workingmen 
do  not  know  yet,  what  they  want ;  and  if  they  don't,  how  shall  I 
know  ?'....!,  thus,  became  convinced  that  the  first  step  towards 
a  solution  of  the  industrial  question  must  necessarily  consist  in 
giving  the  working  people  this  information  and  in  proposing  to 
them  a  remedy  on  which  they  could  unite." 

The  present  book  proposes  the  solution  of  the  in- 
dustrial question,  and  the  author  is  confident  that  he 
has  succeeded.      He  says  : 

"To  the  solution  of  the  industrial  question  are  looking  for- 
ward today  as  to  a  new  gospel  the  untold  hundreds  of  millions  of 
producers  of  all  the  civilised  nations  of  the  earth.  .  .  .  The  pro- 
posed change  in  our  present  industrial  system  may  be  ridiculed 
to-day  as  an  effort  to  introduce  an  idealistic  state  of  society,  and 
yet,  in  a  few  short  years  it  may  be  the  accepted  industrial  reform 
of  the  most  civilised  nations  of  the  Earth.  " 

The  gist  of  the  book  is  contained  in  Book  II,  Chap- 
ter 2,  which  is  entitled  "The  Remedy."  The  author 
proposes  to  "reverse  the  unnatural  use  of  artificial 
labor  into  the  natural  one,"  which  means  that  "the 
working  classes  must  be  given  control  of  the  entire 
means  of  modern  labor,  which  include  land,  machin- 
ery, and  capital."  We  are  not  told  whether  the  capi- 
tal of  savings  banks,  which  is  mostly  the  property  of 
the  laboring  classes,  shall  be  exempt — probably  not, 
for  where  shall  we  draw  the  line.  In  the  same  chap- 
ter (II,  2)  "a  law  for  the  prevention  of  industrial  and 


financial  crises  and  depressions"  is  proposed,  which 
is  a  very  humane  idea.  The  author  finds  no  difficulty 
in  the  problem  and  answers,  at  least  to  his  own  satis- 
faction, all  objections  that  can  be  made  to  his  new 
system.  If  the  labor  problem  were  so  easily  solved  it 
would  have  been  solved  long  ago,  and  if  a  labor  com- 
monwealth, such  as  the  author  of  A  Ne7i>  Gospel  of 
Labor  describes,  had  the  power  to  prevent  by  mere 
acts  of  legislature  industrial  and  financial  crises  and 
depressions,  why  not  also  legislate  against  diphtheria, 
cyclones,  and  earthquakes?  A  millennium  would  in- 
deed be  near  at  hand  !  (Seattle,  Wash. :  S.  Wegener, 
pp.  229,  price  50  cents.) 


RESrONATION. 


BV   H.    A.    DE  I.ANO. 

Life  goes  to  the  Inevitable, 

And  moves  us  all  at  last  against  our  wills  ; 

And  so,  we  drop  the  oars,  and  learn  at  length  to  float. 

Pleased  with  whatever  breeze  our  canvas  tills  ; 

Glad,  in  the  dawning  consciousness  : 

It  is  not  of  ourselves  we  glide  along,  or  give 

Motive,  or  thought,  or  choice,  longer  to  live. 

Tide,  wind,  or  port,  are  thine,  O,  Fate, 

We  shall  be  home  again,  sooner  or  late. 

How  else,  could  any  find  the  way  ? 

For  who,  that  knows  from  whence  he  came  ?  -, 

We  hail  a  thousand  destined  crafts  whose  jaded  crews. 

Have  labored  hard,  had  hope,  and  yet  confess  the  same. 

'Twas  when  Columbus  fought,  and  ceased. 

He  found  his  long-sought,  greater  world. 

Fate  never  smiles  'till  she  her  rainbow  spreads 

Above  our  tears,  and  we  the  sails  have  furled  ; 

Seeing  the  harbor  lights,  and  bar. 

Seeing,  from  home  we  were  not  far. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  396. 

THE  CELLULAR  SOUL.     Prof.  Ernst  Haeckel 4439 

SOUVENIRS  OF  THE  CUBAN  REVOLUTION.   Theo- 
dore Stanton 4442 

THE  IMPORT  OF  INDIVIDUAL  IMPETUS.     Editor.   4444 

"A  NEW  GOSPEL  OF  LABOR." 4446 

POETRY. 

Resignation.      H.  A.  De  Lano 4446 


a 


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DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.   397.     (Vol.  IX.— 14.) 


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SARAH  QRAND'S  ETHICS. 

BY  T.    B.^ILEV  SAUNDERS. 

Mr.  William  M.  S.-\lter's  recent  article  on  the 
ethical  tendency  of  Trilby  and  TIte  Heavenly  Twins 
raises  quite  as  many  difficult  and  delicate  questions  as 
are,  in  his  opinion,  brought  up  by  those  novels  them- 
selves. It  may,  for  instance,  be  asked  how  far  it  is 
legitimate  to  appraise  the  value  of  a  novel  by  its  ethi- 
cal tendenc}';  and  the  answer  will  of  course  depend 
upon  the  particular  kind  of  value  which  is  meant.  It 
would  not  be  difficult  to  maintain  that  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  severe  literary' critic  the  ethical  tendency 
of  a  book  is  a  matter  of  minor  interest.  Few  readers, 
however,  are  severe  literarj'  critics;  and  most  readers, 
whether  they  know  it  or  not,  are  influenced  by  the 
moral  character  of  the  books  they  read.  Not,  indeed, 
in  an}-  high  view  of  the  aim  and  function  of  literature 
as  the  record  of  noble  thought  nobl}'  expressed,  can 
the  importance  of  its  ethical  tendency  be  overrated. 
The  greatest  books  of  the  world  are  also,  in  the  best 
and  broadest  sense  of  the  word,  the  most  moral ;  and 
they  are  great  because  they  are  moral. 

Morality,  alas!  is  a  much  abused  word,  and  with 
ninetj'-nine  people  out  of  a  hundred  has  reference 
chiefly  to  the  relations  between  the  se.xes  ;  as  may  at 
once  be  seen  by  reflecting  on  the  meaning  usually  at- 
tached to  the  contradictory  word,  immorality.  To 
judge  from  his  article,  Mr.  Salter  appears  to  be  one  of 
the  ninety-nine.  He  finds  in  TIte  Heavenly  Tiuins  the 
evidence  of  "an  honest  moral  nature,"  and  -'positive 
ideas  of  right  and  wrong."  It  is  obvious  that  this 
moral  nature  and  these  positive  ideas  are  determined 
solely  by  the  extent  to  which,  in  Mr.  Salter's  judg- 
ment, they  harmonise  with  one  among  the  many  im- 
portant kinds  of  morality,  namely,  that  which  governs 
the  sexual  relations  of  men  and  women.  It  would 
be  a  great  mistake  to  suppose,  though  the  supposi- 
tion is  very  common,  that  morality  of  this  descrip- 
tion carries  with  it  morality  of  every  description  ;  for 
a  man  may  be  a  second  St.  Anthony  and  yet  be  a  bigot, 
with  no  sense  of  honor,  no  regard  for  truth,  and  no 
charity  towards  his  fellowmen.  On  the  other  hand, 
some  of  the  best  that  the  world  has  produced — great 
administrators,  great  inquirers,  great  writers — have 
been  notoriously  promiscuous  in   their  dealings  with 


the  opposite  sex  ;  not,  of  course,  in  virtue  of  their  good 
qualities,  but  in  spite  of  them.  It  is  absurd  to  call  a 
man  moral,  unless  on  the  whole  he  is  scrupulous  in 
the  observance  of  all  kinds  of  morality;  nor  can  a  book- 
be  said  to  possess  a  good  moral  tone  which  harps  upon 
a  particular  form  of  injustice,  and  at  the  same  time 
asks  the  reader's  sympathy  for  much  that  is  narrow, 
cruel,  and  ungenerous. 

Of  Mr.  Salter's  remarks  on  Trilly  some  criticism 
nia}'  be  made  on  another  occasion.  It  will  be  sufficient 
at  present  to  draw  attention  to  what  he  saj's  about 
IVie  Heavenly  Tioins.  There  is  some  satisfaction  in 
observing  that  he  does  not  take  it  upon  himself  to  ex- 
press any  high  opinion  of  its  literary  value.  That  the 
popularity  of  Trilly,  which  has  a  claim  to  be  called  a 
work  of  art,  should  far  exceed  that  of  Sarah  Grand's 
extraordinary  compound,  is  a  fact  highly  creditable  to 
the  great  body  of  readers  in  the  United  States.  There 
are,  it  is  true,  bits  of  The  Heavenly  Twins  which  show 
some  power  of  writing.  Not  only,  however,  is  it.  as 
Mr.  §alter  observes,  of  such  unpardonable  length  that 
no  man  could  in  conscience  ask  a  friend  to  read  it  all ; 
but  the  book  is  a  heterogeneous  conglomerate  of  in- 
terests which  stand  in  no  true  or  inevitable  relation 
with  one  another.  The  characters  fall  into  distinct 
groups;  and  the  doings  of  one  group  have  hardly  an}' 
bearing  on  the  doings  of  the  others.  The  twins,  for 
whom  Mr.  Salter  justly  disclaims  any  admiration,  have 
little  to  do  with  Evadne  or  her  story;  and  that  neu- 
rotic young  lady  stands  in  no  vital  connexion  with  An- 
gelica, whose  surprising  relations  with  the  tenor  are, 
again,  entirely  out  of  keeping  with  the  rest  of  the 
book  ;  so  that  even  the  authoress  is  obliged  to  offer 
an  apology  for  the  awkward  construction  of  her  plot 
by  calling  them  an  "Interlude."  it  is  impossible, 
also,  not  to  agree  with  Mr.  Salter  that  Sarah  Grand  is 
at  times  rather  foolish  and  one-sided,  sarcastic,  spite- 
ful, and  even  peevish  ;  and  that  her  ideas  about  men 
and  women  are  often  exaggerated  and  ludicrous.  Such 
defects  destroy  any  claim  that  might  be  made  on  be- 
half of  The  Heavenly  Twins  as  a  work  of  art  ;  if,  in- 
deed, any  serious  person  could  be  so  rash  as  to  make 
such  a  claim,  except  the  authoress  herself,  who  in  a 
preface  to  a  later  publication  goes  out  of  her  way  to 
draw   attention   to  her  own  artistic  qualities.      Some 


4448 


XMB    OPEN    COURT. 


persons,  with  an  eye  on  tlie  twins,  profess  to  admire 
what  they  are  pleased  to  call  her  humor  ;  but  it  is  plain 
that  the  antics  of  children  do  not  constitute  humor  in 
the  sense  in  which  the  word  is  common!}'  employed  as 
a  quality  of  literature.  In  truth,  a  very  small  supply  of 
that  inestimable  virtue  would  have  saved  Madame  Sa- 
rah Grand  many  a  sad  mistake. 

It  is  needless,  therefore,  to  ask  whether  7'/ii-  Heav- 
enly Twins  is  in  any  way  a  work  remarkable  on  the 
score  of  its  literary  character.  In  literature  little  sur- 
vives but  what  is  expressed  in  good  form  ;  and  it  is 
obvious  that  the  oblivion  which  is  even  now  over- 
taking this  particular  work  will  at  no  very  distant 
period  be  complete  and  impenetrable.  Like  many 
another  forgotten  book,  it  has  gone  up  like  a  rocket, 
with  a  rush  and  a  flare  ;  having  burst  into  stars  its  fate 
is  to  be  swallowed  up  in  darkness  ;  so  that  all  that  re- 
mains is  a  burnt  stick.  But  what  title  has  it  to  shed, 
as  Mr.  Salter  would  have  us  believe,  a  great  moral 
light  in  the  brief  period  of  its  existence?  He  tells 
Evadne's  story  from  his  own  point  of  view,  and  pro- 
nounces that  her  attitude  was  straightforward,  calm, 
dignified,  and  "in  the  great  sense,  womanly."  This  is 
doubtless  the  view  which  the  authoress  herself  would 
desire  us  to  take,  for  Evadne  is  plainly  her  mouth- 
piece. 

This  rebellious  spirit  is  presented  to  us  as  a  very 
honorable  woman,  no  less  perfect  in  her  personal  con- 
duct and  demeanor  than  endowed  with  a  fair  knowl- 
edge of  popular  literature  and  a  surprising  amount  of 
general  information.  "She  always  had  a  solid  book 
in  hand,  and  some  standard  work  of  fiction  also ;  but 
she  read  both  with  the  utmost  deliberation,  and  with 
intellect  clear  and  senses  unaffected  by  anj'thing.  After 
studying  anatomy  and  physiology,  she  took  up  pathol- 
ogy as  a  matter  of  course,  and  naturally  went  on  from 
thence  to  prophylactics  and  therapeutics"  (Bk.  I,  Ch. 
V.)  She  was  not  content  with  reading  Barnard  Smith's 
Arithmetic,  and  The  Vicar  of  Wal;cfield,  she  also  read 
Tom  Jones  and  Roderick  Random,  not  to  mention 
Lewes's  Life  of  Goethe,  Mrs.  Gaskell's  novels,  and  the 
essays  of  Wendell  Holmes  and  Matthew  Arnold.  She 
was  also  a  very  acute  and  observant  person.  She 
managed  to  worst  her  father  in  an  argument ;  and  to 
a  casual  spectator  must  often  have  made  that  irritable 
gentleman  look  very  foolish.  She  sits  up  with  an  aunt 
till  three  in  the  morning,  indulging  in  some  very  tall 
talk;  and  with  great  precision  she  lays  down  the  lim- 
its of  Utilitarianism  and  mundane  philosophy  in  gen- 
eral. And  all  this  at  the  mature  age  of  nineteen  1  Her 
social  position  left  nothing  to  be  desired.  She  con- 
sorted with  the  best  of  the  nobility,  went  to  Court,  and 
knew  a  bishop  ;  and  in  her  own  home,  if  the  butler 
brought  a  telegram  to  her  father,  he  handed  it,  as  the 
authoress  is  careful  to  relate,  "on  a  silver  salver." 


It  is  really  very  extraordinary  that  a  young  lady  so 
intelligent  and  well-read,  and  blessed  with  so  profound 
an  insight  into  the  ways  of  the  world  and  the  charac- 
ter of  her  relations,  should  fail  to  recognise  that  a  per- 
son like  Colquhoun,  who,  when  he  first  appeared  on 
the  scene,  "looked  about  thirty  eight,  and  was  a  big 
blond  man  with  a  heavy  moustache,"  was  hardly  likely 
to  have  lived  so  long  without  some  unmentionable  ex- 
periences. She  ventures  timidly  to  ask  her  father — 
the  poor  old  father  whose  antiquated  ideas  she  had  so 
often  corrected — whether  there  was  anything  in  the 
past  life  of  her  fiance  to  which  she  could  object  ;  and 
it  is  curious  that  so  courageous  and  independent  a 
young  lady  could  be  satisfied  with  the  simple  assurance 
that  he  would  make  an  excellent  husband.  So  curious 
is  it,  that  it  suggests  the  question,  what  she  could  find 
in  such  a  man  to  attract  her.  Colquhoun  was  a  very 
ordinary  person,  well-mannered  and  affable,  but  not 
distinguished.  The  insistence  on  the  fact  that  he  was 
a  big  blond  with  a  heavy  moustache,  and  that  he 
caught  Evadne's  attention  by  gazing  at  her  in  church, 
are  doubtless  meant  by  the  authoress  to  indicate  that 
this  paragon  of  all  the  virtues  fell  a  victim  to  the  same 
physical  qualities  in  Colquhoun  which  had  probabl}' 
rendered  him  an  easy  prey  to  ladies  before. 

It  will  of  course  be  said  that  it  is  perfectly  right  to 
make  Evadne  inconsistent;  for  is  she  not  a  woman? 
Such  an  objection,  however,  would  come  with  a  very 
bad  grace  from  an}'  of  her  admirers;  in  particular, 
from  those  who,  like  Mr.  Salter,  regard  her  as  a  wo- 
man whose  purity  was  no  less  remarkable  than  her 
strength;  a  pattern,  in  fact,  of  the  higher  morality. 
The  point  is  a  small  one,  but  worth  making,  since  it 
throws  no  small  light  upon  the  less  obvious  side  of  her 
character.  But  it  is  in  respect  of  her  action  after  her 
marriage  that  her  claim  to  be  considered  a  pattern  of 
the  higher  morality  must  be  determined.  Mr.  Salter 
describes  the  situation  created  by  the  receipt  of  a  let- 
ter informing  her  of  a  discreditable  incident  in  her 
husband's  life  which  her  parents  had  suppressed.  Its 
nature  is  not  disclosed  ;  but  apparently  it  was  not  so 
bad  as,  in  their  opinion,  to  form  an  obstacle  to  the 
marriage.  The  situation  thus  created  is,  as  Mr.  Salter 
remarks,  "a  problem  in  ethics";  and  in  his  judgment 
Evadne  solves  it  very  well;  so  well,  indeed,  as  to  de- 
serve all  the  complimentary  epithets  which  he  has  ap- 
plied to  her  conduct. 

But  does  she  deserve  them  ?  She  solves  the  prob- 
lem by  deciding  to  live  in  her  husband's  house,  but  to 
be  his  wife  only  in  name.  Her  husband,  it  must  be 
confessed,  acts  with  extraordinary  generosity,  of  which 
Madame  Sarah  Grand  is  apparently  unconscious,  and 
for  which,  at  least,  she  allows  him  no  credit.  He 
treats  Evadne  with  the  utmost  indulgence  and  respect, 
gratifies  her  every  wish,  and  proves  himself  to  be  what 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4449 


she  had  at  first  thought  him — a  good-natured  gentle- 
man. He  could  have  invoked  the  aid  of  the  law,  but 
lie  refrained.  He  gave  her  his  word,  and  kept  it.  She 
had  also  given  him  her  word  in  the  marriage  cere- 
mony, and  straightway  she  broke  it.  That  she  had 
been  deceived  by  her  father  and  mother  is  no  excuse. 
For  in  the  first  place  she  had  seldom  been  content  to 
accept  their  opinion,  except  when  it  coincided  with 
her  own  ;  and,  as  she  is  drawn,  she  is  far  too  clever  to 
allow  any  one  to  deceive  her  on  a  matter  so  important 
to  her  welfare.  In  the  second  place,  even  had  she 
been  so  blind  as  to  be  deceived,  nothing  was  less 
defensible  than  to  wreak  her  vengeance  on  a  man 
who  had  just  sworn  "to  forsake  all  others  and  cleave 
only  unto  her."  But  wliat  is  to  be  said  of  her  subse- 
quent action?  Two  courses  were  open  to  her:  either 
to  live  with  her  husband,  or  to  leave  him.  She  did 
neither  ;  not  the  first,  because  it  was,  she  declared, 
repugnant  to  her  moral  nature  :  not  the  second,  as  the 
authoress  tells  us,  because  of  her  mother's  earnest  en- 
treaties. But  an  ardent  moral  reformer  has  no  busi- 
ness to  yield  to  a  mother  who  has  deceived  her,  if  such 
a  course  involves  gross  injustice  to  a  third  party.  If 
her  conscience  forbade  her  to  be  her  husband's  wife, 
the  straightforward,  honorable,  dignified  course  would 
have  been  to  leave  him,  and  set  him  free.  But  Evadne 
was  not  so  honorable.  She  refused  to  live  i^iitli  him, 
it  is  true;  but  she  did  not  mind  living  on  him.  He 
gave  her  a  social  position,  and  provided  her  with  com- 
fortable apartments  in  her  own  house;  nay,  to  please 
her,  he  had  them  arranged  and  furnished  like  those  in 
her  old  home.  He  did  all  he  could  to  make  her  happy; 
he  offered  her  books,  pictures,  flowers,  music,  amuse- 
ment, and  ever}thing  she  could  wish  for  in  the  way  of 
luxury.  She  took  them  all  with  greatest  complaisance, 
as  if  she  had  a  right  to  them,  but  she  declined  to  grant 
the  right  to  which  her  husband  was  entitled.  How  is 
it  honorable  in  a  woman  to  accept  such  gifts  from  one 
whom  she  despises?  How  is  it  dignified  to  help  a 
man  to  ruin  and  live  at  his  expense?  How  is  it  wo- 
manly to  persist  in  her  spite  and  revenge,  until  her 
husband,  from  sheer  vexation,  plunges  again  into  vice 
and  dies  at  last  a  miserable  death?  If  this  is  the 
higher  moralit\',  to  cherish  an  impossible  scheme  for 
the  reform  of  mankind,  and  neglect  the  salvation  of  a 
single  soul,  the  world  can  well  dispense  with  it. 

Mr.  Salter  hazards  the  singular  statement  that  Sa- 
rah Grand  is  "evidently  a  person  like  her  heroine, 
who  loves  purity  and  truth  and  loathes  degradation 
and  vice."  Apparently  he  arrives  at  this  conclusion 
from  a  study  of  The  Heavenly  Twins  ;  in  particular,  of 
Evadne.  That  an  authoress  must  resemble  her  hero- 
ine is,  of  course,  a  very  rash  supposition,  and  in  gen- 
eral quite  unfounded  ;  nor  in  the  present  instance  is  it 
possible  to  make   such  a  comparison  by  wa\'  of  com- 


pliment. Assuredly  it  is  not  the  purity  and  truth  of 
The  Heavenly  Ticins  which  have  made  it  so  popular  ; 
rather  is  it  something  very  remote  from  those  noble 
qualities.  Its  popularity  is  a  fine  example  of  the  siie- 
eis  Je  seanda/e  \  and,  what  is  still  worse,  the  degrad- 
ing and  prurient  suggestions  in  which  it  abounds  are 
wholly  gratuitous.  The  story,  such  as  it  is,  could 
very  well  have  been  told,  and  might  have  been  told, 
with  a  sense  of  reserve  and  decency;  but  then,  of 
course,  as  the  authoress  must  be  perfectly  aware,  it 
would  have  failed  to  attract  such  wide  notice.  It  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  any  great  moral  lesson  can  be 
drawn  from  The  Heavenly  Twins,  except  that  nothing 
is  more  immoral  than  the  attempt  to  do  a  small  amount 
of  good  by  doing  at  the  same  time  a  vast  amount  of 
harm. 

There  is  no  mention  in  Mr.  Salter's  article  of  an- 
other of  this  writer's  novels,  Ideala,  which,  from  a 
literary  point  of  view,  is  slightly  superior  to  Tlie  Heav- 
enly Twins.  There  we  have  another  ethical  problem  ; 
and  there,  too,  Sarah  Grand  contrives  to  solve  it  in  a 
way  that  alienates  the  admiration  which  might  other- 
wise have  been  felt  for  her  heroine.  The  woman,  it  is 
clear,  uses  the  man  as  a  mere  peg  for  her  own  emo- 
tions; she  gives  him  every  encouragement ;  and  then, 
finding  herself  in  a  difficulty,  abandons  him  in  a  very 
cruel  and  heartless  fashion.  Here,  too,  Sarah  Grand 
evinces  no  disapproval  of  the  injustice  which  she  de- 
scribes, and,  in  spite  of  Mr.  Salter,  any  resemblance 
between  herself  and  her  heroine  would  in  this  case  also 
be  matter  for  regret.  Fidelity  to  an  affection  reached, 
and  the  sense  of  honor  and  gratitude,  seem  to  be  pain- 
fully absent  from  her  conception  of  womanhood,  in 
spite  of  her  parade  of  high  motives.  Nothing  is  truer 
than  that  it  is  what  we  feel  and  do,  rather  than  what 
we  think,  that  is  of  the  essence  of  morality. 

Nor  can  a  more  satisfactory  estimate  be  formed  of 
the  ethical  tendency  which  Sarah  Grand  promotes,  hy 
turning  from  her  novels  to  her  miscellaneous  articles, 
or  to  the  methods  by  which  she  has  sought  to  extend 
her  reputation.  What  good,  for  instance,  can  she 
hope  to  achieve  by  the  tone  or  the  contents  of  the  ar- 
ticles which  appeared  in  the  North  American  Review 
a  year  ago  ?  Men  are  not  to  be  reformed  by  wholesale 
abuse  ;  nor  are  women  to  be  raised  by  the  pretentious 
and  silly  assertion  that  it  is  their  business  to  regard 
men  as  infants  and  to  teach  them.  Mr.  Salter  en- 
deavors to  excuse  these  ridiculous  statements  as  the 
venial  exaggerations  of  a  youthful  writer;  but  unfor- 
tunately for  his  plea,  Sarah  Grand  is  a  person  of  what 
may  civilly  be  called  a  certain  age.  She  has  been 
writing,  and,  according  to  her  own  account,  has  been 
thinking,  for  jears ;  and  she  ought  to  know  better. 
But  Mr.  Salter's  mistake  is  itself  excusable  ;  for  Sarah 
Grand  has  so  far  succumbed  to  the  advertising  mania 


445° 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


as  to  hold  it  right  to  consent  to  the  publication  and  to 
assist  in  the  widespread  distribution  of  a  number  of 
photographs  which  make  her  look  like  a  pretty  young 
actress  of  five-and-twenty.  In  this  connexion  Mr. 
Salter  would  do  well  to  read  the  account  of  an  inter- 
view with  Sarah  Grand  given  in  the  Chicago  Times  for 
August  5,  1894,  the  writer  of  which  was  evidently  pre- 
pared to  be  lavish  in  her  admiration.  He  will  find 
another  instance  of  a  deficient  sense  of  dignity  on  the 
part  of  Sarah  Grand  if  he  will  turn  to  Mr.  Stead's  Re- 
view of  Jie7'ie7c<s  for  August,  1S93,  where  there  are  ex- 
tracts from  an  article  by  that  lady  "On  the  Duty  of 
Looking  Nice,"  illustrated  by  one  of  the  aforesaid  por- 
traits of  herself.  From  a  feminine  point  of  view,  these, 
of  course,  are  pardonable  errors ;  but  it  can  scarcely 
be  maintained  that  those  who  commit  them  are  justi- 
fied in  regarding  men  as  infants,  or  are  peculiarly  fitted 
to  expound  the  higher  morality. 


AN  EPISODE  IN  THE  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 

EV  THOMAS  ].    m'cORMACK. 

Early  in  life,  Adam  Smith  (i 723-1 790),  author  of 
The  Wealth  of  N'ations,  and  founder  of  political  econ- 
omy, is  said  to  have  projected  a  plan  for  giving  "a 
connected  history  of  the  liberal  sciences  and  the  ele- 
gant arts,"  afterwards  abandoning  it  as  far  too  exten- 
sive. Of  the  papers  left  undestroyed  on  his  death,  the 
greater  part,  referring  to  this  subject,  were,  by  his 
friends  Joseph  Black  and  James  Hutton,  deemed 
worthy  of  preservation  and  published  under  the  title 
of  "Essays  by  Adam  Smith  on  Philosophical  Sub- 
jects." They  usually  appear  in  the  same  volume  with 
his  more  famous  treatise.  The  Theory  of  Meral  Senti- 
ments.^ These  Essays,  though  full  of  acute  and  valu- 
able remarks,  are  little  known,  probably  on  account  of 
their  fragmentary  character,  and  because,  as  the  edi- 
tors remark,  the  author  regarded  them  as  in  need  of 
thorough  revision. 

Our  object  in  referring  to  these  Essays  is  to  point 
out  a  curious  resemblance  which  exists  between  Smith's 
views  of  the  principles  which  lead  and  direct  philo- 
sophical inquiries  as  illustrated  in  his  sketch  of  the 
history  of  astronomy,  and  the  view  of  scientific  expla- 
nation now  so  widely  accepted  by  scientists  and  which 
was  first  accurately  formulated  and  brought  into  mod- 
ern notice  independently  of  philosophical  tradition,  by 
Prof.  Ernst  Mach  (1871),  Clifford  (1872),  and  Kirch- 
hoff  (1874).  We  have  evidence  in  these  Essays  that 
Adam  Smith  possessed  the  philosophical  views  which 
now  hold  a  dominant  and  characteristic  place  in  posi- 
tive research,  and  that  he  was  perhaps  also  very  near 
to  that  felicitous  idea  which  has  been  developed  and 
applied  with  such  splendid  success  by  Professor  Mach, 

1  A  cheap  edition  cf  ihe  Essays  is  published  by  Alexander  Miiiiay  &  Sons, 
London,  18(39. 


in  his  doctrine  of  science  as  an  economy  of  thought. 
It  is  not  improbable  that  had  Adam  Smith  ever  fully 
worked  out  his  plan,  the  development  of  many  influen- 
tial modern  ideas  would  have  been  anticipated  by  more 
than  a  century. 

In  any  case,  the  coincidence,  and  we  think  it  more 
than  a  mere  verbal  one,  in  no  way  affects  the  question 
of  priority,  but  merely  shows  the  naturalness  of  the 
thoughts  in  question.  The  view  that  "explanation" 
is  the  description  of  the  unknown  in  terms  of  the 
known  is  not  new  in  philosophy,  but  it  was  never  until 
recently  defined  with  a  precision  which  gave  to  it  a 
wide  range  of  usefulness.  Besides,  in  verbal  coinci- 
dences, great  care  must  be  exercised  lest  we  interpret 
the  words  of  one  period  in  the  light  of  the  ideas  of  a 
subsequent  one,  where  the  intellectual  environment  is 
different. 

That  Adam  Smith,  however,  should  have  come 
near  to  the  idea  of  the  economy  of  thought  is  not  re- 
markable, for  the  main  research  of  his  life  was  occu- 
pied with  that  field  from  which  Professor  Mach  drew 
the  first  suggestions  of  his  theory.^  Much  that  follows 
will  be  rendered  more  intelligible  if  we  remember  that* 
Smith  was  powerfully  influenced  by  the  philosophical 
views  of  his  friend  David  Hume. 

In  accordance  with  the  philosophical  drift  of  the 
time.  Smith  seeks  the  universal  motive  of  philosoph- 
ical research  in  a  Sentiment — the  sentiment  of  wonder. 

"  We  wonder  at  all  extraordinary  and  uncommon  objects,  at 
all  the  rarer  phenomena  o£  nature,  at  meteors,  comets,  eclipses, 
at  singular  plants  and  animals,  and  at  every  thing,  in  short,  with 
which  we  have  before  been  either  little  or  not  at  all  acquainted." 

It  will  be  seen  that  like  Hobbes  he  placed  the  mo- 
tive of  philosophical  research  rather  high  in  the  psy- 
chological scale,  and  could  say  : 

"Wonder,  therefore,  and  not  any  expectation  of  advantage 
from  its  discoveries,  is  the  first  principle  which  prompts  mankind 
to  the  study  of  Philosophy." 

We  should  not  state  his  results  nowadays  in  the 
same  words,  but  practically  the  same  meaning  is  con- 
veyed by  them. 

The  starting  point  clear,  let  us  see  what  "explana- 
tion" consists  in,  keeping  in  mind  the  views  of  Clif- 
ford and  Mach,  which  the  curious  reader  will  find 
summarised  in  the  essays  on  Mental  Adaptation,  The 
Economy  of  Thought,  and  Comparison  in  Phj'sics,  in 
the  XsXi&x's  Popular  Scientific  Lectures,  and  in  the  article 
on  the  Aims  and  Instruments  of  Scientific  Thought  in 
the  former's  Lectures  and  Essays. 

The  mind,  says  Adam  Smith,  takes  pleasure  in  ob- 
serving the  resemblances  that  are  discoverable  betwixt 
objects.  By  such  observations  it  endeavors  "to  ar- 
range and  methodise  all  its  ideas,  and  to  reduce  them 

1  Allied  ideas  may  also  be  found  in  G.  H.  Lewes,  Probletns  0/  Life  and, 
Mind,  Third  Series,  Vol,  U,  Chapter  6. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4451 


into  proper  classes  and  assortments."  One  single  com- 
mon quality  is  suflicient  to  connect  together  widely 
different  objects,  which  is  done  b\'  abstract  or  general 
names.  How,  now,  does  this  ' '  methodising  of  ideas  " 
result  in  explanation  ?     The  author  saj-s  : 

"Whatever  ....  occurs  to  us  ue  are  fond  of  referring  to 
some  species  or  class  of  things,  with  all  of  which  it  has  a  nearly 
exact  resemblance  ;  and  though  we  often  know  no  more  about 
them  than  about  it,  yet  we  are  apt  to  fancy  that  by  being  able  to 
do  so,  we  show  ourselves  to  be  belter  acquainted  with  it,  and  to 
have  a  more  thorough  insight  into  its  nature.  But  when  some- 
thing quite  new  and  singular  is  presented,  we  feel  ourselves  in- 
capable of  doing  this.  The  memory  cannot  from  all  its  stores, 
cast  up  any  image  ihat  nearly  resembles  this  strange  appearance. 
If  by  some  of  its  qualities  it  seems  to  resemble,  and  to  be  con- 
nected with  a  species  which  we  have  before  been  acquainted  with, 
it  is  by  others  separated  and  detached  from  thai,  and  from  all  the 
other  assortments  of  things  we  have  hitherto  been  able  to  make. 
It  stands  alone  and  by  itself  in  the  imagination,  and  refuses  to  be 
grouped  or  confounded  with  any  set  of  objects  whatever.  The 
imagination  and  memory  e.xert  themselves  to  no  purpose,  and  in 
vain  look  around  all  their  classes  of  ideas  in  order  to  find  one 
under  which  it  may  be  arranged. 

"  What  sort  of  a  thing  can  that  be  ?  What  is  that  like  ?  are 
the  questions  which,  upon  such  an  occasion,  we  are  all  naturally 
disposed  to  ask.  If  we  can  recollect  many  such  objects  which  ex- 
actly resemble  this  new  appearance,  and  which  present  themselves 
to  the  imagination  naturally,  and  as  it  were  of  their  own  accord, 
our  Wonder  is  entirely  at  an  end.  If  we  can  recollect  but  a  few, 
and  which  it  requiries  too  some  trouble  to  be  able  to  call  up,  our 
Wonder  is  indeed  diminished,  but  not  quite  destroyed.  If  we  can 
recollect  none,  but  are  quite  at  a  loss,  it  is  the  greatest  possible.', 

Again,  not  only  may  strange  individual  objects  ex- 
cite wonder  and  give  rise  to  the  foregoing  process  of 
the  mind,  but  a  succcssioti  of  objects  tvhiili  follo'w  one 
another  in  an  uneommem  train  or  order,  may  produce  the 
same  efiect,  though  there  be  nothing  particular  in  any  one 
0/  them  taken  by  itself.      For  example  : 

"  The  motion  of  a  small  piece  of  iron  along  a  plain  table  is  in 
itself  no  extraordinary  object,  yet  the  person  who  first  saw  it  be- 
gin, without  any  visible  impulse,  in  consequence  of  the  motion  of 
a  loadstone  at  some  little  distance  from  it,  could  not  behold  it 
without  the  most  extreme  Surprise  ;  and  when  that  momentary 
emotion  was  over,  he  would  still  wonder  how  it  came  to  be  con- 
joined to  an  event  with  which,  according  to  the  ordinary  train  of 
things,  he  could  have  so  little  suspected  it  to  have  any  connex 
ion." 

The  solution  of  this  problem  involves  the  well- 
known  conception  of  causality,  as  a  rigid  and  familiar 
association  of  ideas,  as  a  habit  of  the  imagination. 

"■A.S  its  [the  imagination's]  ideas  move  more  rapidly  than  ex- 
ternal objects,  it  is  continually  running  before  them,  and  there- 
fore anticipates,  before  it  happens,  every  event  which  falls  out  ac- 
cording to  this  ordinary  course  of  things.  When  objects  succeed 
each  other  in  the  same  train  in  which  the  ideas  of  the  imagination 
have  thus  been  accustomed  to  move,  and  in  which,  though  not 
conducted  by  that  chain  of  events  presented  to  the  senses,  they 
have  acquired  a  tendency  to  go  on  of  their  own  accord,  such  ob- 
jects appear  all  closely  connected  with  one  another,  and  the  thought 
glides  easily  along  them,  without  effort  and  without  interruption 
They  fall  in  with  the  natural  career  of  the  imagination.  .  .  .  There 


is  no  break,  no  stop,  no  gap,  no  interval.     The   ideas  excited  by 
so  coherent  a  chain  of  things  seem,  as  it  were,  to  float  through  the 
mind  of  their  own  accord,  without  obliging  it  to  exert  itself,  or  to 
make  any  effort  in  order  to  pass  from  one  of  them  to  another." 
Again  : 

"  If  this  customary  connexion  be  interrupted,  if  one  or  more 
objects  appear  in  an  order  quite  different  from  that  to  which  the 
imagination  has  been  accustomed,  and  for  which  it  is  prepared, 
the  contrary  of  all  this  happens.  We  are  at  first  surprised  by  the 
unexpectedness  of  the  new  appearance,  and  when  that  momentary 
emotion  is  over,  we  still  wonder  how  it  came  to  occur  in  that 
place.  The  imagination  no  longer  feels  the  usual  facility  of  pass- 
ing from  the  event  which  goes  before  to  that  which  comes  after. 
It  is  an  order  or  law  of  succession  to  which  it  has  not  been  accus- 
tomed, and  which  it  therefore  finds  some  difficulty  in  following, 
or  in  attending  to.  The  fancy  is  stopped  and  interrupted  in  the 
natural  movement  or  career,  according  to  which  it  was  proceed- 
ing. These  two  events  seem  to  stand  at  a  distance  from  each 
other  ;  it  endeavors  to  bring  tnem  together,  but  they  refuse  to 
unite  ;  and  it  feels,  or  imagines  it  feels,  something  like  a  gap  or 
interval  betwixt  them.  It  naturally  hesitates,  and,  as  it  were, 
pauses  upon  the  brink  of  this  interval  ;  it  endeavors  to  find  out 
something  which  may  fill  up  the  gap,  which,  like  a  bridge,  may  so 
far  at  least  unite  those  seemingly  distant  objects,  as  to  render  the 
passage  of  the  thought  betwixt  them  smooth,  and  natural,  and 
easy.  The  supposition  of  a  chain  of  intermediate,  though  invis- 
ible, events,  which  succeed  each  other  in  a  train  similar  to  that  in 
which  the  imagination  has  been  accustomed  to  move,  and  which 
links  together  those  two  disjointed  appearances,  is  the  only  means 
by  which  the  imagination  can  fill  up  this  interval,  is  the  only 
bridge  which,  if  one  may  say  so,  can  smooth  its  passage  from  the 
one  object  to  the  other.  Thus,  when  we  observe  the  motion  of 
t!ie  iron,  in  consequence  of  that  of  the  loadstone,  we  gaze  and 
hesitate  and  feel  a  want  of  connexion  betwixt  two  events  which 
follow  one  another  m  so  unusual  a  train.  But  when,  with  Des 
Cartes,  we  imagine  certain  invisible  effluvia  to  circulate  round  one 
of  them,  and  by  their  repeated  impulses  to  imp&l  the  other,  both 
to  move  towards  it,  and  to  follow  its  motion,  we  fill  up  the  interval 
betwixt  them,  we  join  them  together  by  a  sort  of  bridge,  and  thus 
take  oft  that  hesitation  and  difficulty  which  the  imagination  felt  in 
passing  from  the  one  to  the  other.  That  the  iron  should  move 
after  the  loadstone  seems,  upon  this  hypothesis,  in  some  measure 
according  to  the  ordinary  course  of  things.  Motion  after  impulse 
is  an  order  of  succession  with  which  of  all  things  we  are  the  most 
familiar.  Two  objects  which  are  so  connected  seem,  to  our  mind, 
no  longer  to  be  disjointed,  and  the  imagination  flows  smoothly  and 
easily  along  them." 

The  same  happy  phraseologs'  is  employed  through- 
out the  whole  "  Essay  on  the  History  of  Astronomy." 

Adam  Smith  is  well  aware,  too,  of  the  relative  suf- 
ficiency of  explanations.  Speaking  of  astronom}',  where 
science  has  been  most  successful,  he  says  : 

"  Nay,  in  those  cases  in  which  we  have  been  less  successful, 
even  the  vague  hypothesis  of  Des  Cartes,  and  the  yet  more  inde- 
termined  notions  of  Aristotle,  have,  with  their  followers,  contrib- 
uted to  give  some  coherence  to  the  appearances  of  nature,  and 
might  diminish,  though  they  could  not  destroy  their  wonder.  If 
they  did  not  completely  fill  up  the  interval  betwixt  the  two  dis- 
jointed objects,  they  bestowed  upon  them,  however,  some  sort  of 
loose  connexion  which  they  wanted  before." 

And  referring  to  events  where  the  whole  physiog- 
nomy of  nature  is  conceived  to  be  changed,  he  makes 
the  following  remark  : 


4452 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


"Could  we  conceive  a  person  of  the  soundest  judgment,  who 
had  grown  up  to  maturity,  and  whose  imagination  had  acquired 
those  habits,  and  that  mould,  which  the  constitution  of  things  in 
this  world  necessarily  impresses  upon  it,  to  be  all  at  once  trans- 
ported alive  to  some  other  planet,  where  nature  was  governed  by 
laws  quite  different  from  those  which  take  place  here  ;  as  he  would 
be  continually  obliged  to  attend  to  events,  which  must  to  him  ap- 
pear in  the  highest  degree  jarring,  irregular,  and  discordant,  he 
would  soon  feel  ....  [a]  confusion  and  giddiness  begin  to  come 
upon  him,  which  would  at  last  end  ....  in  lunacy  and  distrac- 
tion." 

The  terms  cause  and  effect  seem  to  be  avoided  in 
Smith's  discussion,  but  the  function  of  the  ideas  cause 
and  effect,  as  factors  in  comprehension,  is  well  illus- 
trated, as  follows  : 

"  The  same  orders  of  succession,  which  to  one  set  of  men  seem 
quite  according  to  the  natural  course  of  things,  and  such  as  require 
no  intermedi.nte  events  to  join  them,  shall  to  another  appear  alto- 
gether incoherent  and  disjointed,  unless  some  such  events  be  sup- 
posed :  and  this  for  no  other  reason,  but  because  such  orders  of 
succession  are  familiar  to  the  one,  and  strange  to  the  other.  When 
we  enter  the  work-houses  of  the  most  common  artizans  ;  such  as 
dyers,  brewers,  distillers  ;  we  observe  a  number  of  appearances, 
which  present  themselves  in  an  order  that  seems  to  us  very  strange 
and  wonderful.  Our  thought  cannot  easily  follow  it,  we  feel  an 
interval  betwixt  every  two  of  them,  and  require  some  chain  of  in- 
termediate events,  to  fill  it  up,  and  link  them  together.  But  the 
artizan  himself,  who  has  been  for  many  years  familiar  with  the 
consequences  of  all  the  operations  of  his  art,  feels  no  such  inter\  al. 
They  fall  in  with  what  custom  has  made  the  natural  movement  of 
his  imagination  ;  they  no  longer  excite  his  Wonder,  and  if  he  is 
not  a  genius  superior  to  his  profession,  so  as  to  be  capable  of  mak- 
ing the  very  easy  reflexion,  that  those  things,  though  familiar  to 
him,  may  be  strange  to  us,  he  will  be  disposed  rather  to  laugh  at, 
than  sympathise  with  our  Wonder.  He  cannot  conceive  what  oc- 
casion there  is  for  any  connecting  events  to  unite  those  appear- 
ances, which  seem  to  him  to  succeed  each  other  very  naturally. 
It  is  their  nature,  he  tells  us,  to  follow  one  another  in  this  order, 
and  that  accordingly  they  always  do  so  " 

Philosophy  is  "  the  science  of  the  connecting  prin- 
ciples of  nature."  Philosophies  have  succeeded  or 
failed  according  as  their  connecting  principles  have 
been  more  or  less  familiar  : 

"Why  has  the  chemical  philosophy  in  all  ages  crept  along  in 
obscurity,  and  been  so  disregarded  by  the  generality  of  mankind, 
while  other  systems,  less  useful,  and  not  more  agreeable  to  expe- 
rience, have  possessed  universal  admiration  for  whole  centuries 
together  ?  The  connecting  principles  of  the  chemical  philosophy 
are  such  as  the  generality  of  mankind  know  nothing  about,  have 
rarely  seen,  ard  have  never  been  acquainted  with;  and  which  to 
them,  therefore,  are  incapable  of  smoothing  the  passage  of  the  im- 
agination betwixt  any  two  seemingly  disjointed  objects.  Salts, 
sulphurs,  and  rrercuries,  acids  and  alkalis,  are  principles  which 
can  smooth  things  to  those  only  who  live  about  the  furnace  ;  but 
whose  most  common  operations  seem,  to  the  bulk  of  mankind,  as 
disjointed  as  any  two  events  which  the  chemists  would  connect 
together  by  them.  Those  artists,  however,  naturally  explained 
things  to  themselves  by  principles  that  were  familiar  to  themselves. 
As  Aristotle  obstrves,  that  the  early  Pythagoreans,  who  first  stud- 
ied arithmetic,  explained  all  things  by  the  properties  of  numbers; 
and  Cicero  tells  us,  that  Aristoxenus,  the  musician,  found  the  na- 
ture of  the  soul  to  consist  in  harmony.  In  the  .same  manner,  a 
learned  physician  lately  gave  a  system  of  moral  philosophy  upon 


the  principles  of  his  own  art,  in  which  wisdom  and  virtue  were  the 
healthful  state  of  the  soul ;  the  different  vices  and  follies,  the  dif- 
ferent diseases  to  which  it  was  subject  ;  in  which  the  causes  and 
symptoms  of  those  diseases  were  ascertained  ;  and,  in  the  same 
medical  strain,  a  proper  method  of  cure  prescribed.  In  the  same 
manner  also,  others  have  written  parallels  of  painting  and  poetry, 
of  poetry  and  music,  of  music  and  architecture,  of  beauty  and  vir- 
tue, of  all  the  fine  arts  ;  systems  which  have  universally  owed 
their  origin  to  the  lucubrations  of  those  who  were  acquainted  with 
the  one  art,  but  ignorant  of  the  other  ;  who  therefore  explained  to 
themselves  the  phenomena  in  that  which  was  strange  to  them,  by 
those  in  that  which  was  familiar  ;  and  with  whom,  upon  that  ac- 
count, the  analogy,  which  in  other  writers  gives  occasion  to  a  few 
ingenious  similitudes,  became  the  great  hinge  upon  which  every 
thing  turned." 

Regardiug  the  fiDictlon  of  a  scientific  system.  Smith 
is  also  perfectly  clear.  After  describing  the  astronomi- 
cal system  of  the  ancients  as  perfected  by  Eudoxus 
and  Callippus,  he  says  : 

"  Though  rude  and  inartificial,  it  is  capable  of  connecting  to- 
gether, in  the  im^agination,  the  grandest  and  the  most  seemingly 
disjointed  appearances  in  the  heavens.  .  .  .  And  if  there  had  been 
no  other  bodies  discoverable  in  the  heavens,  besides  the  Sun,  the 
Moon,  and  the  Fixed  Stars,  this  hypothesis  might  have  stood  the 
examinations  of  all  ages  and  gone  down  triumphant  to  the  re- 
motest posterity." 

Owing  to  the  discovery  of  new  phenomena,  how- 
ever, 

"  This  system  had  become  as  intricate  and  complex  as  those 
appearances  themselves,  which  it  had  been  invented  to  render 
uniform  and  coherent.  The  imagination,  therefore,  found  itself 
but  little  relieved  from  that  embarrassment,  into  which  those  ap- 
pearances had  thrown  it,  by  so  perplexed  an  account  of  things." 

Similarly,  speaking  of  the  various  phenomena 
which  the  astronomical  sj'stem  of  Cleanthes  leaves 
unexplained,  he  says  : 

".\11  these  have,  in  his  system,  no  bond  of  union,  but  remain 
as  loose  and  incoherent  in  the  fancy,  as  they  at  first  appeared  to 
the  senses,  before  philosophy  had  attempted,  by  giving  them  a 
new  arrangement,  by  placing  them  at  different  distances,  by  as- 
signing to  each  some  peculiar  but  regular  principle  of  motion,  to 
methodise  and  dispose  them  into  an  order  that  should  enable  the 
imagination  to  pass  as  smoothly,  and  with  as  little  embarrass- 
ment, along  them,  as  along  the  most  regular,  most  familiar,  and 
mo.st  coherent  appearances  of  nature." 

Then  follows  this  paragraph,  highly  elucidative  of 
the  nature  of  scientific  theories,  and  which  Smith  em- 
ploys on  another  occasion,  as  we  shall  see  later  on. 

"  Systems  in  many  respects  resemble  machines.  A  machine 
is  a  little  system,  created  to  perform,  as  well  as  to  connect  to- 
gether, in  reality,  those  different  movements  and  effects  which  the 
artist  has  occasion  for.  A  system  is  an  imaginary  machine  in 
vented  to  connect  together  in  the  fancy  those  different  movemenis 
and  effects  which  ate  already  in  reality  performed.  The  machines 
that  are  first  invented  to  perform  any  particular  movement  are  al- 
ways the  most  complex,  and  succeeding  artists  generally  discover 
that,  with  fewer  wheels,  with  fewer  principles  of  motion,  than  had 
originally  been  employed,  the  same  effects  may  be  more  easily 
produced.  The  first  systems,  in  the  sams  manner,  are  always  the 
most  complex,  and  a  particular  connecting  chain,  or  principle,  is 
generally  thought  necessary  to  unite  every  two  seemingly  dis- 
jointed appearances;   but  it  often  happens  that  one  great  connectr 


THE     OPEN     COITRT. 


4453 


ing  principle  is  afterwards  found  to  be  sufficient  to  bind  to- 
gether all  the  discordant  phenomena  that  occur  in  a  whole  species 
of  things.  How  many  wheels  are  necessary  to  carry  on  the  move- 
ments of  this  imaginary  machine,  the  system  of  Eccentric  Spheres! 
The  westward  diurnal  revolution  of  the  Firmament,  whose  rapid- 
ity carries  all  the  other  heavenly  bodies  along  with  it.  requires 
one.  The  periodical  eastward  revolutions  of  the  Sun,  Moon,  and 
Five  Planets,  require,  for  each  of  tho?e  bodies,  another.  Their 
differently  accelerated  and  retarded  motions  require,  that  those 
wheels,  or  circles,  should  neither  be  concentric  with  the  Firma- 
ment, nor  with  one  another;  which,  more  than  anything,  seems 
to  disturb  the  harmony  of  the  universe.  The  retrograde  and  sta- 
tionary appearance  of  the  Five  Planets,  as  well  as  the  e.\treme 
inconstancy  of  the  Moon's  motion,  require,  for  each  of  them,  an 
Epicycle,  another  little  wheel  attached  to  the  circumference  of 
the  great  wheel,  which  still  more  interrupts  the  uniformity  of  the 
system  The  motion  of  the  apogeum  of  each  of  those  bodies  re- 
quires, in  each  of  them,  still  another  wheel,  to  carry  the  centres 
of  their  Eccentric  Spheres  round  the  centre  of  the  Earth.  And 
thus,  this  imaginary  machine  [Ptolemy's],  though,  perhaps,  more 
simple,  and  certainly  better  adapted  to  the  phenomena  than  the 
Fifty-six  Planetary  Spheres  of  Aristotle,  was  still  too  intricate  and 
complex  for  the  imagination  to  rest  in  it  with  complete  tranquil 
lity  and  satisfaction," 

.  What  Ptolem3''s  sj'stem  failed  to  do,  the  s\'stem  of 
Copernictis,  however,  accomplislied. 

"The  system  cf  Copernicus  afforded  ibis  easily,  and  like  a 
more  simple  machine,  without  the  assistance  of  Epicycles,  con- 
nected together,  by  fewer  movements,  the  complex  appearances 
of  the  heavens,  .  ,  .  Thus  far  did  this  new  account  of  things  ren- 
der the  appearances  of  the  heavens  more  completely  coherent  than 
had  been  done  by  any  of  the  former  systems.  It  die  this,  too,  by 
a  more  simple  and  intelligible,  as  well  as  more  beautiful  machin- 
ery." 

Further,  by  Copernicus's  sj'Stem  the  five  planets 
which  were  formerl}'  thought  to  be  objects  of  a  species 
by  themselves  unlike  anything  to  which  the  imagi- 
nation had  been  accustomed,  were  naturall}'  appre- 
hended to  be  objects  of  the  same  kind  with  the  earth. 

"Thus  this  hypothesis,  by  classing  them  in  the  same  species 
of  things  with  an  object  that  is  of  all  others  the  most  familiar  to 
us,  took  off  that  wonder  and  that  uncertainty  which  the  strange- 
ness and  singularity  of  their  appearance  had  excited  ;  and  thus  far, 
too,  better  answered  the  great  end  of  Philosophy," 

Smith's  comparison  of  scientific  theories  to  imagin- 
ary working-models  of  events,  reminds  us  of  Professor 
Mach's  view  that  science  is  a  Naclihildcn,  reproduction 
or  imitation,  of  facts. 

Smith  also  refers  the  success  of  Newton's  law  of 
gravitation  to  the  afore-mentioned  principle  in  "phi- 
losophy." Gravit}-,  he  says,  of  all  the  qualities  of 
matter,  is  after  its  inertness  that  which  is  most  familiar 
to  us. 

"The  superior  genius  and  sagacity  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  there- 
fore, made  the  most  happy,  and,  we  may  now  say,  the  greatest 
and  most  admirable  improvement  that  was  ever  made  in  philos- 
ophy, when  he  discovered  that  he  could  join  together  the  move- 
ments of  the  Planets  by  so  familiar  a  principle  of  connexion, 
which  completely  removed  all  the  difficulties  the  imagination  had 
hitherto  felt  in  attending  to  them." 


Smith  only  began  his  Essay  on  the  History  of  .An- 
cient Physics.  But  he  lays  down  the  same  principles 
as  directing  inquiry  in  this  domain.  Jiere,  too,  the 
imagination  is  "driven  out  of  its  natural  career,"  only 
it  is  infinitely  more  embarrassed  than  in  the  heavens. 

"To  introduce  order  and  coherence  into  the  mind's  concep- 
tion of  this  seeming  chaos  of  dissimilar  and  disjointed  appearances 
[referring  to  terrestrial  phenomena] ,  it  was  necessary  to  deduce  all 
their  qualities,  operations,  and  laws  of  succession,  from  those  of 
some  particular  things,  with  .vhich  it  was  perfectly  acquainted  and 
familiar,  and  along  which  its  imagination  could  glide  smoothly 
and  easily,  and  without  interruption." 

To  render  this  lower,  terrestrial  part  of  the  great 
theatre  of  nature  a  coherent  spectacle  to  the  imagina- 
tion it  is  necessary  to  suppose,  he  sajs,  and  here  we 
have  in  a  nutshell  his  theory  of  e.xplanation  : 

"First,  that  all  the  strange  objects  of  which  it  consisted  were 
made  up  out  of  a  few,  with  which  the  mind  was  extremely  f.'.mil- 
iar  ;  and  secondly,  that  all  their  qualities,  operations,  and  rules  of 
succession,  were  no  more  than  different  diversifications  of  those 
to  which  it  had  long  been  accustomed,  in  these  primary  and  ele- 
mentary objects." 

In  the  few  pages  constituting  this  essay  he  shows 
how  by  these  principles  the  physical  speculations  of 
the  ancients  were  guided  and  practically  justified. 
Apropos  of  the  last  consideration  he  remarks: 

"Let  us  not  despise  those  ancient  philosophers,  for  thus  sup- 
posing, that  these  two  elements  [fire  and  air]  had  a  positive  levity, 
or  a  real  tendency  upwards.  Let  us  remember  that  this  notion  has 
an  appearance  of  being  confirmed  by  the  most  obvious  observa- 
tions ;  that  those  facts  and  experiments,  which  demonstraie  the 
weight  of  the  Air,  and  which  no  superior  sagacity,  but  chance 
alone,  presented  to  the  moderns,  were  altogether  unknown  to 
them." 

In  concluding  we  shall  give  two  quotations  related 
to  that  made  above  on  s}-stems,  which  seem  to  indi- 
cate that  the  idea  of  mental  econoni}'  was  not  entirely 
unfamiliar  to  Smith's  mind.  He  is  speaking  in  the 
"Essay  on  the  Formation  of  Languages,"  of  the  drop- 
ping of  declensions  and  conjugations,  and  of  their 
places  being  supplied   by  auxiliary  words.      He  says  : 

"  It  is  in  this  manner  that  language  becomes  more  simple  in 
its  rudiments  and  principles,  just  in  proportion  as  it  grows  more 
complex  in  its  composition,  and  the  same  thing  has  happened  in 
it,  which  commonly  happens  with  regard  to  mechanical  engines. 
All  machines  are  generally,  when  first  invented,  extremely  com- 
plex in  their  principles,  and  there  is  often  a  particular  principle  of 
motion  for  every  particular  movement  which  it  is  intended  they 
should  perform.  Succeeding  improvers  observe,  that  one  prin- 
ciple may  be  so  applied  as  to  produce  several  of  those  movements; 
and  thus  the  machine  becomes  gradually  more  and  more  simple, 
and  produces  its  effects  with  fewer  wheels,  and  fewer  principles  of 
motion.  In  language,  in  the  same  manner,  every  case  of  every 
noun,  and  every  tense  of  every  verb,  was  originally  expressed  bv 
a  particular  distinct  word,  which  served  for  this  purpose  and  for 
no  other.  But  succeeding  observations  discovered,  that  one  set  of 
words  was  capable  of  supplying  the  place  of  all  that  infinite  num- 
ber, and  that  four  or  five  prepositions,  and  half  a  dozen  auxiliary 
verbs,  were  capable  of  answering  the  end  of  all  the  declensions, 
and  of  all  the  conjugations  in  the  ancient  languages." 


4454 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


In  another  place  in  the  same  Essay,  in  speaking  of 
impersonal  verbs,  which,  according  to  him,  express  in 
one  word  a  complete  event  and  preserve  in  the  ex- 
pression that  perfect  simplicity  and  unity  which  there 
always  is  in  the  object  and  in  the  idea,  and  which 
suppose  no  abstraction  or  metaphysical  division  of  the 
event  into  its  several  constituent  members  of  subject 
and  attribute,  and  after  explaining  how  such  imper- 
sonal verbs  have  become  personal,  by  splitting  up  and 
dividing  all  events  into  a  great  number  of  metaphysical 
parts,  he  says  : 

"It  is  probably  in  some  such  manner  as  this,  that  almost  all 
verbs  have  become  personal,  and  that  mankind  have  learned  by 
degrees  to  split  and  divide  almost  every  event  into  a  great  num 
ber  of  metaphysical  parts,  expressed  by  the  different  parts  of 
speech,  variously  combined  in  the  different  members  of  every 
phrase  and  sentence.  The  same  sort  of  progress  seems  to  have 
been  made  in  the  art  of  speaking  as  in  the  art  of  writing.  When 
mankind  first  began  to  attempt  to  express  their  ideas  by  writing, 
every  character  represented  a  whole  word.  But  the  number  of 
words  being  almost  infinite,  the  memory  found  itself  quite  loaded 
and  oppressed  by  the  multitude  of  characters  which  it  was  obliged 
to  retain.  Necessity  taught  them,  therefore,  to  divide  words  into 
their  elements,  and  to  invent  characters  whicl-:  should  represent, 
not  the  words  themselves,  but  the  elements  of  which  they  were 
composed.  In  consequence  of  this  invention,  every  particular 
word  came  to  be  represented,  not  by  one  character,  but  by  a  mul- 
titude of  characters ;  and  the  expression  of  it  in  writing  became 
much  more  intricate  and  complex  than  before.  But  though  par- 
ticular words  were  thus  represented  by  a  greater  number  of  char- 
acters, the  whole  language  was  expressed  by  a  much  smaller,  and 
about  four  and  twenty  letters  were  found  capable  of  supplying  the 
place  of  that  immense  multitude  of  characters,  which  were  requi- 
site before.  In  the  same  manner,  in  the  beginnings  of  language, 
men  seem  to  have  attempted  to  express  every  particular  event, 
which  they  had  occasion  to  take  notice  of,  by  a  particular  word, 
which  expressed  at  once  the  whole  of  the  event.  But  as  the  num- 
ber of  words  must,  in  this  case,  have  become  really  infinite  in 
consequence  of  the  really  infinite  variety  of  events,  men  found 
themselves  partly  compelled  by  necessity,  and  partly  conducted 
by  nature,  to  divide  every  event  into  what  may  be  called  its  meta- 
physical elements,  and  to  institute  words,  which  should  denote 
not  so  much  the  events,  as  the  elements  of  which  they  were  com. 
posed.  The  expression  of  every  particular  event  became  in  this 
manner  more  intricate  and  complex,  but  the  whole  system  of  the 
language  became  more  coherent,  more  connected,  more  easily  re- 
tained and  comprehended." 


BOOK  NOTICES. 

Thoughts  on  Religion.     By  Gavge  Jiilni  Ki'iiudu-s.     Edited  by 
Charles  Gore,  M.A.,  Canon  of  Westminster.   Chicago:  The 
Open  Court  Publishing  Co.    1895.   Pages,  184.   Price,  $1.25. 
The  late  Prof.  George  John   Romanes   left   some  unfinished 
notes  on   religion   which   were  handed,  at   his  special  request,  to 
Mr.  Charles   Gore,  Canon   of   Westminster,    a  friend  of   the  late 
scientist,  and  a  representative  of   ecclesiastical  dogmatism,  to  do 
with  them  as  Mr.  Gore  thought  best.      Mr.  Gore  decided  to  pub- 
lish these  notes,  with  editorial  comments  and  two  inedited  es- 
says on   "The  Influence  of  Science  upon  Religion,"  written  by 
Romanes  in  1889.    All  now  lie  before  us,  bearing  the  title  T/iough/s 
on  J^eiigioji. 

As  was  to  be  foreseen,  this  book  is  creating  a  sensation.     Not 
only  does  it  prove  the  depth  of  Professor  Romanes's  religious  sen- 


timent, but  it  is  also  striking  evidence  of  the  importance  of  the 
religious  problem  generally.  We  learn  from  it  that  the  great  bi- 
ologist was  possessed  of  a  profound  eagerness  to  believe,  but  dis- 
cover that  he  was  unable  after  all  to  conquer  the  objections  made 
by  science  to  the  traditional  dogmas  of  religion.  It  appears, 
however,  that  his  tendency  to  belief  increased,  and  we  are  in- 
formed by  the  editor,  Mr.  Gore,  that  Professor  Romanes,  before 
his  death,  "  returned  to  that  full  deliberate  communion  with  the 
Church  of  Jesus  Christ,  which  he  had  for  so  many  years  been  con- 
scientiously compelled  to  forego." 

The  significance  of  the  struggle  in  Professor  Romanes's  mind 
between  reason  and  belief  cannot  be  overrated.  Romanes's  post- 
humous work  is  a  iiuiit'  tckel  which  reminds  us  of  the  importance 
of  the  religious  problem.  We  cannot  and  must  not  leave  it  un- 
settled in  worldly  indifference.  We  must  attend  to  it  and  investi- 
gate it  bravely  and  conscientiously.  We  can  no  longer  denounce 
reason,  or  silence  our  intellectual  needs,  for  it  is  God  himself  who 
speaks  in  the  voice  of  reason  :  and  the  progress  of  science  is  his 
most  glorious  revelation  which  ecclesiasticism  cannot  smother. 
Indeed,  the  suppression  of  reason  is  the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost 
which  cannot  be  forgiven,  but  will  inevitably  lead,  if  persisted  in, 
to  tternal  perdition. 

The  issues  involved  in  Professor  Romanes's  V'/ioiiglils  on  Ke- 
/igion  are  discussed  editorially  and  at  length  in  the  April  Monist, 
which  has  just  appeared. 

We  are  glad  to  announce  the  appearance  of  a  little  paper,  de 
voted  to  the  interests  of  the  People's  Church  of  Peoria,  111.,  en- 
titled The  Unsectarian.  It  is  a  welcome  sign  of  the  times,  and  will 
not  only  serve  to  promote  and  consolidate  the  interests  of  the  or- 
ganisation which  it  represents,  but  will  also  afford  example  and 
encouragement  to  similar  struggling  institutions  in  other  towns. 
The  People's  Church,  we  learn,  "stands  for  the  religion  of  hu- 
manity. ...  It  is  creedless  .  .  .  Asks  no  one  what  he  believes,  .  .  . 
but  aims  to  teach  the  physical,  moral,  and  spiritual  laws  of  the 
universe,  and  exhort  obedience  to  them.  .  .  .  Knowledge  is  the  sa- 
viour of  the  world."     (R.  B.  Marsh,  216  Linn  Street,  Peoria,  111  ) 


Cornell  University  has  been  publishing  for  nearly  two  years 
now  a  high-class  technical  magazine.  The  Physical  Xeview,  a  Jour- 
nal of  Experimental  and  Theoretical  Physics,  conducted  by  Ed- 
ward L.  Nichols  and  Ernest  Merritt.  This  periodical  will,  of 
course,  claim  the  attention  only  of  specialists,  but  it  is  significant 
of  a  new  and  ge.neral  character  of  American  research,  which  all 
will  welcome.     (New  York  :   Macmillan  &  Co.) 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

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E.  C.   HEGELER,  Publisher. 


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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  397. 

SARAH   GRA.XD'S  ETHICS,     T.  Bailev  S.^unders 4447 

AN   EPISODE  IN  THE  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

Thomas  J.  McCormack 445° 

BOOK  NOTICES 4454 


The  Open  Court. 


A    ^VEEKLY   JOURNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.   398.     (Vol.  IX.— 15  ) 


CHICAGO,   APRIL   11,   1895. 


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Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOSES. 

BY  PROF,    C.    H.    CORNILL. 

I  MUST  preface  my  remarks  with  the  statement, 
which  is  to-day  not  snperfliious,  that  I  regard  the  tra- 
ditions of  Israel  concerning  its  ancient  history  on  the 
whole  as  historical.  They  are  to  be  accepted  with  re- 
serve and  criticism,  as  all  legends  are,  but  at  the  basis 
of  them  is  to  be  found  a  grain  of  historical  truth,  which 
it  is  the  duty  of  the  historian  to  disengage  from  the 
magic  veil  which  legend  has  woven  round  it,  and  to 
understand.  I  believe,  accordingly,  that  the  forefa- 
thers of  Israel  under  the  guidance  of  Abraham  wan- 
dered from  Haran  in  Mesopotamia  into  Palestine  ;  that 
after  a  long  sojourn  there  and  after  man}'  adventures 
they  wended  their  way  into  Egypt  and  settled  down  in 
the  reedy  districts  of  the  Eastern  Nile-delta  ;  that  they 
met  there  at  first  with  a  friendly  reception,  or  at  least 
were  tolerated,  but  at  last  were  heavily  oppressed,  till 
under  the  guidance  of  Moses,  who  belonged  to  the  tribe 
of  Levi,  but  who  through  a  special  concatenation  of 
circumstances  had  received  access  to  the  higher  civili- 
sation and  culture  of  Egypt,  they  succeeded  in  freeing 
themselves  from  the  Egyptian  yoke.  The  entire  He- 
braic tradition  with  one  accord  regards  this  Moses,  the 
leader  of  the  exodus  out  of  Egypt,  as  the  founder  of 
the  religion  of  Israel.  Our  first  question,  therefore, 
must  be  :  What  sort  of  rejigion  was  that  which  Moses 
founded?     In  what  does  its  novelty  consist? 

And  now  I  must  make  an  admission  to  you,  which 
it  is  hard  for  me  to  make,  but  which  is  my  fullest  sci- 
entific conviction ,  based  upon  the  most  cogent  grounds, 
that  in  the  sense  in  which  the  historian  speaks  of 
"knowing,"  we  know  absolutel)' nothing  about  Moses. 
All  original  records  are  missing  ;  we  have  not  re- 
ceived a  line,  not  even  a  word,  from  Moses  himself, 
or  from  one  of  his  contemporaries  ;  even  the  celebrated 
Ten  Commandments  are  not  from  him,  but,  as  can  be 
proved,  were  written  in  the  first  half  of  the  seventh 
century  between  700  and  650  B.C.  The  oldest  accounts 
we  have  of  Moses  are  five  hundred  3'ears  later  than  his 
own  time.  Nevertheless,  this  comparative!)'  late  re- 
cord contains  some  special  features  which  are  impor- 
tant and  require  to  be  considered  in  the  solution  of 
the  question  now  occupying  our  attention. 

They  are  as  follows.      The  work  of  Moses  does  in 


no  way  appear  as  something  absolutely  new,  but  as  a 
supplement  to  something  already  existing  among  the 
people.  It  is  the  "God  of  our  fathers"  that  Moses 
proclaims.  Likewise,  it  is  certain,  that  the  name  of 
this  God,  whom  we  are  wont  to  call  Jeliovah,  and 
whose  real  Hebrew  pronunciation  is  Yahvcli,  was  first 
introduced  b}-  Moses,  and  that  a  priest  from  Sinai, 
whom  tradition  makes  the  father-in-law  of  Moses,  had 
no  mean  share  in  Moses's  work. 

As  regards  the  first  of  these  points,  all  the  internal 
evidence  is  in  its  favor.  The  relations  and  circum- 
stances of  the  time  were  not  suited  to  an  entirely  new 
creation  ;  had  the  people  at  the  time  of  Moses  been 
common  Semitic  heathens  or  Egyptian  animal-wor- 
shippers, his  achievements  would  have  been  unintel- 
ligible. Moreover,  I  believe  we  can  bring  into  organic 
connexion  with  this  theorj'  one  of  the  most  charming 
and  touching  narratives  in  Genesis,  the  narrative  of 
how  Abraham  originally  intended  to  sacrifice  his  only 
son,  Isaac,  to  God  as  a  burnt-offering,  when  an  angel 
appeared  and  placed  in  his  stead  a  ram.  Among  the 
Canaanites  the  sacrifice  of  children  was  an  ancient  and 
holy  institution.  The  only  purpose  the  narrative  can 
have  is  to  show  how  Abraham  and  his  companions  in 
their  wholesome  and  unpolluted  minds  regarded  this 
institution  with  horror,  and  that  they  kept  themselves 
uncontaminated  by  the  religious  customs  of  the  Cana- 
anites among  whom  they  lived,  and  whose  language 
they  adopted.  To  ascertain  and  establish  the  belief 
of  Abraham  is  an  utterlj-  impossible  task,  but  that 
Israel  possessed  before  the  time  of  Moses  some  dis- 
tinct sort  of  religion,  on  which  Moses  could  build,  is 
a  conclusion  from  which  we  cannot  escape. 

The  two  other  points  distinctly  traceable  in  the 
Hebrew  tradition  regarding  Moses,  namely,  that  the 
name  of  God  "Yahveh"  was  first  introduced  into  Is- 
rael by  him,  and  that  a  religious  relationship  existed 
with  Sinai,  where  tradition  places  the  foundation  of 
the  Israelitic  religion  by  Moses,  are  also  confirmed  by 
closer  examination  and  found  to  be  connected. 

In  the  first  place,  we  are  struck  with  the  fact  that 
the  name  of  God  "Yahveh"  has  no  obvious  Hebrew 
etj'mology.  The  interpretation  of  this  word  was  a 
matter  of  difficulty  and  uncertaint)-  even  for  the  Old 
Testament    itself.       In     Hebrew,    the   verb    "to    be" 


4456 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


alone  could  come  into  consideration.  This  in  the  He- 
brew is  hcijdh,  but  in  Aramaic  hcwd,  with  a  w  in  the 
second  place.  We  must,  however,  ask  :  Why  did 
Moses,  if  he  himself  invented  the  name,  derive  it,  not 
from  the  Hebrew,  but  from  the  Aramaic,  form  of  the 
verb  "to  be,"  whilst  we  cannot  prove,  or  even  render 
probable,  the  least  connexion  or  influence  on  the  part 
of  the  Aramaic  language?  And,  moreover,  this  deri- 
vation is  in  itself  in  the  highest  degree  suspicious  and 
doubtful.  A  name  for  God,  that  expressed  nothing 
more  of  God  than  mere  being,  essence,  pure  existence, 
is  hard  to  conceive  of  at  such  an  ancient  period  ;  all 
this  is  the  pale  cast  of  philosophical  speculation,  but 
not  the  virile  life  of  religion,  and  with  such  a  purely 
speculative  name  of  God,  Moses  would  have  given  to 
his  people  a  stone  instead  of  bread.  Feeling  this  dif- 
ficulty the  attempt  has  been  made  to  derive  the  name 
from  the  causative  form,  which  in  Semitic  is  obtained 
by  a  simple  vowel-change  in  the  radical,  as  we  form 
set  from  sit,  fell  from  fall;  in  which  case  we  should 
have  to  render  "  Yahveh,"  not  as  "  He  that  is  "  but  as 
"  He  that  calls  into  existence."  But  no  Hebrew,  and 
no  Semite,  of  those  days,  ever  described  the  creative 
power  of  God  as  a  "  calling  into  existence  "  ;  a  causa- 
tive form  of  the  verb  "to  be  "  is  nowhere  found  in  all 
the  Semitic  tongues. 

Here  again,  as  with  the  word  uahi,  prophet,  the 
Arabic  helps  us  out  of  our  difficulties.  The  Arabic  has 
still  preserved  the  fundamental  meaning  of  this  root : 
hatud  means  "to  fall,"  and  of  this  meaning  the  root  in 
Hebrew  has  still  retained  at  least  one  distinct  trace  ; 
the  idea  of  "falling"  is  combined  with  "to  be"  by 
the  intermediary  conception,  "to  fall  out,"  "to  oc- 
cur." Now  observe  the  following  facts.  In  olden 
times  Sinai  seems  to  have  been  looked  upon  as  the 
special  habitation  of  the  God  of  Israel.  In  the  oldest 
production  of  the  Hebrew  literature  that  we  have,  the 
glorious  song  of  Deborah,  God  comes  down  from 
Sinai,  to  bring  help  unto  his  people,  who  are  engaged 
in  a  severe  struggle  at  Kishon  with  the  Canaanites  ; 
and  the  prophet  Elijah  made  a  pilgrimage  unto  Horeb, 
as  Sinai  is  known  under  another  name,  to  seek  the 
Lord  in  person.  The  Arabic,  thus,  gives  us  a  con- 
crete explanation  of  the  name  "Yahveh":  it  would 
mean  "the  feller,"  the  god  of  the  storms,  who  by  his 
thunderbolts  fells  and  lays  low  his  enemies. 

That  Yahveh  was  originally  a  god  of  tempests  may 
be  shown  by  many  additional  vestiges,  and  this  was 
distinctly  recognised  at  a  time  when  no  one  thought  of 
thus  explaining  the  name.  When  He  first  shows  him- 
self to  Moses  and  to  the  people  on  Sinai,  He  appears 
in  the  midst  of  a  terrible  storm,  and  in  the  poetry  of 
Israel  it  is  also  customary  to  depict  the  theophanies  as 
storms.  In  the  cherubs  on  which  He  rides,  one  skilled 
in  the  interpretation  of  mythological  ideas  sees  at  once 


a  personification  of  the  storm  clouds  ;  and  the  seraphs, 
which,  however,  are  mentioned  only  by  Isaiah,  are 
obviously  a  personification  of  the  serpent  of  heaven,  of 
the  lightning. 

And  now  I  should  like  to  call  )'our  attention  to  an- 
other very  important  fact.  This  strange  form  of  the 
name  of  God,  Yahveh,  which  is  a  verbal  form,  an  im- 
perfect, finds,  in  the  whole  populous  Pantheon  of  the 
heathen  Semites,  analogies  only  on  Arabian  soil  : 
among  the  hundreds  of  Semitic  names  of  God  known 
to  us,  we  can  point  to  but  four  such  formations,  and 
all  of  them  occur  on  Arabian  soil.  The  Sinai  penin- 
sula belongs  linguistically  and  ethnographically  to 
Arabia,  and  when  we  keep  all  these  facts  before  us, 
the  conviction  is  forced  upon  us  that  Yahveh  was  orig- 
inally the  name  of  one  of  the  gods  worshipped  on 
Mount  Sinai,  which  from  the  earliest  times  was  con- 
sidered holy,  and  that  Moses  adopted  this  name,  and 
bestowed  it  on  the  God  of  Israel,  the  God  of  their  fa- 
thers. 

But  now  you  will  ask,  with  some  astonishment,  is 
this,  then,  really  all  we  can  conclude  about  Moses, 
even  granting  we  kmnv  nothing  about  him?  No,  it  is 
not.  But,  to  learn  more,  we  must  go  about  it  by  a 
more  circuitous  road.  Even  the  most  exact  of  all  sci- 
ences, mathematics,  regards  a  so-called  indirect  proof 
as  equally  convincing  with  a  direct  one,  if  it  be  rightly 
worked  out,  and  such  an  indirect  proof  we  possess  for 
determining  the  work  of  Moses.  We  may  employ,  in 
fact,  the  method  of  inference  from  effect  to  cause. 
Since,  according  to  the  universally  accepted  tradition 
of  the  whole  people  of  Israel,  Moses  is  the  founder  of 
the  specifically  Israelitic  religion,  we  have  only  to  es- 
tablish what  this  was,  and  in  doing  so  we  establish  at 
the  same  time  the  work  of  Moses. 

To  this  end,  we  must  first  seek  to  discover  the  con- 
stituent elements  of  the  reljgious  consciousness  as  it 
lived  in  the  minds  of  the  people  of  Israel  before  the 
prophets  gave  to  it  wholly  new  impulses.  We  have, 
moreover,  to  compare  this  religious  belief  of  the  people 
of  Israel  about  the  year  800  B.  C.  with  the  religious  ideas 
which  we  find  elsewhere  in  the  Semitic  races,  and  with 
the  conceptions  of  those  purely  or  not  purely  Semitic 
races,  with  whom  Israel  came  into  direct  contact,  as 
the  Egyptians  and  the  Babylonians.  What  we  find 
by  such  a  comparison  to  agree  completely  with  the 
conceptions  of  the  other  Semitic  tribes,  can  in  Israel 
also  be  a  spontaneous  production  of  the  Semitic  mind, 
just  as  in  the  other  Semitic  tribes  ;  while  that  finally 
which  corresponds  with  the  conceptions  of  the  Baby- 
lonians or  Egyptians,  can  have  been  borrowed  directly 
from  them,  because  the  conditions  of  such  an  origin  ex- 
ist in  the  long  sojourn  of  the  Israelites  among  those 
nations.  Should,  however,  in  the  religion  of  Israel, 
about  800  B.  C,  things  be  found,  which  none  of  the 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4457 


nations  mentioned  have  in  common  with  Israel,  or  such 
as  are  diametrical!}'  opposed  to  the  conceptions  and 
notions  of  those  tribes,  then  we  have  in  such  things, 
according  to  all  the  rules  of  historical  and  religio-sci- 
entific  reasoning,  a  creation  of  Moses. 

Now,  as  a  fact,  the  religion  of  Israel  exhibits  a 
large  number  of  such  features.  Israel  is  the  only  na- 
tion we  know  of  that  never  had  a  mythology,  the  only 
people  who  never  differentiated  the  Deity  sexually. 
So  deep  does  this  last  trait  extend,  that  the  Hebrew 
language  is  not  even  competent  to  form  the  word 
"goddess."  Where  the  Book  of  Kings  tells  us  of  the 
supposed  worship  of  idols  by  Solomon,  we  find  writ- 
ten:  "Astarte,  the  _;■■(»(/ of  the  Phoenicians. "  Not  even 
the  K'ord  "goddess"  is  conceivable  to  the  Israelites, 
much  less  the  thing  itself.  Similarly,  the  cult  of  Israel 
is  distinguished  by  great  simplicit}'  and  purity,  as  may 
be  proved  by  such  old  and  thoroughly  Israelitic  feasts 
as  the  Passover,  the  offering  of  the  firstlings  of  the  flock 
during  the  vernal  equinox,  and  the  New  Moons.  Israel 
denounces  with  abhorrence  the  sacrificing  of  cliildren, 
and  especially  that  religious  immorality,  which  held 
full  sway  among  the  immediate  neighbors  of  Israel, 
that  most  detestable  of  all  religious  aberrations,  which 
considered  prostitution  as  an  act  of  worship.  In  fact, 
Israel,  even  in  its  earliest  days,  possessed  in  compari 
son  with  the  neighboring  tribes,  a  very  high  and  pure 
morality.  For  sins  of  unchastity  the  ancient  Hebrew 
has  an  extremely  characteristic  expression  :  it  calls 
them  nchaldh,  "madness,"  something  inconceivable, 
unintelligible,  which  a  reasonable  and  normally  organ- 
ised man  could  never  commit. 

But  the  most  important  feature  of  all  is  the  manner 
in  which  Israel  conceives  its  relations  to  God.  Mono- 
theism, in  a  strictly  scientific  sense,  ancient  Israel  had 
not ;  Yahveh  was  not  the  only  existing  God  in  heaven 
and  on  earth  ;  He  was  only  the  exclusive  God  of  Is- 
rael. Israel  had  henotheism,  as  Max  Miiller  has  termed 
this  idea  to  distinguish  it  from  monotheism,  and  mo- 
nolatry  only.  The  Israelite  could  only  serve  Yahveh  ; 
to  serve  another  god  was  for  the  Israelite  a  crime  de- 
serving of  death.  Thus  was  the  relation  of  the  Israel- 
ites to  this  their  only  God  especially  close  and  inti- 
mate ;  the  religious  instinct  concentrated  itself  on  one 
object,  and  thereby  received  an  intensity,  which  is 
foreign  to  polytheism,  and  must  ever  remain  foreign  to 
it.  And  this  one  and  only  God  of  Israel  was  not  a 
metaphysical  Being  floating  about  in  the  grey  misty 
distance  on  the  other  side  of  the  clouds,  but  He  was  a 
personality,  He  was  everywhere,  and  present  in  all 
things.  The  ways  both  of  nature  and  of  daily  life 
were  God's  work. 

And  this  brings  us  to  an  extremely  important  point. 
No  distinction  was  known  between  divine  and  human 
law ;    both  were   God's  institutions   and    commands, 


civil  as  well  as  church  law,  to  express  ourselves  in  more 
modern  terms.  That  any  valid  law  might  be  merely  a 
human  formulation  and  a  human  discovery,  is  for  the 
ancient  Israelite  an  utterly  inconceivable  idea;  there- 
fore, every  one  that  sins  against  the  civil  law  sins 
against  God— ancient  Israel  knew  only  sins,  and  no 
crimes. 

Moses  also  understood  how  to  render  God  accessi- 
ble for  practical  life.  The  old  Israelitic  priestly  oracle, 
which  played  so  important  a  part  in  ancient  days,  we 
must  also  look  upon  as  a  Mosaic  institution.  And 
practically  this  is  of  the  utmost  importance  ;  for  by  it 
the  approach  to  God  at  every  moment  was  made  easy, 
and  all  of  life  was  passed  in  the  service  and  under 
the  supervision  of  Yahveh.  This  is  indeed  much  and 
great.  Yahveh,  alone  the  God  of  Israel,  who  suf- 
fers no  one  and  nothing  beside  Him,  who  will  belong 
entirely  and  exclusively  to  this  people,  but  will  also 
have  this  people  belong  entirely  and  exclusively  to 
Him,  so  that  it  shall  be  a  pure  and  pious  people,  whose 
whole  hfe,  even  in  the  apparently  most  public  and 
worldly  matters,  is  a  service  to  God,  and  this  God 
source  and  shield  of  all  justice  and  all  morality — these 
must  have  all  been  the  genuine  and  specific  thoughts 
of  Moses.  Moreover,  the  importance  of  these  thoughts 
reaches  far  beyond  the  province  of  religion  in  the  nar- 
rower sense  of  the  word.  By  giving  to  Israel  a  national 
Deity,  Moses  made  of  it  a  nation,  and  cemented  together 
into  a  unity  by  this  ideal  band  the  different  heteroge- 
neous national  elements.  Moses  formed  Israel  into  a 
people.  With  Moses  and  his  work  begins  the  history 
of  the  people  of  Israel. 

This  work  was  soon  to  be  put  to  the  test.  About  a 
generation  after  the  death  of  Moses,  Israel  forced  its 
way  into  Palestine  and  found  itself  before  a  terrible 
danger.  The  Canaanites  were  far  superior  in  civilisa- 
tion to  the  primitive  sons  of  the  desert.  Israel  adopted 
this  civilisation,  and  passed  in  Canaan  from  the  no- 
madic mode  of  life  to  the  agricultural,  finally  taking 
up  a  permanent  residence  there.  It  even  took  from 
Canaan  the  outward  forms  of  religion,  and  in  a  meas- 
ure adopted  its  holy  places.  The  Sabbath,  which  the 
ancient  Babylonians  had,  and  which  was  designated  as 
a  "day  of  recreation  for  the  heart,"  and  the  three  great 
yearly  festivals  of  the  Passover,  of  the  Weeks,  and  of 
the  Tabernacles,  are  borrowed  from  the  Canaanites  ; 
while  the  holy  places  of  worship.  Bethel,  Dan,  Gilgal, 
Beersheba,  Sichem  and  Gibeon,  Shiloh  and  Ramah,and 
others  are  all  adopted  outright  from  the  Canaanites. 
But  if  Israel  preserved  its  identit}'  during  this  mighty 
process  of  transformation,  was  not  mentally  overcome 
and  conquered  by  the  Canaanites,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
knew  how  to  absorb  the  Canaanites  themselves,  so 
that  in  the  end  Israel  remained  the  decisive  and 
dominant  factor,  it  owes  this  solely  to  Moses  and  his 


4458 


THE     OFEN     COURT. 


work,  which  gave  to  the  IsraeHte  nation  its  reUgious 
consecration  and  reUgious  foundation,  and  made  it 
competent,  not  only  to  preserve  itself,  but  also  to 
expand  and  to  press  onward  to  conquest. 

THE  PHYLOQENY  OF  THE  PLANT  SOUL. 

BV  PROF.    ERNST   HAECKEL. 

The  old  biology  found  the  most  important  differ- 
ence between  the  plant  kingdom  and  the  animal  king- 
dom in  the  "  ensoulment "  or  empsychosis  of  the  latter 
— in  that  power  of  sensation  and  voluntary  motion 
which  was  supposed  to  be  totally  wanting  to  the  plant 
kingdom.  This  antiquated  view,  which  is  now  only 
rarely  upheld,  found  its  classical  expression  in  that 
well-known  sentence  of  the  Systema  Natunv  (1735): 
"Lapidcs  crcsciDit,  Vegetabilia  crescunt  et  vivunt,  Aiii- 
tnalia  vivunt,  crescunt  et  scntiunt."  Modern  biology  has 
definitively  refuted  this  fundamental  doctrine,  which 
was  the  source  of  numerous  grave  errors.  Compara- 
tive physiology  has  shown  that  organic  irritability  is  a 
common  vital  property  of  a// organisms,  that  sensibil- 
ity and  motility  are  properties  of  all  living  plasma. 
The  same  physiological  functions  which  in  man  and 
the  higher  animals  we  include  under  the  notion  of  the 
"soul"  belong  in  a  less  perfect  form  not  only  to  all 
lower  animals,  but  also  to  all  plants.  A  more  precise 
knowledge  of  the  protists  has  taught  us  that  the  same 
ensoulment  exists  even  in  these  lowest,  unicellular 
forms  of  life,  and  that  their  cell-soul  exhibits  a  respec- 
table series  of  psychological  differentiations,  of  pro- 
gressive and  regressive  changes. 

Of  highest  importance  for  the  monistic  psychology 
is,  further,  the  phylogenetic  comparison  of  the  uni- 
cellular protist-organism  with  the  ancestral  cell  {cytula) 
of  thehistones;  for  this  ontogenetic  ancestral  cell  of 
the  metaphyta  and  the  metazoa  (or  the  fecundated 
ovum  cell,  ovospora)  possesses  a  "hereditary  cellular 
soul,"  that  is,  a  sum  of  psychical  potential  energies 
which  have  been  gradually  acquired  by  adaptation  in 
long  and  many  generations  of  ancestors  and  been 
stored  up  as  "instincts"  by  heredity.  The  individual 
psychic  life  of  every  single  multicellular  and  tissue- 
forming  organism  is,  in  its  special  quality  and  specific 
tendencies,  conditioned  by  that  hereditary  patrimony, 
and  its  psychical  activity  consists  in  great  measure 
merely  in  the  unfolding  of  that  inherited  cellular  soul. 
The  psychical  potential  energies  contained  in  it  are  re- 
transformed  in  the  course  of  its  actual  life  into  the 
living  forces  or  kinetic  energies  of  motion  and  sensa- 
tion. Our  fundamental  biogenetic  law  preserves  here 
also  its  universal  validity.  This  appears  with  special 
distinctness  in  the  lowest  metaphyta,  the  Algce;  for 
their  psychical  activity,  for  example  in  fecundation,  is 
only  slightl)'  different  from  that  of  their  unicellular 
ancestors,  the  Algettcc. 


Further  knowledge  of  the  phenomena  of  this  sig- 
nificant but  as  yet  little  trodden  field  is  supplied  by 
the  comparative  psychology  of  the  metaphyta  and 
metazoa.  For,  in  the  lowest  divisions  of  the  meta- 
zoa, especially  in  the  Spongiu-  and  other  Coelentera,  the 
psychical  activity  or  irritability  does  not  rise  above 
that  low  stage  of  development  which  we  meet  with  in 
most  metaphyta.  Like  the  latter  the  Spongur  also  lack 
nervous  and  sensory  organs.  Their  vital  activity  is 
limited  mostly  to  the  vegetative  functions  of  nutriment 
and  propagation.  The  old  conception  of  sponges  as 
plants  was  to  this  extent  physiologically  justified.  But 
their  animal  form  of  metabolism  and  their  incapacity 
for  plasmodomy  they  share  with  many  real  metaphyta, 
that  in  consequence  of  parasitic  modes  of  life  have 
suffered  metasitism  {Cuscuta,  Orobanchea,  etc.) 

On  the  other  hand,  we  now  know  of  many  higher 
"sensitive  plants,"  whose  high  degree  of  irritability 
far  surpasses  that  of  many  lower  animals.  The  "ner- 
vousness" of  these  Mimosce,  of  the  Dioncca,  Drosera, 
or  other  carnivorous  plants,  the  energy  of  their  sensa- 
tions and  motions,  reveals  in  these  metaphyta  a  much 
higher  degree  of  psychic  life  than  in  numerous  lower 
animals,  even  in  such  as  already  possess  nerves,  mus- 
cles, and  sensory  organs  (for  example,  lower  Coelen- 
tera, Helmintha).  Especially  such  metazoa  as  have 
suffered  profound  retrogression  by  adaptation  to  seden- 
tary modes  of  life  {Ascidia')  or  parasitism  {Cestoda, 
Entoconcha,  Rhizocephala),  may,  psychologically,  be 
placed  far  below  such  sensitive  plants. 

The  criticism  is  often  made  upon  this  objective 
comparison  of  plant-soul  and  animal-soul,  that  the 
similar  phenomena  in  the  two  kingdoms  rest  on  en- 
tirely different  structural  bases.  Nor  is  the  objection 
unfounded,  so  far  as  the  special  mechanism  for  con- 
ducting the  irritations,  and  the  organs  of  reaction, 
may  be  widely  different  in  the  two  cases ;  in  fact,  in 
most  instances  they  tnust  be  widely  different,  for  the 
reason  that  the  enveloped  cells  of  plant-tissues,  sur- 
rounded as  they  are  by  solid  membranes,  remain  much 
more  independent  than  the  intimately  connected  cells 
of  animal-tissues.  Still,  recent  histology  has  demon- 
strated a  continuous  connexion  between  all  the  cells 
of  the  histone  organism ;  the  apparently  immovable 
cells  in  the  republican  cellular  state  of  the  metaphyta, 
locked  up  in  their  cellular  prisons,  are  connected  by 
countless  delicate  plasma-filaments,  passing  through 
the  rigid  membrane,  just  as  are  the  more  freely  mov- 
able and  mostly  naked  cells  in  the  centralised  mo- 
narchical cell-state  of  the  metazoa.  Besides,  the 
development  of  a  centralised  nervous  system,  even 
among  the  latter,  is  a  subsequent  acquisition,  un- 
known to  their  older  ancestors.  But  organic  irrita- 
bility, as  such,  the  capacity  to  receive  physical  and 
chemical  effects  from   the  outer  world  in  the  form  of 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4459 


excitations,  to  feel  and  to  react  upon  them  by  internal 
or  external  motions,  is  a  property  of  all  living  plasma, 
of  the  plasmodomous  phytoplasm  as  well  as  of  the 
plasmophagous  zooplasm. 

It  will  now  be  the  task,  as  yet  scarcely  begun,  of 
botanical  psychology  to  subject  to  critical  comparison 
and  investigation  the  countless  phenomena  of  irrita- 
bility which  the  kingdom  of  the  metaphyta  offers,  to 
reach  a  knowledge  of  the  manifold  developmental 
stages  of  that  kingdom  in  all  their  phylogenetic  con- 
nexions, and  to  establish  in  every  single  phenomenon 
adaptation  and  heredity  as  the  efficient  causes. 

INSTINCTS  OF  PLANTS. 

Those  psychical  activities  of  animals  which  it  has 
long  been  the  custom  to  include  under  the  notion  of 
instinct,  are  also  found  generally  in  plants,  either  in 
the  restricted  or  in  the  extended  sense  of  that  variously 
interpreted  and  variously  defined  idea.  In  its  restricted 
sense  we  understand  b}'  instinct  definite  psychical  ac- 
tivities, involving  three  essential  properties  :  (i)  the 
action  is  unconscious  ;  (2)  it  is  directed  purposefully 
to  a  definite  physiological  goal  ;  (3)  it  rests  on  heredity 
from  ancestors  and  is  consequent!}^  potentially  innate. 
In  man  and  the  higher  animals,  many  habitual  acts 
which  were  originally  performed  with  consciousness 
and  "learned,"  are  transformed  into  unconscious  in- 
stincts. In  the  lower  animals  and  plants  which  lack 
consciousness,  the  primitive  habits  were  also  acquired 
unconsciously  by  adaptations,  originally  evoked  by  re- 
flex activities  and  in  consequence  of  frequent  repeti- 
tions definitively  fixed  and  made  hereditary.  Precisely 
this  phenomenon,  namely,  the  indubitable  origin  of 
hereditary  instincts  by  the  frequent  repetition  and  ex- 
ercise of  definite  psychical  actions,  furnishes  us  a  mass 
of  inexpugnable  evidence  for  the  important  law  of  pro- 
gressive heredity,  for  the  "  inheritance  of  acquired  char- 
acters." 

Innumerable  are  the  forms  in  which  inborn  instinct 
expresses  itself  in  all  plants  and  in  all  animals — in  all 
protists  as  well  as  in  all  histones.  In  every  cellular 
division  the  karyoplasm  of  the  celleus  reveals  its  in- 
nate or  congenital  instincts.  In  every  copulative  pro- 
cess, the  two  generating  cells  are  brought  together  and 
impelled  to  union  by  sexual  instincts.  Every  protist 
that  builds  for  itself  a  definitely  shaped  shell,  every 
plant  cell  that  envelops  itself  in  its  specific  cellulose 
membrane,  every  animal  cell  that  transforms  itself 
into  a  definite  tissue-form,  acts  from  innate  "instinct." 

Of  the  highest  phylogenetic  import,  both  for  the 
multicellular  organism  of  the  metaphyta  and  forthat  of 
the  metazoa,  are  the  social  instincts  of  cells  ;  for  we  rec- 
ognise in  them  the  fundamental  cause  of  the  formation 
of  tissue.  The  single  isolated  cells  which  in  most  pro- 
tists increase  simply  by  fission  and  continue  life  inde- 


pendently as  monobionts,  are  found  connecte<l  together 
in  social  masses  of  varying  cohesiveness  even  in  some 
divisions  of  protophyta  (for  example,  in  Melethallia) 
and  in  some  of  protozoa  (for  example,  in  Polycxttaria). 
The  attraction  of  allied  cells  of  the  same  family  for  one 
another,  which  rested  originally  upon  some  chemical 
sensory  activity,  causes  them  to  form  permanent  cel- 
lular societies  or  c(i;nobia.  By  heredity  this  social 
chemotropism  is  established  more  and  more  firmly 
and  finally  developed  into  an  instinct.  Then,  by  a 
division  of  labor  between  the  like-constituted  coeno- 
bionts,  the  foundations  are  laid  for  the  tissues,  those 
rigider  cellular  bonds  in  whose  further  development 
the  polymorphism  of  cells  plays  the  most  important 
part. 

The  erotic  chemotropism  which  brings  the  two 
copulating  cells  together  in  the  sexual  generation  of 
metaphyta  and  metazoa  is  in  its  origin  a  special  form 
only  of  that  general  social  chemotropism.  The  '  'sensu- 
ous inclination  "  of  the  conjugating  cellular  individuals 
is  in  both  instances  to  be  traced  back  to  a  chemical 
sensory  activity  allied  to  smell  or  taste.  This  uncon- 
scious sensual  affection,  and  the  motion  produced  as 
its  reflex,  are  in  every  individual  species  fixed  by  habit 
in  their  special  differentiated  form  and  by  heredity  con- 
verted into  sexual  instinct.  In  many  higher  metaphyta 
bionomical  relations  have  been  developed  which  in 
the  marvellous  degree  of  differentiation  and  complica- 
tion attained  are  not  inferior  to  the  similar  sexual  in- 
stitutions of  "marriage"  in  metazoa. 

THE  PHYLOGENETIC  SCALE  OF  THE  SENSATIONS. 

The  sensations  of  plants  are  generally  regarded  as 
unconscious,  as  are  those  of  the  protists  and  most  ani- 
mals. That  special  physiological  function  of  the  gang- 
lion-cells which  in  men  and  the  higher  animals  is  called 
consciousness  is  associated  with  very  complex  and 
subsequently  acquired  structures  of  the  brain.  The 
special  relations  in  the  minute  structure,  composition, 
and  combination  of  the  nerve-cells  that  make  these 
highest  psychical  functions  possible,  are  wanting  both 
to  the  plants  and  to  the  lower  animals.  Nevertheless, 
in  the  metaphyta  as  well  as  in  the  metazoa,  it  is  possible 
to  trace  out  a  long,  graduated  scale  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  psychic  activities  and  more  especially  of 
the  sensations.  Certain  fundamental  phenomena  of 
irritability — relating  to  unconscious  sensations — are 
shared  in  common  by  all  plants  (and  all  animals), 
whilst  others  reach  development  only  in  individual 
groups. 

All  metaphyta  are  more  or  less,  sensitive  to  the  in- 
fluence of  light  (heliotropism),  heat  (thermotropism), 
gravity  (geotropism  ),  electricity  (galvanotropism  ),  and 
various  chemical  excitations  (chemotropism).  The 
quality  and  quantity  of  the  sensation  due  to  the  irrita- 


4460 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


tion,  as  of  the  motor  or  trophic  reaction  produced  by 
it,  varies,  however,  exceedingly  in  the  different  groups 
of  plants  and  frequently  even  in  closely  allied  species 
of  one  genus  or  family.  It  is  very  small  or  hardly  per- 
ceptible in  many  lower  "sense-blunted"  plants  and 
especially  in  parasites.  On  the  other  hand,  in  some 
higher  plants  of  very  delicate  sensibility  {Mimosa,  Di- 
oiKca,  etc.)  it  reaches  a  degree  of  irritability  that  far 
surpasses  the  slight  "  nervosity  "  of  many  lower  meta- 
zoa  provided  with  nerves  and  sensilli  (for  example, 
Cestoda  and  Ascidia).  It  will  be  a  highly  interesting 
task,  as  yet  untouched,  for  botanical  psychology  to 
follow  out  the  physiological  scale  of  these  manifold 
forms  of  sensation  and  to  show  in  every  single  group 
of  plants  by  what  special  adaptations  they  were  orig- 
inally acquired  and  within  what  ancestral  series  they 
were  converted  by  heredity  into  instincts. 

A  second  series  of  sensorial  phenomena  is  devel- 
oped, or  at  least  is  distinctly  noticeable,  only  in  indi- 
vidual groups  of  metaphyta.  Here  belongs  especially 
the  feeling  of  contact  (thigmotropism)  which  is  devel- 
oped to  such  an  astonishing  degree  in  many  clinging 
and  climbing  plants,  and  which,  taken  together  with 
their  nutational  movements,  has  produced  the  special 
form  of  their  tendrils,  twiners,  claspers,  etc.  Also  the 
roots  of  many  plants  which  are  very  sensitive  to  the 
different  physical  composition  of  the  soil,  give  evi- 
dence of  a  high  power  of  thigmotropism  ;  one  kind 
will  seek  out  in  a  mixed  soil  the  soft  earths,  another 
fine  sand,  another  hard  rock,  etc.  Similarly  the  pench- 
ant for  water  (hydrotropism)  varies  much  ;  some  plants 
are  almost  indifferent,  while  others  are  extremely  sen- 
sitive to  the  varying  degrees  of  water  in  the   air  and 

soil. 

Extremely  complex  in  the  plant  kingdom  is  the 
development  of  those  sensorial  affections  which  are 
known  in  the  animal  kingdom  as  smell  and  taste,  and 
which  rest  on  chemical  irritations  (chemotropism). 
As  especially  high  stages  of  these  senses  appear  to  us 
"the  taste"  of  carnivorous  plants,  the  saline  predilec- 
tions of  maritime  metaphyta,  and  the  calcareous  predi- 
lections of  the  calcophilous  plants,  etc.  But  by  far 
the  most  interesting  and  remarkable  phenomena  here 
are  revealed  to  us  by  the  sexual  life,  both  in  the  plant 
and  in  the  animal  kingdom.  Whether  we  are  aston- 
ished at  the  copulation  of  gametes  in  the  Algce  or  the 
zoidogamous  fecundation  of  the  Diaphyia,  or  the  si- 
phonogamous  fecundation  of  the  phanerogamic  blos- 
soms, everywhere  we  stumble  upon  "sexual  instincts" 
whose  earliest  and  common  origin  is  to  be  sought  in 
the  erotic  chemotropism  of  their  protophytic  ancestors, 
the  Algetlcv.  In  the  siphonogamous  chemotropism, 
as  in  the  metazoa  conjugating  per  pliallum,  this  is  as- 
sociated with  a  special  erotic  thigmotropism  (frictional 
sense).     The   fine   qualitative   and   high   quantitative 


development  of  these  erotic  sensations,  which  in  the 
higher  animals  are  characterised  as  "sexual  love,"  the 
most  copious  source  of  poetry  in  man,  is  also  of  the 
highest  biological  importance  for  many  amphigonous 
plants.  It  is  not  only  the  cause  of  the  highest  physio- 
logical achievements  of  the  metaphyta  (in  blossom- 
ing, generating,  bearing  of  fruit,  etc.),  but  also  of 
the  most  manifold  morphological  arrangements  devel- 
oped in  correlation  with  the  latter  (in  the  structure  of 
the  blossom,  the  seed,  the  fruit,  etc.).  The  mutual 
relations  which  plants  enter,  in  this  connexion,  with 
animals,  (particularly  blossoming  plants  with  the  in- 
sects fecundating  them,)  have  in  the  course  of  time  by 
heredity  become  for  both  sides  a  source  of  the  most 
marvellous  instincts. 

THE  PHYLOGENETIC  SCALE  OF  THE  MOTIONS. 

Of  much  less  phylogenetic  interest  than  the  scale 
of  tlie  sensations  is  that  of  the  motions  in  the  organ- 
ism of  the  metaphyta.  Whilst  the  former  taken  to 
gether  are  not  inferior  to  the  corresponding  functions 
of  the  lower  metazoa,  the  latter  cannot  bear  compari- 
son with  them.  The  reason  of  this  is,  first,  that  most 
plants  are  firmly  rooted  in  the  soil,  and,  secondly,  that 
the  rigid  and  closed  membrane  of  the  plant-cell  does 
not  allow  the  living  celleus  or  protoplast  confined  in 
its  prison-walls  that  freedom  of  motion  which  is  per- 
mitted to  the  free  and  often  naked  cellular  body  of  the 
animal-tissue. 

As  in  the  protophyta,  so  also  in  the  metaphyta,  we 
may  take  up  first  the  motions  of  the  individual  cells 
and  distinguish  two  groups  of  these  motions  as  spon- 
taneous and  irrital ;  the  latter  are  produced  by  definite 
irritations,  the  former  not.  The  spontaneous  motions 
of  the  metaphyte  cells  are  subdivided  into  inner 
(plasma-streamings  within  the  cellular  tegument)  and 
outer.  The  most  important  outer  spontaneous  mo- 
tion is  the  ciliate  motion,  which  is  produced  by  con- 
tractile lashes  or  cilia;  it  is  found  in  the  swarming 
spores  of  the  Alga  and  in  the  swarming  spermatazoids 
of  the  Diapliyta  {Bryopliyta  as  well  as  Ptcridopliytd). 
As  the  natatory  flagellate  cells  show  the  same  kind 
of  ciliate  motion  as  is  found  in  the  Algetta,  from  which 
these  metaphyta  are  descended,  we  may  assume  that 
they  have  been  directly  transmitted  by  heredity  from  the 
former  to  the  latter.  In  the  Floridece,  Fungi,  and  lich- 
ens, as  also  in  all  .liiiopliyta,  this  form  of  spontaneous 
cellular  motion  has  been  lost  by  adaptation  to  a  differ- 
ent mode  of  life. 

The  spontaneous  or  autonomous  motions  of  whole 
organs  (leaves,  blossoms,  anthers,  tendrils),  the  pen- 
dulous and  rotatory  nutations  of  stems,  leaves,  etc., 
rest  for  the  most  part  upon  inherited  instincts.  On 
the  other  hand,  many  special  forms  of  motion  that 
appear  here  and  there  in  the  kingdom   of  metaphyta 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4461 


are  probably  to  be  explained  directly  by  adaptation  to 
special  conditions  of  life.  They  possess  only  a  special 
physiological  but  no  phylogenetic  interest ;  as  is  the 
case  also  with  the  motions  of  growth  and  irritation 
that  occur  everywhere  (paratonic,  irrital,  or  induced 
motions).  The  mechanics  of  these  motions  (turges- 
cence,  tension  of  tissues,  growth,  elasticity,  etc.")  va- 
ries much.  The  graduated  scale  of  their  development 
is  of  no  special  interest  for  the  phylogeny  of  meta- 
phyta. 

TELEOSIS  IN  THE  HISTORY  OF  PI. .ANTS. 

The  ancestral  history  of  the  plant  kingdom,  sur- 
veyed from  its  highest  and  most  general  point  of  view, 
Ijke  that  of  the  animal  kingdom,  presents  to  the  vision 
a  stupendous  process  of  progressive  development. 
The  constantly  advancing  historical  separation  or  di- 
vergence of  its  forms,  their  increase  in  number  and 
multiplicity,  is  accompanied  upon  the  whole  with  a 
distinct  perfection  of  organisation  {teleosis).  This  re- 
sult is  deducible  with  absolute  certainty  from  the  crit- 
ical elaboration  and  comparison  of  the  three  great 
phj'logenetic  muniments  —  pakuontology,  ontogeny, 
and  morphology.  By  this  inductively  established 
fact  the  erroneous  assertion  is  definitively  refuted  that 
the  great  main  groups  of  the  plant  kingdom,  or  any 
considerable  number  of  separate  types,  have  subsisted 
from  all  time  and  developed  independently  by  the  side 
of  one  another.  As  this  mystical  view  has  been  up- 
held even  in  recent  times  by  eminent  botanists,  and 
with  it  a  supernatural  "creation"  of  the  entire  plant 
world  has  been  asserted,  we  cannot  emphasise  too 
strongly  here  the  remark  that  such  a  view  is  diametri- 
cally opposed  to  all  the  general  results  of  inductive 
botany  and  especially  of  morphology. 

The  same  remark  holds  true  of  the  repeated  at- 
tempts made  until  very  recently  to  explain  the  pro- 
gress in  the  historical  development  of  the  plant  and 
animal  world  teleologically,  whether  by  means  of  the 
direct  conscious  and  premeditated  constructive  activ- 
ity of  a  personal  creator,  or  by  the  unconscious  activ- 
ity of  a  purposeful  final  cause  or  so  called  "  tendency 
to  an  end."  Every  critical  and  unbiassed  comparison 
of  the  empirically  established  phylogenetic  facts  dem- 
onstrates that  such  a  tendency  to  ends  exists  in  or- 
ganic nature  as  little  as  does  a  personal  creator.  On 
the  contrary,  we  discover  in  the  history  of  the  plant 
world  as  clearly  as  in  that  of  the  animal  and  human 
worlds  that  evcrxtJiing  develops  of  its  o'cvn  accord,  and 
that  the  laws  of  its  evolution  are  purely  mechanical. 
The  adaptiveness  actually  present  in  the  corporeal 
structure  of  organisms,  no  less  than  the  constant  his- 
torical increase  of  their  perfection,  is  the  necessary 
result  of  natural  selection,  that  tremendous  process 
which  has  been  uninterruptedly  active  for  millions  of 


years.  The  unceasing  interaction  of  all  organic  beings, 
their  competition  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  deter- 
mines with  absolute  necessity  a  constant  average  in- 
crease of  their  divergence  and  teleosis, — which  is  not 
neutralised  by  the  numerous  minor  retrogressions  that 
are  constantly  taking  place  in  individual  details. 

Teleosis,  accordingly,  in  the  history  of  the  plant 
world,  as  also  in  that  of  the  animal  world,  is  to  be  re- 
duced to  teleological  mechanics.  This  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  phylogeny  stands  everywhere  in  the  most  in- 
timate causal  connexion  with  the  great  principle  of 
epigenesis  as  revealed  in  ontogeny.  The  explanation 
of  the  fundamental  causal  nexus  between  the  two  yields 
our  fundamental  biogenetic  law,  supported  by  the  the- 
ory of  progressive  heredity.  Precisely  for  this  "hered- 
ity of  acquired  characters" — one  of  the  foundation- 
stones  of  the  monistic  theory  of  evolution — we  find 
countless  salient  and  decisive  proofs  in  the  phylogeny 
of  the  metaphyta. 


SCrENCE  AND  REFORM. 


"  ELBE"  ECHOES. 

The  testimony  before  the  court  of  inquiry  into  the  causes  of 
the  "Elbe"  disaster  tends  to  exculpate  the  captain  of  the  "  Cra- 
thie"  from  the  charge  of  wilful  neglect,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that 
nine- tenths,  if  not  all,  the  passengers  of  the  ill-fated  steamer  could 
have  been  saved  if  help,  in  the  form  of  a  sea-worthy  vessel,  had 
been  near  at  hand.  The  compartment  system  is  evidently  no  in- 
fallible protection  against  the  risk  of  total  shipwreck;  within 
three  minutes  after  the  first  shock  the  sea  streamed  through  the 
gap  at  the  rate  of  a  ton  per  second  ;  still  the  steamer  kept  afloat 
for  at  least  twenty  minutes  longer — a  respite  sufficient  to  disem 
bark  a  regiment  of  artillery  with  all  its  horses  and  ammunition- 
waggons.  Again  and  again  the  costly  lessons  of  experience  illus- 
trate the  wisdom  of  Captain  Wetzel's  plan,  to  let  passeugci-  sleaimrs 
start  pairunsc,  and  keep  up  a  constant  interchange  of  audible  and 
visible  signals. 

OUR  LOST  ITALY. 

Prof.  E.  R.  Rhodes,  in  his  Cruises  Among  the  Antilles,  calls 
attention  to  the  fact  that  the  geology  of  several  West  Indian  moun- 
tain ranges  bears  a  striking  resemblance  to  that  of  Virginia  and 
the  Carolinas,  and  that  the  Cuban  Sierras,  for  instance,  are  prob- 
ably a  continuation  of  our  Southern  Alleghanies.  It  is  a  pity  that 
the  connectmg  link  has  been  so  irretrievably  lost.  Our  .Appa- 
lachian mountain  system  ends  just  where  it  begins  to  reach  the 
region  of  perpetual  Spring.  We  have  an  American  Jura  and  an 
American  Atlas,  but  the  Apennines  of  the  New  World  seem  to 
have  been  submerged,  like  the  chain  of  uplands  which  once  ap- 
pears to  have  connected  Scandinavia  with  Newfoundland  and 
Labrador. 

HALF-TRUTHS. 

The  society  of  theocratical  agitators  known  as  the  National 
Reform  Association  is  dropping  its  mask  and  is  beginning  to  de- 
fine its  notions  of  "reform."  At  the  New  England  convention 
(Boston,  February  19  and  20)  the  pious  reformers  proposed  to 
enlighten  the  nation  on  "The  Right  and  Duty  of  the  Government 
to  Teach  the  Principles  of  the  Christian  Religion  in  the  Public 
Schools,"  and  the  desideratum  to  "Recognise  Christ  as  the  King 
of  Our  Government."  At  the  Newcastle  convention,  the  Rev.  H. 
H.  George  proposed,  among  other  ideals  of  the  reform  movement, 
that  "The   State  should   be  subservient  to  the  Church";   "The 


4462 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


State  should  require  scriptural  qualifications  in  her  rulers";  "The 
State  should  support  the  Church  by  timely  gifts."  Still,  we  have 
not  yet  reached  the  fulness  of  revelation  ;  but  the  veil  may  be 
lifted  when  the  State  has  been  induced  to  "protect  the  Church 
and  restrain  practices  that  are  injurious  to  religion  " — such  as  free 
speech,  the  licence  of  the  secular  press,  and  the  teaching  of  scien- 
tific tenets  at  variance  with  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  The  Rev. 
Schaff  is  treating  us  to  a  glimpse  behind  the  curtain  from  another 
point  of  view,  and  is  quoted  as  saying  that  the  State  rests  on  three 
pillars:  "The  Church  of  God,  the  Book  of  God,  and  the  day  of 
God."  A  fourth  corner-post  may  be  reserved  for  the  "  Holy  In- 
quisition of  God,"  but  even  at  the  present  stage  of  developments 
important  truths  of  this  sort  should  not  be  permitted  to  languish 
in  a  twilight  of  half-expression,  and  the  Rev.  Schaff  ought  to 
avoid  misconstructions  by  explaining  that  he  referred  to  the  stale 
of  clerical  finances. 

MORE  LIGHT. 
The  predicted  exhaustion  of  our  coal  mines  may  force  the 
cities  of  the  future  to  economise  their  fuel-supply;  but  Frost's 
twin-sister,  Darkness,  has  lost  her  power  of  discomfort,  if  the  re- 
cent reports  from  the  laboratory  of  a  New  York  inventor  are  but 
half  true.  Prof.  T.  L.  Wilson,  in  a  communication  to  the  So- 
ciety of  Chemical  Industries,  claims  to  have  discovered  a  new 
illuminating  material  that  can  be  manufactured  from  the  refuse  of 
coal-tar  and  crude  petroleum,  at  a  cost  of  7  (seven)  cents  per 
thousand  feet,  and  which,  in  a  modified  gas-burner,  will  produce 
a  brilliant  Hame,  almost  equal  to  a  calcium  light.  "These  burn- 
ers," says  the  report,  "allow  the  passage  of  about  one  foot  of  the 
gas  per  hour,  and  give  a  light  of  nearly  fifty  candle-power."  In 
other  words,  an  equivalent  of  five  ordinary  coal  oil  lamps  can 
hereafter  be  enjoyed  at  an  expense  of  !,/,„,  cents  per  hour,  plus 
the  costs  of  the  burner  and  the  possible  royalty  of  the  inventor. 
Moreover,  his  inexpensive  gas  ("acetylene,"  as  Professor  Wilson 
calls  it)  can  be  changed  into  a  liquid  and  carted  about  to  custom- 
ers like  gasoline. 

AN  UNPROFITABLE  TRADE. 
The  business  of  train-robbery  has  been  over-worked  to  a  de- 
gree that  appears  to  have  discouraged  the  enterprise  by  lessening 
its  profits.  Passengers  and  express-agents  have  learned  to  hide 
their  valuables;  and  Hold-up  Champion  Cummins,  recently  cap- 
tured at  Mt.  Vernon,  Mo.,  states  that  the  robbery  of  five  different 
trains  netted  his  syndicate  less  than  two  hundred  dollars.  On  one 
occasion  they  secured  only  two  and  one-half  dollars  and  a  few 
watches. 

DOUBTFUL  REFORMATORIES. 
A  strange  report  comes  from  Naumburg,  Germany,  where 
several  pupils  of  a  reform  school  plotted  to  effect  their  deliverance 
from  the  discipline  of  the  superintendent  by  getting  themselves  in- 
dicted on  a  charge  of  murder.  In  pursuit  of  liberty  men  have 
walked  fearful  roads  ;  but  the  young  conspirators  of  the  Saxon 
reformatory  had  not  the  least  hope  of  regaining  their  freedom. 
The  object  of  their  enterprise  was  their  Iransfer  lo  a  Slate pi-niUn- 
tiarv,  and  with  that  object  and  even  a  risk  of  the  scaffold  in  view, 
they  smothered  one  of  their  young  fellow-prisoners  and  strangled 
another.  A  rumor  of  the  plot  had  spread  among  the  inmates  of 
the  institute,  and  the  groans  of  one  of  the  victims  were  heard  by  a 
whole  dormitory  full  of  youngsters  ;  but  fear,  or  the  desire  to  give 
the  experiment  a  fair  chance,  prevented  them  from  giving  the 
alarm.  As  Edmond  About  said  of  the  reported  self-cremation  of 
three  Toulon  galley-slaves,  a  place  must,  indeed,  be  the  reverse  of 
a  paradise,  if  its  inmates  will  attempt  flight  by  such  gates  of  es- 
cape. 

CLIMATIC  RESOURCES. 
The  proposed  introduction  of  the  whipping-post  in   the  State 
of  New  York  has  been   denounced  as  a  relapse  into  worse  than 


Oriental  barbarism,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  young  Czar  has 
just  abolished  the  punishment  of  the  knout.  But  it  should  be  re- 
membered that  the  new  Czar  is  a  Utilitarian,  and  that  he  has 
taken  care  not  to  abolish  the  pena)  colonies  of  Siberia.  With  such 
substitutes  for  mechanical  torture  as  a  winter-frost  of  sixty  degrees 
Fahrenheit  below  zero,  reform-legislators  can  afford  to  be  very 
generous. 

AVALON. 
The  ornithologist  Gilmore  admits  that  North  America  can 
boast  three  times  as  many  different  species  of  birds,  as  Europe  or 
western  Asia  under  the  corresponding  isotherms.  Of  woodpeckers, 
for  instance,  we  have  eleven  kinds  to  three  in  France;  of  owls 
nine,  to  four  in  Italy.  The  name  of  Avalon,  the  Celtic  Atlantis, 
was  once  derived  from  the  Latin  mns,  but  is  now  supposed  to  have 
something  to  do  with  the  Gaelic  apka/l,  an  apple,  hence  "Apple- 
land,"  or  orchard  country.  If  the  elder  derivation  should,  how- 
ever, be  correct,  it  might  really  be  conjectured  that  the  aborigines 
of  Gaul  or  Britain  had  preserved  a  tradition  about  the  existence  of 
a  great  bird-land  in  the  far  West.  Felix  L.  Oswald. 

THE  APRIL  "MONIST."" 

CONTENTS : 

The  World's  Parliament  of  Religions.     The  Hon.  C.  C.  Boniiey. 

The  World's  Religious  Parliament  Extension.  Messages  from  Ca?ifinal 
Gibbons,  Archbishop  Irelanti,  //.  Dharmapala,  Right  Rev.  Shaku  Soyen, 
Rev,  Zitsuzen  Ashitsu,  Bishop  Benjamin  ir.  Arnett  (Af.  E.),  Rev.  Joseph 
Cook,  Rev.  George  T.  Candli7i  {Christian  Missioiiary  to  China). 

A  Piece  of  Patchwork.     Prof.  C.  Lloyd  Morgan. 

The  Well-Springs  of  Reality.    E.  Douglas  Faiocett. 

Music's  Mother-Tone  and  Tonal  Onomatopy.     C.  Crosat  Converse. 

Editorial  :  The  Late  Professor  Romanes's  Thout^hts  on  Religion.  The  Sig- 
nificance of  Music.    Tlte  Key  to  the  Riddle  of  the  Universe. 

Bonnet's  Theory  OF  Evolution.     Prof.  C.  O.  fVhitman. 

Literary  Correspondence.     France.    Lucien  Arreat. 

Book  Reviews.— Periodicals. 

Appendix  :  The  Soul.    A  Poem.    Major  y.  IV.  Foivell. 

Price,   5octs.;  Yearly,  $2.00. 


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TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNIONi 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  398. 

THE  RELIGION  OF  MOSES.  Prof.  C.  H.  Cornill,  .  .  4455 
THE    PHYLOGENY    OF    THE  PLANT  SOUL.      Prof. 

Ernst  Haeckel 4458 

SCIENCE  AND  REFORM:    "Elbe"   Echoes      Our   Lost 

Italy.      Half-Truths.      More    Light.     An    Unprofitable 

Trade      Doubtful  Reformatories.     Climatic  Resources. 

Avalon       Felix  L.  Oswald 4461 


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A  "HTEEKLY  JOURNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


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ELIJAH. 

BY  PROF.    C.   H.  CORNILL. 

The  first  prophet  of  Israel  on  a  grand  scale  was 
Elijah,  one  of  the  most  titanic  personages  in  all  the 
Old  Testament.  One  has  at  once  the  impression  that 
with  him  a  new  epoch  begins,  a  crisis  in  the  religious 
histor)'  of  Israel.  The  account  given  of  Elijah,  it  is 
true,  is  adorned  with  much  that  is  legendary;  but  the 
fact  that  tradition  has  sketched  his  image  with  so  much 
that  is  tremendous  and  superhuman,  and  that  such  a 
garland  of  legends  could  be  woven  around  him,  is  the 
clearest  proof  of  his  greatness  which  makes  him  tower 
above  all  his  predecessors  and  contemporaries.  Where 
smoke  is,  there  fire  must  be,  and  wliere  much  smoke 
is,  there  the  fire  must  be  great.  Let  us  try  to  sketch 
out  a  picture  of  Elijah,  of  his  true  importance  and  his- 
torical achievements. 

It  was  a  trying  time.  In  the  year  876  an  Assyrian 
arm}'  had  penetrated  for  the  first  time  as  far  as  Leba- 
non and  the  Mediterranean  Sea,  and  had  laid  Israel 
under  contribution.  In  addition,  Israel  had  just  had 
an  unlucky  struggle  with  the  neighboring  kingdom  of 
Damascus,  its  hereditary  foe.  In  this  conjuncture, 
King  Ahab  assumed  the  reins  of  power. 

Ahab,  owing  to  liis  conflict  with  Elijah,  is  ranked 
among  the  biblical  miscreants — but  as  unjustly  so  as 
Saul.  Ahab  was  one  of  the  best  kings  and  mightiest 
rulers  that  Israel  ever  had,  esteemed  and  admired  by 
both  friend  and  foe  as  a  man  of  worth  and  character. 
He  was  thoroughly  equal  to  the  situation,  and  after 
severe  struggles  raised  Israel  to  a  position  which  it 
had  held  under  none  of  his  predecessors.  The  only 
thing  which  he  can  be  blamed  for  is  his  weakness 
towards  his  wife,  the  bigoted  and  intriguing  T3'rian 
princess,  Jezebel. 

Jezebel's  father,  Ethbaal,  liad  formerl)'  been  a 
priest  of  Baal,  and  had  raised  himself  to  the  throne  of 
Tyre  by  the  murder  of  his  predecessor.  Ahab,  now, 
in  honor  of  his  wife,  caused  a  temple  to  be  erected  in 
Samaria  to  the  Tyrian  Baal.  That  Ahab  extirpated, 
or  wished  to  extirpate,  from  Israel  the  worship  of 
Yahveh,  is  pure  legend.  The  three  children  of  Ahab 
and  of  Jezebel  whose  names  we  know,  both  his  succes- 
sors, Ahajiah  and  Jehoram,  and  the  later  queen  of 
Judah,  Athaljah,  bear  names  compounded  of  Yahveh, 


and  shortly  before  his  death  there  lived  in  Samaria 
four  hundred  Yahveh  prophets,  who  prophesied  to  the 
king  whatever  he  wished.  Ahab's  doings  in  this  mat- 
ter are  quite  analogous  to  the  building  of  the  Greek 
Catholic  chapel  in  the  famous  watering-place  of  Wies- 
baden, because  the  first  wife  of  the  late  Duke  of  Nas- 
sau was  a  Russian  princess. 

The  supposed  idolatr}'  of  Solomon  is  to  be  explained 
in  the  same  manner.  Solomon  was  the  first  who  ex- 
tended the  intellectual  horizon  of  Israel  bej'ond  the 
borders  of  Palestine,  and  opened  the  land  to  intellectual 
and  commercial  traffic  with  the  outside  world.  In  his 
capital,  which  he  desired  should  become  a  metropo- 
lis, ever}'  one  was  to  be  saved  after  his  own  fashion, 
and  for  this  reason  Solomon  built  temples  to  the  gods 
of  all  the  nations  who  had  dealings  with  Jerusalem. 

No  man,  apparently,  had  taken  offence  at  the  action 
of  Ahab,  or  had  seen  in  it  a  transgression  against  the 
national  Deity,  until  Elijah  cried  out  to  the  people  the 
following  words,  which  are  surely  authentic:  "How 
long  will  ye  halt  between  two  opinions?  If  Yahveh  be 
God,  serve  him,  but  if  Baal  be  God,  serve  him."  Eli- 
jah was  no  opposer  of  Baal  on  grounds  of  principle  ; 
he  travels  in  Phcenicia,  the  special  home  of  Baal,  and 
exhibits  the  power  of  his  miracles  in  the  service  of  a 
worshipper  of  Baal,  the  widow  of  Zarephath  ;  but  in 
Israel  there  was  no  room  for  Baal ;  there  Yahveh  alone 
was  King  and  God.  It  is  the  energy  and  sensitiveness 
of  his  consciousness  of  God  that  rebels  against  the 
least  suspicion  of  syncretism,  and  sees  in  it  a  scoffing 
and  mockery  of  Yahveh,  who  will  have  His  people  ex- 
clusively for  Himself.  He  who  serves  partly  Baal  and 
partly  Yahveh  is  like,  according  to  Elijah's  drastic 
imagery,  a  man  lame  in  both  legs. 

But  another  and  more  important  point  fell  in  the 
balance  here.  Hard  by  the  palace  of  Ahab  in  Jezreel, 
Naboth  the  Jezreelite  had  a  vineyard  which  the  king 
wished  to  make  into  a  garden  of  herbs.  He  offered 
Naboth,  therefore,  the  worth  of  it  in  money,  or,  if  he 
preferred,  a  better  vineyard.  But  Naboth,  with  the 
proud  joy  of  the  true  yeoman  in  his  hereditary  land, 
answers  the  king:  "The  Lord  forbid  it  me  that  I 
should  give  the  inheritance  of  my  fathers  unto  thee." 
With  these  words  the  matter  is  at  an  end,  so  far  as 
Ahab  is  concerned,  but  he  cannot  conceal  his  disap- 


4464 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


pointment.  Jezebel,  his  wife,  hears  of  the  matter,  and 
says  unto  him  the  mocking  and  inciting  words  :  "  Dost 
thou  now  govern  the  Kingdom  of  Israel :  I  will  give 
thee  the  vineyard  of  Naboth."  Ahab  let  her  have  her 
will,  and  Jezebel's  rule  in  Israel  according  to  her  views 
cost  Ahab  and  his  house  their  throne.  False  witnesses 
testified  against  Naboth,  he  was  stoned  to  death  as  a 
blasphemer  against  God  and  the  king,  and  his  goods 
were  confiscated. 

In  the  ancient  East,  as  to-day,  such  events  were  of 
every-day  occurrence,  accepted  by  everybody  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course.  The  contemporaries  of  Ahab,  however, 
saw  in  this  deed  something  unheard  of ;  they  had  the 
feeling  as  if  heaven  and  earth  would  fall,  since  a  king 
of  Israel  was  capable  of  committing  such  a  crime. 
Elijah  made  himself  the  mouthpiece  of  the  general  in- 
dignation. 

On  the  following  day,  when  the  king  arose  to  take 
possession  of  the  vineyard,  he  meets  there  the  mighty 
man,  clothed  in  his  hairy  garment,  who  calls  to  him  in 
a  voice  of  thunder :  "Thou  who  didst  sell  thyself  to 
work  wickedness!  thus  saith  Yahveh  ;  I  have  yester- 
day seen  the  blood  of  Naboth  and  of  his  children,  and 
I  will  requite  thee  in  this  plat."  Elijah  does  not  an- 
nounce the  destruction  of  the  ruling  house  on  account 
of  its  idolatry,  but  as  an  act  of  justice.  It  was  not 
the  Tyrian  Baal  which  overthrew  the  dynasty  Omri, 

but  the  crime  committed  on  a  simple  peasant. 

* 
*  * 

According  to  the  universal  voice  of  tradition,  Eli- 
jah achieved  and  attained  nothing.  But  that  is  his 
highest  praise  and  his  greatest  fame.  For  Elijah  was 
a  man  of  pure  heart  and  of  clean  hands,  who  fought 
only  with  spiritual  weapons.  There  exists  no  greater 
contrast  than  that  between  Elijah  and  the  man  looked 
upon  as  his  heir  and  successor,  Elisha.  Tradition  it- 
self has  felt  this  difference  ;  the  miracles  narrated  of 
Elisha,  in  so  far  as  they  are  not  pure  imitations  of 
Elijah's,  all  possess  a  grotesque,  one  might  almost 
say,  a  vulgar,  character  :  the  sanctification  and  gran- 
deur of  Elijah  are  wanting  throughout.  Elisha  had 
seen  from  his  predecessor's  example  that  nothing 
could  be  achieved  with  spiritual  weapons  ;  he  became 
a  demagogue  and  conspirator,  a  revolutionist  and  agi- 
tator. He  incites  one  of  the  most  contemptible  char- 
acters known  in  the  history  of  Israel,  the  cavalry  officer 
Jehu,  to  smite  the  house  of  Ahab,  and  to  set  himself 
upon  the  throne  of  Israel.  This  came  to  pass.  Elisha 
had  attained  his  object,  and  the  Tyrian  Baal  had  disap- 
peared out  of  Samaria,  but  Israel  itself  was  brought  to 
the  verge  of  destruction.  The  reign  of  Jehu  and  of 
his  son,  Jehoahaz,  is  the  saddest  period  that  Israel 
ever  passed  through,  and  eighty  years  afterwards  the 
prophet  Hosea  saw  in  the  bloody  deeds  of  Jehu  an 
unatoned  guilt,  that  weighed  down  upon  the  kingdom 


and  dynasty,  and  which  could  onlj'  be  expiated  by  the 
fall  of  both. 

In  what,  now,  does  the  importance  of  Elijah  con- 
sist? 

Elijah  is  the  first  prophet  in  a  truly  Israelitic  sense, 
differing  from  the  later  prophets  only  in  that  his  effic- 
acy, like  that  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  was  entirely  per- 
sonal and  in  that  he  left  nothing  written.  He  saw  that 
man  does  not  live  by  bread  alone,  nor  nations  through 
sheer  power.  He  considered  Israel  solely  as  the  bearer 
of  a  higher  idea.  If  the  people  became  unfaithful  to 
this  idea,  no  external  power  could  help  them  ;  for  the 
nation  bore  in  itself  the  germ  of  death.  Israel  was  not 
to  become  a  common  nation  like  the  others ;  it  should 
serve  Yahveh  alone,  so  as  to  become  a  righteous  and 
pure  people. 

Elijah  was  in  holy  earnest  about  this  Mosaic  thought; 
he  measured  his  age  and  its  events  by  this  standard  ; 
he  placed  things  temporal  under  an  eternal  point  of 
view,  and  judged  them  accordingly.  The  crying  evils 
existed  plainly  in  the  modes  of  worship  and  in  the 
administration  of  the  law.  Undefiled  worship  and  a 
righteous  administration  of  the  law  are  what  God  re- 
quires above  all  things.  Here,  if  anywhere,  it  was  to 
be  shown  whether  Israel  was  in  realit}'  the  people  of 
God. 

It  is  no  accident  that  the  first  appearance  of  genu- 
ine prophecy  in  Israel  coincided  with  the  first  advent 
of  the  Assyrians.  Historical  catastrophes  have  inva- 
riably aroused  prophesying  in  Israel,  and  for  this  rea- 
son the  prophets  have  been  well  called  the  storm- 
petrels  of  the  world's  history.  This  Amos  has  spoken 
in  a  highly  characteristic  manner,  where  he  says : 
"Shall  a  trumpet  be  blown  in  the  city  and  the  people 
not  be  afraid?  Shall  there  be  evil  in  a  city  and  the 
Lord  hath  not  done  it?  Surely  the  Lord  Yahveh  will 
do  nothing  but  he  revealeth  his  secret  unto  his  ser- 
vants, the  prophets.  The  Lion  hath  roared,  who  will 
not  fear?  The  Lord  God  hath  spoken,  who  can  but 
prophesy?  " 

The  prophet  possesses  the  capacity  of  recognising 
God  in  history.  He  feels  it  when  catastrophes  are  in 
the  air.  He  stands  on  his  watch-tower  and  spies  out 
the  signs  of  the  times,  so  as  later  to  explain  these  to 
his  people,  and  to  point  out  the  right  way  to  them, 
which  will  surely  guide  them  out  of  all  danger. 

Moreover,  the  prophet  is  also  the  incorporate  con- 
science of  the  nation,  feeling  all  things  and  bringing 
all  things  to  light  that  are  rotten  in  the  nation  and  dis- 
pleasing to  God.  Micah  has  expressed  this,  in  very 
apt  terms,  where  he  states  his  antithesis  to  the  false 
prophets,  as  follows:  "If  a  man  walking  in  the  spirit 
and  falsehood  do  lie  saying  :  I  will  prophesy  unto  thee 
of  wine  and  strong  drink  ;  he  shall  even  be  the  prophet 
of  the  people  .  .  .   [Thej'  are]  the  prophets  that  make 


THE     OPEN     COURX. 


4465 


my  people  err,  that  bite  with  their  teetli  and  crj'  peace  ; 
and  he  that  putteth  not  into  their  mouths  the}'  even 
prepare  war  against  liim  .  .  .  but  truly  I  am  full  of 
power  by  the  spirit  of  the  Lord,  and  of  judgment,  and 
of  might,  to  declare  unto  Jacob  his  transgression,  and 
to  Israel  his  sin." 

That  is  the  prophet  of  Israel,  as  he  is  in  his  true 
character  and  innermost  significance  :  a  man  who  has 
the  power  to  look  at  temporal  things  under  eternal 
points  of  view,  who  sees  God's  rule  in  all  things,  who 
knows,  as  the  incorporate  voice  of  God,  how  to  inter- 
pret to  his  contemporaries  the  plan  of  God,  and  to 
direct  them  according  to  his  will.  This  way  alone 
leads  to  salvation.  To  reject  it  is  certain  destruction, 
be  the  outward  appearance  of  the  nation  ever  so  bril- 
liant. 

Of  these  genuine  prophets  of  Israel,  Elijah  was  the 
first,  and  therefore  a  personality  that  stood  forth  in  his 
age  in  solitary  grandeur,  not  understood,  but  an  object 
of  admiration  to  the  latest  generations,  and  the  pioneer 
of  a  new  epoch  in  the  history  of  the  religion  of  Israel. 

All  these  men  keep  adding  to  the  work  of  Moses ; 
they  build  on  the  foundations  which  he  laid.  Without 
Moses  the  prophets  would  never  have  existed,  and 
therefore  they  themselves  have  the  feeling  of  bringing 
nothing  absolutely  new.  But  as  faithful  and  just 
stewards  they  have  put  to  interest  the  pound  they  in- 
herited from  Moses.  The  national  religion  founded  by 
Moses  became  through  the  prophets  the  religion  of  the 
world.  How  this  took  place,  in  a  marvellously  or- 
ganic development,  the  consideration  of  those  proph- 
ets whose  writings  have  been  preserved,  will  show  us. 


TRILBYMANIA. 

The  writer  of  these  lines  was  almost  forced  to  read 
Trilby,  though  he  very  seldom  reads  novels.  It  was 
the  theme  of  nearly  all  the  society  conversation.  What 
do  you  think  of  it?  was  a  question  so  often  put  to  him, 
that  at  last  he  took  up  the  book. 

For  some  years  I  have  kept  a  diary,  and  had  read 
not  many  pages  of  Du  Maurier's  romance,  before  I 
was  reminded  of  an  entry  made  in  October,  1892,  re- 
garding a  late  novel,  David  Grieve,  by  Mrs.  Humphrey 
Ward.  I  then  wrote  :  "If  any  proof  had  been  want- 
ing since  Mrs.  Ward  had  written  Robert  Elsmere  that 
she  was  a  woman  of  great  literary  and  scientific  ac- 
quirements and  gifted  with  a  most  remarkable  power 
of  expressing  herself,  the  History  of  David  Grieve 
would  certainly  furnish  it.  As  graphic  and  minute  as 
her  description  of  Derbyshire  scenery  was,  were  those 
of  Manchester,  Paris,  and  London.  She  seems  to 
know  every  street,  alley,  and  suburb  of  Manchester; 
and  while  visitors  to  Paris  are  familiar  enough  with 
the  great  sights  of  that  city,  the  Tuilleries  (before  the 
Commune),  the  Louvre,  Palais  Royal,  Place  de  la  Con- 


corde, Champs  Elisdes,  Arc  de  Triomphe,  Hotel  des 
Invalides,  Morgue,  Sainte-Chapelle,  Pantheon,  Notre 
Dame,  and  the  other  innumerable  churches,  the  boule- 
vards, etc.,  Mrs.  Ward  is  quite  at  home  with  the  side- 
streets,  the  lanes,  the  suburbs,  the  marais,  the  ceme- 
teries, the  Quartier  Latin,  St.  Cloud,  St.  Germain, 
Fontainebleau,  and  Barbizon. 

"The  peasantry  of  the  bleak  moorlands  of  Derby- 
shire, the  cattle  and  sheep-drivers  ;  the  factory  workers 
in  Manchester;  the  dialect  of  all  these  various  classes, 
their  religious  creeds,  their  struggle  for  life,  their  pre- 
judices she  knows  as  well  as  the  life  and  doings  of  the 
Quartier  Latin,  of  the  painters,  and  sculptors,  and 
stage-actors  ;  the  interior  of  their  ateliers,  their  mod- 
els, their  life  in  the  caf6s  and  brasseries  ;  all  the  de- 
classee  young  men  and  women,  the  brightness  and  the 
misery  of  the  boarding-house  life,  in  a  word,  she  has 
made  herself  thoroughly  familiar  with  the  artistic  and 
intellectual  proletariat  concentrated  in  this  modern 
Babylon  from  all  parts  of  France  and  other  countries. 

"She  seems  to  have  picked  up  all  the  slang  and 
blague  of  those  people  and  to  know  all  their  good 
qualities  and  still  more  all  their  bad  ones. 

"  In  David  Grieve,  in  contrast  with  Robert  Elsmere, 
she  deals  almost  exclusively  with  the  middle  and  lower 
strata  of  society,  though  she  finds  occasion  to  displaj' 
her  knowledge  of  the  religious  views  of  the  priests  and 
ministers  of  all  of  the  many  sects  and  of  the  rites  and 
ceremonies  of  the  churches. 

"  There  are  many  very  powerful  passages  and  there 
is  no  denying  that  the  author  is  not  only  a  woman  of 
remarkable  talents,  but  of  genius.  And  yet  as  a  compo- 
sition David  Grieve  is  very  feeble  indeed.  A  multitude 
of  people  are  introduced  who  have  no  bearing  upon  the 
events,  which  are  to  illustrate  the  development  of  the 
character  of  the  hero,  David  Grieve.  We  meet  a 
number  of  mere  episodes.  One  of  the  first  requisites 
of  a  novel  is  that  the  characters  should  be  at  least 
somewhat  probable,  and  the  events  at  least  possible. 
But  in  all  those  three  volumes  we  hardly  find  one  pos- 
sible character  or  one  possible  situation.  David  Grieve 
comes  perhaps  nearer  to  a  probable  being.  His  uncle 
Reuben  may  also  pass  as  probable.  The  French  pain- 
ter and  patriot  Regnault  is  a  somewhat  historical  char- 
acter, and  his  portrait  is  quite  true,  but  it  has  really 
no  place  fitting  within  the  frame  of  the  novel.  Reu- 
ben's wife,  Hannah,  a  prominent  figure  in  the  early 
part  of  the  tale  is  altogether  overdrawn.  People  like 
the  visionary  Lias  and  Margarethe  are  wholly  unreal. 
Lomax  and  his  daughter,  the  philosopher  Ancuni,  as 
also  old  Purell  are  personages  no  one  ever  met  with. 
The  heroine  of  the  novel,  Loui  Grieve,  upon  whose 
character  she  has  evidently  devoted  the  greatest  power 
of  delineation  is  so  abnormal  a  creature,  that  no  one 
will   ever   believe   in   such   an   existence  outside  of  a 


4466 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


lunatic  asylum.  In  short,  it  may  be  said  of  the  History 
of  David  Grieve,  that  as  far  as  brilliant  and  impressive 
writing  is  concerned,  it  is  a  master-piece,  but  that,  as 
a  novel,  even  as  a  so-called  psychological  one,  it  is  a 
dead  failure." 

Reading  Trilby  I  was  strongly  reminded  of  David 
Grieve,  and  I  find  that  the  judgment  I  then  ventured 
to  pass  on  Mrs.  Ward's  novel,  differs  but  very  little 
from  the  one  I  have  formed  about  Du  Maurier's,  with 
somewhat  large  modifications,  of  course. 

In  great  part  Trilby  is  undoubtedly  the  result  of 
personal  experiences,  of  confession,  of  personal  traits 
reflected  in  the  portraits  of  some  of  the  characters  de- 
lineated, in  that  of  Little  Billee  for  one,  nay,  in  some 
places  the  author  himself  takes  the  floor.'  In  order 
to  understand  Trilby  one  ought  to  know  something  of 
the  author's  course  of  life.  Within  the  literary  circles 
of  England,  perhaps  also  of  the  United  States,  George 
Du  Maurier  is  well  known.  But  to  the  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  his  readers  his  career  is  a  perfect  blank. 
Hence  the  necessity  of  giving  a  brief  sketch  of  his  per- 
sonality. 

George  Du  Maurier  was  born  at  Paris  in  the  year 
1834.  His  grandparents  had  emigrated  from  France 
during  the  first  revolution  and  had  not  returned  after 
the  downfall  of  the  Reign  of  Terror.  His  father  was 
born  in  London,  but  had  moved  to  France,  where  he 
engaged  in  industrial  pursuits.  George  received  his 
earliest  education  at  Paris.  But  sometime  in  1852  his 
father  returned  to  England,  and  though  George  showed 
very  early  great  talents  for  music  and  also  for  design- 
ing and  painting,  his  father,  who  had  established  a 
chemical  laboratory  at  London,  forced  him  to  study 
chemistry.  But  after  the  death  of  his  father  he  hur- 
ried back  to  Paris  to  his  mother,  and  eagerly  devoted 
himself  to  his  favorite  art,  in  one  of  the  first  ateliers 
in  the  Quartier  Latin.  To  advance  his  studies  he  went 
to  Antwerp,  revelling  in  the  beauties  of  the  old  Dutch 
and  Flemish  masters.  In  i860  he  returned  to  Eng- 
land, where  he  has  since  resided.  He  always  claimed 
England  as  his  true  home  and  shared  to  the  full  ex- 
tent the  national  pride  of  being  a  Britisher.  Nearly 
all  his  principal  characters  in  his  novel,  even  Trilby, 
are  of  British  descent,  she  having  Irish  and  Scotch 
blood  in  her  veins.  Immediately  after  his  arrival  he 
connected  himself  with  the  celebrated  comic  paper 
Punch,  and  his  caricatures  and  the  texts  written  by 
him  to  illustrate  liis  drawings  were  soon  highly  ad- 
mired. 

Punch,  like  John  Bull  himself,  is  a  pretty  coarse 
fellow,  but  Du  Maurier's  work  was  always  sprightly, 
delicate,  tasteful,  showing  his  Galilean  descent. 

Speaking  of  himself  (page  51,  Harper's  edition, 
1894),  he  says:    "My  poor  heroine  had  all  the  virtues 

I  Reminding  us  of  Dickens's  David  Copperjield. 


but  one,  but  the  virtue  she  lacked  was  of  such  a  kind 
that  I  have  found  it  impossible  to  tell  her  history  so  as 
to  make  it  quite  fit  and  proper  reading  for  the  ubiqui- 
tous young  person  so  dear  to  us  all.  Most  deeply  to 
my  regret,  for  I  had  fondly  hoped  it  might  one  day  be 
said  of  me,  that  whatever  my  other  literary  shortcom- 
ings might  be,  I  at  least  had  never  penned  a  line 
which  a  pure-minded  young  British  mother  might  not 
read  aloud  to  her  little  blue-eyed  babe,  as  it  lies  suck- 
ing its  little  bottle  in  its  little  bassinet.  Fate  has  willed 
it  otherwise.  Would  indeed  that  I  could  duly  express 
poor  Trilby's  one  shortcoming  in  some  not  too  famil- 
iar medium — in  Latin  or  Greek,  let  us  say — lest  she, 
the  young  person,  should  happen  to  pry  into  these 
pages,  when  her  mother  is  looking  the  other  way. 
Latin  and  Greek  are  languages  the  young  person 
should  not  be  taught  to  understand.  But  I  am  scholar 
enough  to  enter  one  little  Latin  plea  on  Trilby's  be- 
half— the  shortest,  best,  and  most  beautiful  plea  I  can 
think  of.  It  was  once  used  in  extenuation  and  con- 
donation of  the  frailties  of  another  poor,  weak  woman, 
presumably  beautiful  and  a  far  worse  offender  than 
Trilby,  but  who,  like  Trilby,  repented  of  her  ways  and 
was  most  justly  forgiven — 'Quia  mult  urn  aniavit.'  " 

This  exquisite  passage  might  have  been  written  by 
Renan.  Beautifully  as  this  apology  of  the  author  is 
written,  it  is  nevertheless  utterly  inadmissible.  Who 
was  it  that  bid  him  select  for  the  theme  of  his  novel 
the  rather  unsavory  case  of  an  improper  woman,  to 
use  a  Carlylean  expression,  who  by  a  real  love  re-in- 
tegrated herself,  and  became  as  good  as  new.  It  is 
useless  to  enlarge  on  this  demurrer. 

The  plot  of  Trilby  is  not  new.  It  is  the  same  that 
A.  Dumas,  Jils,  in  his  Dame  aux  Camclias,  and  Verdi 
in  his  Traviata  have  made  known  in  every  corner  of  the 
globe.  A  fiery  young  man  of  a  highly  respected  fam- 
ily has  fallen  passionately  in  love  with  a  demi-mon- 
daine,  who  has  likewise,  after  a  life  of  shame,  felt  the 
first  pulsations  of  true  love.  She  has  great  personal 
charms,  is  intellectual,  and  of  a  lovely  disposition. 
He  is  bent  on  marrying  her,  to  which,  of  course,  she 
consents.  His  parents  naturally  object  to  such  an  un- 
conventional and  degrading  match.  In  vain  are  their 
efforts  to  change  the  mind  of  their  son.  They  turn  to 
the  woman,  supplicating  her  to  renounce  her  love. 
She  yields  to  their  entreaties,  and  dies  of  a  broken 
heart.  The  story  is  not  improbable,  and  waiving  the 
question  whether  it  is  proper  to  represent  it  in  a  novel 
or  on  the  stage,  is  apt  to  win  our  interest. 

But  let  us  see  how  Du  Maurier  has  handled  this 
subject.  We  are  at  the  start  introduced  to  three  Eng- 
lishmen of  very  good  family.  The  oldest  of  them,  Mr. 
Wynne,  generally  called  Taffy,  had  been  an  officer  in 
the  army,  had  gone  through  the  Crimean  War,  but 
had  quitted  the  service  since.     The  second  is  a  Scot- 


THE     OPEN     COURX. 


4467 


tish  laird,  who  goes  in  the  story  by  the  name  of  Sandy 
or  Laird,  and  the  youngest  WilHam  Bagot,  bj'  the 
name  of  Little  Billee.      All  are  of  independent  means. 

They  all  have  taken  up  drawing  and  painting  as  a 
profession.  They  work  in  the  same  atelier,  an  un- 
commonly large  building,  in  which  masters  in  sculp- 
ture and  painting  have  their  studios.  Taffy  is  a  giant 
in  stature,  the  Laird  of  medium  size,  and  Billee  small, 
slender,  and  delicate.  All  three  are  united  by  the 
closest,  most  romantic  friendship;  they  would  die  for 
one  another.  Little  Billee  is  the  pet  of  the  two  others, 
indeed  of  every  one  who  comes  in  contact  with  him. 
This  trio  had  received  a  liberal  education.  The  hero- 
ine, Trilby,  is  the  daughter  of  a  very  learned  Irish 
Churchman,  who  quit  his  profession,  became  a  private 
tutor  to  noblemen's  sons,  was  a  thorough  gentleman, 
and  had,  like  his  daughter,  all  virtues,  lacking  but 
one.  He  was  an  inveterate  drunkard,  lost  position 
after  position,  finally  landed  in  Paris,  but  failed  to 
succeed  there,  died,  and  left  his  wife,  a  coarse  and 
dissipated  woman,  and  two  daughters  in  great  want. 
No  wonder  that  Trilby,  the  oldest  child,  instigated,  as 
it  seems,  by  her  own  mother,  in  course  of  time  lost  her 
virtue.  At  the  time  we  meet  her  in  the  novel  she  sus- 
tains herself  as  a  Blanchisseuse  de  fin.  Parisians  know 
what  that  means.  Occasionally  she  becomes  a  griscttc 
to  the  students  in  the  Latin  Quarter  ;  but  her  princi- 
pal, and  perhaps  most  profitable,  business  is  sitting  as 
a  model  altogethe?-. 

In  that  circle,  besides  many  others,  intrudes  the 
villain  of  the  piece,  Svengali,  a  Jew,  whom  Du  Maurier 
sometimes  calls  a  German  Pole,  at  other  times  an  Aus- 
trian, an  eminent  pianist,  who  hardly  deems  Chopin 
his  equal,  and  who  ekes  out  his  existence  by  casual 
remittances  from  relatives  of  his  native  land,  partly  by 
using  the  earnings  of  his  mistress,  mostly  by  sponging 
upon  his  acquaintances  and  contracting  debts,  which 
he  at  that  time  intended  never  to  pay.  Whatever  he 
gets  that  way  and  by  giving  a  few  lessons,  he  spends 
in  gross  dissipation.  He  has  a  pupil,  a  young  Greek, 
Gecko,  in  the  novel,  an  excellent  violinist. 

As  the  author  has  most  skilfully  and  plentifully 
illustrated  his  novel,  and  has  presented  the  principal 
personages  in  all  possible  and  impossible  poses  and 
situations,  there  is  nothing  left  to  say  by  the  reviewer 
as  to  their  outward  appearances. 

One  of  the  greatest  beauties  of  the  work  is  the 
sharp,  minute  portraiture  of  the  men  and  women  to 
whom  we  are  introduced.  They  impress  themselves 
indelibly  on  the  mind  of  the  reader. 

Regarding  his  description  of  the  character  of  Lit- 
tle Billee,  I  wish  to  underline  one  very  singular  pas- 
sage (page  6):  "And  in  his  winning  and  handsome 
face  there  was  just  a  faint  suggestion  of  some  possible 
very   remote   Jewish   ancestor — just   a   tinge   of   that 


strong,  sturdy,  irrepressible,  indomitable,  indelible 
blood,  which  is  of  such  priceless  value  in  homceopathic 
doses." 

Now  while  a  story  like  that  of  Alexander  Dumas's, 
though  very  extraordinary,  may  still  be  probable,  what 
shall  we  say  of  Du  Maurier's  ?  Had  Trilby  fascinated 
the  young,  inexperienced,  oversensitive  Billee  to  the 
extent  of  his  wishing  to  marry  her,  all  would  have  been 
well.  But  we  are  asked  to  believe  that  she  not  only 
bewitched  him,  but  also  Taffy,  one  of  the  Queen's 
Dragoon  Guards,  and  Sandy,  the  Scotch  nobleman, 
and  Gecko.  Had  they  merely  fallen  in  love  with  her, 
that  might  have  been  natural  enough,  as  she  seemed 
to  have  charmed  everybody,  but  it  is  utterly  beyond 
belief  that  all  were  so  love-struck  that  they  time  and 
again,  each  one  for  himself  and  unknown  to  his  friends, 
should  have  asked  her  for  her  hand. 

This  is  but  one  of  the  extravagances  of  Du  Maurier. 
Many  others  run  through  the  novel,  for  instance,  when 
it  is  told  that  the  muscular  athlete  Taff}',  having  been 
offended  by  a  set  of  pupils  in  a  painter's  studio,  "took 
the  first  rapin"  that  came  to  hand  and  using  him  as  a 
club,  swung  him  about  freely  and  knocked  down  so 
many  students  and  easels  and  drawing  boards  with 
him  and  made  such  a  terrific  rumpus  that  the  whole 
studio  had  to  cry  Pax. 

One  of  the  most  striking  passages  is  when  Trilby 
was  sitting  to  a  celebrated  sculptor  "altogether"  re- 
presenting la  Sourci-,  and  Billee  inadvertently  burst  into 
the  sculptor's  studio,  saw  Trilby,  is  petrified  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  then  rushes  out  of  the  room  at  once.  She 
loved  him  dearly.  He  had  never  seen  her  sit  eti  figure. 
For  the  first  time  she  becomes  conscious,  that  exposing 
herself  as  she  had  done  often  before  was  really  scan- 
dalous. For  the  first  time  shame  mantled  her  forehead 
and  cheeks. 

"Presently  she  dropped  her  pitcher,  that  broke  into 
bits  and  putting  her  two  hands  before  her  face  she 
burst  into  tears  and  sobs,  and  thus  to  the  amazement 
of  everybody  she  stood  crying  like  a  baby  La  source 
au.x  larmes  f  This  newborn  feeling  of  shame  was  un- 
endurable— its  birth  a  travail  tb.at  racked  and  rent 
every  fibre  of  her  moral  being  and  she  suffered  agonies 
beyond  anything  she  has  ever  felt  in  her  life."  P.  120. 

Trilby  had  refused  marriage  to  Taffy  and  Sandy 
repeatedly.  She  had  done  the  same  to  Billee  nine- 
teen times — Du  Maurier  like  Rabelais  deals  in  big  fig- 
ures, but  when  asked  the  twentieth  time,  "Will  you 
marry  me  Trilby?  If  not  I  leave  Paris  to-morrow 
morning  and  never  come  back.  I  swear  it  on  vay  word 
of  honor,"  she  turned  very  pale  and  leaned  her  head 
back  against  the  wall  and  covered  her  face  with  her 
hands.  Little  Billee  pulled  them  away.  "Answer 
me  Trilby."  "God  forgive  me,  yes,"  said  Trilby,  and 
she  ran  down  stairs  weeping. 


4468 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


This  was  on  Christmas  eve.  The  day  for  the  mar- 
riage-celebration was  fixed  for  New  Year's  eve.  In 
the  meantime  Mrs.  Bagot,  Billee's  widowed  mother, 
and  the  Reverend  Mr.  Bagot,  her  brother-in-law,  by 
the  way  the  only  probable  characters  in  Trilby,  had 
come  to  Paris,  had  heard  about  the  engagement,  and 
had  learned  all  the  good  and  bad  about  Trilby  from 
Taffy,  but  far  more  of  the  good  than  the  bad.  The  con- 
versation between  the  mother  and  the  Reverend,  and 
Taffy  is  most  admirably  done.  Of  course  mother  and 
uncle  were  terribly  shocked,  but  being  assured  that 
they  could  not  change  Billee's  mind,  they  greatly  de- 
sired to  see  Trilby.  The  scene  when  they  met  her  is 
described  with  surpassing  power  and  beauty.  The  girl 
understood  the  situation  at  once.  "She  trembled  very 
much."  Mrs.  Bagot  looked  up  into  her  face,  herself 
breathless  with  keen  suspense  and  cruel  anxiety — al- 
most imploringly.  Trilby  looked  down  at  Mrs.  Bagot 
very  kindly,  put  out  her  shaking  hand  and  said, 
"  Good-by,  Mrs.  Bagot,  I  will  not  marry  your  son.  I 
promise  you,  I  will  never  see  him  again,  and  she  walked 
swiftly  out  of  the  room."  How  superior  this  is  to  A. 
Dumas's  maudlin,  sentimental,  and  rhetorical  picture 
of  the  same  situation  in  his  Dame  aux  Camclias.  The 
one  picture  a  Rembrandt,  the  other  a  mere  daub. 

Trilby  now  disappears  for  a  long  while,  and  1 
wished  Du  Maurier  had  stopped  right  there  by  letting 
them  either  die  of  despair  or  live  in  sadness  longing 
for  one  another.  The  palm-tree  and  the  pine  of 
Heine's  song.  All  at  once  the  musical  world  of  Europe 
goes  into  raptures  about  a  new  prima  dona  who  casts 
into  the  shade  Albani,  Jenny  Lind,  Nilsson,  and  even 
Patti.  Madame  Svengali  is  her  name.  It  is  Trilby  ! 
It  will  be  recollected  that  early  in  the  novel  she  is 
represented  as  having  a  most  beautiful  and  powerful 
voice,  but  no  ear  at  all.  She  cannot  read  from  notes, 
or  keep   in  tune.      Her  song  is  ridiculously  grotesque. 

Svengali  undertakes  to  examine  her  organ.  P.  72. 
"Will  you  permit  that  I  shall  look  into  your  mouth, 
mademoiselle?"  She  opened  her  mouth  wide  while 
he  looked  into  it.  "  Himmel  !  the  roof  of  your  mouth 
is  like  the  dome  of  the  Pantheon  ;  there  is  room  in  it 
for  /flutes  les  gloires  de  la  France  and  a  little  to  spare. 
The  entrance  to  your  throat  is  like  the  middle  porch 
of  St.  Sulpice,  where  the  doors  are  open  for  the  faith- 
ful on  All  Saints'  Day  ;  and  not  one  tooth  is  missing — 
thirty-two  British  teeth  as  white  as  milk  and  as  big  as 
knuckle-bones,  and  your  little  tongue  is  scooped  out 
like  the  leaf  of  a  pink  peony,  and  the  bridge  of  your 
nose  is  like  the  belly  of  a  Stradivarius — what  a  sound- 
ing-board !  And  inside  of  your  beautiful  big  chest  the 
lungs  are  made  of  leather,  and  your  breath  it  embalms, 
— like  the  breath  of  a  beautiful  white  heifer  fed  on  the 
buttercups  and  daisies  of  the  Vaterland,  and  you  have 


a  quick,  soft,  susceptible  heart,  a  heart  of  gold,  made- 
moiselle,— and  all  that  sees  itself  in  your  face." 

Svengali  had  also  at  one  time,  when  Trilby  was 
almost  mad  from  excruciating  neuralgic  pains,  relieved 
her  instantly  by  magnetising  her,  and  had  found  her 
a  splendid  medium.  After  she  had  left  Little  Billee 
and  Paris  in  despair,  she  had  kept  herself  secreted  in 
the  house  of  a  female  friend  in  the  neighborhood.  But 
Svengali  had  found  her  out.  By  putting  her  in  a  hyp- 
notic trance  he  could  make  her  sing  the  notes  revolv- 
ing in  his  head  (he  himself  could  not  sing  at  all)  and 
streaming  out  of  his  long  fingers  on  his  touching  the 
piano.  It  is  perhaps  owing  to  these  hypnotic  perform- 
ances, to  this  occult  science  of  hypnotism  which  is 
now  making  such  a  noise  in  the  world,  so  originally 
and  powerfully  treated  by  Du  Maurier,  which  in 
part  at  least  accounts  for  the  unparalleled  success  of 
Trilby.  The  reappearance  of  the  heroine,  what  might 
be  called  the  second  part  of  the  novel,  is  a  weird  story, 
shadowy  and  nebulous,  confused  in  its  chronology,  and 
by  no  means  pleasant  reading.  Still  it  shows  great 
dramatic  power  and  an  exuberant  imagination. 

Little  Billee,  Taffy,  and  Sandy  had  left  Paris  soon 
after  Trilby's  disappearance  and  returned  to  England. 
Billee  in  a  half  maddened  state,  and  their  doings  there 
are  interestingly  narrated.  La  Svengali  after  having 
starred  through  all  the  principal  capitals  of  the  conti- 
nent, at  last  reached  London.  Our  friends  having 
heard  her  at  Paris,  where  they  had  gone  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  seeing  her,  and  where  she  had  met  with 
the  most  rapturous  applause,  attended  her  first  con- 
cert at  London.  Little  Billee's  love  for  Trilby,  in 
spite  of  an  attachment  which  he  had  formed  at  his 
mother's  in  Devonshire,  had  revived  with  redoubled 
force.  The  debut  of  La  Svengali  at  London  had  been 
an  immense  success. 

But  at  her  second  appearance,  when  Svengali,  by 
a  wound  he  had  received  from  Gecko,  and  besides 
laboring  under  a  nervous  prostration,  was  unable  to 
direct  the  orchestra,  but  had  withdrawn  to  a  private 
box  near  the  proscenium,  from  where  he  could  hypno- 
tise Trilby,  had  just  when  she  appeared  on  the  stage 
been  struck  dead  with  apoplexy,  which  she  had  not 
perceived,  broke  down,  the  rapport  between  her  and 
Svengali  being  cut  off,  would  not  sing  at  all  at  first, 
and  when  she  tried  to  appear  before  an  impatient 
and  noisy  audience,  her  song  was  out  of  time,  gro- 
tesque as  it  had  been  in  the  Quartier  Latin,  before  she 
came  under  the  spell  of  the  grim  Svengali.  She  was 
hissed.  The  curtain  fell.  Little  Billee  had  her  taken 
to  the  hotel  where  he  lodged.  Her  mind  had  given 
way.  She  had  lost  all  remembrance  of  some  of  the 
most  important  events  of  her  life,  while  at  times  she 
recollected  past  occurrences  remarkably  well.  She 
had  hours  when  her  mind  was  perfectly  sound.      Dur- 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4469 


ing  her  sickness,  and  at  her  deatlibed,  Du  Maurier 
makes  her  utter  thoughts  and  sentiments  on  life, 
death,  and  immortality  which  might  have  come  out 
of  the  mouth  of  Socrates  or  Seneca.  Whether  such 
a  physiological  and  psychological  status  is  possible, 
must  be  left  to  be  decided  by  alienists.  She  dies, 
making  a  will,  and  trusts  in  a  general  amnesty  to  all 
sinners  by  Ic  bon  Die  11.  Her  last  words  were  "  Sven- 
gali,  Svengali,  Svengali !  " 

Here  the  author  again  speaks  to  the  public :  '  ■  There 
has  been  too  much  sickness  in  this  story,  so  I  will  tell 
as  little  as  possible  of  poor  Little  Billee's  long  illness, 
his  slow  and  only  partial  recovery,  the  paralysis  of  his 
powers  as  a  painter,  his  quick  decline,  his  early  death, 
his  manl}',  calm,  and  most  beautiful  surrender — the 
wedding  of  the  moth  with  the  star,  of  the  night  with 
the  morning.  For  all  but  blameless  as  his  short  life 
had  been,  and  so  full  of  splendid  promise  and  per- 
formance, nothing  ever  became  him  better  than  the 
way  he  left  it." 

The  novel  ends  quite  strangely  and  mermaidlike 
with  a  history  of  Taffy's  marriage,  and  his  quiet,  hum- 
drum family-life. 

Trilbv  has  been  denounced  by  man}'  for  its  immor- 
ality. Priests  and  sectarian  ministers  have  thundered 
against  it  from  the  pulpit.  It  will  be,  if  it  has  not 
been  already,  put  on  the  inde.x  of  forbidden  books  at 
Rome.  Now,  it  is  very  true  that  the  views  expressed 
by  Little  Billee  on  the  Bible,  the  Christian  dogmas, 
on  miracles,  in  his  conversation  with  his  orthodox 
mother,  with  the  Rev.  Mr.  Bagot,  and  most  particu- 
larly the  dialogues  lie  held  with  his  faithful  dog,  Tray, 
are  irreconcilable  with  the  conventional  Christian  re- 
ligion. But  are  they  not  the  views  of  millions  calling 
themselves  Christians,  but  who,  perhaps  rightly,  do 
not  choose  to  profess  them  publicly?  If  Trilby  is  to  be 
burnt,  a  great  many  of  the  most  popular  novels  ought 
also  to  be  delivered  to  the  flames,  let  alone  the  works 
of  Mill,  Huxley,  Spencer,  Haeckel,  and  of  many  other 
scientific  authors.  But  let  us  take  a  look  into  the 
heart  of  Little  Billee,  as  painted  to  us  by  Du  Maurier. 
There  will  be  found  no  place  for  orthodox  or  half  or- 
thodox religion,  but  a  still  corner,  where  the  most  ele- 
vated morality  has  seated  herself.  It  is  this  moral 
law  which  has  guided  him  unscathed  through  the  rag- 
ing surges  and  the  boisterous  tempests  of  human  life. 
Truly  there  is  more  morality  in  Trilby  than  in  the  soi- 
disatit  sermons  of  Sam  Jones,  the  noted  Evangelist,  to 
whose  profane,  not  to  say  blasphemous,  rant,  listen, 
night  after  night,  thousands  of  people,  overcrowding 
the  biggest  halls  and  biggest  churches  in  our  large 
cities. 

George  Du  Maurier  is  an  author  of  various  and 
eminent  talents,  stored  with  the  treasures  of  ancient 
and  modern  lore.      A  master  of  stjle,  possessed  of  an 


exuberant  imagination,  a  highly  gifted  and  original 
poet.  An  envious  critic  might  dispute  his  original- 
ity, accuse  him  of  having  borrowed  too  largely  from 
other  writers.  Moliere,  Shakespeare,  and  even  Goethe, 
have  not  escaped  a  similar  charge.  The  critic  might 
say  that  Du  Maurier,  in  his  microscopic  topography 
of  Paris  and  surroundings,  has  imitated  Victor  Hugo 
in  Les  Miscrables,  and  also  in  Hugo's  use  or  abuse  of 
accumulating  adjectives  and  superlatives,  that  in  his 
so  vivid  pictures  of  the  life  of  artists,  models,  studenls, 
grisettes,  in  the  Quartier  Latin,  he  had  largely  drawn 
on  David  Gricvi-',  and  more  particularly  on  the  Im  Pa- 
radics,  by  the  great  German  novelist,  Paul  Heyse. 
There  is  indeed  a  most  striking  resemblance  between 
the  last  novel  and  liilby.  The  atelier-life  of  Munich 
is  as  drastically  pictured  as  in  Trilby.  And  what  is 
most  remarkable,  the  model  in  /w  Paradies,  Crescen- 
tia,  who  goes  by  the  name  of  the  "reddish  Zenz,"  is, 
saving  the  size,  almost  a  portrait  of  the  person  of 
Trilby,  as  painted  by  Du  Maurier.  Zenz  is  by  no 
means  a  regular  beauty,  but  she  is  still  bewitching. 
Her  complexion  is  snowj'  white,  but  somewhat  spoiled 
by  freckles  on  her  face  and  beautiful  hands.  Her  fig- 
ure is  perfect,  a  splendid  and  soft  growth  of  Venetian 
brown  hair  falls  down  to  her  waist.  She  is  as  artless, 
as  sprightly,  as  affectionate  as  Trilby.  She  has  all  the 
virtues  of  Trilby,  and  none  of  her  vices.  Almost  every- 
body falls  in  love  with  her,  but  she  remains  pure.  She 
sits  as  a  model  from  an  instinctive  love  of  high  art, 
but  never  as  a  whole  figure.  She  refuses  marriage, 
for  she  does  not  wish  her  high-born  lovers  to  step 
down  to  her  humble  level. 

The  winding  up  of  ////  Paradies  is  however  quite 
different.  Zenz  at  the  last  is  found  to  be  the  aban- 
doned offspring  of  a  nobleman,  and  so  her  objection  to 
marry  the  man  she  truly  loved  comes  to  an  end.  And 
what  Sam  Weller  would  call  "a  most  remarkable  co- 
incidence," is  that  Heyse  has  brought  to  the  scene  a 
beautiful  Danish  dog,  as  sensitive  and  intelligent  as 
Tray,  with  whom  his  master  holds  converse,  as  Little 
Billee  did  with  his  pet  Tray. 

The  hypercritic  might  further  allege,  that  the  views 
on  religion  and  philosoph)'  expressed  by  Little  Billie 
and  others  are  met  with  on  many  pages  in  Robert  Els- 
mere,  David  Grieve,  George  Sand,  George  Eliot,  and 
many  other  most  celebrated  novelists  ;  that  Du  Mau- 
rier's  so  often  repeated  attempts  to  describe  the  power 
of  music,  its  very  soul,  and  its  effect  upon  the  hearers, 
have  a  close  affinity  with  F.  A.  Hoffman's  Phantasie- 
stiieke  After  the  Manner  of  Callot,  which,  strange  to 
say,  as  all  the  writings  of  this  most  eccentric  author, 
have  become  extremely  popular  in  France  ;  and  that, 
when  on  one  occasion  Little  Billee  most  eloquently 
defends  the  character  of  Trilby,  he  tremblingly  ex- 
claims :    "Oh,   oh!   good    heavens!    are   you   so   pre- 


.0^ 


4470 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


ciously  immaculate,  you  two,  that  you  should  throw 
stones  at  poor  Trilby!  What  a  shame,  what  a  hideous 
shame  it  is  that  there  should  be  one  law  for  the  wo- 
man and  another  for  the  man  ! — poor  weak  women, 
poor  soft,  affectionate  beings,  that  beasts  of  men  are 
always  running  after,  and  pestering  and  ruining  and 
trampling  under  foot  ! — Oh,  oh  !  it  makes  me  sick — it 
makes  me  sick,"  we  recognise  the  voice  of  Tolstoi. 

And  what  of  all  that?  An  author  intimately  fam- 
iliar with  the  literature  of  all  ages  and  all  countries, 
as  Du  Maurier  unquestionably  is,  with  an  impressible 
soul,  a  retentive  memory,  will  naturally  gather  up  in 
his  intellect  all  the  thoughts  and  ideas  of  the  sages, 
the  poets,  the  scientists,  which  he  has  learned  from 
their  works.  When  such  a  writer  comes  to  produce 
himself,  all  he  has  stored  away  in  the  receptacle  of  his 
mind  unconsciously  crowds  upon  him,  and  if  he  is 
capable  of  giving  it  a  finished,  plastic  form,  inspired 
by  his  own  poetic  mind,  he  becomes  an  original.  Just 
try  to  classify  him,  to  assign  him  a  proper  pigeon- 
hole, and  you  will  find  it  a  vain  effort,  and  must  con- 
fess that  he  stands  out  by  himself,  a  bright  star  on  the 
heavenly  firmament.  His  name  will  be  linked  with 
those  of  Thackeray,  Hawthorne,  Jean  Paul,  George 
Sand,  George  Eliot,  and  the  author  of  Robert  Els- 
7nere.  Outsider. 

JAPANESE  BUDDHISM  AND  THE  WAR  WITH  CHINA. 

Mr.  K.  Ohara,  of  Otsu,  Omi,  Japan,  writes  us  as  follows: 
"About  twenty  or  more  Buddhist  monks  have  been  sent  to 
China  with  our  army  to  comfort  soldiers  ;  not  only  ours,  but  also 
Chinese  prisoners.  One  of  our  colonels  who  fights  with  his  sword 
the  enen. . .  prc.'.ected  an  ^  con  'orted  at  the  same  time  a  mother- 
less Chinese  b  >.by,  wh'c-l  fact  prove  hat  our  army  in  the  field 
'  )es  not  commit  atrotii  s,  but  shr  .harily  towards  the  enemy. 
Though  our  soldiers  are  not  all  iioddhists,  they  are  all  of  them 
deeply  influenced  by  the  teachings  of  Buddha,  our  Lord,  who  has 
no  enemy  in  the  great  universe,  but  aims  at  establishing  a  univer- 
sal brotherhood  of  all  living  beings.  Patriotism,  loyalty,  obedience 
to  the  rightful  laws  of  the  country,  and  good  will  towards  all,  is 
the  outcome  of  the  beautiful  and  elevating  Buddhist  doctrine,  un- 
der the  influence  of  which  our  people  are  instructed  and  brought 
up.  Edwin  Arnold  is  quite  right  when  he  attributes  our  victory 
and  righteousness  to  Buddhism.  (See  the  article  in  No.  388,  page 
4382,  of  The  Open  Court.)  We  are  glad  to  learn  that  the  Ameri- 
can people  appreciate  our  justice  and  love  of  righteousness.  A 
few  days  ago  I  was  requested  to  speak  a  few  words  of  instruction 
to  the  Chinese  prisoners  here  confined,  and  I  read  to  them  pas- 
sages from  your  book.  The  Gospel  of  Bitddlni,  such  as  are  instruc- 
tive and  intelligible,  and  they  greatly  rejoiced  and  cried  out  loudly, 
'kwei-sai,  kwei-sai.'  All  of  them  are  anxious  to  hear  me  speak 
again,  and  I  shall  do  so,  and  will  comfort  them  more  frequently 
hereafter.  They  are  kindly  treated  and  are  quite  comfortable, 
for  many  of  them  are  treated  better  here  than  in  their  own  coun- 
try."   

NOTES. 

We  have  just  received  the  sad  news  of  the  death  of  Prof. 
George  von  Gizcyki  of  the  University  of  Berlin,  at  the  age  of  forty- 
four  years.  Professor  Gizcyki  was  the  author  of  several  well- 
known   works  on   philosophy  and  took  a  prominent   part  in  the 


ethical  movement  of  Germany,  having  translated  works  of  Mr. 
Salter,  Dr.  Coit,  and  Professor  Adler,  and  latterly  publishing  a 
weekly  paper  in  the  interests  of  ethical  culture.  He  contributed 
several  articles  to  The  Open  Court  and  was  much  interested  in 
some  of  its  earlier  discussions.  Our  older  readers  will  recall  his 
work  with  pleasure.  A  lifelong  invalid,  he  was  yet  an  indefatiga- 
ble worker,  and  his  loss  will  be  widely  felt. 


The  Journal  of  lidtictition,  for  March  7,  1895,  publishes  the 
"Report  of  the  Committee  of  Fifteen"  on  the  correlation  of  stud- 
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Harris  at  the  Cleveland  Meeting,  on  February  20,  of  this  year. 
It  is  a  document  which  no  educator  can  afford  to  neglect ;  being  a 
compact  and  luminous  discussion  of  a  question  which  it  is  impera- 
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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  399. 

ELIJAH.     Prof.  C.  H.  Cornill 4463 

TRILBYMANI A.      Outsider 4465 

JAPANESE     BUDDHISM     AND     THE     WAR     WITH 

CHINA 4470 

NOTES 4470 


n 


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MODERN  LIBERALISM. 

BY   HUDOR   GENONE. 

There  are  no  longer  any  infidels.  Infidelity  has 
gone  out  of  vogue  and  "liberality"  masquerades  in 
its  place.  With  Herbert  Spencer's  Firs/  Principles 
this  new  cult  appeared,  certain  only  of  its  own  uncer- 
tainty ;  doubting  even  its  own  doubts  ;  whose  best  wis- 
dom is  not  to  know  ;  and  whose  divinity  is  the  un- 
knowable. 

And  now,  responsive  to  the  twang  of  the  agnostic 
horn,  out  of  the  kennels  of  intellect  a  pack  of  opinions 
come  :  free  religions,  ethical  cultures,  theosophies,  high 
and  higher  criticisms,  fancies  of  all  breeds,  from  faiths 
to  fictions,  in  full  cry  to  join  the  grand  battue  for  truth. 

And  when  sometimes  one  poor  little  fact  (which  no 
one  ever  denied),  has  been  caught,  they  cut  off  its 
brush  and  hold  it  jubilantly  aloft,  crying  that  they 
have  found  the  truth  at  last. 

In  olden  times  to  be  an  "  infidel  "  was  to  be  an  out- 
cast ;  and  it  was  seldom  without  good  reason  that  he 
was  so,  for  his  sentiments  were  sinful,  his  conduct  cor- 
rupt, and  his  pranks  perfidious.  In  the  town  where 
I  lived  when  a  boy  there  was  an  old  man  whom  I  very 
early  learned  to  dread  and  shun  as  an  unbeliever. 
Curious  tales  were  told  of  him,  and  well  do  I  remem- 
ber with  what  gruesome  awe  we  listened  to  recitals  of 
his  misdeeds;  how  with  a  number  of  others,  evil  as 
himself,  after  a  wild  debauch  of  blasphemy,  at  which 
they  made  mockery  of  the  last  supper,  and  fetched  in 
and  baptised  a  cat,  he  was  stricken  with  mortal  illness. 
He  was  buried,  so  we  were  told,  at  his  own  request, 
in  a  plain  pine  box,  and  with  no  ministry  of  the  gospel 
or  of  any  other  sort  at  his  grave. 

It  was  all  very  horrible  to  me  then,  but  the  lesson 
I  learned  was  not  without  its  value.  How  is  it  now? 
There  are  no  longer  any  such  characters ;  atheists  are 
exceedingly  difficult  to  find  nowadays,  and  even  ma- 
terialists are  becoming  scarcer  and  scarcer  yearly  as 
science  advances,  and  the  old-fashioned  race  of  unbe- 
lievers dies  off. 

The  modern  "infidel"  is  usually  a  person  of  cul- 
ture and  refinement,  despising  his  antetype,  the  blas- 
phemer, most  heartily,  and  more  often  than  otherwise 
actuated  by  the  noblest  of  endeavors — the  finding  of 
the  truth. 


He  has  a  sincere  concern  for  sincerity,  an  honest 
regard  for  honesty  ;  he  is  patient  with  others'  in- 
firmities, and  tolerant  of  others'  weaknesses  ;  he  re- 
veres reverance,  honors  his  god  (his  substitute  for 
God ),  and  more  generally  than  otherwise  claims  to  be 
an  admirer  and  defender  of  the  character  and  ethical 
teachings  of  Jesus. 

When  the  French  aristocracy  was  sinking  into  the 
slime  of  its  sensuality  we  are  told  that  vice  lost  half 
its  sin  by  losing  all  its  grossness.  Is  it  so  with  mod- 
ern liberalism  ?  What  is  the  meaning  of  this  tidal 
wave  of  intellect?  Has  it  anything  in  common  with 
that  liberty  with  which  Christ  hath  made  us  free  ? 

It  is  fashionable  to  be  "liberal,"  and  one  of  the 
chief  clauses  of  the  arraignment  of  Christianity  is  that 
it  is  "illiberal,  intolerant,  bigoted  and  cruel  "  ;  that  it 
condemns  to  what  is  called  damnation  those  who  dis- 
regard its  tenets  and  decline  its  doctrines. 

But  the  truth  admits  no  adjective  to  balk  its  in- 
flexible determination. 

If  geometry  is  intolerant  in  declaring  that  the  three 
angles  of  a  triangle  are  equivalent  to  two  right  angles, 
then  Christianity  is  intolerant  when  it  declares  that 
the  soul  that  sinneth  shall  surely  die. 

If  the  arithmetic  is  bigoted  in  asserting  that  two 
plus  two  equals  four,  then  the  Christian  is  bigoted 
who  believes  that  strait  is  the  gate  and  narrow  the 
way  that  leadeth  unto  life. 

If  chemistry  is  cruel  in  the  certainty  of  its  ap- 
plied formula,  then  the  Gospel  of  Christ  is  cruel  when 
in  simple  terms  radiant  with  the  certainty  of  divinity, 
it  tells  the  world  :  there  is  but  one  truth,  but  one  way, 
but  one  life. 

There  are  some  who  think  (knowing  how  often  I 
have  assailed  the  tenets  of  theology)  that  I  do  wrong 
to  continue  to  call  myself  a  Christian,  and  the  spirit 
of  truth, — which  they  recognise  in  some  measure, — 
the  Christian  spirit.  Perhaps,  after  all,  I  am  wrong. 
Perhaps  the  sects  have  no   monopoly  of   divine  truth. 

And,  yet  when  I  am  asked  what  I  call  myself,  I  in- 
variably reply  that  while  I  am  averse  to  classifying 
myself,  if  I  must  do  so  I  shall  ask  to  be  considered  a 
Christian. 

"  Not  an  orthodox  Christian,  surely  ?  " 


4472 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


"Yes,"  I  answer,  "just  that,  an  orthodox  Chris- 
tian." 

"But  you  are  a  Hberal." 

"No,  I  am  not.  I  am  certainly  liberal,  but  I  am 
not  a  liberal,  and  I  know  nothing  so  illogical  as  liberal 
Christianity." 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  liberal  truth,  as  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  a  liberal  arithmetic.  The  truth  is 
either  true  or  it  is  untrue.  If  it  be  true,  whether  in 
mathematics  or  religion,  it  is  necessarily  bigoted,  in- 
evitably dogmatic. 

It  is  always  right  to  be  liberal,  even  to  illiberality ; 
to  be  gentle  with  the  erring,  to  be  kind  even  to  the 
criminal ;  but  to  error  severity  is  the  only  gentleness ; 
to  crime  destruction  is  the  sole  kindness.  Merciful 
always  to  the  sinner,  just  always  to  the  sin. 

If  by  "orthodox"  you  mean  a  believer  in  a  deity 
of  wrath,  a  divine  being  who  has  issued  an  edict  of 
condemnation  against  mankind,  a  god  personally  and 
wilfully  so  unjust  that  he  would  demand  obedience  of 
an  unknown  and  unknowable  law,  I  certainly  am  not 
orthodox. 

But  if  you  agree  with  the  teaching  of  all  nature  and 
common  sense  and  besides  these,  the  "Scriptures," 
that  God  is  spirit,  and  that  there  does  exist  in  and 
over  the  universe  this  spirit  of  justice,  duly,  accurately, 
inevitably,  and  eternally  just,  whose  law  physically, 
mentally,  or  morally,  is  not  to  be  violated  with  im- 
punity,— the  Continuity  of  consequences,  the  Divinity 
in  destiny,  the  Overruling  Providence  of  necessity,  ' '  of 
purer  eyes  than  to  behold,"  and  purer  virtue  than  to 
condone  iniquity,  then  we  are  both  of  one  mind  ;  we 
are  both  orthodox. 

If  by  orthodox  you  mean  that  this  God  of  wrath, 
this  cruel  Jehovah  was  so  vindictive,  so  implacable, 
that  in  order  to  restore  order  to  a  world  disordered, 
not  by  its  own  fault,  but  by  his  decree,  a  sacrifice  was 
demanded  in  the  person  of  the  man  Christ,  and  that 
by  believing  in  this  personal  man  God,  and  by  that 
belief  alone,  the  whole  purpose  and  intent  of  deity, 
can  be  averted,  then  I  tell  you  frankly  I  am  not  or- 
thodox. 

But  if  you  believe  that  in  this  world  of  weariness 
there  is  rest ;  for  the  war  of  opinion,  the  peace  of  un- 
derstanding;  for  sorrow,  joy;  for  suffering,  content- 
ment. If  by  a  divine  atonement  you  mean  to  "cru- 
cify the  flesh  with  its  lusts,"  to  live  a  life  of  dutiful 
performance  for  the  sake,  not  of  your  own  safety,  but 
of  the  race,  and  so  for  God's  sake.  If  you  have  learned 
that  in  so  doing  you  have  followed  Christ  and  loved 
the  Lord  thy  God  and  thy  neighbor  as  thyself.  If  you 
recognise  that  in  following  this  ideal  you  have  become 
amenable  to  a  higher  and  greater  law  than  that  of  com- 
mandments,— the  law  of  love.  If  you  find  in  that  great 
master  of  the  art  of  living  a  true  revelation  of  all  truth. 


If  in  Jesus  you  find  him  who  brought  life  and  immor- 
tality to  light,  then,  I  assure  you,  we  are  not  far  apart ; 
we  are  both  orthodox. 

As  there  was  geometry  before  Euclid,  and  chemis- 
try before  Priestly  and  Farraday,  and  electricity  be- 
fore Franklin  and  Volta  and  Edison,  so  there  was 
Christianity  before  Christ. 

Christ  taught  no  vicarious  atonement  personal  or 
peculiar  to  himself,  but  rather  how  we  should  emulate 
his  devotion  by  making  our  own  atonement  in  the 
sacrifice  of  ourselves  for  the  world. 

The  race  is  our  larger  self,  and  we  may  be  our  own 
Christ. 

Jesus  never  claimed  to  be  God's  only  son.  He 
was  the  son,  as  we  also  are  sons.  The  creeds  have 
foisted  a  fictitious  assumption  upon  him.  In  trying  to 
elevate  his  character,  they  have  really  degraded  it. 
They  have  tried  to  paint  the  lily,  to  gild  the  gold,  to 
daub  the  permanent  blue  of  heaven  with  earthy  co- 
balt. 

In  making  the  validity  of  his  doctrines  dependent 
upon  incidents  of  his  career  they  have  given  us  some- 
thing little  better  than  mythology,  and  in  reliance  upon 
miracles  have  degraded  him  to  the  level  of  an  ordinary 
necromancer. 

In  the  story  of  his  immaculate  birth  they  have 
brought  down  the  sweet  motherhood  of  Mary  to  the 
grossness  of  a  Rhea  Sylvia,  and  in  that  of  the  bodily 
resurrection  proclaimed,  in  place  of  the  spirit  of  truth, 
a  materialistic  doctrine  of  the  flesh  which  profiteth 
nothing. 

Modern  ritual  is  a  fine  example  of  the  atavism  of 
our  pagan  proclivities. 

The  principles  of  the  Christianity  of  Christ  have 
been  criminally  libelled  by  their  professed  friends. 
Instead  of  facts  as  they  are  known  we  have  only  guesses 
as  they  are  surmised. 

And  here  and  there  and  everywhere,  with  those 
who  think  as  well  as  with  those  who  stifle  thought, 
with  the  infidel  as  well  as  the  devout,  none  seems  to 
have  a  glimmer  of  an  idea  of  the  limits  permissible  to 
opinion,  the  boundary  of  the  arable  region  of  fact,  and 
the  accurate  frontiers  of  the  desert  of  Guessland. 

The  infidel  has  successfully  abolished  a  hell.  Can 
he  abolish  the  effect  of  cause?  He  has  eliminated  a 
personal  authority  for  legality.  Can  he  eliminate  the 
law? 

The  human  God  has  been  stricken  by  liberal  Chris- 
tians from  the  list  of  deities,  as  the  inhuman  God  was 
by  the  moral  sense  of  all  men.  But  in  either  case  it 
was  the  names  alone  that  were  abolished ;  all  that 
those  names  implied  in  the  light  of  science  yet  remains. 
The  despotism  of  the  sequences  of  fate  is  no  less  des- 
potic than  if  they  were  edicts  issued  by  personal  and 
remorseless  power,  and  the  spirit  of  love,  which   was 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4473 


the  meaning  of  the  man  God,  still  remains  definite  and 
potent  incarnate  in  him  and  in  us. 

Dare  to  defy  the  poison  and  decline  the  antidote 
and  you  inevitably  perish. 

It  matters  not  by  what  symbols  you  express  these 
omnipotent  ideas;  they  yet  remain — the  changeless 
choice  of  time. 

But  these  certain  principles,  which  can  be  so  read- 
ily considered  and  easily  understood,  are  completely 
vitiated  by  the  contamination  of  symbolical  treatment. 

Read  the  average  journals  devoted  to  what  is  com- 
monly considered  free  thought,  how  impotent  they  are 
to  effect  any  definite  good  in  the  way  of  abolishing 
superstition.  Their  columns  are  mainly  filled  with 
attacks,  more  or  less  coarse  and  scurrilous,  against  the 
observances  of  theology,  and  crude  arguments  current 
among  iconoclasts, — those  dealers  in  second-hand 
mind  material  who  know  how  to  pull  down,  but  cannot 
build  up. 

Hardly  less  silly  in  their  simple  sincerity  are  those 
within  the  pale  of  some  church,  who  yet,  somewhere, 
somehow  feel  that  they  must  cling  to  a  ghost  of  some- 
thing. They  feel  the  world  moving  beneath  them,  and 
for  fear  of  falling  clutch  at  shapes  of  air.  These  sort  of 
thinkers,  various  varieties  of  deists.  Unitarians,  broad 
churchmen,  higher  critics,  "advanced"  thinkers  as 
they  think  themselves,  reformers  as  some  call  them, 
liberal  Christians  in  all  denominations, — all  engaged 
in  vague  and  futile  attempts  to  reconcile,  not  science 
and  religion,  but  the  convictions  hallowed  by  the  as- 
sociations of  the  past  with  the  slow-moving  logic  of 
resistless  truth. 

Away  with  man-made  creeds  ;  they  are  all  confu- 
sion, and  "God  is  not  the  author  of  confusion,  but  of 
peace." 

I  find  many  who  tell  me  that  they  do  not  under- 
stand how  it  is  possible  to  do  away  with  opinion  in 
religion.  I  answer  that  it  is  not  possible  so  long  as 
they  consider  religion  a  matter  of  opinion.  The  world 
has  had  the  Saviour  of  its  heart;  now  it  needs  a  Re- 
deemer of  its  brain. 


AMOS. 

BV  PROF.   C.    H.    CORNILL. 

Nothing  is  more  characteristic  than  the  appearance 
of  written  prophecy  in  Israel. 

It  was  at  Bethel,  at  the  Autumn  festival.  In  that 
place  where  once  Jacob  saw  in  a  dream  the  angels  of 
God  ascending  and  descending,  where  God  had  ap- 
peared to  him  and  had  blessed  him,  there  was  the 
sanctuary  of  the  kingdom  of  Israel,  the  religious  cen- 
tre of  the  ten  tribes.  Here  stood  the  revered  image 
of  the  bull,  under  which  symbol  the  God  of  Israel  was 
worshipped.  Here  all  Israel  had  gathered  for  thanks- 
giving and  adoration,  for  festivity  and  sacrifice. 


In  distinct  opposition  to  the  harsh  austerity  and 
sombre  rigor  of  the  later  Judaism,  the  worship  of  God 
in  ancient  Israel  was  of  a  thoroughly  joyful  and  cheer- 
ful character.  It  was  a  conception  utterly  strange  to 
the  ancient  Israelite  that  worship  was  instituted  to  re- 
store the  impaired  relation  of  man  to  God,  or  that  it 
was  the  office  of  sacrifice  to  bring  about  an  atonement 
for  sins.  The  ancient  Israelite  considered  the  service 
of  God  a  rejoicing  in  God.  In  the  sacrifice,  of  which 
God  received  His  appointed  portion,  whilst  the  sacri- 
ficer  himself  consumed  the  rest,  he  sat  at  the  table 
with  God,  he  was  the  guest  of  his  God,  and  therefore 
doubly  conscious  of  his  union  with  Him.  And  as  an- 
cient Israel  was  a  thoroughly  cheerful  and  joyous  peo- 
ple, its  rejoicing  in  God  bore,  according  to  our  ideas, 
many  very  worldly  and  unrighteous  traits.  Revelry 
and  tumultuous  carousing  marked  the  festivals.  As 
on  the  occasion  of  such  an  autumn  festival  at  Shiloh, 
the  mother  of  Samuel  poured  out  her  heart  to  God  in 
silent  prayer,  Eli  said  unto  her:  "How  long  wilt  thou 
be  drunken?  put  away  thy  wine  from  thee."  So  that 
evidently  drunken  women  were  not  seldom  seen  on 
such  occasions.  The  prophet  Isaiah  gives  us  a  still 
more  drastic  sketch  of  a  celebration  in  the  temple  at 
Jerusalem,  when  he  describes  how  all  the  tables  were 
full  of  vomit  and  filthiness,  so  that  there  was  no  place 
clean.  And  even  worse  things,  licentious  debaucheries 
of  the  lowest  sort,  took  place  during  these  festivals. 

The  prophets  recognised  in  these  excrescences,  and 
certainly  most  justi}',  remnants  of  Canaanite  pagan- 
ism. Israel  had  not  only  taken  its  sanctuaries  from 
the  Canaanites,  but  also  its  modes  of  worship.  The 
contemporaries  of  Amos,  however,  considered  this  to 
be  the  correct  and  fitting  worship  of  God,  such  as  the 
God  of  Israel  demanded  from  His  people,  and  such 
as  was  pleasing  unto  Him. 

In  the  year  760  such  another  feast  was  celebrated 
in  Bethel.  Revelry  was  the  order  of  the  da}-.  And 
why  should  man  not  rejoice  and  give  thanks  to  God? 
After  a  long  period  of  direst  tribulation  and  distress 
Israel  had  again  raised  itself  to  power.  Its  worst 
enemy,  the  kingdom  of  Damascus,  had  been  decisively 
defeated,  and  was  no  longer  dangerous.  The  neigh- 
boring nations  had  been  subjected,  and  Jeroboam  II. 
reigned  over  a  kingdom  which  nearly  attained  the  size 
and  grandeur  of  the  kingdom  of  David.  The  good  old 
times  of  this  greatest  ruler  of  Israel  seemed  to  have 
come  again.  Israel  was  the  ruling  nation  between  the 
Nile  and  Euphrates.  And  were  not  affairs  in  the  in- 
terior of  the  kingdom  as  brilliant  and  stupendous  as 
they  had  ever  been?  There  were  palaces  of  ivory  in 
Samaria  then,  and  houses  of  hewn  stone  without  num- 
ber, castles  and  forts,  horses  and  chariots,  power  and 
pomp,  splendor  and  riches,  wherever  one  might  turn. 
The  rich  lay  on  couches  of  ivory  with  damask  cushions; 


4474 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


daily  they  slew  a  fatted  calf,  drank  the  most  costly 
wines,  and  anointed  themselves  with  precious  oils. 
All  in  all,  it  was  a  period  in  which  to  live  was  a  joy. 
Accordingly,  the  feast  was  celebrated  with  unwonted 
splendor,  and  untold  sacrifices  were  offered.  Men 
lived  in  the  consciousness  that  God  was  on  their  side, 
and  they  were  grateful  to  Him. 

But  just  as  the  festival  mirth  was  at  its  highest,  it 
was  suddenly  interrupted.  An  unknown,  plain-looking 
man  of  the  people  forced  his  way  through  the  crowd  of 
merry-makers.  A  divine  fire  gleamed  in  his  eyes,  a  holy 
gravity  suffused  his  countenance.  With  shy,  involun- 
tary respect  room  is  made  for  him,  and  before  the 
people  well  know  what  has  happened,  he  has  drowned 
and  brought  to  silence  the  festive  songs  by  the  piercing 
mournful  cry  of  his  lamentation.  Israel  had  a  special 
form  of  poetry  for  its  funeral  dirge,  a  particular  melo- 
dious cadence,  which  reminded  every  hearer  of  the 
most  earnest  moments  of  his  life,  as  he  had  stood, 
weeping,  for  the  last  time  at  the  bier  of  his  father,  his 
mother,  wife,  or  some  beloved  child,  and  this  form  was 
adopted  repeatedly  by  the  prophets  with  great  effect. 
Such  a  dirge  does  the  strange  man  now  intone  in  the 
sanctuary  at  Bethel.  It  is  a  dirge  over  Israel;  he 
shouts  it  among  the  merry-makers  that  are  crowded 
before  him  : 

"  The  virgin  of  Israel  is  fallen, 
She  shall  no  more  rise, 
She  is  forsaken  upon  her  land, 
There  is  none  to  raise  her  up." 

The  assembly  is  seized  with  astonishment  and  con- 
sternation. Men  inquire  who  the  strange  speaker  is, 
and  are  told  that  he  is  called  Amos,  a  herdsman  of 
Tekoa,  who  has  uttered  such  blasphemies  several  times 
before.  For  to  predict  the  destruction  of  God's  own 
people  was  the  acme  of  blasphemy  ;  it  was  the  same 
as  saying  that  either  God  was  not  willing  or  that  He 
had  not  the  power  to  protect  and  save  His  people  ;  it 
was  equivalent  to  prophesying  God's  own  destruction  ; 
for  God  Himself  perished  with  the  people  who  served 
and  honored  Him.  Yet  this  wondrous  prophet  adds 
to  his  blasphemy,  insanity.  It  is  God  Himself  who  de- 
stroys His  people  Israel,  Who  must  destroy  it.  He 
has  sworn  it  by  His  holiness,  by  Himself,  that  the  end 
is  come  over  His  people  Israel. 

No  long  time  elapsed  before  Amaziah  the  priest 
came  up  and  addressed  the  bold  speaker  in  these  words: 
"O  thou  seer,  go,  flee  thee  away  into  the  land  of  Judah 
and  there  eat  bread  and  prophesy  there  :  But  prophesy 
not  again  at  Bethel ;  for  it  is  the  King's  chapel,  and 
the  King's  court." 

Then  Amos  answered  :  "I  was  no  prophet,  neither 
was  I  a  prophet's  son  ;  but  I  was  an  herdman  and  a 
gatherer  of  sycomore  fruit  :  And  the  Lord  took  me  as 
I  followed  the  flock,  and  the  Lord  said  unto  me.  Go, 
prophesy  unto  my  people  Israel."     And  he  now  con- 


cludes his  general  warning  of  evil  with  a  personal 
threat  to  the  high-priest :  "  Thy  wife  shall  be  an  harlot 
in  the  city,  and  thy  sons  and  thy  daughters  shall  fall 
by  the  sword,  and  thy  land  shall  be  divided  by  line, 
and  thou  shalt  die  in  a  polluted  land." 

After  Amos  had  fulfilled  the  divine  charge,  he  re- 
turned home  to  his  sheep  and  to  his  sycamores.  But 
feeling  that  what  he  had  prophesied  was  not  for  the 
present,  nor  for  those  immediately  concerned,  but 
spoken  for  all  time,  he  wrote  down  his  prophesies  and 
made  of  them  an  imperishable  monument. 

Now,  how  did  Amos  arrive  at  this  conviction,  which 
reversed  everything  that  at  that  time  seemed  to  be  the 
fate  of  Israel.  When  he  imagines  to  himself  the  over- 
throw of  Israel,  the  conquest  and  destruction  of  its 
army,  the  plundering  and  desolation  of  its  land,  and 
the  captivity  and  transportation  of  its  people  by  an 
outside  foe,  he  is  thinking,  of  course,  of  the  Assyrians, 
although  he  never  mentions  the  name.  This  lowering 
thundercloud  had  repeatedly  flashed  its  lightnings  over 
Israel's  horizon,  first  in  the  year  876,  and  in  the  suc- 
ceeding century  ten  times  at  least.  At  last,  in  767, 
the  Assyrian  hosts  had  penetrated  as  far  as  Lebanon 
and  the  Mediterranean  Sea,  spreading  terror  and  de- 
vastation everywhere.  But  at  the  time  in  question  the 
danger  was  not  very  imminent.  The  Assyrian  empire 
was  then  in  a  state  of  the  uttermost  confusion  and  im- 
potence. Amos's  conviction,  accordingly,  was  no  po- 
litical forecast.  Moreover,  the  most  important  and 
most  unintelligible  point  remains  unexplained  on  this 
assumption.  Why  was  this  condemnation  an  absolute 
necessity,  willed  and  enforced  b}'  God  Himself  ?  This 
the  prophet  foresaw  from  his  mere  sense  of  justice. 

In  Amos  we  have,  so  to  speak,  the  incorporation 
of  the  moral  law.  God  is  a  God  of  justice  ;  religion 
the  moral  relation  of  man  to  God — not  a  comfortable 
pillow,  but  an  ethical  exaction.  Israel  had  faith  in  its 
God,  He  would  not  leave  his  people  in  the  lurch,  but 
would  assist  them  and  rescue  them  from  all  calamity. 
This  singular  relation  of  Israel  to  its  God,  Amos  ac- 
knowledges :  "You  only  have  I  known  of  all  the  fam- 
ilies of  the  earth."  But  what  is  his  conclusion? 
"Therefore  I  will  punish  you  for  all  your  iniquities." 

Amos  had  already  clearly  perceived  what  a  greater 
than  he  clothed  in  these  words  :  "To  whom  much  has 
been  given,  of  him  will  much  be  required."  The  outer 
relation  in  itself  is  entirely  worthless.  "Are  ye  not  as 
children  of  the  Ethiopians  unto  me,  O  children  of  Is- 
rael?" says  God  through  Amos.  And  also  God's  spe- 
cial marks  of  favor,  in  having  led  Israel  out  of  Egypt 
and  through  the  desert,  prove  nothing  ;  for  He  had  also 
done  the  same  for  Israel's  most  bitter  enemies.  "  Have 
I  not  brought  up  Israel  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt?  and 
the  Philistines  from  Caphtor,  and  the  Syrians  from 
Kir?" 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4475 


True,  the  people  are  pious  after  their  fashion  ;  they 
cannot  do  enough  in  the  matter  of  feasts  and  sacrifices. 
But  all  this  appears  to  the  prophet  merely  as  an  at- 
tempt to  bribe  the  just  judge,  as  it  was  then  the  custom 
on  earth  for  a  judge  in  return  for  money  to  acquit  the 
guilty  and  condemn  the  innocent.  Says  God  through 
Amos  : 

"  I  hate,  I  despise  your  feast  days,  and  I  will  not 
smell  in  your  solemn  assemblies.  Though  ye  offer  me 
burnt  offerings  and  3'our  meat  offerings,  I  will  not  ac- 
cept them,  neither  will  I  regard  the  peace  offerings  of 
your  fat  beasts.  Take  thou  away  from  me  the  noise 
of  thy  songs ;  for  I  will  not  hear  the  melody  of  thy 
viols.  But  let  judgment  run  down  as  waters,  and 
righteousness  as  a  mighty  stream."  "Seek  me  and 
ye  shall  live.  .  .  .  Hate  the  evil  and  love  the  good  and 
establish  judgment  in  the  gate." 

But  it  is  just  in  what  God  here  demands  that  Israel 
is  totally  wanting.  Amos  sees  about  him  rich  volup- 
tuaries and  debauchees,  who  derive  the  means  of  car- 
rying on  their  sinful  lives  by  shameful  extortion  and 
the  scandalous  oppression  of  the  poor  and  the  weak, 
thereby  storing  up  in  their  palaces  oppression  and  ty- 
ranny. Justice  is  turned  to  wormwood  and  righteous- 
ness thrown  to  the  earth  ;  a  bribe  is  taken  against  the 
just,  and  the  poor  sold  for  a  pair  of  shoes.  And  the 
worst  of  all  is,  that  the}'  neither  know  nor  feel  how 
wicked  and  corrupt  they  are  ;  they  live  carelessly  and 
listlessly  on,  and  have  no  conception  of  the  instability 
of  all  things. 

Yet  no  particular  insight  or  revelation  is  necessary. 
Amos  can  call  upon  the  heathen,  the  Philistines,  and 
the  Egyptians  to  bear  witness  to  God's  dealings  with 
Israel.  Even  these  heathen  who  know  not  God  and 
His  commandments  must  see  that  in  Samaria  things 
are  done  which  cry  out  to  heaven,  and  that  Israel  is 
ripe  for  death.  Therefore  must  God  Himself  as  an 
atonement  for  his  despised  sanctity  and  justice  destroy 
his  people.      He  says  : 

"The  end  for  my  people  Israel  is  at  hand,  I  can 
no  longer  forgive." 

The  blooming  pink  on  the  cheek  of  the  virgin  Is- 
rael is  not  for  the  prophet  a  sign  of  liealth,  but  the 
hectic  flush  of  one  diseased  and  hastening  to  her  end. 
In  all  the  noise  and  tumult,  the  hurry  and  bustle,  his 
keen  ear  detects  the  death  rattle  and  he  intones  Is- 
rael's funeral  dirge.  And  history  has  justified  him. 
Forty  years  afterwards  the  kingdom  of  Israel  was 
swept  away,  and  its  people  carried  into  captivity. 

But,  you  may  ask,  is  there  anything  so  wonderful 
in  this?  Are  not  these  very  ordinar}-  truths  and  per- 
ceptions that  are  offered  to  us  here?  That  would  be 
a  serious  error.  As  a  fact,  the  progress  which  the  re- 
ligion of  Israel  made  in  and  through  Amos  cannot  be 
too  highly  rated.      In  Amos  it  breaks  for  the  first  time 


through  the  bonds  of  nationality  and  becomes  a  uni- 
versal religion  instead  of  the  religion  of  a  single  people. 
In  analysing  the  relationship  of  God  to  Israel,  or  at 
least  in  recognising  it  as  morally  conditioned,  which 
by  the  fulfilment  of  the  moral  conditions  could  just  as 
well  be  discharged  by  any  other  people,  he  gave  a 
philosophical  foundation  to  religion,  which  rendered 
it  possible  that  the  religion  of  Israel  and  the  God  of 
Israel  should  not  become  implicated  in  the  fall  of  Is- 
rael, but  could  be  developed  all  the  more  grandly. 
The  fall  of  the  people  of  Israel  was  the  victory  of  God, 
the  triumph  of  justice  and  truth  over  sin  and  decep- 
tion. That  which  had  destroyed  every  other  religion 
could  now  only  strengthen  the  religion  of  Israel. 

This  progress  shows  itself  most  strongly  in  the  con- 
ception of  God.  Ancient  Israel  had  no  monotheism, 
in  the  strict  scientific  sense.  The  gods  of  the  heathen 
were  looked  upon  as  real  beings,  as  actual  gods,  who 
in  their  spheres  were  as  powerful  as  the  God  of  Israel 
in  His.  That  had  now  to  be  otherwise.  Right  and 
justice  exist  beyond  the  boundaries  of  Israel  ;  they 
reach  even  further  than  the  might  of  the  Assyrians. 
For  right  is  right  everywhere,  and  wrong  is  everywhere 
wrong.  If  the  God  of  Israel  was  the  God  of  justice, 
then  His  kingdom  extended  as  far  as  justice  did, — then 
He  was  the  God  of  the  world,  as  Amos  expressed  it  by 
the  name  he  framed  for  God,  Zebaoth,  the  Lord  of 
hosts,  the  God  of  all  power  and  might  in  heaven  and 
on  earth. 

National  boundaries  fell  before  this  universal  power 
of  justice.  When  the  Moabites  burnt  to  lime  the  bones 
of  an  Edomite  king  they  drew  down  upon  themselves 
the  judgment  and  punishment  of  the  God  of  Israel. 
Justice  and  righteousness  are  the  only  realit}'  in  heaven 
and  on  earth.  Thus  through  Amos  the  God  of  Israel, 
as  the  God  of  justice  and  righteousness,  becomes  the 
God  of  the  entire  world,  and  the  religion  of  this  God  a 
universal  religion. 

Amos  is  one  of  the  most  marvellous  and  incompre- 
hensible figures  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind,  the 
pioneer  of  a  process  of  evolution  from  which  a  new 
epoch  of  humanity  dates.  And  here  again  we  see  that 
the  most  important  and  imposing  things  are  the  sim- 
plest and  apparently  the  most  easil}'  understood. 


CHRISTIAN  CRITICS  OF  BUDDHA. 

It  is  a  very  strange  fact  that  the  similarities  that 
obtain  between  Buddhism  and  Christianity  have  so  far 
been  of  little  avail  in  establishing  a  sentiment  of  good- 
will among  Christians  and  Buddhists,  and,  far  from 
being  an  assistance  to  mission  work,  have  proved 
rather  a  hindrance  to  the  spread  of  Christianity.  The 
reason  is  that  most  Christians  (at  least  those  who  call 
themselves  orthodox)  look  upon  the  Christian  like  doc- 
trines of   non-Christian   religions   in    an    un-Christian 


4476 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


spirit.  Our  present  Christianity  is  too  much  under 
the  influence  of  pagan  notions. 

When  the  Apostle  St.  Paul  came  to  Greece,  he 
diligently  sought  for  points  of  contact  and  preached  to 
the  Athenians  the  unknown  God  whom  they  unknow- 
ingly worshipped.  In  the  same  way  the  missionaries 
who  converted  England  and  Germany  utilised  as  much 
as  possible  the  religious  beliefs  of  the  people  to  whom 
they  addressed  themselves  and  welcomed  every  agree- 
ment that  could  be  discovered.^  Since  Christians  have 
begun  to  press  the  blind  faith  in  the  letter  and  have 
ceased  to  rely  on  the  universality  of  religious  truth, 
they  reject  all  other  religions  prima  facie.  In  their  self- 
sufficiency  they  have  ceased  to  exercise  self-criticism, 
and  have  thus  become  blind  to  their  own  shortcom- 
ings. At  the  same  time,  they  are  not  ashamed  of  look- 
ing upon  the  noblest  virtues  of  pagans  as  polished 
vices,  and  in  doing  so  make  themselves  unnecessarily 
offensive  to  all  serious  believers  of  other  religions, 
Buddhists,  Hindus,  Parsees,  and  Mohammedans.  The 
consequence  is  that  as  a  rule  only  religiously  indiffer- 
ent people  become  converts  for  impure  reasons  of 
worldly  advantages,  and  Christianity  has  made  during 
the  last  centuries  no  progress  worthy  of  mention. 

I  am  not  an  enemy  of  missions,  on  the  contrary,  I 
believe  in  the  practise  of  making  a  missionary  propa- 
ganda for  one's  own  convictions.  Missions  are  a  good 
thing,  for  they  are  an  evidence  of  spiritual  life.  That 
church  which  does  not  missionarise  is  dead.  And 
missionary  work  will  not  only  bring  our  ideas  to  those 
to  whom  missionaries  are  sent,  but  will  also  exercise 
a  beneficial  influence  on  those  who  send  them. 

The  worst  objection  that  can  be  made  to  freethink- 
ers is  that  they  are  lukewarm  in  missionarising.  How 
poorly  are  the  magazines  of  freethought  supported. 
Very  few  freethinkers  are  sufficiently  enthusiastic  to 
make  a  bold  propaganda  for  the  faith  that  is  in  them. 
Most  of  them  shrink  from  making  pecuniary  or  other 
sacrifices  for  their  cause.  The  reason  is  that  what  is 
commonly  called  freethought  is  not  a  positive  faith,  but 
consists  in  mere  negations,  and  negativism  has  no 
power  to  rouse  enthusiasm  in  the  human  heart. 

While  missions  are  a  good  thing  they  must  be  con- 
ducted with  propriety.  They  must  be  made  at  the 
right  time,  in  the  right  way,  and  with  the  right  spirit. 
But  I  regret  to  say  that  upon  the  whole  Christian  mis- 
sions are  not  always  conducted  in  the  right  spirit.  As 
an  instance  of  the  wrong  spirit  that  animates  many  (I 

3  Gregory  I.  went  so  far  as  to  advise  the  missionary  Augustinus  in  an  edict 
given  in  6oi  A.  D.,  not  to  destroy  pagan  temples  but  to  change  them  into 
churches;  pagan  festivals  were  also  to  be  retained  with  this  modification  that 
they  should  no  longer  be  celebrated  in  honor  of  Gods  or  heroes,  but  in  com- 
memoration of  analogous  saints  {Ep.  xi,  76).  This  accommodation  policy 
no  doubt  gave  a  new  lease  of  life  to  many  pagan  customs  and  notions,  but  it 
has  conlributed  not  a  little  to  the  final  success  of  Christianity.  At  the  same 
time  we  must  confess  that  while  many  superstitions  thus  reappeared  in  a 
Christianised  form,  there  were  also  many  valuable  features  of  pagan  life  pre- 
served, which  might  otherwise  have  been  lost. 


do  not  say  "all")  of  our  missionaries,  I  refer  to  the 
book  of  a  man  for  whose  intellectual  and  moral  qual- 
ities I  cherish  the  highest  opinion. 

The  Rev.  R.  Spence  Hardy,  the  famous  Buddhist 
scholar  to  whose  industry  we  owe  several  valuable 
contributions  to  our  knowledge  of  Buddhism,  has  writ- 
ten a  book,  Tlie  Legends  and  Tlteorics  of  the  Biiddliists 
Compared  with  History  and  Science,  in  which  he  treats 
Buddhism  with  extraordinary  injustice. 

It  is  nothing  but  the  spirit  of  injustice  that  alien- 
ates the  sympathies  of  non-Christian  people  toward 
Christianity. 

It  is  strange  that  Mr.  Hardy's  unfair  statements  are 
made  with  no  apparent  malice,  but  from  a  sheer  habit 
which  has  been  acquired  through  the  notion  of  the  ex- 
clusiveness  of  Christianity. 

In  making  these  critical  remarks  I  do  not  wish  to 
offend,  but  to  call  attention  to  a  fault  which  can  and 
should  be  avoided  in  the  future. 

Spence  Hardy  says  in  his  book,  Tlie  Legends  and 
Tlteorics  of  Buddliists  Compared  7vii/i  History  and  Science 
(pp.  138,  140): 

' '  The  tales  that  are  told  about  the  acts  performed  by  Buddha, 
and  the  wonders  attendant  on  these  acts,  need  only  be  stated,  in 
order  to  be  rejected  at  once  from  the  realm  of  reality  and  truth. 
....  These  things  are  too  absurd  to  require  serious  refutation." 

Mr.  Hardy  forgets  that  many  "tales  told  about 
the  acts  performed  by  Jesus,  and  the  wonders  attendant 
on  the  acts,"  too,  need  only  be  stated,  in  order  to  be 
rejected  at  once  from  the  realm  of  reality  and  truth. 
Mr.  Hardy  recognises  the  paganism  of  others,  but  he 
does  not  see  that  he  himself  is  still  entangled  in  pagan 
notions.  What  would  Mr.  Hardy  say  if  a  Buddhist 
were  to  write  exactly  the  same  book  only  changing 
the  word  Christ  into  Buddha  and  making  other  little 
changes  of  the  same  nature.  Buddhists  requested  by 
a  Christian  missionary  to  believe  literally  in  Christ's 
walking  upon  the  water  or  being  bodily  lifted  up  to 
heaven,  are,  as  much  as  Spence  Hardy,  entitled  to 
say  :  "  These  things  are  too  absurd  to  require  serious 
refutation."     Mr.  Hardy  protests  (p.  137): 

"  I  deny  all  that  is  said  about  the  passing  through  the  air  of 
Buddha  and  his  disciples,  or  of  their  being  able  to  visit  the  Dewa 
and  Brahma  worlds." 

If  history  and  science  refute  the  miracles  attributed 
in  the  later  Buddhistic  literature  to  Buddha,  why  not 
those  attributed  to  Christ  ?  And  we  must  assume  that 
Mr.  Hardy  does  not  deny  that  Christ  descended  to 
hell  and  that  he  passed  through  the  air  when  carried 
up  to  heaven  in  his  ascension. 

Mr.  Hardy  speaks  of  "the  errors  of  Buddhism  that 
are  contrary  to  fact  as  taught  by  established  and  un- 
controverted  science"  (p.  135),  but  he  appears  to  re- 
ject science  whenever  it  comes  into  collision  with  a 
literal    interpretation    of    Christian    doctrines.      Bud- 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4477 


dhism  is  to  him  a  fraud,  Christianity  divine  revelation. 
He  says  of  Buddliism  (pp.  210-211,  313,  207)  : 

"  I  must  confess  that  the  more  closely  I  look  into  the  system, 
the  less  respect  I  feel  for  the  character  of  its  originators.  That 
which  at  first  sight  appears  to  be  the  real  glory  of  Buddhism,  its 
moral  code,  loses  all  its  distinction  when  minutely  e.xamined.  Its 
seeming  brightness  is  not  that  of  the  morning  star,  leading  onward 
to  intenser  radiance  but  that  of  the  meteor  ;  and  not  even  that ; 
for  the  meteor  warns  the  traveller  that  the  dangerous  morass  is 
near  ;  but  Buddhism  makes  a  fool  of  man  by  promising  to  guide 
him  to  safety,  while  it  leads  him  to  the  very  verge  of  the  fatal 
precipice.  .  .  .  The  people  who  profess  this  system  know  nothing 
of  the  solemn  thought  implied  by  the  question,  'How  can  I  do 
this  great  wickedness  and  sin  against  God?'.  .  .  .  The  operation 
of  the  mind  is  no  different  in  mode  to  that  of  the  eye,  or  ear,  vision 
is  eye-touch,  hearing  is  ear-touch,  and  thinking  is  heart-touch. 
The  man,  as  we  have  repeatedly  seen,  is  a  mere  mass,  a  cluster,  a 
name  and  nothing  more.  .  .  .  There  is  no  law,  because  there  is  no 
law-giver,  no  authority  from  which  law  can  proceed." 

Man  is  "  a  cluster,"  means  that  the  unity  of  man's 
soul  is  a  unification — a  truth  on  which  all  prominent 
psychologists  and  naturalists  of  Christian  countries 
agree  with  Buddha.  In  the  same  sense  Hume  char- 
acterised the  human  soul  as  a  bundle  of  sensations  and 
ideas.  Man  is  an  organism  consisting  of  a  great  num- 
ber of  living  structures,  which  in  their  co- operation 
constitute  a  well-regulated  commonwealth  of  sentient 
functions.  And  why  should  there  be  no  law  if  there 
is  no  law-giver?  Is  the  law  of  gravity  unreal  because 
of  its  mathematical  nature,  which  indicates  that  it  is 
of  an  intrinsic  necessity  and  requires  a  lawgiver  as  little 
as  the  arithmetical  law  2X2  =  4.  Is  2  >:  2  ^4  a  reli- 
able rule  only  if  a  personal  God  has  decreed  it  ?  The 
moral  law  is  of  the  same  kind  ! 

Buddha  regards  the  order  of  the  world  not  as  the 
invention  of  either  Brahma  or  any  other  God,  but  as  an 
eternal  and  unconditional  law  as  rigid  as  the  number- 
relations,  which  we  formulate  in  arithmetical  proposi- 
tions. Does  such  a  view  of  man's  soul  and  the  nature 
of  the  moral  dispensation  of  life  indeed  annul  all  moral 
responsibility?  Buddhism  does  not  employ  the  same 
symbolical  terms  as  Christianity,  but  it  is  not  devoid 
of  an  authority  of  moral  conduct.  Mr.  Spence  Hardy 
is  so  accustomed  to  the  Christian  terminology,  that 
he,  from  the  start,  misconstrues  all  other  modes  of 
expression. 

In  other  passages  Mr.  Hardy  refers  to  Buddha's 
tales  in  which  Buddha  speaks  of  his  experiences  in  pre- 
vious existences.      He  says  (p.  153): 

"  These  facts  are  sufficient  to  convince  every  observant  mind 
that  what  Buddha  says  about  his  past  births,  and  those  of  others, 
is  an  imposition  upon  the  credulity  of  mankind,  without  anything 
whatever  to  support  it  from  fact." 

Here  Mr.  Hardy's  naivete  can  only  evoke  our 
smiles  :  Buddhists  are  no  more  obliged  to  accept  the 
Jataka  tales  as  genuine  historj-,  than  our  children  are 
requested  to  believe  the  legends  of  saints  or  Grimm's 


fairy  tales.  There  are  Buddhists  who  believe  the  Ja- 
taka tales,  and  there  are  many  Christians,  especially 
in  Roman  Catholic  countries,  who  believe  the  legends 
of  saints. 

Speaking  in  this  connexion  of  the  fossil  remains  of 
extinct  animals,  Mr.  Hardy  says  (p.  150): 

"Of  many  of  the  curious  creatures  that  formerly  existed  only 
a  few  fragments  have  been  found.  Among  them  are  birds  of  all 
sizes,  from  an  ostrich  to  a  crow,  and  lizards  with  a  bird's  beak 
and  feet.  .  ,  .  The  Himalayas  contain  the  remains  of  a  gigantic 
land  tortoise.  The  megatherium  lies  in  the  vast  plains  of  South 
America,  etc.,  etc.  .  .  .  Now  if  Buddha  lived  in  these  distant  ages, 
and  had  a  perfect  insight  into  their  circumstances,  as  he  tells  us 
he  had,  how  is  it  that  we  have  no  intimation  whatever  in  any  of 
his  numerous  references  to  the  past,  that  the  world  was  so  differ- 
ent in  these  respects  to  what  it  is  now  ?  .  .  .  The  only  conclusion 
we  can  come  to  is,  that  he  knew  nothing  about  the  beasts  that 
roamed  in  other  lands,  or  the  birds  that  flew  in  other  skies;  and 
that  as  he  was  ignorant  of  their  existence  he  could  not  introduce 
them  into  his  tales" 

It  is  right  that  Mr.  Hardy  appeals  to  the  tribunal 
of  science  against  the  narrowness  of  a  belief  in  the 
letter  of  the  Buddhistic  Jatakas  ;  but  why  does  he  not 
sweep  first  before  his  own  door?  Unfortunately,  the 
same  objections  can  be  made  to  Christ,  who  said  : 
"Before  Abraham  was  I  am,"  apparently  meaning 
that  he  had  existed  a;ons  before  his  birth.  There  is  a 
great  similarity  between  the  pre-existence  of  Christ 
and  of  Buddha,  especially  when  we  consider  the  later 
doctrine  of  Amitabha,  the  infinite  light  of  Buddha- 
hood,  which  is  omnipresent  and  eternal.  While  Christ 
claims  to  have  existed  before  Abraham,  he  gives  us 
no  information  about  the  fossil  animals  that  have  of 
late  been  found  by  geologists.  Ingersoll  speaks  of 
Christ  in  the  same  way  as  Spence  Hardy  does  of  Bud- 
dha. He  says  :  "  If  he  truly  was  the  Son  of  God,  he 
ought  to  have  known  the  future  ;  he  ought  to  have 
told  us  something  about  the  New  World  ;  he  ought  to 
have  broken  the  bonds  of  slavery.  Why  did  he  not 
doit?"  And  Ingersoll  concludes:  "  Because  he  was 
not  the  Son  of  God.  He  was  a  man  who  knew  noth- 
ing and  understood  nothing."  When  Ingersoll  speaks 
in  these  terms,  he  is  accused  of  flippancy,  but  Mr. 
Hardy's  seriousness  is  not  to  be  doubted. 

What  would  Christians  say  of  a  Buddhist,  who, 
with  the  same  logic,  commenting  on  analogous  Chris- 
tian traditions,  would  say  of  Christ  what  Mr.  Hardy 
says  of  Buddha  !      Mr.  Hardy  says  : 

"I  have  proved  that  Buddhism  is  not  a  revelation  of  truth  ; 
that  its  founder  was  an  erring  and  imperfect  teacher,  and  ignorant 
of  many  things  that  are  now  universally  known  ;  and  that  the 
claim  to  the  exercise  of  omniscience  made  for  him  by  his  followers 
is  an  imposition  and  pretence.  .  .  .  We  can  only  regard  Buddha  as 
an  impostor." 

This  is  strong  language,  and  I  am  sorry  for  Mr. 
Hardy  that  he  has  forgotten  himself  and  all  rules  of 
justice  and  fairness  in  his  missionary  zeal. 


.-v^ 


4478 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


Even  Buddha's  broadness  in  recognising  the  good 
wherever  he  found  it,  is  stigmatised  by  Mr.  Hardy. 
He  says  (p.  215): 

' '  Buddha  acknowledges  that  there  are  things  excellent  in  other 
religions,  and  hence  he  did  not  persecute.  He  declares  that  even 
his  opponents  had  a  degree  of  wisdom  and  exercised  a  miraculous 
power.  But  this  very  indifference  about  error,  as  about  everything 
else,  this  apparent  candor  and  catholicity,  is  attended  by  an  in- 
fluence too  often  fatal  to  the  best  interests  of  those  by  whom  it  is 
professed." 

Mr.  Hardy  condemns  "this  apparent  candor  and 
catholicity"  as  "indifference  about  error,"  and  he 
adds  (p.  216): 

"To  be  a  Christian  a  man  must  regard  Buddha  as  a  false 
teacher." 

Mr.  Hardy,  apparently  intending  to  palliate  his 
harsh  remarks,  says  : 

"  I  am  here  a  controversialist,  and  not  an  expositor."  (P.  206.) 

But  even  as  a  controversialist,  he  should  not  lower 
himself  by  making  unjust  accusations.  It  is  neither 
right  nor  wise;  for  the  liberties  which  he  takes  must 
be  granted  to  opponents  ;  and  if  they  refuse  to  use 
them,  it  is  to  their  credit. 

Mr.  Hardy  says:  "These  conclusions  I  have 
founded  upon  statements  taken  from  the  sacred  writ- 
ings," and  rejects  Buddhism  on  account  of  these  er- 
rors wholesale.  Nor  would  he  permit  Buddhists  to 
discriminate  between  Buddha's  doctrine  and  later  ad- 
ditions.    For,  says  Mr.  Hardy  (p.  219): 

"By  rejecting  other  parts  of  the  Pitakas  as  being  unworthy 
of  credence,  and  yet  founding  upon  them,  and  upon  them  alone, 
your  trust  in  the  words  they  ascribe  to  Buddha,  you  do  that  which 
no  wise  worshipper  would  do,  and  what  you  have  no  liberty  to  do 
as  a  man  guided  by  the  requirements  of  reason." 

This  is  a  dangerous  principle  for  Mr.  Hardy  to 
propound,  for  it  should  be  applicable  to  all  religions, 
and  what  would  become  of  Christianity  if  it  had  to  be 
kept  under  the  bondage  of  the  letter,  so  that  we  should 
no  longer  be  allowed  to  discriminate  between  truth 
and  error,  but  adopt  or  reject  at  once  the  whole  fabric. 
If  one  discrepancy  of  the  dogmatic  texture  of  a  reli- 
gion with  science  or  with  reason  disposes  of  it  as  a 
fraud,  what  shall  we  do  with  Christianity? 

Spence  Hardy's  attitude  toward  Buddhism  is  typi- 
cal for  a  certain  class  of  Christians  whose  Christianity 
is  little  more  than  a  highly  advanced  paganism. 

Happily  there  are  Christians  who  see  deeper,  and 
they  feel  no  animosity  against  Buddhism  on  account 
of  its  many  agreements  with  Christian  doctrines.  As 
their  spokesman  we  quote  Prof.  Max  Miiller  who  says  : 

"If  I  do  find  in  certain  Buddhist  works  doctrines  identically 
the  same  as  in  Christianity,  so  far  from  being  frightened,  I  feel 
delighted,  for  surely  truth  is  not  the  less  true  because  it  is  believed 
by  the  majority  of  the  human  race." 

[to  be  concluded.] 


NOTES. 

We  announce  with  deep  regret  the  death  of  Prof.  Comm. 
Luigi  Ferri  of  the  University  of  Rome,  Italy,  editor  of  ihe  Jin'ista 
Italiana  di  Filosofia  and  author  of  approved  and  valuable  philo- 
sophical works. 

The  Poliliis  of  Aristotle,  a  revised  text,  with  introduction, 
analysis,  and  commentary,  by  Prof.  Franz  Susemihl,  of  Greifs- 
wald,  and  Mr.  R.  D.  Hicks  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge  is  an- 
nounced by  Macmillan  &  Co. 


Mr.  F.  C.  Conybeare's  critical  edition  of  Philo  About  the  Con- 
templative Life  will  be  published  very  shortly  by  the  Clarendon 
Press.  Mr.  Conybeare  strongly  upholds  the  genuineness  of  the 
treatise,  which  is  of  paramount  importance  for  the  history  of 
primitive  Christianity. 

The  fourth  summer  session  of  the  School  of  Applied  Ethics 
will  be  held  in  Plymouth,  Mass.,  and  will  open  on  July  the  8th, 
continuing  for  five  weeks.  There  will  be  in  all  about  eighty  lec- 
tures given  in  economics,  ethics,  education,  and  the  history  of  re. 
ligion,  by  some  of  our  most  prominent  scholars.  Complete  pro- 
grammes may  be  obtained  by  applying  to  the  secretary  of  the 
school,  S.  Burns  Weston,  1305  Arch  Street,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 


The  Medico-Legal  Society  announces  that  it  will  hold  a 
Medico-Legal  Congress  at  or  near  the  city  of  New  York  during 
the  last  week  of  August  or  first  week  of  September,  1895  (time  and 
place  to  be  hereafter  announced).  A  general  invitation  to  all  per- 
sons interested  in  the  science  of  medical  jurisprudence  is  extended, 
who  may  send  for  circulars  to  either  H.  W.  Mitchell,  M,D.,  Presi- 
dent, 747  Madison  Avenue,  New  York,  or  Clark  Bell,  Esq.,  Secre- 
tary, 57  Broadway,  New  York. 


Macmillan  &  Co.  have  just  issued  a  third  edition  of  the  late 
Prof.  Stanley  Jevons's  T/ie  Slate  in  delation  to  Labor.  The  matter 
has  been  brought  up  to  date  by  the  help  of  footnotes,  and  the 
editor,  M.  M.  Cababe,  contributes  an  introduction  on  The  Pres- 
ent Aspect  of  Some  of  the  Main  Features  of  the  Labor  Question. 
Mrs.  Jevons,  in  the  L.etters  and  Journal  of  her  husband,  says  that 
this  book  was  the  result  of  his  maturest  thoughts  upon  the  subject, 
his  conclusion  being  that  no  hard  and  fast  rules  could  be  laid  down 
for  the  interference  or  non-interference  of  the  State  with  labor. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  400. 

MODERN  LIBERALISM.     Hudor  Genone 4471 

AMOS.     Prof.  C.  H.  Cornill 4473 

CHRISTIAN  CRITICS  OF  BUDDHA.     Editor 4475 

NOTES 4478 


i( 


The  Open  Court. 


A  "HTEEKLY   JOUENAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  401.     (Vol.  IX.— 18 


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HOSEA. 

BY   PROF.    C     H.   CORN'ILL. 

Wh'h  all  due  acknowledgment  of  the  greatness  of 
Amos,  it  is  impossible  to  acquit  him  of  a  certain  nar- 
row-mindedness. His  God  is  essentially  a  criminal 
judge,  inspiring  fear  but  not  love  ;  and  on  fear  alone 
neither  the  heart  of  man  nor  religion  can  e.xist.  With 
the  execution  of  the  judgment  matters  are  at  an  end,  so 
far  as  Amos  is  concerned.  What  was  to  take  place 
afterwards,  he  does  not  ask.  This  was  soon  felt  as  a 
defect,  and  a  reconciliatory  conclusion  was  appended 
to  the  Book  of  Amos,  which  contains  little  of  his  ideas, 
and  is  at  variance  in  all  points  with  his  doctrines.  The 
real  complement  of  Amos  is  found,  marvellously  de- 
veloped, in  Hosea,  the   prophet  who   came  after  him. 

To  Amos's  proposition,  "God  is  justice,"  Hosea 
adds  :  "God  is  love."  Not  as  if  Hosea  were  any  less 
severe  in  his  judgment  of  the  evils  of  his  people  ;  on 
the  contrary,  he  shows  himself  even  more  deeply  af- 
fected by  them,  and  his  descriptions  are  far  more  som- 
bre and  ominous  than  those  of  Amos.  But  Hosea 
cannot  rest  content  with  a  negation.  For  God  is  not 
a  man,  whose  last  word  is  anger  and  passion.  He  is 
the  Holy  One,  the  Merciful  One,  whom  pit}'  over- 
comes. He  cannot  cast  aside  the  people  whom  He 
once  loved.  He  will  draw  them  to  Himself,  improve 
them,  educate  them.  God  is  a  kind  Father,  who  pun- 
ishes His  child  with  a  bleeding  heart,  for  its  own  good, 
so  that  He  may  afterwards  enfold  it  all  the  more 
warmly  in  His  arms.  Whilst  in  Amos  the  ethical  ele- 
ment almost  entirely  predominates,  in  Hosea  the  reli- 
gious element  occupies  the  foreground.  He  and  his 
intellectual  and  spiritual  compeer,  Jeremiah,  were  men 
of  emotion,  the  most  intense  and  the  most  deeply  reli- 
gious of  all  the  prophets  of  Israel. 

The  manner  in  which  Hosea  became  conscious  of 
his  calling  is  highly  interesting  and  significant,  and  is 
a  fresh  proof  of  how  pure  and  genuine  human  sentiment 
always  leads  to  God.  Family  troubles  bred  prophecy 
in  Hosea.  He  took  to  himself  a  wife.  Her  name  and 
that  of  her  father  lead  us  to  conclude  that  she  was  of 
low  birth,  a  child  of  the  people.  We  can  easil)'  un- 
derstand how  this  serious,  thoughtful  man  was  attracted 
by  the  natural  freshness  and  grace  of  this  simple 
maiden.      But  when  married  she  renders  him  deeply 


unhappy,  and  he  had  finally  to  admit  that  he  had 
wasted  his  love  on  one  unworthy,  on  a  profligate  wo- 
man. We  cannot  clearly  make  out  whether  the  woman 
forsook  him,  or  whether  he  cast  her  away.  But  now 
something  incredible  takes  place.  He,  the  deeply  in- 
jured husband,  cannot  help  regretting  his  wife.  Could 
the  innermost  and  purest  feeling  of  his  heart  have  been 
only  self-deception?  At  one  time  she  loved  him.  And 
Hosea  feels  himself  responsible  for  her  who  was  his 
wife.  Was  it  not  possible  to  wake  the  better  self  of 
the  woman  again  ?  When  the  smothering  ashes  had 
been  cleared  away,  could  not  the  spark,  which  he  can- 
not consider  to  have  died  out,  spring  up  into  a  bright 
and  pure  flame?  That  was  possible  only  through  self- 
denying  and  tender-hearted  love.  Such  love  could  not 
fail,  in  the  end,  to  evoke  a  genuine  response.  He 
must  try  again  this  faithless  woman,  must  have  her 
near  him.  He  takes  her  back  into  his  house.  He 
cannot  reinstate  her  at  once  into  the  position  and 
rights  of  a  wife  ;  she  must  first  pass  through  a  severe 
and  hard  period  of  probation  ;  but  if  she  goes  through 
this  probation,  if  she  yields  to  the  severe  yet  mild  dis- 
cipline of  the  husband  who  still  loves  her,  then  he  will 
wed  her  afresh  in  love  and  trust,  and  nothing  again 
shall  rend  asunder  this  new  covenant. 

Hosea  recognises  in  this  relation  of  his  wife  an 
image  of  the  relation  of  God  to  Israel.  God  has  chosen 
the  poor,  despised  Israelites,  the  slaves  of  the  Eg3'p- 
tians,  to  be  His  people;  has  allied  Himself  with  tlierfi 
in  love  and  faith,  showered  His  blessings  upon  the  na- 
tion, miraculousl}'  guided  it,  and  finally  made  it  great 
and  mighty.  And  all  these  mercies  are  requited  by 
Israel  with  the  blackest  ingratitude;  its  service  of  God 
is,  in  the  eyes  of  the  prophet,  a  worship  of  Baal,  a 
mockery  of  the  holy  God,  whom  it  knows  not,  and  of 
whom  it  does  not  want  to  know  ;  and  therefore  He  must 
give  it  over  to  perdition.  But  for  God  this  judgment 
is  no  personal  object.  He  wishes  to  lead  thereby  these 
foolish  and  blinded  hearts  to  reflexion  and  to  self-knowl- 
edge. When  they  learn  to  pray  in  distress,  when  they 
humbh'  turn  again  to  God  with  the  open  confession  of 
their  sins,  then  will  He  turn  to  them  again,  then  will 
He  accept  into  grace  those  fallen  awaj',  then  will  they 
be  His  people,  who  are  now  not  His  people,  and  He 
will  be  their  God.      Right  and  justice,  grace  and  pit}', 


4480 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


love  and  faith,  will  He  bring  to  them  as  the  blessings 
and  gifts  of  the  new  covenant,  and  they  will  acknowl- 
edge Him  and  become  His  willing  and  obedient  chil- 
dren. He  will  be  to  Israel  as  the  dew,  and  Israel  shall 
grow  as  the  lily  and  blossom  out  as  the  olive-tree,  and 
stand  there  in  the  glory  and  scent  of  Lebanon. 

God  is  love.  Hosea  recognised  this,  because  he 
bore  love  in  his  heart,  because  it  was  alive  in  him  ; 
love  which  is  long-suffering  and  kind,  which  seeketh 
not  lier  own,  is  not  easily  provoked,  which  beareth  all 
things,  believeth  all  things,  hopeth  all  things,  endureth 
all  things,  the  love  which  never  faileth.  When  we 
consider  that  all  this  was  absolutely  new,  that  those 
thoughts  in  which  humanity  has  been  educated  and 
which  have  consoled  it  for  nearly  three  thousand  years, 
were  first  spoken  by  Hosea,  we  must  reckon  him 
among  the  greatest  religious  geniuses  which  the  world 
has  ever  produced.  Among  the  prophets  of  Israel, 
Jeremiah  alone  can  bear  comparison  with  him,  and 
even  here  we  feel  inclined  to  value  Hosea  higher,  as 
the  forerunner  and  pioneer. 

Why  is  it  that  Hosea  is  so  often  misconceived  in 
this,  his  great  importance?  He  has  not  rendered  it 
easy  for  us  to  do  him  justice,  for  his  book  is  unusually 
obscure  and  difficult.  It  is  in  a  way  more  than  any  other 
book  individual  and  subjective.  What  Hosea  gives 
us  are  really  monologues,  the  ebullitions  of  a  deeply 
moved  heart,  torn  by  grief,  with  all  its  varied  moods 
and  sentiments.  Like  the  fantasies  of  one  delirious, 
the  images  and  thoughts  push  and  pursue  one  another. 
But  it  is  exactly  this  subjectivity  and  this  individual- 
ity which  gives  to  the  Book  of  Hosea  its  special  charm 
and  irresistible  efficacy.  He  is  the  master  of  heartfelt 
chords,  which  for  power  and  fervor  are  possessed  by 
no  other  prophet.  Let  me  quote,  in  Hosea's  own 
words,  an  especially  characteristic  passage,  a  master- 
piece of  his  book. 

"When  Israel  was  a  child,  I  loved  him  and  called 
him  as  my  son  out  of  Egypt.  But  the  more  I  called 
the  more  they  went  from  me  ;  they  sacrificed  unto 
Baalim  and  burned  incense  to  graven  images.  I  taught 
Ephraim  also  to  walk,  taking  him  in  my  arms.  But 
they  knew  not  that  I  meant  good  with  them.  I  drew 
them  with  cords  of  a  man,  with  bands  of  love  ;  and  I 
was  to  them  as  they  that  take  off  the  yoke  on  their 
jaws,  and  I  laid  meat  unto  them.  Yet  they  will  return 
into  the  land  of  Egypt,  and  Asshur  be  their  king.  Of 
me  they  will  know  nothing.  So  shall  the  sword  abide 
in  their  cities,  destroy  their  towers,  and  devour  their 
strongholds.  My  people  are  bent  to  backsliding  from 
me  ;  when  called  on  from  on  high,  none  looketh  up- 
wards. How  shall  I  give  thee  up,  Ephraim?  How 
shall  I  deliver  thee,  Israel?  Shall  I  make  thee  as  Ad- 
mah?  Shall  I  set  thee  as  Zeboim  ?  My  heart  is  turned 
within  me,  my  compassion  is  cramped  together.     I  will 


not  execute  the  fierceness  of  mine  anger.  I  will  not 
return  to  destroy  thee  Ephraim,  for  I  am  God  and  not 
man  ;  the  Holy  One  in  the  midst  of  thee.  I  cannot 
come  to  destroy." 

Thus  is  love,  grace,  mercy,  ever  the  last  word  :  for 
God  is  love.  Thus  religion  becomes  an  act  of  love. 
God  calls  for  love,  not  sacrifice,  knowledge  of  God, 
not  burnt  offerings  ;  and  acquires  thus  a  power  of  in- 
timacy that  till  then  was  unknown.  That  dear,  com- 
forting phrase,  "the  Lord  thy  God,"  which  places 
every  individual  man  in  a  personal  relation  of  love 
with  God,  was  coined  by  Hosea,  and  is  first  found  in 
his  book.  Even  the  requirement  of  being  born  again, 
of  having  to  become  completely  new,  in  order  to  be 
really  a  child  of  God,  can  be  found  in  Hosea.  He  is 
the  first  who  demands  that  God  shall  not  be  worshipped 
by  images,  and  pours  out  his  bitterest  scorn  on  the 
"  calves  "  of  Dan  and  Bethel,  as  he  dares  to  name  the 
old,  venerated  bull-symbols.  In  fact,  he  demands  a 
rigorous  separation  of  the  worship  of  God  from  the 
worship  of  nature.  Everything  that  is  contradictory 
to  the  real  holy  and  spiritual  nature  of  God  is  paganism 
and  must  be  done  away  with,  were  it  ten  times  a  ven- 
erable and  traditional  custom. 

That  this  man,  so  apparently  a  man  of  emotion, 
governed  entirely  by  his  moods,  and  driven  helplessly 
hither  and  thither  by  them,  should  have  possessed  a 
formal  theological  system,  which  has  exercised  an  im- 
measurable influence  on  future  generations,  is  a  phe- 
nomenon of  no  slight  significance.  To  prove  this  state- 
ment would  require  too  much  time  and  discussion  of 
details.  But  it  may  be  said  that  the  entire  faith  and 
theology  of  later  Israel  grew  out  of  Hosea,  that  all  its 
characteristic  views  and  ideas  are  to  be  first  found  in 
his  book. 

Hosea  was  a  native  of  the  northern  part  of  the  na- 
tion, its  last  and  noblest  offshoot.  He  wrote  his  book 
between  738  and  735  B.  C,  about  twenty-five  years 
after  the  appearance  of  Amos.  We  already  know  from 
the  short  accounts  in  the  Book  of  Kings  that  this  was 
a  period  of  anarchy  and  dissolution  ;  Hosea's  book 
transplants  us  to  this  time,  and  allows  us  to  see  in  the 
mirror  of  the  prophet's  woe-torn  heart  the  whole  life  of 
this  period. 

It  is  a  horrible  panorama  that  unfolds  itself  before 
our  eyes.  One  king  murders  the  other ;  God  gives 
him  in  his  wrath  and  takes  him  away  in  his  displeas- 
ure ;  for  none  can  help,  but  all  are  torn  away  and 
driven  about  by  the  whirlpool  of  events,  as  a  log  upon 
the  waters.  So  hopeless  are  matters  that  the  prophet 
can  pray,  God  should  give  to  Ephraim  a  miscarrying 
womb  and  dry  breasts,  so  that  fresh  offerings  of  calam- 
ity and  misery  be  not  born.  In  such  a  state  of  affairs 
the  thought  strikes  the  prophet,  that  the  whole  state 
and  political  life  is  an  evil,  an   opposition  to  God,  a 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4481 


rebellion  against  Him  who  is  the  only  Lord  and  King 
of  Israel,  and  who  will  have  men  entirely  for  himself. 
In  the  hoped-for  future  time  of  bliss,  when  all  things 
are  such  as  God  wishes  them,  there  will  be  no  king 
and  no  princes,  no  politics,  no  alliances,  no  horses  and 
chariots,  no  war  and  no  victory.  What  is  usually 
known  as  the  thcoiracy  of  the  Old  Testament,  was 
created  by  Hosea  as  a  product  of  those  evil  days. 

As  a  man  of  sorrows,  he  was  naturally  not  spared 
a  personal  martyrdom.  He  fulfils  his  mission  in  the 
midst  of  ridicule  and  contumely,  amidst  enmity  and 
danger  to  his  life.  He  occasionally  gives  us  a  sketch 
of  this  in  his  book  :  "  The  da}'s  of  visitation  are  come, 
the  days  of  recompense  are  come  :  Israel  shall  know 
it!"  And  the  people  shout  back  mockingly  :  "The 
prophet  is  a  fool,  the  spiritual  man  is  mad."  Hosea 
takes  up  their  words  and  answers  : 

"  Veril}^  I  am  mad,  but  on  account  of  the  multitude 
of  thine  iniquity  and  the  multitude  of  the  persecution." 

"The  snares  of  the  fowler  threaten  destruction  to 
the  prophet  in  all  his  ways  ;  even  in  the  house  of  his 
God  have  the)-  dug  a  deep  pit  for  him." 

We  know  not  if  Hosea  survived  the  overthrow  of 
Israel.  His  grave,  still  regarded  as  a  sanctuary,  is 
shown  in  Eastern  Jordan,  on  the  top  of  Mount  Hosea, 
Dschebel  Oscha,  about  three  miles  north  of  es-Salt, 
from  where  we  can  obtain  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
views  of  Palestine. 


SOME  DATA  FOR  ETHICAL  EDUCATION. 

BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 

One  man  has  the  right  to  claim  to  know  only  those 
things  which  any  other  man  under  the  same  conditions 
might  know.  Two  sorts  of  things  are  perfectly  know- 
able  :  the  principles  of  the  universe,  common  to  all, 
and  that  taste  in  choosing  which  is  proper  to  each  in- 
dividual. 

In  the  region  of  religion  this  taste  is  conscience. 

The  expression,  "an  enlightened  conscience,"  has 
always  appeared  to  me  defective.  It  should  rather  be 
a  cultivated  conscience,  as  we  do  not  ordinarily  say  an 
enlightened,  but  a  cultivated,  taste. 

As  solutions  of  problems  are  the  work  of  the  fac- 
ulty of  calculation,  so  conscience  is  the  work  of  the 
faculty  of  conscientiousness. 

Possibly  some  may  regard  this  as  a  quibble  about 
words.  But  the  real  meaning  of  a  word  is  its  vitality, 
and  to  agree  upon  exact  meanings  seems  to  me  of  the 
very  first  importance. 

Conscience,  as  I  have  said,  is  the  moral  taste  of 
the  soul.  Its  analogy  may  perhaps  be  found  in  the 
principle  of  electricity.  You  can  hardly  "enlighten" 
electricity,  but  you  may  afford  it  opportunity  for  use. 

As  the  current  is  sluggish,  conveyed  by  imperfect 
conductors,  but  rapid  over  copper  and  silver  wires,  so 


conscience  acts  feebly  and  sluggishly  in  minds  of  a 
low  order,  but  in  men  in  whom  an  intense,  ardent, 
energetic  temperament  is  united  with  veneration  and 
the  other  moral  sentiments  with  great  rapidity. 

This  conscience,  —  this  soul  taste, — is  really  the 
expression  for  soul  motive  of  morals. 

As  electricity  is  electricity,  so  motive  is  motive. 

An  adjective  may  qualify,  but  hardly  impair  the 
meaning  of  a  principle. 

In  an  article  by  Dr.  Conant,  entitled  "Education 
in  Ethics,"  it  is  stated  :  "If  an  enlightened  religious 
conscience  could  be  made  the  moral  guide  of  even  a 
majority  of  men  all  might  be  well.  But  we  are  further 
from  such  a  consummation  to-day  than  a  hundred 
years  ago,  and  the  chasm  widens  daily." 

This  entire  article  is  admirable,  and  one  is  com- 
pelled to  agree  with  the  substance  of  its  statements 
and  heartily  sympathise  with  its  conclusions. 

And  yet  I  cannot  but  feel  that  the  expectation  of 
"being  able  to  benefit  the  race  by  instruction  in  the  art 
of  ethics  in  the  schools  is,  in  the  present  conditions  of 
thought,  futile. 

Instruct  the  children  ever  so  caref  ull)',  even  indoc- 
trinate them  daily  with  ideas  so  plain  that  the  wayfar- 
ing child  (who  is  by  no  means  a  fool)  cannot  err,  and 
all  your  care  and  heed  and  learning  and  efforts  will,  in 
the  majority  of  cases,  be  utterly  wasted,  because  the 
children,  day  after  day,  return  to  homes  where  reli- 
gion is  perhaps  professed,  but  is  practically  unknown  ; 
where  mothers  have  "  tantrums  "  and  fathers  tempers  ; 
where  meekness,  if  anything,  is  either  amiability  or 
cowardice,  and  where  self-sacrifice  may  be  held  to  be 
a  good  thing  for  another  to  die  for,  but  a  poor  way  for 
a  business  man  to  get  a  livelihood. 

Instruction,  to  be  of  real  value,  must  be  given,  not 
only  by  teachers  in  the  schools,  but  by  parents  in  the 
homes. 

When  the  common  consent  of  mankind  unites  upon 
the  certainty  and  practicability  in  action  of  the  science 
of  religion  as  it  now  does  upon  the  science  of  mathe- 
matics ;  when  the  gross  superstitions  which  now  pass 
current  for  religion  are  eliminated,  and  theology  be- 
comes, as  the  word  demands,  the  true  and  accurate 
logic  of  God,  then  only  shall  it  be  possible  to  effectu- 
ally educate  the  young  in  the  true  principles  of  right. 

Religion  is  the  science  of  the  motive  of  life. 

Ethics  is  the  art  of  right  living. 

My  way  of  educating  the  children  would  be  some- 
what different.  I  should  begin,  not  with  the  babes, 
nor  the  boys  and  girls,  nor  the  parents,  nor  the  teach- 
ers, nor  the  pastors;  I  should  begin  with  the  philoso- 
phers. 

A  people  which  subsists  wholly  upon  a  diet  of  vege- 
tables will  become  in  the  course  of  time  timid,  weak, 
irresolute,  and  effeminate. 


4482 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


Men  accustomed  to  animal  food  in  due  proportion 
acquire  a  vigorous  physique  and  with  it  vigorous  char- 
acter. 

The  mild  rice  eating  Hindu  is  quite  unable  to  cope 
with  his  Saxon  beefsteak-made  brother  of  Britain. 

What  is  true  physically  and  mentally  is  also  true 
morally.  Civilisation  has  been  nurtured  upon  theo- 
logical slops.  I  should  start  with  the  sages  by  getting 
them  to  formulate  definitely  the  principles  of  the  sci- 
ence of  religion,  by  inducing  them  to  give  up  opinions 
of  all  kinds,  and  when  they  were  sure  of  what  they 
knew  and  agreed  among  themselves  as  to  the  assur- 
ance, then  they  should  go  into  all  the  world  and  preach 
their  doctrines  to  every  creature. 

Directly  or  indirectly,  self-interest  is  the  root  of 
all  action. 

The  potency  of  theology,  especially  that  which  of- 
fers a  vicarious  atonement,  is  that  it  seems  to  present 
an  easy  method  of  ridding  one's  self  of  anxiety  about  a 
hereafter  :    "  Only  believe." 

To  the  ego-soul  his  permanent  safety  is  the  one 
thing  needful. 

Not  less  surely  than  that  a  line,  however  long,  is 
composed  of  infinitesimal  points,  so  the  hereafter, 
howsoever  big,  is  made  up  of  an  infinite  number  of 
here  nows. 

Let  us,  too,  take  as  our  watchword  those  words, 
"Only  believe."  Annihilate  theology  if  you  like,  but 
purify  religion.  The  principles  of  Christianity  are 
pure  ;  its  ethics  perfect.  Christianity  does  not  need 
destruction,  but  explanation. 

Make  the  wrath  of  the  angry  God  "who  for  our 
sins  is  justly  grieved  "  certain  by  explaining  the  abso- 
lute nature  of  consequences. 

Give  to  the  doctrine  of  a  vicarious  atonement  its 
true  interpretation,  as  something  done  for  you  forever, 
but  by  means  of  the  pattern  set  for  you  now. 

This  is  the  true  atonement  ;  this  the  sacrifice  made 
from  the  foundation  of  the  world  ;  this  the  way  in 
which  the  heel  of  the  woman's  seed  shall  crush  the 
serpent's  head. 

Take  from  what  is  called  religion  the  myth  of  per- 
sonifications, and  while  you  are  doing  that  take  the 
same  myth  from  yourself. 

Learn  to  know  how  illusory  is  the  thing  within  you 
which  we  dignify  as  I.  Learn  the  true  nature  of  self, 
the  vital  responsibility  of  selfhood  which  is  not  self- 
ishness. Learn  that  man  is  not  the  master,  but  the 
envoy  of  the  master;  that  he  is  a  delegate  from  the 
realm  of  the  infinite  at  the  court  of  sense,  and  that  he 
is  bound  to  represent  his  sovereign  wisely  and  well. 
Learn  that  the  mission  is  a  definite  one,  the  creden- 
tials clear,  the  instructions,  not  as  some  think,  blind. 
If  the  orders  seem  sealed,  open  them  and  read  them 
and  obey  them. 


Learn  also  that  there  is  an  inevitable  "  day  of  judg- 
ment," when,  recalled  from  your  mission,  you  shall 
give  account  of  how  you  served  your  king. 

There  is  nothing  but  futile  fancy  in  the  Hindu's 
doctrine  of  metempsychosis,  but  there  is  a  truth  of  re- 
incarnation not  susceptible  to  the  accidents  of  wreck 
on  rocks  of  doubt  or  shoals  of  ignorance.  The  acqui- 
sition of  good  habits  is  a  contemporaneous  reincarna- 
tion and  their  transmission  by  inheritance  or  influence 
a  certain  one  in  the  future. 

Conquer  a  vice  to-day  and  you  save  your  descend- 
ants untold  misery.  If  you  clasp  the  flattering  fancy, 
aprcs  moi  le  deluge,  thinking  that  you  yourself  can  so 
easily  escape,  I  tell  you  that  will  never  be,  it  can  never 
be,  never,  never,  never  ! 

The  thief  must  some  time  restore  ;  the  liar  some 
time  be  shamed  by  the  truth  ;  he  who  kills,  though  he 
escape  the  electric  chair  or  the  scaffold  here,  some 
way,  some  how,  some  time,  must  somehow  requite 
with  something  his  victim. 

Yonder  staggers  a  besotted  wretch,  and  in  his  body 
the  spirit  of  drink  ;  the  atavism  of  perhaps  a  rude  bar- 
barian in  the  time  of  the  Druids. 

And  there  a  fair,  fresh,  young  girl,  new  to  shame, 
stifles  thoughts  in  mirth  and  ribald  song,  dancing  down 
that  hellish  road  whose  inns  are  hospitals,  and  jails, 
and  asylums,  and  whose  end  may  be  another's  violence 
or  her  own  mad  act, — an  overdose  of  chloral  or  the 
wintry  river. 

"  Love  by  harsh  evidence 
Thrown  from  its  eminence, 
Even  God's  providence 
Seeming  estranged." 

And  all  the  while  her  grandsire  who  debauched  his 
life,  lives  in  her  and  suffers  in  her  the  torments  of  hell. 
The  sins  of  the  children  shall  be  visited  by  the  fathers 
to  all  generations. 

It  is  easy  to  sneer  at  these  pictures  of  the  imagina- 
tion, easy  to  say  they  are  more  rhetorical  than  defi- 
nite. 

And  it  is  easy  too,  for  those  who  think  so,  to  be- 
lieve they  can  avert  consequences,  to  expect  a  remote, 
lackadaisical,  musical,  material  paradise  by  trusting 
to  the  atoning  blood  of  Jesus. 

If  you  believe  in  paradise,  help  bring  it  in  here. 
If  you  believe  in  the  atoning  blood,  show  it  now. 

Let  the  world   know  you  are  ambassador  of  God. 

Let  every  man  be  his  own  saviour  in  the  world. 

The  fear  of  the  Lord,  as  truly  now  as  in  the  days 
of  David,  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom,  none  the  less  so 
whether  called  God's  wrath  or  karma,  or  the  law  of 
inevitable  consequence.  Religion  as  it  is  preached 
to-day  in  almost  all  our  pulpits  and  printed  in  the  pious 
press  is  taken  by  the  great  bulk  of  the  people  faut  de 
inii-iix ;  their  sole  notion  of  faith  being  in  the  Catholic 
churches  a   blind   subserviency  to   a   sj'stem  ;   in   the 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4483 


Protestant  an  equally  blind,  equally  simple,  and  less 
logical  "  belief  "  in  a  book. 

This  belief,  when  it  is  not  ingenuous  credulity,  is 
spurious  cant.  When  people  say  they  believe  a  thing 
and  do  not  act  as  that  belief  demands  they  do  not  be- 
lieve ;  they  are  liars,  and  the  truth  is  not  in  them. 

In  the  course  of  my  own  experience  of  men  "re- 
generated and  born  again,"  or  who  claimed  to  be,  I 
have  met  all  told  not  over  a  half  dozen  to  whom  I  be- 
lieved the  epithets  applied,  and  most  of  these,  in  sea- 
son and  out  of  season,  went  about,  each  after  his  own 
fashion,  doing  good,  beseeching  his  neighbors  to  re- 
pent, to  flee  from  the  wrath  to  come,  to  give  their 
hearts  to  Jesus. 

They  bored  me  immensely,  but  I  respected  them 
sincerely  because  by  their  fruits  I  knew  them  to  be 
sincere. 

Let  your  faith  emulate  in  sincerity  that  kind  of 
faith.  But  to  your  faith  add  virtue  and  to  your  virtue 
knowledge.  Then  upon  that  rock  you  may  rebuild  a 
church  grander  than  any  contemplated  by  the  sects, 
against  which  the  gates  of  hell  cannot  prevail. 

Instruct  the  pastors  and  the  parents  in  the  certain 
principles  till  at  last  the  very  air  itself  shall  be  fragrant 
with  wisdom  and  love.  And  the  children  may  be 
taught  in  the  schools  without  fear  that  the  best  efforts 
of  the  teacher  will  be  thwarted  by  active  opposition, 
cynical  incredulity  or  contemptuous  indifference  in 
the  family  or  in  the  practical  affairs  of  the  world. 


CHRISTIAN  CRITICS  OF  BUDDHA. 

[concluded.] 

From  German  criticism  of  Buddhism  I  select  for 
discussion  those  of  two  Protestant  clergymen,  G.  Voijt 
and  Adolph  Thomas,  whose  remarks  seem  to  me  worthy 
of  notice. 

G.  Voigt^  declares  that  Buddhism  did  not  origi- 
nate in  the  whim  of  a  maniac  or  in  the  hallucination 
of  an  enthusiast,  but  is  born  out  of  the  very  depths  of 
the  human  heart.  Its  aspirations  remind  us  of  St. 
Paul's  cry:  "O  wretched  man  that  I  am  !  Who  shall 
deliver  me  from  the  body  of  this  death  !  "  (Rom.  vii, 
24.)  But,  adds  Mr.  Voigt,  "Buddha  cannot  deliver 
mankind,  he  cannot  conquer  the  world  because  he  de- 
nies it ;  and  he  cannot  deny  the  world,  because  he  does 
not  conquer  it.  Christianity  alone  is  the  world-reli- 
gion because  it  alone  conquers  the  world"  (p.  19). 
"Buddha's  salvation  is  self-deliverance,  and  this  is  the 
first  and  decisive  condition  of  the  Buddhistic  Gospel. 
It  refers  man,  in  order  to  gain  his  eternal  salvation,  to 
the  proud  but  utterly  barren  path  of  his  own  deeds" 
(p.  22). 

Here  the  Buddhistic  scheme  of  salvation  is  the 
same  (Voigt  claims)  as  that  of  Goethe's  Faust  (p.  31), 

l"Buddhismus  und  Christenthum."  in  Zeit/ragen  des  chr.  I'otkslt-betis. 
Heilbronn :  Henninger.     1887. 


for  Faust,  too,  does  not  rely  on  the  blood  of  Christ, 
but  has  to  work  out  his  salvation  himself.  Accordingly, 
one  main  difference  between  Christ  and  Buddha  con- 
sists in  this,  that  Christ  is  the  Saviour  of  mankind  while 
Buddha  only  claims  to  be  the  discoverer  of  a  path  that 
leads  to  salvation  (p.  35). 

Mr.  \'oigt's  statement  concerning  Buddha's  doc- 
trine of  salvation  is  to  the  point ;  but  we  have  to  add 
that  while  Buddhism  is  indeed  self-salvation,  Chris- 
tianity may,  at  least  in  a  certain  sense,  also  be  called 
self-salvation.  In  another  sense.  Buddhism,  too, 
teaches  the  salvation  of  mankind,  not  through  self- 
exertion,  but  through  the  light  of  Buddha. 

Mr.  Voigt  is  a  Protestant  and  a  Lutheran  ;  therefore 
he  presses  the  point  that  we  are  justified  not  through 
our  own  deeds,  but  through  God's  grace  who  takes 
compassion  on  us.  To  Lutherans  it  will  be  interest- 
ing to  know  that  there  is  a  kind  of  Protestant  sect 
among  the  Buddhists  (and  they  are  the  most  numer- 
ous and  influential  sect  in  Japan),  the  Shin-Shiu,  who 
insist  on  salvation  sola  fide,  through  faith  alone,  with 
the  same  vigor  as  did  Luther.  They  eat  meat  and  fish, 
and  their  priests  marry  as  freely  as  Evangelical  clergy- 
men. The  statement  made  by  A.  Akamatsu  for  presen- 
tation at  the  World's  Religious  Parliament  and  pub- 
lished in  leaflets  by  the  Buddhist  Propagation  Society 
declares  : 

"Rejecting  all  religious  austerities  and  other  action,  giving 
up  all  the  idea  of  self  power,  we  rely  upon  Amita  Buddha  with  the 
whole  heart,  for  our  salvation  in  the  future  life,  which  is  the  most 
important  thing  :  believing  that  at  the  moment  of  putting  our  faith 
in  Amita  Buddha,  our  salvation  is  settled.  From  that  moment, 
invocation  of  his  name  is  observed  to  e.xpress  gratitude  and  thank- 
fulness for  Buddha's  mercy  ;  moreover,  being  thankful  for  the  re- 
ception of  this  doctrine  from  the  founder  and  succeeding  chief 
priests  whose  teachings  were  so  benevolent,  and  as  welcome  as 
light  in  a  dark  night  :  we  must  also  keep  the  laws  which  are  fixed 
for  our  duty  during  our  whole  life." 

Replace  the  words  "Amita  Buddha"  by  "Jesus 
Christ"  and  no  Lutheran  of  the  old  dogmatic  t3pe 
would  make  any  serious  objection  to  this  formulation 
of  a  religious  creed. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  points  on  which  Mr.  Voigt  fails 
to  do  justice  to  Buddhism,  not  because  he  means  to 
be  unfair,  but  because  he  is  absolutely  unable  to  un- 
derstand the  Buddhistic  doctrines. 

Buddhism  in  Mr.  Voigt's  opinion  is  full  of  contra- 
dictions, for  "the  idea  of  retribution  can  no  longer  be 
upheld  if  there  is  no  ego-unit"  (p.  23),  and  "the 
standard  of  Christian  morality  is  God,  but  Buddhism, 
ignoring  God,  has  no  such  standard  of  morality" 
(p.  43).      ^'oigt  maintains  : 

"  He  who  denies  the  living  God,  must  consistently  deny  also 
the  living  soul — of  course,  not  the  soul  as  mental  life,  the  existence 
of  which  through  our  experience  is  sufficiently  guaranteed,  but 
the  soul  as  the  unit  and  the  personal  centre  of  all  mental  life.  In 
this  sense  Buddhism  denies  the  existence  of  a  soul "  (p    22). 


44S4 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


Why  can  the  idea  of  retribution  no  longer  be  up- 
held if  the  soul  is  a  unification  and  not  a  metaphysical 
soul-unit?  Why  can  Buddhism  have  no  standard  of 
morality,  if  Buddha's  conception  of  moral  authority  is 
not  that  of  a  personal  being,  but  that  of  an  immanent 
law  in  analogy  with  natural  laws  and  in  fact  only  an  ap- 
plication of  the  law  of  cause  and  effect?  It  is  the 
same  misconception  which  we  found  in  Mr.  Spence 
Hardy's  arguments,  when  he  said  "There  is  no  law, 
because  there  is  no  law-giver." 

Adolph  Thomas,  another  German  clergyman,  criti- 
cises Buddhism  in  a  lecture  which  he  delivered  in  vari- 
ous cities  of  North  America.  It  bears  the  title  "A 
Sublime  Fool  of  the  Good  Lord."  The  lecture  is  a 
curious  piece  of  composition,  for  it  is  a  glowing  tribute 
to  Buddha's  greatness  and  at  the  same  time  a  vile 
jeer  at  his  religion.  Here  is  a  translation  of  its  best 
passages  : 

"I  will  show  unto  you,  dear  friends,  a  sublime  fool  of  the 
Almighty.  Miniature  copies  you  will  find,  not  a  few  in  the  large 
picture  gallery  of  the  world's  history.  I  show  you  a  colossal  statue. 
It  represents  Shakyamuni,  the  founder  of  the  first  universal  reli- 
gion, to  whom  the  admiring  generations  of  after-ages  gave  the 
honoring  title  of  Biiddlia,  i.  e.  the  Enlightened  One.  Out  of  the 
dawn  of  remote  antiquity,  through  the  mist  of  legendary  lore,  bis 
grand  figure  looms  up  to  us,  belated  mortals,  lofty  as  the  summit 
of  the  Himalayas  towering  into  the  clouds  above.  He  stands  upon 
the  heights  of  Oriental  humanity,  his  divine  head  enveloped  by  the 
clouds  of  incense,  sending  his  praise  upwards  from  millions  of 
temples.  The  equal  rival  of  Jesus  Christ  cannot  be  otherwise  than 
sublime. 

"Buddha  possesses  that  soul-stirring  sublimity  which  wins 
the  hearts  with  a  double  charm,  by  the  contrast  of  natural  dignity 
and  voluntary  humiliation,  of  nobility  of  mind  and  kindness  of 
soul.  This  son  of  a  king,  who  stretches  forth  his  hand  to  the  timid 
and  rag-covered  Tshandala  girl,  saying  :  '  My  daughter,  my  law 
is  a  law  of  grace  for  all  men,"  appears  at  once  as  winning  souls 
and  as  commanding  respect.  The  cry  of  woe  with  which  he  de- 
parts from  the  luxurious  royal  chambers,  full  of  sweet  music  and 
pleasures  of  the  table,  full  of  the  beauty  of  women  and  the  joys 
of  love;  'Woe  is  me!  lam  indeed  upon  a  charnal  field!'  thrills 
the  very  soul.  The  alms-begging  hermit,  to  whose  sublime  mind 
royal  highness  was  too  low,  the  splendors  of  court  too  mean,  the 
power  of  a  ruler  too  small,  must  have  inspired  with  reverence  even 
the  gluttonous  and  amorous  epicurean.  A  prince  who  was  capable 
of  mortifying  soul  and  body  by  retirement,  fasting,  and  meditation 
during  six  long  years  to  find  a  deliverance  from  the  ocean  of  sor- 
rows for  all  sentient  beings,  bears  indeed  the  stamp  of  those  staunch 
and  mighty  men  of  character,  who  are  able  to  sacrifice  everything 
for  an  idea.  'Son  constant  heroisme,'  says  the  latest  French  bio- 
grapher of  the  ancient  founder  of  Buddhism,  concerning  his  char- 
acter, '  egale  sa  conviction.  II  est  le  module  acheve  de  tons  les 
vertus  qu'il  pr^che.' 

■ '  Buddha  towers  above  the  ordinary  teacher  not  less  by  his  in- 
tellectual geniality,  than  by  his  moral  excellence.  Five  hundred 
years  before  the  birth  of  Christ  did  this  far-seeing  thinker  antici- 
pate the  most  far-reaching  views  in  the  field  of  natural  sciences  and 
the  freest  social  advances  of  the  nineteenth  century.  This  very  an- 
cient saint  of  the  interior  of  Asia  was  a  champion  of  free  thought 
and  liberty  after  the  most  modern  conception.  He  looked  at  the 
world  with  the  unsophisticated  eye  of  a  scientist  of  our  days,  seeing 
in  it  a  chain  of  causes  and  effects  in  continuous  change,  birth  and 


death,  forever  repeating  themselves,  or  perhaps  with  the  short- 
sightedness of  a  fashionable  materialist,  seeing  in  it  nothing  but 
the  product  of  matter  which  to  him  exists  exclusively.  A  priest 
of  humanity  centuries  before  a  Christ  and  Paul  broke  through  the 
barriers  of  the  Jewish  ceremonial  service,  thousands  of  years  be- 
fore a  Lessing  and  Herder  preached  the  newly  discovered  gospel 
of  pure  humanity.  Buddha  revealed  to  the  people  of  India  and 
China,  to  Mongolians,  Malayans,  the  never-heard-of  truth  that 
upon  the  earth  and  in  heaven  humanity  alone  had  merit. 

"The  moral  code  of  Buddhism  has  given  a  purer  expression 
to  natural  morality  and  has  kept  it  more  free  from  natural  preju- 
dices and  religious  admixtures  than  any  of  the  later  religions. 

"Buddha  already  held  high  the  banner  of  philanthropic  sym- 
pathy, which  is  perhaps  the  acknowledged  symbol  of  modern  eth- 
ics, and  before  which  in  our  times  even  the  arms  of  war  give  way. 
The  humane  demand  that  capital  punishment  be  abolished,  which 
Christianity  only  now,  after  nineteen  centuries  begins  to  empha- 
sise, had  already  been  realised  in  Buddhistic  countries  shortly 
after  the  death  of  the  founder  of  their  religion.  And  in  regard  to  his 
efforts  upon  the  field  of  social  policy,  I  venture  to  call  the  reformer 
of  India  the  boldest  champion  who  has  ever  fought  for  the  holy 
cause  of  liberty  ;  for  the  tyranny,  which  he  fought — that  of  the 
Brahman  castes — was  the  most  outrageous  violation  of  the  rights 
man,  and  he,  that  fought  it,  was — according  to  the  legend — the 
descendant  of  an  oriental  dynasty  which  was  of  course,  as  every 
one  of  them,  a  sneer  upon  the  liberty  of  the  people. 

"Sublime  in  his  earthly  career  by  his  personal  worth,  Buddha 
has  still  been  more  elevated  in  his  immoita/i/y  by  the  extent  and 
power  of  his  historical  effects.  He  is  one  of  the  spiritual  kings, 
whose  kingdom  is  without  end  and  whose  train-bearers  are  nations. 
The  dark  chasm  of  oblivion  into  which  two  thousand  years  have 
sunk,  has  not  even  dimmed  his  memory.  Following  the  track  of 
the  victorious  sun,  his  illustrious  name  has  appeared  like  a  bril- 
liant meteor  to  us  also,  the  inhabitants  of  the  Far  West,  the  sons 
of  Europe  and  America.  He  who  is  adored  like  a  god  by  three 
hundred  and  seventy  millions  of  people  in  Asia,  took  captive  also 
not  a  few  strong  minds  of  the  German  civilised  countries.  Phi- 
losophers and  poets  like  Schopenhauer  and  Kinkel  worshipped  at 
his  shrine. 

"  His  words  sound  in  our  ears,  also,  like  words  of  authority. 
The  dignified  pathos  that  pervades  them  conquers  the  souls. 

'  Not  even  feasting  with  the  Rods 
Brings  rest  unto  the  truly  wise ; 
Who's  wise  indeed  doth  but  rejoice 
That  no  desires  within  him  rise.' 

' '  The  sublimity  that  lies  in  his  description  of  his  blessed  Nir- 
vana is  affecting  :  'I  have  attained  unto  the  highest  wisdom,  I  am 
without  desires,  I  wish  for  nothing  ;  I  am  without  selfishness,  per- 
sonal feeling,  pride,  stubbornness,  enmity.  Until  now  I  was  full 
of  hatred,  passion,  error,  a  slave  of  conditions,  of  birth,  of  age,  of 
sickness,  of  grief,  of  pain,  of  sorrow,  of  cares,  of  misfortune.  May 
many  thousands  leave  their  homes,  live  as  saints,  and  after  they 
have  lived  a  life  of  meditation  and  discarded  lust  be  born   again  ' 

"  From  the  sublime  to  the  ridiculous  there  is  but  one  step.  I 
must  laugh  when  I  think  of  a  group  of  three  Japanese  idols.  This 
stone  monument  from  the  history  of  Buddhism  appears  as  a  com- 
ically disgusting  caricature  of  the  Christian  trinity. 

"  Here  a  striking  connexion  comes  to  the  surface.  A  despiser 
of  the  gods  became  the  forerunner  of  worshippers  of  idols;  Bud- 
dha's doctrine  of  liberty  brought  in  its  train  the  tyranny  of  priests, 
his  enlightened  views,  superstition  ;  his  humanity,  the  empty  cere- 
monies of  sacerdotal  deceivers.  His  attempt  at  education  and  eman- 
cipation of  the  people  without  a  god  was  followed  by  a  period  of  a 
senseless  and  stupefying  subjugation  of  the  people  ;  a  striking  con- 
trast and  lamentable  failure  indeed  ! 

"  What  an  irony  of  fate.     Fate  had  different  intentions  from 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4485 


Buddha  and  forced  Buddha  to  do  that  which  was  contrary  to  what 
he  intended.  Like  a  bunted  deer  which  falls  into  the  net  of  those 
from  whom  it  fled,  like  a  deceived  fool  who  accomplishes  foreign 
aims  against  his  will  and  knowledge,  thus  India's  sublime  prince 
of  spirits  lies  before  us,  adjudged  by  the  power  of  fate  from  which 
no  one  can  escape.  One  is  reminded  of  the  Jewish  poetry  of  old  : 
'  He  that  sitleih  in  the  heavens  shall  laugh,  the  Lord  shall  have 
him  in  derision.'  In  derision  did  he,  who  governs  the  fates  of 
men,  place  the  fool's  cap  upon  that  noble  head.  The  comedies  of 
Aristophanes  are  praised,  because  a  bitter  seriousness  is  heard  in 
their  droll  laughter.  The  great  author  of  the  world's  drama  has 
after  all  composed  a  far  better  satire  than  the  best  comic  poet  of 
this  earth.  The  monster  tragi  comedy,  BiiJii/iii  and  Biiddhiiin, 
which  he  wrote  into  the  chronicles  of  the  world,  moves  not  only 
the  diaphragm,  but  the  heart  also." 

The  rest  of  Mr.  Thomas's  lecture  consists  of  caustic 
complaints  on  the  increase  of  atheism  in  Christian  coun- 
tries. Natural  science,  he  says,  is  materialistic.  Scho- 
penhauer's pessimism  is  gaining  ascendency  in  philos- 
ophy, and  theology  tends  either  to  the  infidel  liberal- 
ism of  D.  Fr.  Strauss  or  favors  a  reaction  that  will 
strengthen  the  authorit)*  of  the  Pope.  Everywhere  ex- 
tremes !      He  concludes  one  of  his  harangues  : 

"It  darkens!  We  are  Buddhists  and  not  Christians.  .  .  . 
Bless  us.  O  Shakyamuni  Gaulama,  'master  of  cows' — which  is 
the  literal  translation  of  'Gautama.'  Why  did  your  worshippers 
not  call  you  '  master  of  oxen  '  ?  " 

Strange  that  one  who  ridicules  Buddha  cannot 
help  extolling  him  in  the  highest  terms  of  admiration. 
Mr.  Thomas  sets  out  with  the  purpose  of  calling  Bud- 
dha a  fool,  but  the  subject  of  his  speech  and  the  great- 
ness of  the  founder  of  Buddhism  carry  him  along  so 
as  to  change  his  abuse  into  an  anthem  of  praise.  He 
is  like  Balaam,  who  went  out  to  curse  Israel  but  can- 
not help  blessing  it.  And  what  can  he  say  against 
Buddha  to  substantiate  his  harsh  judgment?  The 
same  that  can  be  said  against  Christ,  for  the  irony  of 
fate  is  not  less  apparent  in  the  history  of  the  un-Christ- 
like  Christian  church  than  in  the  development  of  the 
un-Buddha-like  Buddhism. 

The  same  objections  again  and  again  !  Buddha 
was  an  atheist  and  denied  the  existence  of  the  soul. 
The  truth  is  that  while  the  Buddhist  terminology  radi- 
cally differs  from  the  Christian  mode  of  naming  things, 
the  latter  being  more  mythological,  both  religions 
agree  upon  the  whole  in  ethics,  and  the  spirit  of  their 
doctrines  is  more  akin  than  their  orthodox  repre- 
sentatives, who  cling  to  the  letter  of  the  dogma,  are 
aware  of. 

CORRESPONDENCE. 


amused  at  my  being  put  down  as  one  of  the  ninety-nine  people  out 
of  a  hundred  who  think  that  morality  has  reference  chiefly  to  the 
relations  between  the  sexes  ;  I  will  confess,  however,  that  I  do  re- 
gard it  as  an  important  part  of  morality,  perhaps  as  rather  more 
important  than  it  appears  to  be  in  the  eyes  of  Mr.  Saunders.  It 
is  interesting  to  me  to  observe  that  Mr.  Saunders  thinks  that  ;in 
innocent  young  girl  of  nineteen,  who,  as  her  mother  said,  "knew 
nothing  of  the  world,"  should  yet  be  expected  to  have  her  suspi- 
cions about  "a  big.  blond  man  [of  thirty-eight]  with  a  heavy 
moustache"  as  a  person  hardly  likely  to  have  "lived  so  long  with- 
out some  unmentionable  e.vperiences."  This  taking  for  granted  of 
certain  things  by  English  gentlemen  is,  I  suppose,  a  part  of  the 
sad  and  brutal  fact  against  which  Sarah  Grand  makes  her  protest. 

As  to  Evadne's  way  of  solving  the  ethical  problem  with  which 
she  was  confronted,  it  was  in  part  noble  and  in  part  weak.  The 
noble  element  in  it  was  the  rebellion  ;  the  weak  part  was  the  con- 
senting afterward  to  live  in  the  same  house  with  her  husband.  It 
was  the  former  act  I  admired  ;  it  was  the  only  thing  about  which 
I  used  any  language  of  approval.  But  Mr.  Saunders's  language 
leads  one  to  suppose  that  the  solution  of  the  problem  which  I  ad- 
mired was  the  "  deciding  to  live  in  her  husband's  house,  she  to  be 
his  wife  only  in  name." 

Of  Sarah  Grand's  personality  or  other  writings  I  knew  noth- 
ing. I  wrote  of  her  simply  as  the  author  of  The  Hcavcitlv  fvins. 
I  am  obliged  to  say  that  Mr.  Saunders's  article  makes  me  think  all 
the  more  that  the  book  was  called  for,  whatever  its  faults  or  one- 
sidedness,  William  M.  S.^lter. 


"SARAH    QRAND'S    ETHICS." 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Open  Court : 

I  REGRET  that  I  have  but  just  had  an  opportunity  to  read  Mr. 
T.  Bailey  Saunders's  article  on  "Sarah  Grand's  Ethics"  in  The 
Open  Court  of  April  4,  in  which  he  criticises  my  comments  on 
The  HeaTenly  Twins  in  an  earlier  number ;  but  I  have  very  little 
to  say   by   way   of  reply.     Those  who  know   me  will   be   raiher 


RECENT  PSYCHOLOGICAL  LITERATURE. 

It  would  be  impossible  for  a  reader  who  has  not  daily  accefs 
to  the  special  literature  of  this  subject  to  form  an  idea  at  all  ade- 
quate of  the  tremendous  amount  of  work  which  is  being  done  in 
modern  psychology.  It  may  help  such  a  one  to  mention  that  the 
new  Psychological  Annual  published  by  Messrs.  Binet  and  Beaunis, 
of  France,  catalogues  twelve  hundred  titles  of  works  and  articles 
which  have  been  published  on  psychological  and  allied  topics  in 
the  one  year  of  1894.  The  nevi  Psychological  Index  prepared  by 
Mr.  Warren  of  Princeton,  and  Dr.  Farrand  of  Columbia,  com- 
prises an  equal  number  of  titles,  and  the  great  German  journal 
Die  Zeitschrift  fiir  Psychologie  und  Physiologie  der  Sinnesorgane 
gives  annually  a  bibliography  of  similar,  if  not  larger,  dimensions. 
There  are  at  present  in  America  alone  sixteen  psychological  labora- 
tories, and  two  special  journals.  The  Psychological  Bcvie^o  and  The 
American  Journal  0/  Psychology,  not  to  mention  a  host  of  publica- 
tions on  this  subject  which  are  published  privately  and  in  connex- 
ion with  the  various  universities.  Of  course,  in  Europe  the  num- 
ber is  larger.  It  would  be  wrong  to  suppose,  however,  that  the 
innumerable  special  results  thus  gathered  are  all  of  real  positive 
value,  or  for  that  matter — which  is  also  important  in  science — 
of  real  negative  value.  By  far  the  greater  proportion  of  the  re- 
searches and  results  now  published  in  the  special  magazines  con- 
sists merely  of  detailed  elaborations  of  facts  already  established, 
or  of  the  redundant  exploitation  of  methods  which  some  illustrious 
precedent  has  rendered  fashionable.  This,  however,  is  not  a  spe- 
cial characteristic  of  modern  psychological  research,  but  is  true 
also  of  the  work  in  nearly  all  the  other  sciences.  It  is  the  inevit- 
able result  of  a  wholesale  and  indiscriminate  division  of  labor, 
which  has  its  reverse  but  beneficent  aspect  in  the  circumstance 
that  if  there  are  thousands  who  do  superfluous  work,  there  are  also 
a  few,  of  a  different  class,  whose  vocation  it  is  to  put  into  concise, 
systematic  form  what  is  valuable  and  to  render  this  important  but 
limited  material  accessible  both  for  philosophy  and  practical  life. 
A  few  recent  works  of  this  general  character,  we  propose  to  men- 
tion here. 

We  have  spoken  before  of  Prof    C.  Lloyd  Morgan's  Introduc- 
tion to  Comparative  Psychology  as  an  exemplary  work.     Close  upon 


4486 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


its  publication  follows  his  Fsyc/iology  for  Teachers}  for  which  a 
preface  has  been  written,  commending  the  work,  by  Mr,  Fitch, 
one  of  Her  Majesty's  chief  inspectors  of  training-colleges.  "My 
hearty  commendation,"  says  Mr.  Fitch,  "of  this  book  to  the  seri- 
"  ous  and  sympathetic  consideration  of  such  persons  [teachers] 
"does  not,  of  course,  imply  an  acceptance  of  all  its  psychological 
"conclusions,  qs  a  complete  and  final  account  of  the  genesis  of 
"mental  operations  and  the  scientific  basis  of  the  pedagogic  art. 
"It  is  not  desirable,  in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge,  that 
"anyone  psychological  theory  should  be  universally  accepted, 
"and  regarded  as  orthodox.  What  is  desirable,  is  that  men  and 
"  women  "'bo  intend  to  consecrate  their  lives  to  the  business  of 
"teaching,  should  acquire  the  habit  of  studying  the  nature  of  the 
' '  phenomena  with  which  they  have  to  deal  ;  and  of  finding  out  for 
' '  themselves  the  laws  which  govern  mental  processes,  and  the  con- 
"  ditions  of  healthy  growth  in  the  minds  and  bodies  of  their  pu- 
"  pils.  This  book  will  help  them  much  in  such  a  study,  and  will 
"  do  so  all  the  more  effectually,  because  it  does  not  undertake  to 
"save  the  schoolmaster  the  trouble  of  thinking  out  rules  and  the- 
"  cries  for  himself." 

It  would  be  well  if  all  books  on  this  subject  would  approach 
to  the  example  which  Professor  Morgan  has  set.  The  work  is  free 
from  the  repulsive  technical  jargon  which  infests  the  majority  of 
text-books  on  pedagogical  psychology,  and  is  written  in  a  simple 
spirited  style,  abounding  in  illustrations  borrowed  from  all  depart- 
ments of  life.  The  subjects  discussed  are  :  States  of  Conscious- 
ness ;  Association  ;  Experience  ;  Perception  ;  Analysis  and  Gene- 
eralisation  ;  Description  and  Explanation  ;  Mental  Development ; 
Language  and  Thought ;  Literature;  Character  and  Conduct. 

A  book  of  a  more  special  character  and  with  different  aims,  but 
also  treating  of  a  subject  fraught  with  significant  revelations  for 
every  branch  of  educational  science,  is  Prof.  J.  Mark  Baldwin's 
treatise  on  Mental  Develepmenl  in  the  Child  and  the  Kace."^  Pro- 
fessor Baldwin's  work  is  comparatively  untechnical  in  character 
and  written  in  a  terse  and  vigorous  style,  so  that  it  will  commend 
itself  to  unprofessional  readers.  The  educational,  social,  and  eth- 
ical implications,  in  which  the  subject  abounds,  the  author  has 
reserved  for  a  second  volume,  which  is  well  under  way  ;  the  pres- 
ent treats  of  methods  and  processes.  Having  been  led  by  his  studies 
and  experiments  with  his  two  little  daughters  to  a  profound  appre- 
ciation of  the  genetic  function  of  imitation,  he  has  sought  to  work 
out  a  theory  of  mental  development  in  the  child  incorporating  this 
new  insight.  A  clear  understanding  of  the  mental  development  of 
the  individual  child  necessitates  a  doctrine  of  the  race  development 
of  consciousness — the  great  problem  of  the  evolution  of  mind. 
Accordingly  Professor  Baldwin  has  endeavored  to  link  together 
the  current  biological  theory  of  organic  adaptation  with  the  doc- 
trine of  the  infant's  development  as  that  has  been  fashioned  by 
his  own  wide,  special  researches.  Readers  familiar  with  the  ar- 
ticles of  Professor  Haeckel  now  running  in  The  Open  Court  wilj 
understand  the  import  of  a  theory  which  seeks  to  unite  and  ex- 
plain one  by  the  other  the  psychological  aspects  of  ontogenesis  and 
phylogenesis.  As  Professor  Baldwin  says,  it  is  the  problem  of 
Spencer  and  Romanes  attacked  from  a  new  and  fruitful  point  of 
view.  There  is  no  one  but  can  be  interested  in  the  numerous  and 
valuable  results  which  Professor  Baldwin  has  recorded  ;  teachers, 
parents,  and  psychologists  alike  will  find  in  his  work  a  wealth  of 
suggestive  matter.  

Prof.  ].  Rehmke  of  Greifswald,  Germany,  has  recently  pub- 
lished a  Text-Book  on  General  Psychology"  which  also  takes  its  place 
apart  from  the  special  treatises,  and  deals  with  broader  philosoph- 

1  London  :  Edward  Arnold.     1K94.     Pp.  2O1.     Price,  3s  6d,  net. 
SMacmillan  and  Co.:  New  Yoik  and  London.    1895.    Pp.  496.    Price,  82.60. 
3L.  Voss  :  Hanjbnrg  and  Leipsic.     Pp.  580. 


ical  questions.  It  is  written  to  set  the  "  Sonntagsreiter,"  or  amateur 
equestrian,  of  psychology  more  firmly  in  his  saddle.  The  burthen 
of  the  book  lies  in  its  treatment  of  the  nature  of  the  soul.  The 
key  to  Professor  Rehrake's  view  is  contained  in  his  definition  of 
the  abstract  and  the  concrete.  The  abstract  is  the  invariable,  the 
concrete  is  the  variable.  Carrying  this  distinction  into  the  realm 
of  psychology  we  discover  that  the  datum  of  the  soul  is  the  concrete 
consciousness,  but  the  so-called  subject  is  simply  a  vionient  of  con- 
sciousness, where  by  "moment"  is  meant  a  here  and  now  of  con- 
sciousness. Professor  Rehmke  has  also  recently  written  a  pamphlet 
on  Our  Certainty  of  the  Outer  ll'or/J.  Both  books  are  reviewed 
in  the  April  J/onist. 

Of  a  more  rigorous  and  scientific  character,  finally,  but  im- 
portant as  belonging  to  the  introductory  studies  of  psychology,  is 
Prof.  Max  Verworn's  new  General  Physiology,  Rudiments  of  the 
Science  of  Life,  which  has  just  appeared  in  German  ^  It  is  a  portly, 
large  octavo  volume  of  nearly  six  hundred  pages,  and  containing 
two  hundred  and  sixty-eight  cuts  and  illustrations.  Despite  its 
size,  however,  it  treats  only  of  fundamental  questions.  Modern 
physiology  has  reached  a  point  where  the  cell  must  be  regarded  as 
the  last  hiding-place  of  the  secrets  of  life.  Here  the  work  of  the 
future  is  to  be  done.  Of  this  general  cellular  physiology,  now. 
Prof.  Verworn  has  given  us  a  comprehensive  exposition,  reciting 
ancient  and  modern  theories,  adding  historical  and  comparative 
elucidations,  and  exhibiting  the  various  and  complex  aspects  of 
life  under  the  new  cellular  physiological  points  of  view,  in  which 
the  myriad  branches  of  special  physiology  all  ultimately  meet. 
The  task  which  Professor  Verworn  has  set  himself  and  which  he 
is  the  first  to  attempt  on  so  large  a  scale,  is  performed  with  credit 
and  success.  The  work  is  very  appropriately  dedicated  to  the 
memory  of  Johannes  Miiller,  who  represented  the  comparative 
point  of  view  in  physiology  with  such  splendid  results,  as  justly  to 
be  regarded  the  greatest  master  of  physiology  which  this  century 
has  produced.  T.  J.  McCormack. 

IJena:  G.  Fischer.     Price,  15  marks. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN    STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor 


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be  supplied  on  order.     Price,  75  cents  each. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  401. 

HOSEA.     Prof.  C.  H.  Cornill 4470 

SOME    DATA  FOR    ETHICAL   EDUCATION.     Hudor 

Genone 4481 

CHRISTIAN  CRITICS  OF  BUDDHA.   (Concluded.)  Edi- 
tor     4483 

CORRESPONDENCE. 

"Sarah  Grand's  Ethics."     W.M.Salter 4485 

RECENT    PSYCHOLOGICAL    LITERATURE.      T     J. 

McCormack 44^5 


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No.  402.     (Vol.  IX.— 19  ) 


CHICAGO,   MAY  9,   1895. 


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IN  MEMORIAM— GUSTAV  FREYTAG. 

nlcA-t   tnlt  ffCerri.    •i^-d^.      ei    p( a-u,t.'-f   m    ^emcifh — . 


i  J i'e  1 1>  a-d^JT^  ■ 


^3^ 


^t 


'ffl-r 


-v.^r^^. 


I 


GusTAV  Freytag  died  at  Wiesbaden  on  the  first  of  this  month. 

The  conception  of  the  nature  and  preservation  of  the  soul  in  the  poetical  descriptions  of 
life  in  his  works,  in  combination  with  the  teachings  of  modern  psychology  and  a  mechanical 
world-conception,  is  to  me  the  affirmative  solution  of  the  question  of  personal  immortality  as 
preservation  of  form.  The  spreading  of  this  view  was  and  remains  my  leading  motive  in  the 
publications  of  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Company.  Edward  C.  Hegeler. 


QUOTATIONS  FROM  QUSTAV  FREYTAQ'S  "  LOST 
MANUSCRIPT." 

"A  noble  human  life  does  not  end  on  earth  with 
death.  It  continues  in  the  minds  and  the  deeds  of 
friends,  as  well  as  in  the  thoughts  and  the  activity  of 
the  nation." 

[Motto  for  the  authorised  translation  of  The  Lest  Manuscript. \ 

"The  soul  of  mankind  is  an  immeasurable  unit}', 
which  comprises  every  one  who  ever  lived  and  worked, 
as  well  as  those  who  breathe  and  produce  new  works 
at  present.  The  soul,  which  past  generations  felt  as 
their  own,  has  been  and  is  daily  transmitted  to  others. 
What  is  written  to-day  may  to-morrow  become  the 
possession  of  thousands  of  strangers.  Those  who  have 
long  ago  ceased  to  exist  in  the  body  daily  revive  and 
continue  to  live  in  thousands  of  others." 

"There  remains  attached  to  every  human  work 
something  of  the  soul  of  the  man  who  has  pro- 
duced it,  and  a  book  contains  between  its  covers  the 
actual  soul  of  its  author.      The  real  value  of  a  man  to 


others — the  best  portion  of  his  life — remains  for  the 
generations  that  follow,  and  perhaps  for  the  farther- 
most future.  Moreover,  not  only  those  who  write  a 
good  book,  but  those  whose  lives  and  actions  are  por- 
trayed in  it,  continue  living  among  us.  We  converse 
with  them  as  with  friends  and  opponents;  we  admire  or 
contend  with,  love  or  hate  them,  not  less  than  if  they 
dwelt  bodily  among  us.  The  human  soul  that  is  inclosed 
in  such  a  cover  becomes  imperishable  on  earth,  and, 
therefore,  we  may  say  that  the  soul-life  of  the  individ- 
ual becomes  enduring  in  books,  and  the  soul  which  is 
incased  in  a  book  has  an  assured  duration  on  earth." 
"  No  one  has  of  himself  become  what  he  is  ;  every 
one  stands  on  the  shoulders  of  his  predecessors  ;  all 
that  was  produced  before  his  time  has  helped  to  form 
his  life  and  soul.  Again,  what  he  has  produced,  has  in 
some  sort  formed  other  men,  and  thus  his  soul  has 
passed  to  later  tiines.  The  contents  of  books  form  one 
great  soul-empire,  and  all  who  now  write,  live  and  nour- 
ish themselves  on  the  souls  of  the  past  generations." 


4488 


THE    OPEN     COURX. 


ISAIAH. 

BY  PROF.   C.    H.   CORNILL. 

In  the  year  722  B.  C.  Israel  disappears,  and  Judah 
succeeds  as  its  heir.  From  the  time  of  Hosea  proph- 
ecy has  its  existence  wholly  on  the  soil  of  Judah.  At 
the  head  of  these  Judaic  prophets  stands  Isaiah,  who 
began  his  work  shortly  after  the  completion  of  the 
Book  of  Hosea.  He  is  distinguished  from  both  his 
predecessors  by  his  personality  and  whole  style  of  ac- 
tion. Whilst  Amos  only  rages  and  punishes,  Hosea 
only  weeps  and  hopes,  Isaiah  is  a  thoroughly  practical 
and  positive  character,  who  feels  the  necessity  of  in- 
fluencing personally  the  destinies  of  his  people.  Evi- 
dently belonging  to  the  highest  classes — Jewish  tradi- 
tft)n  makes  him  a  priest  of  the  King's  house — he  pos- 
sessed and  made  use  of  his  power  and  influence. 
Seated  at  the  tiller,  he  guides  by  the  divine  compass 
the  little  ship  of  his  fatherland  through  the  rocks  and 
breakers  of  a  wild  and  stormy  period. 

It  was  the  most  critical  period  of  the  whole  history 
of  Judah.  The  question  was.  To  be  or  not  to  be?  If 
Judah  weathered  this  crisis  and  held  out  for  over  a 
century,  it  is  essentially  due  to  the  endeavors  of  the 
prophet  Isaiah  who  knew  how  to  make  clear  to  his 
contemporaries  the  wondrous  plan  of  God.  In  Isaiah 
we  find  for  the  first  time  a  clearly  thought  out  concep- 
tion of  universal  history.  Nothing  takes  place  on 
earth  but  it  is  directed  by  a  supramundane  holy  will, 
and  has  as  its  ulterior  object  the  honor  of  God.  God 
is  all,  man  is  nothing — thus  perhaps  the  theology  of 
Isaiah  could  be  most  tersely  and  clearly  stated.  God 
is  supramundane,  the  all-powerful,  who  fills  heaven 
and  earth,  the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  as  Isaiah  loves  to 
call  Him,  who  proves  His  sanctity  by  His  justice. 
Man  is  in  His  hand  as  clay  in  the  hand  of  the  potter. 
Even  the  powerful  Assyrians  are  but  the  rod  of  His 
wrath,  whom  He  at  once  destroys  on  their  presuming 
to  become  more  than  a  mere  tool  in  the  hands  of  God. 
Pride,  therefore,  is  the  special  sin  of  man,  as  where  he 
arrogates  to  himself  the  honor  and  glory  which  belong 
to  God  alone. 

In  one  of  his  earliest  prophecies  Isaiah  bursts  forth 
like  a  thunderstorm  over  everything  great  and  lofty 
that  men  possess  and  men  produce.  All  this  will  be 
mercilessly  levelled  to  the  ground — "the  lofty  looks  of 
man  shall  be  humbled,  and  the  haughtiness  of  men 
shall  be  bowed  down,  and  the  Lord  alone  shall  be  ex- 
alted in  that  day."  On  the  other  hand,  the  true  virtue 
of  man  is  loyal  confidence  in  God  and  submission  to 
his  will.  "In  quietness  and  rest  shall  ye  be  saved; 
in  submission  and  confidence  shall  be  your  strength," 
so  does  he  preach  to  his  people. 

This  guidance  of  the  history  of  the  world  by  a  supra- 
mundane holy  will,  as  the  fulfilment  of  its  own  honor, 
is  what  Isaiah  repeatedly  terms  "the  work  of  God." 


It  is  true,  this  work  is  singular,  this  plan  is  wondrous, 
but  man  must  accept  it  and  submit  to  it.  Their  blind- 
ness to  it,  their  wilfully  closing  their  eyes  against  it,  is 
the  severest  reproof  which  the  prophet  brings  against 
his  people.  But  let  us  follow  up  his  work  in  its  single 
stages  and  see  if  we  can  understand  it. 

At  the  opening  of  Isaiah's  theology  we  find  the 
thought,  "A  remnant  shall  return."  Thus  had  he 
named  his  eldest  son,  just  as  Hosea  had  given  signifi- 
cant names  to  his  children,  and  made  them  in  a  cer- 
tain sense  living  witnesses  of  his  prophetic  preaching. 
Like  Amos,  Isaiah  considers  the  judgment  as  unavoid- 
able, but  like  Hosea  he  sees  in  the  judgment  not  the 
end  but  the  beginning  of  the  true  salvation.  Yet  in  the 
manner  in  which  he  thinks  out  the  realisation  of  this 
salvation,  Isaiah  goes  his  own  way.  He  cannot  think 
that  his  people  is  only  a  rabble  of  godless  evil-doers  ; 
there  must  be  some  among  them  susceptible  of  good, 
and  whom  one  can  imagine  as  worthy  of  becoming  cit- 
izens of  the  future  kingdom  of  God,  and  those  are  the 
"remnant."  This  remnant  is  the  "  holy  seed  "  from 
which  the  future  Israel  shall  burst  forth  under  God's 
care.  Thus  Isaiah  sees  the  object  of  the  judgment  to 
be,  the  rooting  out  of  the  godless  and  the  sinners,  so 
that  this  noble  remnant,  which  is  left  over,  shall  con- 
tinue alone  in  the  field  and  develop  free  and  unhin- 
dered. And  this  future  kingdom  of  God  Isaiah  can 
only  picture  to  himself  under  a  mundane  form.  This 
is  his  principal  contrast  to  Hosea,  the  opposition  of 
the  Judaean  to  the  Israelite. 

In  Judah,  where  the  supremacy  of  the  House  of 
David  had  never  been  seriously  opposed,  a  benign 
stability  had  prevailed  in  all  affairs  and  a  doctrine  of 
legitimacy  had  been  established,  owing  to  a  lack  of 
which  Israel  was  incessantly  disturbed  and  hurried  on 
from  revolution  to  revolution,  from  anarchy  to  anarchy. 
These  inestimable  mundane  blessings  the  prophet  is 
anxious  shall  not  be  wanting  in  the  future  kingdom  of 
God.  We  find  in  his  work  a  very  remarkable  passage 
in  which  he  places  a  religious  valuation  on  patriotism, 
and  acknowledges  it  to  be  both  a  gift  and  the  working 
of  the  spirit  of  God  for  men  to  fight  valiantly  for  their 
country  and  to  repel  the  enemy  from  its  imperilled  bor- 
ders. The  future  kingdom  of  God  shall  also  have  its 
judges  and  officials,  and  above  all,  at  its  head  an  earthly 
king  of  the  House  of  David.  But  this  earthly  king  will 
rule  over  a  kingdom  of  peace  and  justice.  Then  will 
all  the  harnesses  of  the  proud  warriors,  and  the  blood- 
stained cloaks  of  the  soldiers  be  consumed  as  fuel  of 
the  fire.  And  in  their  place  the  government  will  be  on 
the  shoulders  of  a  child,  who  shall  be  called  "Won- 
derful Counsellor,  the  Mighty  God,  the  Everlasting 
Father,  the  Prince  of  Peace."  Of  the  increase  of  peace 
there  will  be  no  end,  and  the  throne  of  David  will  be 
established  on  judgment  and  justice  for  ever  and  ever. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4489 


And  again  most  beautifully  in  another  passage,  which 
I  cannot  refrain  from  quoting  in  its  own  words  : 

"And  there  shall  come  forth  a  sprig  out  of  the  stem 
of  Jesse  and  a  branch  shall  grow  out  of  his  roots  ;  and 
the  spirit  of  the  Lord  shall  rest  upon  him,  the  spirit  of 
wisdom  and  understanding,  the  spirit  of  counsel  and 
might,  the  spirit  of  knowledge  and  of  the  fear  of  the 
Lord  ;'the  delight  of  whose  life  shall  be  the  fear  of  the 
Lord.  And  he  shall  not  judge  after  the  sight  of  his 
eyes,  neither  reprove  after  the  hearing  of  his  ears.  But 
with  righteousness  shall  he  judge  the  poor  and  re- 
prove with  equity  for  the  oppressed  of  the  earth  ;  and 
he  shall  smite  the  tyrant  with  the  rod  of  his  mouth,  and 
with  the  breath  of  his  lips  shall  he  slay  the  wicked. 
And  righteousness  shall  be  the  girdle  of  his  loins,  and 
faithfulness  the  girdle  of  his  reins.  The  wolf  also 
shall  dwell  with  the  lamb,  and  the  leopard  shall  lie 
down  with  the  kid ;  and  the  calf  and  the  young  lion 
and  the  fatling  together ;  and  a  little  child  shall  lead 
them.  And  the  cow  and  the  bear  shall  feed  ;  their 
young  ones  shall  lie  down  together  ;  and  the  lion  shall 
eat  straw  like  the  ox.  And  the  sucking  child  shall  play 
on  the  hole  of  the  asp,  and  the  weaned  child  shall  put 
his  hand  on  the  cockatrice's  den.  They  shall  not  hurt 
nor  destroy  in  all  my  holy  mountain  ;  for  the  earth 
shall  be  full  of  the  knowledge  of  the  Lord,  as  the  wa- 
ters cover  the  sea." 

How,  now,  shall  this  last  design  of  the  divine  govern- 
ment of  the  world  be  fulfilled?  The  mission  of  Isaiah 
begins  apparently  with  a  shrill  dissonance.  As  he 
receives  the  call  and  consecration  for  the  office  of 
prophet  in  the  year  of  the  death  of  Uzziah,  736  B.C., 
God  speaks  to  him:  "Go  and  tell  this  people,  Hear 
ye  indeed  but  understand  not ;  and  see  ye  indeed  but 
perceive  not !  Make  the  heart  of  this  people  fat,  and 
make  their  ears  heavy,  and  shut  their  eyes  ;  lest  they 
see  with  their  eyes,  and  hear  with  their  ears,  and  un- 
derstand with  their  heart,  and  convert,  and  be  healed." 

These  words  sound  terrible,  I  might  almost  say 
godless,  and  nevertheless  they  contain  a  deep  truth. 
Isaiah  has  clearly  recognised  that  man  can  and  dare 
not  be  indifferent  to  the  good.  Either  he  bows  to  the 
good  and  it  becomes  a  blessing  to  him,  or  he  hardens 
his  heart  against  it,  and  it  becomes  to  him  a  double 
curse.  The  nation  as  a  whole  is  neither  ripe  nor  ready 
for  the  future  kingdom  of  God.  And  since  the  judg- 
ment is  the  necessary  transition  to  salvation,  since  the 
quicker  the  judgment  comes,  the  quicker  salvation  can 
be  effected,  therefore  it  is  to  the  interest  of  both  God 
and  Israel  if  the  sins  of  the  latter  shall  speedily  reach 
a  point  where  judgment  must  ensue. 

Uzziah  was  a  vigorous  ruler,  whose  reign  of  fifty- 
two  years  was  a  period  of  power  and  splendor  for  Ju- 
dah.  This,  however,  was  entirely  changed  when  in 
the  year  735  B.  C.    his  grandson  Ahaz  ascended  the 


throne.  This  young  monarch  was  a  perfect  type  of 
the  Oriental  despot,  capricious,  extravagant,  profli- 
gate, cruel,  acknowledging  only  his  own  will  as  the 
highest  law.  In  his  reign  just  such  conditions  pre- 
vailed in  the  kingdom  as  are  described  in  Israel  by 
Amos  and  Hosea.  Outside  troubles  were  soon  to  be 
added  to  this  inner  dissolution.  Whilst  the  great  As- 
syrian conqueror  Tiglath-Pileser  already  hovered  over 
their  heads  like  a  lowering  thundercloud,  the  small 
kingdoms  had  in  their  confusion  nothing  better  to  do 
than  to  fall  to  blows  with  one  another.  Rezin  of  Da- 
mascus and  Pekah  of  Israel  took  advantage  of  Ahaz's 
weak  and  unpopular  government  and  allied  themselves 
in  an  attack  on  Judah,  which  they  drove  to  such  sore 
straits  that  even  a  siege  of  Jerusalem  seemed  imminent. 
Ahaz  helped  himself  out  of  this  dilemma  by  taking  a 
desperate  step.  He  placed  himself  and  his  kingdom 
voluntarily  under  the  protection  of  Assyria  as  the  price 
of  being  rescued  by  the  Assyrians  from  his  enemies. 

Isaiah  evidently  knew  of  these  machinations.  One 
day  as  Ahaz  was  inspecting  the  works  for  the  defence 
and  fortification  of  Jerusalem,  he  publicly  stepped 
in  front  of  the  king  and  implored  him  to  rely  on  his 
good  cause,  and  to  have  confidence  in  God,  who  would 
surely  help  him.  As  Ahaz  hesitates,  Isaiah  says  to 
him  :  "Ask  thee  a  sign  from  the  Lord  thy  God,  ask  it 
either  in  the  depth  or  in  the  height  above."  Tremen- 
dous words,  a  belief  in  God  of  such  intensity  as  to 
appear  to  us  men  of  modern  times  fanatical.  We  can 
hardly  take  umbrage,  therefore,  at  the  remark  of  one 
of  the  most  brilliant  modern  interpreters  of  Isaiah,  that 
the  prophet  had  every  reason  for  being  grateful  to  Ahaz 
for  his  unbelief,  in  that  he  did  not  take  him  at  his  word 
and  ask  for  the  sign.  And  now  with  flaming  eyes  Isaiah 
discloses  to  him  his  shortsightedness.  The  means  will 
indeed  help,  but  at  a  high  cost,  for  the  decisive  strug- 
gle between  Assyria  and  Egypt  will  then  have  to  take 
place  on  the  soil  of  Judah,  and  thereby  the  country  will 
be  shaved  with  the  razor  that  has  been  hired,  namely, 
by  them  beyond  the  river  Euphrates,  and  converted 
into  a  desert  and  a  wilderness. 

After  that  Isaiah  has  made  Ahaz  and  his  son  respon- 
sible for  all  the  consequences  by  their  want  of  trust  in 
God,  and,  knowing  full  well  that  all  public  labor  would 
now  be  in  vain,  he  temporarily  abandons  the  scene, 
and  begins  a  more  silent  task.  He  sets  to  work  to 
form  and  educate  the  remnant  which  shall  be  left  and 
on  which  depends  the  hope  of  Israel.  He  gathers 
about  him  a  band  of  kindred  hearts,  whom  he  names 
disciples  of  God,  "to  bind  up  the  testimony  and  to 
seal  the  law"  for  him  and  them. 

"I  am  thy  son  and  thy  slave.  Come  up  and  save 
me  from  the  King  of  Damascus  and  from  the  King  of 
Israel, "was  the  fatal  message  sent  by  Ahaz  to  Tiglath- 
Pileser,  who  did  not  wait  to  be  twice  summoned,  but 


4490 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


came  at  once.  Israel  was  conquered  in  734,  King  Pe- 
kah  executed,  and  two-thirds  of  the  country  annexed. 
In  732,  after  three  years'  hard  fighting,  Damascus  also 
succumbed  to  the  Assyrian  arms.  King  Rezin  was 
executed  and  his  land  converted  into  an  Assyrian 
province. 

One  may  think  of  Ahaz  as  one  likes.  But  political 
foresight  he  certainly  possessed,  as  the  issue  proved. 
By  his  remaining  loyal  and  unwavering  in  his  unsought 
submission  to  Assyria,  he  brought  it  about  that  whilst 
one  after  another  of  the  neighboring  kingdoms  sank, 
whilst  war  and  uproar,  murder  and  plunder  raged 
about  him,  Judah  remained  quiet,  a  peaceful  island  on 
a  storm-tossed  sea. 

Ahaz  died  in  the  year  715  B.C.,  and  was  succeeded 
by  his  son  Hezekiah.  Hezekiah  was  of  a  weak  and 
wavering  character.  Under  him  the  national  party, 
which,  with  the  assistance  of  Egypt,  wished  to  shake 
off  the  Assyrian  yoke,  obtained  the  supremacy.  Here, 
again,  was  work  for  Isaiah.  At  that  time  Assyria  un- 
der Sargon,  one  of  the  most  powerful  of  warrior- kings, 
and,  what  we  must  also  not  overlook,  one  of  the  noblest 
and  most  sympathetic  of  all  the  Assyrian  rulers,  was 
celebrating  her  greatest  triumphs,  was  winning  her 
brilliant  victories,  and  achieving  her  marvellous  suc- 
cesses. According  to  Isaiah,  that  could  only  have  been 
accomplished  through  God,  or  suffered  by  Him  ;  and 
therefore  he  drew  the  conclusion,  that  in  conformity 
with  God's  plan  the  Assyrian's  role  was  not  yet  thor- 
oughly played  out,  that  God  still  had  need  of  him  and 
had  yet  greater  things  in  store  for  him.  To  rise  against 
the  Assyrian  was  rebellion  against  the  will  of  God,  and 
so  Isaiah  did  all  in  his  power  to  keep  Judah  quiet  and 
guard  it  against  foolish  enterprises. 

When  in  the  year  711  B.C.  the  excitement  was  at 
its  highest,  and  men  were  on  the  verge  of  yielding  to 
the  siren  voice  of  Egypt,  Isaiah  appeared  publicly  in 
the  despicable  garb  of  a  prisoner  of  war,  as  a  sign  that 
the  prisoners  of  Egypt  and  Ethiopia  would  be  led 
away  captives  in  this  apparel  by  the  Assyrians.  But 
to  forestall  the  thought  that  the  tremendous  advance 
of  the  Assyrian  Empire  might  after  all  be  a  serious 
danger  to  Judah,  which  prudence  and  self-preservation 
commanded  the  nation  to  guard  against,  Isaiah  at  this 
critical  period  establishes  a  dogma,  which  was  to  be 
of  the  uttermost  importance  for  all  future  ages — the 
dogma  of  the  inviolability  of  Mount  Zion.  There  God 
has  His  dwelling  on  earth,  His  habitation  ;  whosoever 
touched  this,  touched  the  personal  property  of  God. 
And  such  an  attack  God  could  not  permit  ;  even  the 
mighty  Assyrian  would  dash  himself  to  pieces  against 
the  hill  of  Zion,  if  in  his  impious  presumption  he  dared 
to  stretch  out  his  hand  against  it.  Isaiah  really  suc- 
ceeded in  subduing  the  excitement.  Jerusalem  re- 
mained quiet  and  no  further  steps  were  taken. 


In  the  year  705  Sargon  died,  probably  murdered 
by  his  son  and  successor  Sennacherib.  Everywhere 
did  men  rejoice,  that  the  rod  of  the  oppressor  was 
broken,  and  they  now  prepared  themselves  with  all 
their  might  to  shake  off  the  yoke.  Isaiah  remained 
firm  in  his  warnings  to  undertake  nothing  and  to  leave 
everything  in  the  hands  of  God. 

This  was  not  cowardice.  On  the  contrary,  it  was 
the  siiblimest  feeling  of  strength,  the  sentiment  of 
being  in  God's  hand,  of  being  safe  and  protected  by 
Him.  This  is  proved  by  a  very  characteristic  passage, 
which  is  one  of  the  most  powerful  in  all  Isaiah.  An 
embassy  had  come  from  Ethiopia  to  Jerusalem  to  so- 
licit an  alliance  against  Assyria,  Isaiah  says  :  "Return 
to  your  country.  All  ye  inhabitants  of  the  world  and 
dwellers  on  the  earth,  see  ye,  when  he  lifteth  up  an 
ensign  on  the  mountains,  and  when  he  bloweth  a 
trumpet,  hear  ye.  For  so  the  Lord  said  unto  me,  I 
will  take  my  rest,  and  I  will  consider  in  my  dwelling- 
place  like  a  clear  heat  upon  herbs  and  like  a  cloud  of 
dew  in  the  heat  of  harvest.  For  afore  the  harvest  when 
the  bud  is  perfect  and  the  sour  grape  is  ripening  in  the 
flower,  he  shall  both  cut  off  the  sprigs  with  pruning 
hooks,  and  take  away  and  cut  down  the  branches. 
They  shall  be  left  together  with  the  fowls  of  the  moun- 
tains, and  to  the  beasts  of  the  earth  ;  and  the  fowls 
shall  summer  upon  them,  and  all  the  beasts  of  the 
earth  shall  winter  upon  them."  Then  will  the  Ethio- 
peans  also  bow  down  to  the  God,  who  is  enthroned  on 
Zion. 

Here  God  plays  with  the  Assyrian  as  a  wild  beast 
with  his  prey.  He  lets  him  have  his  own  way,  appears 
even  to  encourage  him  ;  but  at  the  right  moment  He 
has  only  to  strike  out  to  stretch  him  lifeless  on  the 
ground. 

This  time,  however,  Isaiah  was  unable  to  stem  the 
rising  current  of  enthusiastic  patriotism.  In  spite  of 
his  efforts  an  alliance  with  Ethiopia  and  Egypt  was 
concluded,  and  Hezekiah  together  with  all  the  small 
rulers  of  the  neighboring  lands,  openly  rebelled  against 
the  mighty  Assyrian  monarch. 

Isaiah's  position  at  this  period  is  very  curious,  and 
apparently  a  very  contradictory  one.  Nowhere  does 
he  oppose  his  people  with  greater  harshness,  never  did 
he  utter  bitterer  truths,  or  hurl  more  terrible  threats 
against  them  ;  yet  despite  all  he  remains  unmoved  in 
his  assurance  that  God  will  save  Jerusalem,  and  not 
suffer  it  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  heathen.  And 
wonderful  to  say,  his  promise  is  fulfilled  ! 

In  the  year  701  Sennacherib  approached  with  a 
mighty  army.  Egypt  and  Ethiopia  were  beaten,  and 
Judasa  horribly  desolated.  The  Assyrians  robbed  and 
plundered  forty-six  cities,  and  drove  200, 150  men  out  of 
this  small  land  of  not  over  1500  miles  square  into  cap- 
tivity.   But  the  waves  actually  broke  against  the  walls 


THE     OF>EN     COURT. 


4491 


of  Jerusalem.  The  Assyrians  withdrew  without  hav- 
ing accomphshed  their  object.  In  the  direst  moment 
of  trouble  God  triumphed  over  them  and  protected  his 
city.  The  fate  to  which  twenty-one  years  previously 
Israel  and  Samaria  had  succumbed,  did  not  befall 
Judah  and  Jerusalem. 

We  can  well  imagine  how  the  wonderful  fulfilment 
of  his  prophecy  must  have  increased  the  authority  of 
the  prophet.  God  Himself  had  imprinted  the  seal  of 
His  approval  on  the  words  of  Isaiah.  And  this  man, 
ever  restlessly  active  for  the  welfare  of  his  people,  at 
once  turned  his  success  to  practical  profit.  The  Book 
of  Kings  tells  us  that  Hezekiah  reformed  the  worship 
of  the  nation  and  abolished  the  worst  idolatrous  prac- 
tices in  the  temple  at  Jerusalem.  We  must  surely 
imagine  Isaiah  as  the  motive  power  in  this  reform, 
and  as  the  date  of  its  carrying  out  we  must  most  nat- 
urally regard  the  time  succeeding  the  wonderful  pre- 
servation of  Jerusalem.  Thus  with  Isaiah  prophecy 
had  become  a  power  which  exerted  a  decisive  influence 
over  the  destinies  of  the  people,  and  brought  it  safely 
and  surely  to  blessing  and  to  salvation. 

We  know  nothing  of  the  last  days  of  Isaiah.  The 
legend  that  he  suffered  martyrdom  at  an  advanced  age, 
is  thoroughly  unfounded,  and  in  itself  most  highly  im- 
probable. 

With  Isaiah  sank  into  the  grave  the  greatest  classic 
of  Israel.  Never  did  the  speech  of  Canaan  pour  forth 
with  more  brilliant  splendor  and  beauty  than  from  his 
lips.  He  has  a  strength  and  power  of  language,  a 
majesty  and  sublimity  of  expression,  an  inexhaustible 
richness  of  fitting  and  stirring  imagery,  that  over- 
whelms the  reader,  nay,  fairly  bewilders  him. 


ETHICS  IN  NATURE. 

[Prof.  Wilhelm  Winkler  has  recently  published  in  the  nine- 
teenth annual  report  of  the  public  Real-Schools  of  the  Leopold- 
stadt  of  Vienna  an  essay  entitled  Ethik  in  der  NaturgesthichU,  in 
which  he  protests  against  the  wide-spread  prejudice  among  the 
authoiities  of  Europe  against  natural  history  as  a  branch  of  edu- 
cation in  the  public  schools,  on  the  ground  that  it  spreads  materi- 
alism and  fosters  atheism.  He  offers  quotations  from  the  most 
prominent  scientists,  such  as  Newton,  Kepler,  Linnaeus,  Davy, 
Liebig,  Oersted,  Madler,  and  last,  but  not  least,  Gojthe,  in  cor- 
roboration of  his  view  that  natural  science,  if  well  understood,  can 
only  serve  to  deepen  our  religious  sentiments  and  broaden  our 
moral  sympathies.  Prof.  Winkler's  essay  is  by  no  means  a  sys- 
tematic investigation  of  the  subject,  but  it  contains  several 
beautiful  observations  of  nature,  which  he  employs  to  point  out 
the  moral  lessons  that  natnre  teaches.  We  propose  to  present 
our  readers  with  an  English  translation  of  a  series  of  brief 
sketches  extracted  from  his  pamphlet,  of  which  the  first  is  "The 
Wheatfield."] 

THE  WHEATFIELD. 

Nature  and  civilisation  have  passed  at  all  times  as 
opposites,  yet  civilised  man  has  ever  felt  himself 
powerfully  attracted  by  nature.  Whenever  it  is  his 
good  fortune,  therefore,  to  shake  the  dust  of  the  city 


from  his  shoes,  he  wends  his  way  almost  without 
exception  to  regions  in  which  the  forms  of  nature's 
scenery  are  most  untouched  by  human  hands  and 
exist  in  their  greatest  primitive  variety. 

And  yet  even  the  most  highly  cultivated  land  is 
not  entirely  wanting  in  that  poetry  which  primitive 
nature  instils  into  the  wanderer's  soul  and  which 
touches  so  profoundly  his  heart.  Even  that  form  of 
cultivated  nature  which  is  most  devoid  of  her  varied 
beauties — the  wheatfield — affords  an  inexhaustible 
plentitude  of   joy  and  pleasure,  when  closely  studied. 

No  finer,  no  simpler  portrayal  of  the  significance 
of  grain  in  the  development  of  human  civilisation  can 
be  found  than  that  given  by  an  Indian  chieftain  in  an 
address  to  his  fellow-tribesmen  urging  the  adoption 
of  agriculture.      He  says  : 

"Know  ye  not  that  the  white  men  live  from  grain 
whilst  we  live  from  flesh  ;  that  it  takes  this  flesh  more 
than  thirty  moons  to  grow  in,  and  that  it  is  scarce  ; 
that  every  one  of  those  marvellous  little  grains  that 
they  scatter  upon  the  land  returns  to  them  a  hundred 
fold  ;  that  the  meat  whereof  we  live  has  four  feet  for 
flight,  whereas  we  possess  only  two;  that  the  little 
grains  stay  and  grow  where  the  white  men  sow  them  ; 
that  the  winter  which  is  for  us  a  time  of  labor  is  for 
them  a  time  of  rest  ? 

"Therefore  is  their  life  longer  than  ours.  I  say 
unto  you,  every  one  that  will  heed  me,  that  before  the 
cedars  of  our  village  shall  have  died  and  the  maple- 
trees  of  the  valley  shall  have  ceased  to  yield  us  sugar, 
the  race  of  the  grain- sowers  will  have  rooted  out  the 
race  of  the  flesh-eaters,  unless  the  hunters  shall  re- 
solve to  sow. " 

But  the  voice  of  wise  foresight  and  experience 
died  away  unheeded  amid  the  short-sighted  folly  of 
the  crowd. 

"The  marvellous  grains  of  the  white  man,"  the 
fragile  blade  of  wheat,  that  the  softest  breath  of  air 
can  bend,  has  won  the  victory  over  the  never-failing 
arrow  and  the  unerring  spear  of  the  red  man. 

Not  until  man  exchanged  the  hunter's  bloody 
spear  and  the  uncertain  shepherd's  staff  for  the 
plough,  only  since  he  has  acquired  the  art  of  sowing 
and  harvesting,  of  earning  his  daily  bread  with  blood- 
less hands — only  since  a  tiller  of  the  soil  has  been  de- 
veloped out  of  the  hunter  and  the  shepherd,  has  man 
really  become  man. 

The  tiller  of  the  soil  founds  his  existence  not  on 
blind  chance,  but  on  the  eternal  laws  of  nature. 

The  labor  and  weary  effort  of  the  new  mode  of  life 
soon  proved  more  successful,  according  as  it  was 
found  to  be  in  harmony  with  the  invariable  workings 
of  the  forces  of  nature.  To  investigate  those  laws, 
therefore,  lay  directly  in  the  interests  of  agriculture. 


4492 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


This  awakened  thought  and  rendered  acute  the  in- 
tellect of  man. 

But  no  thought,  however  acute,  can  stir  a  grain  of 
sand  from  its  place,  unless  moved  by  the  hands. 
Methodical,  uninterrupted  activity  of  the  bodily 
powers  of  man  is  necessary,  which  makes  his  body 
strong  and  his  mind  moral.  This  was  the  weary  road 
by  which  man  came  to  understand  and  to  solve  the 
great  problems  of  the  race. 

The  unsubstantial  tent  gave  way  to  the  staunchly 
built  hut.  Men  took  up  permanent  abodes.  Villages 
grew,  which  formed  themselves  into  larger  commun- 
ities and  then  into  states.  From  states  the  powers 
and  virtues  of  the  nations  sprang. 

Nature,  accordingly,  was  the  first  instructress  of 
man.  She  incited  in  him  his  first  impulses  to  think 
and  to  acquire  knowledge  by  experiments.  From  the 
state  "Hia"  onwards,  which  Chinese  agriculturists 
founded  two  thousand  four  hundred  years  before  the 
birth  of  Christ,  until  the  present  day,  farmers  have 
always  been  the  first  founders  of  states.  In  all  times 
agriculture  has  been  the  granite  rock  upon  which  the 
stupendous  but  artificial  edifice  of  the  modern  state 
has  safely  rested,  and  as  in  the  past,  so  now,  too,  the 
might  and  glory  of  states  rises  and  falls  with  the 
moral,  physical  and  economical  power  and  solidity  of 
its  tillers  of  the  soil. 

THE    OAK. 

A  fiock  of  blithesome  starlings  are  scurrying  over 
the  meadows,  in  noisy  bustle  and  chatter. 

There,  on  that  mighty  oak,  which  commands  the 
entrance  into  the  forest  ravine,  they  alight. 

A  magnificent  tree,  such  as  the  artist  paints  as 
the  emblem  of  the  German  nation  !  A  tree,  which  is 
the  eagle's  favorite  resort,  and  which  the  hero  takes 
as  his  prototype. 

Indestructible  is  its  form,  and  seemingly  planted 
for  aye.  Far  out  its  gigantic  roots  extend,  embrac- 
ing whole  rocks.  Titanic  is  the  spread  of  the  defiant 
boughs  that  form  its  colossal  crown. 

The  true  and  proper  symbol  of  an  unconquered 
people ! 

Indestructible?     Destined  for  all  eternity? 

Secretly  and  unnoticed  a  tiny,  cuddling  shoot — 
the  mistletoe — has  lodged  itself  in  the  body  of  the 
unconquerable  monarch,  and  whilst  the  eye  of  the  un- 
initiated tourist  is  enchanted  by  the  glistering  green 
of  the  leaves  and  tendrils  encompassing  the  knotted 
boughs,  the  experienced  eye  of  the  friend  and  lover 
of  nature  sinks  at  the  sight. 

He  sees  that  the  destiny  of  the  forest  giant  is 
sealed.  Branchlet  succeeds  branchlet,  each  shaping 
itself  into  a  tiny  tree,  each  forming  for  itself  a  crown. 
One  and  all,  they  sink   their  ravenous  roots  beneath 


the  bark  of  the  towering  branches,  to  live  unlabor- 
iously  from  the  toilsome  effort  of  the  tree  and  its  saps. 
When  the  wanderer  returns  to  the  spot  after  years 
have  passed,  he  oftentimes  is  unable  to  recognise  the 
once  magnificent  monarch. 

Its  colossal  crown  has  nearly  all  vanished. 

Withered,  shorn,  and  leafless,  its  branches  tower 
into  the  blue  of  heaven,  swollen  into  gnarled  and  re- 
pulsive knots.  On  them  still  thrive  the  tiny,  count- 
less mistletoe  trees,  the  stranglers  of   the   forest  king. 

He  who  has  so  often  felt  the  titanic  power  of  the 
thunder-bolt  in  his  limbs,  undismayed,  who  has  defied 
and  braved  unnumbered  storms,  is  fallen  a  victim  to 
this  insignificant  shrublet,  a  dwarf  in  the  kingdom  of 
plants.  % 

Thousands  of  wood-worms  now  bore  their  tunnels 
in  the  interior  of  the  conquered  giant  and  complete 
the  work  of  his  destruction. 

But  will  this  insidious  destroyer  of  the  tree  escape 
its  victim's  destiny  ?  What  has  the  future  in  store 
for  //  ? 

THE  ANT-HILL. 

Look  now  at  those  ants  below  us — those  real  fa- 
vorites of  the  friend  of  nature,  so  simple  and  modest 
in  their  outward  appearance,  yet  endowed  with  such 
rich  inward  bounties.  Surely  the  methodical  labor  of 
the  tiny  ants  and  bees  must  seem  more  attractive  to 
every  thoughtful  man  than  the  light-headed  antics  of 
a  butterfly,  however  gorgeous. 

Far  off  in  the  remote  suburbs  of  the  little  ant-city, 
the  tiny  creatures  are  wandering  about  in  the  high 
grass,  some  in  groups,  some  entirely  alone,  apparently 
bewildered,  like  men  lost  in  a  forest. 

Here  a  large  body  has  gathered  together  to  engage 
in  some  common  work.  The  little  animals  are  busied 
in  dragging  off  to  their  dwelling  a  dead  caterpillar — a 
tremendous  burden  for  such  diminutive  creatures. 
Yet  how  intelligently  each  one  of  the  little  animals 
behaves  in  his  use  of  his  bodily  strength  and  of  the 
points  of  vantage  which  the  character  of  the  ground 
offers  !  How  willing  it  is  at  all  times  to  give  assist- 
ance, and  how  patient  and  considerate  it  is  towards 
its  fellow-laborers. 

There  sits  one  of  the  group  on  a  high  swaying 
blade,  like  a  look-out  on  the  mast  of  a  ship.  Could  it 
be  the  duty  of  this  fellow,  perhaps,  to  spy  out  the 
direction  of  the  city,  so  as  to  show  the  way  to  his 
brothers? 

But  turn  to  the  ant-hill.  What  a  fascinating  pic- 
ture is  there  unrolled  before  the  loving  eye  of  the  ob- 
server ! 

Here  a  band  of  the  little  animals  is  struggling  to 
repair  with  bits  of  pitch  and  needles  from  the  pines, 
the  damage  which  the  last  shower  has  done  to  their 
habitation. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4493 


Whole  attachments  are  changing  the  resting-places 
of  the  young  brood.  The  larva;  and  pupa?  are  being 
carried  from  the  close  atmosphere  of  the  nurseries, 
which  the  shower  has  dampened,  into  the  warm,  sa- 
lubrious air  of  the  forest. 

Could  a  mother  treat  her  children  more  lovingly 
and  carefully,  or  show  more  unalloyed  self-denial  than 
does  ever}'  single  one  of  these  little  animal  "nurses  "? 

In  the  society  of  men  such  conduct  is  called 
mother's  love.      What  is   it  in  the  society  of  ants? 

The  young  people  appear  to  be  celebrating  some 
holiday.     They  are  plainly  engaged  in  a  joyous  game. 

With  the  fore  parts  of  their  bodies  lifted,  the  little 
animals  are  moving  hither  and  thither,  half  hopping, 
half  skipping.  Using  their  forefeet  like  hands  they 
romp  and  wrestle  like  roguish  dogs  at  play. 

Suddenly  an  accident  interrupts  the  gay  scene.  A 
gorgeous  ground-beetle,  pursuing  his  booty  on  the 
branch  of  an  overarching  pine,  has  forgotten  in  the 
heat  of  pursuit  all  caution,  lost  his  equilibrium,  and 
fallen  directly  in  the  midst  of  the  rolicking  company. 
At  once  the  heedlessl}'  romping  bands  are  converted 
into  bristling  hosts  of  redoubtable  warriors,  ready  to 
stake  their  lives  for  the  safety  of  their  city. 

Unmindful  of  themselves,  each  one  of  the  tiny  he- 
roes throws  himself  on  the  enemy  that  has  disturbed 
the  civic  peace  and  infringed  others'  rights,  but  is 
physicall}'  so  much  their  superior.  Dismayed,  the 
beetle  defends  himself.  But  the  power  of  the  giant 
succumbs  to  the  unity  of  the  dwarfs,  and  the  next 
moment  the  intruder  has  taken  to  flight. 

On  the  field  of  battle,  however,  several  wounded 
warriors  lie  strewn.  Peace  again  reigns  in  the  city. 
But  the  truculent,  redoubtable  defenders  of  the  do- 
mestic rights  are  now  become  so  many  kind  Samari- 
tans, who  seem  to  think  only  of  their  wounded  com- 
rades. 

Disinterestedly  they  feel  the  wounds  of  their  un- 
fortunate fellow-combatants,  raise  the  invalids  care- 
fully on  high  by  means  of  their  mandibles  and  carry 
them  gently  into  the  inner  apartments,  where  they  re- 
ceive the  proper  care.  Soon  everything  again  goes 
its  wonted  course.  Every  one  of  the  little  citizens 
again  pursues  his  customary  employment. 

Such  a  noble  deed,  thinks  the  observer,  must  be 
rewarded.  A  small  bit  of  sugar,  which  has  been  left 
over  from  breakfast,  is  crushed  between  the  fingers 
and  let  fall  on  the  little  people  like  the  shower  of 
manna  on  the  children  of  Israel  in  the  desert. 

At  first  there  is  consternation.  The  white  grains 
are  felt  by  the  antennffi,  tested  by  the  jaws,  examined 
and  tasted  by  the  tongue.  The  lively  play  of  the  an- 
tenna? and  the  peculiar  hopping  motions  of  the  little 
animals  are  evidence  of  the  joy  that  now  possesses 
them.     Thinking  of  themselves  last,  a  number  of  them 


hasten  into  the  interior  of  the  common  habitation. 
From  all  sides  and  from  all  the  gates  of  the  city  the 
invited  guests  now  pour  forth  to  receive  their  portion 
of  the  unanticipated  donation. 

Magnificent  qualities,  the  observer  thinks.  Tiiese 
little  animals  have  really  a  heart,  but  not  an  anatomi- 
cal heart  only,  like  many  of  their  human  counterparts, 
but  a  heart  that  finds  a  living  expression  in  sentiment 
and  sacrifice,  in  pity  and  compassion.  In  this  society 
no  vile  greed  is  discoverable,  no  avarice,  no  heartless 
striving  to  take  from  others  necessities,  merely  to  ac- 
cumulate for  oneself  a  superfluity. 

Here  no  brutal  struggle  for  existence  is  to  be  found, 
but  everywhere  we  meet  with  joyous  help  throughout 
all  life. 

Restlessly  and  unwearyingly  they  discharge  their 
duties.  Where,  in  the  city  of  the  ants,  are  hatred 
and  envy,  bickering  and  quarrels,  struggle  and  con- 
fusion to  be  found? 

Are  we  not  immediately  reminded  here  of  the 
words  of  the  great  Goethe,  which  Eckermann  has 
transmitted  to  us  : 

"If  God  did  not  ensoul  the  bird  with  this  almighty 
instinct  towards  its  young,  and  if  the  same  tendency 
did  not  run  through  all  the  life  of  nature,  the  world 
could  not  subsist. 

"But,  as  it  is,  the  divine  power  is  everywhere 
present,  and  eternal  love  everywhere  active." 

The  prolonged  whistling  of  a  locomotive  emerg- 
ing from  the  valley  imparts  another  direction  to  the 
naturalist's  train  of  thought.  Involuntarily  the  eye 
follows  the  railway  train  as  it  slowly  enters  the  little 
city  at  the  base  of  the  mountain.  There  one  place 
succeeds  another,  and  between  them  the  mighty  fac- 
tory-chimnej's  tower.  Infinite  are  the  lines  of  the  vil- 
lages, and  the  farthest  appears  to  the  eye  not  much 
larger  than  our  little  city  of  ants. 

There  below  men  dwell.  They,  too,  have  gath- 
ered together  in  States  in  all  the  countries  of  the  earth. 
But  men  regard  sc/f-sci-king  as  the  sole  motive  power 
of  animate  nature,  and  exalt  egotism  as  the  only  dura- 
ble bond  of  all  human  associations. 

In  the  rapine  and  murder  of  unsocially  living  ani- 
mals they  fancy  they  discover  a  scientific  justification 
of  their  doctrines,  and  like  these  they  fight  with  their 
brothers  the  battle  for  existence.  They  have  forgotten 
to  study  the  life  of  social  animals. 


CORRESPONDENCE. 

SECTS  AND  THE  CHURCH  OF  SCIENCE. 

To  the  Eiiitor  of  The  Open  Court  : 

In  your  issue  of  No.  3S8  you  state:  In  my  zeal  for  the  name 
of  truth  there  is  a  great  "  danger  of  narrowness,  The  Religion  of 
Science  should  be  broad,  its  representatives  must  be  just  towards 
others,  and  the  movement  ought  to  come  as  a  fulfilment  of  all  re- 
ligious aspirations,  not  as  their  destruction."     There  is  no  danger 


o 


4494 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


of  narrowness  where  truth  is  authority.  By  truth  we  are  forced 
to  be  just  toward  all  ;  for  the  truth  is,  all  mankind  in  their  differ- 
entiated religions  and  secular  aspects  are  specific  evolutions  from 
the  same  cosmic  root.  There  is  no  narrowness  here.  This  is 
scientific  monism  pure  and  simple.  But  while  this  doctrine  of 
the  assembly  of  science  is  thus  broad  in  regard  to  all  religious  and 
secular  sects,  it  is  just  toward  them  when  it  declares,  also,  that 
sectarianism  is  not  based  on  truth.  Therefore,  disciples  of  sect 
are  not  disciples  of  truth.  Sectarianism  is  based  on  superstition — 
something  adapted  to  humanity  in  the  place  of  truth — the  milk, 
not  the  strong  meat— which  had  of  necessity  to  come  first,  owing 
to  the  weakness  of  mankind. 

While  the  scientific  reform  movement  will  come  as  a  fulfil- 
ment of  all  true  human  aspirations  for  a  solid  base  upon  which  to 
rest,  yet  it  will  be  destructive  to  all  formulated  creeds,  both  reli- 
gious and  secular. 

The  true  kernels  will  remain,  but  the  shells  will  crumble 
away.  Mankind  will  be  justified,  but  their  creeds  and  tenets  will 
suffer  loss.  The  Church  of  Science  will  be  built  upon  a  founda- 
tion quite  the  opposite  to  that  of  religion,  that  is,  ecclesiasticism. 
It  will  be  reared  upon  the  indomitable  rock  of  monism  with  truth 
for  authority.  The  fundamental  question,  therefore,  is,  "  what  is 
truth  ?  "  The  border-line  between  truth  and  error  must  be  crossed  ; 
a  definite  stand  must  be  taken  for  the  unification  of  the  whole  hu- 
man race  ;  the  authority  of  truth  must  prevail  in  order  to  bring 
about  peace  on  earth  and  good-will  among  men. 

"  WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ?" 

To  Pilate's  question,  "  What  is  truth  ?  " 

There  was  no  answer  given. 
From  then  till  now,  to  tind  it  out, 

Philosophers  have  striven. 
Yet  in  two  words  it  can  be  told  ; 

When  said,  nought  else  remains. 
For  every  creed  is  swept  away 

By  the  two  words,  God  reigns. 

Philosophers  have  viewed  mankind 

As  free  from  Nature's  laws  ; 
Hence  reason  has  been  handicapped 

And  held  between  the  jaws 
Of  mystical  Antithesis, 

Where  it  would  always  stay, 
If  evolution  had  not  come 

To  drive  the  spell  away. 

And  show  us  by  induction  true, 

Without  a  flaw  or  stain, 
That  as  forms  can't  evolve  themselves 

It's  clear  that  God  must  reign. 
With  premise,  then,  that  God  does  reign, 

'Tis  an  objective  fact 
That  every  sect  was  born  of  Him 

To  act  and  interact 

In  evolution's  mighty  stream. 

Till  unity  is  found  ; 
Based  on  the  mighty  power  of  God, 

The  only  truthful  ground. 
Let  all  strife  die,  let  peace  be  born ; 

Let  man  not  hate  his  brother, 
For  God,  the  Power  within,  is  Lord, 

There  can't  be  any  other. 

The  atheists,  agnostics,  and  unbelievers,  so  called,  have  their 
places  in  the  onworking  of  intellectual  evolution.  Atheists  pro- 
nounce against  the  superstition  of  anthropomorphism,  agnostics 
teach  presumptive  dogmatists  to  be  modest,  and  unbelievers  show 
believers  where  they  are  mistaken.  Where  error  abounds,  all  such 
critics  are  necessary.  In  keeping  your  columns  open  for  all,  you 
are  doing  a  noble  work,  without  which  progress  would  be  impossi- 
ble, so  that  if  you  lose  some  in  theory  you  will  gain  in  relative  posi- 
tion. Truth  does  not  fear  criticism.  Superstition  must  build  a 
sectarian  wall  around  it,  it  has  no  other  defence.  Again  I  say, 
there  is  no  narrowness  here  John  Maddock. 


BOOK  NOTICES. 

Among  the  most  attractive  of  Macmillan  &  Co.'s  announce- 
ments is  that  of  their  "Illustrated  Standard  Novels," — a  series  of 
reprints  of  famous  English  works  of  fiction.  An  introduction  by 
a  critic  of  acknowledged  competence  will  be  contributed  to  each, 
and  all  will  be  illustrated  by  prominent  artists.  The  first  volume 
contains  Castle  Rackrent  and  The  Absentee  by  Maria  Edgeworth. 


The  latest  number  of  the  Nachrichten  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
Sciences  in  Gottingen,  Mathematico-physical  Department,  con- 
tains several  articles  of  interest  to  physicists  and  mathematicians. 
].  R.  Schiitz  contributes  "A  Complete  and  General  Solution  of 
the  Fundamental  Problem  of  the  Potential  Theory"  and  "An  Ex- 
tension of  Maxwell's  Law  of  the  Distribution  of  Velocities,  etc., 
from  Hertz's  Principle  of  the  Straighest  Path  ";  R.  Dedekind  gives 
an  article  "On  the  Foundations  of  the  Ideal  Theory,"  and  H. 
Burkhardt  some  remarks  "On  the  Investigations  Concerning  the 
Foundations  of  Geometry."  The  number  is  particularly  rich, 
(Gottingen  :  Dieterich).  We  have  also  received  in  this  department 
from  Prof.  H.  Schubert  of  Hamburg  two  tracts  on  H-dimensional 
space  and  on  a  new  proposition  in  the  theory  of  numbers.  (Leip- 
sic :  B.  G.  Teubner.) 

The  Open  Court  Publishing  Company  has  just  issued  a  second 
edition  of  their  authorised  English  translation  of  Th.  Ribot's  Dis~ 
eases  of  Personality.  The  translation  of  this  edition  has  been  re- 
vised throughout,  and  embodies  all  the  additions  and  corrections 
made  by  the  author  in  the  latest  (fourth)  French  edition  of  the 
work.  All  obtainable  references  have  been  verified,  the  numerous 
citations  from  English  works  have  been  recompared  and  given  in 
the  words  of  the  originals,  and  an  analytical  index  has  been  added 
which  will  greatly  enhance  the  value  of  the  book  for  students. 
Professor  Ribot's  works  form  delightful  introductions  to  the  study 
of  psychology,  while  the  concise  style  of  the  author  and  his  lucid 
resumes  will  save  the  reader  no  end  of  time  in  becoming  acquainted 
with  the  latest  results  of  this  broad  field  of  research.  (Pages,  164. 
Price:  cloth,  75  cents;  paper,  25  cents.) 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGBLER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor 


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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  402. 

IN    MEMORIAM  — GUSTAV    FREYTAG.       Edward   C. 

Hegeler 4487 

ISAIAH.     Prof.  C.  H.  Cornill 4488 

ETHICS  IN  NATURE.    The  Wheatfield.    The  Oak.    The 

Ant-Hill.     WiLHELM  Winkler 4491 

CORRESPONDENCE. 

Sects  and  the  Church  of  Science.  John  Maddock.  .  . .  4493 
BOOK  NOTICES 4494 


41 


The  Open  Court. 


A  'MTEEKLY  JOURNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  403.     (Vol.  IX.— 20  ) 


CHICAGO,   MAY  16,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
I  Single  Copies,  5  Cent 


Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.— Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


MR.  BALFOUR'S  "  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF." 

BY  GEORGE   M.    Mc  CRIE. 

It  is  a  remarkable  coincidence  that  the  two  fore- 
most figures  now  in  the  arena  of  British  politics — Mr. 
Gladstone,  the  Prime  Minister  of  the  past,  and  Mr. 
Arthur  Balfour,  the  Prime  Minister  of  the  future — 
should,  in  the  literary  world,  be  simultaneously  en- 
gaged in  the  self-same  task — that  of  the  defence  of 
the  Christian  faith.  Brought  up  in  widely  different 
schools, — the  one,  an  Anglican  High  Churchman,  the 
other  a  Scotch  Presbyterian  ;  the  one,  versed  in  pa- 
tristic lore,  a  lover  of  traditionalism,  and  a  keen  sacer- 
dotalist  ;  the  other,  every  inch  a  sturdj'  Protestant, 
but  with  a  strong  dash  of  that  metaphysicism  which 
no  educated  Scotsman  ever  wholly  lacks — these  men, 
otherwise  so  diverse  in  opinion,  agree  in  rebuking  so- 
called  "Godless  Science,"  and  in  advocating  a  prac- 
tical reversion,  on  the  part  of  the  thinking  world,  to 
the  faith  once  delivered  to  the  saints.  Singular,  that 
two  writers,  starting  from  wholly  opposite  premises, 
should  practically  reach  the  same  conclusion  ; — more 
singular  still,  that  men  of  such  undoubted  ability  and 
sincerity,  in  the  face  of  all  the  advance  of  modern 
thought,  religious,  scientific,  and  philosophic,  should 
be  found  to  counsel  a  virtual  submission  of  reason  to 
authority! 

Yet  such  is  the  case.  Mr.  Gladstone's  closing 
years  are  to  be  devoted,  we  are  told,  to  this  supreme 
endeavor.  Already,  in  his  past  controversy  with  Pro- 
fessor Huxley,  as  in  a  presently  appearing  article,  in 
a  popular  American  edition  of  the  Scriptures,  he  has 
counselled  what  amounts  to  a  practical  retrogression 
in  modern  thought — a  more  or  less  literal  adhesion  to 
the  Old  and  New  Testament  writings,  as  the  only 
"rule  of  faith  and  manners."  And  now  Mr.  Balfour, 
similarly  persuaded,  takes  the  field  somewhat  after 
the  fashion  of  Berkeley,  and,  with  Berkeley's  own 
idealistic  weapon,  seeks  to  rout  the  forces  of  natural- 
ism, agnosticism,  and  scientific  "  Godlessness,"  even 
as  the  worthy  Bishop  sought  in  his  day  and  by  a  simi- 
lar method,  to  dispose  summarily  of  all  deists,  Hobb- 
ists,  and  infidels.  In  lifting  the  Excalibur  of  idealism, 
Mr.  Balfour  handles  a  trenchant  blade,  but  it  is  a  two- 
edged  one,  which  turns  every  way.  It  will  perhaps 
be  found  that,  as  in   Berkeley's  case,  the  weapon  he 


uses   may  turn   against  himself,   destroying  the  self- 
same conclusion  which  it  was  invoked  to  defend. 

Mr.  Balfour's  latest  work,  77/c  Foundations  of  Be- 
lief,'^ is  a  suggestive  and  significant  one,  but  it  is  nei- 
ther bracing  nor  stimulating.  Indeed,  the  author's 
tone  throughout  seems  to  us  to  be  one  of  profound  in- 
tellectual weariness.  It  is  the  confession  of  a  more  or 
less  ignoble  intellectual  surrender;  the  Apologia  of  a 
lesser  Newman,  at  the  turning  of  the  ways  between 
reason  and  faith.  It  is  noteworthy  as  the  contribution 
of  a  brilliant  essayist  to  the  endless  controversy  be- 
tween ecclesiasticism  and  science,  but  its  note  is  not 
a  jubilant  one — it  is  one  which  evidences  a  tired  brain, 
a  mind  which  flags  before  the  supreme  problems  of 
life,  and  which  is  fain  to  hark  back  upon  the  affirma- 
tions of  a  creed  outworn,  as  being,  after  all  said  and 
done,  perhaps  as  good  and  true  as  any  other.  Such 
moods,  born  partly  of  weariness,  partly  of  intellectual 
satiety,  are  not  unfamiliar  to  even  the  bravest  spirits 
among  us.  But  in  such  cases  they  are  transitory; — 
they  pass  away  with  the  moment  of  mental,  or  bodily, 
languor  which  begot  them.  In  Mr.  Balfour's  case,  the 
mood  has  become  habitual,  even  chronic.  In  effect, 
what  he  says  may  be  summed  up  in  this  inconsequent 
proposition  : 

"Since  all  we  know  is  that  nothing  can  be  known,  why  not 
revert  to  the,  at  all  events  time-honored,  belief  in  a  Living  and 
Personal  Deity,  as  our  Creator,  Sustainer,  and  Eternal  Home  ? 
Since  such  a  belief  is,  to  say  the  least,  just  as  likely  to  be  well 
founded  as  any  other — since,  indeed,  the  probability  lies  faintly 
in  favor  of  such  a  hypothesis,  as  explaining  many  otherwise  in- 
soluble life  problems,  why  not  entertain  it  ?" 

This  shows  a  tone  and  a  temper  impatient  and  dis- 
satisfied with  the  slow  and  gradual,  though  assured, 
march  of  modern  science,  and  eager  to  find  the  solid 
rock  of  certainty  here  and  now  beneath  its  feet,  at 
whatever  hazards.  It  is  a  tone  and  a  temper,  how- 
ever, which  will  fascinate  many.  Mr.  Balfour's  Gos- 
pel is  just  the  one  to  suit  those  who  are  too  indolent 
and  careless  to  search  personally  for  the  truth  which 
makes  free.  It  will  help  to  pacify  the  timid  religion- 
ist, zealous  for  the  infallibility  of  the  Biblical  testi- 
mony, and  trembling  for  the  Ark  of  God.      It  will  be 

1  The  Foundations  0/ Belief :  Being  Notes  Introduetoyy  to  the  Study  0/  The- 
ology. By  the  Right  Honorable  Arthur  James  Balfour,  M.P,  London  :  Long- 
mans.    1895.     Price,  I2S  6d. 


4496 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


popular — such  orthodox  utterances  of  famous  men  al- 
ways are.  But  for  all  that  it  has  not  the  ring  of  hon- 
est conviction  in  it ;  there  is  nothing  of  serious  pur- 
pose or  of  strenuous  endeavor  in  its  half-hearted 
pleading — nothing  of  nobility,  nothing  of  truth  ! 

At  the  very  outset  this  modern  Defender  of  the 
Faith  makes  some  notable  slips.  His  book  is  mainly 
an  arraignment  of  what  he  calls  "naturalism."  The 
first  part  of  the  volume  consists  of  chapters  on  Natu- 
ralism and  Ethics,  Naturalism  and  ^Esthetics,  and  Nat- 
uralism and  Reason.  What,  then,  it  may  be  asked, 
is  "naturalism"?  Naturalism,  in  Mr.  Balfour's  sense, 
is  the  persuasion  that  we  know  phenomena,  and  the 
laws  governing  them,  but  nothing  more.  But,  as 
Professor  Huxley  well  remarks,  in  the  first  part  of  his 
criticism  of  the  volume  in  the  Nineteenth  Century : 
"Mr.  Balfour  appears  to  restrict  the  term  'phenom- 
ena'  to  those  which  constitute  the  subject-matter  of 
the  natural  sciences,  mental  states  not  being  reckoned 
among  them," — i.  e.  the  province  of  psychology,  and 
hence  of  consciousness.  The  attack  is  really  made 
against  agnosticism;  "and  agnosticism,"  continues 
Professor  Huxley,  "has  not  necessarily  anything  to 
do  with  naturalism,  properly  so  called."  Moreover, 
"  If  the  '  natural  science  '  of  Mr.  Balfour  is  unlike  any- 
thing known  to  men  of  science,  it  follows  that  the 
view  of  '  naturalism  '  founded  upon  it,  and  the  concep- 
tion of  empiricism  and  agnosticism,  which  are  counted 
among  the  forms  of  naturalism,  are  equally  non-exis- 
tent."! 

As  a  consequence  of  this  grave  initial  blunder,  Mr. 
Balfour  does  not  fight  all  along  the  line  of  the  Chris- 
tian defences.  His  apologetic  is  really  powerless 
against  those  systems  of  modern  thought  which  take 
their  stand  on  the  newest  results  in  the  fields  of  phys- 
ics, psychology,  and  philosophy,  and  which  erect 
thereon  a  consistent  and  reasoned  belief  as  to  man's 
place  and  purpose  in  the  economy  of  the  universe,  his 
evolution  from  primordial  elements,  and  his  necessary 
immortality,  in  conformity  with  the  laws  of  heredity 
and  of  the  conservation  of  matter  and  energy.  All 
this  Mr.  Balfour  evades.  "Godless  science,"  with 
him,  is  the  foe  to  be  vanquished,  and  he  can  descry 
none  other  in  the  field.  Believers  in  [material]  phe- 
nomena solely,  and  agnostic  as  regards  everything 
else,  have  their  moral  sentiments  naturally  depraved. 
Hence  the  following  passages  inter  alia  : 

"  Kant,  as  we  all  know,  compared  the  moral  law  to  the  starry 
heavens,  and  found  them  both  sublime.  It  would,  on  the  natural- 
istic hypothesis,  be  more  appropriate  to  compare  it  to  the  protec. 
live  blotches  on  the  beetle's  back,  and  to  find  them  both  ingeni- 
ous. 

"  If  naturalism  be  true — or  rather,  if  it  be  the  whole  truth — 

I  Nineteenth  Century,  March,  1895.  In  the  April  number  Professor  Hux. 
ley  does  not  continue  his  criticism.  It  will  probably  be  resumed  in  the  follow- 
ing issue. 


is  morality  but  a  bare  catalogue  of  utilitarian  precepts,  beauty  but 
the  chance  occasion  of  a  passing  pleasure,  reason  but  the  dim  pas- 
sage from  one  set  of  unthinking  habits  to  another  ?  All  that  gives 
dignity  to  life,  all  that  gives  value  to  effort,  shrinks  and  fades  un- 
der the  pitiless  glare  of  a  creed  like  this  ;  and  even  curiosity,  the 
hardiest  among  the  nobler  passions  of  the  soul,  must  languish  un- 
der the  conviction,  that,  neither  for  this  generation  nor  for  any 
that  shall  come  after  it,  neither  in  this  life  nor  in  another,  will  the 
tie  be  wholly  loosened  by  which  reason,  not  less  than  appetite,  is 
held  in  hereditary  bondage  to  the  service  of  our  material  needs." 

Reason,  Mr.  Balfour  maintains,  is  very  much  over- 
estimated. All  the  important  things  of  life  are  done 
without  its  aid.  The  subordinate  part  which  it  plays 
in  the  conduct  of  life  is,  however,  more  fully  dwelt 
upon  under  the  heading  of  the  province  of  authority. 
Lastly,  under  this  section,  the  morality  of  naturalism 
[by  which  we  presume  the  writer  to  mean  agnosti- 
cism] is  parasitic  in  character.  Illustrating  his  mean- 
ing by  speaking  of  the  parasite  which  lives,  and  can 
live  only,  within  the  bodies  of  more  highly  organised 
animals,  he  adds  : 

"  So  it  is  with  those  persons  who  claim  to  show,  by  their  ex- 
ample, that  naturalism  is  practically  consistent  with  the  mainte- 
nance of  ethical  ideals  with  which  naturalism  has  no  natural  affin- 
ity. Their  spiritual  life  is  parasitic  ;  it  is  sheltered  by  convictions 
which  belong,  not  to  them,  but  to  the  society  of  which  they  form 
a  part  ;  it  is  nourished  by  processes  in  which  they  take  no  share. 
And  when  these  convictions  decay,  and  these  processes  come  to 
an  end,  the  alien  life  which  they  have  maintained  can  scarce  be 
expected  to  outlast  them." 

All  that  need  be  said  regarding  this  illustration  is 
that  it  is  not  in  the  best  of  taste,  that  it  is  not,  by  any 
means,  original,  and  that  it  conveys  a  truism,  it  being 
an  accepted  fact  Christianity  has  invariably  claimed  a 
monopoly  of  all  the  virtues. 

SOME  REASONS  FOR  BELIEF. 

Such  is  the  title  of  the  second  part  of  the  volume. 
After  what  has  just  been  said  in  depreciation  of  the 
functions  of  reason,  it  seems  a  little  odd  to  appeal  to 
the  reasoning  faculty  as  having  any  share  in  the  deci- 
sion of  the  question. 

Scientific  data  are  assailed  with  the  weapons  of 
idealism,  with  the  view  of  showing  that  of  all  things 
the  testimony  of  the  senses  is  the  least  reliable,  as 
being  prone  to  error.  Science  itself  contradicts  the 
popular  view,  ex.  gr.  that  a  green  tree  is  standing  in 
the  next  field,  by  its  own  explanation  of  the  complex 
series  of  facts  which  such  an  impression  really  repre- 
sents. The  "red"  is  not  in  the  rose,  it  is  a  sensation 
produced  in  ourselves,  and  so  on.  Hence,  he  says — 
speaking  of  naturalism  : 

"We  can  hardly  avoid  being  struck  by  the  incongruity  of  a 
scheme  of  belief  whose  premises  are  wholly  derived  from  wit- 
nesses admittedly  untrustworthy,  yet  which  is  unable  to  supply 
any  criterion,  other  than  the  evidence  of  these  witnesses  them- 
selves, by  which  the  character  of  their  evidence  can  in  any  given 
case  be  determined." 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4497 


This  statement  is  a  singular  distortion  of  admitted 
physical  and  psj'chological  facts.  It  shows  to  what 
straits  Mr.  Balfour  is  put  in  order  to  reduce  rcaso/icd 
scientific  conclusions  to  a  minimum.  Solely  on  the 
ground  that  physical  phenomena  have  often  a  surface 
appearance  at  variance  with  their  scientifically  ascer- 
tained reality,  the  testimony  of  the  senses  is  denounced 
as  "untrustworthy"!  Why,  one  would  think  that  the 
self-same  senses  have  played  their  part  in  the  correct 
interpretation — the  required  scientific  correction — of 
the  surface  appearance  !  It  would  be  quite  as  logical 
for  our  author  to  argue  that  the  "rising  "  and  "set- 
ting" of  the  sun  is  an  erroneous  and  thoroughly  mis- 
leading conclusion.  Yet  are  we  not  content  to  speak 
of  the  sun  as  doing  so,  supplying,  if  need  be,  mentally, 
the  correct  explanation  of  the  phenomenon  which  sci- 
ence teaches  ?  In  the  same  way  science  instructs  us 
regarding  the  true  rationale  of  the  appearance  of  the 
green  tree  in  the  field  :  only,  as  Clifford  somewhere 
says,  "  we  cannot  be  pedantic  all  day,"  so  we  are  con- 
tent to  use  the  ordinary  phrase  and  to  assert  that  the 
tree,  in  all  its  greenness  and  other  qualities,  exists 
where  we  see  it.  So  it  does,  for  all  practical  purposes. 
There  is  nothing  definitely  "erroneous"  in  such  a 
judgment.  Being,  however,  not  a  single  judgment, 
but  rather  a  synthesis  of  many  interdependent  judg- 
ments, it  is  capable  of  analysis,  that  is  all. 

Mr.  Balfour,  however,  presses  the  point  still  fur- 
ther, he  says : 

"Anything  which  would  distribute  similar  green  rays  on  the 
retina  of  my  eyes,  in  the  same  pattern  as  that  produced  by  the 
tree,  or  anything  which  would  produce  a  like  irritation  of  the  optic 
nerve,  or  liki  modification  of  the  cerebral  tissues,  would  produce 
an  impression  of  a  tree  quite  indistinguishable  from  the  original 
impression,  but  it  would  be  wholly  incorrect." 

This  would  be  an  ingenious  argument,  if  it  were 
not  an  erroneous  one  !  The  catch  lies  in  the  words 
which  we  italicise  in  the  above  extract.  Expressions 
such  as  similar,  like,  the  same  as,  etc.,  ought  always 
to  be  employed  with  the  utmost  care  in  argument,  and 
with  a  precise  understanding  arrived  at,  as  to  the 
sense  in  which  they  are  so  used.  If  by  "similar,"  in 
the  above  quotation,  Mr.  Balfour  means  identical,  and 
by  "like,"  the  same  as,  then  assuredly  his  argument  is 
faulty.  For  the  self-same  retinal  image,  optic  nerve 
irritation,  and  changes  in  cerebral  tissue  would,  if  re- 
peated, only  produce  the  self-same  impression  which 
would  not  be  "incorrect,"  but  wholly  accurate — in 
other  words,  would  represent  the  self-same  tree!  All 
the  elements  which  go  to  form  the  perceptual  synthe- 
sis which  we  cognise  as  a  green  tree  being  present 
once  more,  the  original  synthesis  would  again  exist 
necessarily.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  by  the  words  "  sim- 
ilar "  and  "like"  in  the  above  extract  is  meant  only 
something  approaching  to,  or    very  nearly  the  same  as, 


then  the  impression  generated  would  not  be  that  of 
the  tree  as  formerly  viewed,  and  accordingly  it  would 
not  be  "indistinguishable,"  but,  on  the  contrary,  quite 
distinguishable  "from  the  original  impression."  In 
either  case,  Mr.  Balfour's  argument  falls. 

SOME  CAUSES  OF  BELIEF. 

Under  this  heading,  which  comprises  Part  III  of 
the  volume,  we  have  a  systematic  exaltation  of  author- 
ity at  the  expense  of  reason.  Authority,  with  Mr.  Bal- 
four, stands  for  that  grasp  of  non-rational  causes, 
moral,  social,  and  educational,  which  produces  its  re- 
sults by  psychic  processes,  other  than  reason.  There 
are  many  instances  in  point.  But  the  objection  here 
is,  that,  in  many  cases — the  great  majority  of  cases, 
indeed — in  which  we  act  without  fully  reasoning  out 
the  conclusions  arrived  at,  reasoning  though  behind 
the  scenes  is  nevertheless  the  virtually  controlling 
power.  I  find  a  summons  from  a  coroner  on  my  table, 
commanding  my  presence,  in  the  capacity  of  a  jury- 
man, at  a  certain  place  and  date.  I  instinctively  obey 
the  summons,  postponing  all  other  engagements  in 
order  to  do  so.  But  do  I  act,  in  such  a  case,  from  a 
blind  submission  to  the  coroner's  authority,  as  Mr. 
Balfour  would  have  it?  Not  at  all.  My  sense  of  the 
imperative  nature  of  the  summons  is  made  up,  in  the 
last  recess,  of  various  previously  reasoned-out  convic- 
tions :  ex.  gr.,  the  power  of  the  coroner  to  summon 
me;  my  duty  to  the  State,  and  as  a  citizen  ;  my  knowl- 
edge of  the  penalty  for  non-attendance,  and  that  I 
have  no  valid  ground  on  which  to  be  exempted  from 
serving.  All  this  is  a  very  different  matter  from  blind 
acquiescence.  It  is  a  perfectly  reasoned-out  process, 
even  though  I  may  not  repeat  the  several  steps  of  it. 
At  the  last  moment,  I  may  elect  not  to  serve,  and  to 
pay  the  fine  for  non-attendance,  a  stronger  motive 
having  meanwhile  predominated.  Nine  tenths  of  our 
daily  duties  are  similarly  actuated  by  previously  rea- 
soned-out convictions,  and  such  convictions,  so  stere- 
otyped as  to  become  almost  instinctive,  really  give 
evidence,  not  of  automatism,  or  of  submission  to 
authority,  but  of  reason  /;/  excelsis. 

Instead  of  authority  ruling,  as  Mr.  Balfour  puts  it, 
in  the  provinces  of  ethics  and  politics,  science  and  so- 
cial life,  we  would  substitute  a  complex  process  of 
what  might  be  called  abbre-i'iated  reasoning.  No  man 
dreams  of  questioning  a  scientific  premise  laid  down 
by  an  eminent  savant,  on  the  ground  that  the  experi- 
ment has  not  been  verified  by  himself.  It  is  on  the 
ground  of  the  standing  of  the  savant  that  it  is  taken 
for  granted  that  his  experiment  has  been  genuinely 
tested.  Such  a  one,  we  know,  would  not,  for  the  sake 
of  his  own  reputation  alone,  hazard  a  deception.  By 
a  process  of  reasoning  identical  with  or  akin  to  this, 
we,  accordingly,  accept  his  statement  on  trust.   Should 


4498 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


the  standing,  or  bona  fides,  of  the  scientific  man  be 
thereafter  seriously  impugned,  we  distrust  his  after- 
results — nay,  may  reject  them  wholly.  All  through, 
the  balance  of  reason  continually  weighs  the  pro  and 
con.  Blind  submission  to  authority,  on  the  other  hand, 
believes  the  impossible,  the  incredible,  even  like  Ter- 
tullian,  believes  in  it  "because  it  is  impossible"! 
Thus  taking  statements  on  trust,  after  deliberation,  is 
like  the  system  of  credit  in  business.  Legitimately 
safe-guarded,  it  is  indispensable  in  the  interests  of 
progress  and  expansion.  We  accept  many  things,  on 
the  testimony  of  those  whom  we  judge  to  be  reliable, 
which  we  have  neither  the  time,  nor  the  opportunity, 
to  verify  for  ourselves.  Mr.  Balfour,  however,  slumps 
all  these  cases  under  one  heading — that  of  authority. 
According  to  this  criterion,  the  use  of  a  table  of  loga- 
rithms would  be  a  submission  of  our  reason  to  the 
authority  of  the  compiler  ! 

SUGGESTIONS  TOWARDS   A  PROVISIONAL   PHILOSOPHY. 

Here  are  Mr.  Balfour's  "three  or  four  broad  prin- 
ciples which  emerge  from  the  discussion  at  this  stage.'' 
We  append  a  brief  comment  on  each  : 

1.  "  It  seems  beyond  all  question  that  any  system  which,  with 
our  present  knowledge,  and  it  may  be,  our  existing  faculties,  we 
are  able  to  construct,  must  suffer  from  obscurities,  from  defects 
of  proof,  and  from  incoherencies.  Narrow  it  down  to  bare  sci- 
ence— and  no  one  has  seriously  proposed  to  reduce  it  farther — 
you  will  still  find  all  three,  and  in  plenty." 

This  is  simply  an  assertion,  denied  by  nobody,  of 
the  necessary  limitations  of  present-day  human  knowl- 
edge. But  the  same  human  knowledge  is  hourly  in- 
creasing ! 

2.  "  No  unification  of  belief,  of  the  slightest  theological  value, 
can  take  place  on  a  purely  scientific  basis — on  a  basis,  I  mean,  of 
induction  from  particular  experiences,  whether  'external'  or  'in- 
ternal.' " 

The  expression  "theological  value"  is  puzzling. 
What  does  Mr.  Balfour  mean  by  it  ?  Is  it  that  what  is 
theologically  true  may  be  inaccurate  scientifically? 

3.  "No  philosophy,  or  theory  of  knowledge  (epistemology), 
can  be  satisfactory  which  does  not  find  room  within  it  for  the 
quite  obvious,  but  not  sufficiently  considered,  fact  that,  so  far  as 
empirical  science  can  tell  us  anything  about  the  matter,  most  of 
the  proximate  causes  of  belief,  and  all  its  ultimate  causes,  are  non- 
rational  in  their  character." 

The  "proximate  causes"  of  belief  are  guaranteed 
to  us  by  the  testimony  of  consciousness  itself,  which, 
so  far  from  being  "non-rational,"  is  the  only  source  of 
knowledge  which  we  possess.  The  "  ultimate  causes," 
again,  though  hypothetical  in  character,  such  as  ether, 
atom,  vibration,  undulation,  etc.,  are  far  from  being 
non-rational,  on  that  account.  They  are  hypotheses 
which  coincide  with  the  rest  of  our  natural  knowledge, 
and  are  therefore  to  be  accepted  as  working  hypothe- 
ses until  disproved  or  displaced, 


4.  "No  unification  of  beliefs  can  be  practically  adequate 
which  does  not  include  ethical  beliefs  as  well  as  scientific  [sic!] 
ones  ;  nor  which  refuses  to  count  among  ethical  beliefs,  not  merely 
those  which  have  reference  to  moral  commands,  but  those,  also, 
which  make  possible  moral  sentiments,  ideals,  and  aspirations, 
and  which  satisfy  our  ethical  needs.  Any  system,  which  when 
worked  out  to  its  legitimate  issues,  fails  to  effect  this  object,  can 
afford  no  permanent  habitation  for  the  spirit  of  man." 

Moral  sentiments,  ideals,  and  aspirations  are  all 
capable  of  scientific  embodiment  in  a  scientific  reli- 
gion, having  the  moral  as  well  as  the  physical  needs 
of  man  fully  in  view. 

All  this  contention,  however,  on  Mr.  Balfour's  part, 
leads  up  to  his  pet  theory  that  every  need  of  man  is 
bound  to  receive  its  "  satisfaction "  in  the  universal 
plan.  Starting  from  the  scientist's  need  to  postulate 
the  ideas  of  heat,  matter,  motion,  etc.,  he  insists  that 
it  is  equally  legitimate,  when  working  in  a  region  not 
less  real  to  postulate  the  existence  of  a  real  authority 
operating  in  the  affairs  of  the  universe — in  other 
words,  the  existence  of  a  final  cause,  a  rational  author! 

He  says  : 

"Compare,  for  example,  the  central  truth  of  theology  — 
'  There  is  a  God' — with  one  of  the  fundamental  presuppositions 
of  science  (itself  a  generalised  statement  of  what  is  given  in  ordi- 
nary judgments  of  perception),  'There  is  an  independent  material 
world.'  I  am  myself  disposed  to  doubt  whether  so  good  a  case 
can  be  made  out  for  accepting  the  second  of  these  propositions,  as 
can  be  made  out  for  accepting  the  first.  .  .  .  Consider,  for  exam- 
ple, this  question,  'What  is  a  material  thing?'  Nothing  can  be 
plainer  till  you  consider  it ;  nothing  can  be  obscurer  when  you  do." 

Now,  most  persons  would  think  that  although  the 
idea  of  that  objective  something  which  we  call  "a  ma- 
terial thing,"  while  strictly  and  scientifically  definable, 
leads,  in  the  last  analysis,  to  not  a  little  ambiguity,  the 
idea  of  God  stands  on  a  somewhat  different  footing. 
The  latter  is  not  given  to  us  in  the  form  of  a  percept. 
It  is  not  ours,  conceptually,  in  the  sense  of  a  re-cog- 
nised percept,  it  is  wholly,  and  solely,  a  complex  and 
variable  product  of  the  imagination  which 

"  Bodies  forth  the  shape  of  things  unknown." 

It  is  an  idea  which  fills  no  place,  and  bears  no  share, 
in  our  conception  of  the  universe,  save  that  indefinite, 
and  wholly  visionary,  one  of  Causa  Causarum.  A  crav- 
ing, a  need  exists,  persists  Mr.  Balfour,  for  the  action 
of  a  rational  author  in  the  universe.  Therefore,  the 
hypothesis  that  such  a  being  exists  is  allowable,  in- 
deed imperative.  In  this  light,  the  craving,  or  need, 
would  be  the  measure  or  standard,  according  to  which 
the  existence  of  God,  as  infinite  cause,  may  be  affirmed 
— or,  it  might  be  added,  denied,  seeing  that,  in  many 
ancient  faith-systems,  no  such  craving  exists.  Again, 
if  the  craving  be  an  index  of  a  necessary  satisfaction 
awaiting  or  meeting  it,  it  is  clear  that  the  "satisfac- 
tion "  must  bear  some  natural  relationship  to  the  crav- 
ing— must,  as  it  were,  be  modelled  to  suit  it — in  order 
to  be  any  satisfaction  at  all.     But  men's  conceptions 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4499 


of,  and  cravings  after,  the  theistic  have  been  as  mul- 
titudinous as  the  subjects  of  these  experiences.  God, 
therefore,  would  not  be  the  One,  but  the  Many,  in  the 
sense  of  the  infinitely  varying,  fnstead  of  man  being 
made  in  God's  own  image,  God  would  be,  literally, 
made  after  the  fashion,  whim,  or  fancy,  of  each  indi- 
vidual man.  The  criterion  is  wholly  unallowable. 
Given  a  craving  for  personal,  individual  immortality. 
Does  this  alone  guarantee  such  an  existence  beyond 
the  grave  and  fate  of  death  ?     And  if  not,  why  not? 

THE  CHRISTIAN  CREED. 

The  surprise  of  the  informed  and  thoughtful  reader 
will  be  considerable  on  finding  that  Mr.  Balfour,  on 
the  strength  of  premises  so  scanty  as  those  already 
mentioned,  boldly  makes  a  salto  mortale,  at  this  stage, 
from  his  hj'pothetical  Causa  Causaium  to  the  deity  of 
Christianity  !  It  is  true,  that  he  does  not,  at  first, 
identify  the  two — speaking,  as  he  does,  of  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  "  one  reality,"  in  broad  and  general  terms. 
But  he  soon  becomes  more  definitely  anthropomorphic 
in  his  theism.  "The  evidences  of  God's  material 
power,"  he  says,  "lie  about  us  on  every  side."  But 
"the  evidences  of  His  moral  interest  have  to  be  anx- 
iously extracted,  grain  by  grain,  through  the  specula- 
tive analysis  of  our  moral  nature."  As,  however,  man- 
kind are  not  given  to  speculative  analysis,  "  I  know 
not,"  he  says,  how  this  end  [the  grasping  of  this  tran- 
scendent truth]  "could  be  more  completely  attained 
than  by  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  incarnation." 

This  is,  indeed,  a  transition  for  which  the  logical 
reader  is  scarcely  prepared,  on  such  short  notice. 
The  hiatus  in  question  has  not  escaped  the  notice  of 
his  reviewers,  even  of  those  otherwise  favorably  dis- 
posed towards  his  views.  One  of  these  writes  as  fol- 
lows on  this  point  : 

"The  world,  says  Mr.  Balfour,  is  an  absurdity  without  crea- 
tion and  guidance.  Very  well,  infer  creation  and  guidance.  More 
than  this,  we  have  no  authority  to  claim.  And  then,  in  a  moment, 
we  suddenly  come  upon  Mr.  Balfour  speaking  of  '  a  living  God  ' ! 
Who  is  hypostatising  the  abstract  now  ?  .  .  .  God,  by  the  hypothe- 
sis, is  a  causative  and  a  guiding  principle,  and  there  is  no  possible 
right  to  attribute  one  shred  more  of  meaning  to  the  conception 
than  what  is  supplied  by  the  method  of  its  deduction.  Is  it  need- 
ful to  discuss  the  value  of  this  result  ?  Such  a  God  is  worthless 
and  unmeaning  ;  the  result  is  as  jejune  as  the  process  is  illegiti- 
mate." ' 

To  all  of  which  we  very  heartily  say  Amen  ! 

We  may  admire  Mr.  Balfour's  adroitness,  his  wealth 
of  illustration,  and  brilliant  style,  but  we  cannot  say 
that  we  admire,  or  agree  with,  his  logic.  His  final 
conclusions  are  not  contained  in  the  premises  with 
which  he  starts.  Even  his  orthodox  friends  despair 
of  his  methods. 

1  Mr.  Btilfour'f  Philosophy.     By  G.  W.  S'Seveqs,   in  the  NfW  Revieiu  for 

Mafcb, 


Personally,  we  do  not  believe  that  the  volume  will 
bring  satisfaction  of  mind  to  any  earnest  and  unpreju- 
diced seeker  after  truth.  It  will,  rather,  serve  to  repel 
those  who  might  otherwise  be  attracted  to  Christian- 
ity, by  its  forced  assumptions  and  question-begging 
arguments.  On  tlie  other  hand,  he  must  be  a  faint- 
hearted believer  who  is  in  any  way  strengthened  in 
the  faith  by  its  perusal.  A  demonstration,  which,  at 
its  best,  only  reaches  the  idea  of  a  possible  guiding 
and  sustaining /('7i'(V  in  the  universe,  and,  that  issue 
hypothetically  established,  jumps  at  once  to  the  fur- 
ther conclusion  that  this  "  power "  is  no  other  than 
the  deity  revealed  in  the  Old  and  New  Testament 
Scriptures,  may  command  the  assent  of  the  unthink- 
ing, but  will  be  powerless  to  convince  any  one  else. 

One  of  our  author's  most  indulgent  critics,  Mr.  W. 
T.  Stead,'  remarks  that  Mr.  Balfour  employs  the 
method  of  David  Hume  to  support  the  conclusions  of 
John  Knox.  We  can  only  speculate  what  Mr.  Bal- 
four's illustrious  compatriots  would  have  thought  of 
the  result. 

EDUCATION. 

BY  THOS.   C.    LAWS. 

It  seems  to  be  forgotten  in  most  discussions  upon 
educational  questions  that  the  person  to  be  educated 
is  at  least  of  equal  importance  to  the  knowledge  to  be 
imparted.  In  all  education,  whether  it  be  literary  or 
scientific,  moral  or  sesthetic,  general  or  technical,  our 
first  inquiry  should  always  be,  what  sort  of  pupil  is 
the  one  to  be  trained  ?  For  the  differences  between 
pupils  are  not  less  great  than  those  between  the  vari- 
ous forms  of  knowledge  which  we  are  in  the  habit  of 
teaching.  Much  money  might  have  been  saved,  many 
tempers  might  not  have  been  soured,  many  blows 
might  have  been  spared,  had  we  been  content  or  cap- 
able— for  incapacity  is  at  the  bottom  of  much  of  our 
inattention — to  see  to  what  kind  of  study  our  charge 
was  adapted.  It  is  true  alike  of  adults  and  children 
that  our  educational  systems  will  be  worthless  until 
we  have  learned  the  value  of  J.  S.  Mill's  sarcastic 
remark,  that  education  is  a  machine  for  making  people 
think  alike,  and  acknowledge  that  liberty  in  education 
has  a  value  as  great  as  in  politics  and  theology.  A 
musical  training  to  one  who  has  no  "ear"  for  music 
is  absurd  upon  the  face  of  it,  and  when,  as  too  fre- 
quently happens  in  the  case  of  children,  that  training 
is  made  strictly  compulsory,  and  shirking  it  is  severely 
punished,  that  absurdity  becomes  a  matter  of  cruelty. 
Not  only  is  the  child  compelled  to  try  to  make  himself 
competent  in  a  study  in  which  he  can  never  become 
competent,  but  there  is  laid  before  him  a  great  temp- 
tation to  come  to  look  upon  all  education  as  a  nuisance 
and  a  waste  of  time,  and,  smarting  under  a  punish- 

\  In  ^lie  Rcinciv  0/ Reviews  for  March, 


4500 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


ment  given  for  "  faults  "  which  are  not  wholly  his,  but 
which  have  been  inherited  by  him  from  his  parents,  to 
react  against  his  training  to  an  extent  which  no  amount 
of  compulsion  will  ever  overcome  and  to  associate 
obedience  and  filial  respect  with  pain  and  punishment 
and  wrongs  committed  against  himself.  It  may  be 
said  generally  that  wherever  a  person  is  really  capable 
of  taking  any  sufficient  and  satisfactory  interest  in  a 
subject,  he  will  do  so  spontaneously  and  without  coer- 
cion or  extraneous  prompting.  It  should  be,  there- 
fore, one  of  the  most  important  duties  of  parents  and 
guardians  to  study  carefully  those  committed  to  their 
charge,  and  to  make  education  a  rational  continuation 
of  the  work  which  nature  herself  has  begun.  Indi- 
viduality, diversity  of  thought  and  feeling,  of  senti- 
ment and  research,  is  one  of  the  greatest  charms  of 
social  life,  and  a  necessity  for  the  right  appreciation 
of  the  many-sided  universe  in  which  we  have  our  being. 
Civilised  life  is  so  complex,  its  divisions  so  numerous, 
the  facts  included  therein  of  such  vast  number  and 
variety,  that  no  one  person  can  expect  to  fill  all  posi- 
tions, nor  to  master  all  the  available  facts.  It  should 
be  the  duty  of  the  true  educationalist  to  watch  care- 
fully the  unfoldings  of  each  human  mind,  and  to  do 
somewhat  towards  helping  its  possessor  to  take  his 
appointed  place  in  the  universe  into  which  he  has  been 
born. 

Not  that  I  for  one  moment  encourage  the  creation 
of  a  nation  of  specialists.  In  most  matters  it  may 
justly  be  said  that  the  specialist  sees  but  one  side  of  a 
question — his  own — and  that  he  judges  all  questions 
by  his  own  particular  art  or  science.  But  what  I  do 
intend  to  imply  is  that  as  no  two  persons  are  born  into 
the  world  equally  gifted  in  body  and  mind,  we  should 
endeavor,  in  our  systems  of  education,  to  temper  the 
wind  to  the  shorn  lamb.  Greater  play  should  be  al- 
lowed to  spontaneity  on  the  part  of  the  pupil,  compul- 
sion as  far  as  possible  should  be  avoided,  and  far  less 
punishment  should  be  meted  out  to  children  because 
they  fail  to  come  up  to  a  given  standard  in  a  given 
subject.  Every  man  is  not  a  born  linguist,  nor  a  born 
scientist,  a  mathematician,  a  musician,  nor  an  artist, 
but  where  such  gifts  exhibit  themselves,  they  should 
be  fostered,  trained  in  the  way  that  they  should  go, 
developed  in  such  wise  that  they  may  be  of  the  great- 
est value  to  the  individual  when  he  will  have  to  earn 
his  own  living,  fill  a  certain  position  in  society,  and 
exercise  definite  functions  in  the  state.  To  one  who 
has  no  taste  for  languages  it  will  be  mere  waste  time 
to  teach  the  varying  intricacies  of  the  French  irregular 
verbs,  for  the  little  he  learns  of  them  he  will  speedily 
forget.  He  will  not  travel  abroad,  save  with  person- 
ally conducted  parties  ;  will  prefer  home  trade  to  for- 
eign, or  if  otherwise,  will  find  at  a  sufficiently  small 
cost,  in  all  our  great   commercial  cities,  professional 


translators  and  corresponding  clerks  ready  to  make  up 
for  his  shortcomings.  To  such  a  one  the  literature  of 
his  own  country  is  sufficiently  vast  and  excellent  to 
occupy  all  his  attention,  while  most  foreign  works  of 
any  note  are  procurable  in  his  own  language,  in  trans- 
lations which  usually  represent  the  original  with  a  fair 
amount  of  accuracy.  And  he  who  has  the  gift  of 
tongues  will  find  opportunities  for  displaying  it,  even 
though  his  parents,  as  too  frequently  happens,  should 
so  far  have  ignored  his  talents  and  his  predilections 
as  to  have  started  him  in  a  course  utterly  unsuited  to 
his  capacities. 

Nevertheless,  while  these  talents  should  be  discov- 
ered and  trained,  it  is  necessary  to  give  a  general 
knowledge  to  every  individual,  and  this  knowledge 
should  be  such  as  will  be  of  the  greatest  value  to  him 
in  after  life,  whether  destined  for  profit,  for  citizen- 
ship, or  for  recreation  and  pleasure.  Although  it  can- 
not be  said  that  knowledge  in  itself  is  a  benefit  to  any- 
one, yet  it  becomes  advantageous  when  it  can  be  put 
to  a  good  purpose,  either  for  the  well-being  of  the  in- 
dividual or  of  society  at  large.  All  education  is  di- 
rected either  towards  physical,  mental,  or  moral  dis- 
cipline, or  the  accumulation  of  facts.  And  here  let  it 
be  said  that  physical  education  is  as  truly  a  part  of  a 
sound  education  as  is  the  learning  of  facts,  or  the  dis- 
cipline of  the  mind.  When  we  reflect  that  the  object 
of  life  is  to  live,  and  to  live  as  long  and  as  happily  as 
may  be  with  the  least  possible  trouble  to,  or  inter- 
ference with  or  by  those  around  us,  we  shall  see  at 
once  the  value  of  a  good  physical  training.  For  on 
the  health  of  the  body  depends  the  well-being  of  the 
mind.  To  discipline  our  minds,  too,  is  a  lesson  which 
most  of  us  need  to  learn.  How  few,  indeed,  do  we 
see  capable  of  arguing  a  disputed  point  without  call- 
ing up  memories  of  Smithfield  and  the  Tower.  Con- 
troversialists, whose  sole  object  should  be  the  search 
for  the  truth,  are  ever  eager  for  victory,  and  it  is  not 
upon  rare  occasions  that  their  zeal  overcomes  their 
discretion.  Moreover,  we  must  remember  that  the 
next  generation  depends  for  its  whole  being  upon  this, 
and  that  unless  we  learn  to  discipline  aright  our  own 
minds  we  shall  find  it  no  easy  task  to  understand  those 
of  another  generation  and  to  train  them  right.  But, 
undoubtedly,  the  most  important  form  of  discipline  is 
moral  training.  And  this  is  precisely  the  most  diffi- 
cult to  give.  Children  have  been  variously  likened  to 
savages  and  young  criminals,  of  whose  natures  they 
largely  partake,  and  how  many  children  are  there  who 
have  to  repeat  the  complaint  of  David  Hoist  in  Jonas 
Lie's  celebrated  novel  Den  Fre?nsynte,  that  "father 
was  a  hard  man,  who  far  too  little  could  understand 
children"?  Much  will  doubtless  be  improved  in  the 
future  by  the  alienological  study  of  the  evolution  of 
the  mind,  and  the  contouring  of  its  various  functions 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4501 


in  its  different  stages  of  developuicnt.  LJut  \vc  inubt 
not  forget  that  for  the  imparting  of  moral  discipline 
there  is  necessary  not  only  the  reasoning  faculty,  but 
also  a  wide  sympathy,  an  implacable  evenness  of  tem- 
per, and  an  intimate  knowledge  of  child-nature.  Lit- 
tle service  is  done  by  imparting  this  form  of  education 
in  the  shape  of  aphorisms  and  injunctions,  but  as  far 
as  possible  every  infringement  of  a»  moral  rule  should 
bring  about  its  natural  punishment.  The  child  who 
dawdles  when  his  parent  or  nurse  is  prepared  to  take 
him  for  a  walk  should  be  left  behind.  Instead  of  lec- 
turing a  child  at  length  for  wasting  his  money,  further 
gifts  should  be  suspended  for  a  season.  To  Luther 
the  mind  of  the  child  resembled  a  sheet  of  white  pa- 
per, upon  which  one  can  write  what  one  chooses.  On 
the  contrary,  it  might  rather  be  likened  to  a  piece  of 
newspaper,  or  a  sheet  upon  which  much  has  already 
been  written,  which  must  be  effaced.  Lying,  cruelty, 
and  vanity  are  far  more  common  among  children  than 
among  normal  adults.  Their  impulsiveness  is  as  a 
rule  greater,  and  their  power  of  distinguishing  right 
from  wrong  less,  and  it  is  usually  limited  to  the  differ- 
ence between  parental  pleasure  and  displeasure,  more 
particularly  if  the  child  receive  practical  evidences 
thereof.  It  should,  therefore,  be  the  duty  of  those 
upon  whom  the  duty  of  training  the  rising  generation 
falls,  to  do  their  utmost  to  create  or  evolve  a  con- 
science, and  that  one  of  the  highest  rectitude.  To 
effect  this  it  is  necessary  that  right  doing  should  be  so 
enforced  that  it  becomes,  as  it  were,  part  of  the  con- 
stitution of.  the  child,  so  that  moral  acts  may  be  per- 
formed by  habit  or  reflex  action,  spontaneously,  in- 
stantaneously, and  automatically,  while  the  diffi- 
culty of  doing  immoral  ones  is  made  correspondingly 
greater. 

Of  knowledge  other  than  of  a  purely  disciplinary 
character  it  may  be  said  that  it  should  be  primarily 
directed  towards  making  the  child  his  own  observer, 
investigator,  and  thinker  upon  matters  which  require 
thought  and  research.  He  should  be  taught  never  to 
rely  upon  work  done  by  others,  which  can  be  equally 
done  by  himself.  He  should  not  take  statements  upon 
trust,  but  should  prove  them  for  himself.  It  is  better 
for  him  to  work  out  the  interest  on  a  sum  of  money  at 
a  given  percentage  than  to  find  it  in  an  interest-table. 
In  learning  languages  he  should  not  be  permitted  to 
use  the  dictionary  except  when  absolutely  necessary. 
Such  training  should  be  given  for  the  most  part  by 
ear,  and  as  part  of  his  daily  life.  If  he  be  of  scientific 
tastes  he  should  be  taught  to  make  his  own  electric 
batteries,  his  own  cameras,  and  his  own  collections, 
to  mount  his  own  objects,  and  he  might  be  worse  em- 
ployed than  in  binding  his  own  books.  Few  things 
can  be  worse  combated  than  habits  of  chronic  lazi- 
ness, acquired  by  too  great  dependence   upon  others, 


and  leading  ultimately  to  mischief,  unruliness,  and 
perhaps  even  crime. 

It  is  the  opinion  of  some  that  a  scientific  education 
should  be  paramount,  and  that  little  attention  should 
be  paid  to  literature  and  the  arts.  That  such  is  not 
the  theory  put  forward  here  scarcely  needs  emphasis- 
ing. As  moral  training,  many  of  our  great  literary 
works  can  scarcely  be  excelled,  and  their  lessons  are 
taught  in  an  English  which  has  become  classic,  and  in 
a  style  which  has  won  the  admiration  of  all  lovers  of 
our  native  tongue.  Why,  indeed,  should  we  boycott 
old  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  because  Vauxhall  Gardens 
were  not  lit  with  the  electric  light,  or  sneer  at  the  rug- 
ged prophet  of  Chelsea,  because  his  economics  were 
sometimes  unsound?  Nor  must  we  forget  that  many 
men  have  united  literature  and  science.  We  may  re- 
call the  names  of  Bacon  and  Goethe,  Flammarion  and 
Lewes,  and  few  men  have  done  so  much  to  advance 
the  English  language  in  all  its  manly  force  and  vigor 
as  Professor  Huxley  and  the  late  Professor  Tyndall. 
There  seems  to  me  no  adequate  reason  why  the  two 
forms  of  learning  should  not  be  associated  together.  For 
exactitude  of  observation  and  impartiality  of  thought, 
a  scientific  training  is  almost  a  necessity,  whereas  for 
extension  of  sympathy,  for  keeping  alive  the  senti- 
mental, aesthetic,  and  altruistic  feelings,  science  must 
yield  place  to  literature.  The  statistician  might  furnish 
us  with  a  complete  list  of  all  the  killed  and  wounded, 
the  thefts,  rogueries,  and  blunders  of  any  great  war 
summed  up  with  exactitude  in  dollars  and  cents,  yet 
he  would  fail  to  excite  our  detestation  of  the  "human 
beast  "  as  a  man  of  war  to  anything  like  the  same  de- 
gree as  Zola  by  his  novel  La  Dchdclc,  or  Vassilovitch 
by  a  few  strokes  of  his  brush.  There  is  always,  no 
doubt,  a  danger  that  a  literary  education  may  degen- 
erate into  mere  book-learning.  A  member  of  a  cer- 
tain university  once  told  me  that  there  the  Latin  and 
Greek  languages  were  not  learned  that  the  students 
might  read  their  literatures.  The  theoretical  rules  of 
grammar  were  simply  taught  over  and  over  again,  and 
upon  them  the  degrees  were  practically  obtained.  On 
the  other  hand,  a  purely  scientific  education  tends  to 
produce  callousness  and  to  lead  to  the  conclusion  that 
every  problem  in  nature  is  to  be  solved  by  the  tele- 
scope, the  microscope,  the  dissecting-knife,  or  the  pro- 
cess of  electrolysis.  The  combination  of  the  two, 
however,  should  unite  the  advantages  of  both,  and 
neutralise  their  disadvantages. 

When  I  speak  of  literary  education,  I  mean  more 
especially  the  acquisition  of  a  knowledge  of  the  litera- 
tures of  to-day.  The  Roman,  Hellenic,  and  Hebrew 
literatures  ma)'  be  interesting  to  some,  but  neither 
they  nor  the  languages  in  which  they  are  written,  are 
of  utility  to  the  many.  One  may,  therefore,  safely 
leave  them  to  the  consideration  of  specialists,  and  fill 


4502 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


up  their  places  in  modern  education  by  such  languages 
as  French,  German,  and  Italian,  to  which  may  be 
added,  for  commercial  and  political  purposes,  Span- 
ish, Russian,  and  Japanese.  In  any  case,  however,  it 
is  advisable  to  teach  a  dead  language  through  its 
nearest  living  representative,  to  lead  the  student  in  a 
natural  way  from  one  in  which  all  things  are  familiar, 
gradually  back  into  another  in  which  everything  is  un- 
familiar. Modern  Italian  and  the  old  Italian  literature 
are  the  best  stepping-stones  to  Latin,  just  as  Saxon 
can  be  most  easily  learned  by  one  who  is  conversant 
not  only  with  modern  English  and  German,  but  also 
with  Middle  English  literature,  to  which  may  with  ad- 
vantage be  added  the  existing  dialects  of  Yorkshire 
and  Somerset.  It  must  always  be  borne  in  mind  that 
a  dead  language  differs  essentially  from  a  living  one 
in  a  most  important  point,  that,  whereas  the  modern 
can  and  should  be  taught  mainly  by  the  ear,  the  an- 
cient can  be  taught  only  by  its  literature.  And  this 
introduces  us  to  another  reason  for  combining  litera- 
ture with  science.  Science  is  learned  chiefly  by  the 
eye.  A  scientific  training  is  pre-eminently  a  training 
in  accurate  ocular  observation.  A  literary  education 
is  imparted  largely  by  the  tongue  and  ear,  and  thus 
helps  to  train  into  correct  use  and  into  rapidity  and 
accuracy  of  observation  other  organs  with  which  the 
imparting  of  science  has  little  concern.  From  the 
thesis  laid  down  in  the  opening  paragraphs  and  from 
what  has  since  been  said,  it  is  evident  that  the  rela- 
tive value  of  an  educational  system  depends  little  or 
not  at  all  upon  the  examinations  which  may  be  passed 
under  it,  but  rather  upon  the  more  adequate  play 
which  it  gives  to  all  the  senses  and  to  all  the  functions 
of  the  mind.  Under  the  current  system  the  senses 
are  represented  by  sight  alone,  and  the  mental  facul- 
ties by  an  overtaxed  memory. 

[to  be  concluded.] 


BOOK  NOTICES. 


Ernst  Schroder  of  Karlsruhe,  publishes  in  the  MatheDiatischt 
Aniialen  an  abstruse  AhHe  on  the  Algebra  of  the  Binary  Relative 
(Leipsic  :  B.  G.  Teubner). 


The  Sunset  Club  of  Chicago,  an  institution  organised  several 
years  ago  "  to  foster  rational  good  fellowship  and  tolerant  discus- 
sion among  business  men  of  all  classes,"  has  just  published  its 
Year  Book  for  1893-1894.  The  Year  Book  contains  full  reports  of 
the  fortnightly  meetings  and  discussions,  addresses,  etc.,  and  con- 
stitutes upon  the  whole  an  entertaining  volume,  from  which  much 
information  regarding  burning  questions  of  the  day  may  be  drawn. 


The  Anthropological  Society  of  Washington  publishes,  under 
the  title  of  The  Earth  the  Home  0/ Man  a  part  of  a  very  inter- 
esting course  of  lectures  prepared  for  them  by  Mr.  W.  G.  McGee. 
Mr.  McGee  has  summarised  in  a  pleasant  form,  not  unmingled 
with  new  ideas  and  a  suggestive  mode  of  interpretation,  the  main 
results  of  anthropological  research  as  affecting  our  physical  and 
intellectual  status.     The   little  pamphlet  will  well  repay  reading. 


We  have  also  received,  as  extracts  from  the  Proceedings  of  the 
Rochester  Academy  of  Science  Vol.  2,  two  little  tracts  by  Dr.  M. 
A.  Veeder  of  Lyons,  N.  Y.,  one  of  which  treats  of  the  difficult 
problem  of  thunderstorms  as  connected  with  auroras,  where  the 
author  finds  that  auroras  and  their  attendant  magnetic  storms  oc- 
cur when  spots  or  facula?,  or  both,  are  at  the  sun's  eastern  limb, 
and  near  the  plane  of  the  earth's  orbit  ;  and  the  second  of  solar 
electrical  energy,  which  the  author  contends  is  not  transmitted  by 
radiation,  but  is  to  be  explained  by  principles  of  conduction  as 
they  appear  under  the  conditions  existing  in  interplanetary  space. 

THE    DISEASES    OF    PERSONALITY. 

By  TH.   RIBOT, 

Professor  of  Comparative  Psychology  in  the  College  of  France. 

Second  Authorised  Edition  of  the  Translation,  Revised  After  the 

New  French  Edition.     Thoroughly  Indexed.     Pages,  163. 

Price,  Cloth,  75  Cents;   Paper,  25  Cents. 


"A  remarkable  study," — San  Francisco  Chronicle. 

"Well  and  attractively  written." — Scientific  American. 

"  Should  be  in  the  hands  of  every  student  of  psychology." — Messiak^s 
Hfrald,  Boston. 

"  Of  the  greatest  importance  and  of  special  worth  at  this  time,  when  new 
methods  of  studying  the  mind  are  so  rapidly  coming  into  vogue.  One  of  the 
most  important  contributions  to  experimental  psychology." — Educational  Cou- 
rafit,  Louisville,  Ky. 

■■  Ribot  is  a  profound  student  of  the  subject  of  individuality  and  personal- 
ity, and  his  conclusions  as  to  the  influence  of  organic  disorders  upon  the  mind 
are  as  interestingly  set  forth  as  anything  can  be  in  that  complex  field  of  ob- 
servation."—  The  Weekly  IVisconsin,  Milwaukee,  Wis. 

"Throws  a  vast  amount  of  light  upon  some  very  important  conceptions  of 
consciousness  and  individuality  as  they  are  held  by  the  advanced  school  of 
workers  in  experimental  psychology." — Review  0/ Reviews. 

"  One  of  the  best  of  Ribot's  works,  and  one  moreover  that  should  be  in  the 
library  of  every  physician  who  is  at  all  interested  in  psychology  and  the  study 
of  nervous  diseases.  Though  intended  for  the  lay  reader,  in  its  scope  it 
touches  many  points  that  are  decidedly  medical  in  character." — Medical  Age, 
Detroit. 


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MR.     BALFOUR'S     "FOUNDATIONS    OF    BELIEF." 

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BOOK  NOTICES 4502 


17 


The  Open  Court. 


A  ■WTEEKLY  JOUENAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  404.     (Vol.  IX.— 21. 


CHICAGO,   MAY  23,   1895. 


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THE  REACTION  AGAINST  THE  PROPHETS. 

BY  PROF.    C,    H.    CORNILL. 

It  was  Hosea  who  first  perceived  that  the  tradi- 
tional s)'stem  of  worship  which  in  his  eyes  was  fla- 
grant paganism,  constituted  the  real  cancer  that  was 
eating  the  life  of  Israel.  Isaiah  shared  his  view,  and, 
being  of  a  practical  nature,  acted  upon  it.  The 
prophecy  of  Israel  openly  and  hostilely  attacks  the 
religion  of  the  people  and  endeavors  to  mould  it  ac- 
cording to  the  prophetic  ideal.  That  was  no  easy 
task  and  had,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  to  meet  with 
a  bitter  and  fanatical  opposition.  We  men  of  modern 
daj's  can  scarcel)'  appreciate  what  religion  means  to 
a  primitive  people,  how  it  governs  and  enters  into  all 
their  relations  and  becomes  the  pulse  and  motive 
power  of  their  whole  life.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
power  of  custom  in  religion  cannot  be  too  highly 
rated.  Tradition  is  considered  sacred  because  it  is 
tradition.  The  heart  clings  to  it.  The  solemn  mo- 
ments of  life  are  inseparably  bound  up  with  it,  and 
every  alteration  of  it  appears  as  blasphemy,  as  an  in- 
sult to  God. 

And  now  let  us  consider  the  feelings  of  the  people 
of  Judah  towards  the  reforms  proposed  and  inaugur- 
ated by  Isaiah.  The  ancient  and  honored  relics, 
which  could  be  traced  back  to  the  Patriarchs  and  to 
Moses,  before  which  David  had  knelt,  which  from 
time  immemorial  had  been  to  every  Israelite  the  most 
sacred  and  beloved  objects  on  earth,  should  now  of  a 
sudden,  to  quote  Isaiah,  be  considered  as  filth  to  be 
cast  to  moles  and  bats,  because  a  few  fanatics  in 
Jerusalem  did  not  find  them  to  their  taste  !  Now  in- 
deed, if  the  new  God  whom  the  prophets  preached 
(for  thus  he  must  have  appeared  to  the  people)  had 
only  been  more  powerful  than  the  older,  whom  their 
fathers  had  worshipped,  if  things  had  only  gone  on 
better — well  and  good.  But  there  was  no  trace  of 
this. 

So  long  as  we  were  confined  solely  to  the  Old  Tes- 
tament for  our  knowledge  of  Jewish  history,  it  was 
supposed  naturally  enough  that  with  the  futile  attack 
on  Jerusalem  in  the  year  701  the  Assyrian  domination 
in  Judah  was  broken  for  all  time,  and  that  Judah  had 
again  become  free.  But  that  is  not  the  case.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  the  Assj^rian  power  only  attained  to  the 


zenith  of  its  glory  under  the  two  successors  of  Sen- 
nacherib, Esarhaddon  and  Asurbanipal.  It  is  true 
that  Sennacherib  did  not  again  enter  Palestine,  as  he 
had  enough  to  do  in  the  neighborhood  of  his  own 
capital,  and  it  may  be  that  for  a  short  time  a  certain 
respite  was  gained.  But  Israel  remained  as  before 
an  Assyrian  province,  and  Judah  as  before  the  vassal 
of  the  Assyrian  monarch,  having  yearly  to  send  a  trib- 
ute to  Nineveh.  In  fact,  the  Assyrian  rule  became 
more  and  more  oppressive.  Esarhaddon  had  laid  the 
keystone  in  the  Assyrian  domination  of  the  world  by 
his  conquest  of  Egypt.  Thrice  in  rapid  succession 
had  the  Assyrian  army  forced  its  way  to  Thebes,  and 
Assyrian  viceroy's  governed  Egypt  as  an  Assyrian 
province.  Asurbanipal  had  also  fought  in  Egypt,  in 
Arabia,  and  Syria,  and  we  can  easily  understand  that 
in  all  these  attacks  Judaea,  the  natural  sallying-port 
from  Asia  into  Africa,  and  the  natural  point  of  union 
between  Syria  and  Egypt,  was  sucked  into  the  raging 
whirlpool  and  suffered  severely. 

Such  a  state  of  affairs  was  not  calculated  to  recom- 
mend the  reform  of  the  prophets.  On  the  contrary, 
the  religious  sentiment  of  the  people  could  not  but  see 
in  it  all  a  punishment  inflicted  by  the  national  Deity 
for  the  neglect  of  his  wonted  service.  The  popular 
religion  understood  the  great  danger  that  threatened 
it.  The  prophecies  had  smitten  it  with  a  deadly 
stroke,  but  it  was  nevertheless  not  inclined  to  give  up 
the  struggle  without  a  blow.  It  accepted  the  chal- 
lenge and  soon  wrested  a  victory  from  the  reformers. 

It  is  true,  so  long  as  Hezekiah  lived,  submission  was 
imperative.  For  the  reform  had  become  a  law  of  the 
kingdom,  enacted  by  him,  and  was  in  a  certain  measure 
his  personal  creation.  He  died  in  the  year  686,  leav- 
ing the  kingdom  to  Manasseh,  his  son,  a  child  twelve 
years  old.  How  it  came  to  pass,  will  forever  remain 
an  enigma,  owing  to  the  utter  lack  of  records  ;  but 
the  fact  remains  certain  that  under  Manasseh  a  ter- 
rible and  bloody  reaction  set  in  against  the  prophets. 
This  is  the  period  of  which  Jeremiah  says  that  the 
sacred  sword  devoured  the  prophets  like  a  raging 
lion,  when  all  Jerusalem  was  full  of  innocent  blood 
from  one  end  to  the  other.  All  that  Hezekiah  had 
destroyed  was  restored.  No  memories  of  the  hated 
innovations  were  suffered  to  remain. 


4504 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


A  further  step  was  taken.  Genuine  paganism  now 
made  its  entry  into  Judaea  and  Jerusalem.  The  over- 
powering strength  of  the  Assyrians  must  have  made  a 
deep  impression  on  their  contemporaries.  Were  not 
the  gods  of  Assyria  more  mighty  than  the  gods  of  the 
nations  subjugated  by  it  ?  And  so  we  find  under  Man- 
asseh  the  Assyrio-Babylonian  worship  of  the  stars  intro- 
duced into  Judaea,  and  solemn  festivals  held  in  honor 
of  it  in  the  temple  at  Jerusalem.  Even  foreign  habits 
and  customs  were  adopted.  The  healthful  simplicity 
of  the  fathers  was  discarded  to  exchange  therefor  the 
dangerous  blessings  of  an  overrefined  and  vitiated 
civilisation.  This  also  had  its  effect  on  the  worship 
of  God.  The  ritual  became  more  and  more  gaudy 
and  elaborate.  Incense,  of  which  ancient  Israel  knew 
nothing,  appears  from  this  time  as  an  essential  con- 
stituent of  the  service,  and  even  that  most  terrible  of 
religious  aberrations,  the  sacrificing  of  children,  fully 
calculated  to  excite  with  gruesome  and  voluptuous  tit- 
illation  the  unstrung  nerves  of  an  overwrought  civili- 
sation, became  the  fashion.  King  Manasseh  himself 
made  his  firstborn  son  pass  through  the  fire,  and 
everywhere  in  Jerusalem  did  the  altars  of  Moloch 
send  up  their  smoke,  whilst  a  bloody  persecution  was 
instituted  against  the  prophets  and  all  their  party. 

These  events  made  on  the  minds  of  the  devout 
men  in  Israel  an  indelible  impression,  and  the  pro- 
phecies of  Isaiah  as  to  the  indestructibility  of  Zion 
and  of  the  House  of  David,  were  forgotten  in  their 
terror.  It  became  the  settled  conviction  of  the  best 
spirits  that  God  could  never  forgive  all  this,  but  that, 
owing  to  the  sins  of  Manasseh,  the  destruction  both  of 
Judah  and  Jerusalem  was  inevitable. 

It  is  a  memorable  fact  that  during  this  whole  period, 
almost,  prophecy  remained  dumb  in  Israel.  We  can 
only  point  to  one  brief  fragment  with  anything  like 
assurance,  and  that  is  now  read  as  Chapter  6  and  the 
beginning  of  Chapter  7  of  the  book  of  Micah.  This 
fragment  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  that  we  possess, 
and  still  resounds,  borne  on  Palestrina's  magic  notes, 
as  an  improperia,  on  every  Good  Friday  in  the  Sistine 
Chapel  at  Rome.      God  pleads  with  Israel : 

"O,  my  people,  what  have  I  done  unto  thee  ?  And 
wherein  have  I  wearied  thee?  Testify  against  me." 
And  as  now  the  people  bow  themselves  down  be- 
fore God  in  answer  to  His  divine  accusations,  and  are 
anxious  to  give  up  everything,  even  the  first-born,  for 
their  transgressions,  then  speaks  the  prophet  : 

"He  hath  shewed  thee,  O  man,  what  is  good  ;  and 
what  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee,  but  to  do  justly, 
and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy 
God?" 

This  fragment  is  important,  as  testifying  how  dur- 
ing this  time  of  heavy  affliction  and  persecution,  piety 
deepened  and  became  more  spiritual ;    how  it  retired 


within  itself  and  saw  itself  in  an  ever  truer  and  clearer 
light,  finally  to  come  forth  purified  and  strengthened. 
Prophecy  was  again  aroused  from  its  slumbers  by 
the  trumpet  tones  of  the  world's  history.  In  650  the 
Assyrian  empire  was,  if  anything,  greater  and  mightier 
than  ever.  But  now  destiny  knocked  at  its  gates. 
From  the  coasts  of  the  Black  Sea  a  storm  broke  forth 
over  Asia,  such  as  man  had  never  before  witnessed. 
W^ild  tribes  of  horsemen,  after  the  manner  of  the  later 
Huns  and  Mongolians,  overran  for  more  than  twenty 
years  all  Asia  on  their  fast  horses,  which  seemed 
never  to  tire,  spreading  everywhere  desolation  and 
terror.  Egypt  had  torn  itself  away  from  the  rule  of 
the  Assyrians,  and  a  new  and  terrible  enemy  in  the 
Medes  who  were  now  consolidating  their  forces  in 
the  rear  of  Nineveh  appeared.  The  Assyrian  world- 
edifice  cracked  in  all  its  joints,  and  grave  revolutions 
were  imminent.  At  once  prophecy  is  at  hand  with  the 
small  but  exceedingly  valuable  book  of  Zephaniah. 
The  thunder  of  the  last  judgment  rolls  in  Zephaniah's 
powerful  words,  whose  dithyrambic  lilt  and  wondrous 
music  no  translation  can  render.  The  Dies  tree,  dies 
ilia,  which  the  Roman  Church  and  the  whole  musical 
world  now  sings  as  a  requiem,  is  taken  word  for  word 
from  Zephaniah. 

"The  great  day  of  the  Lord  is  near,  it  is  near  and 
hasteth  greatly,  even  the  voice  of  the  day  of  the  Lord  ; 
the  mighty  man  shall  cry  there  bitterly.  That  day  is 
a  day  of  wrath,  a  day  of  trouble  and  distress,  a  day  of 
wasteness  and  desolation,  a  day  of  darkness  and 
gloominess,  a  day  of  clouds  and  thick  darkness.  A 
day  of  the  trumpet  and  alarm  against  the  fenced  cities 
and  against  the  high  towers.  And  I  will  bring  distress 
upon  men,  that  they  shall  walk  like  blind  men  because 
they  have  sinned  against  the  Lord  ;  and  their  blood 
shall  be  poured  out  as  dust,  and  their  marrow  as  the 
dung.  Neither  their  silver  nor  their  gold  shall  be 
able  to  deliver  them  in  the  day  of  the  Lord's  wrath  ; 
but  the  whole  land  shall  be  devoured  by  the  fire  of  his 
jealousy  :  for  he  shall  make  even  a  speedy  riddance 
of  all  them  that  dwell  in  the  land." 

The  cause  of  this  terrible  judgment  is  the  sins  of 
Manasseh,  which  Zephaniah  describes  with  drastic 
vividness  at  the  beginning  of  his  book.  Only  the 
righteous  and  the  meek  of  the  earth  shall  escape,  who 
will  form  at  the  end  of  time  a  people  pleasing  unto 
God. 

In  the  time  of  Nahum  events  had  progressed  still 
further.  His  book  has  for  its  sole  subject  the  impend- 
ing destruction  of  Nineveh.  It  was  probably  written 
in  the  year  625,  as  the  Medes  under  king  Phraortes 
made  their  first  attack  on  Nineveh,  but  did  not  ac- 
complish their  aim.  The  merited  judgment  shall  now 
fall  upon  the  Assyrian  nation  for  all  the  oppressions 
and  persecutions  which  it  has  brought  upon  the  world, 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4505 


and  especially  on  the  land  and  people  of  God.  In 
a  religious  and  prophetic  sense  the  contents  of  the 
book  are  not  important,  but  its  aesthetic  and  poetical 
value  is  on  that  account  the  higher,  the  language  full 
of  power  and  strength,  and  possessing  a  pathos  and 
fervor  which  only  true  passion  can  inspire.  It  is  in  a 
certain  measure  the  cry  of  distress  and  revenge  from 
all  the  nations  oppressed  and  downtrodden  by  that 
detestable  people,  which  is  here  re-echoed  to  us  with 
irresistible  power  in  the  Book  of  Nahum. 

The  Book  of  Habakkuk  also  belongs  to  this  series. 
The  destruction  of  Nineveh  is  its  subject.  But  in 
Habakkuk's  Book  the  Chaldeans  appear  as  the  future 
instruments  of  the  divine  wrath.  Habakkuk  is  a  mas- 
ter of  eloquence  and  imagery.  His  description  of  the 
Assyrian  as  the  robber  who  opens  his  jaws  like  hell, 
and  is  as  insatiable  as  death,  who  devoureth  all 
people,  and  swalloweth  down  all  nations,  is  among 
the  most  magnificent  productions  of  Hebrew  litera- 
ture. 

"He  treateth  men  as  the  fishes  of  the  sea,  as 
creeping  things  that  have  no  ruler  over  them.  He 
fishes  up  all  of  them  with  the  angle,  he  catches 
them  in  his  net,  and  gathers  them  in  his  drag ; 
therefore  does  he  rejoice  and  is  glad.  Therefore  he 
sacrifices  unto  his  net,  and  burns  incense  unto  his 
drag,  because  by  them  is  his  portion  plenteous  and 
his  meat  fat.  Shall  he  then  ever  draw  his  sword,  and 
not  spare  continually  to  sla}'  the  nations  ?" 

In  Habakkuk  the  ethical  and  religious  element  is 
duly  treated.  Pride  causes  the  fall  of  the  Assyrian, 
the  hyl'iis  in  the  sense  of  Greek  tragedy,  for,  as 
Habakkuk  sharply  and  clearly  defines  it,  he  makes 
"his  strength  his  God."  Might  for  the  Assyrian  ex- 
ceeds right.  Because  he  has  the  might,  he  oppresses 
and  enslaves  nations  which  have  done  him  no  harm. 
The  universal  moral  law  demands  his  destruction. 

But  now  we  must  retrace  our  steps  for  a  time.  As 
Zephaniah,  Nahum,  and  Habakkuk  form  an  inti- 
mately connected  group,  it  appeared  expedient  to 
treat  them  together.  But  Jeremiah  appeared  before 
Nahum,  and  between  Nahum  and  Habakkuk  an  event 
took  place  which  ranks  among  the  most  important  and 
momentous  in  the  history  of  mankind. 


THE  BOW  IN  ART,  METAPHOR,  AND  SONQ. 

BY   GEORGE   HENRY   KNIGHT. 

That  potent  factor  in  human  evolution,  the  inven- 
tive faculty,  appears  to  have  been  first  exercised  in 
the  manufacture  of  weapons  and,  among  weapons, 
the  archer's  bow  occupied,  deservedly,  a  very  con- 
spicuous place.  The  value  set  upon  it  by  the  an- 
cients appears  in  their  belief  in  its  divine  origin  and 


in  the  reference  to  it  in  sacred  and  epic  verse  as  a 
favorite  weapon  of  their  gods  and  heroes.  That  such 
estimation  was  not  misplaced  will  be  conceded  when 
it  is  considered  that  by  this,  his  earliest  machine, 
the  primordial  hunter  was  enabled  to  take  his  first 
accurate  and  deliberate  aim  with  slight  muscular 
effort  from  a  distant  covert  without  betraying  his 
presence  to  the  weaker  or  engaging  in  close  mortal 
combat  with  the  more  powerful  creatures  of  the 
chase.  In  the  missile's  easy  and  certain  penetration 
to  a  vital  part,  in  the  access  afforded  to  such  tooth- 
some game  as  birds  and  fleet-footed  ruminants,  in  the 
mastery  given  over  all  the  hunter's  predatory  com- 
petitors (whether  man  or  brute),  and  in  the  prolific 
field  of  invention  thus  opened',  the  archer's  craft 
occupies  a  high  rank  among  inventions  that  have  in- 
augurated new  eras  in  human  progress. 

The  substantial  identity  of  form,  in  all  times  and 
places, -and  the  improbability  of  a  double  origin  of  such 
an  invention  among  savages,  taken  in  connexion  with 
its  prevalence  north  and  its  comparative  absence  south 
of  a  definable  boundary,-'  seem  to  indicate  a  single 
place  of  origin  for  the  craft  of  archery.  Innumerable 
collected  specimens  of  indestructible  flint  arrowheads 
ranging  from  almost  shapeless  chips  and  flakes  to 
blades  having  the  mathematical  perfection  of  a  mod- 
ern lancet,  tell  the  story  of  their  growth ;  but  of  the 
comparatively  perishable  bow,  we  are  acquainted  only 
with  its  last  and  perfected  stage  of  development.  A 
hint  of  its  pedigree  may,  possibly,  be  found  in  some 
co-adaptation  of  the  spear-casting  thong  (amentum) 
and  some  type  of  the  spear-throwing  staff,  such  as 
still  seen  among  the  Eskimos,  the  Paru  Indians  of 
the  Amazon,  the  Pelew  Islanders  of  the  Pacific,  the 
Uganda  Negroes  of  Eastern  Africa  and  certain  Austra- 
lian tribes.  One  eminent  authority,  however,  sug- 
gests that : 

' '  The  spring-trap  of  the  Malay  Peninsula,  described  by  Pierre 
Bourienne,  is  a  contrivance  that  might  readily  (?)  have  suggested 
itself  from  the  use  of  an  elastic  throwing-stick.  When  the  spring 
is  fastened  down  by  a  string  or  cord,  it  would  soon  (?)  be  per- 
ceived that,  by  attaching  the  end  of   the  lance  to   the  string,  in- 

1  In  the  bow-rotated  tire-drill  may  be  detected  the  germ  and  prototype  of 
modern  machinery.  The  crafts  of  the  bowyer  and  of  the  fire-maker  led  to  the 
invention  of  firearms,  thus  :  the  gun-barrel  had  a  twofold  suggestion  in  the 
groove  of  the  crossbow  and  the  tube  of  the  blow-gun  ;  the  stock,  butt,  sight, 
lock,  and  trigger,  in  like  parts  of  the  crossbow:  the  cock,  pan,  touch-hole 
and  priming  were  adaptations  of  the  prehistoric  fire-striker,  tinder  and 
match.  The  crossbow  was  a  portable  catapult,  itself  a  modification  of  the 
bow.  Even  the  "  spin  "  given  to  the  bullet  by  a  modern  rifle  is  but  an  adap- 
tation to  firearms  of  the  action  produced  by  the  spiral  feathering  of  arrows  of 
unknown  antiquity.  The  divine  arts  of  poetry  and  music  even  are  largely 
indebted  to  the  bowyer's  craft,  for  it  was  to  the  accompaniments  of  the  harp 
and  the  lyre  that  the  bards  of  old  recited  their  poems,  and  these  instru- 
ments are  clearly  traceable  to  the  bow. 

'^Arckery,  by  C.  L.  Longman,  p.  i. 

■>.\  "  great  circle  "  described  on  a  map  or  globe  about  a  center  at  or  near 
the  present  city  of  London  (see  map  in  Public  IVorks  0/  Great  Britain,  by 
John  Weale,  iy40)  defines  very  nearly  the  boundary  of  that  half  of  the 
earth's  surface  to  which  the  navigators  of  the  sixteenth  century,  A.  D.,  found 
a  knowledge  of  the  bow  to  be  generally  restricted. 


45o6 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


stead  of   to   the  stick,  it  would  be  made  to  project  the  lance  with 
great  force  and  accuracy.     The  bow  would  thus  be  introduced.  ' 

The  entire  absence  of  the  bow  (and,  so  far  as  known, 
of  the  elsewhere  so  abundant  arrowheads),  from  cer. 
tain  remote  regions  of  the  Southern  Hemisphere,  e.  g. 
Australasia  and  the  South  American  pampas  may  be 
due  to  one  or  more  of  several  causes,  such  as  the  re- 
luctance of  barbarians  to  exchange  old  for  new  methods 
or  that,  long  before  the  invention  had  penetrated  to 
those  parts,  such  fairly  effective  devices  as  the  boome- 
rang, the  spear-caster  and  the  weet-weet,-  in  the  one 
case,  and  the  blow-gun,  the  bolas,  and  the  lariat,  in 
the  other  case,  had  become  too  popular  for  displace- 
ment. Such  competent  judges,  however,  as  Oskar 
PescheP  and  N.  Joly^  have  expressed  a  belief  that,  in 
such  cases,  archery  should  be  regarded  as  a  "lost  art" 
whose  disuse  had  probably  arisen  from  lack  of  suitable 
prey  ;  but,  opposed  to  this  view,  we  have  the  well- 
known  obstinate  adherence  of  savages  to  wonted  usage 
even  in  the  presence  of  better  methods^  and  the  seem- 
ing improbability  that  a  hunting  people,  having  once 
become  familiarised  with  the  use  of  the  far-reaching, 
deadly  arrow,  would  return  to  mere  hurling  devices  in 
regions  exceptionally  rich  in  birds,  a  class  of  game 
which  the  arrow  was  singularly  well  fitted  to  reach. 
Former  use,  moreover,  seems  to  be  discredited  by  the 
lack,  already  adverted  to,  of  spent  arrow-heads. 

But,  beside  its  pre-eminence  as  an  instrument  of 
war  and  the  chase  and  of  primitive  industrial  art,  the 
bow  was  a  not  unimportant  factor  in  the  birth  and 
early  development  of  the  divine  arts  of  music  and 
song.  In  devices  still  used  by  certain  primitive 
peoples,*  in    numerous   antique   pictured   and   sculp- 

1  Remarks  of  Gen.  Pitt  Rivers  in  Cat.  Lond.  Anthrop.  Col.,  p.  41.— With 
reference  to  Gen.  Rivers's  suggestion  it  may  be  permitted  to  inquire  whether 
— concedinfi  the  requisite  antiquity  of  the  somewhat  complex  trap  referred 
to — the  uninformed  mind  of  the  savage  would  arrive  at  the  bow  with  the 
"readiness"  which  this  skilled  military  engineer,  to  whom  the  invention  is 
familiar,  thinks  it  would  be  ? 

2./J  Study  of  Saztage  Weapons.     Smithsonia?c  Rep.,  iSyg. 

5Races  of  Man,  185. 

\  Man  before  Metals,  222. 

5  "The  old  Lapp  woman,  Elsa,  sat  upon  the  floor,  in  a  deer-skin,  and 
employed  herself  in  twisting  reindeer  sinews,  which  she  rolled  upon  her 
cheek  with  the  palm  of  her  hand."  Northern  Travel,  by  Bayard  Taylor 
{1859),  p.  108.  The  mingled  indolence  and  conceit  of  savages  is  well  illus- 
trated in  the  following  ;  "  The  acme  of  respectability  among  the  Becbuhanas 
is  the  possession  of  cattle  and  a  wagon.  It  is  remarkable  that,  though  these 
latter  require  frequent  repairs,  no  Bechuhan  has  ever  learned  to  mend  them. 
Forges  and  tools  have  been  at  their  service  and  teachers  willing  to  aid  them, 
but,  beyond  putting  together  a  camp-stool,  no  effort  is  ever  made  to  acquire  a 
knowledge  of  the  trades.  They  observe,  most  carefully,  a  missionary  at  work 
until  they  understand  whether  a  tire  is  well  welded  or  not,  and  then  pro- 
nounce upon  its  merit  with  great  emphasis;  but  there  their  ambition  rests 
satisfied.  It  is  the  same  peculiarity  among  ourselves  which  leads  us  in  other 
matters,  such  as  book-making,  to  attain  the  excellence  of  fault-finding  withou 
the  wit  to  indite  a  page.  It  was  in  vain  I  tried  to  indoctrinate  the  Bechuhanas 
with  the  idea  that  criticism  did  not  imply  any  superiority  over  the  workman 
or  even  equality  with  him."  Travels  and  Researches  in  South  .'ifr/ea,  by 
Dr.  David  Livingstone,  62.    Races  of  Mankind,  by  Robert  Brown,  46  and  118. 

*J  For  illustrations  of  existing  stringed  instruments  traceable  to  the  bow- 
see  :  Through  the  Dark  Continent,  by  Henry  M.  Stanley,  413.  For  a  represen, 
tation  of  the  Bojesman's  musical  bow,  see  :  Travels  in  the  Interior  of  South- 
ern Africa,  by  William  John  Burchell,  Frontispiece  to  Vol.  I. 


tured  records,  1  and  even  in  specimens  recovered  from 
ancient  tombs,'-*  we  have  abundant  evidence  that,  in 
some  remote  prehistoric  past, 

"When  music,  heavenly  maid,  was  young," 

the  archer's  bow  led  to  the  harp  and  thus  to  stringed 
instruments  of  all  kinds ;  to  become,  in  turn,  the 
recognised  symbol  of  martial  prowess  and  of  sover- 
eign power,  conspicuously  apparent  in  rock  and 
mural  inscriptions  of  India  and  of  Egypt  and  other 
Levantine  nations  of  antiquity.  A  triumphal  paean 
from  the  old  Aryan  conquerors  of  India  contains  the 
following  invocation  to  the  bow  : 

"  May  the  bow  bring  us  spoils  and  oxen. 

May  the  bow  be  victorious  in  the  heat  of  the  fight. 

The  bow  fills  the  world  with  fear. 

May  the  bow  give  us  victory  over  the  world."-'' 

All  Persian  youth  of  noble  birth  were  practised  in 
archery,  and,  among  all  other  ancient  nations,  skill  in 
the  use  of  the  bow  was  regarded  as  a  princely  accom- 
plishment.* 

The  annals  of  ancient  Egypt  contain  frequent 
allusions  to  the  bow,  thus :  Sinuhe,  an  officer  at- 
tached to  the  court  of  Amenem  I.  (2,400,  B.  C.) 
closes  his  combat  with  the  hero  of  the  opposing  host 
by  the  following  decisive  act : 

"I  shot  at  him  and  my  weapon  stuck  in  his  neck.  He  cried 
out !     He  fell  on  his  nose  !  " 

It  gives  one  no  surprise  to  read  that,  on  observing 
this  condition  of  their  champion, 

"All  the  Bedouins  cried  out !  "  ^ 

Pentauert  ("The  Egyptian  Homer")  puts  in  the 
mouth  of  his  patron,  Ramses  II.  (1,400,  B.  C),  a 
grandiloquent  battle-speech  of  which  the  following  is 
a  small  portion  : 

"I  am  as  Mont ;  I  shoot  to  the  right  and  hurl  to  the  left ; 
I  am  like  Baal  as  a  plague  upon  them.  I  find  the  chariot-force 
of  their  army  lying  slaughtered  under  the  feet  of  my  horses 
Behold,  none  of  them  are  able  to  fight  before  me  ;  their  hearts 
melt  in  their  bodies  ;    their  arms  fall  down  ;    they  cannot  shoot.* 

In  a  letter  addressed  to  one  Nechtsotep  by  some 
unknown  writer  under  the  New  Empire  (about  1,200, 
B.  C.)  occurs  the  following  passage  : 

"Thou  dost  see  after  thy  team.  Thy  horses  are  as  swift  as 
jackals.  When  they  are  let  go,  they  are  like  the  wings  of  the 
storm.  Thou  dost  seize  the  reins.  Thou  takest  the  bow.  We 
will  see  now  what  thy  hand  can  do.  Beware  of  the  gorge  with 
the  precipice  two  thousand  cubits  deep,  which  is  full  of  rocks  and 
boulders.  Thou  dost  make  a  detour.  Thou  dost  seize  thy  bow 
and  showest  thyself  to  the  good  princes,  so  that  their  eye  is 
wearied  at  thy  hand."' 

\Life  in  .Ancient  Egypt,  by  Adolf  Erman,  Chap.  XI. 

2  A  harp  taken,  A.  D.  1823,  from  an  Egyptian  tomb  had  several  remaining 
strings  which,  responding  to  the  touch,  awoke  from  a  slumber  of  30M  years. 
Am.  Mcch.  Diet.,  1063. 

3The  Rig'Veda,  VI.,  65,  quoted  in  Prehistoric  Antiijuities  of  the  Aryan 
Peoples,  by  Otto  Schrader. 

i Encyc.  Brit.,   "Archery." 

5  Life  in  Ancient  Egypt,  371. 

^Ibid.,  394. 

7/4irf.,  381. 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4507 


The  symbolic  use  of  the  bow  in  the  Hebrew  scrip- 
tures is  familiar  to  every  reader,  thus  :  in  Genesis,  the 
up-pointed  (and  therefore  pacific)  "bow  in  the 
cloud"  is  "the  sign"  whereby  The  Elohim  vouch- 
safe assurance  of  their  reconciliation  with  mankind, 
much  in  the  same  sense  as,  between  aliens  and  hos- 
tiles,  at  all  times  and  everywhere,  the  reversed  arms 
or  the  buried  weapon  has  been  the  recognised  pledge 
of  peace.      Thus,  The  Elohim  are  made  to  say  : 

"  This  is  the  token  of  the  covenant  which  We  make  between 
Us  and  you  for  perpetual  generations  :  We  do  set  our  bow  in  the 
clouds,  and  it  shall  be  for  a  token  of  the  covenant  between  Us 
and  the  earth,  .  .  .  and  We  will  look  upon  it  that  We  may 
remember  the  everlasting  covenant  between  The  Elohim  and 
every  living  creature."' 

The  bow  and  arrow  are  also  spoken  of  symbol- 
ically in  the  following  passages  : 

"  His  bow  abode  in  strength-  ...  I  will  spend  mine  arrows 
upon  them''  .  .  .  The  arrow  of  Yahveh's  deliverance^  .  .  .  Yah- 
veh  will  whet  His  sword  ;  He  hath  bent  His  bow  and  made  it 
ready'  .  .  .  Thine  arrows  are  sharp  in  the  heart''  .  .  .  And  it 
shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day  that  I  will  break  the  bow  of  Israel 
in  the  valley  of  Jezreel."" 

The  following  texts  seem  significant  reminders  of 
the  antiquity  of  the  barbed  arrow  head  with  poisoned 
tip:* 

"Thine  arrows  stick  fast  in  me,'  The  arrows  of  the  Al- 
mighty are  within  me,  the  poison  whereof  drinketh  up  my 
spirit." '" 

In  the  charming  story  of  ITlysses,  Penelope  im- 
poses on  the  throng  of  importunate  suiters  the  follow- 
ing task  : 

"  If  /the  prize  and  mc  you  seek  for  wife. 
Hear  the  conditions  and  commence  the  strife. 
Who  first  Ulysses  wond'rous  bow  shall  bend 
And  through  twelve  ringlets  the  swift  arrow  send  ; 
Him  will  J  follow  and  forsake  my  home. 
For  him  forsake  this  loved,  this  wealthy  dome, 
Long— long— the  scene  ot  all  ray  past  delight 
And— to  the  last — the  vision  of  my  night." 

When  it  comes  to  Ulysses's  turn  : 

"  Now— sitting  as  he  was — the  cord  he  drew. 

Through  ev'ry  ringlet  le\eling  his  view  ; 

Then  notch'd  the  shaft,  released,  and  gave  it  wing  ; 

The  whizzing  arrow  vanished  from  the  string, 

Sung  on  direct  and  threaded  ev'ry  ring. 

The  solid  gate  its  fury  scarcely  bounds. 

Pierced  through  and  through,  the  solid  gate  resounds." 

1  Gen.  ix,  12. 

2  Gen  ,  xlix,  24. 
^Dettt.,  xxxii,  23. 
■12,  Kittys,  siii,  17. 
hPsahns^  xii,  12. 

f>  Psalms,  xlv,  5. 

7  Rosea,  i,  5. 

«  The  close  affinity  of  certain  ancient  names  for  poison  and  for  the  arcli- 
er's  bow  ;  the  use  by  many  widely  separated  existing  savage  tribes  of  poisoned 
arrow-lips,  and  the  near  resemblance  to  such  tips  of  numerous  prehistoric 
specimens,  indicates  an  extreme  antiquity  for  a  device  which  thus  (like  fire- 
making)  combined  chemical  with  mechanical  agents.  If  the  bow-and-arrow 
was  a  machine,  the  poisoned  form  tro^ul')  was  more  than  a  machine— it  was 
an  apparatus. 

9  Psalms,  xxviii,  32, 

Kl  yob,  vi,  4, 


This   feat   satisfies  Penelope  of  Ulysses's  identity  : 

"  Ah  no  !— she  cries— a  tender  heart  I  bear, 
A  foe  to  pride,  no  adamant  is  there  ; 
And  now,  ev'n  now,  it  melts,  for  sure,  I  see 
Once  more— Ulysses  !— my  beloved  !— in  thee."  1 

The  frequent  allusion,  in  lyric  verse,  to  Cupid's 
bow  has  familiarised  the  graceful  Hellenic  legend  to 
all  readers,  thus:  the  son  of  Venus,  nettled  by 
Apollo's  rebuke  on  finding  the  manly  bow  in  the 
hands  of  a  boy,  retaliates  by  a  demonstration  of  liis 
skill  on  the  god  himself  : 

"  Two  ditterent  shafts  he  from  his  bosom  draws  ; 
One  to  repel  desire  and  one  to  cause. 
One  shaft  is  pointed  with  refulgent  gold, 
To  bribe  the  love  and  make  the  lover  bold  ; 
One  blunt  and  tipp'd  with  lead,  whose  base  allay 
Provokes  disdain  and  drives  desire  away. 
Tlie  blunted  bolt  against  the  nymph  lie  dress'd. 
But  with  the  sharp  transtix'd  Apollo's  breast."  2 


EDUCATION. 


by  thos.  c.  laws, 
[concluded.] 

Education,  in  whatever  direction  it  may  lie,  must 
follow  the  order  of  nature,  proceeding  from  the  con- 
crete to  the  abstract,  from  the  simple  to  the  complex. 
In  matters  of  science,  for  example,  it  is  usually  forgot- 
ten that  the  "laws  of  nature"  are  man's  laws,  and 
that,  in  the  history  of  every  department  of  science, 
the  facts  have  been  discovered  first,  and  the  laws  or 
generalisations  invented  later.  The  child  learns  sci- 
ence more  readily,  with  far  greater  interest  and  amuse- 
ment, from  the  working  of  a  battery  or  from  a  series 
of  experiments  in  chemistry,  than  from  learned  dis- 
sertations upon  the  laws  of  Dalton,  Ampere,  and  Boyle. 
For  this  reason,  the  child's  early  education  should  be 
limited  to  the  concrete  sciences  which  deal  with  facts 
themselves,  through  which  the  abstract  ones,  dealing 
with  the  laws  manifested  by  those  facts,  may  be  easily 
learned.  More  especially  is  logic  as  we  know  it,  with 
its  uncouth  terminology  and  needless  mnemonics,  to 
be  avoided,  and  in  its  place  be  given  a  training  in  rea- 
soning upon  facts.  The  art  of  reasoning  upon  social 
science — a  use  to  which  the  so-called  "history"  of 
our  schools,  with  its  long  lists  of  monarchs  and  its  in- 
terminable dates,  can  never  be  put — may  be  imparted 
in  the  same  way.  There  are  few  children,  indeed, 
who  are  not  interested  in  books  of  travel  and  adven- 
ture, and  who  might  not  in  this  way  be  taught  many 
facts  relating  to  the  social  history,  evolution,  and  or- 
ganisation of  their  own  and  other  races,  and  be  in- 
duced to  make  comparisons  between  them.  In  a  walk 
in  the  fields  a  pupil  might  be  taught  very  much  in- 
deed under  a  competent  teacher — he  might  learn  the 
names  and  natures  of  the  flowers  he  gathered,  might 
find  "sermons  in  stones,"  and  gather  facts  about  bird, 
beast,  insect,  and  fish,  as  well  as  the  elements  of  land- 

1  Oilyssey,  xxi  and  xxiii. 

2  Ovid's  Met.,  i.  * 


45o8 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


tenure,  graiiiic  and  petite  culture,  rent  and  wages,  cap- 
ital and  labor,  and  so  forth.  And  in  this  simple  and 
graphic  way  the  interdependence  among  the  sciences 
might  be  made  manifest,  and  a  sure  foundation  builded, 
not  for  the  study  of  physical  science  alone,  but  of  po- 
litical science  at  the  same  time,  and  the  child  would 
be  led  to  reflect  and  to  value  the  rights  of  citizenship 
which  he  will  possess,  and  valuing  those  rights  to  ful- 
fil the  duties  which  they  involve. 

Much  is  said  just  now  about  technical  education. 
Its  supporters  point  to  the  fact  that  most  people  have 
to  earn  their  living  at  a  trade  or  profession.  On  the 
other  hand  it  is  objected  that  technical  education  tends 
to  produce  jacks  of  all  trades  instead  of  good  work- 
men, that  it  opens  up  amateur  competition  with  recog- 
nised businesses,  and  that  it  tends  to  abolish  appren- 
ticeship. For  the  last  there  can  be  little  regret  except 
on  the  part  of  those  employers  who  are  benefited  by 
the  premiums  paid.  Few  ways  of  learning  a  business 
could  be  more  unsatisfactory  than  is  in  most  cases  the 
apprenticeship  system,  in  which  the  apprentice  is 
often  treated  as  an  errand  or  page-boy,  while  the  mas- 
ter himself  (to  whom  in  too  many  cases,  the  premium 
is  everything  and  the  pupil  nothing)  is  incapable 
through  want  of  experience  or  ability  to  give  the  pro- 
per training.  As  to  the  other  objections,  a  good  all- 
round  technical  education  has  usually,  where  the  pupil 
is  free  to  make  his  own  choice,  as  its  result  the  selec- 
tion by  him  of  a  branch  of  business  for  which  he  is 
specially  adapted,  after  a  long  experience  in  several 
crafts,  instead  of  a  nominal  selection  after  a  month's 
experience  of  one  only.  The  better  system  cannot  but 
produce  better  workmen,  because  those  workmen  will 
have  been  trained  under  masters  qualified  to  give  the 
necessary  training,  will  have  been  naturally  sorted  ac- 
cording to  their  abilities  and  tastes,  and  will  have 
been  kept  abreast  of  modern  requirements  and  discov- 
eries. The  question  of  amateur  versus  professional 
involved  is  not  a  serious  one,  and  is  rarely  raised  ex- 
cept upon  this  question.  Many  a  business  man  in  our 
large  cities  is  an  amateur  gardener  ;  many  a  clerk 
spends  his  hours  of  leisure  carpentering  ;  many  a 
schoolmaster  is  his  own  electrical  engineer  ;  and  even 
bricklayers  have  taken  to  amateur  photography.  In 
small  villages,  distant  from  a  large  town,  jacks  of  all 
trades  are  useful  workmen,  but  the  increasing  com- 
plexity of  our  social  life  makes  division  of  labor  more 
than  ever  a  necessity,  so  that  actual  competition  be- 
tween the  two  is  becoming  more  and  more  difficult. 
But  even  if  amateur  work  be  on  the  increase,  that 
means  simply  a  redistribution  of  tasks,  for  somebody 
must  produce  the  tools  and  the  books  which  the  ama- 
teur requires.  Perhaps  the  only  way  in  which  tech- 
nical education  may  injure  existing  trades  is  by  sub- 
stituting capable  engineers  for  many  skilled  workmen. 


as  those  in  the  bootmaking  and  tailoring  trades.  But 
even  here  the  impetus  has  been  given  by  the  trades- 
people themselves,  and  has  not  been  imparted  from 
without.  In  this  connexion  reference  may  be  made 
to  the  technical  education  of  women.  Although  the 
growing  equalisation  of  the  sexes  cannot  but  result  in 
women  taking  upon  themselves  to  some  extent  the 
work  heretofore  performed  by  men,  still  to  a  prepon- 
derating extent  their  position  in  the  household  must 
remain  the  same  as  ever.  For  this  reason  some  ex- 
perience in  the  arts  of  cooking,  nursing,  household 
economy,  and  the  like  should  be  obtained  as  a  part  of 
the  girl's  education. 

Something,  too,  must  be  said  about  religious  edu- 
cation. This  phrase  in  reality  covers  at  least  three 
distinct  questions.  Firstly,  it  is  applied  to  our  duty 
to  one  another;  secondly,  to  our  duty  towards  the  di- 
vine powers;  and  thirdly,  to  the  knowledge  and  be- 
ing of  those  powers.  It  would  certainly  be  of  advan- 
tage to  dispense  entirely  with  the  word  "religion"  in 
this  connexion.  The  first  question  has  already  been 
dealt  with  under  the  name  of  moral  education  ;  the 
other  two  may  well  be  grouped  together  as  theology, 
and  with  this  I  shall  proceed  to  deal.  Education 
should  be  limited  to  the  imparting,  not  of  guesses, 
theories,  and  popular  prejudices,  but  of  ascertained 
facts,  and  since,  in  the  civilised  world,  there  are  so 
many  phases  of  theological  opinion,  even  within  the 
limits  of  one's  own  parish,  it  may  be  questioned  how 
far  theological  ideas  are  from  being  ascertained  facts, 
and  how  far  they  partake  of  the  nature  of  hypoth- 
eses. It  has  been  observed  above  that  education 
should  begin  with  the  concrete.  But  it  cannot  be  said 
that  the  fundamental  notions  of  theology  are  such. 
Strictly  they  form  part  of  the  study  of  metaphysics, 
and  who  would  think  of  instilling  Kant,  Hegel,  or 
Hamilton  into  the  mind  of  a  child,  or  of  trying  to 
make  it  acquainted  with  the  theorems  of  abstract  psy- 
chology? And  when  two  such  orthodox  theists  as  Kant 
and  Dean  Mansel  knock  away  all  the  popular  argu- 
ments in  proof  of  the  existence  of  the  Deity  as  untena- 
ble, upon  what  grounds  shall  be  based  the  arguments 
which  we  put  before  the  child?  The  elaborate  meta- 
physical disquisition  of  Kant  upon  the  necessary  exis- 
tence of  God  cannot  be  translated  into  child  language. 
Doubtless  it  will  be  replied  that  we  must  teach  it  as  a 
dogma,  and  as  an  unquestionable  fact.  To  this  I  de- 
mur. Putting  aside  the  question  of  Trinitarianism 
against  Unitarianism,  and  both  against  Positivism  and 
Agnosticism,  the  teaching  of  a  dogma  as  dogma  is 
utterly  opposed  to  the  spirit  of  this  essay.  I  have  all 
along  expounded  a  theory  of  education  as  in  verity  a 
process  of  leading-out,  a  disciplining  of  the  mind  into 
such  order  that  when  facts  are  obtained  they  fall  nat- 
urally into  their  proper  places.      I   do  not  doubt  that 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4509 


theological  education  will  continue  to  be  given  at  home 
and  in  Sunday-schools,  although  I  cannot  feel  disposed 
to  approve  even  of  that.  Better  by  far  let  the  child 
grow  up  free  and  unbiassed,  or  give  him,  after  the 
manner  already  indicated  with  regard  to  histor}-  and 
economics,  an  impartial  knowledge  of  hierology,  the 
comparative  and  historical  science  of  all  religions,  new 
and  old,  that  when  his  mind  becomes  fully  developed 
he  may  select  one  for  himself,  as  he  will  do  in  the  case 
of  a  profession. 

To  sum  up  in  a  few  words  the  theories  herein  ex- 
pounded, a  rational  theory  of  education  must  take  into 
consideration  the  person  to  be  educated,  and  must  be 
so  applied  as  to  continue  the  work  which  nature  has 
already  begun,  in  extending  individuality  and  in  bring- 
ing into  adequate  play  and  thorough  discipline  all  the 
senses  and  all  the  functions  of  the  mind.  Examina- 
tions for  other  than  specific  objects  —  as  sight  and 
sound  testing  among  railroad  men — are  to  be  discoun- 
tenanced. The  educationalist  must  endeavor  to  better 
human  life  in  all  its  relations,  and  not  attempt  to  cre- 
ate geniuses  or  walking  encyclopa?dias.  In  extending 
the  faculties,  the  true  educationalist  will  seek  to  sup- 
plement memory,  observation,  and  reasoning  by  sym- 
pathy and  the  aesthetic  senses,  and  give  to  his  charge 
that  physical,  mental,  and  moral  discipline  which 
shall  insure  the  greater  well-being  of  the  individual, 
and  lay  the  foundation  of  a  common  bond  of  ethical, 
social,  and  political  unity,  in  which  the  happiness  of 
the  one  shall  be  coincident  with  the  well-being  of  the 
many. 


BAD  FOR  ME,  BUT  WORSE  FOR  HIM. 

Sad  is  the  predicament  of  an  author  who  falls  into 
the  hands  of  an  incompetent  reviewer,  but  sadder  is 
the  case  of  the  reviewer  himself  who  thus  naively  ex- 
poses his  incompetence. 

A  reviewer  ought  to  be  familiar  with  the  literature 
of  the  subject,  but  what  shall  we  say  of  a  critic  on 
philosophical  literature — a  severe  critic,  of  course,  and 
a  stern  judge — whose  knowledge  of  monism  appears 
to  be  limited  to  the  dictionary  definition  of  the  term. 

Mr.  George  M.  Steele,  a  reviewer  of  the  latest  edi- 
tion of  Fundatnental  Probletns  in  the  Boston  Coinmon- 
loealtli,  gives  his  opinion  of  the  book  as  follows  : 

"  Dr.  Paul  Carus  is  a  staunch  supporter  of  the  theory  of  Mo- 
nism. Doubtless  the  believers  in  this  theory  have  a  clear  concep- 
tion of  what  is  meant  by  this  term,  but  they  are  not  always  suc- 
cessful in  conveying  it  to  others.  As  nearly  as  some  of  us  can  make 
out,  it  means  that  there  is  in  the  universe  but  one  substance  and 
that  this  is  neither  matter  nor  mind,  these  last  being  only  mani- 
festations of  it.  One  great  obstacle  to  its  comprehension  by  a  con- 
siderable class  of  men  will  be  that  they  will  perversely  look  upon 
this  substance  as  a  kind  of  teyliuiii  quid,  so  that  instead  of  having 
but  one  substance  we  shall  have  three  !  It  is  a  little  doubtful 
whether  by  this  device  the  subject  is  much  simplified." 


It  is  probable  that  Mr.  Steele  resorted  for  informa- 
tion on  monism  to  Webster  ;  at  least  the  expressions 
which  he  uses,  are  to  be  found  there.  Webster  de- 
fines monism  as  : 

"That  doctrine  which  refers  all  phenomena  to  a  single  con- 
stituent or  agent.  .  .  .  Matter,  mind,  and  their  phenomena  have 
been  held  to  be  manifestations  or  modifications  of  some  one  sub- 
stance." 

The  words  "one  substance"  and  matter  and  mind 
being  manifestations  of  it  do  not  occur  in  any  one  of 
my  expositions  of  monism  ;  they  are  Mr.  Steele's  sub- 
stitutions. 

Had  Mr.  Steele  been  familiar  with  the  monism 
represented  by  Tlie  Open  Court  and  The  Monist,  or 
had  he  really  read  Fundamental  Frol>h-ms,  he  would 
have  known  that  I  have  again  and  again  objected  to 
the  proposition  of  defining  monism  as  a  one-substance 
theory.      One  quotation  may  be  sufficient  : 

"Monism  is  not  'that  doctrine'  (as  Webster  has  it)  'which 
refers  all  phenomena  to  a  single  ultimate  constituent  or  agent.' 
....  Monism  means  that  the  whole  of  Reality,  i.  e.  everything 
that  is,  constitutes  one  inseparable  and  indivisible  entirety.  Mo- 
nism accordingly  is  u  iiiiitary  concfftion  0/  the  world.  It  always 
bears  in  mind  that  our  words  are  abstracts  representing  parts  or 
features  of  the  One  and  All,  and  not  separate  existences.  Not 
only  are  matter  and  mind,  soul  and  body  abstracts,  but  also  such 
scientific  terms  as  atoms  and  molecules,  and  also  religious  terms 
such  as  God  and  world." 

As  to  the  real  significance  of  monism,  which  is  a 
method  rather  than  a  finished  system,  a  plan  of  com- 
prehending the  world  and  not  the  hypothetical  assump- 
tion of  any  tertiiim  quid;  Mr.  Steele  should  read  the 
section  entitled  "  Foundation  of  Monism  "  {Fundamen- 
tal Problems,  pp.  21-25). 

The  idea  of  self-evident  truths  is  an  old  crux,  and 
all  philosophers  agree  that  a  philosophy  which  can  do 
without  them  is  superior  to  those  systems  that  find 
them  indispensable.  Concerning  the  endeavor  to  dis- 
card self-evident  truths,  Mr.  Steele  says  : 

"  It  is  a  little  interesting  to  learn  that  in  the  present  animosity 
against  what  is  called  orthodoxy  in  theology  and  philosophy  and 
science,  even  mathematics  are  not  free  from  invasion.  We  are 
informed  that  there  is  a  good  deal  of  'dogmatism  '  here  that  is  to 
be  discarded.  The  author,  like  some  others,  apparently  does  not 
believe  in  self-evident  or  necessary  truths.  His  illustrations  are 
very  unfortunate.  Thus  he  gives  as  one  of  the  axioms  that  will 
not  stand  criticism,  that  "a  straight  line  is  the  shortest  distance 
between  two  points"  ;  which  is  not  an  axiom  at  all,  but  a  conven- 
tional definition  !  So  we  are  to  have  a  reformed  mathematics 
with  no  dogmatism  in  them.  The  author  is  clearly  not  an  intui- 
tionalist  either  in  physics  or  in  metaphysics" 

Mr.  Steele  imagines  that  the  attempt  to  get  rid  of 
the  assumption  of  self-evident  truths  springs  from  a 
mere  prejudice  against  orthodoxy!  But  how  ill-in- 
formed he  is  !  He  says  "his  (!)  illustrations,"  as  if  / 
had  invented  the  problem  of  a  mathematics  without 
the  axiom  of  parallels.  In  addition,  these  problems 
are  to  him  "mere  illustrations  "!   Mr.  Steele  has  appar- 


v' 


4510 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


ently  never  heard  of  the  labors  of  such  men  as  Grass- 
mann,  Riemann,  Gauss,  Lobatschewsky,  and  Hamil- 
ton. He  finds  the  idea  of  "mathematics  with  no  dog- 
matism in  them"  grandly  ridiculous.  The  very  prob- 
lem of  modern  philosophy  appears  to  him  a  good 
joke.  What  a  picture  of  innocence  abroad  seated  on 
the  critic's  tripod  ;  and  to  such  men  the  reviewing  of 
philosophical  books  is  entrusted  ! 

Mr.  Steele  asks  many  questions  which  I  shall  be 
glad  to  answer  when  the  proper  occasion  arises.  We 
read  in  his  review  : 

"In  explanation  of  certain  evolutionary  processes  he  [viz. 
the  author  of  Fiiiidininnta!  Piolilc-ms}  says  :  '  Under  the  constant 
influence  of  special  irritations  special  senses  are  created.  Given 
ether  waves  of  light  and  sensation,  and  in  the  long  process  of  evo- 
lution an  eye  will  be  formed  ;  given  air-waves  of  sound  and  sensa- 
tion, and  in  the  long  process  of  evolution  an  ear  will  be  formed.' 
This  may  be  all  correct,  but  it  will  bear  a  good  deal  of  explana- 
tion. The  man  without  much  philosophic  apprehension  and  only 
common  sense  might  inquire  why  it  is  that  the  eye  or  the  ear  al- 
ways developes  in  a  particular  place,  and  why  there  are  two  of  each 
and  only  two,  instead  of  one  or  a  dozen— why  they  do  not  break 
out  on  the  cheek,  or  on  the  back  of  the  head  or  all  over  the  body, 
or  even  in  trees  and  stones  ?  " 

I  have  fallen  into  the  hands  of  an  original  critic, 
whose  vis  cctnica  is  apparently  involuntary  and  un- 
conscious. Mr.  Steele  forgets  that  a  book  is  devoted 
to  the  explanation  of  special  problems.  No  one  can 
expect  in  a  philosophical  treatise  a  discussion  of  bio- 
logical or  evolutionary  topics,  and  still  less  the  solu- 
tion of  childish  conundrums.  A  reviewer's  business  is 
to  discuss  the  book  that  is  before  him,  and  not  to  ask 
impertinent  questions.  No  author  can  be  expected  to 
anticipate  and  explain  all  the  quibbles  with  which  his 
critics  will  quiz  him.  Moreover,  one  wise  critic  can 
ask  more  questions  than  all  the  authors  in  the  world 
can  answer.  p-  c. 


NOTES. 

There  are  a  number  of  free  religious  societies  in  Germany, 
most  of  which  call  themselves  German  Catholic  Congregations. 
They  are,  however,  in  a  hard  plight,  as  the  government  does  but 
partly  recognise  their  religious  character,  and  questions  the  right 
of  their  speakers  in  their  profession.  They  have  been  subpoenaed 
for  teaching  iheii  religion  and  for  speaking  at  funerals,  while 
parents  are  prosecuted  for  withdrawing  their  children  from  reli- 
gious instruction  in  public  schools  for  the  sake  of  sending  them  to 
their  own  schools.  It  is  difficult  to  see  on  what  grounds  the  Prus- 
sian Government  can  defend  its  proceedings,  which  interfere  with 
the  conscience  and  inalienable  liberties  of  their  citizens.  Even 
those  who  do  not  agree  with  the  tenets  of  their  religion  can  find 
nothing  in  it  that  is  subversive  or  ultra-radical.  Their  religion  is 
a  kind  of  pantheism  which  they  uphold  with  great  enthusiasm, 
summing  it  up  in  the  sentence,  "the  world  governs  itself  accord- 
ing to  eternal  laws."  They  publish  a  little  sheet,  called  Frei- 
religibses  Familieii-Blatt.  edited  by  G.  Tschirn,  with  the  assistance 
of  Dr.  Volkel  and  I.  Hering,  at  Chemnitz. 


belonging  to  the  State  Church  of  Prussia  who  are  no  longer  will- 
ing to  surrender  their  liberty  of  conscience.  Three  years  ago  the 
authorities  of  the  Prussian  State  Church  enjoined  with  reference 
to  the  theological  criticism  of  modern  times  that  the  clergy  are 
bound  to  believe  the  apostolic  confession  of  faith  as  it  stands,  and 
should  not  be  allowed  to  give  it  their  own  interpretation.  In  re- 
ply to  this  proclamation  a  number  of  clerymen  have  of  late  made 
the  following  statement;  "Our  allegiance  at  our  ordination 
was  not  pledged  to  the  letter,  but  to  the  religious  spirit  of  the 
apostolicuDi,  and  we  shall,  whether  the  new  or  the  old  agenda 
be  introduced,  understand  it  in  the  future  in  this  sense,  as  it  is 
our  good  right  in  the  Church  of  the  Union  (viz.,  the  Union  of 
Lutherans  and  the  Reformed  Congregations).  It  is  impossible  to 
derive  from  the  decrees  of  the  general  synod  a  right  of  binding  the 
conscience  of  a  young  clergyman  at  his  ordination,  as  this  has  ex- 
pressly been  recognised  by  the  Evangelical  Oberkirchenrath  in 
their  decree  of  the  year  1892.  Even  the  most  venerable  confession 
of  faith  is  subject  to  a  re-examination  according  to  the  Gospel." 
This  statement  has  been  signed  by  forty-five  Evangelical  clergy- 
men of  Silesia. 

H.  Dharmapala  sends  us  a  greeting  from  Buddha  Gaya,  the 
most  sacred  spot  of  Buddhism,  being  the  place  where  the  Bodhi 
tree  stood,  under  which  Buddha  received  enlightenment.  The 
Maha- Bodhi  Society  proposes  a  restoration  of  the  sacred  building 
which  was  erected  on  the  spot  when  Buddhism  still  flourished  in 
India,  and  the  intention  is  to  found  here  a  college  and  to  make  it 
the  centre  for  the  propaganda  of  Buddhism  all  over  the  world. 


The  Second  American  Congress  of  Liberal  Religious  Societies 
will  be  held  June  4,  5,  and  6  in  the  Sinai  Temple  of  Chicago. 
Arrangements  have  been  made  to  make  the  meeting  a  representa- 
tive one. 

A  lecture  on  ReHgion  as  a  Factor  in  Htiiiian  Evolution  by  E. 
P.  Powell,  of  Clinton  N.  Y.,  has  been  published  by  Charles  Kerr 
&  Co.,  Chicago. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 


We  learn  from  the  Frcire/igiost-!  Fatiiilien-Blatt  a  fact  which 
has  escaped  us  in  the  daily  press  of  Germany,  or  has  not,  perhaps, 
received  much  attention.     There  is  a  great  number  of  the  clergy 


N.  B.  Binding  Cases  for  single  yearly  volumes  of  The  Open  Court  will 
be  supplied  on  order.     Price,  75  cents  each. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  404. 

THE  REACTION  AGAINST  THE  PROPHETS.     Prof. 

C.    H      CORNILL 4503 

THE     BOW     IN     ART,      METAPHOR,     AND     SONG. 

George  Henry  Knight 4505 

EDUCATION.     Thomas  C.  Laws.     (Concluded.) 4507 

BAD  FOR  ME,   BUT  WORSE  FOR  HIM.     Editor 4509 

NOTES 4510 


^   / 


The  Open  Court. 


A   ^VEEKLY   JOURNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  405.     (Vol.  IX.— 22.) 


CHICAGO,   MAY  30,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
I  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.— Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


LEGAL  TENDER. 


A    POSTHUMOUS    ARTICLE. 


BY  M.    M.   TRUMBULL. 

Because  everybody  believes  it,  it  is  not  therefore 
true,  and  because  nobody  believes  it,  it  is  not  there- 
fore false.  That  a  dogma  or  a  doctrine  is  accepted  by 
the  majority  is  a  strong  argument  in  its  favor,  but  it  is 
not  conclusive.  I  believe  that  any  maxim,  rule,  doc- 
trine, or  expedient  in  sociology,  politics,  law,  or  in 
anything  else  that  is  out  of  moral  symmetry  is  out  of 
symmetry  altogether;  and  any  principle  not  built  upon 
an  ethical  foundation  is  rickety  and  dangerous,  liable 
to  fall  under  any  unusual  pressure  brought  against  it. 
The  present  monetary  crisis  that  baffles  the  skill  of 
our  statesmen  ought  to  be  convincing  proof  of  this. 
Further,  I  believe  that  any  dishonest  law  approved  by 
any  people  weakens  their  sense  of  magnanimity  and 
their  consciousness  of  moral  obligation.  A  govern- 
ment makes  itself  a  teacher  of  dishonesty,  so  long  as  it 
keeps  among  its  laws  the  statutes  of  legal  tender. 

In  studying  the  evolution  of  money  as  a  medium 
of  exchange,  we  shall  find  that  the  law  of  natural  se- 
lection has  been  continually  interfered  with  by  govern- 
ments, because  they  could  more  effectually  pillage  a 
country  by  an  oppressive  use  of  the  "money  power" 
than  by  any  other  peaceful  instrumentality  whatever, 
and  I  believe  that  the  "money  power"  in  the  hands 
of  government  has  been  more  potent  in  the  subjuga- 
tion of  the  common  people  than  superstition  or  the 
sword.  I  think  I  am  opposed  to  the  money  power 
exercised  by  the  national  banks,  and  to  the  money 
power  possessed  by  certain  corporate  and  incorporate 
monopolies,  by  numberless  trusts,  conspiracies,  and 
combines,  and  to  all  the  other  subordinate  "money 
powers,"  more  or  less  qualified  for  evil,  but  all  these 
are  to  a  great  extent  controlled  by  the  laws,  needs, 
customs,  and  obligations  of  business,  while  the  "  money 
power"  known  as  government  is  unlimited  in  author- 
ity and  wholly  irresponsible.  One  of  the  great  mas- 
ters of  statescraft  was  the  man  who  invented  the 
scheme  of  legal  tender,  as  the  English  kings  acknowl- 
edged with  becoming  gratitude  when  they  used  it  for 
the  spoliation  and  oppression  of  the  people.  They 
encroached  upon  the  innocent  coining  privilege,  and 


claimed  the  right  to  regulate  all  money.  They  cor- 
rupted the  money  while  coining  it  and  after  coining  it, 
and  they  debased  the  currency  at  will.  Then  they 
made  it  "legal  tender"  by  punishing  those  who  had 
the  presumption  to  slander  the  "  King's  coin  "  by  re- 
fusing to  take  it  at  its  nominal  value  in  payment  of 
debts.  And  to  this  day  in  England  the  "  King's  coin" 
and  the  "  coin  of  the  realm  "  are  metallic  and  sonorous 
legal  phrases  that  assume  the  political  character  of 
money,  and  place  its  quality  and  quantity  under  the 
control  of  the  "Crown." 

The  impudent  expression  "legal  tender,"  when  it 
appears  in  any  law  concerning  money,  puts  that  law 
under  suspicion,  because  honest  money  needs  no  legis- 
lative whip  to  make  it  go.  The  promise  of  one  man 
to  pa}'  another  a  hundred  dollars  is  not  payment,  but 
there  are  persons  who  think  that  "Government"  has 
the  magic  power  to  pay  ten  thousand  million  dollars 
with  its  own  promises  to  pay.  They  even  expand  the 
miracle,  so  that  a  citizen  debtor  can  pay  his  debts 
by  the  simple  tender  of  a  government  promissory  note, 
whether  the  creditor  is  willing  to  take  it  or  not ;  and 
there  are  thousands  of  men  in  Chicago  still  at  large 
who  believe  in  this  impossible  alchemy. 

There  have  been  in  our  own  country,  and  in  other 
countries,  too,  many  "circulating  mediums"  of  bad 
character  travelling  about  as  money,  and  they  have 
done  a  very  profitable  and  extensive  business  on  false 
pretenses.  Certain  substitutes  for  money,  having 
served  for  a  time  in  that  capacity,  declare  themselves 
real  money  under  a  licence  from  the  law,  and  they 
often  do  much  mischief  before  they  can  be  arrested 
and  suppressed.  For  this,  government  is  responsible. 
It  asserts  the  omnipotent  power  to  create  something 
out  of  nothing,  and  with  false  money  it  has  tempted 
one  part  of  the  community  to  cheat  the  other,  the  most 
helpless  victims  of  the  "green  goods"  monetary  sys- 
tem being  the  men  and  women  and  children  who  work 
for  wages.  It  was  an  arrogant  assumption  of  illegiti- 
mate power  when  governments  declared  money  to  be 
a  legal  tender  in  the  payment  of  debts.  By  doing  so 
they  made  a  political  standard  of  honesty,  elastic,  un- 
certain, and  shifting  from  time  to  time.  This  despotic 
legislation  has  thrown  the  whole  system  of  human 
dealing  into  a  chaos  of  moral  confusion.   Governments 


4512 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


declare  gold,  silver,  paper,  tobacco,  coonskins,  rum, 
and  various  other  things  to  be  legal  tender  in  payment 
of  debts,  and  the  result  is  the  debasement  of  the  na- 
tional conscience  and   the  national  currency  together. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  it  is  not  within  the  legal 
power  of  a  government  to  close  its  courts  to  creditors 
and  declare  that  certain  coonskins,  or  other  legal  ten- 
ders, having  been  offered  them,  their  debtors  are  free 
and  their  debts  paid  ;  but  in  the  dominion  of  morals 
the  act  is  unconstitutional  and  void.  There  justice 
reigns,  and  a  debt  is  not  paid  until  the  moral  obliga- 
tion it  contains  is  cancelled.  Great  as  this  govern- 
ment is,  it  is  not  able  to  pay  any  man's  debt  b)'  statute. 
It  may  declare  the  debt  expunged,  cancelled,  satisfied, 
wiped  out,  even  paid,  but  only  the  debtor  can  pay  it. 
The  moral  confusion  in  these  cases  is  created  by  the 
wrong  word,  "payment."  A  debtor,  finding  that  his 
debts  are  paid  by  legal  force,  is  apt  to  think  that  the 
moral  as  well  as  the  legal  obligation  to  pay  has  been 
discharged  by  the  laws  of  his  country,  when,  in  fact, 
the  moral  obligation  can  be  discharged  by  himself 
alone.  "  I  owe  you  nothing,"  said  a  dishonest  debtor 
to  his  creditor,  "that  note  was  outlawed  last  week." 
In  like  manner  the  bankrupt,  having  passed  through 
the  court,  thinks  that  he  owes  nothing,  and  that  all 
his  debts  are  paid. 

It  was  a  fantastic  dream  of  the  alchemists  that  by 
chemical  expedients  they  could  change  the  baser  met- 
als into  gold,  but  it  is  a  more  irrational  fanaticism  that 
believes  in  the  power  of  governments  to  create  money 
that  will  pay  debts.  All  the  resources  and  skill  of  the 
alchemists  failed,  and  there  is  no  political  alchemy 
that  can  perform  this  later  miracle.  Jackson  owes 
Johnson  a  hundred  dollars,  and  when  Thompson  steps 
in  and  declares  what  shall  be  a  legal  tender  in  pay- 
ment of  the  debt,  we  agree  at  once  that  the  interference 
is  an  impudent  usurpation,  and  that  in  law  and  in 
morals  it  is  absolutely  void.  Now,  multiply  Thomp- 
son by  a  hundred,  or  a  thousand,  or  ten  million,  and 
you  have  added  no  moral  quality  to  his  interference; 
but  when  the  ten  million  Thompsons  organise  them- 
selves into  the  corporation  called  government,  the}' 
condense  themselves  into  a  physical  power  strong 
enough  to  enforce  their  will  and  make  it  the  law  of 
the  land  ;  but  it  is  the  usurpation  of  Thompson  still. 
What  is  wrong  for  one  man  to  do  is  wrong  for  ten  mil- 
lion men  to  do. 

For  centuries  mankind  has  been  afflicted  with  so- 
cial wrongs  because  of  the  political  mistake  of  govern- 
ments that  they  possess  the  prerogative  of  creating 
money.  Markets,  not  governments,  determine  what 
is  money.  No  matter  what  nominal  value  government 
may  give  to  coins  or  paper  bills,  their  actual  value  in 
exchange  is  fixed  in  the  markets  of  the  world.  The 
commercial  value  given  to  a  piece  of  paper  by  making 


it  a  legal  tender  in  the  payment  of  debts  is  a  limited 
and  abnormal  value,  a  dishonest  coercion  of  creditors, 
and  the  weakness  of  it  appears  in  the  fact  that  although 
the  government  may  compel  a  merchant  to  accept  it 
in  payment  for  a  debt,  or  get  nothing,  it  cannot  com- 
pel him  to  receive  it  in  payment  for  his  goods.  Here 
the  fiat  becomes  impotent,  and  the  legal  tender  usur- 
pation fails.  No  fiat  of  the  government  can  give  a 
dollar's  value  to  a  piece  of  paper,  nor  will  it  pass  cur- 
rent until  commercial  vitality  is  given  to  it  by  the  ex- 
press or  implied  promise  of  the  government  to  redeem 
it  in  metallic  money  having  the  same  value  according 
to  its  weight  before  coining  as  after,  and  independent 
of  the  image  and  superscription  stamped  upon  it. 

A  very  good  quality  of  statecraft  was  utilised  when 
government  stamped  upon  its  coins  the  efiigy  of  the 
king,  because  by  that  bit  of  political  necromancy  it 
stamped  upon  the  popular  brain,  which  is  usually 
rather  soft,  the  fiction  of  the  "  King's  coin,"  and  it 
led  the  people  to  connect  by  an  easy  mental  process 
the  king  and  the  coin  together.  By  this  device  public 
attention  was  diverted  from  the  actual  value  of  the 
coins,  and  the  people  were  hypnotised  into  the  delu- 
sion that  it  was  the  king's  portrait  stamped  upon  the 
monej'  that  gave  it  purchasing  power,  as  our  Govern- 
ment reconciles  the  people  more  easily  to  paper  money 
by  printing  pictures  on  the  back  of  it  representing  De 
Soto  discovering  the  Mississippi,  or  the  landing  of  Co- 
lumbus. But  coinage  adds  nothing  to  the  value  of  the 
metal  coined.  Gold  bullion  is  equal  in  value  to  gold 
eagles  or  gold  sovereigns  weight  for  weight.  I  think 
the  four  hundred  shekels  of  silver  paid  by  Abraham 
for  the  field  of  Machpelah  were  not  coins,  at  least,  not 
legal  tender  coins,  for  they  were  weighed,  not  counted, 
and  yet  they  were  "current  money  with  the  merchant." 
When  the  sons  of  Abraham  passed  under  the  domin- 
ion of  Rome,  and  those  shekels  bore  the  image  and 
superscription  of  Caesar  their  value  relatively  to  the 
other  silver  round  about  them  was  not  changed.  The 
coining  of  them  simply  dispensed  with  the  trouble  of 
weighing  them.  The  "image  and  superscription" 
merely  said  to  the  merchants,  "You  need  not  weigh 
these  pieces  ;  Caesar  hath  already  weighed  them,  and 
vouches  that  they  contain  so  many  grains  of  silver." 
And  wherever  those  shekels  are  to-day,  whether  in 
shillings  or  in  dollars,  whether  bearing  the  image  and 
superscription  of  Queen  Victoria,  or  our  own  goddess 
of  liberty,  the  image  and  superscription  upon  them 
testify  only  to  their  weight.  Whatever  additional 
value  they  obtain  by  reason  of  their  legal  tender  qual- 
ity is  a  dishonest  value,  the  measure  of  their  useful- 
ness in  cheating  creditors  and  poor  men  out  of  their 
wages. 

Kindred  in  statesmanship  to  "  Legal  tender,"  and 
the  king's  effigy  on  money  was  the  assumed  right  of 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4513 


governments  to  nickname  coins  in  order  to  give  them 
an  arbitrary  and  artificial  character  expressive  of  no 
quality  in  the  coins.  Why  not  make  an  honest  ounce 
of  silver  a  monetary  unit  and  truthfully  name  it  an 
"Ounce"?  If  the  name  of  every  coin  expressed  the 
actual  weight  of  it,  the  multiple  or  fraction  of  an  ounce, 
the  people  would  not  be  so  easily  deceived  by  the  fiscal 
tricks  of  governments.  Florins,  francs,  dollars,  and 
shillings,  are  deceitful  nicknames,  intended  to  conceal 
the  quality  of  the  monej'  they  pretend  to  describe. 
They  may  be  of  different  weights  at  different  times, 
changing  their  values  and  keeping  their  names,  but  no 
government  could  coin  three  hundred  grains  of  silver, 
and  call  it  an  ounce  without  being  at  once  detected, 
nor  could  such  a  coin  be  made  available  to  cheat  the 
workingman  out  of  his  labor. 

"Boston,  Dec.  14,  1893. 
"  Dear  General  Trumbull  : 

"Your  note  oC  the  twelfth  is  at  hand. 

"  I  long  since  came  to  the  conclusion  that  legal  tender  acts 
must  have  been  born  of  fraud  So  long  as  money  of  any  kind  was 
true  to  the  weight  indicated  by  nearly  all  the  names  of  coin  or 
other  pieces  of  money,  the  conception  of  an  act  of  legal  tender 
could  not  in  the  nature  of  things  have  occurred  to  any  one.  Evi- 
dence of  an  effort  to  fullil  contracts  with  money  of  full  weight 
being  a  very  different  matter  from  prescribing  by  a  legal  tender 
act  what  kind  of  money  should  be  offered.  I  therefore  began  a 
system  of  inquiry  among  the  learned  in  the  law,  from  judges  of 
the  Supreme  Court  down  to  young  practitioners.  Not  until  very 
lately  could  I  get  a  trace  of  the  origin  of  legal  tender.  This  trace 
was  given  me  by  Prof.  James  B.  Thayer,  of  Harvard  University, 
who  pointed  out  the  edicts  of  Edward  III.  as  probably  being  the 
first  legal  tender  acts  among  English  speaking  people.  He  de- 
based coin  and  of  course  he  is.sued  an  edict  making  it  a  penal  of- 
fence for  any  one  to  refuse  the  King's  money.  From  that  time  to 
the  present  day  acts  of  legal  tender  have  worked  corruption. 

"  If  all  acts  of  legal  tender  were  repealed,  the  conceptions  of 
weight  and  value  would  be  re-united.  Free  coinage  or  the  manu- 
facture of  round  disks  of  even  weight  and  fineness  would  be  per- 
fectly safe.  A  given  weight  of  gold  would  be  maintained  as  the 
standard  of  the  world's  commerce  as  it  is  now. 

"It  happens  that  in  the  Forum  for  January  which  will  pres- 
ently be  published  you  will  find  this  subject  treated.  I  had  made 
an  arrangement  with  a  young  lawyer  with  whom  I  had  co-operated 
in  writing  an  article  on  '  Personal  Liberty  '  some  time  since,  to 
work  up  this  whole  question  of  legal  tender  from  its  inception. 
But  alas  !  the  young  man  was  struck  by  death,  and  I  know  of  no 
one  with  whom  I  could  renew  the  undertaking. 

Yours  very  truly, 

Edward  Atkinson. 

I  did  not  need  this  letter  to  convince  me  that  Mr. 
Atkinson  had  adopted  my  views  on  the  subject  of  legal 
tender,  for  in  his  latest  book,  Taxation  and  Work,  he 
had  already  surrendered  the  doctrine  of  "  legal  ten- 
der" in  a  rather  qualified  way.  He  says  :  "There- is 
no  need  of  a  legal  tender  among  men  who  intend  to 
meet  their  contracts  honestly."  The  qualification  does 
not  qualify,  because  if  honest  men  do  not  need  any 
legal  tender,  dishonest  men  ought  not  to  have  its  aid. 


and  Mr.  Atkinson  might  as  well  have  said,  "There  is 
no  need  of  legal  tender  at  all." 

Commenting  on  Mr.  Atkinson's  opinions  The  ]\'cst- 
niinster  Revifto  remarks  as  follows  :  "  That  expression 
'legal  tender,'  by  the  way,  is  not  a  well  defined  one 
in  Dr.  Atkinson's  mind.  He  imports  into  the  well- 
established  phrase  the  idea  that  a  nation  is  always  on 
the  watch  to  palm  off  a  coin  for  more  than  it  is  really 
worth — whereas  the  value  of  legal  tender  is  to  meet 
the  convenience  of  the  community  b}'  earmarking  the 
best  medium  of  exchange  ;  and  the  history  of  currency 
shows  us  over  and  over  again  that  if  the  government 
sets  its  seal  upon  an  inadequate  medium  the  nation 
will  set  it  aside." 

The  above  explanation  shows  that  the  phrase  "le- 
gal tender"  is  much  better  defined  in  Mr.  Atkinson's 
mind  than  it  is  in  the  mind  of  his  critic.  The  West- 
minster Review  thinks  that  the  phrase  "legal  tender" 
does  not  include  any  debt-paying  qualities,  but  is 
merely  an  indirect  method  of  "earmarking  the  best 
medium  of  exchange."  This  may  be  all  there  is  of  it 
in  England,  since  the  government  there  has  adopted 
the  money  standard  of  the  markets,  but  in  the  United 
States  it  means  the  privilege  of  paying  debts  with  de- 
preciated coin  or  currency.  For  these  latter  uses 
"legal  tender"  is  obsolete  in  England,  although  the 
ancient  form  of  it  yet  lingers  in  the  monetary  system 
of  that  country.  It  is  like  the  vermiform  appendage, 
if  I  get  the  name  of  it  right,  which  lingers  in  the  hu- 
man body,  although  its  uses  have  long  ago  ceased  ; 
and  the  vermiform  appendage,  as  I  have  been  told  by 
scientific  men,  whenever  it  chooses  to  become  angry, 
can  make  itself  troublesome,  and,  perhaps,  dangerous. 
Even  the  limited  and  comparatively  harmless  charac- 
ter of  legal  tender,  as  defined  by  the  Westminster  Re- 
view, condemns  it,  because  the  Review  confesses  that 
government  sometimes  earmarks  an  "inadequate  me- 
dium," instead  of  the  "best  medium,"  and  this  is  a 
very  good  reason  why  government  should  altogether 
cease  the  practice  of  earmarking  money.  By  the  "  na- 
tion," the  Review  means,  of  course,  not  the  govern- 
ment, but  the  people  in  their  markets.  And  here 
every  "inadequate  medium"  7tiill  be  set  aside,  because 
the  government  has  no  power  to  make  anything  a  le- 
gal tender  in  the  purchase  of  goods.  Where,  how- 
ever, the  inadequate  medium  has  the  government 
authority  to  discharge  debts,  it  may  work  incalculable 
mischief  before  the  nation  can  set  it  aside.  There  is 
a  little  vainglory  in  the  boast  of  the  Westminster  Re- 
vieic,  for  England  persisted  in  earmarking  an  inade- 
quate medium  for  seven  hundred  j-ears. 

There  is  much  innocent  simplicity  in  the  banter  of 
the  Review  where  it  laughs  at  Mr.  Atkinson  for  his 
unreasonable  supposition  that  a  nation  is  always  on 
the  watch  to  palm  off  a  coin  for  more  than  it  is  really 


45H 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


worth  ;  but  if  the  reviewer  had  thought  historically  for 
a  moment  he  would  have  remembered  that  nations 
have  been  doing  that  very  thing  ever  since  they  came 
into  possession  of  the  "  money  power."  Even  Eng- 
land has  but  recently  abandoned  the  practice,  and 
may  begin  it  again  at  any  time. 

In  tracing  the  origin  of  "legal  tender,"  Professor 
Thayer  did  not  go  far  enough,  because  I  find  that 
more  than  two  hundred  years  before  the  reign  of  Ed- 
ward the  Third,  King  Henry  the  First  debased  the 
currency  one  per  cent.,  and  in  that  way  cancelled  a 
debt  of  a  hundred  shillings  by  the  payment  of  ninety- 
nine.  This  was  a  tax  of  one  per  cent,  upon  industry 
and  business,  the  injustice  of  which  fell  heavily  on  the 
workingmen,  because  they  constitute  the  most  numer- 
ous portion  of  the  creditor  classes,  for  they  are  com- 
pelled to  sell  their  labor  on  time;  and  Prof.  Thorold 
Rogers  in  his  great  book,  SLx  Centuries  of  Work  and 
Wages,  has  convincingly  shown  that  the  trick  of  de- 
preciating the  currency  and  earmarking  an  "inade- 
quate medium"  was  potent  in  the  oppression  of  the 
workingmen  of  England  from  the  time  of  the  Black 
Death  down  to  1S34,  when  the  industrial  system  of 
England  had  the  advantage  of  a  more  sound  and  stable 
currency.  It  will  always  be  a  satire  on  the  partiality 
of  human  laws  that  when  a  citizen  mutilated  the  coin, 
or  debased  the  currency,  and  then  made  it  a  "legal 
tender,"  he  was  hanged  for  it;  but  the  king  never 
was. 

Much  confusion,  not  only  of  mental  ideas,  but  of 
moral  ideas,  also,  has  arisen  from  an  innocent  use  of 
words  and  phrases,  such,  for  instance,  as  "payment," 
"legal  tender,"  "full  legal  tender,"  and  the  like. 
Some  people  mean  by  "full  legal  tender"  the  power 
to  buy  goods  as  well  as  to  pay  debts.  This  was  the 
meaning  given  to  the  phrase  by  the  French  Republic, 
and  the  penalty  for  giving  it  a  more  limited  meaning 
was  death.  Yet  the  legal  tender  of  the  French  Repub- 
lic could  not  buy  goods,  although  it  had  behind  it  the 
French  nation,  the  forfeited  lands  of  the  nobility  and 
clergy,  and  the  guillotine.  Even  England,  at  a  later 
day,  decreed  by  law  that  no  person  should  give  more 
for  a  guinea  than  twenty-one  shillings  in  paper  money, 
and  all  persons  were  forbidden  to  give  less  for  a  one 
pound  note  than  twenty  shillings  in  silver.  This  was 
statesmanship  in  England  as  late  as  the  nineteenth 
century.  But  it  was  void  statesmanship.  Men  gave 
the  market  value  for  the  paper  money,  and  no  more. 
There  was  not  power  enough  in  the  British  monarchy 
to  compel  them  to  give  more,  and  the  reason  of  it  is 
that  omnipotence  is  denied  to  man.  Neither  Parlia- 
ment nor  Congress  can  create  value.  They  may  take 
value  from  one  thing  and  add  it  to  another,  as  in  legal 
tender  legislation,  but  they  cannot  create  value  to  the 
amount  of  fifty  cents. 


There  is  no  honest  reason  for  "earmarking  "  gold 
in  order  to  convince  a  people  that  it  is  a  more  "ade- 
quate medium  "  than  silver.  They  can  learn  that  for 
themselves,  and  the  government  might  as  well  ear- 
mark wheat  in  order  to  persuade  us  that  it  is  worth 
more  bushel  for  bushel  than  oats  or  turnips.  For  any 
honest  purpose  the  earmarking  is  redundant  and  su- 
perfluous. Shortl}'  after  I  came  to  America  I  "hired 
out,"  as  they  call  it,  on  a  farm,  and  one  of  my  first 
duties  was  to  help  my  employer  feed  the  hogs.  He 
surprised  me  a  little  by  the  reckless  manner  in  which 
he  threw  forty  or  fifty  ears  of  corn  into  the  pen.  Now, 
I  knew  nothing  about  farm  life,  for  I  had  always  lived 
in  London,  and  had  hardly  ever  seen  a  four-footed 
hog  in  all  my  life.  I  knew  nothing  of  its  ability  and 
resources,  and  so  I  was  foolish  enough  to  say  to  my 
boss  :  "  Don't  you  shell  that  corn  for  them  ?  "  "No," 
he  said,  "they  shell  it."  Now,  the  people  of  this 
country  are  as  able  to  earmark  their  own  money,  with- 
out the  aid  of  the  government,  as  those  hogs  were  to 
shell  their  own  corn.  Let  the  Government  stop  de- 
basing the  currency  by  "legal  tender"  legislation  and 
there  can  be  no  objection  to  coining  all  the  sand  of 
California  into  gold  dollars,  and  all  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains into  silver  dollars,  if  there  is  room  for  them  to 
circulate  through  the  arteries  of  trade,  and  when  there 
is  no  longer  any  room  for  them  to  circulate,  the  coin- 
age of  them  will  automaticall}'  cease.  Abandon  the 
whole  system  of  legal  tender,  and  the  money  problem 
will  soon  be  solved. 


EPIQENESIS  OR  PREFORMATION.' 

EY  PROF,    ERNST  HAECKEL. 

The  phenomena  of  ontogenesis,  or  individual  de- 
velopment, possess  for  our  knowledge  of  phylogenesis 
the  highest  import ;  and  this  holds  true  of  the  plant 
kingdom  as  well  as  of  the  animal  kingdom;  it  holds 
true  of  embryology  proper  as  much  as  it  does  of  meta- 
morphology  or  the  history  of  transformations  which 
follows  it.  The  former  carries  us  back,  in  the  simple 
ancestral  cell  or  fertilised  ovum,  to  the  primitive  uni- 
cellular state  from  which  originally  all  metaphyta  and 
all  metazoa  phylogenetically  sprang.  The  latter  dis- 
plays before  our  eyes  in  the  "metamorphosis  of  the 
cormus,"  and  especially  of  its  blossom  offspring,  the 
most  important  stages  of  the  ancestral  series,  passed 
through  by  the  thallophytic  and  cormophytic  ancestors 
of  the  Anthophyta.  Although  in  all  Antho/'kyta  (and 
in  fact  more  so  in  the  A ngios/'enim  than  in  the  Gymno- 
speriuic)  the  whole  progress  of  ontogenesis  has,  by  ab- 
breviated heredity,  by  the  transformation  of  the  pro- 
thallium  into  the  endosperm,  and  by  other  cenogen- 

1  From  \\\Q  we-w  Phylogenie.  V>y  \lKpli.  The  series  of  which  tllis  article  is 
the  conclusion  ran  through  Nos.  387,  391,  394.  396.  and  39S  of  The  Opcti  Court, 
where  readers  are  referred  for  the  explanation  of  difficult  technical  terms. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4515 


etic  processes,  been  greatly  altered  and  contracted, 
yet  the  comparison  of  it  with  that  of  the  Diaphyta  and 
Thallophyta  enables  us  to  point  out  clearly  the  palin- 
genetic  road  upon  which  the  former  have  proceeded 
from  the  latter.  Our  fundamental  biogenetic  law  pre- 
serves here  in  all  points  its  elucidative  significance. 

For  a  clear  understanding  of  the  histor}'  of  plants, 
therefore,  the  theoretic  analysis  of  such  ontogenetic 
processes  must  be  of  the  highest  importance.  Differ- 
ent as  the  process  of  thought  may  have  been  in  all  the 
varied  old  and  new  theories  of  evolution,  5'et  all,  so 
far  as  they  have  been  clearly  and  logically  thought 
out,  can  be  classified  into  two  opposed  groups  — 
namely,  cpigencsis  and  [Tefoymaliou.  The  oldest  pre- 
formation ihcory,  formerly  also  called  the  crolu/ion  the- 
ory, maintained  that  the  whole  organism  was  already 
//•(•formed  in  the  germ,  and  that  its  development  in 
the  true  sense  was  merely  an  unfolding,  evohitio  (Aiis- 
wieketii/tg),  of  the  preformed,  enfolded  parts,  partes 
involiitic.  It  was  believed  that  germinal  tracts  existed 
in  the  ovum  having  the  power  to  develop  organs  and 
containing  the  groundwork  of  all  the  subsequently  de- 
veloped parts  of  the  body.  As  a  logical  consequence 
of  this  view  came  the  encasement  or  seatiilation  theor}'. 
As  the  ground-plans  of  the  future  germinal  organs  were 
also  preformed  in  the  germ,  so  the  ground-plans  of  all 
future  generations  must  have  been  preformed  and  en- 
cased a  thousand  fold  one  in  another  in  the  first  "cre- 
ated "  individual  of  each  species. 

That  this  old  doctrine  of  preformation  which  pre- 
vailed in  the  preceding  century  not  only  leads  to  the 
absurdest  consequences  but  stands  in  glaring  contra- 
diction with  the  empirically  established  facts  of  the 
history  of  individual  development  was,  for  the  higher 
animals  and  plants,  shown  as  early  as  1759.  By  pains- 
taking observations  it  was  demonstrated  that  the  germs 
of  animals  and  plants  contain  no  trace  of  the  multi- 
form and  composite  parts  of  the  mature  organism,  but 
that  on  the  contrarj-  the  latter  grew  up  subsequently 
by  degrees.  The  separate  organs  are  not  preformed 
but  //('reformed  one  after  another  at  different  times  in 
different  manners.  The  new  theory  of  ep/'xenes/s  rest- 
ing on  the  facts  last  cited  was,  however,  unable  for 
half  a  century  to  win  a  solid  footing.  It  first  found 
recognition,  slowly  and  gradually,  when  the  more  deli- 
cate processes  accompanying  the  fecundation  and  de- 
velopment of  the  ova  were  more  minutely  and  success- 
fully investigated.  A  real  understanding  of  epigenesis 
and  its  causal  import  was  first  effected  a  century  sub- 
sequently, by  the  reform  and  acceptance  of  the  theory 
of  descent  (1859). 

Nevertheless,  the  history  of  science  repeatedly 
shows  that  radical  errors  when  associated  with  funda- 
mental and  universal  conceptions,  are  not  to  be  dis- 
posed of  for  all  time  by  plain  refutations.      From  time 


to  time  they  appear  again  and  assert  on  new  grounds 
their  old  rights.  Such  is  now  the  case  with  the  doc- 
trine of  preformation,  which  appeared  to  have  been 
definitively  disposed  of  by  the  epigenesis  theory.  On 
the  basis  of  extensive  observations,  and  by  the  em- 
ployment of  much  acumen,  a  new  theory  of  heredity 
has  been  propounded  during  the  last  ten  years  having 
for  its  foundation  the  conception  of  the  "continuity 
of  the  germ-plasm  "  and  reaching  its  highest  develop- 
ment (1892)  in  an  ingeniously  constructed  organic 
molecular  theory.  By  its  most  important  phylogenetic 
consequence,  progressive  heredity  is  impugned — in 
our  view-  the  most  indispensable  precondition  of  all 
phylogenesis.  Although  this  new  germ- plasm  theory 
avoids  the  crude  conceptions  of  the  old  doctrines  of 
preformation  anil  scatulation,  and  is  ostensibly  founded 
on  the  very  delicate  and  only  recently  discovered  pro- 
cesses in  the  fertilised  ovum,  nevertheless  it  leads  in 
its  ultimate  conseijuences  to  a  downright  denial  of 
epigenesis  and  to  a  new  and  more  refined  form  of  mys- 
tical preformation. 

It  is  not  the  place  here  to  refute  in  detail  this  new 
germ-plasm  theory,  which  has  met  with  the  most  as- 
tonishing success  in  the  last  few  j'ears  ;  nor  is  it  neces- 
sary, for  that  refutation  has  been  accomplished  again 
and  again  by  competent  hands.  From  the  beginning 
we  have  stoutly  contested  this  metaphysical  molecular 
theory,  as  forming  in  our  judgment  a  momentous  retro- 
grade step  in  the  general  analysis  of  the  organic  de- 
velopmental processes,  and  as  the  opening  of  a  devious 
path  into  the  domain  of  dualistic  and  teleological  phi- 
losophy. We  put  together  only  recently  our  objections 
to  the  doctrine  in  our  Systeinatie  Introduction  to  t/ie 
P/iylogenr  of  tlie  Australian  Fauna  (1893),  parts  of 
which  were  published  in  Tlie  Open  Court  (No.  338). 
But  we  deemed  it  advisable  now  and  in  this  place  to 
repeat  our  protest,  as  the  lively  war  between  the  two 
opposed  theories  still  continues,  and  since  precisely 
the  ontogeny  of  the  metaphyta  furnishes  us  abundant 
and  decisive  refutation  of  the  continuity  of  the  germ- 
plasm.  All  that  we  have  advanced  in  our  New  J'/iv- 
iogeny  on  the  generation,  embryology,  and  metamor- 
phosis of  the  metaphj'ta,  all  the  phenomena  in  the 
germinal  history  of  the  Tliallopliyta,  Diapliyta  and  An- 
tiiophyta  speak  in  our  opinion  for  epigenesis  and 
against  preformation. 

EPIGENESIS  AND  TRANSFORMATION. 

Epigenesis  in  the  history  of  the  germ,  and  trans- 
formation in  the  history  of  the  race,  proceed  every- 
where hand  in  hand  ;  the  two  processes  of  organic  de- 
velopment are  inseparably  united  and  mutually  explain 
each  other.  This  fundamental  principle  rests  on  the 
intimate    causal    nexus    which    unites    the    two    chief 


45i6 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


branches  of  the  history  of  organic  development,  and 
which  has  found  its  precisest  expression  in  our  funda- 
mental biogenetic  law.  The  laws  of  heredity  and 
adaptation,  of  which  the  former,  as  a  physiological 
function,  is  to  be  traced  to  propagation,  and  the  latter 
to  nutrition  and  metabolism,  possess,  accordingly, 
equal  significance  for  the  ontogeny  and  phylogeny  of 
each  organ.  Hence,  also,  all  the  various  theories  re- 
cently set  up  for  the  physiological  explanation  of 
heredity  and  adaptation  possess  immediate  importance 
for  ontogeny  as  well  as  for  phylogeny. 

This  intimate  and  inseparable  connexion  between 
the  ontetic  and  phyletic  development  must  be  specially 
emphasised  here  at  the  close  of  our  phylogeny  of  meta- 
phyta,  for  the  new  molecular  theory  of  the  continuity 
of  the  germ-plasm  which  in  ontogeny  has  led  us  back 
to  the  old  fallacious  theory  of  preformation,  enters  in 
this  way  into  the  sharpest  contrast  with  the  monistic 
doctrine  of  the  mechanical  transformation  of  the  or- 
ganic world  on  which  the  whole  theory  of  descent  and 
phylogeny  rests.  The  constant  and  gradual  transfor- 
mation of  animal  and  plant  forms  which  we  embrace 
under  the  notion  of  phyletic  transformation  can  be 
explained  in  a  rational  manner  only  by  assuming  pro- 
gressive heredity  or  the  heredity  of  acquired  charac- 
ters ;  and  it  is  precisely  this  most  important  funda- 
mental process  of  phylogenesis  that  is  vehemently 
denied  by  the  present  champions  of  the  afore- men- 
tioned germ-plasm  theory,  nay,  rejected  as  inconceiv- 
able— and  from  their  teleological  point  of  view  justly 
so.  Here  is  the  decisive  point  at  which  one  or  another 
of  the  two  theories,  either  the  monistic  epigenesis  or 
the  dualistic  preformation,  must  win  its  victory. 

When  in  1866,  in  the  nineteenth  chapter  of  our 
General  Morphology,  we  made  the  first  attempt  to  ex- 
plain the  physiological  elements  of  the  theory  of  de- 
scent and  selection  as  mechanical  natural  phenomena, 
we  distinguished  for  the  first  time  a  number  of  definite 
laws  of  heredity  and  adaptation.  We  arranged  these 
"laws,"  or,  if  the  expression  is  preferable,  modalities, 
or  rules,  or  norms,  into  four  groups.  We  distinguished 
on  the  one  liand  the  laws  of  Lonservativc  and  of  pro- 
gressive heredity,  on  the  other,  the  laws  of  indirect 
{potential)  and  of  direct  {aetnal)  adaptation.  In  dis- 
cussing further  the  complex  reciprocal  and  co-opera- 
tive actions  of  these  different  laws  in  the  struggle  for 
existence,  we  expressly  emphasised  the  high  import 
which  belongs  on  the  one  hand  to  progressive  hered- 
ity, and  on  the  other,  to  actual  adaptation.  For,  only 
provided  the  products  of  the  latter  can  be  transmitted 
by  means  of  the  first,  is  phylogenetie  adnptation  in  the 
true  sense  conceivable.  The  phylogeny  of  the  meta- 
phyta,  the  chief  features  of  which  have  been  discussed 
in  our  new  work,  furnishes  for  our  theories  an  unlimited 
supply  of  examples. 


In  the  further  discussion  of  these  relations  in  our 

Natural  History  of  Creation,  we  mainly  emphasised  the 
significance  that  eonstitiited  heredity  possesses  among 
the  different  laws  of  progressive  heredity,  and  cumula- 
tive adaptation  among  the  norms  of  actual  adaptation. 
The  alterations  of  organs,  which  the  organism  effects 
by  its  own  activity,  progressive  growth  by  exercise, 
retrogressive  growth  by  disuse,  can  be  transmitted  to 
descendants  by  heredity.  The  trophic  effect  of  func- 
tional irritations  can,  by  direct  mechanical  motions, 
produce  within  the  tissues  in  this  process  the  greatest 
conceivable  perfection.  That  "cellular  selection"  which 
is  due  to  the  constant  struggle  of  the  parts  of  the  or- 
ganisms is  incessantly  at  work  in  the  tissues  of  the 
metaphyta,  as  well  as  of  the  metazoa.  The  "cellular 
divergence  "  which  follows  of  necessity  therefrom  is  the 
cause  of  the  differentiation  of  tissues.  It  is  obvious  that 
these  cumulative  and  functional  adaptations  possess 
phylogenetie  significance  only  in  the  event  that  they  can 
be  transferred  to  descendants  by  progressive  heredity; 
and  since  their  influence  in  the  histone  organism  is 
everywhere  observable,  since,  further,  an  intimate  cor- 
relation subsists  everywhere  between  the  cells  of  the 
propagative  organs  ( genninoplasnia)  and  the  cells  of 
the  other  organs  (soniato-plasnia),  therefore,  we  have 
in  these  facts  at  the  same  time  an  indubitable  disproof 
of  the  theory  of  the  continuity  of  the  germ-plasm, 
which  asserts  a  complete  separation  of  the  latter  from 
the  somato-plasm. 

Finally,  as  utterly  futile  and  valueless  must  be  re- 
garded the  attempts  which  have  been  recently  made 
to  discover  a  middle  path  between  these  two  opposed 
theories,  and  to  blend  together  the  correct  fundamen- 
tal ideas  of  both.  According  to  our  settled  conviction, 
only  ('//('  of  the  two  can  be  true.  Either  preformation 
and  creationism,  or  epigenesis  and  transformation.  If 
the  whole  developmental  process  of  organisms  rests  on 
vitalistic  and  teleological  principles,  that  is,  is  deter- 
mined by  final  causes,  then  we  must  accept  in  on- 
togeny the  theory  of  preformation  and  scatulation,  and 
in  phylogeny  supernatural  creationism  or  the  "crea- 
tion dogma."  If,  on  the  other  hand,  all  biogenesis  is 
based  on  mechanical  and  monistic  principles,  that  is, 
is  mediated  solely  by  efficient  causes,  then  we  are 
forced  in  ontogeny  to  the  assumption  of  epigenesis, 
and  in  phylogeny  to  the  assumption  of  transformism. 
The  history  of  the  world  of  plants  whose  fundamental 
features  we  have  here  laid  down,  leads  us,  like  that  of 
the  animal  world,  to  the  conviction  that  the  latter  only 
contains  the  truth,  and  the  former  a  vital  error.  Only 
by  the  assumption  of  epigenesis  and  transformation  is 
the  existing  harmony  of  the  general  results  of  palae- 
ontology, ontogeny,  and  morphology  —  those  three 
grand  muniments  of  systematic  phylogeny — to  be  ex- 
plained. 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4517 


CORRESPONDENCE. 


"TRILBYMANIA." 

To  the  Editor  of  TJie  Open  Court  : 

Under  the  head  of  "  Trilbymania,"  in  your  issue  of  April  iS, 
"Outsider"  gives  your  readers  a  long  review  and  criticism  of  Du 
Maurier's  'I'rilln',  A  careful  reading  gives  me  an  impression  that 
he  read  the  book  hastily,  and  he  mistakes  important  portions  in 
his  synopsis  of  the  story. 

"Outsider"  tells  us  Trilby  disappeared  and  was  gone  a  long 
time,  concealed  in  the  neighborhood  in  the  house  of  a  friend,  but 
Svengali  found  her  out.  In  fact  she  left  Paris  entirely  ;  took  her 
little  brother  and  went  to  Vibraye.  There  the  three  painters  and 
Svengali  wrote  to  her.  In  a  short  time  her  brother  died,  and  she 
went  back  to  Paris  in  disguise.  She  was  subject  to  neuralgia  in 
her  eyes.  Svengali  had  once  relieved  her  by  mesmeric  treatment. 
On  her  return  to  Paris,  having  no  place  to  go,  being  half  crazed 
with  grief  and  neuralgia,  she  went  to  Svengali's  quarters  to  have 
him  cure  her  neuralgia  ;  and  this  is  how  they  came  together. 

There  is  no  doubt  but  Svengali  believed  that  by  use  of  hypno- 
tism he  could  make  Trilby's  wonderful  voice  subject  to  his  own 
exquisite  perception  of  tune  and  time.  Du  Maurier  says  of  him, 
"  He  grew  to  understand  the  human  voice  as  perhaps  no  one  has 
understood  it  before  or  since.  ...  In  his  head  he  went  for  ever 
singing  ...  as  probably  no  human  nightingale  has  ever  yet  been 
able  to  sing  out  loud,  .  .  .  making  unheard  heavenly  melody  of  the 
cheapest,  trivialest  tunes."  Gecko,  in  his  last  interview  with 
Taffy  in  Paris  twenty  years  after,  says  of  him,  "  Svengali  was  the 
greatest  artist  I  ever  met,  ...  he  was  a  demon,  a  magician,  I  used 
to  think  hira  a  god  !  ...  he  was  the  greatest  master  that  ever 
lived."  As  to  teaching  Trilby  Gecko  said,  "We  taught  her  to- 
gether— for  three  years — morning,  noon,  and  night,  six  to  eight 
hcurs  a  day.  .  .  .  We  took  her  voice  note  by  note — there  was  no 
end  to  her  notes,  each  more  beautiful  than  the  other.  .  .  .  Let  any 
other  singer  try  to  imitate  them,  they  would  make  you  sick.  That 
was  Svengali,  ...  he  was  a  magician."  "There  were  two  Tril- 
bys.  There  was  the  Trilby  you  knew  who  could  not  sing  a  single 
note  in  tune.  .  .  .  With  one  wave  of  his  hand  over  her,  with  one 
look  of  his  eye,  with  a  word,  Svengali  would  turn  her  into  the 
other  Trilby,  his  Trilby,  and  make  her  do  whatever  he  liked.  You 
might  have  run  a  red  hot  needle  into  her  and  she  would  not  have 
felt  it.  He  had  but  to  say  '  Dors,'  and  she  became  an  unconscious 
Trilby  of  marble,  who  could  produce  wonderful  sounds — just  such 
sounds  as  he  wanted  and  nothing  else.  .  .  .  Trilby  was  just  a  sing- 
ing machine,  a  voice  and  nothing  more,  just  the  unconscious  voice 
Svengali  sang  with,  for  it  takes  two  to  sing  like  La  Svengali,  the 
one  who  has  got  the  voice  and  the  one  who  knows  what  to  do  with 
it.  .  .  .  When  you  heard  her  sing  .  .  .  you  heard  Svengali  singing 
with  her  voice." 

I  bring  these  scraps  of  quotation  together  here  as  a  founda- 
tion for  saying,  first,  that  Du  Maurier  makes  Svengali  a  master  in 
knowledge  of  and  in  teaching  the  human  voice — not  singing  him- 
self. I  think  it  is  a  historical  fact  that  many  of  the  most  famous 
teachers  did  not  sing — had  no  voice ;  but  with  perfect  time  and 
tune,  knowledge  of  the  anatomy,  mechanics,  dynamics,  and  of  all 
the  possible  means,  uses,  and  effects,  they  could  teach.  To  this 
Svengali  added  mesmeric  or  hypnotic  force. 

Second.  If  what  is  claimed  for  hypnosis  by  very  high  author- 
ity is  true,  there  is  nothing  improbable  in  Du  Maurier's  statements 
about  Svengali  and  Trilby.  That  it  is  not  true  can  be  only  an 
opinion,  and  not  demonstrated  fact  on  which  one  can  justly  base 
an  assertion  that  Du  Maurier's  work  is  a  failure  or  that  his  state 
ments  are  impossible. 


Little  Billee  did  not  form  an  attachment  in  Devonshire  after 
he  went  back  to  England.  The  fact  is  he  had  lost  ihe  power  to 
love  any  one. 

"  Outsider"  tells  us  that  Trilby's  debut  in  London  was  a  great 
success,  and  Little  BiUee's  love  for  her  had  all  returned  ;  but  at 
her  second  appearance  Svengali  died  of  apoplexy  as  she  came  on 
the  stage.  In  fact  Svengali  died  at  her  debut,  and  the  debut  was 
a  lamentable  failure. 

' '  Outsider  "  tells  us  ;  Trilby  was  insane  and  had  lost  her  mind 
and  memory  after  Svengali's  death,  yet  the  author  makes  her  argue 
wiser  than  a  philosopher  on  theology.  The  fact  is,  she  was  in  her 
right  mind  and  memory.  She  only  had  no  memory  of  what  hap- 
pened while  under  hypnosis.  That  was  her  condition  most  of  the 
time  for  three  years  while  with  Svengali,  according  to  Gecko's 
statement  to  Taffy  and  his  wife  aftei wards.  Gecko  tells  them  she 
was  not  mad.  She  did  not  remember  or  know  what  she  did  when 
mesmerised.  There  seems  to  be  nothing  deep  in  her  talk  about 
theology.  Her  ideas  of  prayer,  of  death,  of  the  hereafter,  as  told 
to  Mrs.  Bagot,  were  simply  childish  faith  and  belief,  based  on 
what  she  had  heard  her  father  say,  and  in  whom  she  had  confi- 
dence. Other  mistakes  about  facts  leave  the  inference  that  "Out- 
sider" read  hastily,  or  imperfectly  remembered  the  facts  when  he 
entered  on  a  critical  review  of  one  of  the  most  remarkable  books 
of  modern  times,  as  it  impresses  me. 

"Outsider"  gives  us  a  long  extract  from  his  own  diary  of  his 
views  of  Mrs.  Ward's  novel  David  Grieve,  which  he  had  con- 
demed,  as  being  unnatural  and  impossible  in  incidents  and  char- 
acters ;  and  he  finds  that  judgment  applicable  now  to  'I'nlbv  ;  giv- 
ing credit,  however,  for  brilliant  and  impressive  writing,  with 
modifications  in  favor  of  Trilby  ;  but  as  a  novel,  even  a  psycholo- 
gical one,  pronouncing  it  a  "dead  failure." 

Having  read  'Trilby  with  care  (and  it  must  be  so  read  to  be 
comprehended  fairly),  it  seems  strange  to  me  that  it  could  im- 
press any  one  as  it  seems  to  have  impressed  "Outsider,"  who  is 
evidently  a  finished  scholar  and  ready  writer. 

The  book  impressed  me  in  this  way.  That  any  one  who  is 
fairly  well  informed,  who  has  anything  of  an  emotional  tempera- 
ment, or  who,  as  a  scientist  or  philosopher,  understands  the  emo- 
tional nature,  who  has  some  sense  of  humor,  who  can  appreciate 
the  beautiful,  who  can  comprehend  something  of  idealism  and 
realism,  who  loves  truth,  courage,  and  generosity,  who  can  feel 
genuine  sentiment  and  realise  the  bearings  of  fact  under  the  glitter 
of  imagination,  who  has  a  desire  for  the  elevation  of  hi;-'  kind,  can 
take  up  Trill>y  as  a  classic,  read  it  many  times  and  find  something 
new  in  it  or  in  the  suggestions  it  stimulates  at  every  reading.  He 
can  find  texts  for  a  sermon  or  an  essay  in  some  of  its  parentheses. 
It  is  not  a  book  to  be  read  merely  for  the  story,  though  that  is 
thrilling  and  educational.  Accidentally  or  intentionally  the  author 
has  given  us  matter  for  several  books  in  one.  It  is  siti  generis.  It 
has  no  model.  It  cannot  be  compared  with  any  other  work.  It 
is  a  novel  only  as  it  tells  a  connected  story.  The  story  is  only  a 
shape  on  which  to  display  a  great  variety  of  things.  As  well  call 
the  human  skeleton  the  body.  It  has  no  repulsive  character  in  it. 
Even  Svengali  is  a  hero  and  full  of  interest  to  us.  In  characters 
and  incidents  it  is  natural  and  not  improbable  or  impossible.  It 
approaches  exaggeration  just  near  enough  to  add  interest  without 
repulsion.  It  touches  more  subjects  intelligently  in  rapid  succes- 
sion than  any  other  work  of  fiction  I  ever  read.  It  does  not  keep 
us  waiting  impatiently,  or  break  or  tangle  the  thread  of  regular 
progress,  cr  in  any  place  tire  us  or  create  a  disposition  to  skip.  It 
has  no  abrupt  breaks,  or  leaps,  or  lapses,  or  by-ways,  or  side 
tracks.  No  groupings  of  incidents  and  characters  to  be  left  be- 
hind to  go  back  after  and  bring  up  later,  and  after  we  have  started 
on  a  journey  with  others.  No  straggling  or  losing  of  char- 
acters. They  are  all  disposed  of  in  such  a  way  that  they  drop  out 
and  come  back  again  when  wanted — if  wanted — at  the  right  time 


45i8 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


and  place.  o£  themselves,  in  a  natural,  consistent  way,  without  in- 
terrupting the  current  of  our  interest  and  enjoyment.  Whatever 
it  touches  on  it  treats  without  being  tedious  and  in  a  manner  to 
impress  the  memory,  appeal  to  the  intellect,  awaken  a  sense  of 
humor,  or  stimulate  curiosity  and  wonder,  or  excite  surprise,  or 
arouse  sympathy,  create  enjoyment,  and  leave  more  suggestions 
and  fewer  regrets  than  any  creation  of  modern  times. 

The  pictured  illustrations  are  simply  wonderful.  Their  truth- 
ful adherence  to  personality  and  situations  seem  perfect,  except  as 
to  Svengali.  They  contradict  the  personal  description  given  of 
him.  but  are  speaking  likenesses  of  such  a  character  as  he  is  de- 
scribed— just  such  a  person  as  one  would  expect  from  the  character. 
I  read  Trilbv  for  the  story  as  an  engineer  would  run  a  preliminary 
line  for  a  railroad,  leaving  the  critical  surveys  to  be  made  after- 
wards, with  corrections  and  estimates.  Then  I  read  it  for  the 
study  of  its  characters  and  its  own  development  and  maintainance 
of  them.  And  again  for  its  situations,  its  philosophy,  its  ideal- 
isms, realisms,  romance  and  fact,  in  contrast  and  combined.  Once 
more  for  its  imagery  and  beauties  of  description.  Finally,  for  its 
literary  composition,  its  wonderful  language,  use  of  words  and 
sentences  to  accomplish  a  purpose,  its  rhetoric,  logic,  criticisms, 
inventions  in  comparison,  its  parentheses  taken  with  the  text  and 
in  their  implications  alone  ;  each  time  keeping  in  view  the  special 
object  of  reading;  and  afterward  I  felt  inclined  to  pick  it  up  and 
read  portions  of  it  from  time  to  time.  Each  character  fits  its  place. 
Each  situation  comes  naturally.  The  book  is  mathematical  as  a 
whole.  Strike  out  any  character  or  incident,  or  course  of  action 
and  its  proportion  will  be  marred  or  destroyed.  It  does  not  seem 
like  a  studied  design  ;  but  as  if  the  author  started  with  some  fixed 
ideas,  and  after  starting  it  ran  off  his  pen  as  a  sort  of  inspiration 
over  which  he  bad  no  control.     It  has  few  repetitions. 

Of  course,  the  book  is  not  above  criticism.  What  he  says 
about  fiddles  (p.  231)  is  a  bit  of  careless  writing.  His  method  of 
securing  hypnotic  influence  on  Trilby  in  her  last  scene  challenges 
the  critics.  It  was  easy  to  have  Svengali's  picture  produced  in  a 
natural  way,  without  any  special  mystery.  As  he  introduces  it,  it 
seems  like  an  unnecessary  crook  in  an  otherwise  straight  road. 

The  story  has  been  put  on  the  stage.  As  well  try  to  dramatise 
one  of  Paul's  epistles  and  give  a  correct  idea  of  it.  Few  read  the 
story  for  comparison  and  analysis.  Disjointed  portions  are  se- 
lected by  the  supersensitive  and  moralising  to  try  to  find  something 
immoral  or  heterodox.  Reviewers  have  hurried  through  it  to  write 
reviews.  The  story  was  thrilling  enough  to  be  popular.  But,  as 
it  seems  to  me,  to  the  student  it  is  far  more  than  a  story.  To  him 
it  is  a  new  creation  unlike  any  other  production  in  the  world  of 
fiction.  He  does  not  compare  it  with  anybody's  novel.  It  is  to 
him  simply  "Trilby,  by  George  Du  Maurier,"  and  as  such  remains 
in  his  memory  as  one  of  the  most  enjoyable  and  curious  things 
that  has  come  to  him. 

Trilby  lives  in  our  curiosity  until  she  ceases  to  be  a  model  ; 
thence  on,  she  lives  in  our  pity,  wonder,  and  admiration.  In 
thinking  it  all  over  it  is  impossible  to  form  a  thought  that  does  not 
tend  to  a  higher  level.  Not  an  immoral  thought,  or  suggestion,  or 
an  impulse  to  say,  do,  or  feel  in  harmony  with,  an  immoral  thing 
enters  the  mind.  We  cannot  read  any  of  the  classics,  or  a  single 
daily  paper  in  any  day  in  the  year,  without  finding  oceans  of  mat- 
ter immorally  suggestive,  compared  to  drops  in  Tiilby,  if  any  thing 
in  Du  Maurier's  composition  of  the  latter  is  considered  immoral. 
It  seems  to  me  that  only  to  a  prude  is  a  criticism  of  J'lilby  as 
teaching  immorality  possible. 

No  review  should  prevent  those  who  have  not  but  would  like 
to  read  Trilby,  from  reading  it ;  and  those  who  read  it  most  delib- 
erately and  carefully  will  appreciate  and  enjoy  it  most. 

Such  are  some  of  the  impressions  left  with  me  from  the  read- 
ing of  Trilby,  in  contrast  with  those  of  "Outsider." 

C.  H.  Reeve. 


NOTES. 

The  Pittsburgh  News  Company  have  just  published  a  little 
pamphlet  of  eleven  pages  by  C.  V.  Tiers,  under  the  title  A  Gold 
Slaiiiliird  Bui  \ol  GolJ  Momy.  The  author  proposes  to  change 
the  present  ambiguous  inscription  of  the  greenbacks  which  reads  : 
"The  United  States  will  pay  bearer  one  dollar"  to  "This  is  a  le- 
gal tender  in  the  United  States  of  America  for  one  dollar  for  all 
debts  public  or  private,  and  has  an  exchange  and  debt-paying 
value  eijiinl  lo  2j.S  grains  of  standard  gold  (\,  e.  goo  fine)."  Mr. 
Tiers  explains  the  present  trouble  in  our  finances  as  due  to  the 
ambiguity  of  our  treasury  notes  which  were  first  made  in  1862. 
He  shows  the  unfeasibility  of  the  double  standard  system.  A  true 
double  standard  ought  to  make  a  legal-tender  note  equal  to  the 
combined  value  of  17.2  grains  of  standard  gold  and  275.2  grains 
of  standard  silver.  The  double  standard,  as  usually  proposed, 
would  force  gold  immediately  to  a  premium,  drive  it  out  of  circu- 
lation, and  thus  really  produce  a  silver  standard.  It  would  not, 
however,  raise  the  value  of  silver  and  could  only  pull  down  the 
value  of  gold. 

We  are  informed  that  the  Second  American  Congress  of  Lib- 
eral Religious  Societies,  which  is  to  meet  at  the  Sinai  Temple  at 
Chicago  on  June  4,  5,  and  6.  promises  to  be  a  great  success.  Dr. 
Alfred  Momerie  of  London,  Rabbi  Voorsanger  of  San  Francisco, 
Rev.  Dr.  Herron,  and  President  George  A.  Gates  of  Iowa  College, 
Grinnell,  Iowa,  are  expected  to  be  present.  Dr.  Hirsch,  Dr. 
Thomas,  Dr.  Gould,  and  Jenkin  Lloyd  Jones  are  the  leading 
spirits  of  the  Congress. 

Prof.  Alcee  Fortier  of  Tulane  University,  Louisiana,  has  re- 
cently collected  and  edited  a  number  of  Louisiana  Folk  Tales,  in 
Frcncli  dialect  and  English  translation.  The  volume  is  published 
under  the  auspices  of  the  American  Folklore  Society,  and  is  got 
out  in  handsome  and  substantial  shape.  The  tales  are  printed  on 
the  even  pages  in  the  Creole,  and  on  the  odd  pages  the  English 
translations  are  given.     (Boston:   Houghton,  Mifllin  &  Co.) 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor 


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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  405. 

LEGAL    TENDER.      (A    Posthumous    Article.)     M.     M. 

Trumbull 451 1 

EPIGENESIS    OR     PREFORMATION.      Prof.    Ernst 

Haeckel 4513 

CORRESPONDENCE. 

"  Trilbymania."     C.  H.  Reeve 4517 

NOTES 4518 


M 


The  Open  Court. 


A  -HTEEKLY  JOUENAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  406.     (Vol.  IX.— 23.) 


CHICAGO,  JUNE  6,   1895. 


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JAMES  MARTINEAU. 

BY  MONCURE  D.    CONWAY. 

I  VISITED  Dr.  Martineau  on  his  ninetieth  birthday 
(April  21),  and  found  him  even  more  vigorous  than 
when  I  saw  him  on  his  eighty- ninth.  I  was  accompa- 
nied by  Mr.  Virchand  Gandhi,  the  Jain  scholar  from 
Bombay,  who  was  much  impressed  by  Dr.  Martineau's- 
conversation  on  Oriental  religious  subjects.  Not  long 
ago  this  eminent  minister  had  to  address  a  number  of 
Nonconformist  ministers,  many  of  them  orthodox,  and 
his  tact  was  as  unfailing  as  ever,  carrying  with  him 
the  full  sympathies  of  his  audience.  His  latest  vol- 
ume. The  Seat  of  Authority  in  Religion,  is  generally 
considered  his  ablest  work,  as  it  is  also  that  most  ad- 
vanced in  opinion  :  many  supposed  it  impossible  that 
an  octogenarian  cOuld  have  written  any  part  of  such  a 
book,  and  labelled  the  whole  of  it  with  his  prefatory 
remark,  that  some  of  it  was  early  work.  But  now 
there  has  appeared  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  magazine 
for  the  same  month  of  April  a  review  of  Mr.  Balfour's 
ingenious  plea  for  orthodoxy,  just  published,  and  Mar- 
tineau's genius  and  learning  have  rarely  been  happier 
than  in  this  same  article.  What  is  there  in  intellec- 
tual freedom  which  thus  embalms  so  many  of  its  chil- 
dren ?  On  April  20  Dr.  W.  H.  Furness  reached  his 
ninety-third  year.  On  February  the  second  he  jour- 
neyed from  Philadelphia  to  New  York,  on  the  third  he 
preached  a  deeply  interesting  sermon  in  All  Souls' 
Church,  reading  his  lessons  without  glasses,  on  the 
fourth  he  made  a  happy  speech  at  the  Unitarian  Club 
banquet,  on  the  fifth  united  two  young  people  in  wed- 
lock (he  had  married  the  lady's  parents  in  1858),  and, 
after  chatting  pleasantly  with  the  guests  for  an  hour, 
went  off  to  Philadelphia  ;  though  it  was  the  coldest 
spell  of  the  winter,  I  hear  that  he  is  none  the  worse  for 
that  visit.  Furness  and  Martineau  are  brother-spirits, 
and  show  how  beautiful  old  age  may  be.  To  return, 
Dr.  Martineau  is  almost  unique  in  the  steady  continu- 
ance of  his  intellectual  vitality;  he  has  suffered  no  ar- 
rest in  any  phase  of  his  faith,  has  suffered  no  reaction, 
and  his  latest  productions  have  been  the  largest  in  their 
liberalism. 

On  the  occasion  of  this  ninetieth  birthda}',  the 
representatives  of  the  Unitarian  churches  and  institu- 
tions throughout  the  country  presented  him  with  an 


address,  finely  engrossed  in  an  illuminated  album.  On 
the  cover  is  a  silver  plate,  engraved  with  the  Marti- 
neau crest,  a  Martin,  with  the  motto,  "Afarte  nobilior 
Pallas"  (wisdom  nobler  than  war).  In  the  address 
they  say  : 

"We  now  recall,  not  so  much  the  great  works  with 
which  you  have  enriched  the  literature  of  philosophy 
and  religion  during  the  past  ten  years,  nor  the  collec- 
tion of  the  rich  fruits  of  earlier  toil,  as  the  untiring 
interest  which  you  have  manifested  in  the  principles 
and  the  welfare  of  our  churches,  in  the  education  of 
the  young,  in  the  training  of  the  ministry,  in  the  pro- 
gress of  religious  thought,  and  the  advancement  of 
learning.  But  we  cannot  fail  to  rejoice  also,  that  your 
words  have  brought  guidance  and  strength  to  many 
hearts  in  many  lands,  and  we  treasure  the  knowledge 
that  differences  in  the  interpretation  of  Christianity 
have  not  prevented  the  members  of  divers  commun- 
ions from  profiting  by  your  teaching  and  feeling  the 
power  of  your  spirit." 

To  this,  and  some  addresses  that  were  made.  Dr. 
Martineau  replied  in  his  touching  and  gracious  waj', 
barely  alluding  to  the  altered  tone  of  feeling  towards 
him  since  the  earlier  days  of  his  ministry.  The  South 
Place  Society  requested  me  to  convey  to  Dr.  Marti- 
neau "their  grateful  remembrance  of  his  long  and 
faithful  services  to  truth  and  knowledge.  They  recog- 
nise the  honor  of  a  career  which  has  carried  the  best 
traditions  of  English  scholarship  to  the  maintenance 
of  a  higher  standard  of  intellectual  honesty;  and  they 
rejoice  that  Dr.  Martineau  has  lived  to  see,  did  his 
characteristic  humility  permit,  noble  harvests  gar- 
nered, or  still  ripening,  from  seeds  sown  by  him  in 
fields  his  youth  found  overgrown  with  superstition  and 
intolerance." 

Among  the  fields  so  overgrown  in  Martineau's 
youth  was  Unitarianism  itself.  The  prosecution  of 
Richard  Carlile  in  1817,  for  selling  the  works  of  Paine 
(a  more  orthodox  man  than  Martineau),  was  con- 
ducted by  a  Unitarian.  This  went  on  till  Carlile,  and 
Jane  Carlile,  and  Mrs.  Wright,  saleswoman  in  the 
book-shop,  and  even  the  store-boy,  were  all  shut  up 
in  gaol  for  years.  So  far  as  I  can  learn,  Mr.  Fox,  of 
the  Society  now  known  as  "South  Place,"  was  the 
only    Unitarian   who   denounced    these   persecutions. 


4520 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


South  Place  has  for  sixty  years  been  outside  the  Uni- 
tarian and  every  other  organisation,  and  it  has  seen 
Martineau  steadily  taking  up  a  like  position,  so  far  as 
the  denominational  character  is  concerned.  I  remem- 
ber witnessing  a  scene  of  moral  sublimity  on  an  occa- 
sion when  the  Unitarian  Association  was  induced  by 
his  solitary  but  irresistible  pleading  to  renounce  a  sub- 
stantial pecuniary  bequest  on  the  sole  ground,  if  I 
recollect  aright,  that  their  endowment  as  a  corpora- 
tion was  contrary  and  perilous  to  their  principles  of 
freedom  and  progress.  Even  in  the  last  generation, 
when  his  unsectarian  attitude  was  less  pronounced 
than  in  later  years,  his  utterances  were  steadily  in  the 
direction  of  a  religious  unity  on  the  purely  spiritual 
basis, — or  what  then  appeared  to  him  as  such.  I  must 
find  space  for  one  of  his  eloquent  utterances  on  that 
theme,  which  was  novel  enough  at  the  time  : 

"The  refusal  to  embody  our  sentiments  in  any 
authoritative  formula  appears  to  strike  observers  as  a 
whimsical  exception  to  the  general  practice  of  churches. 
The  peculiarity  has  had  its  origin  in  hereditary  and 
historical  associations  ;  but  it  has  its  defence  in  the 
noblest  principles  of  religious  freedom  and  Christian 
communion.  At  present  it  must  suffice  to  say  that 
our  societies  are  dedicated,  not  to  theological  opin- 
ions, but  to  religious  worship  ;  that  they  have  main- 
tained the  unity  of  the  spirit  without  insisting  on  any 
unity  of  doctrine ;  that  Christian  liberty,  love  and 
piety  are  their  essentials  in  perpetuity,  but  their  Uni- 
tarianism  an  accident  of  a  few  or  many  generations, 
which  has  arisen,  and  ought  to  vanish,  without  the 
loss  of  tneir  identity.  We  believe  in  the  mutability 
of  religious  systems,  but  the  imperishable  character  of 
the  religious  affections ;  in  the  progressiveness  of 
opinion  within  as  well  as  without  the  limits  of  Chris- 
tianity. Our  forefathers  cherished  the  same  convic- 
tion ;  and  so,  not  having  been  born  intellectual  bonds- 
men, we  desire  to  leave  our  successors  free.  Con- 
vinced that  uniformity  of  doctrine  can  never  prevail, 
we  seek  to  attain  its  only  good — peace  on  earth  and 
communion  with  heaven  —  without  it.  We  aim  to 
make  a  true  Christendom — a  commonwealth  of  the 
faithful — by  the  binding  force,  not  of  ecclesiastical 
creeds,  but  of  spiritual  wants  and  Christian  sym- 
pathies; and  indulge  the  vision  of  a  church  that  'in 
the  latter  days  shall  arise'  like  'the  mountain  of  the 
Lord,'  bearing  on  its  ascent  the  blossoms  of  thought 
proper  to  every  intellectual  clime,  and  withal  mas- 
sively rooted  in  the  deep  places  of  our  humanity,  and 
gladly  rising  to  meet  the  sunshine  from  on  high." 

It  will  be  observed  that  Martineau  speaks  of  "our 
societies,"  not  of  any  general  organisation  ;  yet  by 
labelling  them  all  "  Christian  "  he  did  give  them  all  a 
common  creed,  and  some  sanction  for  an  organisation 
sufficiently  strong  to  persecute  all  who  did  not  hold 


doctrines  considered  "essential"  by  the  majority. 
The  vaunted  freedom  from  creeds  of  Unitarianism  has 
been  something  like  the  boasted  absence  of  State  reli- 
gion in  the  United  States, — an  absence  which  leaves 
us  fettered  by  the  Sabbath,  taxed  for  an  army  of  ex- 
plicitly unconstitutional  chaplains,  and  taxed  to  sup- 
port all  churches  because  church  propert)'  is  not  taxed. 
Indeed,  the  absence  of  an  authoritative  Unitarian  creed 
seems  to  have  been  once  felt  by  many  Unitarians  as 
an  incentive  to  secure  conformity  by  tongue-lynching, 
— of  course  I  refer  to  their  narrow  wing,  now  very 
small  :  there  was  always  a  magnanimous  Left,  and 
under  Martineau's  leadership  it  has  long  been  the 
Right. 

What  Martineau  has  himself  had  to  endure  will 
probably  never  be  made  known.  He  is  a  man  who 
would  desire  to  bury  such  things  in  oblivion.  No 
reader  of  experience  can  fail  to  recognise  the  pathetic 
significance  of  some  utterances  of  his  earlier  years. 
"  If  you  want  to  find  the  true  magic  pass  into  heaven, 
scores  of  rival  professors  press  round  you  with  ob- 
trusive supply  :  if  you  ask  in  your  sorrow,  Who  can 
tell  me  whether  there  be  a  heaven  at  all?  every  soul 
will  keep  aloof  and  leave  you  alone.  All  men  that 
bring  from  God  a  fresh,  deep  nature,  all  in  whom  re- 
ligious wants  live  with  eager  power,  and  who  are  yet 
too  clear  of  soul  to  unthink  a  thought  and  falsify  a 
truth,  receive  in  these  days  no  help  and  no  response." 
"Those  on  whom  heaven  lays  the  burthen  of  duty,  no 
power  on  earth  may  strip  of  rights."  "If  being  or- 
thodox you  die  at  the  stake,  you  are  a  martyr  ;  if  being 
a  heretic — why,  then,  you  are  a  man  burnt."  And  I 
will  here  add  an  extract  from  a  private  letter  written 
by  Martineau  to  myself,  in  i860,  in  answer  to  a  letter 
of  mine,  written  soon  after  the  annual  meeting  of  the 
Unitarian  alumni  of  Harvard  College  had  refused  to 
pass  a  resolution  I  had  proposed,  extending  our  sym- 
pathy to  Theodore  Parker — then  dying  in  Italy.  Mar- 
tineau wrote  :  "Some  painful  experience  has  taught 
me  to  estimate  these  things  at  their  right  value,  and 
to  see  that  some  of  the  purest,  noblest,  and  devoutest 
men  of  this  age  have  been  and  are  among  the  excom- 
municate. What  nobler,  practical  life — nay,  in  spite 
of  all  extravagances,  what  nobler  inner  religion  has 
our  time  seen  than  Theodore  Parker's?  Dissenting 
from  his  Christology,  and  opposing  it,  nay,  strongly 
feeling  the  defects  of  his  philosophy,  I  deeply  honored 
and  loved  him,  and  from  the  first  recognised  in  him 
one  of  God's  true  prophets  of  righteousness.  But 
there  never  was,  and  never  will  be,  a  Stephen  whom 
the  Chief  Priests  and  the  Sanhedrim  at  large  do  not 
cast  out  and  stone." 

Dr.  Martineau  once  made  a  practical  effort  to  found 
an  inclusive  church,  which  should  embrace  those  in 
all  other  churches  who  held  the  ethical  element  of  re- 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4521 


ligion  and  the  spiritual  culture  as  more  important  than 
dogmatic  or  sectarian  partitions.  We  all  met  in  a 
public  hall,  and  listened  to  a  most  beautiful  prophecy 
b}"  him  of  the  higher  unity.  It  soon  came  to  nothing. 
Dr.  Martineau,  with  characteristic  humility,  supposed 
that  the  persons  who  attended  his  church,  some  of 
them  eminent,  came  there  from  purely  spiritual  mo- 
tives, and  to  worship  God  :  they  came  there  to  listen 
to  the  prose  poem  that  every  week  came  from  his  lips. 
When  people  have  ceased  to  attend  churcli  to  please 
God  or  to  save  their  souls,  they  go  for  instruction  or 
to  be  charmed  by  some  particular  preacher.  The  elo- 
quent Martineau  could  only  have  founded  his  inclusive 
church  by  preaching  to  it  ever}'  Sunday,  and  then  it 
would  only  have  been  a  duplicate  of  his  existing  chapel. 
He  was,  indeed,  the  greatest  preacher  I  ever  heard. 
From  first  to  last  he  was  like  some  inspired  master 
musician,  in  whose  instrument  were  strung  the  chords 
of  every  heart  before  him,  from  which  he  evoked  har- 
monies which  entranced  each  individual  spirit  by  turn- 
ing into  melody  all  its  life  and  its  experiences.  I  re- 
member once  meeting  Sir  Charles  Lyall,  as  we  were 
leaving  the  door  of  Martineau's  church,  and  he  said, 
"  I  cannot  understand  how  it  is  that  people  can  go  to 
all  these  churches  around  us,  and  spend  their  time 
listening  to  ignorant  preachers,  when  such  thought, 
such  truth  and  beauty  is  at  their  doors.  Think,  too, 
of  their  grand  temples,  and  of  this  dark  little  chapel 
where  such  a  man  is  hidden  away."  Now  that  the 
ministry  has  ceased,  and  the  world  is  paj'ing  homage 
to  the  man  whom  great  universities  have  honored, 
how  man}- people  have  to  reflect  that  though  they  have 
grown  up  near  by  the  place  of  his  long  ministry,  they 
never  heard  or  even  saw  him  ! 


Since  the  above  was  sent  Mr.  Conway  has  received 
and  forwarded  to  us  the  subjoined  response  of  Dr. 
Martineau  to  the  address  of  the  South  Place  Society  : 

"35  GoRnoN  Square, 
"London,  W.  C,  May  5,  1S95. 
To  the  Si'i/f/i  Place,  Fitisbury,  Congregation 
and  Minister  : 

"Dear  Mr.  Conway: — You  will  not  interpret,  I 
am  sure,  the  late  date  of  this  letter  as  any  sign  of  tardy 
gratitude  to  your  congregation  for  their  truly  generous 
greeting  on  the  completion  of  my  ninetieth  year.  So 
profuse  has  been  the  shower  of  birthday  addresses 
from  the  many  public  bodies  with  which  a  long  life 
has  connected  me  that,  with  my  utmost  diligence,  I 
have  been  unable  to  prevent  their  overflow  into  out- 
lying reaches  of  time. 

"  So  cordial  a  recognition  of  my  life-work  as  you 
have  been  commissioned  to  send  me  is  the  more  valued 
for  being  based,  as  1  am  well  aware,  not  on  any  party- 
sympathy  with  the  cast  of  my  opinions,  but  on  a  com- 


mon moral  approval  of  careful  research  and  unreserved 
speech  on  all  subjects  affecting  either  theoretic  or  his- 
torical religion.  The  attempt  to  find  infallible  records 
in  canonical  books,  and  permanent  standards  of  truth 
in  ecclesiastical  votes,  has  so  hopelessly  failed,  that 
honest  persistence  in  it  has  become  impossible  to  in- 
structed persons  :  and  therefore,  in  all  competent 
guides  and  teachers  of  men,  a  continued  sanction  and 
profession  of  it  is  not  simply  an  intellectual  error,  but 
a  breach  of  veracity.  And  this  tampering  with  sii^- 
cerit}-  on  the  part  of  instructors  who  know  better  than 
they  choose  to  say,  not  only  arrests  the  advance  to 
higher  truth,  but  eats,  like  a  canker,  into  the  morals 
of  our  time.  The  sophistries  of  unfaithful  minds  are 
as  strange  as  they  are  deplorable.  Whoever  smothers 
an  'honest  doubt'  creates  the  Sin,  while  missing  the 
preluding  Good,  of  unbelief.  And  the  conventional 
outcry  against  'destructive  criticism'  intercepts  the 
reconstructive  thought  and  faith  which  can  alone  en- 
dure. 

"  I  can  never  cease  to  be  grateful  to  fellow-' seek- 
ers after  God,'  whose  heart  is  set  on  following  the  lead 
of  His  realities,  and  not  the  bent  of  their  own  wishes 
and  prepossessions.  And  far  above  all  doctrinal  sym- 
pathies, orthodox  or  freethinking,  do  I  prize  the  en- 
couragement which  your  message  presses  home  upon 
our  common  conscience,  to  'hold  fast  our  integrity, ' 
and  trust  ti/e  true  and  tlie  good  as  alone  Di','ine. 
"Believe  me,  always, 

"Yours  very  sincerely, 

"James  Martineau." 


DEUTERONOMY. 

BY  PROF.    C.    H.   CORNILL. 

W^HEN,  in  the  eighteenth  year  of  Josiah,  621  B.  C, 
Shaphan  the  scribe  paid  an  official  visit  to  the  temple 
of  Jerusalem,  the  priest  Hilkiah  handed  to  him  a  book 
of  laws  which  had  been  found  there.  Shaphan  took  the 
book  and  immediately  brought  it  to  the  King,  before 
whom  he  read  it. 

The  impression  which  the  book  made  on  the  King 
must  have  been  stupendous.  He  rent  his  garments, 
and  sent  at  once  a  deputation  to  Huldah,  the  proph- 
etess, who  was  the  wife  of  one  of  his  privy  officers  and 
evidentl}-  held  in  high  esteem.  Huldah  declared  in 
favor  of  the  book,  and  the  King  now  went  energetically 
to  work.  The  entire  people  were  convened  in  the  temple 
at  Jerusalem,  and  the  King  entered  with  them  into  a 
covenant.  Both  parties  mutually  and  solemnly  pledged 
themselves  to  acknowledge  this  book  as  the  fundamen- 
tal law  of  the  kingdom,  and  to  follow  its  commands. 
Upon  the  basis  of  it,  a  thorough  reorganisation  was 
effected  and  the  celebrated  reform  of  worship  carried 
out,  of  which  we  read  in  the  Book  of  Kings. 

The  events  of  the  year  621  at  Jerusalem  were  ap- 


4522 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


parently  of  no  great  importance.  But  their  conse- 
quences have  been  simply  immeasurable.  By  them 
Israel,  nay,  the  whole  world,  has  been  directed  into 
new  courses.  We  are  to-day  still  under  the  influence 
of  beliefs  which  were  then  promulgated  for  the  first 
time,  under  the  swaj'  of  forces  which  then  first  came 
into  life.  Therefore,  we  must  go  into  this  matter  more 
minutely,  for  the  entire  later  development  of  prophecy 
is  quite  unintelligible  unless  we  have  a  clear  concep- 
tion of  it. 

Our  first  question  must  be  :  What  is  this  book  of 
laws  of  Josiah,  which  was  discovered  in  the  year  621  ? 
The  youthful  De  Wette,  in  his  thesis  for  a  professor- 
ship at  Jena  in  the  year  1805,  clearly  proved  that  this 
book  of  laws  was  essentially  the  fifth  book  of  Moses, 
known  as  Deuteronomy.  The  book  is  clearly  and  dis- 
tinctly marked  off  from  the  rest  of  the  Pentateuch  and 
its  legislation,  whilst  the  reforms  of  worship  intro- 
duced by  Josiah  correspond  exactly  to  what  it  called 
for.  The  proofs  adduced  by  De  Wette  have  been  gen- 
erally accepted,  and  his  view  has  become  a  common 
possession  of  Old  Testament  research,  having  afforded 
us  our  first  purchase,  so  to  speak,  for  the  understand- 
ing of  the  religious  history  of  Israel. 

The  conceptions  and  aims  of  Deuteronomy  are 
thoroughly  prophetic.  It  seeks  to  realise  the  hoped 
for  Kingdom  of  God  as  promised  by  the  prophets. 
Israel  is  to  become  a  holy  people,  governed  by  the  will 
of  God ;  and  this  holiness  is  to  be  manifested  through 
worship  and  justice,  so  that  man  shall  serve  God 
righteously  and  judge  his  fellow-men  uprightly.  The 
first  point  is  the  more  important  with  Deuteronomy  ; 
its  chief  attention  is  devoted  to  the  cultus,  and  here  it 
broke  away,  in  all  fundamental  points,  from  the  ideas 
of  ancient  Israel  and  turned  the  development  of  things 
into  entirely  new  courses. 

The  fundamental  problem  of  religion  is  the  relation 
between  God  and  the  world.  Ancient  Israel  had  seen 
both  in  one  ;  all  things  worldly  appeared  to  it  divine  ; 
in  everything  appertaining  to  the  world  it  found  the 
expressions  and  revelations  of  God.  The  entire  na- 
tional life  was  governed  and  ruled  by  religion  ;  in  all 
places  and  all  things  God  was  to  his  people  a  living 
and  real  presence.  The  result  of  this  naturally  was 
the  secularisation  of  God,  which  the  prophets  felt  to 
be  an  exceedingly  grave  danger.  The  right  solution  of 
the  problem  would  have  been  that  given  by  Jesus,  who 
openly  recognised  the  divinisation  of  the  world  as  the 
rightful  task  of  religion — to  fill  and  sanctify  the  world 
with  the  spirit  of  God,  and  thus  to  make  it  a  place  and 
a  field  for  God's  work,  a  Kingdom  of  God,  and  a  tem- 
ple of  the  Holy  Spirit.  Deuteronomy  pursues  a  differ- 
ent course;  it  dissolves  the  bond  between  God  and  the 
world,  tears  them  asunder,  and  ends  by  depriving  the 
world  entirely  of  its  divinity.   On  the  one  hand,  a  world 


without  a  God  ;  on  the  other,  a  God  without  a  world. 
Nevertheless,  this  last  was  more  the  result  than  the  in- 
tention of  Deuteronomy.  At  least,  wherever  it  con- 
sciously carries  out  this  view  it  is  justified,  especially 
when  it  requires  that  God  shall  not  be  worshipped 
through  symbols  or  images,  and  that  every  figurative 
representation  of  the  Godhead,  or  its  simulation  by 
certain  venerated  forms  of  nature,  must  be  destroyed 
root  and  branch.  We  have  here  merely  the  outcome 
of  the  prophetic  apprehension  that  God  is  a  spirit,  and 
therefore  must  be  worshipped  as  a  spirit.  But  Deu- 
teronomy makes  additional  requirements.  Obviously 
in  consequence  of  the  dogma  of  Isaiah  respecting  the 
central  importance  of  Mount  Zion  as  the  dwelling- 
place  of  God  on  earth,  Deuteronomy  insists  that  God 
can  only  be  worshipped  at  Jerusalem  ;  only  there  should 
acts  of  adoration  be  permitted,  and  all  other  sanctua- 
ries and  places  of  worship  outside  of  Jerusalem  should 
be  destroyed. 

The  idea  that  the  centralisation  of  worship  in  a 
single  place  rendered  it  easier  of  supervision  and  en- 
sured the  preservation  of  its  purity  maj'  have  contrib- 
uted to  the  adoption  of  this  last  measure  ;  and  it  must 
certainly  be  admitted  that  the  local  sanctuaries  in 
smaller  towns  were  really  breeding-places  of  flagrant 
abuses.  But  the  consequences  of  the  measure  were 
simply  incalculable.  It  was  virtually  tantamount  to  a 
suppression  of  religion  in  the  whole  countrj'  outside  of 
Jerusalem. 

Up  to  this  time,  ever}'  town  and  village  had  had  its 
sanctuary,  and  access  to  God  was  an  easy  matter  for 
every  Israelite.  When  his  heart  moved  him  either  to 
give  expression  to  his  thanks,  or  to  seek  consolation  in 
his  sorrow,  he  had  only  to  go  to  his  place  of  worship. 
Every  difficult  question  of  law  was  laid  before  God  ; 
that  is,  argued  in  the  sanctuary  and  decided  by  a 
solemn  oath  of  purification.  And  to  one  and  all  these 
sanctuaries  granted  the  right  of  refuge.  Here  was  the 
fugitive  safe  from  his  pursuer,  and  he  could  only  be 
removed  from  the  sanctuary  and  delivered  up  provided 
he  were  a  convicted  felon.  Moreover,  in  the  old  days 
of  Israel  all  these  sanctuaries  were  oracles,  where  at 
any  time  men  could  ask  advice  or  aid  in  difficult  or 
dangerous  matters.  And  many  things  which  have  for 
us  a  purely  secular  character,  were  to  the  ancient  Is- 
raelites acts  of  divine  service.  Every  animal  slaugh- 
tered was  a  sacrifice  ;  every  indulgence  in  meat,  a 
sacrificial  feast. 

All  this  ceased  with  the  legislation  of  Deuteron- 
omy. The  Israelite  was  now  compelled  to  carry  on 
his  daily  life  without  God,  and  thus  accustomed  him- 
self to  consider  life  as  something  apart  from  religion, 
and  in  no  wise  connected  with  God.  Religion  was  re- 
duced to  the  three  great  feasts,  which  Deuteronomy 
likewise  fundamentally  reconstituted. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4523 


In  ancient  Israel  the  three  great  feasts  were  thanks- 
giving festivals.  At  the  feast  of  the  unleavened  bread 
the  first  fruits  of  the  fields,  of  the  barley  harvest,  were 
offered  up  to  God.  The  Feast  of  Weeks,  or  Pente- 
cost, was  the  regular  harvest  feast,  when  the  wheat  was 
garnered,  and  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  was  the  autumn 
festival,  the  feast  of  the  ingathering  of  the  wine  and 
the  fruit.  This  natural  foundation  of  the  three  great 
festivals,  which  brought  them  into  organic  relation 
with  each  individual  and  his  personal  life,  and  in  fact 
formed  for  him  the  real  crises  of  his  life,  was  now  de- 
stroyed, and  an  ecclesiastical  or  ecclesiastico-histor- 
ical  basis  given  to  them.  The  feast  of  unleavened 
bread  took  place  in  remembrance  of  the  flight  out  of 
Egypt ;  the  Feast  of  Weeks  later  in  remembrance  of  the 
giving  of  the  law  on  Sinai,  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  in 
remembrance  of  the  journe)'  through  the  desert,  when 
Israel  dwelt  in  tents.  A  difference  thus  was  created 
spontaneously  between  hoi}'  events  and  secular  events, 
week  days  and  festivals.  Routine  everyday  life  was 
secularised,  while  religion  was  made  into  an  institution, 
ordinance,  work,  and  achievement  apart  b}-  itself. 

A  further  outcome  of  Deuteronomy  was,  that  a  dis- 
tinct and  rigorously  exclusive  priesthood  now  appears 
as  the  sole  lawful  ministers  and  stewards  of  the  cultus, 
and  it  was  enacted  that  all  its  members  should  be  de- 
scended from  the  tribe  of  Levy.  In  olden  times  the 
father  of  the  family  offered  up  the  sacrifices  for  himself 
and  household  ;  he  was  the  priest  of  his  house.  To 
be  sure,  larger  sanctuaries  and  professional  priests 
were  already  in  existence,  but  the  people  were  not  re- 
stricted to  them.  Every  house  was  still  a  temple  of 
God,  and  every  head  of  a  family  a  priest  of  the  Most 
High.  Deuterononi}'  did  away  with  all  this,  and  so 
first  created  the  distinction  between  clergy  and  laity. 
Man,  as  such,  has  nothing  to  do  directly  with  God, 
but  only  a  privileged  class  of  men  possess  this  pre- 
rogative and  right. 

In  this  way  Deuteronomy  also  radically  transformed 
the  priesthood.  In  ancient  Israel  the  priest  was  pri- 
marily the  minister  of  the  divine  oracle,  the  interpreter 
and  expositor  of  the  Divine  Will.  Deuteronomy  did 
away  with  oracular  predictions  as  heathenish,  and  con- 
verted the  priest  into  a  sacrificer  and  expounder  of  the 
law.  The  character  of  the  sacrifice  also  was  completely 
altered.  The  Israelite  now  only  offered  up  sacrifices 
at  the  three  great  yearly'  festivals,  when  he  was  com- 
pelled to  be  in  Jerusalem.  He  could  hardly  be  ex- 
pected to  undertake  a  journey  to  Jerusalem  merely  for 
the  sake  of  making  a  thanksgiving  offering.  There 
was,  however,  a  species  of  sacrifice  which  allowed  of 
no  delay, — the  sacrifice  of  sin  and  atonement.  Here, 
in  restoring  man's  broken  relations  with  God,  no  time 
could  be  lost.  Accordingly,  the  sin  and  atonement 
offerings  now  assume  increasing  dominance  ;  the  whole 


cultus  becomes  more  and  more  an  institution  for  the 
propitiation  of  sins,  and  the  priest,  the  intermediator 
who  negotiates  the  forgiveness. 

Still  another  consequence  flowed  from  the  ideas  of 
Deuteronomy — the  opposition  of  Church  and  State. 
This  also  Deuteronomy  created.  If  the  whole  of  hu- 
man life  has  in  itself  something  profane,  and  the  reli- 
gious life  is  restricted  to  a  definite  caste,  man  is,  so  to 
speak,  torn  into  two  halves,  each  of  which  lives  its 
own  life.  In  ancient  Israel  man  saw  a  divine  dispen- 
sation in  the  public  and  national  life  ;  love  of  country 
was  a  religious  tluty.  The  king  was  the  chief  high 
priest  of  the  people ;  all  State  acts  were  sanctified 
through  religion,  and  when  men  fought  for  home  and 
country,  they  fought  for  God  "the  fight  of  God."  But 
now  all  that  was  changed.  The  State  as  such  had 
nothing  more  to  do  with  the  religious  life,  and  we  even 
see  the  beginnings  in  Deuteronomy  of  that  develop- 
ment which  subsequently  set  the  Church  over  the  State 
and  regarded  the  latter  merely  as  the  handmaid  of  the 
former.  Civil  State  life  became  a  matter  of  ecclesias- 
tical cult.  This,  in  a  sense,  was  providential.  By  the 
separation  of  religion  from  the  State,  the  religion  of 
Israel  was  enabled  to  survive  the  destruction  of  the 
Jewish  State  which  followed  thirty-five  3'ears  later. 
But  its  ultimate  consequences  were  direful  beyond 
measure. 

Nor  was  this  all  that  Deuteronomy  did.  It  substi- 
tuted for  the  living  revelation  of  God  in  the  human 
heart  and  in  histor}',  the  dead  letter.  For  the  first 
time  a  book  was  made  the  foundation  of  religion,  reli- 
gion a  statute,  a  law.  He  who  followed  what  was  writ- 
ten in  this  book  was  religious,  and  he  alone. 

We  see,  thus,  how  an  indubitable  deepening  of  the 
religious  spirit  is  followed  by  a  fixed  externalism,  and 
how  the  prophetic  assumptions  led  to  thoroughly  un- 
prophetic  conclusions.  Deuteronomy  is  an  attempt 
to  realise  the  prophetic  ideas  by  external  means.  This 
naturall}'  brought  in  its  train  the  externalisation  of 
those  ideas.  In  Deuteronomy  prophecy  gained  a  de- 
cided victory  over  the  national  religion,  but  it  was 
largel)'  a  P3'rrhic  victor}'.  Prophec}'  abdicated  in  favor 
of  priesthood.  It  is  worth}'  of  note  that  Deuteronomy 
makes  provision  for  the  event  of  a  prophet  appearing 
who  might  teach  doctrines  not  written  in  this  holy 
book,  of  which  the  priests  are  the  natural  guardians 
and  interpreters.  As  in  earlier  times  the  monarchy 
and  prophecy  were  the  two  dominant  powers,  so  now 
priesthood  and  the  law  ruled  supreme. 

But  Deuteronomy  was  productive  of  still  other  re- 
sults. The  opposition  of  secular  and  sacred,  of  laity 
and  clergy,  of  State  and  Church,  the  conception  of  a 
hoi}'  writ  and  of  a  divine  inspiration,  can  be  traced  back 
in  its  last  roots  to  the  Deuteronomy  of  the  year  621, 
together  with   the  whole  history  of  revealed  religion 


4524 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


down  to  the  present  time,  including  not  only  Judaism 
but  Christianit}'  and  Islam,  who  have  simply  borrowed 
these  ideas  from  Judaism. 

By  whom  this  book,  which  is  perhaps  the  most  sig- 
nificant and  most  momentous  that  was  ever  written, 
was  composed,  we  do  not  know.  It  represents  a  com- 
promise between  prophecy  and  priesthood,  and  might 
therefore  have  been  compiled  by  the  priests  of  Jerusa- 
lem, as  indeed  it  was  a  priest  who  delivered  it  to  the 
king,  and  the  priests  who  derived  all  the  benefits  from 
it.  It  may  be  regarded  as  pretty  certain  that  it  took  its 
origin  in  this  period. 

Josiah  regarded  the  demands  of  this  book  with  rev- 
erent awe.  We  are  not  told  whether  his  reforms  were 
opposed  by  the  people,  although  he  carried  them  out 
with  great  severity  and  harshness.  The  final  estab- 
lishment of  regularity  must  have  been  looked  upon  as 
a  blessing,  and  the  more  so  as  Deuteronomy  lays  par- 
ticular stress  on  civil  justice,  establishing  in  this  do- 
main also  stability  and  order.  Moreover,  Josiah  was 
a  man  who  by  his  personal  qualities  was  fitted  to  ren- 
der acceptable  the  oppressive  features  of  the  work,  and 
to  win  for  it  able  partisans. 


THE  PREVAILING  DESPAIR  OF  THE  REASON. 


BY  CHARLES  L,    WOOD. 


Just  now  we  seem  to  be  having  a  recrudescence 
of  supernaturalism.  The  old  religious  systems  have 
temporarily  come  back  into  favor  as  offering  some 
refuge  from  the  intellectual  excesses  of  the  time.  On 
occasions  of  mental  trouble  and  vexation,  men  are 
grateful  for  any  shelter  and  sympathy  and  are  quite 
willing  to  waive  points  which  at  other  times  they  are 
scrupulous  in  regarding  as  fixed  convictions. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  human  mind,  when  it 
reaches  a  certain  stage,  to  despair  of  the  reason.  The 
mind  resolutely  attacks  problem  after  problem  and  is 
urged  on  to  still  greater  efforts  with  each  crowning 
success.  But  the  time  inevitably  comes  when  for  that 
particular  mind  there  must  be  a  halt — the  joyous  leap 
of  the  idea  from  the  assembled  elements  no  longer 
follows.  The  mind  struggles,  but  in  vain,  and  ends 
by  acknowledging  itself  mastered.  Some  higher  tribu- 
nal there  must  be,  and  to  that  and  not  to  the  discred- 
ited reason  must  be  the  ultimate  appeal.  And  so  the 
once  strong  rationalistic  mind  transfers  its  allegiance 
to  the  faith  that  asks  no  questions,  and  affects,  for  a 
time,  to  rest  satisfied  there. 

Every  epoch  has  its  note  of  despair,  usually  very 
dolefully  sounded  by  those  that  think  they  have  reached 
the  confines  of  human  apprehension  ;  but  those  epochs 
especially  which  are  troubled  with  many  and  vexatious 
problems  are  most  prone  to  take  up  the  dirge  of  intel- 
lectual despair.      The  present  time  is  notable  for  its 


problems  of  far-reaching  character.  In  sociology, 
science,  philosophy,  religion,  there  are  questions  and 
questions;  and  each  advance  seems,  paradoxically,  to 
raise  new  and  more  complex  issues.  And  so  in  all 
these  departments  we  have  a  numerous  class  of  writ- 
ers and  apologists,  who,  with  unmistakable  disap- 
pointment, find  themselves  called  upon  to  abjure  the 
reason.  The  two  most  recent  much-talked-of  works 
that  betray  great  travail  of  thought,  namely,  Kidd's 
Social  Evolution  and  Balfour's  Foundations  of  Belief, 
are  such  apologies,  and  both  writers  give  up  the  rea- 
son and  array  themselves  in  the  supra-rationalistic 
camp.  But  these  works  belong  to  a  long  and  growing 
list  of  the  same  sort;  and,  strange  as  it  may  appear, 
they  all  are  exponents  of  the  availability  of  reason  it- 
self to  arrive  at  high,  if  not  fully  satisfactory,  conclu- 
sions. They  are  themselves  proof,  as  their  authors 
would  have  us  believe,  that  the  mysteries  of  life  and 
the  universe  still  lend  themselves  to  the  ratiocinative 
processes  of  the  mind. 

Now  this  recurring  tone  of  despair  is  thoroughly 
unworthy  those  who  would  constitute  themselves  lead- 
ers of  thought.  The  reason  is  not  to  be  discredited  in 
this  offhand  and  self-sufficient  manner.  It  is  still  man's 
highest  faculty  and  the  true  distinguishing  mark  of 
his  unique  position  as  lord  of  this  world.  The  capa- 
bilities of  the  reason  have  not  been  exhausted,  nor  in- 
deed can  they  ever  be.  In  every  stage  of  the  past, 
men  have  cried  out :  There  is  nothing  more  ;  further 
exercise  of  the  reason  will  but  confuse  itself — and 
every  succeeding  stage  of  progress  has  proved  the 
falsity  of  the  declaration.  There  is  a  limit  to  every 
individual  mind  and  in  every  stage,  but  that  limit  is 
not  fixed  for  all  time  ;  and  who  is  quite  sure  the  limit 
in  a  given  case  has  ever  been  reached? 

The  reason  is  still  the  most  powerful  and  effective 
instrument  man  possesses  ;  and  sufficient,  despite  all 
said  to  the  contrary,  to  guide  his  life  in  the  right 
paths,  and,  with  patience  and  trust  in  it,  able  in  time 
to  solve  all  hindering  difficulties.  Problems  them- 
selves are  a  proof  of  the  triumph  of  reason  ;  and  the 
advent  of  the  consciousness  of  a  new  problem  marks 
an  advance  in  man's  intellectual  attainments.  The 
reason  at  present  labors  under  a  certain  disadvantage 
due  to  excess  of  material,  which  the  scientific  obser- 
vations and  analytical  researches  of  the  age  have  ac- 
cumulated on  every  side.  These  countless  facts  and 
phenomena  must  be  sorted,  arranged  and  generalised, 
and  then  grouped  under  their  appropriate  symbols, 
before  they  can  be  well  utilised  as  elements  contribut- 
ing to  higher  thought.  Meanwhile  we  should  be  grate- 
ful for  what  has  been  done  in  that  widespread  eman- 
cipation of  the  intellect  from  superstition  and  error, 
which  has  been  the  crowning  work  of  the  reason  dur- 
ing this  century.      And  again  and  finally,   we  should 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4525 


be  alive  to  the  work  now  going  on  in  every  field, 
which,  in  effect,  is  the  preliminary  task  that  reason 
has  set  herself  in  the  noble  purpose  to  work  out  for 
man  a  true  and  practical  salvation. 


A  REVIVAL  OF  BUDDHISM. 

Charles  T.  Paul,  the  editor  of  Tlu-  Tibttan,  a 
Christian  missionary  journal,  says  in  his  April  num- 
ber : 

"A  revival  of  Buddhism  is  one  of  the  distinguishing  features 
of  the  close  of  this  century.  From  the  signs  of  activity  everywhere 
present  among  the  followers  of  the  great  Indian  Teacher  in  many 
Oriental  countries,  and  indeed  to  some  extent,  in  the  West,  it  is 
difficult  to  agree  with  Mr.  W.  S.  Lilie's  statement  that  '  Buddhism 
is  a  moribund  faith.'  Whatever  may  have  been  its  temporary 
signs  of  decadence  in  the  past,  present  evidences  go  to  show  that 
it  is  rejuvenescent.  In  a  word,  a  great  missionary  revival  is  stir- 
ring the  rank  and  file  of  Buddhists,  not  only  in  India,  but  in  Siam, 
Japan,  Ceylon,  China,  and  other  countries. 

"  We  have  already  referred  to  the  Maha-Bodhi  Society,  formed 
under  the  direct  patronage  of  the  Grand  Lama  of  Tibet.  The 
avowed  objects  of  the  Society  are  to  make  known  unto  all  nations 
'  the  sublime  teachings  of  the  Buddha,  Sakya  Muni,  and  to  rescue 
and  restore  the  sight  of  the  holy  tree  at  Buddha-gaya,  where  the 
Buddha  attained  supreme  wisdom.' 

"  'At  this  thrice  sacred  spot,'  the  journal  of  the  M.  B.  Society 
announces,  '  it  is  proposed  to  re-establish  a  monastery  for  the  resi- 
dence of  Bikkhus  (monks)  of  Tibet,  Ceylon,  China,  Japan,  Bur- 
mah,  Siam,  Cambodia,  Chittagong,  Nepal,  Corea,  and  Arakan  ;  to 
found  a  college  for  training  young  men  of  unblemished  character, 
of  whatsoever  race  and  country,  for  carrying  abroad  the  message 
of  peace  and  brotherly  love  promulgated  by  the  divine  Teacher 
twenty-four  centuries  ago. '  Buddhists  of  all  countries  are  exhorted 
to  unite  in  the  work.  It  is  declared  also  that  '  the  time  is  ripe  to 
sow  the  seed  of  Buddha's  teachings  on  Indian  and  American  soils, 
and  an  appeal  is  made  for  young  men  to  give  themselves  up  to  this 
mission.  The  headquarters  of  the  Society  are  in  Calcutta,  and  it 
counts  among  its  honorary  and  corresponding  members  the  names 
of  many  eminent  scholars,  European  as  well  as  Asiatic.  Among 
the  former  may  be  mentioned  Sir  Edwin  Arnold,  Professor  Rhys 
Davids,  and  Col.  Olcott. 

"The  General  Secretary  is  Mr.  H.  Dharmapala,  the  talented 
Cingalese  Buddhist,  who  represented  his  co-religionists  at  the  Chi- 
cago Parliament  of  Religions,  and  who,  since  his  return  to  India 
and  Ceylon,  has  created  an  almost  unparalleled  religious  enthusi- 
asm among  his  people.  As  a  result  of  his  recent  labors  in  Ceylon, 
a  pilgrimage  of  Buddhist  ladies  started  out  for  the  sacred  shrine  at 
Buddha-gaya,  the  first  time  in  several  centuries  that  such  a  thing 
has  been  known  to  occur. 

"  Buddhism  is  alive,  and  demands  more  than  ever  the  atten- 
tion of  Christian  missionaries.  No  messenger  of  the  Gospel  of 
Christ  can  afford  at  this  time  of  day,  to  be  ignorant  of  the  doc- 
trines, the  institutions  and  the  operations  of  a  religion  which  is 
coming  to  be  the  gentle  rival  of  Christianity.  In  the  May  number 
of  The  Tibetan  will  begin  a  series  of  articles  on  the  Life  and  Teach- 
ings of  the  Buddha.  c.  T.  p." 

In  a  similar  spirit  Mr.  F.  H.  Balfour  spoke  of  the 
powerful  revival  of  Buddhism  in  Japan.  He  said  in  a 
lecture  given  before  the  Japan  Society  in  London  ac- 
cording to  the  London  and  China  Express  (quoted  in 
the  Journal  of  the  i\Iaha-Bcdln  Society,  III,  No.  Sj  : 

"If  the  introduction  of  Christianity  into  Japan  has  done  noth- 
ing else,  it  has  done  this — it  has  given   an  impetus  to  Buddhism 


that  would  have  rejoiced  the  heart  of  the  great  King  Asoka.  Be- 
fore, Buddhism  was  asleep  ;  now  it  is  very  much  awake,  and  the 
air  rings  with  controversy. 

"In  China,  Buddhism  makes  priests,  like  Jeroboam,  of  the 
lowest  of  the  people.  It  is  not  so  in  Japan.  Among  the  priesthood, 
there,  you  will  find  men  of  the  highest  families  and  the  deepest 
erudition,  who  are  not  only  versed  in  Eastern  and  Western  meta- 
physics, but  know  as  much  about  Christianity  as  you  and  I  do. 
Where  do  you  think  we  shall  find  one  of  the  completest  libraries 
of  Christian  evidences  in  Japan — a  library  containing  all  the  stand- 
ard controversial  works,  from  our  old  friend  Archdeacon  Paley 
down  to  'Lux  Mundi, '  and  the  latest  volume  of  the  fervent  Farrar  ? 
In  some  theological  training  school  under  missionary  superintend- 
ence ?  No  ;  but  in  the  great  Temple  of  Reformed  Buddhism  at 
Kyoto.  All  these  are  healthy  signs.  The  Buddhists  are  fighting 
for  their  faith  and  for  their  lives  ;  they  do  not  regard  Christianity 
with  indifference,  but  attack  it  with  honesty  and  boldness  ;  they 
are  foemen  worthy  of  our  steel,  and  every  inroad  that  is  made 
upon  their  ranks  is  a  very  hard-won  victory." 


NOTES. 

Friends  of  Mr.  Gandhi  will  be  glad  to  hear  good  news  about 
his  journey.   Moncure  D  Conway  writes  from  London  as  follows  : 

"  Mr.  Gandhi  arrived  in  London  on  the  i8th  and  was  drawn 
by  a  telegram  to  his  steamer  straight  to  my  house,  where  he  now 
is,  and  will  remain  until  the  middle  of  next  week.  He  gave  a 
deeply  interesting  exposition  of  Jain  religion  at  South  Place 
Chapel  last  Sunday  (.A.pril  21)  and  in  the  same  evening  at  an  ethi- 
cal society  in  Camberwell.  Last  evening  he  was  a  speaker  at  the 
Liberal  Social  Union,  in  a  discussion  on  the  influence  of  the  Jew 
on  religious  thought.  He  has  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Ben- 
ball  and  other  Sanskrit  scholars  of  the  British  Museum,  and  has 
been  assisting  them  to  make  a  more  accurate  arrangement  of  their 
Jain  manuscripts  and  relics.  Every  one  is  much  pleased  with 
him.  He  has  gone  to-day  on  a  visit  to  Max  Miiller  (at  his  daugh- 
ter's house  in  Kent),  and  is  to  read  a  paper  before  the  Royal  Asi- 
atic Society,  May  7.  He  will  then  visit  the  Museum  of  Religions 
in  Paris,  visit  Weber  and  other  Sanskritists  in  Germany  and  in 
Hungary,  and  sail  for  India  towards  the  close  of  May.  Mean- 
while he  has  several  receptions  and  a  Hindu  banquet  on  hand, 
and  his  too  brief  sojourn  in  London  will  be  well  occupied." 


Among  the  recent  noteworthy  donations  to  the  cause  of  scien- 
tific research  is  that  of  M.  Ernest  Solvay,  who,  after  having  pre- 
viously founded  for  the  University  of  Brussels  an  institute  of  physi- 
ology, subsequently  donated  two  hundred  thousand  francs  for  the 
erection  and  equipment  of  a  special  institute  devoted  to  the  inves- 
tigation of  electro-biological  phenomena.  We  have  before  us  the 
long  address  which  M.  Solvay  delivered  in  December,  1893,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  dedication  of  the  electro-biological  institute  bear- 
ing his  name,  wherein  he  has  laid  down  his  views  of  how  this  re- 
search should  be  conducted  and  what  are  its  objects.  He  thinks 
that  ' '  the  phenomena  of  life  can  and  ought  to  be  explained  by  the 
action  of  physical  forces  alone  and  that  among  them  electricity 
plays  a  predominant  role."  No  doubt  the  institute  will  yield  good 
fruits.  The  restriction  of  its  aim,  however,  seems  to  us  calculated 
to  impair  its  usefulness.  The  condition  implied  in  the  above- 
quoted  sentence  of  the  founder  is  one  which  research  should  end, 
not  start,  with.   (Brussels  :   F.  Hayez,  112  Rue  de  Louvain,  1S94.) 

The  Rev.  Dr.  Kaye,  a  Congregational  minister  of  Edger- 
ton,  Wisconsin,  will  contribute  a  series  of  articles  to  the  Free- 
thought  Magazine,  edited  by  H.  L.  Green,  Chicago,  Illinois,  on 
Col.  Robert  G.  IngersoU's  lecture,  "About  the  Holy  Bible,"  and 
Dr.  Felix  L.  Oswald  will  reply.  The  controversy  promises  to  be 
a  lively  one. 


.o" 


4526 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


BOOK  NOTICES. 


Back  to  the  Old  Testament  for  the  Message  of  the  New. 
An   Effort   to   Connect   More   Closely   the  Testaments,   to 
Which  Is  Added  a  Series  of  Papers   on  Various  Old  Testa- 
ment Books  and  Subjects.     By  Anson  Barrie  Curtis,  B.D., 
Ph.  D.      Boston  :    Universalist  Publishing   House.      1894. 
Pages,  325. 
We  have  in  the  work  of  Dr.  Curtis  an  eminently  fair  exposi- 
tion of  the  state  and  significance  of  modern   Biblical  study,  both 
as  a  scientific  discipline  and  as  an  agency  in  the  solution  of  the 
crying  religious  problems  of  the  day.     The  author's  views,  though 
critical,  are  wisely  conservative  and  never  lose  out  of  sight  the 
fact  that  the  higher  criticism  is  not  an  end  in  itself,  but  a  means 
to  help  us  to  purer  and  nobler  views  of  religious  life.     He  ex- 
pressly maintains  that  the  results  of  the  new  research  can  only 
confirm  and  not  destroy  the  essence  of  true  religion.      "The  dis- 
cussion  presupposes   throughout   the   general  correctness  of  the 
views  of   Driver,    Cheyne,    Briggs,   Robertson,   Smith,    and    [the 
German  scholars].     But  at  the  same  time  our  effort  is  not  to  es- 
tablish those  results,  but  to  show  in  some  detail  how  the  Christian 
religion  has  gained  in  authority,  in  attractiveness,  and  in  spiritu- 
ality by  an  appeal  to  the  New  Bible." 

The  title  of  the  book  means  that  in  religion  as  in  all  other 
things  we  can  find  the  solution  of  present  problems  only  by  going 
back  to  their  roots  in  the  past.  We  must  go  back  to  the  Old  Tes- 
tament "  for  its  own  sake,"  as  a  religious  and  literary  masterpiece 
ranking  among  the  first  books  of  the  world  ;  we  must  gg  back  to 
the  Old  Testament  "for  the  doctrine  of  inspiration,"  which  the 
author  understands  in  a  broad  and  purified  sense;  we  must  go 
back  to  the  Old  Testament  "  f or  a  valid  proof  of  God's  existence,  '■ 
"  for  a  new  conception  of  the  Messiah,"  "for  the  way  of  salva- 
tion," "for  the  suffering  Christ,"  and  also  for  corrections,  supple- 
mentations, and  counterpoises  to  the  New  Testament,  which, 
viewed  in  the  light  of  the  Old,  receives  an  extended  and  higher 
spiritual  significance.  Other  Biblical  problems  are  also  well  dis- 
cussed in  the  book.  The  following  quotation  v;ill  characterise  the 
position,  which  the  author  holds  on  Biblical  matters  : 

"  It  is  certainly  true  that  the  Church  should  move  slowly  and 
with  caution  in  these  matters.  But  to  the  truly  religious  man,  to 
the  man  of  faith,  there  is  little  to  cause  alarm  in  these  newer 
books.  If  ours  is  an  age  of  unbelief,  it  is  this  unbelief  that  has 
caused  destructive  Biblical  criticism  ;  the  higher  criticism  has  not 
caused  it.  For  the  modern  movement  in  Bible  study  is  at  bottom 
sincere,  profoundly  in  earnest,  profoundly  moral,  and  filled  with 
an  intense  desire  to  reach  the  very  heart  of  our  modern  life.  It 
is  an  effort,  not  to  take  the  Gospel  away  from  the  people,  but  to 
bring  it  to  them  in  all  its  primitive  purity  and  power." 

In  the  three  last  chapters  of  the  book,  "  Leisurely  Rambles 
in  the  Old  Testament  With  Some  of  Its  Friends  and  Admirers," 
' '  Hints  for  the  Pulpit  and  Devotional  Use  of  the  Old  Testament, " 
and  "An  Inexpensive  Old  Testament  Library,"  we  have  a  wel- 
come and  judicious  sketch  of  the  available  literature  on  this  sub- 
ject, accessible  to  English  readers,  and  we  can  cordially  recom- 
mend Dr.  Curtis's  advice  here  to  all  who  wish  to  pursue  farther 
the  studies  suggested  by  the  articles  of  Professor  Cornill  now  run- 
ning in  The  Open  Court.  T.  J.  McC. 

The  recent  death  of  Gustav  Freytag,  the  great  German  novel- 
ist, has  attracted  increased  attention  to  his  works,  only  few  of 
which,  besides  The  Lost  Manusiript,  have  appeared  in  English. 
Freytag,  who  is  known  to  us  only  as  a  story-writer,  was  equally 
powerful  as  a  historian  and  playwright.  In  the  latter  capacity  he 
achieved  remarkable  success.  And,  strange  to  say, — at  least,  it 
will  appear  strange  to  us, — he  accomplished  his  work  by  dint  of  a 
long-continued  and  profound  study  of  the  origin  and  principles 


of  his  art,  such  as  one  would  only  have  expected  from  a  scientific 
scholar  or  critic.  Nor  did  he  omit  to  study  thoroughly  the  prac- 
tical mechanism  of  dramatic  representation.  His  results  he  era- 
bodied  in  a  work  called  The  Technique  of  the  Drama,  An  Exposi- 
tion of  Dramatic  Composition  and  Art,  which  takes  high  rank  as  a 
literary  as  well  as  a  scientific  study,  and  we  are  glad  to  notice  now 
the  appearance  of  this  book  in  an  English  translation  by  Elias  J. 
MacEwan  (Chicago:  Griggs  &  Co.).  Upon  the  whole,  the  interest 
and  value  of  Freytag's  work  are  reproduced,  although  such  mis- 
takes as  the  following  excite  a  reviewer's  suspicion.  Speaking  of 
Shakespeare's  parallel  use  of  comic  and  tragic  action,  this  sen- 
tence occurs  as  giving  an  example  ;  "As  when  the  constables  must 
help  to  prevent  the  sad  fate  threatening  the  hero  "  (p.  46).  Frey- 
tag's reference  here  is  plainly  to  the  famous  scene  in  Much  Ado 
About  .Vothing,  where  the  foolish  constables  unearth  the  plot 
against  the  honor  of  Hero — the  name  of  the  heroine,  and  daugh- 
ter of  Leonato. 

Among  the  numerous  announcements  of  Macmillan  the  fol- 
lowing are  likely  to  prove  of  interest  to  our  readers,  (i)  A  new 
series  of  Saga  translations  to  be  issued  under  the  title  of  the 
"  Northern  Library,"  the  first  of  which  will  be  a  rendering  by  the 
Rev.  John  Sephton  of  the  Saga  of  King  Olaf  Tryggwason.  (2)  A 
new  edition  of  the  philosophical  poet,  Wordsworth,  edited  by 
Professor  Knight  of  St.  Andrews,  to  occupy  sixteen  volumes  of 
the  "  Eversley  Series  "  and  to  contain  not  only  the  poems,  but  the 
prose  works  and  also  the  letters  both  of  the  poet  and  his  sister- 
(3)  A  new  "  Novelists'  Library,"  the  first  number  of  which  is  Mrs. 
Humphry  Ward's  Marcella,  to  be  published  monthly,  in  paper 
covers,  and  costing  only  fifty  cents.  Other  novels  by  F.  Marion 
Crawford,  Rudyard  Kipling,  W,  Clark  Russell,  the  Hon.  Emily 
Lawless,  Mrs.  Clifford,  and  Mrs.  F.  A.  Steel  to  follow.  (4)  The 
Principles  of  Sociology,  by  Franklin  H.  Giddings,  formerly  o. 
Bryn  Mawr  College  and  at  present  professor  of  sociology  in  Co- 
lumbia. Professor  Giddings's  work,  which  will  treat  exclusively 
of  sociological  topics,  will  be  issued  in  the  early  autumn. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  STREET. 

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E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor 


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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  406. 

JAMES  MARTINEAU.     Moncure  D.  Conway 4519 

DEUTERONOMY.     Prof.  C.  H.  Cornill 4521 

THE    PREVAILING    DESPAIR    OF    THE    REASON. 

Charles  L.  Wood 4524 

A  REVIVAL  OF  BUDDHISM.     Editor 4525 

NOTES 4525 

BOOK  NOTICES 4526 


47 


The  Open  Court. 


A  "HTEEKLY  JOUENTAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  407.     (Vol.  IX.— 24. 


CHICAGO,  JUNE  13,  1895. 


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JEREMIAH. 

BY  PROF.    C.    H.   CORNILL. 

Priiphecv  did  not  experience  at  once  the  disastrous 
consequences  of  the  priestl}'  reforms  of  621,  but  dis- 
plaj'ed  at  this  period  its  noblest  offshoot  in  Jeremiah. 
It  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  Jeremiah  had  anj'thing 
to  do  with  either  the  composition  or  introduction  of 
Deuteronomy.  The  rather  elaborate  account  given  of 
the  proceedings  of  this  period  in  the  Book  of  Kings 
makes  no  mention  of  him,  and  the  mental  relation- 
ship which  some  have  claimed  to  exist  between  Jere- 
miah and  Deuteronomy  is  based  on  passages  of  this 
book  which  did  not  belong  to  the  law-code  of  621,  but 
are  later  than  Jeremiah,  and  the  direct  outcome  of  his 
influence. 

As  the  Kingdom  of  Israel  on  its  downfall  bore  in 
Hosea  its  noblest  prophetic  fruit,  so  in  the  time  imme- 
diately preceding  the  destruction  of  Judah  we  find  the 
sublime  figure  of  Jeremiah.  Mentally,  also,  these  two 
men  were  closely  related.  Sentiment  is  the  predomi- 
nant characteristic  of  each.  Both  have  the  same  ten- 
der and  S3'mpathetic  heart ;  both  have  the  same  elegiac 
bent  of  mind  ;  both  were  pre-eminently  devout  men. 
The  religious  element  preponderates  entirely  over  the 
ethical.  It  can  be  proved  that  Jeremiah  was  power- 
fully influenced  bj'  Hosea,  and  that  he  looked  upon  him 
as  his  prototype. 

We  are  better  informed  concerning  the  life  and  for- 
tunes of  Jeremiah  than  of  an}^  other  prophet.  He  re- 
ceived his  call  to  the  prophetic  office  in  the  thirteenth 
year  of  Josiah's  reign,  namel}',  in  627.  He  must  have 
been  at  the  time  very  3'oung,  as  he  hesitated  to  obey 
the  divine  order  on  the  ground  of  his  youth.  We  are 
referred,  therefore,  to  the  later  3'ears  of  the  reign  of 
King  Manasseh,  as  the  period  of  the  prophet's  birth. 
Jeremiah  was  not  a  native  of  Jerusalem  ;  his  home  was 
Anathoth,  a  small  village  near  Jerusalem.  He  came 
of  a  priestly  family,  and  we  get  the  impression  that  he 
did  not  live  in  poor  circumstances.  Solomon  had  ban- 
ished to  his  estate  in  Anathoth,  Abiathar,  the  high- 
priest  of  David,  and  the  last  remaining  heir  of  the  old 
priesthood  of  Shiloh.  The  conjecture  is  not  rash, 
perhaps,  that  Jeremiah  was  a  descendant  of  this  fam- 
ily, which  could  cherish  and  preserve  the  proudest  and 
dearest   recollections   of    Israel   as    family   traditions. 


The  family  was  descended  from  Moses.  Abiathar  had 
been  closely  attached  to  David's  person  and  throne  ; 
he  had  given  the  religious  sanction  to  all  David's 
mighty  deeds,  and  it  was  he  who  helped  to  found  Je- 
rusalem as  also  to  be  the  first  to  worship  there  the  God 
of  Israel.  How  vividly  such  traditions  are  wont  to 
be  fostered  in  fallen  families  is  well  known,  and,  be- 
sides, Jeremiah  shows  himself  to  be  thoroughly  ac- 
quainted with  the  past  history  of  Israel.  Moses  and 
Samuel,  Amos  and  Hosea,  they  were  the  men  with 
whom  and  in  whom  he  lived.  No  other  prophet  is  so 
steeped  in  the  ancient  literature  and  history  of  Israel. 
Everything  that  was  noble  and  worthy  in  Israel  was 
known  and  familiar  to  liim.  We  see  in  this  the  fruits 
of  a  careful  education,  and  can  readily  imagine  how  the 
priestly  father  or  pious  mother  filled  the  impressionable 
heart  of  the  child  with  what  was  most  sacred  to  them. 

Jeremiah  himself  mentions  his  debt  to  his  parents, 
where  God  says  to  him  in  the  vision:  "Before  thou 
camest  forth  out  of  the  womb  I  sanctified  and  ordained 
thee  a  prophet."  Which  means:  A  person  born  of 
such  parents  is,  of  necessity,  consecrated  to  God. 

And  still  another  circumstance  is  of  utmost  impor- 
tance. Jeremiah  is  the  scion  of  a  martyred  church. 
He  was  born  at  a  time  when  Manasseh  persecuted  the 
prophets  with  fire  and  sword,  and  raged  against  their 
whole  party.  Persecution,  however,  only  serves  to  fan 
religion  into  a  more  intense  flame.  With  what  fervor 
do  men  then  pra}- ;  with  what  strength  the}-  believe, 
and  confide,  wait  and  hope.  Under  such  circumstances 
was  Jeremiah  born.  Under  such  impressions  he  grew 
up.      Trul}',  he  was  a  predestined  personality. 

In  Jeremiah  prophecy  appears  in  a  totally  new  and 
distinct  stamp,  noticeable  even  in  his  first  calling  in 
the  year  627.  God  sa)'s  to  Jeremiah:  "See  I  have 
this  da)'  set  thee  over  the  nations  and  over  the  king- 
doms, to  root  out  and  to  pull  down,  to  build  and  to 
plant."  So  thoroughly  does  the  prophet  feel  himself 
one  with  Him  who  sent  him,  and  fancy  his  own  per- 
sonality identical  with  God.  Likewise,  in  one  of  the 
grandest  passages  of  his  book  it  is  he  who  causes  all 
the  nations  to  drink  of  the  wine-cup  of  God's  fury. 
And  thus  the  whole  life  of  the  prophet  is  absorbed  in 
his  calling.  He  must  even  deny  himself  the  joys  of 
matrimony  and  of  home.     Solitary  and  forlorn  he  must 


4528 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


wander  through  life,  belonging  only  to  God  and  to  his 
vocation. 

It  is  my  duty  to  state,  so  as  not  to  draw  on  myself 
the  charge  of  false  embellishment,  that  this  conscious- 
ness of  absolute  union  with  God  often  assumes  in  Jere- 
miah a  form  which  has  for  us  something  offensive  in  it. 
His  enemies  are  also  God's  enemies,  and  this  other- 
wise tender  and  gentle  man  calls  down  upon  them  the 
heaviest  curses:  "Pull  them  out  like  sheep  for  the 
slaughter,  and  prepare  them  for  the  day  of  throttling." 
But  he  is  conscious  himself  that  this  is  something  in- 
congruous. In  one  of  his  most  remarkable  passages, 
where  he  has  broken  out  into  the  direst  imprecations 
and  cursed  himself  and  the  day  of  his  birth,  God  an- 
swers him  :  "If  thou  becomest  again  mine,  thou  may- 
est  again  be  my  servant,  and  if  thou  freest  thy  better 
self  from  the  vile,  then  shalt  thou  still  be  as  my 
mouth." 

Jeremiah  did  indeed  free  his  better  self  from  the 
vile,  and  such  passing  outbreaks  only  make  him  dearer 
to  us  and  render  him  more  human,  as  showing  us  what 
this  man  inwardly  suffered,  how  he  struggled,  and  un- 
der what  afflictions  his  prophecy  arose.  The  sorrow 
he  bears  is  twofold  :  personal,  in  that  he  preaches  to 
deaf  ears  and  only  reaps  hate  in  return  for  his  love ; 
and  general,  as  a  member  of  his  people.  For  as  the 
prophet  knows  himself  to  be  in  his  vocation  one  with 
God,  so  does  he  know  himself  as  a  man  to  be  one  with 
his  people,  whose  grief  he  bears  with  a  double  bur- 
den, whose  destiny  is  like  to  break  his  heart. 

"My  bowels,  my  bowels,  I  am  pained  to  my  very 
heart;  my  heart  maketh  a  noise  in  me;  I  cannot  hold 
my  peace,  because  thou  hast  heard,  O  my  soul,  the 
sound  of  the  trumpet,  the  alarm  of  war." 

Thus  he  exclaims  in  one  place,  and  in  another  we 
read  : 

"O  that  my  head  were  waters,  and  my  eyes  a  foun- 
tain of  tears,  that  I  might  weep  day  and  night  for  the 
slain  of  the  daughter  of  my  people  !" 

Out  of  this  peculiar  and  twofold  position  of  the 
prophet  between  God  and  his  people  Jeremiah  drew 
the  practical  inference  that  he  was  the  chosen  advo- 
cate and  intercessor  of  the  nation  with  God  ;  in  his 
fervent  prayers  he  fairly  battles  with  God  for  the  sal- 
vation of  his  people.  This  is  a  totally  new  feature. 
The  relation  of  the  former  prophets  to  their  contem- 
poraries was  that  of  mere  preachers  of  punishment 
and  repentance.  Jeremiah,  however,  in  spite  of  their 
unworthiness,  holds  his  fellow-countrymen  lovingly  in 
his  heart  and  endeavors  to  arrest  the  arm  of  God, 
already  uplifted  to  deal  on  them  the  destructive  blow. 
God  at  last  must  all  but  rebuff  his  unwearying  and  im- 
petuous prophet. 

The  prophetic  preaching  of  Jeremiah  naturally 
often  rests  on  that  of  his  predecessors,  out  of  which  it 


organically  grew.  But  it  is  curious  to  see,  and  this  is 
noticeable  even  in  the  smallest  details,  how  everj'thing 
is  spiritualised  and  deepened  in  Jeremiah,  and  in  a 
certain  measure  transposed  to  a  higher  key.  Often  it 
is  a  mere  descriptive  word,  or  characteristic  expres- 
sion, which  makes  old  thoughts  appear  new,  and 
stamps  them  as  the  mental  property  of  Jeremiah.  I 
must  forego  the  proof  of  this  in  detail,  and  limit  my- 
self in  this  brief  sketch  to  what  is  specifically  new  in 
Jeremiah,  and  to  what  constitutes  his  substantial  im- 
portance and  position  in  the  historj'  of  Israelitic  proph- 
ecy and  religion. 

Now,  the  specifically  new  in  Jeremiah  touches  di- 
rectly the  kernel  and  substance  of  religion.  Jeremiah 
was  the  first  to  set  religion  consciously  free  from  all 
extraneous  and  material  elements,  and  to  establish  it 
on  a  purely  spiritual  basis.  God  himself  will  destroy 
His  temple  in  Jerusalem,  and  at  the  time  of  the  final 
salvation,  it  shall  not  be  built  up  again,  and  the  Holi- 
est of  Holies,  the  ark  of  the  covenant,  will  not  be 
missed,  and  none  new  made.  What  God  requires  of 
man  is  something  different  :  man  shall  break  up  his 
fallow  ground  and  not  sow  among  thorns  ;  he  shall 
circumcise  his  heart.  God  considers  only  the  purity 
of  the  heart,  its  prevalent  disposition  ;  it  is  he  who 
"tries  the  heart  and  the  reins" — an  expression  origin- 
ally coined  by  Jeremiah,  and  which  we  meet  with  in 
his  book  for  the  first  time.  Truth  and  obedience  are 
good  in  themselves,  as  denoting  a  moral  disposition. 

There  was  a  sect,  the  Rechabites,  who  abstained 
from  drinking  wine.  Jeremiah  knew  well  that  the 
Kingdom  of  God  was  not  eating  and  drinking,  and  that 
the  goodness  and  worth  of  man  in  God's  sight  did  not 
depend  on  whether  he  drank  wine  or  not.  Neverthe- 
less, he  praises  these  Rechabites,  and  holds  them  up 
to  the  people  as  an  example  of  piety  and  faith.  Jere- 
miah goes  indeed  further  than  this.  He  is  the  first  to 
affirm  in  clear  and  plain  words,  that  the  gods  of  the 
heathen  are  not  real  beings,  but  merely  imaginative 
creations  of  the  minds  of  their  worshippers.  Yet  he 
holds  up  to  his  people  the  heathen  who  serve  their  false 
and  meaningless  religion  with  genuine  faith  and  sincere 
devotion,  as  models  and  examples  which  put  them  to 
shame.  They  are  reall}'  more  pleasing  to  God  than  a 
people  who  have  the  true  God,  but  are  unmindful  and 
forgetful  of  Him.  And  this  is  a  sin  for  which  there  is 
no  excuse,  for  the  knowledge  of  God  is  inborn  in  man. 
As  the  bird  of  passage  knoweth  the  time  of  his  depar- 
ture and  the  object  of  its  wandering,  so  is  the  longing 
for  God  born  in  man  ;  he  has  only  to  follow  after  that 
yearning  of  his  heart  as  the  animal  after  its  instinct, 
and  this  craving  must  lead  him  to  God.  And  this  will 
also  be  in  the  end  of  time  when  God  concludes  a  new 
covenant  with  Israel :  then  has  every  man  the  law  of 
God  written  in  his  heart ;  he  has  only  to  consult  his 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4529 


heart  and  to  follow  after  its  directions.  Now,  if  reli- 
gion, or,  as  Jeremiah  calls  it,  the  knowledge  of  God, 
is  born  in  man,  then  there  is  no  difference  between 
Jews  and  Gentiles,  and  this  grand  thought  Jeremiah 
first  recognised  : 

"  O  Lord,  .  .  .  the  Gentiles  shall  come  unto  thee 
from  the  ends  of  the  earth  and  shall  say,  Our  fathers 
have  inherited  only  lies,  vanity,  and  things  wherein 
there  is  no  profit.  Can  a  man  make  gods  unto  him- 
self, that  are  not  gods?  "  And  when  the  Gentiles  then 
learn  from  converted  Israel  to  worship  the  true  God, 
as  they  themselves  taught  Israel  to  offer  sacrifices  to 
idols,  then  they,  too,  will  enter  into  the  future  king- 
dom of  God. 

The  ideality  and  universality  of  religion — they  are 
the  two  new  grand  apprehensions  which  Jeremiah  has 
given  to  the  world.  Every  man  as  such  is  born  a 
child  of  God.  He  does  not  become  such  through  the 
forms  of  any  definite  religion,  or  outward  organisation, 
but  he  becomes  such  in  his  heart,  through  circumci- 
sion of  the  heart  and  of  the  ears.  A  pure  heart  and  a 
pure  mind  are  all  that  God  requires  of  man,  let  his 
piety  choose  what  form  it  will,  so  long  as  it  is  genuine. 
Thus  we  have  in  Jeremiah  the  purest  and  highest  con- 
summation of  the  prophecy  of  Israel  and  of  the  reli- 
gion of  the  Old  Testament.  After  him  One  only  could 
come,  who  was  greater  than  he. 

But  we  must  now  pass  on  to  a  consideration  of  the 
life  and  fortunes  of  Jeremiah,  for  in  them  are  reflected 
the  fortunes  of  his  people  and  age. 

In  the  early  days  of  his  vocation  as  a  prophet,  Jere- 
miah seems  to  have  worked  very  quietly.  For  the  first 
five  years,  during  the  occurrence  of  the  extremely  im- 
portant events  enacted  at  Jerusalem  in  connexion  with 
Deuteronomy,  nobody  took  the  slightest  notice  of  him. 
Perhaps  he  was  still  living  in  his  native  village  of 
Anathoth.  We  know  from  his  own  accounts  that  he 
labored  there,  as  also  that  he  was  the  object  of  a  ran- 
corous persecution,  which  aimed  at  his  life.  It  is  pos- 
sible that  it  was  this  that  induced  him  to  settle  in  Je- 
rusalem. 

Of  his  work  during  the  reign  of  Josiah  we  know 
nothing  definite.  Only  one  short  speech  of  the  col- 
lection in  his  book  is  expressly  ascribed  to  this  time. 
In  fact,  we  are  told  nothing  of  Josiah  himself,  after 
the  famous  reform,  except  the  manner  of  his  death. 
The  second  half  of  his  reign  must  have  been  on  the 
whole  happy  and  propitious  for  Judah.  The  Scythian 
storm  had  raged  across  it  without  causing  much  se- 
vere damage.  The  power  of  Assyria  was  smitten  and 
had  entirely  disappeared  in  the  outlying  regions.  Jo- 
siah could  rule  over  Israel  as  if  it  were  his  own  land, 
and  in  a  measure  restore  the  kingdom  of  David. 

But  events  pursued  their  uninterruptible  course. 
In  the  year  608  Nineveh  was  surrounded  by  the  allied 


Medes  and  Chaldeans,  and  its  fall  was  only  a  question 
of  time.  The  Egyptian  Pharaoh  Necho  held  this  to 
be  a  fitting  opportunity  to  secure  for  himself  his  por- 
tion of  the  heritage  of  Assyria.  He  set  forth  with  a 
huge  army  from  the  Nile,  to  occupy  on  behalf  of  the 
Egyptian  kingdom  the  whole  country  up  to  the 
Euphrates.  What  moved  Josiah  to  oppose  him  we 
do  not  know.  A  disastrous  engagement  took  place  at 
Megiddo,  where  Josiah  was  completely  defeated  and 
mortally  wounded.  This  was  for  the  religious  party 
in  Israel  a  terrible  blow.  Josiah,  the  first  king  pleas- 
ing to  God,  had  met  a  dreadful  end.  He  had  served 
God  faithfully  and  honestly,  and  now  God  had  aban- 
doned him.  Could  not  some  mistake  have  been  made 
as  to  God's  power,  or  as  to  His  justice?  And  indeed 
after  this  event  a  change  does  really  seem  to  have 
taken  place  in  the  religious  views. 

Jehoiakim,  Josiah's  eldest  son,  who  now  ruled  as 
an  Egyptian  vassal,  was  not  a  man  after  the  heart  of  the 
prophet ;  in  him  Manasseh  lived  anew.  He  also  per- 
secuted the  prophets.  He  ordered  one  of  them  named 
Urijah  to  be  executed,  and  Jeremiah  himself  was  in 
constant  danger  of  losing  his  life.  Whether  the  re- 
form of  the  cultus  ordered  by  Josiah  was  revoked,  we 
do  not  know  ;  in  any  event  Jekoiakim  took  no  interest 
in  it,  and  in  no  wise  supported  it.  Under  him  the 
temporal  arm  of  the  church  was  not  available.  And 
now,  just  at  the  beginning  of  his  reign,  Jeremiah  ap- 
pears with  the  awful  prophecy,  at  that  time  doubly 
monstrous  and  blasphemous,  that  temple  and  city 
would  be  both  destroyed  if  a  radical  improvement  and 
thorough  conversion  did  not  take  place.  Violent  scenes 
arose  in  the  temple;  the  death  of  the  obnoxious  prophet 
was  clamorousl}'  called  for.  He  was  saved  only  with 
difficulty,  and  it  seems  was  forbidden  to  enter  the  tem- 
ple and  to  preach  there. 

In  the  year  606  Nineveh  fell  after  a  three  years' 
siege,  and  thus  disappeared  the  kingdom  and  nation 
of  the  Assyrians  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  The 
Medes  and  Chaldeans  divided  the  spoils  among  them. 
Now,  however,  they  had  another  task  on  their  hands. 
A  third  competitor  was  to  be  driven  out  of  the  field. 
Pharaoh  Necho  had  actuall}'  occupied  the  whole  coun- 
try up  to  the  Euphrates.  Accordingly,  in  605,  a  year 
after  the  fall  of  Nineveh,  the  Babylonian  Nebuchad- 
nezzar marched  against  him.  The  battle  took  place 
at  Carchemish  and  Necho  was  totally  defeated.  The 
Egyptian  hosts  rolled  back  in  wild  flight  to  their  homes 
and  the  whole  country  as  far  as  the  confines  of  Egj-pt 
fell  into  Nebuchadnezzar's  hands. 

In  this  critical  year,  605,  Jeremiah  received  God's 
command's  to  write  down  in  a  book  all  the  words  which 
he  had  hitherto  spoken,  and  at  the  end  of  the  book  we 
find  the  vision  of  the  cup  of  wrath,  which  the  prophet 
was  to  cause  all  nations  and  peoples  to  drink,  for  now 


45  30 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


through  the  Chaldeans  God's  judgment  is  fulfilled  over 
the  whole  earth.  Jehoiakim  felt  the  seriousness  of 
the  situation.  A  general  fast  was  ordered,  and  seizing 
the  occasion  Jeremiah  caused  his  young  friend  and 
pupil  Baruch  to  read  his  book  of  prophecies  aloud  in 
the  temple.  The  King  heard  of  it,  ordered  the  book 
to  be  read  to  him,  had  it  cut  into  pieces  and  cast  into 
the  fire.  He  ordered  the  arrest  of  Jeremiah  and  Ba- 
ruch, but  they  managed  to  keep  out  of  the  way. 

Thus  Jehoiakim  was  converted  from  an  Assyrian 
into  a  Babylonian  vassal,  and  Jeremiah  incessantly 
urged  upon  him  the  necessity  of  bending  his  neck  to 
the  yoke  of  the  King  of  Babel.  For  Nebuchadnezzar 
was  the  servant,  the  chosen  weapon  of  God,  appointed 
by  Him  to  rule  over  the  earth.  Natural  prudence  and 
insight  alone  would  have  recommended  this  policy  as 
the  only  right  and  possible  one  ;  for  by  it  relative  quiet 
and  peace  were  assured  to  the  nation.  But  Jehoiakim 
did  not  think  so.  He  arose  against  the  King  of  Babel, 
and  a  storm  now  brewed  around  Jerusalem.  Jehoiakim 
himself  did  not  survive  the  catastrophe,  but  his  son 
Jehoiachin  was  compelled  to  surrender  unconditionally 
to  the  Babylonians.  Nebuchadnezzar  led  the  king 
captive  to  Babylon,  where  he  was  kept  in  close  bond- 
age, together  with  ten  thousand  of  his  people,  the 
entire  aristocracy  of  birth  and  intellect  ;  nothing  re- 
mained but  the  lower  classes.  He  set  the  third  son 
of  Josiah,  Zedekiah,  as  vassal  king  over  this  decimated 
and  enfeebled  people. 

All  this  happened  in  the  year  597. 

Better  days  now  began  for  Jeremiah.  Zedekiah 
resembled  his  father  Josiah  ;  he  evidently  held  the 
prophet  in  high  esteem,  and  seemed  not  indisposed  to 
be  guided  by  him.  But  he  had  to  reckon  here  with 
the  wishes  of  the  people  and  with  public  opinion,  and 
they  tended  the  other  way.  The  sadder  the  situation 
and  the  more  dangerous  the  circumstances  became, 
the  higher  flared  the  fanaticism,  which  was  fanned 
into  a  flame  by  other  prophets.  Here  we  encounter 
those  biassed  and  undiscriminating  disciples  of  Isaiah, 
who,  with  their  boasts  of  the  indestructibility  of  Jeru- 
salem and  the  temple,  were  never  weary  of  assuring 
the  people  of  divine  protection,  and  of  urging  them  to 
shake  off  the  detested  yoke  of  the  Gentiles. 

In  the  fourth  year  of  the  reign  of  Zedekiah  a  pow- 
erful and  widespread  agitation  seems  to  have  broken 
out.  Ambassadors  from  all  the  smaller  nations  and 
peoples  round  about  gathered  in  Jerusalem  to  plan 
some  scheme  of  concerted  action  against  Nebuchad- 
nezzar. Jeremiah  appears  in  their  midst  with  a  j'oke 
around  his  neck.  It  is  the  will  of  God  that  all  the  na- 
tions should  bow  their  necks  beneath  the  yoke  of  Neb- 
uchadnezzar, lest  a  heavier  judgment  should  fall  upon 
them.  One  of  the  false  prophets,  Hananiah,  took  the 
yoke  from  off  the  neck  of  Jeremiah  and  broke  it,  say- 


ing :  "  Even  so  will  the  Lord  break  the  yoke  of  Nebu- 
chadnezzar king  of  Babylon  from  the  neck  of  all  the 
nations  within  the  space  of  two  full  3'ears. "  Then  said 
Jeremiah  to  him:  "Thou  hast  broken  the  yokes  of 
wood;  but  in  their  stead  shall  come  yokes  of  iron." 
It  was  predicted  Hananiah  should  die  in  that  year,  for 
having  prophesied  falsely  in  the  name  of  God.  And 
Hananiah  died  in  the  seventh  month.  Finally,  noth- 
ing definite  came  of  the  deliberations,  and  the  nations 
remained  quiet.  But  even  the  exiles  in  Babj'lon,  who 
were  also  greatly  excited  and  stirred  up  by  false  proph- 
ets, had  to  be  warned  by  Jeremiah  to  peace  and  resig- 
nation in  the  will  of  God.  He  did  this  in  a  letter, 
which  must  have  been  written  at  the  same  time  with 
the  events  above-mentioned. 

Of  the  next  five  years  we  know  nothing.  But  ad- 
versity takes  rapid  strides,  and  now  the  destiny  of 
Jerusalem  was  about  to  be  fulfilled.  Confiding  in  the 
help  of  Egypt,  Zedekiah  rebelled  against  his  suzerain 
and  for  a  second  time  the  Babylonian  armies  marched 
against  Jerusalem.  Zedekiah  sent  to  consult  the 
prophet  as  to  the  future.  Jeremiah  remained  firm  in 
his  opinion — subjection  to  the  King  of  Babylon.  Who- 
soever shall  go  forth  against  the  Chaldeans  shall  not 
escape  out  of  their  hands,  and  whosoever  shall  re- 
main in  the  city  shall  die  through  the  sword,  hunger, 
and  pestilence,  but  the  city  shall  be  consumed  with 
fire.  The  people  did  not  listen  to  him  ;  passion  had 
blinded  and  rendered  them  foolish.  The  siege  began. 
The  Egyptians,  however,  kept  their  promise.  Egyp- 
tian troops  poured  in,  and  Nebuchadnezzar  raised  the 
siege. 

The  joy  in  Jerusalem  knew  no  bounds.  But  un- 
fortunately these  days  of  rejoicing  and  confidence  were 
darkened  by  a  disgraceful  breach  of  faith.  The  neces- 
sities of  the  siege  had  suggested  the  revival  of  an  an- 
cient custom,  by  which  the  Hebrew  slaves  were  set  free 
after  six  years'  service.  To  obtain  warriors  willing  to 
fight  during  the  siege,  the  Hebrew  slaves  had  been 
solemnly  liberated,  but  now  that  all  danger  was  over, 
they  were  compelled  to  return  to  servitude.  The  en- 
raged prophet  hurled  his  most  terrible  words  at  the 
heads  of  this  faithless  and  perjured  people,  but  in  so 
doing  he  made  enemies  among  the  ruling  classes,  who, 
as  he  was  about  to  set  forth  to  his  birthplace  Anathoth, 
caused  him  to  be  arrested,  on  the  pretence  that  he  in- 
tended to  go  over  to  the  Chaldeans;  he  was  beaten 
and  put  into  prison.  But  his  prophecy  was  right.  The 
Chaldeans  returned,  and  the  siege  began  anew.  That 
was  for  Jeremiah  a  time  of  affliction.  Hated,  ill-treated, 
persecuted  by  all  as  a  betrayer  of  his  country,  he  passed 
several  weeks  and  months  of  unutterable  misery.  To 
the  energetic  mediation  of  King  Zedekiah  he  owed 
his  life. 

We  can  now  understand,  perhaps,  the  moods  which 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4531 


caused  him  to  curse  his  birth  and  to  murmur  against 
God,  who  had  only  suffered  him  to  be  born  for  misery- 
and  wretchedness,  hatred  and  enmit}'. 

But  soon  tlie  fate  of  Jerusalem  was  fulfilled.  After 
being  defended  with  the  wild  courage  of  despair,  it 
was  finally  captured  on  the  ninth  of  July,  536.  This 
time  Nebuchadnezzar  showed  no  mercy.  Zedekiah 
had  his  eyes  put  out  and  was  carried  in  chains  to  Baby- 
lon, after  all  his  children  had  been  murdered  in  his 
sight.  The  city  and  temple  were  plundered,  burnt 
with  fire,  and  utterly'  destroyed,  and  almost  the  entire 
population  carried  away  captive  into  Babylon.  Only 
a  few  of  the  poor  of  the  land  were  left  behind  for  vine- 
dressers and  for  husbandmen.  As  Babylonian  viceroy 
over  this  miserable  remnant,  with  a  residence  in  Miz- 
pah,  was  appointed  Gedaliah,  a  grandson  of  Shaphan, 
the  scribe  who  had  delivered  Deuteronomy  to  King 
Josiah. 

Jeremiah,  who  had  survived  all  the  terrors  and  suf- 
ferings of  the  siege  and  capture,  and  whom  the  Chal- 
deans had  left  in  Judah,  remained  with  Gedaliah, 
whose  father,  Ahikam  had  been  a  warm  friend  and 
supporter  of  the  prophet.  And  now  that  his  prophecies 
soared  to  their  sublimest  heights  and  he  had  just  pre- 
dicted on  the  ruins  of  Jerusalem  and  of  the  temple, 
God's  everlasting  covenant  of  grace  with  Israel,  he 
would,  perhaps,  have  still  enjoyed  a  successful  activ- 
ity, had  not  a  band  of  fanatics  with  a  prince  of  the 
royal  blood  at  their  head,  treacherously  attacked  and 
slain  Gedaliah  and  such  Chaldeans  as  were  with  him. 
Jeremiah  still  counselled  quiet.  Nebuchadnezzar 
would  not  visit  the  crime  of  a  few  on  the  whole  nation. 
But  the  people  would  not  trust  him  ;  they  arose  and 
went  into  Eg3'pt  and  forced  the  aged  prophet  to  ac- 
company them. 

In  Eg3'pt  the  prophet  closed  a  life  full  of  suffering. 
Bitter  contentions  arose  with  his  countrj'men.  Jere- 
miah still  fearlessl3'  discharged  his  office  as  incarnate 
conscience  of  his  people,  and  was,  according  to  a  Jew- 
ish tradition,  stoned  to  death  by  an  infuriated  mob. 

Thus,  breathed  out  his  great  soul  Jeremiah,  solitary 
and  alone  on  Egj'ptian  soil  under  the  blows  of  his  own 
people,  for  whom  during  his  whole  lifetime  he  had 
striven  and  suffered,  and  from  whom,  for  all  his  love 
and  faith,  he  had  but  reaped  hatred  and  persecution. 
Truly  he  drank  the  cup  of  suffering  to  its  dregs.  But 
undismayed  and  dauntless,  he  fell  in  his  harness,  a 
true  soldier  of  the  truth.  He  had  become  as  an  iron 
wall,  and  as  pillars  of  brass  against  the  whole  land. 
They  had  struggled  against  him,  but  not  overcome 
him.  He  fell  as  a  hero,  as  a  conqueror  ;  he  could  die 
for  the  truth,  he  could  not  abjure  it. 

Jerusalem  destroyed,  its  greatest  son  buried  in  the 
sands  of  Egypt,  the  people  dragged  as  captives  into 
Babylon — what  was  now  to  become  of  Israel?     Here 


was  the  opportunity  for  Deuteronomy  to  prove  itself 
true,  and  it  did  prove  true.  It  saved  Israel  and  religion. 
And  to  this  end  prophecy  also  helped  much.  If  the 
songs  of  the  Lord  were  silent  in  a  strange  land,  and 
Israel  weeping  hung  her  harps  on  the  willows  by  the 
waters  of  Babylon — yet  prophecy  was  not  silent.  It 
found  during  the  exile  in  Bab3'lon  two  of  its  truest 
and  spiritually  most  powerful  exponents. 


LIFE. 

BY  WILHELMINE  DARROW. 

Out  of  the  dusk,  the  shadows  of  night, 
Out  of  the  shadows  the  birth  of  light. 

Out  of  that  light,  the  life-giving  flame, 

Out  of  that  light  the  spirit  came, 

Out  of  that  light  the  perfect  plan 

From  the  blade  of  grass  to  the  crown  of  man. 

In  the  dawn  of  life  earth  held  thee, 
As  a  mother  her  nestling  at  her  knee. 

As  the  climbing  moon  the  sea-tides  drew. 
So  fuller  and  higher  thy  summit  grew, — 
From  the  sun-fed  blossoms  of  childhood's  plains 
The  upland  path  as  manhood  gains. 

When  darkness  comes  it  means  but  rest 
To  lie  for  a  while  on  earth's  brown  breast. 

And  out  of  the  dust  to  live  again 
In  the  oak  tree's  strength  or  the  waving  grain  ; 
A  cunning  fragment  of  the  alchemist's  art, 
Or  to  nestle  close  to  a  human  heart. 

Tho'  marred  by  time,  tho'  tempest  tossed 
What  has  been  never  can  be  lost. 

Of  broader  brow,  of  keener  view 

Thy  children  thine  upward  race  pursue. 

In  the  songs  thy  mother  sang  to  thee. 
The  spirit-age  of  a  nation  see, 
Deeds  of  thine  in  earlier  days 
Shall  be  the  theme  of  minstrel-lays. 

The  spirit  of  the  scholar  lies  enfolded  in  the  scroll. 
The  deeds  of  man  the  living  soul. 


THE  AMERICAN   CONGRESS  OF  LIBERAL  RELIGIOUS 
SOCIETIES. 

The  second  session  of  the  American  Congress  of  Liberal  Re- 
ligious Societies,  held  in  Chicago  on  June  4,  5,  and  6,  has  been 
successful  in  bringing  together  a  number  of  liberal  thinkers  who 
are  full  of  hopes  for  building  grander  religious  mansions  for  man- 
kind. There  were  all  shades  of  religious  and  philosophical  thought 
represented,  and  problems  were  discussed  that  are  now  in  the 
minds  of  many  serious,  inquiring  people.  But  we  cannot  say  that 
the  word  of  solution  has  been  pronounced.  On  the  very  last  day 
of  the  Congress  I  was  asked  by  a  stranger  of  the  audience,  "  Can 
you  not  tell  me  what  is  the  main  intention  of  the  Congress  ?  " 
"Did  you  not  hear  the  speeches  of  the  preceding  days?"  I  re- 
torted. And  my  questioner  replied:  "I  attended  all  the  sessions, 
but  I  cannot  make  out  what  the  Congress  means  to  accomplish, 
and  how  they  will  bring  about  a  closer  relation  among  the  various 


4532 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


denominations.  Are  they  limited  to  Unitarians,  Universalists, 
Jews,  and  Ethical  Culturists,  and  what  do  they  intend  to  do  to- 
gether ?  We  feel  that  something  ought  to  be  done,  but  in  these 
divergencies  of  opinion  we  are  at  a  loss  to  know  what  can  be 
done." 

This  expression  of  public  sentiment  appeared  to  me  very  char- 
acteristic. The  Congress  contains  great  possibilities,  but  the  main 
thing  is  yet  lacking, — purpose  and  definite  direction.  The  agree- 
ment of  the  Liberals  is  so  far  only  negative.  There  was  a  general 
denunciation  of  dogmatic  religion,  there  was  an  eagerness  for  ac- 
quiring more  breadth,  a  tendency  towards  Universalism  ready  to 
sink  all  sectarianism  in  world-wide  generalities.  This  tendency, 
however,  was  opposed  by  some  calmer  minds,  especially  by  the 
Jews,  who  had  come  to  the  Congress,  not  for  the  sake  of  dropping 
Judaism,  but  because  they  felt  that  the  very  principle  of  their  re- 
ligion gave  them  liberty  of  thought  and  allowed  them  to  seek  fel- 
lowship with  others. 

In  the  absence  of  Dr.  Thomas,  the  President,  Rabbi  Hirsch 
opened  the  Congress.  He  introduced  several  speakers,  among 
them  W.  L.  Sheldon  of  St.  Louis,  the  Rev.  Joseph  Stolz  of  Chi- 
cago, the  Rev.  Dr.  J.  M.  Pullman,  Universalist,  of  Lynn,  Mass. 
Sheldon's  conception  of  liberalism  was  that  of  the  ethical  culture 
societies,  which  was  identical  with  subjectivism.  He  said  that  he 
did  not  come  to  change  the  religion  of  others.  He  wanted  the 
Roman  Catholic  to  remain  a  Roman  Catholic,  the  Presbyterian  a 
Presbyterian,  t'le  Unitarian  a  Unitarian,  while  he  stuck  to  his 
conception,  which  was  the  truth  to  him.  He  said  ;  "  If  any  one 
would  offer  me  a  solution  which  claims  to  have  solved  the  problem 
I  would  say:  You  have  no  Gospel  for  me,  for  the  key  to  the  reli- 
gious problem  has  beeh  lost.  There  will  always  remain  the  vari- 
ous religions  which  we  have  now,  or  analogous  forms,  so  long  as 
the  world  stands.  One  makes  this  idea  or  aspiration  prominent, 
while  others  urge  the  importance  of  other  ideas.  To  me  duty  is 
the  highest  religion.  To  let  every  one  have  the  liberty  of  his  own 
conviction  is  to  me  the  gist  of  liberalism, "  Mr.  Sheldon  was  much 
applauded  for  his  remarks,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  voiced 
the  sentiment  of  perhaps  the  majority  of  the  audience. 

After  him  spoke  Rabbi  Stolz,  claiming  that  Judaism,  the  most 
ancient  religion,  was  still  the  most  modern.  That  he  did  not  come 
to  surrender  his  views,  but  to  uphold  them,  in  the  confidence  that 
they  could  stand  the  test  of  time.  Dr.  Pullman  spoke  very  elo- 
quently for  Universalism,  while  the  Rev.  F.  E  Dewhurst  repre- 
sented the  Independents. 

The  subject  of  these  opening  addresses  was  "The  Tendency 
to  Unite  the  Things  Held  in  Common  and  the  Things  We  Can  Do 
Together."  The  impression  which  the  various  speeches  made  did 
not  afford  the  satisfaction  of  attaining  to  a  closer  union,  and  we 
would  suggest  here  that  if  liberalism  is  what  Mr.  Sheldon  repre- 
sents it,  viz.,  Agnosticism  and  Subjectivism,  the  American  Con- 
gress of  Liberal  Religious  Societies  will  never  accomplish  any- 
thing worth  talking  about.  Mr.  Sheldon  says  that  to  him  duty  is 
the  highest  religion,  but  is  not  the  performance  of  duty  to  every- 
body of  whatever  denomination  he  may  be  the  highest  religion  ? 
The  trouble  is  to  find  a  test-stone  of  duty.  While  the  Roman 
Catholic  allows  himself  to  be  guided  by  the  directions  of  his  eccle- 
siastical superiors  and  the  Pope,  the  Protestant  relies  on  the  Bible, 
and  the  Ethical  Culturist  on  his  conscience.  But  everybody  be- 
lieves in  duty.  The  question  is.  Can  we  have  a  test  of  duty,  or  is 
duty  simply  a  matter  of  individual  preference  ?  Is  there  a  possi- 
bility of  ascertaining  and  clearly  defining  the  maxims  of  moral 
conduct,  or  is  it  a  matter  of  taste,  where  various  opinions  may 
peacefully  obtain  one  beside  the  other  ? 

The  solution  of  the  problem  as  proposed  by  The  Open  Court 
would  be  that  we  have,  indeed, a  means  of  discovering  the  moral 
laws  which  should  regulate  our  conduct,  and  while  the  names  of 
the  various  denominations  are  of  no  account,  while  ceremonies,  tra- 


ditions, and  symbols  may  vary,  the  gist  of  true  religion  can  only  be 
one,  and  must  be  the  same  under  all  conditions.  The  character 
of  this  cosmic  religion  is  not  indefinite,  it  is  not  a  matter  of  taste, 
or  personal  preference,  but  it  can  be  objectively  determined  and 
clearly  defined.  Man's  relation  to  the  All,  the  conditions  from 
which  he  springs,  the  laws  according  to  which  his  soul  develops, 
the  potentiality  of  further  progress,  the  social  relations  of  man  to 
man,  his  duties  to  himself,  to  his  fellow-beings,  to  his  posterity, 
can  be  made  the  subject  of  inquiry  ;  the  whence  and  whither  of 
man  is  not  an  insolvable  problem.  It  is  accessible  to  us.  A  solu- 
tion is  possible,  if  we  only  take  the  trouble  to  investigate  with  all 
necessary  accuracy  and  circumspection.  If  we  do  not  solve  the 
whole  problem  at  once,  we  can  approach  it  gradually  by  resolving 
it  into  partial  problems,  and  solving  them  one  by  one.  In  a  word, 
science  is  applicable  not  only  to  lower  nature,  but  also  to  higher 
nature.  Science  is  not  limited  to  mineralogy,  chemistry,  and 
zoology,  but  can  be  applied  also  to  the  problems  of  the  human 
soul.  The  religious  needs  of  man,  his  aspirations  and  ideals,  too, 
can  be  subjected  to  scientific  inquiry,  and  these  most  important 
facts  of  man's  life  are  the  well-springs  of  his  religion.  Religion, 
be  it  ever  so  misguided  by  superstitious  notions,  is  deeply  grounded 
in  the  nature  of  man,  and  only  by  a  painstaking  investigation  of 
the  facts  from  which  religion  springs  can  we  solve  the  religious 
problem. 

Here,  then,  if  anywhere,  is  the  ground  upon  which  religious 
societies  can  come  to  an  agreement,  and  indeed  not  only  liberal 
religious  societies,  but  all  religious  people,  churches  and  individ- 
uals, liberal  and  illiberal,  sectarian  and  unsectarian.  Mere  nega- 
tions, such  as  undogmatic  religion,  non-sectarian  churches,  abso- 
lute mental  liberty,  which  apparently  is  understood  to  mean  pure 
subjectivism,  will  be  an  insufficient  cement  for  a  religious  fellow- 
ship, and  the  limitation  of  the  congress  to  "liberal  religious  socie- 
ties" gives  it  an  involuntary  flavor  of  illiberality  which  is  not  de- 
sirable. 

The  objection  may  be  made  that  if  the  Congress  were  not 
limited  to  liberal  religious  societies,  dogmatic  people  might  join 
them  and  obliterate  the  liberal  character  by  outnumbering  the 
original  founders.  But  of  this  there  would  be  no  danger  if  the 
Congress  adopted  the  principle  that  the  facts  of  life  ascertainable 
by  experience,  especially  the  higher  spiritual  experiences  of  the 
human  heart,  must  be  considered  as  the  basis  of  religion,  and  that 
all  problems  have  to  be  decided  before  the  tribunal  of  science. 
Science  must  not  be  regarded  as  profane.  Science  is  a  religious 
revelation,  and  if  the  will  of  God  becomes  known  anywhere  it  ap- 
pears in  the  verdicts  of  science.  This  is  a  positive  ground  to  stand 
on.  The  nature  of  science  is  objectivity.  The  truths  of  science 
are  not  vague  generalities  but  definite,  and  these  truths  are 
not  mere  opinions  but  universal  statements  that  can  be  proved. 
The  nature  of  genuinely  scientific  statements  is  that  they  'must  be 
accepted  by  every  one  who  investigates  the  subject.  They  can  be 
revised  and  restated.  They  can  be  amended,  corrected,  and  be 
rendered  more  and  more  accurate.  Science  indeed  is  the  only 
catholic  institution  in  the  world,  and  if  we  want  catholicity  in  re- 
ligion we  must  fall  back  upon  science. 

The  name  American  Congress  of  Liberal  Religious  Societies 
is  ponderous,  awkward,  and  inappropriate  Dr.  Momerie  of  Lon- 
don proposed  to  change  it  into  "The  Liberal  Congress  of  Reli- 
gious Societies,"  and  we  would  suggest  simply  "The  American 
Religious  Congress." 

In  order  to  make  the  Congress  a  success  it  would  be  desirable 
to  have  it  conducted  according  to  the  plan  and  principles  of 
the  World's  Parliament  of  Religions,  which  united  men  of  the 
most  different  and  even  opposite  convictions  in  a  brotherly  spirit, 
because  the  liberality  of  the  Parliament  was  parliamentary  and 
did  not  make  any  attempts  to  replace  the  definiteness  of  its  sec- 
tarian members  by  vague  generalities.     If  the  .-\merican  Congress 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4533 


of  Liberal  Religious  Societies  were  a  Pan-Religious  Congress 
affording  to  its  members  parliamentary  liberty  on  the  ground 
that  whatever  opinion  can  stand  the  test  of  scienlific  critique 
should  have  the  right  of  survival,  the  new  organisation  would  find 
a  great  field.  It  would  then  be  truly  liberal,  could  invite  the  most 
dogmatic  churches  to  join,  and  would  without  fail  purify  the  reli- 
gious traditions  from  which  we  have  to  v  ork  out  a  nobler  con- 
ception of  God  and  man  and  the  ethical  duties  of  man. 

On  Wednesday  morning,  June  5,  the  Congress  heard  the  re- 
ports of  the  various  committees,  especially  on  missionary  and  pub- 
lication work.  The  Rev.  A.  W.  Gould's  report  was  discussed  by 
the  Rev.  A.  N.  Alcott  of  Elgin,  111.  The  latter  made  some  valu- 
able remarks  as  to  the  policy  of  missionarising.  He  criticised  the 
attempts  to  induce  societies  to  change  their  names  or  to  sink  other 
sectarian  peculiarities  which  are  not  antagonistic  to  federation  and 
friendly  fellowship.  Dr.  E.  G.  Hirsch  made  a  report  on  a  school 
of  sociology  and  religion  which  he  rightly  declared  to  be  a  need  of 
the  time.  He  did  not  doubt  if  the  plan  were  made  in  the  right 
way,  the  money  necessary  for  its  foundation  would  be  forthcoming. 

Dr.  Orello  Cone,  President  of  Buchtel  College,  spoke  in  the 
afternoon  on  "  The  Higher  Criticism  and  Its  Ethical  Relations," 
and  he  was  followed  on  the  same  subject  by  Dr.  Hirsch.  Both 
paid  a  glowing  tribute  to  the  noble  efforts  of  the  critics,  and  espe- 
cially Dr.  Hirsch  waxed  eloquent  in  his  explanation  of  the  deeply 
religious  nature  of  the  so-called  higher  criticism.  The  higher  crit- 
ics have  taken  the  wind  out  of  the  sails  of  Ingersolianism.  They 
are  the  men  who  rescued  the  Bible  from  misinterpretation.  They 
give  back  to  us  our  sacred  Scriptures  which  we  had  lost  through 
the  misconception  of  narrow-minded  ignoramuses.  The  dust  of 
centuries  has  settled  upon  them,  defacing  their  original  meaning 
and  beauty  and  our  critics  are  doing  the  work  of  a  thorough  house- 
cleaning  by  which  the  original  beauty  is  restored. 

in  the  evening  the  Rev.  George  D.  Herron  of  Iowa  College, 
Grinnell,  Iowa,  spoke  on  "  The  Uses  and  Abuses  of  Wealth."  It 
was  a  harangue  in  which  the  railroad  companies  and  other  great 
corporations  were  justly  and  unjustly  attacked,  and  no  remedy 
was  offered  to  improve  the  present  condition  of  things.  We  have 
no  objection  to  radical  views  and  to  the  proposition  of  new  socio- 
logical theories,  but  we  cannot  help  thinking  that  mere  denuncia- 
tions which  smack  of  demagogism  are  out  of  place  at  a  religious 
congress,  and  it  is  certain  that  the  Rev.  Herron  did  more  harm  to 
the  cause  of  the  Congress  than  any  adversary  of  its  cause  could 
have  accomplished.  Dr.  Momerie  spoke  on  the  same  evening  on 
"  The  Essentials  of  Religion."  Although  he  belongs  to  the  Epis- 
copalian Church  of  England,  famous  for  its  dogmatic  spirit,  he 
did  not  spare  the  old  dogmatic  conception  of  religion  which  he 
represented  as  a  species  of  bargain-making  for  gaining  the  favor 
of  the  deity  through  sacrifices  and  flattery. 

The  Rev.  Arthur  M.  Judy  of  Davenport,  Iowa,  proposed  in 
the  session  on  Thursday  morning  a  plan  of  federation  between  the 
various  societies  which,  however,  found  no  strong  support  in  the 
discussion  that  followed.  As  his  speech  touches  the  main  problem 
of  the  Congress,  it  is  to  be  published  in  full  in  Unity  together  with 
an  accurate  report  of  the  debate  elicited  by  it. 

The  Rev.  John  Faville,  Pastor  of  the  Congregational  Church 
Appleton,  Wis.,  spoke  in  the  afternoon  on  "The  Interchange  of 
Ministerial  Courtesies  Across  Theological  Chasms."  The  rest  of 
the  time  was  filled  by  twenty-minute  addresses  on  various  sub, 
jects,  among  them  one  on  Politics  by  the  Rev.  W.  R.  Lord  of  St. 
Paul,  Minn.,  and  one  on  The  Public  Schools  by  Col.  F.  W.  Par- 
ker of  Chicago.  The  latter's  address  was  very  impressive  and  as 
he  spoke  with  great  enthusiasm  it  served  to  kindle  and  intensify 
the  popular  interest  for  the  importance  of  the  educational  problem 
through  the  instrumentality  of  our  public  schools. 

The  Standard  Club  of  Chicago  gave  a  brilliant  reception  to 


the  members  and  friends  of  the  Congress  Thursday  evening,  where 
the  most  prominent  leaders  of  the  Congress,  Dr.  Thomas,  Dr. 
Jones,  Dr.  Hirsch,  and  a  tew  guests,  Dr.  Momerie,  Dr.  Moses, 
and  the  Hon.  Lyman  Trumbull  made  valedictory  addresses. 

We  repeat,  the  Congress  has  great  potentialities  but  it  will  be 
indispensable  for  the  new  organisation  to  become  more  definite  in 
its  purpose  and  to  define  clearly  the  aims  and  methods  of  its  aspi- 
rations, p.  c. 

BOOK  NOTICES. 

The  Power  of  Silence.  An  Interpretation  of  Life  in  Its  Rela- 
tion to  Health  and  Happiness.  By  Iloralio  IV.  Dy,-ssc-r. 
Boston  :  George  H.  Ellis.  Pages,  2ig.  Price,  $1.50. 
This  book  of  two  hundred  and  nineteen  pages  contains  a  phi- 
losophy of  life  based  upon  the  e.xperiences  of  Dr.  P.  P.  (Juimby, 
of  Belfast,  Maine.  It  is  dedicated  to  the  author's  parents,  who 
were  long  associated  with  Dr.  Quimby.  The  main  idea  is  to  at- 
tain the  right  attitude  in  life  by  hushing  the  bustle  of  the  world. 
There  is  too  much  writing  upon  the  subject  before  a  presentation 
of  the  substance  is  reached.  Some  good  ideas  are  scattered 
through  its  pages,  but  we  look  in  vain  for  a  condensed  statement 
of  the  gist  of  the  author's  thoughts.  So  far  as  we  can  see,  his 
philosophy  centres  in  these  sentences  (p.  125):  "What  is  God  do- 
ing with  us?  What  is  the  ideal  toward  which  the  immanent  life  is 
moving  through  us?"  The  answer  is:  "  Suffering  is  intended  to 
make  men  think.  Behind  all  experience  moves  one  great  aspiring 
power  developing  and  perfecting  the  world.  Wherein  man  is  ad- 
justed to  it,  he  is  already  free  from  suffering  ;  but  wherein  he  still 
acts  ignorantly  he  suffers,  and  is  sure  to  be  in  conflict  until  he 
understands  the  law  of  growth." 

The  Drama  of  tlie  Apocalypse,  by  En  Dansk,  "being  medita- 
tions on  life  and  immortality,"  is  a  new  attempt  at  putting  sense 
and  meaning  into  the  Revelation  of  St.  John.  To  do  so,  the  au- 
thor says,  "it  is  necessary  to  transport  ourselves  in  thought  to  the 
times  in  which  the  author  lived,  and  try  to  understand  the  belief 
and  hopes  which  animated  this  pioneer  of  a  new  faith."  He  re- 
jects the  old-time  methods  of  interpreting  the  Apocalypse,  his  own 
procedure  being  chiefly  psychological  and  a  sort  of  endeavor  "  to 
enter  into  the  mind,  expectations,  and  intellectual  environment  of 
the  Seer  of  Patmos."  The  author  has  eloquently  and  vividly  de- 
scribed the  physical,  social,  and  mental  environment  of  the  apoca- 
lyptic rhapsodist,  and  his  book  will  no  doubt  serve  to  help  many 
to  a  rational  insight  into  this  enigmatic  production  of  early  Chris- 
tianity. The  author  does  not  neglect  to  emphasise  the  spiritual 
importance  of  the  Apocalypse  as  a  symbolisation  of  the  person  of 
Christ  and  his  life-work.  (London  :  T.  Fisher  Unwin,  Paternoster 
Square.      1S94.     Pages,  241.) 


Mr.  Charles  W,  French,  Principal  of  the  Hyde  Park  High 
School  of  Chicago,  has  just  edited  and  arranged  for  school  use 
some  appropriate  Selections  from  the  U'orks  of  Robert  Browning, 
(New  York  :  A.  Lovell  &  Co.  Pages,  112.  Price,  50  cents.)  The 
Selections  include  Saul,  Ben  Ezra,  Pheidippides,  Abt  Vogler, 
A  Grammarian's  Funeral,  and  The  Dead  Pan.  The  editor  has 
written  a  brief  expository  and  biographical  introduction  giving 
analyses  of  the  larger  poems,  and  appended  explanatory  footnotes 
to  difficult  and  obscure  passages. 


Mr.  D.  Ostrander  has  written  a  little  book  on  Social  Growth 
and  Stability,,  a  Consideration  of  the  Factors  of  Modern  .Society  and 
Their  Relation  to  the  Character  of  the  Coming  State,  in  which  are 
expressed  upon  the  whole  correct  and  adequate  ideas  of  the  social 
and  ethical  problems.  The  book,  however,  is  unsystematic  and 
excursive,  and  the  author's  grasp  of  many  questions  somewhat 
naive.  (Chicago  :  S.  C.  Griggs  &  Company.  1895.  Pages,  igi. 
Price,  S1.00-) 


4534 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


Dr.  Charles  Borgeaud's  Adoption  and  Aiiicndinent  of  Conslilu- 
tioiis  in  Europt-  and  America,  which  received  the  Prix  Rossi 
awarded  in  1893  by  the  Faculty  of  Law  of  the  University  of  Paris, 
and  is  favorably  known  in  juridical  circles  abroad,  has  been  trans- 
lated into  English  by  Prof.  C.  D.  Hazen  and  Mr.  John  M.  Vin- 
cent. (Macmillan  &  Co.  Pages,  353.  Price,  $2.00.)  The  pres- 
ent study  aims  to  exhibit  the  process  of  constitution-making  in 
States,  unlike  England,  which  admit  of  isolated  treatment  and 
supply  materials  for  the  construction  of  a  general  theory.  In  the 
author's  view  this  end  can  be  attained  only  by  a  clear  understand- 
ing of  the  general  principles  which  underlie  the  various  constitu- 
tions, and  for  this  in  turn  a  historical  study  of  the  fundamental 
law  of  the  different  nations  is  necessary.  He  has  sought  in  this 
work  to  show  the  possibilities  of  such  an  investigation,  examining 
(i)  The  Origin,  Growth,  and  Character  of  Written  Constitutions, 
(2)  Royal  Charters  and  Constitutional  Compacts  (in  Germany, 
Austria,  Scandinavia,  and  the  Latin  Nations),  (3)  Democratic  In- 
stitutions (in  America,  France,  and  Switzerland).  What  we  have 
in  Dr.  Borgeaud's  work  is  a  brief  synoptic  view  of  the  historical 
development  of  the  world's  constitutions  as  organic  wholes,  and  not 
a  bare  and  tedious  transcription  of  their  texts.  He  has  compressed 
a  mass  of  unwieldy  material  into  a  very  small  compass. 


Books  so  elucidative  and  interesting  as  Outlines  of  English  In- 
dustrial History,  by  W.  Cunningham  and  Ellen  A.  McArthur,  are 
rare.  The  authors  recount  in  simple  and  concise  language  the 
main  facts  of  English  industrial  development,  under  such  heads 
as  Immigrants  to  Britain,  Physical  Conditions,  The  Towns,  The 
Manors,  The  National  Economic  Life,  Agriculture,  Labor  and 
Capital,  etc.  It  is  surprising  to  see  what  light  this  little  historical 
sketch  throws  on  modern  economic  problems.  The  book  is  one 
we  can  fairly  recommend  to  backward  students  and  beginners  of 
economic  history.  (Macmillan  &  Co.:  New  York  and  London. 
Pages,  274.     Price,  $1.50) 


NOTES. 

Mrs.  Mary  M.  Higgins,  the  Principal  of  Mussaeiis  School  and 
Orphanage,  Cinnamon  Gardens,  Colombo,  Ceylon,  has  with  the  help 
of  American  friends,  for  three  years  and  a  half,  devoted  her  whole 
time  and  energy  to  the  education  of  Singhalese  girls.  She  has 
built  a  little  hut  covered  with  a  palm-leaf  roof,  in  which  she  lives 
with  twenty-one  girls,  and  there  she  also  keeps  school.  She  re- 
ceives orphans  free  of  charge.  A  prominent  Singhalese  gentleman 
has  donated  a  suitable  site  for  a  better  equipped  school  house, 
but  there  are  no  means  to  build  it.  Mrs.  Higgins  writes  to  Dr. 
Mary  Weeks  Burnett  of  Chicago  :  "If  you  could  see  our  dear  little 
brown-faced,  bright-eyed  girls  and  could  watch  their  progress  in 
school,  I  know  you  would  feel  that  it  is  worth  while  to  devote 
oneself  to  their  welfare.  I  venture  to  ask  you  if  you  will  help  us 
to  build  a  home  for  them.  It  may  be  you  know  among  your  rich 
patients  some  one  who  would  lend  us  a  helping  hand.  £>r.  Alice 
B.  StOikham  of  sfT ,  II'.  Madison  St.,  of  your  city  is  our  good  friend 
and  can  give  any  information  you  need  about  our  work."  We  are 
informed  that  Mrs.  Higgins  has  given  the  little  she  has  herself 
for  the  cause  of  her  life,  and  has  been  backed  with  substantial 
help  and  good  will  by  American  and  German  friends,  among  the 
latter  of  whom  is  the  Countess  Wachtmeister,  who  visited  Colombo 
en  route  to  Australia. 


The  Chautauqua  Literary  and  Scientific  Circle  has  just  an- 
nounced a  very  elaborate  special  course  in  Jewish  history  and 
literature,  under  the  direction  of  Prof.  Richard  Gottheil  of  Colum- 
bia College,  New  York.  The  syllabus  of  the  course,  a  copy  of 
which  we  have  received,  forms  a  valuable  guide  to  the  study  of 
Hebrew  doctrines  and  culture.  Persons  interested  may  address 
Henry  Berkowitz,  P.  O.  Box  825,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 


POPULAR  SCIENTIFIC   LECTURES. 

BY   ERNST  MACH, 

PROFESSOR  OF  PHYSICS  IN  THE  GERMAN  UNIVERSITY  OF  PRAGUE. 

Translated  by  Thomas  J.  McCormack. 


Cloth,  Gilt  Top.     Exhaustively  Indexed.     Pages,  313.     Price,  $1.00. 


"  The  volume  is  one  that  may  be  fairly  called  rare." — Prof.  Henry  Crew, 
in  the  Astrophysical  Journal. 

"A  most  fascinating  volume,  treating  of  phenomena  in  which  all  are  inter- 
ested, in  a  delightful  style  and  with  wonderful  clearness.  For  lightness  of 
touch  and  yet  solid  vnlue  of  information  the  chapter  '  Why  Has  Man  Two 
Eyes  ?  '  has  scarcely  a  rival  in  the  whole  realm  of  popular  scientific  writing." — 
The  Boston  Traveller. 

"A  very  delightful  and  useful  book.  .  .  .  The  author  treats  some  of  tlie 
most  recondite  problems  of  natural  science,  in  so  charmingly  untechnica!  a 
way,  with  such  a  wealth  of  bright  illustration,  as  makes  his  meaning  clear  to 
the  person  of  ordinary  intelligence  and  education.  .  .  .  This  is  a  work  that 
should  find  a  place  in  every  library,  and  that  people  should  be  encouraged  to 
read." — Daily  Picayune,  New  Orleans. 

"  Professor  Mach's  lectures  are  so  pleasantly  written  and  illumined  with 
such  charm  of  illustration  that  they  have  all  the  interest  of  lively  fiction." — 
Netu  York  Corn.  Advertiser. 

"  Will  please  those  who  find  the  fairy  tales  of  science  more  absorbing  than 
fiction." — The  Pilot,  Boston. 

"Professor  Mach  ...  is  a  master  in  physics.  .  .  .  His  book  is  a  good  one 
and  will  serve  a  good  purpose,  both  for  instruction  and  suggestion." — Prof.  A. 
E.  Dolbear,  in  The  Dial. 

"  The  literary  and  philosophical  suggestiveness  of  the  book  is  very  rich." 
— Hartford  Seminary  Record. 

"We  find  the  most  beautiful  ideas  unfolded  in  the  exposition." — Catholic 
World,  New  York. 


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be  supplied  on  order.     Price,  75  cents  each. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  407. 

JEREMIAH.     Prof.  C,  H.  Cornill 4527 

LIFE.     (A  Poem.)     Wilhelmine  Darrow 453i 

THE  AMERICAN    CONGRESS    OF    LIBERAL    RELI- 
GIOUS SOCIETIES.     Editor 4531 

BOOK  NOTICES 4533 

NOTES 4534 


The  Open  Court. 


A   "VyEEKLY  JOUENAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  408.     (Vol.  IX. -25.) 


CHICAGO,  JUNE  20,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
(  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


HOW  TO  AVOID  STRIKES. 

BY  F.    M.  HOLLAND. 

A  STRIKE  is  a  war  ;  and  like  other  wars  it  is  some- 
times necessary;  but  more  often  it  is  simply  mischiev- 
ous, as  was  the  case  not  many  months  ago  in  Chicago. 
"  In  time  of  peace,  prepare  for  war,"  is  a  good  maxim 
for  trades  unions,  as  well  as  for  nations,  to  a  limited 
extent.  Our  own  country  is  wise  enough  to  devote 
her  attention,  while  blessed  with  peace,  to  keeping  up 
such  friendly  relations  with  her  neighbors  as  make 
war  impossible.  Where  employer  and  operative  are 
friends,  there  is  little  danger  of  strikes.  I  remember 
myself  how  sadly  the  efficiency  of  Harvard  College 
was  impaired,  forty  years  ago,  by  the  prejudice  of 
students  against  professors  as  natural  enemies.  When 
we  came  together  for  recitation,  and  found  the  door 
closed  against  us,  our  general  delight  was  loudly  ex- 
pressed in  the  sounds  by  which  a  hen  announces  that 
she  has  laid  an  egg.  Imitating  geese  would  have  been 
much  more  appropriate.  Of  course,  the  professor,  as 
he  called  himself,  of  boxing  did  not  get  off  from  his 
engagements  so  easily.  There  is  much  less  childish- 
ness in  Cambridge  now  ;  the  elective  system  enables 
a  student  to  choose  his  own  course  of  study;  and  this 
has  helped  him  to  see  that  the  professors  are  really 
his  friends.  What  is  to  be  done  to  bring  about  a  sim- 
ilar change  of  feeling  in  factories? 

This  has  often  been  done  by  giving  the  entire  con- 
trol to  the  operatives;  but  they  are  apt  to  be  unable 
to  see  the  necessity  of  paying  high  enough  salaries  to 
secure  officials  with  sufficient  knowledge  of  business 
to  buy  the  raw  materials  and  sell  the  products  to  the 
best  advantage.  Co-operation  usually  means  moral 
success  and  financial  failure.  It  goes  too  far,  but  it  is 
in  the  right  direction. 

Practical  men  are  carrying  on  conciliatory  plans, 
which  may  be  grouped  in  two  great  classes.  In  the 
first  place,  operatives  are  given  a  chance  to  be  heard 
before  they  strike.  The  general  superintendent  of  the 
Lake  Shore  and  Michigan  Southern  Company  has 
published  an  article  to  remind  railway  officials  that 
"most  valuable  information  is  to  be  gained  by  con- 
sulting those  employees  whose  duties  bring  them  in 
daily  contact  with  the  service  performed."  Questions 
about  wages  are  often  settled  amicably  in  such  con- 


sultations. More  serious  differences  of  opinion  have 
often  been  reconciled  by  boards  of  arbitration  com- 
posed of  employers  and  operatives  in  equal  propor- 
tions. This  plan  has  been  found  very  successful  in 
Boston,  Chicago,  and  New  York,  as  well  as  in  some 
of  the  English  factory  towns.  In  France  and  Belgium 
many  cases  are  prevented  from  coming  before  such 
boards  by  the  action  of  standing  committees,  each  of 
which  contains  a  workman  and  an  official  from  every 
local  industry,  and  meets  daily.  The  only  objection 
to  such  tribunals  is  that  the  members  meet  as  ambas- 
sadors from  hostile  armies,  representing  interests  which 
they  consider  almost  irreconcilable.  They  are  too 
much  like  the  knights  who  fought  beneath  a  shield 
which  one  declared  to  be  gold,  and  the  other  said  was 
silver,  because  neither  could  see  more  than  one  side. 
Then,  second,  the  operative  may  be  shown  both 
sides  of  the  shield,  by  various  methods  of  letting  him 
share  the  profits.  The  first  experiment  of  much  im- 
portance was  made  by  a  painter  of  houses  in  Paris, 
who  called  together  forty-four  of  his  best  men  on  Feb- 
ruary 12,  1843,  emptied  out  a  great  bag  of  coin  on  the 
table,  and  proceeded  to  pay  each  his  share  of  the  last 
year's  gains.  They  received  on  the  average  more 
than  S50  each.  This  plan  was  still  kept  up  by  the 
firm  at  last  accounts  ;  and  the  extra  expense  had  been 
fully  repaid  by  the  care  which  the  men  took  of  their 
paint  and  brushes,  their  constant  industry,  their  will- 
ingness to  work  over  hours,  and  their  refusal  to  join  in 
strikes.  More  than  a  hundred  such  cases  may  be 
found  in  Mr.  Oilman's  book  on  Profit  Sharing,  and 
the  effect  on  the  men  may  be  judged  from  such  stories 
as  these.  Baggage-smashing  suddenly  ceased  on  one 
of  the  French  railways,  for  any  man  who  handled  it 
carelessly  was  called  to  account  by  his  comrades,  who 
said:  "What  are  you  about?  You'll  cut  down  our 
dividend."  There  had  been  great  breakage  of  stones 
in  a  lithographic  establishment;  but  as  soon  as  the 
men  began  to  share  the  profits,  one  was  heard  to  say 
to  another  :  "  Hold  on  there  ;  don't  break  any  more 
stones;  that  one  cost  us  eight  francs."  It  was  also 
found  by  the  overseers  that  they  could  watch  the  work 
much  more  closely  than  formerly,  without  giving  of- 
fence. Of  course  the  plan  has  its  defects  ;  one  is  that 
the  operatives  usually  insist  on  having  full  wages,  in 


4536 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


addition  to  their  share  of  the  profits,  and  refuse  to 
bear  any  part  of  an  occasional  loss.  This  refusal  is 
natural  enough  so  long  as  they  have  no  voice  in  the 
management  ;  but  some  such  voice  must  be  given  be- 
fore their  sympathy  with  their  employers  can  become 
complete. 

A  safe  and  practical  way  of  doing  this  is  encourag- 
ing operatives  to  hold  shares  of  the  company's  stock. 
Shares  have   been  given   in  proportion  to  the  profits 
since    1870   by  a  Swiss  manufacturer  of  music-boxes 
named    Billon  ;    and    the   workmen    held   more    than 
$15,000   invested   in   the   capital   of   the   company  in 
1888,  when  the  dividend  was  six  per  cent.      Another 
well-known  case  is  that  of  Mr.  Henry  C.  Briggs,  man- 
ager of  a  coal-mine  in   England,  where  he  had  had  so 
much   trouble  with  the  men  that  one  of  them  said  : 
"If  Mr.  Briggs  only  had  horns  on,  he  would   be  the 
very  devil."     In  1865  he  promised  to  pay  the  men  a 
yearly  bonus  in  proportion  to  the  amount,  not  only  of 
the  wages  they  might   earn,  but  of   the   shares   they 
might  hold  of  the  company's  stock.    Such  shares  were 
offered  at  a  reduced  rate,  and  were  bought  freely  after 
the  men  had  found  out  that  they  were  dealt  with  hon- 
estly.    The  very  man   who  had   called   Mr.  Briggs  a 
devil  was  soon  defending  him  against  charges  of  bad 
motives.      Strikes  ceased  ;  when   part  of  the  miners 
asked  for  more  wages,  the  rest  of  the  men  were  asked 
whether   the    demand    were   just ;    and   they   decided 
unanimously  that  it  was  not.      In  1869  one  of  the  men 
who  held  shares  was  chosen  director  by  the  other  hold- 
ers, who  then  numbered  one  seventh  of  all  the  adults 
employed.      The  dividends  rose  a  few  years  later  to 
fifteen  per  cent.,  on  account  partly  of  the  general  con- 
dition of  business,  and  partly  of  the  unusual  care  taken 
by  the   miners   to   bring  in  the  coal  free  from  dirt  or 
stones,  and   in   large   lumps.      Wages,    too,    were   in- 
creased, but  the  market  soon  changed  for  the  worse. 
A  reduction  of  wages,  together  with  the  arbitrary  con- 
duct of  the  managers,  brought  on  a  strike.     The  arbi- 
trators decided  against  the  operatives,  and  the  other 
holders  of  stock  voted  in  1875,  that  the  new  plan  be 
given  up.      It  seems  to  have  been  partly  the  fault  of 
the  operatives,  and  partly  of  the  manager,  that  success 
was  not  permanent.    It  was  sufficiently  so  in  the  cases 
of  Godin  in   Paris  and   Cassell  in  London,  to  enable 
these  establishments  to  become   co-operative.      This 
might  safely  be  done  after  the  laborers  had  gradually 
become  aware  of  what  their  relations  really  were  with 
managers  and  capitalists. 

Much  has  been  done  to  produce  mutual  friendli- 
ness by  the  operatives  becoming  stock-holders,  by 
their  receiving  a  share  of  the  profits,  and  by  their 
meeting  frequently  in  consultation  with  the  managers. 
It  seems  to  me  that  a  good  way  to  avoid  strikes  would 
be  to  combine  all  these   plans  into  one  system  some- 


what as  follows.  It  is  not  because  all  the  details  are 
essential  that  I  will  give  them  freely,  but  because  I 
wish  the  reader  to  understand  the  general  features  of 
my  plan. 

The  first  step,  I  think,  would  be  for  the  employer 
to  announce  that,  say  six  months  hence,  he  would  give 
the  operatives  a  fixed  percentage  of  the  profits,  letting 
the  bonus  for  each  individual  correspond  to  the  amount 
of  wages  during  that  time.  This  bonus  should  at  first  be 
paid  in  cash,  partly  to  please  the  operatives  and  partly 
to  prevent  the  company  from  committing  itself  to  them 
inextricably  before  they  were  willing  to  meet  half  way. 
As  soon,  however,  as  their  labor  should  improve 
enough  in  value  to  make  up  for  the  extra  expense,  the 
most  intelligent  and  influential  of  the  operatives,  with 
some  leading  representatives  of  the  trades  unions, 
should  be  invited  by  the  managers  to  help  them  draw 
up  a  permanent  plan. 

The  next  bonus  would  accordingly  be  paid  partly 
or  wholly  in  scrip,  receivable  by  the  company  for 
shares  of  a  special  stock  which  should  be  redeemable 
at  par  when  presented,  after  due  notice,  by  holders 
then  or  formerly  in  the  employ  of  the  company,  or  by 
their  heirs.  A  dividend  in  proportion  to  profits  should 
be  guaranteed  ;  and  shares  of  this  stock,  as  well  as  of 
the  common  stock,  should  always  be  for  sale  on  the 
instalment  plan.  In  short,  the  operatives  are  to  get  a 
share  of  the  profits,  not  only  as  a  dividend  on  their 
stock  but  as  a  bonus  on  wages  ;  and  this  will  give 
them  a  personal  interest  in  the  company's  prosperity. 
They  will  not  say  to  a  new-comer,  "We  can't  afford 
to  have  your  machine  running  so  fast  as  that.  The 
boss  will  be  hurrying  us  up  next.  The  longer  it  takes 
to  do  the  job,  the  longer  the  work  holds  out.  I  guess 
the  company  's  rich  enough  to  stand  it." 

It  seems  to  me  further  necessary  for  brotherly 
feeling  between  employer  and  operatives,  that  those 
of  the  latter  who  hold  stock  should  have  some  voice 
in  the  management.  Concession  of  this  right  will 
keep  them  conscious  that  they  are  capitalists,  and  en- 
courage them  to  purchase  largely.  I  do  not  insist  on 
details  ;  but,  I  think  it  simply  just  to  have  the  stock- 
holders in  the  factory  choose  one  of  themselves  as  di- 
rector, and  more  when  their  number  of  shares  increases 
sufficiently.  It  would  also  be  well  to  have  these  ope- 
ratives decide  who  of  them  shall  be  members,  in  com- 
pany with  an  equal  number  of  managers  and  superin- 
tendants,  of  an  advisory  council,  which  is  to  meet  reg- 
ularly to  decide  about  wages,  regulations,  holidays, 
etc.,  hear  complaints,  and  deal  with  other  questions 
likely  to  give  occasion  for  strikes.  The  council  should 
also  determine  what  regard  ought  to  be  paid  to  length 
of  service,  number  of  days  at  work,  good  behavior,  or 
other  circumstances,  in  the  annual  distribution  of 
profits. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4537 


It  might  be  for  the  interest  of  all  parties  to  agree 
that  no  operatives  enter  the  council,  except  those  who 
own  a  specified  amount  of  stock  and  have  been  for  a 
fixed  time  in  the  factor)';  and  the  representation  should 
be  broad  enough  to  correspond  to  all  differences  in 
sex,  nationality,  party,  and  relation  to  the  unions ; 
but  otherwise  there  should  be  perfect  freedom  of  choice 
by  the  Australian  ballot.  It  might  also  be  well  for  one 
third  of  the  representatives  of  the  operatives  to  go  out 
of  office  annually.  I  insist  only  on  the  importance  of 
some  representation  among  the  managers  for  the  stock 
held  in  the  factory.  It  is  hard  to  say  whether  em- 
ployer or  operative  is  likely  to  learn  more  in  such 
friendly  intercourse  about  their  common  interests  ;  and 
it  is  certain  that  they  will  find  every  encouragement 
to  remain  friends. 

The  minor  arrangements  must  at  first  be  made 
rather  cautiously  and  tentatively  ;  and  some  changes 
may  be  necessary  before  the  plan  assume  a  form  mu- 
tually satisfactory.  As  soon  as  this  is  done,  there 
should  be  no  possibility  of  alteration,  even  in  details, 
except  after  long  deliberation  and  with  general  con- 
sent. It  must  be  understood  from  the  first  that  there 
is  to  be  no  desertion  of  the  two  fundamental  princi- 
ples, namely  annual  distribution  of  scrip  for  stock  among 
the  operatives,  in  proportion  to  profits,  and  permanent 
share  in  management  for  those  who  choose  to  hold 
stock. 


THE  BABYLONIAN  EXILE. 

BY  PROF.    C.    H.    CORNILL. 

The  Assyrians  were  the  first  people  to  make  use  of 
the  exile  as  a  means  of  pacifying  rebellious  tribes. 
Whenever  they  chanced  to  come  upon  an  especially 
strong  nationalit}',  which  offered  determined  opposi- 
tion in  its  struggle  for  existence  and  was  not  willing  to 
be  swept  away  without  resistance  by  the  advancing 
avalanche,  the  entire  nation  was  expelled  from  its  land 
and  dragged  into  the  heart  of  the  Assj'rian  empire, 
either  directly  into  Assyria  itself,  or  into  regions  which 
had  been  denationalised  for  generations  and  alread}' 
been  made  Assyrian,  whilst  the  depopulated  country 
itself  was  filled  with  Ass^'rian  colonists.  The  Assyrians 
had  already  noticed  that  the  strong  roots  of  the  power 
of  an  individual  as  well  as  of  a  nation  lie  in  its  native 
soil.  Home  and  country  mutually  determine  each 
other  and  form  an  inseparable  union.  In  those  days 
they  did  so  more  than  now,  for  then  religion  also  was 
an  integral  part  of  the  nation,  and  religion,  too,  was 
indissolubly  associated  with  the  soil.  A  nation's  coun- 
try was  the  home  and  dwelling-place  of  its  national 
Deity  ;  to  be  torn  away  from  one's  native  soil  was  equi- 
valent to  being  torn  away  from  Him,  and  thus  was  de- 
stroyed the  strongest  bond  and  the  truest  source  of 
nationality. 


The  object  of  the  transportation  was  attained.  Such 
members  of  the  ten  tribes  of  Israel  as  were  carried 
away  in  the  year  722  have  disappeared  without  a 
trace,  and  if  that  branch  of  the  Semites  commonly 
known  as  the  Aramaic  has  been  unable  to  assume  a 
distinct  ethnographical  type  in  history,  the  fact  may 
be  ascribed  to  the  five  hundred  years'  dominion  of  the 
Assyrians  in  those  regions,  who  from  the  earliest  times 
systematically  eradicated  the  nationalities  of  conquered 
countries. 

In  their  national  sentiments  Irael  did  not  differ 
from  the  other  nations  of  antiquity.  Every  country 
except  Palestine  was  unclean,  and  to  hold  there  the 
service  of  God  was  impossible.  For  a  man  like  the 
prophet  Hosea,  who  did  not  suffer  himself  to  be  gov- 
erned by  prejudices,  or  allow  his  better  judgment  to 
be  impaired,  it  was  quite  a  matter  of  course  that  so 
soon  as  the  people  left  the  soil  of  Palestine,  all  service 
of  God  should  cease  of  itself,  and  this  is  for  him  one  of 
the  deepest  terrors  of  the  threatened  exile.      He  said  : 

"They  shall  not  dwell  in  the  Lord's  land,  but 
Ephraim  shall  return  to  Egypt  and  eat  unclean  things 
in  Assyria.  They  shall  not  offer  wine-offerings  to  the 
Lord,  neither  shall  they  prepare  burnt-offerings  for 
Him  ;  their  bread  shall  be  unto  them  as  the  bread  of 
mourners  ;  all  that  eat  thereof  shall  be  polluted  :  for 
this  bread  serves  to  still  their  hunger,  and  none  of  it 
shall  come  into  the  house  of  the  Lord.  What  will  ye 
do  in  the  solemn  day  and  in  the  day  of  the  feast  of  the 
Lord?" 

Such  also  was  the  thought  one  hundred  and  fifty 
years  later,  when  Judah  was  carried  into  exile.  The 
Babylonian  government  would  have  had  no  objection 
to  the  exiles  building  for  themselves  the  altars  and 
temples  of  their  God  in  Mesopotamia — but  it  never 
entered  the  heads  of  the  Jews  to  build  a  temple  to  God 
on  the  Euphrates,  after  that  His  own  house  on  Mount 
Zion  had  been  destroyed.  Even  the  most  religious 
man  would  have  seen  in  this  an  insult,  a  mocker}'  of  the 
God  of  Israel :  better  not  sacrifice  at  all  than  unclean 
things  on  unclean  ground.  And  this  condition  of  things 
was  to  last  a  long  time.  Jeremiah  had  distinctly 
named  seventy  years  as  the  period  during  which  God 
would  grant  to  the  Chaldeans  dominion,  and  had  re- 
peatedly and  urgently  warned  the  exiles  to  make  ar- 
rangements for  a  long  sojourn  in  the  strange  land. 
How,  now,  did  Israel  pass  this  period  of  probation  ? 

The  consequences  of  the  Babylonian  exile  have 
been  momentous  in  every  way;  the  exile  in  Babylon 
quite  transformed  Israel  and  its  religion  ;  it  created 
what  is  known  in  religious  history  as  Judaism,  in  con- 
tradistinction to  Israelitism.  To  have  been  the  first  to 
clearly  recognise  that  the  Judaism  of  post-exilic  times, 
although  the  organic  product  of  the  Israelitism  of  the 
exilic  period,  was  yet  something  totally  new  and  spe- 


4538 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


cifically  different  from  it,  is  the  great  and  imperishable 
service  of  De  Wette,  who  was  indeed  the  first  to  have 
any  understanding  at  all  of  the  religious  history  of  the 
Old  Testament  in  its  real  significance  and  tendencies. 
That  the  exile  into  Babylon  exercised  this  stupendous 
transformative  influence,  was  the  natural  result  of  the 
circumstances  and  of  the  logic  of  facts. 

A  later  writer  of  the  Old  Testament,  whose  name 
and  period  are  unknown  to  us,  he  who  gave  to  the 
Book  of  Amos  the  conciliatory  conclusion  already  men- 
tioned, compares  the  Babylonian  captivity  to  a  sieve, 
in  which  the  house  of  Irael  is  sifted,  through  which  all 
the  chaff  and  dust  passes,  but  not  the  least  grain  falls 
to  the  earth.  This  comparison  is  excellent  and  char- 
acterises the  situation  with  a  distinctness  and  sharpness 
that  could  not  be  improved  upon. 

The  Babylonian  exile  did  indeed  bring  about  a  sepa- 
ration of  the  religious  from  the  irreligious  section  of 
the  people,  of  the  followers  of  the  prophetic  religion 
from  the  followers  of  the  ancient  popular  religion,  fn 
the  fall  of  Judah  and  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  and 
the  temple,  the  prophetic  religion  won  a  complete 
victory  over  the  old  religion  of  the  people,  and  the 
latter  lost  every  possibility  of  further  existence.  The 
ancient  Deity  of  the  nation  vanished  in  the  smoke 
sent  up  by  the  conflagration  of  the  temple  of  Solomon. 
He  was  vanquished  and  destroyed  by  the  gods  of  Ne- 
buchadnezzar. His  want  of  power  had  been  plainly 
proved  by  the  destruction  of  His  people  and  of  His 
house,  and  He  himself  lay  buried  beneath  their  ruins. 

The  moral  influence  of  the  Babylonian  captivity 
and  its  attendant  features  must  also  be  taken  into  ac- 
count. Bowed  down  by  the  dread  blows  of  fate,  all 
confidence  lost  in  themselves  and  their  God,  the  Jews 
came,  a  despised  and  oppressed  remnant,  to  Babylon, 
which  was  at  that  time  in  the  zenith  of  its  power  and 
magnificence.  What  an  overwhelming  effect  must  the 
undreamtof  grandeur  of  their  new  surroundings  have 
made  upon  them  !  Their  once  so  loved  and  admired 
Jerusalem,  how  poor  it  must  have  appeared  to  them 
when  compared  with  the  metropolis  of  Babylon  with 
its  gigantic  buildings,  its  art,  its  luxury  !  The  temple 
of  Solomon,  at  one  time  their  pride  and  glory,  was  it 
not  but  a  miserable  village-church  when  likened  to  the 
wondrous  edifice  raised  to  the  worship  of  the  Baby- 
lonian God  !  As  the  great  unknown  writer  towards 
the  end  of  the  captivity  expresses  it,  Israel  was  here 
but  a  worm  and  Jacob  a  maggot.  How  irresistible 
the  temptation  must  have  been  :  "Away  with  the  old 
trash,  let  us  bow  down  and  acknowledge  this  new  and 
powerful  deity  !  " 

Moreover,  it  was  a  decided  personal  advantage  for 
a  Jew  to  renounce  his  nationality  and  to  become 
a  Babylonian.  We  have  in  the  literary  productions  of 
the  time  woful  complaints  concerning  the  brutal  mock- 


ery and  heartless  derision  to  which  the  poor  Jews  were 
subjected  in  exile,  nay  more,  the)'  were  subject  to  ill- 
treatment  and  personal  violence.  An  extraordinary 
strength  of  character  was  necessary  to  remain  stead- 
fast and  true  ;  only  really  earnest  and  convinced  reli- 
gious natures  could  resist  such  temptations.  And  thus 
the  natural  consequences  of  the  conditions  were  that 
the  half-hearted  and  lukewarm,  the  weak  and  those 
wanting  in  character,  the  worldly-minded,  who  thought 
only  of  personal  advantage  and  honor,  broke  awaj', 
and  that  a  refining  process  took  place  within  Israel 
which  left  nothing  remaining  but  the  sacred  remnant 
hoped  for  by  Isaiah.  Even  on  this  remnant,  which 
was  really  composed  of  the  best  and  the  noblest  ele- 
ments of  the  people,  the  Babylonian  captivity  had  a 
profound  effect.  The  religion  of  Israel,  in  fact,  was 
destined  to  undergo  a  deep  change. 

Deuteronomy  had  already  effected  a  separation  be- 
tween the  State  and  the  Church,  between  the  national 
and  the  religious  life.  Of  course,  at  the  outset  the  re- 
form had  to  reckon  with  these  as  concrete  powers  and 
weighty  factors,  but  it  is  evident  they  stood  in  its  way 
and  formed  serious  obstacles  to  the  realisation  of  its 
final  aims,  which  were  of  a  purely  ecclesiastical  char- 
acter. But  now  destiny  had  removed  these  hindrances. 
The  State  was  destroyed,  the  national  life  extirpated, 
nothing  but  the  ecclesiastical  element  remained.  The 
hard  logic  of  facts  itself  had  drawn  the  conclusions  of 
Deuteronomy,  and  afforded  them  the  freest  play  for 
their  growth  and  operation.  Judah  as  a  nation  was 
destroyed  by  the  Babylonian  captivity  as  completely  as 
Israel  was  by  the  Assyrian,  but  it  was  transformed 
into  Judaism.  The  State  became  a  Church  ;  a  nation 
was  converted  into  a  congregation.  And  this  Judah, 
which  had  now  become  Judaism,  had  a  universal  mis- 
sion to  fulfil  which  was  without  parallel.  The  future 
and  entire  further  development  of  religion  depended 
upon  it. 

EVOLUTION  AND  IDEALISM. 

BY    ELLIS    THURTELL. 

Herbert  Spencer,  in  his  Principles  of  Psychology, 
has  insisted  that  "should  the  idealist  be  right,  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  would  be  a  dream."  To  this  the 
late  Prof.  T.  H.  Green — representing  the  theistic  Neo- 
Hegelians — demurred.  And  with  him  the  non  theis- 
tic Neo-Hegelians,  such  as  Mr.  Belfort  Bax  and  a 
newly  arisen  writer,  Mr.  E.  Douglas  Fawcett,  are  in 
complete  agreement.  The  latter  in  his  recent  very 
suggestive  Riddle  of  the  Universe  has  said  :  "The  ac- 
ceptance of  evolution  as  natural  process  in  time,  and 
as  such  prior  to  individual  consciousness,  is  not  only 
consistent  with  idealism,  but  constitutes  the  idealist 
innovation  of  the  nature-philosophy  of  Schelling. " 

The  view  of  evolution  indicated  here  does  certainly 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4539 


coincide  with  that  set  forth  by  Herbert  Spencer  in 
his  essay  upon  Professor  Green.  Herein  he  writes  : 
"There  is  necessarily  implied  by  this  theory  of  evolu- 
tion a  mode  of  being  independent  of  and  antecedent 
to  the  mode  of  being  we  now  call  consciousness."  But 
he  continues  :  "  Consequentl)' this  theory  must  be  a 
dream  if  either  ideas  are  the  only  existences,  or  if,  as 
Professor  Green  appears  to  think,  the  object  exists 
only  by  correlation  with  the  subject." 

And  Mr.  Fawcett  meets  the  Spencerian  demurrer 
in  this  way  :  That  the  world  is  by  no  means  a  mere 
appendage  to  the  "mind."  Hegelian  idealism,  he 
declares,  "does  not  deny  that  objects  and  ideas,  or 
mental  states,  are  different."  It  adds,  however,  that 
the  former  are  not  things  outside  the  system  of  expe- 
rience. Furthermore,  Mr.  Fawcett  asserts  that  we 
must  not  confuse  the  psyc/u7/ogica/  with  the  metaphysi- 
cal distinction  between  world  and  mind.  "Though 
mental  and  object  states  differ  much,  they  agree  in  be- 
ing states  of  my  experience."  And  as  to  Spencer's 
account  of  our  belief  in  independent  objectivity,  he 
writes:  "Accepted  psychologically,  as  a  history  of  the 
genesis  of  the  belief,  it  is,  as  will  be  obvious,  fraught 
with  great  value — the  ancestral  element  being  a  con- 
spicuously excellent  innovation.  But  construed  meta- 
physically as  a  proof  of  i?idependent  objective  agencies  it 
is  misleading  and  fallacious."  Spencer's  vindication 
of  realism  is  allowed  to  show  "  why  we  must  think  the 
reality  of  something  out  of  consciousness,  but  it  does 
not  and  cannot  establish  the  something  as  a  fact." 
And  Mr.  Fawcett  finally  insists,  "that  to  maintain  in- 
dependent objectivity  i^(;it'«^/ experience,  on  the  ground 
of  cohesion  in  consciousness  generated  by  experience, 
is  to  confuse  psychology  and  metaphj'sic." 

We  may  indeed  say  that  metaphysic  is  by  all  Neo- 
Hegelians  accredited  with  validity,  as  a  source  of  phil- 
osophic inspiration  far  higher  than  that  possessed  by 
pure  psychology.  But  how  if  metaphysic  should  be 
held  to  be  not  superior  but  subservient  to  psychology  I 
The  Riddle  of  the  Universe  truly  is  described  as  "an 
attempt  to  determine  the  first  principles  of  metaphysic, 
considered  as  an  inquiry  into  the  conditions  and  im- 
port of  consciousness."  But  Fleming's  Vocabulary  of 
Philosophy  (4th  ed.)  defines  psychology  as  "a  theory 
of  the  nature  and  powers  of  the  mind,  based  upon  an 
analysis  and  interpretation  of  the  facts  of  conscious- 
ness." While  metaphysic  is  declared  to  be  "  that  de- 
partment of  mental  philosophy  which  is  concerned 
with  speculative  problems  transcending  those  belong- 
ing to  the  nature  and  relation  of  the  facts  of  conscious- 
ness." Furthermore,  it  is  well  known  that  this  is  the 
sense  in  which  Kant  used  the  word  when  he  announced 
that  a  metaphysic — an  ontological,  as  distinct  from  an 
experiential,  theory  of  the  universe — was  valueless,  if 
not  rationally  unattainable. 


In  point  of  fact,  the  problem  of  "  the  conditions 
and  import  of  consciousness  "  belongs  essentially  to 
psychology.  While  as  to  metaphysic,  George  Henry 
Lewes  has,  I  think,  satisfactorily  settled  its  place  in 
philosophy  after  a  fashion  somewhat  different  to  Mr. 
Fawcett's.  Metaphysic,  Lewes  has  well  shown  (in 
his  Problems  of  Life  and  Mind,  Vol.  I )  to  be  concerned 
with  "the  disengagement  of  certain  most  general  prin- 
ciples, such  as  cause,  force,  life,  mind,  etc.,  from  the 
sciences  which  usually  imply  these  principles  [the 
science  of  psychology,  in  the  case  of  '  mind  ']  ;  and  the 
exposition  of  their  constituent  elements — the  facts, 
sensible  and  logical,  which  these  principles  involve  ; 
and  the  relations  of  these  principles.  ...  Its  place  as 
a  special  discipline,"  Lewes  proceeds,  "is  that  of  an 
objective  logic.  Its  method  is  that  of  dealing  exclu- 
sively with  the  known  functions  of  unknown  quanti- 
ties, and  at  every  stage  of  inquiry  separating  the  em- 
pirical from  the  metenipirical  data."  And  further  on 
he  very  properly  speaks  of  "the  great  psychological 
problems  of  the  limitations  of  knowledge,  and  the 
principles  of  certitude."  The  important  word  is  itali- 
cised by  me. 

George  Henry  Lewes  has,  indeed,  interfered  to 
save  intellectual  metaphysic  from  the  annihilation 
threatened  it  by  the  Kantian  Critique,  which  left  only 
a  metaphysic  of  morals  standing  firm.  But  he  has 
done  so  upon  the  clear  and  positive  understanding 
that  it  is  metaphysic  which  is  to  be  subservient  to 
science,  not — as  in  pre-Kantian  days  and  among  many 
idealists  even  now — science  to  metaphysic.  And  as  to 
realism  and  idealism  Lewes  has  declared  that  accord- 
ing to  his  system  "idealism  is  vindicated  in  all  that  it 
has  of  truth,  and  realism  is  rescued." 

It  is  certainly  matter  for  mutual  congratulations 
among  philosophers  of  different  schools  that  our  most 
newly-reformed  and  advancing  idealists  are  willing  to 
stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  our  present-day  re- 
novated and  progressive  realists  in  defence  of  a  con- 
sistently evolutionary  scheme  of  thought.  Beside  this 
recent  and  great  agreement  old  controversies  between 
idealist  and  realist  seem  trivial.  Moreover,  these  very 
controversies  under  the  treatment  of  Lewesian  Spen- 
cerians  on  the  one  hand  and  Schopenhauerian  Hegel- 
ians on  the  other,  are  steadily  tending  towards  com- 
promise. While  under  the  adequately  developed  mo- 
nism for  the  consummation  of  which  all  truly  natural- 
istic thinkers  are  now  working,  they  must  inevitably 
collapse.  Yet  for  all  that  we  do  still  certainly  hear 
somewhat  too  much  about  the  competency  of  purely 
idealist  dialectic  and  metaphysic  in  the  settlement  of 
strictly  psychological  topics  of  dispute.  A  last  year's 
republication  of  essays,  entitled  Darivin  and  Hegel 
with  Other  Philosophical  Studies,  by  Mr.  (now  Profes- 
sor) D.  G.  Ritchie,  affords  farther  proof  of  this, 


4540 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


In  this  book  Professor  Ritchie  writes:  "Lewes 
and  Spencer  consider  it  the  special  triumph  of  their 
theory  of  heredity  as  a  factor  in  knowledge,  that  they 
are  able  to  reconcile  the  theories  of  the  a  priori  and  a 
posteriori  schools.  This  opinion  seems  to  me  a  com- 
plete ignoratio  elenchi.  Kant's  critical  theory  is  not 
psychological  but  logical.  The  name  a  priori  is  of 
course  most  unfortunate  :  it  suggests  priority  in  time. 
What  Kant  urges  is  that  the  possibility  of  science,  or 
in  fact  of  anything  that  we  can  call  'knowledge,'  im- 
plies certain  necessary  elements.  Hume  had  already 
shown  that  sense-experience  can  never  give  necessity. 
Therefore,  argues  Kant,  this  necessity  comes  from  the 
very  nature  of  thought." 

Well,  I  make  bold  to  maintain  that  Lewes  and 
Spencer  are  right,  and  that  Professor  Ritchie  is  wrong. 
Kant  did  not  o)i!y  urge  that  all  knowledge  implies 
necessary  elements.  He  went  on  to  insist  that  this 
implication  of  necessity  (and  universality)  further  im- 
plied a  non-experiential  origin  of  knowledge.  And  it 
is  at  this  point  that  the  consistent  evolutionist  must 
join  issue  with  him.  The  question,  as  Lewes  says, 
"is  not  whether  a  priori  elements  can  be  detected  in 
knowledge,  but  whether  those  elements  were  or  were 
not  originally  formed  out  of  ancestral  sensible  experi- 
ences." And  inasmuch  as  evolutionary  psychology 
clearly  shows  that  these  elements  were  formed  out  of 
such  ancestral  experience,  the  Kantian  theory  falls, 
There  is  an  a  priori  element  of  knowledge.  But  this 
element,  instead  of  being  independent  of  experience, 
as  Kant  supposed,  is  actually  the  product  of  experi- 
ence— the  experience  not  indeed  of  the  individual,  but 
of  the  race.  As  to  how  experience  in  any  form  is  pos- 
sible— that  is  no  doubt  a  mystery.  But  it  is  only  part 
of  the  general  mystery  of  life,  a  mystery  that  remains 
the. same  for  any  hitherto  existing  theory  of  cosmic 
order. 

Professor  Ritchie,  indeed,  admits  (in  his  profound 
and  subtle  essay  entitled  "Darwin  and  Hegel")  that 
"all  attempts  on  the  part  of  '  intuitionists '  to  meet 
evolutionists  on  questions  of  'origins'  are  doomed  to 
failure."  And  the  essay  concludes  with  a  description 
of  the  idealist's  position  which  certainly  seems  too 
moderate  and  reasonable  to  justify  the  peremptory 
lesson  its  author  has  elsewhere  attempted  to  teach  the 
followers  of  Lewes  and  Herbert  Spencer.  The  idealist. 
Professor  Ritchie,  says,  "only  insists  that,  after  we 
have  had  as  complete  a  history  as  can  be  given  of  how 
things  have  come  to  be  what  they  are,  we  are  justified 
in  looking  back  from  our  vantage  ground  and  seeing 
in  the  past  evolution  the  gradual  '  unrolling '  of  the 
meaning  that  we  only  fully  understand  at  the  end  of 
the  process."  No  evolutionists,  however  uncomprom- 
ising, need  refuse  assent  to  this.  And  if  this  is  all  the 
acute  Neo-Kantian  and  Neo-Hegelian  critics  of  Spen- 


cerian  evolutionism  mean  there  can  be  no  inseparable 
bar  to  that  "idealistic"  development  of  the  Spencer- 
ian  philosophy  for  which  some  of  our  most  progressive 
and  suggestive  young  thinkers  appear  to  be  so  eagerly 
upon  the  watch — toward  which  indeed  some  of  them 
have  already  contributed  important  work. 


HEREDITY  AND  THE  A  PRIORI. 

Mr.  Ellis  Thurtell  defends  the  compatibility  of 
evolutionism  and  idealism,  and  there  can  be  no  ques- 
tion about  it  that  evolution  is  possible  in  a  world  of 
pure  ideas  as  much  as  in  a  material  world.  That  phi- 
losophers of  different  schools  stand  shoulder  to  shoul- 
der in  defence  of  an  evolutionary  scheme  of  thought 
seems  to  me  less  a  matter  for  mutual  congratulations 
among  philosophers  than  an  evidence  of  the  recogni- 
tion which  the  doctrine  of  evolution  receives.  It  is 
natural  that  the  rising  sun  has  many  worshippers,  and 
we  dare  say  that  at  the  present  juncture,  any  world 
view,  be  it  philosophical  or  religious,  which  would  be 
found  in  an  irreconcilable  conflict  with  the  theory  of 
evolution,  appears  to  be  doomed. 

Although  we  agree  with  Mr.  Thurtell  as  to  the 
compatibility  of  evolutionism  and  idealism,  we  must 
object  to  his  condemnation  of  Professor  Ritchie's  criti- 
cism of  Lewes's  and  Spencer's  reconciliation  of  the 
a  priori  and  a  posteriori  schools.  Mr.  Thurtell  says 
"I  make  bold  to  maintain  that  Lewes  and  Spencer 
are  right  and  that  Professor  Ritchie  is  wrong";  but, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  find  that  he  himself  is  guilty  of 
the  same  ignoratio  elenchi  of  which  Mr.  Ritchie  accuses 
Spencer  and  Lewes. 

When  Kant  speaks  of  necessity  he  does  not  mean 
certitude.  An  instinctive  assurance  may  be  inherited  ; 
but  to  explain  the  universality  and  necessity  of  math- 
ematics by  heredity  (as  Spencer  and  Lewes  propose) 
is  simply  an  evidence  of  their  miscomprehension  of 
the  problem. 

We  explain  by  heredity  the  structures  of  organised 
beings.  By  heredity  the  organ  of  seizing  has  been 
developed  in  the  elephant's  trunk,  in  man's  hand, 
in  the  monkey's  tail,  in  the  lobster's  claws.  In  a  sim- 
ilar way  tendencies  and  also  dispositions  of  forming 
ideas  may,  by  heredity,  become  firmly  implanted  in 
the  minds  of  thinking  beings.  We  have  hereditary 
prejudices,  religious  as  well  as  political,  social,  and 
otherwise.  Talents,  proclivities,  and  instincts  of  all 
kinds  are  also  inherited.  Artistic  genius  is  explainable 
by  heredity.  But  these  products  of  evolutionary  hered- 
ity are  by  no  means  intrinsically  necessary.  Under 
other  conditions  they  would  have  developed  in  another 
wa)'.  And  what  has  the  idea  of  inheritance  to  do  with 
the  problem.  Why  is  the  equation  i  -|-  i  =:  2  intrinsi- 
cally necessary  ?  Why  does  it  hold  good  always  and 
under  all  conditions,  without  any  exception  ? 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4541 


The  proposition  is  not  why  is  man  in  possession 
of  a  faculty  quickly  to  grasp  and  apply  the  proposi- 
tion of  one  plus  one  being  two,  or  why  does  he  easily 
acquire  arithmetic  and  mathematics?  This  question 
I  freel}'  grant  may  be  answered  by  the  Lewes-Spencer 
theory  of  heredit)'.  Kant's  problem  is,  Why  must  all 
the  formal  theorems  of  arithmetic,  mathematics,  logic, 
and  purely  natural  science  (as  Kant  calls  the  idea  of 
causation  and  its  corollaries)  be  conceived  as  universal 
and  intrinsically  necessary  truths,  and  how  is  it  that 
this  assurance  never  fails? 

If  the  intrinsic  necessity  of  "  twice  two  being  four" 
were  indeed  a  product  of  heredity  there  would  be  a 
more  or  less  of  it,  but  any  one  who  understands  the 
problem  sees  at  once  that  mathematical  truths  either 
are  or  are  not  necessary.  There  is  no  middle  ground. 
These  truths  either  are  or  are  not  products  of  sense- 
experience,  whether  it  be  of  the  race  or  of  the  individ- 
ual, but  the  fact  is  that  no  amount  of  sense-e.xperience 
can  ever  establish  a  single  formal  statement  that  would 
be  universal  as  well  as  necessary. 

We  have  to  add  here  that  Mr.  Thurtell  does  not 
appear  to  know  that  Kant's  usage  of  the  term  "ex- 
perience" is  limited  to  "sense-experience,"  involving 
the  exclusion  of  formal  thought.  Professor  Ritchie 
seems  to  be  well  aware  of  the  dubious  meaning  of  the 
term,  for  in  the  passage  quoted  from  him  by  Mr.  Ellis 
Thurtell,  Professor  Ritchie  expressly  speaks  of  "sense- 
experience"  and  not  experience  in  general. 

In  brief,  the  Kantian  problem  of  intrinsically  neces- 
sary truths  cannot  be  disposed  of  in  Mr.  Spencer's 
easy  way.  The  problem  lies  deeper  and  has  not  been 
antiquated  by  the  acceptance  of  the  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution.^ 

THE  DIVINITY  OF  SCIENCE. 

BY  CHARLES  VON  FALCK. 

The  sun  is  setting,  and  his  rays,  like  threads  of  gold 
Are  touching  earth,  connecting  with  the  higher  region 

The  world  of  selfish  toil,  disturbance,  sorrow,  woe. 
Where  purity  is  rare — still  rarer,  true  religion. 

1  A  reconciliation  of  the  a  priori  3.x\A  a  posteriori  schools  is  proposed  in 
the  Primer  of  Philosophy ,  in  which  attention  is  called  to  the  loose  usage  of  the 
term  "experience,"  which  sometimes  includes,  sometimes  excludes,  the 
"formal"  element  of  knowledge.  Experience  in  the  former  sense  is  the 
total  effect  that  events  have  upon  the  sentiency  of  a  living  being;  it  consti 
tutes  the  source  of  all  knowledge.  Experience  in  the  latter  sense  is  limited 
to  the  sense-element  of  experience  in  the  former  sense. 

Reason  is  not  a  priori  xo  experience  in  the  wider  application  of  the  term, 
although  we  grant  that  it  is  independent  of  the  sensory  elements  of  experience. 
No  amount  of  isolated  sense-impressions  can  produce  reason,  but  the  relations 
that  obtain  in  sensations,  the  formal  features  of  experience  are  the  elements 
from  which  formal  thought  naturally  originates,  and  reason  is  nothing  but 
systematised  formal  thought. 

Mathematics,  arithmetic,  and  logic  are  indeed,  as  Kant  claims,  purely 
mental  constructions,  but  their  elementary  building  material,  purely  formal 
ideas,  such  as  the  units  of  counting,  geometrical  space,  logical  relations,  etc., 
far  from  being  latent  in  the  mind  and  prior  to  experience,  have  been  derived 
from  experience  by  abstraction. 

Kant's  solution  is,  in  our  opinion,  untenable,  but  Lewes  and  Spencer,  far 
from  succeeding  better  than  Kant,  failed  even  to  understand  the  problem  it- 
self. For  further  details  see  the  Primer  of  Philosophy,  "  The  Methods  of  Phi- 
losophy Derived  from  Experience,"  pp.  51-136. 


And  in  disgust  the  sun,  the  mighty  source  of  light 
Sinks  into  ocean's  waves,  and  darkness  now  envelops 

The  earth,  that  has  no  light,  except  from  higher  source. 
On  which  all  life  depends — by  which  it  grows,  develops. 

But  as  all  things  on  earth,  that  we  can  comprehend 

Subserve  God's  grandest  law,  the  stern  law  of  all  nature. 

Thus  must  the  sun  return — throw  light  on  wrong  and  right. 
And  do  its  sacred  work  through  all  eternal  future. 

And  in  the  world  of  mind,  there  also  shines  a  sun  ; 

Grand,  not  in  outer  form,  but  in  its  holy  mission  ; 
The  sun  of  science  which,  with  beneficial  rays 

Sheds  light  on  human  faults,  and  wrongs,  and  superstition. 

Sheds  light  upon  the  path  of  universal  truth. 

And  shows  the  ways  and  means  for  human  minds'  progression, 
And  with  its  force  divine — with  slow  but  constant  growth 

It  takes  of  mankind's  mind  its  fore-ordained  possession. 

It  has  resolved  the  creeds,  these  prisons  of  man's  mind. 
Into  the  mighty  folds  of  healthful  revolution  ; 

Not  by  the  sword  or  blood,  but  by  the  might  of  words. 
Disclosing  to  the  world  the  law  of  evolution. 

The  reason  you  may  ask,  why  science  has  subdued 
The  human  fancy — earth  and  ocean's  mighty  brine  ? 

The  answer  is,  it  walks  the  path  of  God  Himself 
Not  blinded  by  a  faith.     It  knows — it  is  divine. 


BOOK  NOTICES. 

S.  C.  Griggs  &  Company  of  Chicago  publish  a  work  on  the 
Opium  Habit,  entitled  Doctor  JtiJns,  by  Wm.  Rcsser  Cobbe,  a 
Chicago  journalist  who  was  a  victim  of  the  habit  for  nine  years 
and  has  treated  the  subject  in  all  its  physical  and  moral  bear- 
ings.    (Pages,  320.      Price,  Si. 50.) 

The  New  York  State  Reformatory  at  Elmira  publishes  Year 
Books  which  give  full  reports  of  the  management  and  work  of  the 
Reformatory,  and  are  interesting  as  being  entirely  the  product  of 
youthful  prisoners'  labor.  The  photographs  of  criminal  skulls, 
footprints,  and  the  tables  of  statistics  will  be  valuable  to  crimin- 
ologists. 

The  American  Comvwnwealth,  by  the  Rt.  Hon.  James  Bryce 
(Macmillan  &  Co.,  two  volumes,  S4.00  net),  has  recently  appeared 
in  its  third  edition,  completely  revised  throughout  and  with  a  few 
additional  chapters.  ".\11  difficult  and  controverted  points  have 
been  reconsidered,  the  constitutional  changes  in  the  States  since 
18S9  have  been  (so  far  as  possible)  noted,  and  the  figures  of  popu- 
lation have  been  corrected  by  the  census  returns  of  iSgo,  those 
relating  to  education  by  the  latest  available  Report  of  the  Bureau 
of  Education."  The  four  new  chapters  discuss  :  "  The  Tammany 
Ring  in  New  York  City,"  "The  Present  and  Future  of  the  Negro," 
"The  South  Since  the  War,"  and  "The  Home  of  the  Nation." 
Mr.  Bryce  enters  quite  fully  into  recent  politics,  takes  note  of  the 
issues  of  the  last  presidential  campaign,  the  effects  of  public  opin- 
ion on  such  questions  as  the  "Force  Bill,"  the  "Tariff,"  the 
"Silver  Question,"  in  deciding  the  elections,  the  relations  of  the 
political  parties  to  each  of  these  topics,  discusses  at  some  length 
the  growth  of  new  parties,  and  comments  on  the  Hawaiian  trou 
bles,  new  aspects  of  the  agitation  for  female  suffrage,  etc.  There 
is  scarcely  a  question  now  commanding  the  inteiest  of  the  nation 
which  is  not  touched  upon,  and  much  wholesome,  courageous  dis- 
cussion of  the  recent  abuses  of  our  political  system  is  introduced. 
Praise  of  Mr.  Bryce's  work,  which  now  takes  rank  with  the  philo- 


iS)^ 


4542 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


sophic  treatise  of  De  Toqueville  as  a  standard  manual  of  reference 
on  American  aSairs,  would  be  superfluous.  The  work  is  an  un- 
biassed and  high-minded  critical  exposition  of  the  main  features  of 
American  institutions  by  a  man  of  erudition  and  culture,  and  lat- 
terly with  a  wide  and  successful  experience  in  practical  political 
affairs,  and  it  is  a  good  sign  of  the  tendency  of  modern  American 
opinion  that  his  book  is  so  widely  read  and  circulated  in  the  United 
States.  It  is  one  which  no  thoughtful  American  should  leave  un- 
read.   

In  Sociiilismus  iinJ  moderne  Wisseiischaft  (Dar-win- Spencer- 
Afarx),  by  Prof.  Enrico  Ferri,  we  have  a  German  translation  of 
an  eloquent  and  brilliant  exposition  of  the  trend  of  modern  bio- 
logical and  social  science  as  initiated  by  Darwin  and  Spencer 
and  culminating  in  the  socialistic  theories  of  the  celebrated  Ger- 
man writer,  Carl  Marx.  The  doctrine  of  Carl  Marx,  Professor 
Ferri  contends,  is  the  only  socialistic  theory  which  possesses  sci- 
entific method  and  importance,  and  which  unanimously  guides 
and  inspires  the  socialistic  parties  of  the  whole  world.  In  his 
opinion,  it  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  practical  and  natural 
•fruitage  in  the  province  of  sociology  of  that  scientific  revolution 
which  began  with  the  renaissance  of  modern  science  in  Galileo 
and  has  received  its  highest  modern  perfection  in  the  works  of 
Darwin  and  Spencer.  The  last-mentioned  authors  hesitated  to 
draw  the  sociological  conclusions  which  logically  flowed  from 
their  scientific  premises,  but  left  that  work  to  Marx,  who  with 
them  forms  the  brilliant  stellar  triad  of  modern  scientific  thought. 
In  socialism,  as  reared  upon  the  scientific  foundations  of  Marx, 
the  world  shall  surely  find,  our  author  thinks,  a  panacea  for  the 
evils  which  now  threaten  what  is  noblest  and  best  in  its  life.  It 
cannot  be  denied  that  the  little  book  is  written  with  fervor  and 
understanding.  Professor  Ferri  is  a  member  of  the  Italian  Cham- 
ber of  Deputies,  and  the  translation  of  his  work  has  been  made  by 
Dr.  Hans  Kurella,  well  known  as  the  German  translator  of  Lom- 
broso  and  of  other  standard  criminological  works.  (Leipsic  : 
Georg  H.  Wigand.     1895.     Pages,  169.     Price,  M.  1.50. ) 


NOTES. 

Dr.  Lewis  G.  Janes  informs  us  that  a  conference  of  evolution- 
ists is  to  take  place  on  the  grounds  of  the  Greenacre  Inn,  Eliot, 
Maine,  on  July  6  to  13,  which  is  to  afford  an  opportunity  for  con- 
sultation and  interchange  of  views  among  the  friends  of  scientific 
thought.  Among  the  speakers  are  Prof.  E.  D.  Cope  of  Philadel- 
phia, Prof.  Edward  S.  Morse,  Peabody  Institute,  Salem,  Mass  , 
the  Rev.  E.  P.  Powell,  Clinton,  N.  Y.,  Miss  Mary  Proctor,  the 
daughter  of  Richard  Proctor,  the  Rev.  James  T.  Bixby,  Prof. 
John  Fiske,  and  Dr.  Janes.  Herbert  Spencer  has  sent  a  paper 
which  will  be  read  on  the  first  day  of  the  conference. 


Mr.  K.  Ohara  of  Otsu,  Omi,  Japan,  22  Midguagecho,  writes 
in  a  letter  just  received  that  he  finds  many  articles  in  TAe  Monist 
and  in  The  Open  Cotirt  on  psychology  and  philosophy  to  be  in 
strict  accordance  with  the  teachings  of  Buddhism,  and  he  prom- 
ises in  time  to  point  out  these  coincidences  in  his  periodical,  the 
Shi-Do-A'wai-A'o-A'oku,  which  is  on  our  exchange  list.  He  has 
translated  in  a  recent  number  the  "Triangular  Debate  on  Chris- 
tian Missions"  which  appeared  in  the  January  number  of  The 
Monist,  and  states  that  his  translation  has  aroused  wide  interest 
in  Japan  and  has  been  republished  by  several  religious  and  scien- 
tific journals.  The  present  number  of  his  periodical  contains  be- 
sides an  editorial  on  ' '  The  Relative  Value  of  Names, "  by  K.  Ohara, 
two  sermons,  one  on  ' '  The  Three  Virtues, "  by  the  Rev .  S.  Yemura, 
and  one  on  "  Morality  and  War,"  by  the  Rev.  K.  Y'o-Shi-Tami, 
a  scriptural  writing  on  the  birth  of  Buddha,  and  miscellaneous 
notes  on  the  lives  of  eminent  Buddhists  and  Buddhistic  pagodas 
in  Japan.  Besides  these  religious  articles  the  number  contains  a 
contribution  by  a  Japanese  scholar  on  "The  Invention  of  Pen 
and  Paper." 

Mr.  Ohara  sends  us  by  the  same  mail  a  booklet  written  in 
English  called  The  War  Reader  published  by  the  Keigyosha,  To- 
kio.  It  contains  a  number  of  anecdotes  and  newspaper  accounts 
of  the  late  war  and  also  a  poem  by  Edwin  Arnold.  It  is  interest- 
ing to  notice  the  attitude  of  Buddhist  priests.  The  Chief  Abbot  of 
the  Hongwan  Temple,  being  prevented  by  his  home  duties  from 
joining  the  warriors  of  his  country,  wrote  a  letter  in  which  the  fol- 
lowing passage  strikes  us  as  characteristic  :  "  Soldiers  and  sailors 
"  are  bound  to  apply  themselves  to  the  grave  responsibility  of  con- 
"  ducting  either  offensive  or  defensive  operations  and  to  prove 
"themselves  pillars  of  the  State.  And  yet,  unless  they  feel  con- 
"  fident  of  their  destiny  in  the  life  to  come  they  may  quail  amidst 
"smoke  and  flying  bullets,  and  may  thus  fail  to  bring  victory  to 
"the  army  of  Japan.  It  is  therefore  of  the  utmost  importance 
"  for  the  Japanese  soldiers  on  active  service  to  have  no  fear  about 
"  their  fate  beyond  the  grave.  Now  for  the  inheritance  of  future 
"glory  Buddha  underwent  a  prolonged  religious  discipline  and 
"finally  attained  Nirvana,  and,  all  who  place  an  implicit  faith  in 
"the  teachings  of  Buddha  and  pass  out  of  this  earthly  existence 
"  without  entertaining  any  sceptical  doubts  of  the  attainment  of  a 
"glorious  future  life,  will  be  rewarded  at  once  with  unbounded 
"  felicity  in  another  world." 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


Prof.  Ernst  Mach,  who  needs  no  introduction  to  the  readers 
of  The  Open  Court  and  The  Monist,  and  who  is  now  well  known  to 
the  English-reading  public  at  large  by  his  profound  and  attractive 
works  on  scientific  subjects,  has  resigned  the  chair  of  Physics  in 
the  University  of  Prague  in  order  to  accept  a  professorship  of  the 
History  and  Theory  of  Inductive  Science  in  the  University  of 
Vienna.  (The  recent  notices  in  the  press  which  announced  his 
acceptance  were  premature,  and  partly  wrong. )  Professor  Mach 
is  to  be  congratulated  on  this  call  to  a  wider  scene  of  activity.  It 
is  significant  and  rare  that  a  man  whose  life  has  been  devoted  to 
the  practical  furtherance  of  science  and  who  has  actually  watched 
and  helped  its  growth,  should  be  selected  to  expound  and  eluci- 
date its  history  and  principles  of  procedure.  Both  the  scientific 
and  philosophical  world  may  expect  fruitful  and  beneficent  results 
from  Professor  Mach's  activity  in  his  new  vocation. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  408. 

HOW  TO  AVOID  STRIKES.     F.  M.  Holland 4535 

THE  BABYLONIAN   EXILE.     Prof.  C.  H.  Cornii.l 4537 

EVOLUTION   AND  IDEALISM.     Ellis  Thuruell 4538 

HEREDITY  AND  THE  A  PRIORI.     Editor 4540 

POETRY. 

The  Divinity  of  Science.     Charles  von  Falck 4541 

BOOK  NOTICES 4541 

NOTES 4542 


47^ 


The  Open  Court 


A   WEEKLY  JOURNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  409.     (Vol.  IX.— 26  ) 


CHICAGO,  JUNE  27,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
1  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


WAGES  OF  FOLLY. 


BV   HUDOR   GENONE. 


It  is  a  bitterly  cold  day  in  the  early  spring.  The 
windows  of  "The  Biddle,"  a  semi-genteel  flat,  are 
frosted  white,  and  the  steam  heater,  radiating  none 
too  well,  snaps  and  thumps  as  if  angry  at  its  inability 
to  compete  with  the  cold. 

Wrapped  in  a  frayed  and  faded  shawl,  relic  of  for- 
mer "gentility,"  Caroline  McLane  hovers  over  it,  ab- 
sorbed in  a  paper-covered  novel.  Clara,  her  younger 
daughter,  suffering  from  a  mild  ailment,  is  in  bed  in 
an  inner  room,  while  her  elder  sister,  Heloise,  a  beauty 
of  nineteen,  stands  before  a  tawdry  looking-glass,  ar- 
ranging her  abundant  auburn  hair. 

For  a  while  Caroline  continues  her  perusal ;  then, 
suddenly  awaking  to  life's  realities,  lays  the  book 
down,  and  turning'  with  an  impatient  twitch  of  the 
shoulders,  says  querulously:  "It's  high  time  that  man 
was  here." 

Heloise  making  no  response,  after  a  pause  she 
adds:  "  If  he's  coming,  I'd  like  to  know  why  in  the 
name  of  common  sense  he  don't  come." 

"I'm  sure  I  can't  tell  you,"  the  girl  replies  indif- 
ferently, continuing  to  untwist  her  curl-papers. 

"He  said  he'd  be  here  about  three,  didn't  he?" 

"Yes." 

"What  time  did  you  say  it  was  now?" 

"  I  didn't  say.  I  can't  be  running  next  door  every 
five  minutes  to  ask  the  time.  It  was  quarter  past  a 
while  ago  ;  it  must  be  half  past  now.  Do  quit  fret- 
ting, mother,  do  ;  you're  forever  fretting.  He  said 
he'd  be  here,  and  I  suppose  he  will.  You  don't  think 
Mr.  Dronloth  would  lie,  do  you  ?  " 

With  another  twitch  Caroline  picked  up  her  novel, 
saying,  half  aloud  :  "Oh!  dear,  dear;  did  I  ever  ex- 
pect to  come  to  this?  " 

Almost  as  she  spoke  there  was  a  knock  at  the  door, 
a  quick,  energetic  rap. 

"There  he  is  now,"  said  Caroline.  "Go  to  the 
door,  Heloise,  and  let  him  in." 

But  to  do  this  Heloise  was  indisposed.  She  had 
completed  her  adornments  and  was  tying  her  bonnet- 
strings. 

"Tell  him  I've  gone  out,  mother,"  she  whispered, 


and  with  that  whisked  nimbly  into  the  other  room, 
closing  the  door  softl)-. 

"Come  in,"  said  Caroline. 

The  door  opened  briskly.      Caroline's  face  fell. 

"Oil!  is  that  you,  Mary  Rowan?"  Then  she 
added,  none  too  cordiallj',  after  a  brief  pause  :  "  Won't 
3'ou  sit  down  ?  But  what  brings  3'ou  to  the  city  a  day 
like  this?  " 

Miss  Rowan  was  tall,  thin,  and  angular,  with  prom- 
inent features  and  cold  grey  eyes.  She  crossed  the 
room  and  sat  down  with  scant  ceremon}'. 

"What  brings  me  to  the  cit}'? "  she  repeated, 
tartly.  "That  is  a  pretty  question  for  you  to  ask. 
You  wrote,  saying  that  you  and  Heloise  would  be  glad 
of  some  plain  sewing.  I  sent  a  package  by  express 
last  week,  all  cut  out,  basted,  and  ready.  Did  it 
come  ?  " 

"Oh!  yes;  it  came,"  said  Caroline,  wearil}'. 

"And  why  didn't  you  write,  as  I  asked,  and  ac- 
knowledge receiving  them  ?  " 

"I  thought  Heloise  wrote.      She  said  she  would." 

"  You  ought  to  have  written  yourself.  The  least 
you  could  have  done,  after  the  trouble  I  took  to  ac- 
commodate you,  was  to  drop  a  line,  if  it  was  only  a 
postal.      But  it  doesn't  signify.      Are  they  done?" 

"No  ;   they  are  not  finished." 

"Well,"  exclaimed  Miss  Rowan,  indignantly.  "I 
must  sa}'  it's  high  time  the}'  were.  Here  3'ou've  kept 
me  waiting  over  a  week.  You  ought  to  have  finished 
them  at  once,  Caroline,  and  sent  them  back,  especially 
as  I  asked  you  to  be  prompt." 

"I  was  prompt,"  responded  Caroline,  bridling; 
"as  prompt  as  I  could  possibly  be  under  the  circum- 
stances." 

Miss  Rowan  sniffed. 

"  You  had  a  novel  in  your  hand  when  I  came  in. 
Do  you  call  that  being  prompt, — wasting  time  over  a 
trashy  novel,  when  you  might  be  sewing?  And  where, 
I  should  like  to  know,  are  your  girls  ?  Thej'  ought  to 
be  helping  you." 

"Clara  is  sick  abed,"   answered  Caroline,  shortly. 

"And  Heloise?" 

"Heloise  wasn't  feeling  well,  either,  so  I  told  her 
to  go  out  and  get  a  breath  of  fresh  air.  Besides  (here 
Caroline's  temper  got  the  better  of  prudence ),  besides, 


4S44 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


I  want  you  to  understand,  Mary  Rowan,  that  I  don't 
intend  to  be  catechised  by  you  or  any  one  else,  nor  do 
I  intend  to  make  a  slave  of  myself.  It's  easy  to  say 
the  work  ought  to  be  finished — mighty  easy,  and  it 
would  have  been  if  I  had  had  the  strength.  I  never 
neglected  a  duty  in  my  life — never." 

"Where  is  Heloise?"  asked  Miss  Rowan,  stiffly. 
"You  said  she  had  gone  out." 

"  I  suppose  she  has  gone  to  the  Philharmonic.  She 
does  go  sometimes." 

"Well !  I  do  think,"  exclaimed  Miss  Rowan,  vastly 
irritated,  "  I  do  think,  after  asking  for  work,  the  least 
she  could  have  done  was  to  leave  an  expensive  place 
like  the  Philharmonic,  or  whatever  you  call  it,  alone  till 
my  work  was  done." 

"Thank  you,"  retorted  Caroline;  "but  we  didn't 
ask  for  charity.  I  hope  you  don't  think  we've  sunk  so 
low  as  that." 

"That's  neither  here  nor  there,"  said  Miss  Rowan, 
whose  stock  of  patience,  after  running  low,  now  gave 
out  altogether,  "beggars  shouldn't  be  choosers." 

"Thank  you,"  again  retorted  Caroline,  with  a  toss 
of  the  head  and  much  caustic  inflexion.  "You're 
civil,  Pm  sure  ;  but   I   want  you  to  understand,  Mary 

Rowan,  that  we're  not  quite  paupers." 

* 

"She  bounced  up  off  her  chair  (this  is  Mrs.  Mc- 
Lane's  version,  as  given  an  hour  later  to  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Dronloth).  And  oh  !  the  cruelty  in  her  tone.  Said 
she,  '  If  this  is  the  way  you  are  going  to  do  my  work, 
not  another  stitch  will  you  get  ! '  Then  she  went  on  and 
abused  us  all  like  pickpockets.  I  never  heard  such 
outrageous  talk  in  all  my  born  days.  Was  it  my  fault 
that  Clara  and  I  were  sick?  Why,  Mr.  Dronloth,  all 
this  day  I've  had  such  a  feeling  of  distress  come  over 
me  whenever  I  move.  And  you've  no  idea  how  my 
side  aches  after  sewing  any  length  of  time.  And  then 
to  hear  her  harp  upon  Heloise  going  to  listen  to  a  lit- 
tle good  music.  What  could  be  more  innocent  ?  And 
yet  you  would  have  thought,  to  hear  her  talk,  that  the 
poor  child  had  done  something  morally  wrong." 

The  following  day  two  ladies  of  the  "Aid  Society" 
connected  with  Mr.  Dronloth's  church  came  to  the 
flat.  By  this  time  Clara  had  so  far  recovered  from 
her  indisposition  as  to  be  able  to  sit  up,  or  rather  to 
recline  on  a  lounge  in  the  front  room.  Heloise  was 
again  absent,  and  Mrs.  McLane,  her  novel  discreetly 
put  away,  and  the  plain  sewing  having  been  replev- 
ined,  sat  with  folded  hands. 

"Poor  thing,"  exclaimed  young  Miss  Bradford, 
brimming  over  with  the  fervor  of  good  works,  "poor 
thing,  how  you  must  have  suffered.  It  is  no  wonder 
that  you  feel  these  insults  keenly.  Do  you  wonder  at 
it,  Mrs.  Vernon?" 

Janet   Vernon's   sole   response   (because   she   had 


been  connected  with  organised  charity  for  so  many 
years)  was  rather  in  the  way  of  a  practical  sugges- 
tion. 

"  Oh  !  of  course,  Mrs.  Vernon,"  said  Caroline,  tear- 
fully; "we  understand  that  thoroughly.  We  do  not 
expect  to  live  in  idleness.  We  must  do  something, 
now  that  all  our  friends  have  abandoned  us  in  our 
poverty.  We  are  ready  to  turn  to  anything.  As  I 
have  said  over  and  over  again  to  Heloise,  anything 
that  was  respectable." 

Miss  Bradford  was  sure  this  showed  the  right 
spirit ;  and  then  Mrs.  Vernon  brought  out  a  blank 
form  of  application,  explaining  that  before  the  Society 
could  take  steps  to  provide  employment  this  must  be 
signed. 

"Oh  !  certainly,"  said  Caroline. 

When  the  form  had  been  filled  out,  Caroline  read 
it  over  attentively. 

"  Of  course  we  will  sign  it,"  she  said,  pen  in  hand, 
but  nevertheless  hesitating;  "we  will  sign  it  cheer- 
fully, but  I  do  think  it  ought  to  state  more  explicitly 
the  nature  of  the  proposed  employment.  I  should 
like  it  to  be  more  distinctly  specified  that  any  emplo)'- 
ment  we  are  asked  to  accept  shall  not  be  menial." 

"Yes,  indeed,"  said  Miss  Bradford,  "that,  of 
course,  is  understood." 

"Then  it  ought  to  be  specified,"  said  Caroline, 
her  courage  rising.  "  My  husband  in  his  lifetime  was 
a  most  excellent  business  man.  How  often  he  used 
to  say  to  me,  'Caroline,  never  enter  into  any  agree- 
ment that  you  are  not  full}'  prepared  to  abide  b}'. '  " 

Mrs.  Vernon  here  lost  patience. 

"  No  one  expects  you  to  take  a  place  you're  unfit 
for,"  she  said,  a  little  tartly;  "and  if  they  did,  who's 
to  make  you?  What  object  is  it  to  us,  except  to  help 
you?  The  word  '  suitable' covers  it.  If  you  don't  like 
what  the  Society  finds,  why  you  needn't  take  it ;  that's 
all  there  is  to  the  matter.  Just  sign,  and  have  done 
with  it." 

At  this  frank  speaking,  Miss  Bradford,  quite  new 
to  the  business  of  succoring  those  in  indigent  circum- 
stances, blushed  painfully,  and  was  far  more  concerned 
than  Caroline,  who,  without  more  ado,  signed  the  pa- 
per. 

"Don't  get  up,  dearest,"  she  said  to  Clara,  who 
was  rousing  herself  languidly;  "don't  get  up;  I'll 
bring  it  to  you,  pet."  Adding  aside:  "Shesufiersso 
at  times  I  spare  her  ever}'  exertion." 

Clara  feebly  traced  her  name. 

"Must  this  be  signed  by  Heloise  also?"  asked 
Caroline.      "  Is  that  requisite  ?  " 

"Certainly,"  responded  Mrs.  Vernon,  crisply,  "if 
she  wants  help  from  the  Society.  Now,  I  will  leave 
the  paper  for  her.  When  she  comes  in,  you  and  she 
make  out  a  list  of  essentials, — wearing  apparel,  and 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4545 


things  you  are  in  absolute  need  of, — only  absolute 
necessaries,  of  course, — and  let  Heloise  bring  the  list 
with  the  paper  to  the  rooms  of  the  Society  to-mor- 
row." 

With  this  understanding  the  ladies  went  away. 

In  going  so  frequently  to  the  Philharmonic,  Heloise 
had  not  been  actuated  solely  by  the  love  of  music. 
There  was  a  Mr.  Augustus  Holmes,  whom  she  had 
met,  and  who  had  recently  become  "attentive,"  whose 
attentions  had  so  far  progressed  as  to  be  "Gus"  to 
Heloise,  and  her  escort,  not  only  to  the  Music  Hall, 
but  to  many  other  places  of  amusement. 

These  pleasurings  cost  the  girl  nothing,  and  Miss 
Rowan  erred  in  assuming  that  they  were — in  the  way 
of  money,  at  least — expensive. 

It  had  occurred  to  Caroline  to  tell  the  "prying  old 
maid"  something  of  these  economical  facts,  to  have 
one  small  triumph,  and  to  say,  "  That  shows  how  you 
misjudge, "  but  a  certain  intuition  withheld  her  tongue, 
or  perhaps  she  might  have  been  questioned  as  to  Mr. 
Holmes's  "antecedents,"  and  as  to  whether  he  was 
"  a  fit  associate." 

The  acquaintance  was  not  of  long  standing.  In 
fact,  it  was  only  the  previous  week  that  Mr.  Holmes 
had  been  brought  to  the  flat  and  duly  presented. 

"This  is  my  particular  friend,  mother,"  said  Helo- 
ise, making  the  presentation.  Caroline  shook  hands 
graciously,  and  with  much  emphasis  hoped  that  her 
visitor  would  not  be  "too  particular  to  be  seated." 

This  passed,  of  course,  for  a  sally  of  wit,  and 
"Gus"  laughed  heartily  and  at  other  sallies,  till  in 
the  course  of  that  one  afternoon  they  all  got  to  be  on 
excellent  terms. 

When  he  had  gone,  Caroline  fell  to  discussing  him  : 
"  So  fine  looking  ;  so  agreeable  ;  evidently  has  money. 
Where  on  earth  did  you  pick  him  up.  Birdie?" 

And  when  Heloise  (or  Birdie)  blushed  and  was 
loth  to  tell,  Caroline  remonstrated  that  she  ought  to 
tell.  "You  ought  to  tell  your  mother  everything.  A 
mother  is  always  a  girl's  best  friend  and  adviser." 

Holmes  came  home  with  Heloise  that  evening  and 
stayed  so  late  that  the  preparation  of  the  list  of  neces- 
saries was  deferred  till  next  day. 

I  am  strongly  tempted  to  give  this  list  entire;  but 
perhaps  realism  (in  this  instance,  exact  truth)  may  go 
too  far;  let  it  suffice  that  among  the  things  regarded 
by  Mrs.  McLane  as  "essential"  were  "one  dozen 
cans   corn,  ditto  tomatoes,  and   a  soapstone  griddle." 

All  the  items,  which  were  exceedingly  voluminous, 
were  written  upon  the  finest  of  linen  paper,  a  relic  of 
former  "  style,"  both  paper  and  envelope  adorned  with 
what  passed  for  the  McLane  arms,  for  crest  a  clay- 
more rampant,  and  for  motto,  "So  we  fought, — all  or 
naught," 


Modesty,  or  some  other  reason,  restrained  Heloise 
from  delivering  this  in  person  ;  Clara  was  still  indis- 
posed, so  a  district  messenger  boy  was  sent,  charged 
to  bring  an  answer,  and  with  instructions  to  "collect." 

At  the  rooms  of  the  Society  all  this  created  some- 
thing of  a  sensation  ;  but  charity,  as  we  know,  suffer- 
eth  long,  so  in  due  course  a  bountiful  supply  of  real 
essentials  was  sent  to  the  flat,  which  however  did  not 
include  the  soapstone  griddle. 

Accompanying  the  goods  was  the  following  letter  : 

"  Office  of  St.  Ann's  Aid  Society, 

"  No.  —  Oddth  Street,  March  20,  189-. 
"  Mrs.  C.  McLane  : 

"Madam — With  some  difficulty  places  have  been  obtained 
for  your  two  girls  with  Messrs.  Cheviot  and  Dellane,  No. —  Blank 
Avenue  ;  for  the  elder  as  saleswoman  in  the  hosiery  department, — 
wages,  —  dollars  ;  for  the  younger  in  the  laundry  at  —  dollars. 
The  work  in  the  laundry  will  be  light,  and  will  not  overtask  her 
strength.  The  girls  should  apply  at  the  side  entrance  on  Oddth 
Street  at  seven  to-morrow.     Yours,  etc.,         Janet  Veknon." 

When  Caroline  received  the  abundant  but  frugal 
store  she  was  indignant,  but  this  letter  made  her  a 
ravening  woman.  That  evening  Mr.  Dronloth,  not 
fully  informed  as  to  what  had  taken  place,  came  again 
to  "The  Biddle." 

He  found  Caroline  alone  and  in  tears. 

"  Read  it,"  she  said,  hysterically;  "I  only  ask  you 
to  read  it,"  and  thrust  Mrs.  Vernon's  letter  into  his 
hands.  She  watched  him  narrowly,  and  when  he  had 
finished  the  perusal  again  burst  forth  :  "  Now,  do  you 
wonder  that  you  find  me  weeping?  Observe  how  she 
speaks  of  wages  and  alludes  to  my  daughters  as  if  they 
were  common  servants  applying  for  situations.  It  is 
enough,  quite  enough,  to  make  me  weep.  It  is  hard 
to  be  reduced  through  force  of  circumstances  to  the 
necessity  of  seeking  assistance,  but  to  be  gratuitously 
insulted  is  more  than  a  mother  can  bear." 

Mr.  Dronloth  felt  called  upon  to  disclaim  some- 
what strenuously  for  Mrs.  Vernon  any  intentional  in- 
sult;  but  his  disclaimer, — or  want  of  sympathy,  as 
Caroline  felt  it  to  be, — only  served  to  make  matters 
worse. 

"Oh!  did  1  ever  expect  to  be  reduced  to  this?" 
she  exclaimed,  frantically.  "Oh!  what  shall  I  do  ? 
Hounded  here,  hounded  there." 

"Have  they  gone?"  inquired  the  rector,  in  some 
perplexity. 

"  Gone  !  "  exclaimed  Caroline,  "  my  daughters  ?  I 
wonder  you  ask  the  question.  No  indeed  ;  sooner 
than  have  that  happen  I'd  work  my  fingers  to  the 
bone." 

"  But  what  are  they  to  do  ?  " 

"Anything.  They  are  willing  to  do  anything.  I 
mean,  of  course,  anything  in  reason.  It  was  expressly 
Stipulated  that  nothing  degrading  should  be  offered, 


4546 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


and  I  must  say,  in  suggesting  positions  as  shop-girls, 
Mrs.  Vernon  violated  her  pledged  word." 

"  Have  you  anything  else  in  prospect  ?  " 

"Heloise,"  responded  Caroline,  loftily,  "has  re- 
cently expressed  an  intense  longing  to  fit  herself  for 
the  stage." 

"  That  is  a  life  full  of  peril,"  said  Dronloth. 

"Yes,  I  know  some  are  prejudiced, — unduly  so,  I 
think.  But  Heloise  has  been  too  well  brought  up  for 
me  to  have  any  fears  on  her  account." 

"And  what  are  her  qualifications?  Has  she  any 
aptitude  for  the  profession  of  a  dramatist?" 

"Oh  !  "  replied  Caroline,  airily,  "that  remains  to 
be  seen.  It  is  never  well  to  be  too  sanguine  ;  though, 
for  my  part,  I  haven't  the  least  doubt  of  it  in  the  world. 
Why,  Mr.  Dronloth,  she  recites  beautifully.  You 
ought  to  hear  her  recite  ;  and  then,  she  has  such  an 
exquisite  figure.  Oh  !  I  am  sure  all  that  she  needs  is 
the  chance." 

* 

*  * 

Poor  Heloise.  She  had  the  chance.  Five  years 
afterwards,  one  bitter  winter's  night,  she  lay  dying 
alone  and  friendless  in  the  city  hospital.  They  told 
her  she  could  not  live,  and  asked  if  she  had  friends 
she  wished  sent  for.  No,  she  said,  she  had  no  friends. 
Would  she  have  a  clergyman  ?  At  first  she  said  "  No  " 
also  to  that ;  but  at  last  said  she  wished  to  see  Mr. 
Dronloth.  He  came,  and  his  wife,  once  Miss  Laura 
Bradford,  when  she  heard  who  it  was,  came  with  him. 

All  that  could  be  done  they  did  for  her  ;  but  for 
comforts  of  this  world  few  days  were  left. 

That  night  the  good  man  gave  her  such  absolution 
and  remission  of  her  sins  as  were  his  to  give,  praying 
fervently  beside  her  bed,  and  then  leaving  her,  wet- 
eyed,  alone  with  his  wife. 

The  fondest  breast  on  which  the  parting  soul  re- 
clines is  always  a  woman's.  Tender-hearted  Laura 
would  have  spared  the  woman's  recital  of  her  story  ; 
but  Heloise, — in  broken  words,  and  sometimes  with 
long  pauses, — told  it  all. 

"I  thought  I  was  married.  For  more  than  three 
years  I  called  myself  Mrs.  Holmes.  Ah,  you  remem- 
ber the  name, — Mrs.  Augustus  Holmes.  I  was  so 
young  when  I  met  him  first.  He  was  managing  the 
Melpomene  Theatre.  Mother  let  me  go  out  so  much 
alone.  I  was  good  then.  I  never  thought  to  be  any- 
thing else,  God  knows.  Mother  took  to  the  man  from 
the  start.  He  was  very  kind,  and  that  was  a  time, 
you  know,  when  there  were  few  enough  to  be  kind. 
He  used  to  take  me  out  places — theatres,  suppers, 
and  then  balls.  He  was  a  great  deal  older  than  I, 
and  mother  always  said  there  was  no  harm,  going  as 
I  did, — that  I  could  never  be  young  but  once,  and 
Holmes  was  old  enough  to  be  my  father.     God  pity 


the  girl  who  goes  with  a  man  old  enough  to  be  her 
father.  He  found  out  how  poor  we  were  and  how 
proud  mother  was.  Poor  mother  ;  she  was  always  so 
proud.  Then  you  offered  us  places  in  the  store,  and 
mother  cried  and  took  on  and  said  it  was  degrading, 
and  all  that.  Holmes  had  heard  me  recite  and  sing, 
— I  had  a  very  fair  voice  then  ;  mother  told  him  I 
wanted  to  go  on  the  stage,  and  begged  him  to  get  me 
on.  After  a  while  he  did.  At  first  it  was  in  the  chorus. 
But  what  I  wanted  was  parts.  Then  he  offered  to  pay 
for  my  training.  Mother  accepted  for  me.  What 
harm  was  there  ?  she  said.  I  could  pay  him  back 
some  time. 

"By  spring,  the  woman  said,  I  should  do  well 
enough.  Holmes  said  so,  too.  But  the  company  was 
going  '  on  the  road,'  as  they  call  it. 

"  Oh  !  after  that  I  had  a  gay  time,  plenty  of  money, 
lots  of  fun,  and  chances  to  act  the  parts  I  liked.  I 
thought  I  was  married  ;  I  did  ;  I  did  truly.  Holmes 
promised  sacredly.  He  said  it  was  a  marriage, — that 
a  ring  and  a  promise  made  a  marriage,  wliat  they  call 
a  common-law  marriage. 

"What  a  fool  I  was!  Girls  brought  up  like  me  are 
always  fools.  In  a  year  I  found  out  how  he  had  lied 
to  me, — the  scoundrel, — I  found  out  he  had  a  wife 
already.  I  could  have  killed  him,  and  I  believe  I  did 
try.  But, — ah,  that  was  my  sin.  Holmes  swore  he 
never  loved  the  other  woman,  and  that  he  did  love  me. 
He  begged  and  pleaded,  and  at  last  I  gave  in. 

"I  did  it  for  mother,  more,  oh  !  a  thousand  times 
more  than  for  myself.  Why,  1  had  sent  her  regu- 
larly a  hundred  dollars  a  month.  Was  I  to  stop  that? 
What  else  could  I  do  ?  Yes,  I  can  honestl}'  say  I  did 
it  for  mother. 

"We  were  out  West  when  mother  sent  me  a  tele- 
gram that  she  was  very  ill  and  could  not  live.  I 
showed  the  dispatch  to  Holmes.  He  was  good-hearted 
enough  when  he  was  himself  ;  but  he  had  taken  to 
drink.  He  said  I  shouldn't  go.  I  told  him  I  would 
go,  and  then  he  said, — the  cur, — that  if  I  went  and 
left  the  company  in  the  lurch,  with  no  one  to  play 
Mignonne,  he  would  tell  every  one  how  it  was  be- 
tween us. 

"Well,  I  packed  up  and  took  the  next  train  east. 
Oh!  mother  wasn't  dying.  It  was  only  one  of  her  old 
turns.  When  I  got  to  New  York  she  was  all  right, — 
up  and  about  as  usual. 

"  Of  course,  I  didn't  tell  her  all, — only  that  Holmes 
had  acted  like  a  brute.  She  said  I  must  go  back  at 
once.  But — oh  !  that  man.  He  had  been  as  bad  as 
his  word.  I  found  that  out.  It  almost  killed  me. 
But  what  was  I  to  do  ?  I  stayed,  mother  harping  con- 
tinually about  my  going  back  to — my  husband. 

"One  day  mother  said  to  me:  'Heloise,  you 
haven't  given  me  my  allowance  for  this  month.' 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4547 


"Then  she  went  on  to  tell  me  that  she  couldn't 
possibly  get  along  with  only  a  hundred  ;  that  she  owed 
then  for  the  rent,  and  this,  that,  and  the  other — bills 
here  and  there  and  everywhere. 

"  'Tell  me  just  how  much  you  owe,  mother,"  said 
I,  my  heart  almost  broken. 

"  She  got  paper  and  pencil  and  summed  it  up,  item 
by  item,  talking  all  the  time,  telling  what  she  intended 
to  do  in  the  summer,  and  complaining  how  the  trades- 
men had  overcharged  her. 

"  It  came  to  over  five  hundred  dollars.  I  knew  to 
a  cent  what  I  had  left  in  my  purse, — a  little  over  sixty 
dollars.  There  was  one  fifty-dollar  bill.  I  gave  her 
that,  but  she  wasn't  pleased. 

"  'The  landlord  wants  his  money  for  the  rent,'  she 
said.  'He  is  coming  for  it  this  afternoon.  I  promised 
he  should  have  it,  and  it  would  mortify  me  to  death 
not  to  keep  my  word.' 

"I  made  an  excuse,  and  got  away  by  myself  to 
think.  What  was  I  to  do  ?  I  couldn't — oh  !  I  couldn't 
try  for  a  place  on  the  boards  again.  I  suppose  I  in- 
herited that  kind  of  pride.  Well,  I  was  too  proud. 
Every  one  in  the  profession  knew  how  it  was  by  this 
time,  and  I  had  alwaj-s  held  my  head  so  high.  I  went 
into  the  park  and  sat  down.  But  I  couldn't  think.  I 
couldn't  fiit  still.  I  got  up  and  walked  about, — as 
poor  mother  used  to  say, — distracted.  I  suppose  I 
must  have  acted  queer,  for  I  heard  some  one  ask  me 
what  was  the  matter.  I  turned  round.  It  was  a  man 
I  had  known  before  I  went  on  the  stage, — when  I  used 
to  go  out  with  Holmes. 

"Oh!  God  pity  me;  what's  the  use  of  telling  it 
all  ?  He  was  rich  and  generous.  I  paid  mother's  debts 
and  made  her  comfortable.  She  never  knew  to  her 
dying  day.      Thank  God  for  that. 

"I  had  to  lie  about  Holmes.  I  told  mother  we 
had  separated,  and  that  I  had  an  allowance. 

"Mother  was  always  a  great  hand  to  talk  about 
family  and  good  breeding  and  such  things.  I  hated 
to  hear  her  tell  how  respectable  we  had  alwaj's  been. 
But  what  could  I  do  ?  I  had  to  listen.  She  never 
used  to  be  great  for  going  to  church,  but  now  she  took 
to  going,  and  tried  to  get  me  to  go  with  her.  I  never 
would.  I  didn't  dare  to.  To  that  man  I  used  to  pre- 
tend that  I  didn't  believe  in  religion,  or  a  God,  or  a 
hereafter.  Oh  !  it  was  all  a  pretence.  I  did  believe. 
I  do  believe,  not  much  in  churches,  but  in  a  good  God 
somewhere  and  in  a  pitying  Jesus.  Am  I  penitent  ? 
I  hardly  know  whether  I  am  that  or  not.  No,  per- 
haps not  exactly  penitent.  If  I  had  it  to  do  over 
again  I  suppose  it  would  be  the  same  way.  I  didn't 
do  it  for  myself.  I  did  it  for  mother.  I  don't  sup- 
pose you  call  that  being  penitent ;  but  I  can  say  truth- 
fully, I  am  sorry,  I  am  so  sorry  for  it  all." 


EZEKIEL. 

BY   PROF.    C.    H.   CORNILL. 

EzEKiEL  was  the  son  of  a  priest  of  the  temple  of 
Jerusalem,  and  had  been  carried  off  to  Babylon  with 
the  first  captives,  under  Jehoiakim,  in  the  j-ear  597. 
Five  years  later,  592,  he  appeared  as  prophet.  His 
work  lasted  for  twenty-two  years,  but  we  know  nothing 
of  its  details.  He  was  at  first  a  mere  herald  of  the  judg- 
ment ■;  the  approaching  complete  destruction  of  Jeru- 
salem was  his  only  theme.  But  his  companions  in 
misery  refused  to  listen  to  him.  National  fanaticism, 
blind  confidence  in  God,  who  in  the  end  must  perforce 
aid  both  His  people  and  His  temple,  had  seized  pos- 
session of  their  hearts.  Derided  and  maligned,  the 
prophet  was  forced  to  be  silent,  till  the  fulfilment  of 
his  threat  by  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  loosed  the 
seal  from  his  mouth  and  from  the  ears  and  hearts  of 
his  people. 

The  Book  of  Ezekiel  is  the  most  voluminous  of  all 
the  prophetic  literature,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  give  in  a 
few  brief  strokes  a  sketch  of  the  man  and  of  his  impor- 
tance, but  I  will  try  to  emphasise  at  least  the  chief 
points. 

Personality  is  the  characteristic  of  Ezekiel.  Eze- 
kiel was  a  man  of  a  thoroughly  practical  nature  with  a 
wonderfully  sharp  perception  of  the  problems  and  needs 
of  his  age  ;  he  understood  how  to  read  the  signs  of  the 
times  and  to  deduce  the  right  lessons  from  them.  In 
this  respect  he  bears  a  most  wonderful  resemblance  to 
Isaiah,  with  whom  he  has  also  a  marked  relationship 
of  character.  The  kej'-note  in  the  character  of  both  is 
the  immeasurable  distance  between  God  and  man. 
In  the  image  of  God  the  predominant  and  decisive 
feature  is  His  sanctity  and  majesty.  His  absolutely 
supramundane  elevation  in  ethical  and  metaphysical 
matters,  the  consequence  being  that  humility  is  the 
cardinal  virtue  of  man.  When  confronting  his  God, 
Ezekiel  feels  himself  to  be  only  the  "son  of  man." 
When  thought  worth}'  of  a  divine  revelation,  he  falls 
on  his  face  to  the  ground,  and  it  is  God  who  raises 
him  up  and  sets  him  on  his  feet.  He  has,  in  common 
with  Isaiah,  the  same  terrible  moral  earnestness,  a 
certain  vein  of  severity  and  harshness,  which  does  not 
suffer  the  tenderer  tones  of  the  heart  to  come  into  full 
play. 

One  of  the  most  learned  theologians  of  the  present 
day  has  compared  this  prophet  to  Gregory  VII.  and 
Calvin,  in  both  of  whom  personal  amiability  and  sym- 
pathy are  wanting,  but  who  excite  our  unbounded  ad- 
miration as  men  and  characters  by  the  iron  consistency 
of  their  thought  and  the  hard  energy  of  their  actions. 
There  is  much  that  is  true  and  befitting  in  this  com- 
parison. Ezekiel — if  I  maj'  be  allowed  the  expres- 
sion— is  pre-eminentl}'  churchman  and  organiser  ;  as 
such,  the  greatest  that   Israel  ever  had.      He  has  left, 


4548 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


in  this  respect,  the  imprint  of  his  mind  on  all  future 
ages,  and  marked  out  for  them  the  way  of  develop- 
ment. 

As  Isaiah  transformed  into  practice  the  ideas  of 
Amos  and  Hosea,  so  Ezekiel  is  thoroughly  dependent 
on  his  great  predecessor  Jeremiah.  He  drew  the  con- 
clusions from  the  religious  subjectivism  and  individ- 
ualism of  Jeremiah,  and  bestowed  upon  them  the  cor- 
rective which  they  urgently  needed. 

I  will  now  endeavor  to  group  together  and  to  char- 
acterise the  principal  thoughts  of  Ezekiel  in  their  most 
important  aspects.  The  first  thing  Ezekiel  is  called 
upon  to  do  is  to  vindicate  God,  even  as  against  his 
most  pious  contemporaries. 

"The  way  of  the  Lord  is  the  wrong  way,"  was  a 
remark  that  Ezekiel  must  have  repeatedly  heard.  And 
such  views  were  not  urged  without  a  certain  amount 
of  justification.  Were  the  people  and-  the  period  just 
previous  to  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  so  especially 
wicked  and  godless?  Had  not  King  Josiah  done 
everything  to  fulfil  the  demands  of  God?  Yet  this 
righteous  king  was  made  to  suffer  a  horrible  death, 
and  misfortune  on  misfortune  was  heaped  upon  Judah. 
The  proverb  arose:  "Our  fathers  have  eaten  sour 
grapes,  and  the  children's  teeth  are  set  on  edge." 
This  conception  appears  in  a  still  more  drastic  form  in 
a  remarkable  passage  of  the  Book  of  Jeremiah,  where 
the  answer  is  hurled  at  the  head  of  the  prophet,  who 
is  warning  and  exhorting  his  people:  "When  our 
fathers  worshipped  Baal  and  the  stars,  things  went 
well  with  us,  but  since  Josiah  served  the  Lord  only, 
things  have  gone  ill."  In  opposition  to  such  views, 
Ezekiel  had  now  to  bring  forward  proof  that  the  judg- 
ment was  deserved  and  unavoidable. 

To  this  end,  he  passes  in  review  the  entire  past 
of  the  people,  and  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  it  had 
been  one  long  chain  of  direst  ingratitude  and  shocking 
sin.  Jerusalem  is  much  worse  than  Samaria,  has  acted 
more  sinfully  than  the  Gentiles;  even  Sodom  is  justi- 
fied by  the  iniquity  of  Jerusalem.  Jerusalem  is  as  a 
rusty  pot,  whose  filthiness  cannot  be  removed  by  being 
burnt  out,  but  which  must  be  thrown  into  the  furnace, 
so  that  its  metal  may  be  purged  and  rendered  fit  for 
a  new  cast. 

This  appears  heartless  and  is  at  times  stated  by 
Ezekiel  with  offensive  harshness.  But  to  break  up 
the  new  land  required  by  Hosea  and  Jeremiah,  the 
thorns  and  weeds  must  first  be  pitilessly  dug  out,  and 
tlie  earth  upturned  to  its  very  depths  by  the  plough- 
shares. Nothing  else  is  Ezekiel's  intention.  By  this 
painful  process  the  ground  is  simjily  to  be  loosened 
for  the  new  seed,  for  God  takes  no  pleasure  in  the 
death  of  a  sinner,  but  wishes  rather  that  he  be  con- 
verted and  live.  And  this  conversion  is  quite  pos- 
sible ;  for   the  relation  of   God   to  man   adjusts  itself 


according  to  the  relation  of  man  to  God.  Now,  here 
is  the  point  where  Ezekiel's  creative  genius  is  dis- 
played. If  religious  personality  he  the  true  subject  of 
religion,  the  inestimable  value  of  every  individual  hu- 
man soul  follows  directly  from  this  fact.  Here  it  is 
that  the  lever  must  be  applied,  and  in  Ezekiel  thus 
prophecy  is  transformed  into  the  pastoral  care  of  souls. 

The  idea  of  pastoral  care,  and  the  recognition  of  it 
as  a  duty,  is  first  found  in  Ezekiel.  Even  the  Messiah 
does  not  appear  to  him  in  the  pomp  of  a  royal  ruler, 
but  as  the  good  shepherd,  who  seeks  him  that  is  lost, 
goes  after  him  that  has  strayed,  binds  up  the  wounded,- 
and  visits  the  sick  and  afflicted.  Ezekiel  considers 
this  pastoral  and  educating  office  to  be  his  vocation  as 
prophet,  and  has  conceived  it  with  the  sacred  earnest- 
ness peculiar  to  himself :  he  feels  himself  to  be  per- 
sonally responsible  for  the  soul  of  every  one  of  his 
fellow-countrymen  :  "If  the  wicked  man  sin,  and  thou 
givest  him  not  warning,  to  save  his  life,  the  same 
wicked  man  shall  die  in  his  iniquity;  but  his  blood  will 
I  require  at  thy  hand.  Yet  if  thou  warn  the  wicked, 
and  he  turn  not  from  his  wickedness,  nor  from  his 
wicked  way,  he  shall  die  in  his  iniquity;  but  thou  hast 
delivered  thy  soul."  With  these  words  God  makes 
Ezekiel  a  prophet,  or,  as  he  has  vividly  expressed  it, 
a  "watchman  over  the  house  of  Israel." 

Such  was  the  practical  conclusion  which  Ezekiel 
drew  from  Jeremiah's  religious  conceptions,  and  by 
which  he  introduced  into  the  religio-historical  devel- 
opment of  the  world  an  entirely  new  force  of  imperish- 
able importance  and  of  incalculable  consequences. 

I  spoke  above,  however,  of  a  complement,  of  a 
corrective  of  the  work  of  Jeremiah  by  Ezekiel,  and 
this  brings  us  to  the  point  by  which  Ezekiel  exercised 
a  determinative  influence  on  the  succeeding  period. 
Jeremiah  with  his  religious  subjectivism  and  individ- 
ualism had  spoken  the  final  and  conclusive  word  on 
the  relation  of  the  individual  to  God.  But  beyond  in- 
dividualism Jeremiah  did  not  go.  The  conception  of 
fellowship  was  altogether  wanting  in  his  views.  He 
did  not  notice  that  great  things  on  earth  are  only  pro- 
duced by  union.  Ezekiel,  on  the  other  hand,  regarded 
it  as  the  aim  and  task  of  his  prophetic  and  pastoral 
mission  to  educate  individuals  not  only  to  be  religious, 
but  also  to  be  members  of  a  community,  which  as  such 
could  not  be  subjectively  determined  only,  but  also 
needed  definite  objective  rules  and  principles.  The 
problem  was,  to  preserve  Israel  in  Babylon,  to  prevent 
the  nation  from  being  absorbed  by  the  Gentiles.  To 
this  end  Ezekiel  insists  that  his  people  shall  absolutely 
eschew  the  worship  of  the  idols  of  their  conqueror. 
He  also  discovers  a  means  of  directly  worshipping 
God.  Temple  and  sacrifices  were  wanting  in  the 
strange  land,  but  they  had  the  Sabbath,  which  apper- 
tained   tp   no   particular  place   nor  land,  which   they 


XHE    OPEN     COURT". 


4549 


could  observe  in  Babylon  just  as  well  and  in  the  same 
way  as  in  Palestine.  And  so  Ezekiel  made  the  Sab- 
bath the  fundamental  institution  of  Judaism,  or,  as  he 
himself  expresses  it,  "a  sign  between  God  and  Israel, 
b}'  which  they  shall  know  that  it  is  God  who  sanctifies 
them."  On  every  seventh  day  Israel  shall  feel  itself 
to  be  the  holy  people  of  God. 

Also  in  its  mode  of  life  Israel  must  prove  itself  a 
pure  and  holy  people.  Ezekiel  warns  his  people 
against  the  sins  of  unchastity  with  greater  emphasis 
than  any  of  his  predecessors.  If  the  sanctification  of 
wedded  life  and  the  purity  of  the  famil}-  has  ranked  at 
all  times  as  the  costliest  ornament  and  noblest  treasure 
of  the  Jewish  race,  it  is  a  possession,  in  which  we  cannot 
fail  to  recognise,  more  than  any  other,  the  seal  which 
Ezekiel  lastingly  imprinted  upon  it.  And  moreover, 
Ezekiel  urges  and  inculcates  afresh  the  necessity  of 
love  towards  brethren  and  neighbors.  Every  Israelite 
shall  recognise  in  everj'  other  a  brother  and  treat  him 
with  brotherly  love,  that  the  little  band  of  dispersed 
and  scattered  exiles  may  be  lield  together  in  ideal 
unity  by  this  spiritual  bond.  If  Ezekiel  could  only 
succeed  in  making  of  ever}'  individual  a  sanctified  per- 
sonality, who  at  the  same  time  felt  himself  to  be  the 
member  of  a  community  and  was  steeped  with  the 
conviction  that  he  could  find  true  salvation  only  in 
this  community,  then  would  there  be  some  hope  of 
obtaining  citizens  worthy  of  the  Kingdom  of  God, 
which  was  sure  to  come. 

Ezekiel  has  given  us  a  description  of  this  future 
Kingdom  of  God,  which  ranks  among  the  most  remark- 
able portions  of  his  book.  It  is  the  famous  vision  of 
the  new  Jerusalem,  which  forms  the  conclusion  of  the 
Book  of  Ezekiel.  Here  he  essentially  follows  Deute- 
ronom}'.  The  service  and  worship  of  God  are  marked 
out  most  exactly,  and  the  temple  becomes,  not  only 
spiritually,  but  also  materiall}',  the  centre  of  the  whole 
nation  and  its  life.  The  priests  and  Levites  receive  a 
definite  portion  of  land  as  the  material  foundation  of 
their  existence. 

Most  noteworthy  of  all,  however,  is  the  future  pic- 
ture of  the  State  in  the  vision  of  Ezekiel.  In  earlier 
speeches  Ezekiel  had  expressed  the  hope  that  the  fu- 
ture king  would  come  of  the  house  of  David,  though 
the  king  he  pictures  exhibits  quite  peculiar  ecclesias- 
tical characteristics.  Now,  however,  there  is  no  fur- 
ther mention  of  a  king  ;  he  is  merely  called  the  prince. 
And  what  is  his  position?  In  the  new  Jerusalem  crime 
is  unknown,  as  God  bestows  on  all  a  new  heart  and  a 
new  mind,  and  turns  them  into  a  people  who  walk  in 
the  way  of  his  commandments,  observe  his  laws,  and 
act  accordingly.  The  administration  of  justice,  then, 
is  no  longer  needed,  and  so  one  of  the  most  important 
moral  functions  of  the  government  dispensed  with. 
Should,   however,    a  crime   or   transgression   actually 


occur,  it  must  be  atoned  for  by  an  ecclesiastical  pen- 
ance. Nor  has  the  State  need  to  provide  for  the  ex- 
ternal welfare  of  th.e  people,  for  God  gives  all  things 
bounteously  now  and  no  one  is  in  want.  Neither  are 
measures  for  the  external  security  of  the  country  re- 
quired, for  this  is  a  kingdom  of  everlasting  peace, 
where  war  is  no  longer  possible.  Should  a  heathen 
nation  dare  to  disturb  this  peace  and  stretch  forth  its 
hand  against  the  Kingdom  of  God,  God  himself  will 
interfere  and  in  the  fire  of  His  wrath  destroy  the  offen- 
der, so  that  Israel  will  only  need  to  bury  the  corpses, 
and  to  burn  with  fire  the  weapons  of  the  enemy,  as 
described  by  Ezekiel  in  his  wondrous  vision  of  Gog, 
chief  of  the  land  of  Magog. 

In  such  conditions  no  function  is  left  for  the  prince 
but  that  of  representative  of  his  people,  and  patron  of 
the  church.  He  has  to  look  after  the  temple,  and  sup- 
ply the  materials  of  worship,  for  which  purpose  he  can 
only  collect  from  the  people  gifts  of  such  things  as  are 
needful  for  the  sacrifice  :  sheep,  goats,  bullocks,  oxen, 
corn,  wine,  oil.  All  taxes  are  exclusivelj'  church  taxes. 
The  prince  receives,  so  as  not  to  oppress  his  people, 
nor  exact  unlawful  tribute  from  them,  a  rich  demesne 
of  land,  which  he  tills  like  ever}' other  Israelite.  Also 
each  individual  tribe  receives  its  determinate  portion 
of  the  sacred  land. 

We  have  here  for  the  first  time  in  perfect  distinct- 
ness the  conception  of  a  Kingdom  of  God,  or,  as  we 
might  also  say,  of  an  ecclesiastical  State.  The  State 
is  completely  absorbed  in  the  Church.  Such  is  Eze- 
kiel's  new  Jerusalem,  and  its  name  is  "  Here  is  God." 

These  ideas  were  feasible  as  long  as  the  Baby- 
lonians, the  Persians,  and  the  Greeks  deprived  the 
Jews  of  all  secular  and  governmental  functions  and 
discharged  them  themselves.  Theocracy  as  a  fact,  for 
such  we  are  wont  to  call  this  conception  after  a  word 
coined  by  Josephus, — theocracy  as  a  fact,  realised  in 
this  world,  needed  as  its  complement  and  as  its  pre- 
supposition the  conquest  and  government  of  the  Jews 
by  a  foreign  power.  So  soon,  however,  as  Judah  was 
enabled  and  obliged  to  form  a  national  and  political 
State,  this  contradiction  asserted  itself,  and  the  tragical 
conflict  arose  which  five  hundred  years  later  brought 
about  the  destruction  of  the  State  of  the  Maccabees. 


CORRESPONDENCE. 

"SARAH  GRAND'S  ETHICS." 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Open  Court  : 

Mr.  Salter  has  favored  me  with  a  brief  reply  to  my  article  on 
"Sarah  Grand's  Ethics,"  but  I  cannot  see  in  what  way  he  has 
thereby  improved  his  position.  He  takes  me  to  task  for  a  suppo- 
sition which  I  do  not  entertain.  I  do  not  e.xpect  an  innocent 
young  girl  of  nineteen  to  have  her  suspicions  about  a  man  of 
thirty-eight,  nor  do  I  think  that  English  gentlemen  as  a  rule  take 
such  suspicions  for  granted.     My  contention  was  that  Evadne,  as 


y 


t>^ 


4550 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


she  is  described,  is  a  ridiculous  and  impossible  person.  She  is 
said  to  be  well  versed  in  anatomy,  pithology,  prophylactics,  and 
therapeutics;  to  be  not  only  familiar  with  7',>/ii  y<'»f.fand  RoJeriJ: 
Random,  but  also  to  be  capable  of  making  philosophical  reflexions 
on  "young  men  steeped  in  vije,"  the  danger  to  the  community 
involved  in  their  marriage,  "  the  self  interest  and  injustice  of  men, 
and  the  fatal  ignorance  and  slavish  apathy  of  women."  In  her 
opinions  she  boasts  a  perfect  independence,  and  she  makes  her 
relatives  feel  it ;  and  if,  after  all  this  parade  of  grace,  wisdom,  and 
understanding,  she  succumbs  to  "a  heavy  moustache,"  it  is  clear 
that  either  her  learning  or  her  morality  is  a  sham.  Though  she 
may  receive  our  sympathy,  I  do  not  see  how  she  can  compel  it. 

Mr.  Salter  declared  that  her  situation  was  "a  problem  in 
ethics,"  and  if  his  article  was  not  designed  to  approve  her  solution 
as  admirable,  there  is  some  difficulty  in  seizing  its  exact  purpose. 
He  described  the  theme  of  The  Heavenly  Tioins,  and  found  "its 
treatment  of  this  theme  brave,  strong,  and  in  a  high  sense  wo 
manly."  If  he  now  considers  that  the  only  noble  element  in 
Evadne's  attitude  was  the  act  of  rebellion,  I  take  to  myself  some 
credit  for  having  assisted  him  to  this  conclusion  ;  because,  as  I 
think,  he  cannot  logically  rest  in  it,  but  must  be  driven  on  to 
another  of  a  still  less  sentimental  character  and  more  in  harmony 
with  the  facts.  Tbe  solution  of  a  moral  problem  is  not  reached 
by  an  act  of  rebellion.  That  is  only  the  statement  of  the  problem. 
The  solution  which  Evadne  provides  shows  us  that  she  is  immoral 
in  the  wide  sense  of  the  word  ;  for  si  e  i"  mean  and  cruel.  She 
takes  all  she  can  get  in  the  way  of  respect,  kindness,  and  atten- 
tion, and  in  return  ruins  the  man  who  gives  her  what  she  wants. 
How  is  this  conduct  to  be  called  brave,  strong,  and  womanly? 

Mr.  Salter  remarks  that  he  knows  nothing  of  Sarah  Grands 
personality,  or  of  her  other  writings,  but  I  must  beg  leave  to  ob- 
serve that  he  has  transferred  his  eulogy  of  Evadne's  character  to 
the  character  of  her  creator,  whose  exaggerations  he  pardons  on 
the  score  of  her  alleged  youth,  and  that  he  has  mentioned  an  ar- 
ticle by  Sarah  Grand  in  The  jXoi-th  American  Rei'iew,  and  quoted 
a  passage  from  it.  I  made  my  comments  on  the  article.  With 
Sarah  Grand's  personality  I  have  nothing  to  do  ;  and  I  strongly 
deprecate  the  idea  that,  because  a  lady  has  written  a  book,  her 
personal  character  and  private  affairs  are  a  legitimate  topic  for 
discussion  ;  although,  in  truth,  from  the  number  of  interviews 
forced  upon  the  public,  such  discussion  sometimes  appears  to  be 
invited  rather  than  discouraged.  But  Sarah  Grand's  voluntary 
appearances  in  public,  whether  in  a  book  or  article,  or  in  a  system 
of  advertisement  by  interviews  or  photography,  are  fair  matter  for 
comment,  and  a  critic  is  perfectly  within  his  rights,  if  he  shows 
how  they  must  all  be  taken  into  account  in  estimating  the  moral 
effect  of  her  work.  T.  Bailey  Saunders. 


NOTES. 

The  meetings  of  the  Pan-American  Congress  of  Religion  and 
Education  will  be  held  at  Toronto,  Canada,  July  18-25.  The  out- 
line programme  of  the  Congress  comprises  a  numerous  list  of  at- 
tractive and  important  subjects.  Besides  the  addresses  and  dis- 
cussions on  the  broad  general  questions  affecting  religion  and 
civilised  progress,  there  are  three  special  sections  devoted  respec- 
tively to  the  "Young  People,"  to  "  Education,"  including  the  Re- 
ligious Parliament  Extension,  and  to  "  Philanthropy."  The  Con- 
gress will  be  welcomed  by  the  Mayor  of  Toronto  on  July  the  iSth; 
on  the  19th  President  Henry  Wade  Rogers  and  Archbishop  Ireland 
will  speak  ;  on  the  20th  Miss  Jane  Addams  and  the  Rev.  William 
Galbraith  ;  on  the  22d  the  Rev.  William  Clark  and  Bishop  M.  N. 
Gilbert ;  on  the  23d  the  Rev.  A.  Lazerus  and  Mrs.  Charles  Hen- 
rotin.  The  Hon.  C.  C.  Bonney  of  Chicago  will  preside  over  the 
department  of  Religious  Parliament  Extension,  while  Dr.  Paul 
Carus  and  other  speakers,  too  numerous  to  mention,  will  either 


lead  or  assist  in  the  general  discussions.  Reduced  railroad  fares 
can  be  obtained  to  Toronto  during  the  sessions  of  the  Congress  and 
circulars  of  general  information  may  be  procured  by  addressing 
S.  Sherin,  Secretary,  Rossin  House,  Toronto,  Canada. 


Macmillan  &  Co.  announce  from  the  University  Press  of  Co- 
lumbia College  an  Alias  of  Ferlilisation  and  Karyokinesis,  by  Prof. 
Edmund  B.  Wilson  with  the  cciJperation  of  Dr  Edward  Leaming. 
The  work  will  contain  forty  figures,  photographed  from  nature  by 
Dr.  Leaming  from  the  preparations  of  Professor  Wilson  at  an  en- 
largement of  one  thousand  diameters  and  reproduced,  without  re- 
touching or  other  alterations,  by  the  gelatine  process  by  Bierstadt 
of  New  York.  The  photographs  are  very  perfect  and  convey  a 
good  idea  of  the  actual  object.  They  illustrate  nearly  every  im- 
portant step  in  fertilisation,  from  the  first  entrance  of  the  sperma- 
tozoon onwards  to  the  cleavage-stages,  and  not  only  present  a  very 
clear  picture  of  the  more  familiar  outlines  of  the  subject,  but  em- 
body many  original  discoveries  as  well.  They  are  to  be  accom- 
panied by  an  explanatory  text,  comprising  a  general  elementary 
introduction,  a  critical  description  of  the  plates,  and  a  large  num- 
ber of  text-cuts. 

We  have  in  our  hands  the  prospectus  of  a  new  "  weekly  jour- 
nal of  general  information  and  independent  comment,"  called  The 
Observer,  the  first  number  of  which  was  to  have  appeared  in  Chi- 
cago on  June  15.  The  paper  is  to  be  edited  by  Mr.  John  J.  Flinn 
and  is  to  give  a  brief  but  .accurate  synopsis  of  the  news  of  the 
week,  with  critical  comments  upon  municipal,  social,  admistrative, 
and  political  affairs,  reviews  of  new  books,  the  drama,  amusements, 
etc.  The  place  which  'The  Observer  aims  to  fill  is  vacant  in  Chi- 
cago journalism  and  we  may  look  forward  to  its  first  numbers  with 
interest. 

Philosophical  students  will  be  glad  to  learn  of  the  following 
important  additions  which  are  about  to  be  made  to  Bohn's  Libra- 
ries :  Selecled  Essays  of  John  Stuart  Mill ;  and  Harriet  Alarli- 
neajt's  and  Coinle's  Positive  Philosophy  in  three  volumes  with  an 
Introduction  by  Frederic  Harrison. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.   HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAI^  UNION: 

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N.  B.  BindinE  Cases  for  single  yearly  volumes  of  The  Open  Court  will 
be  supplied  on  order.     Price,  75  cents  each. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  409. 

THE  WAGES  OF  FOLLY.      HunoR  Gk.none 4543 

EZEKIEL.     Prof.  C.  H.  Cornill 4547 

CORRESPONDENCE. 

"  Sarah  Grand's  Ethics."     T.  Bailey  Saunders 4549 

NOTES 4550 


H 


The  Open  Court. 


A   "WEEKLY   JOURNAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  410.     (Vol.  IX.— 27. 


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MAXIME  DU  CAMP. 


BY  G.    KOERNER. 


Francis  Xavier  Kraus  has  published  in  one  of  the 
last  numbers  of  the  Deutsche  Rundschau  (German  Re- 
view) his  recollections  of  the  distinguished  French 
author,  Maxime  Du  Camp.  They  are  written  in  a 
masterly  style.  They  do  not  propose  to  give  us  a 
biography  of  that  writer,  they  rest  upon  an  intimate 
personal  intercourse  with  him,  and  a  thorough  knowl- 
edge of  his  works.  These  recollections  are  somewhat 
in  the  nature  of  Mr.  Senior's  celebrated  conversations 
with  the  prominent  characters  of  his  time. 

The  essay  of  Prof.  Kraus  presupposes  a  general 
knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  first  French  Revolu- 
tion, the  first  Empire,  the  Bourbon  Restorations,  of 
the  July  Government  of  Louis  Philippe,  the  second 
Republic,  the  second  Empire,  and  the  third  Republic. 
It  is  principally  interesting  as  throwing  entirely  new 
light  upon  some  of  the  most  important  incidents  during 
those  periods  and  upon  some  of  the  characters  of  the 
leading  actors  in  that  perhaps  greatest  drama  in  the 
history  of  the  world. 

If  I  am  not  greatly  mistaken,  a  partial  translation 
of  the  Rundschau  article  will  not  be  quite  unwelcome 
to  the  readers  of  The  Open  Court.  I  say  "partial 
translation,"  for  to  give  the  whole  of  it  would  tran- 
scend the  bounds  within  which  articles  for  a  weekly 
publication  must  be  confined. 

"The  end  of  the  century,"  says  Prof.  Kraus,  at  the 
beginning  of  his  essay,  "shows  evidently  a  decadence 
of  belles  lettres  literature — Spain  excepted,  the  very 
remarkable  literary  movement  of  which  we  hope  to 
see  soon  presented  to  us  Germans  by  a  competent 
pen.  All  the  highly  cultured  countries  of  Europe 
manifest  this  decline,  France  not  the  least.  There  are 
no  more  Chateaubriands,  Lamartines,  Alfred  De  Mus- 
sets,  Victor  Hugos.  Both  the  Dumas,  George  Sand, 
Balsac,  and  Flaubert  are  dead.  The  Chambers  are 
devoid  of  a  Guizot,  a  Thiers,  a  Montalembert,  or  Ber- 
ryer.  No  Lacordaire,  nor  even  a  Ravignon  or  Du- 
panloup  has  ascended  the  pulpit  of  Notre  Dame. 
Prosper  Merrime,  Saint  Beuve,  and  Taine  have  found 
successors,  but  no  equals. 

"Transierunt.     And  yet  he  would  do  injustice  to 


the  France  of  1895  who  would  make  the  disappearance 
of  the  greatest  literary  stars  the  only  test  for  judging 
of  her  intellectual  life.  In  the  domain  of  the  exact 
and  experimental,  of  the  historic  and  archaeological 
and  economical  sciences,  our  Western  neighbors 
within  the  last  quarter  of  the  century  have  been  active 
in  a  most  remarkable  degree.  In  history  and  archae- 
ology France  before  1870  counted  great  and  brilliant 
names.  But  they  were  kept  down  by  the  weight  of 
surrounding  dilettantism.  There  were  but  few  learned 
philologists  and  students  of  antiquity.  Whole  branches 
of  the  sciences,  such  as  comparison  of  languages,  even 
the  philology  of  the  Romance  tongues,  drew  their 
lives  from  foreign  countries.  All  that  has  been 
changed.  France  abounds  to-day  in  a  well-trained 
staff  of  eminent  philologists,  Orientalists,  archaeolo- 
gists. The  French  schools  founded  within  the  last 
twenty  years  at  Rome  and  Athens  have  educated  a 
great  number  of  learned  men.  The  monuments  of 
Egypt,  Greece,  and  Mesopotamia  are  studied  by  su- 
perior specialists.  Diligent  investigators  of  inscrip- 
tions complete  nobly  the  work  of  German  research  in 
that  field.  The  method  of  German  history  of  art  has 
been  naturalised  in  France  by  E.  Muenz,  De  Lastene. 
Christian  archaeology  reverts,  after  the  death  of  De 
Rosse,  to  the  esteemed  Edmond  Le  Blanc,  as  its  Nes- 
tor. Theology  has  also  taken  a  higher  stand.  Since 
1789  it  had  hardly  an  existence  in  France.  The  abo- 
lition of  theological  seats  of  learning,  and  the  humili- 
ating dependency  of  the  clergy  created  by  Napoleon's 
government,  prevented  the  rise  of  a  real  theological 
science.  The  whole  French  theological  literature, 
with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  the  works  of  Carriere, 
between  1789  and  1870,  will  fall  into  deserved  obscur- 
ity. From  the  great  Bossuet  phrases  and  declama- 
tions were  borrowed,  but  of  his  genius  there  was  no 
longer  a  trace.  There  was  a  lack  of  positive  knowl- 
edge and  criticism.  Here,  also,  a  change  has  taken 
place.  In  L.  Duchesne  French  theology  possessed 
the  first  great  critical  author  since  Mabillon.  His  edi- 
tion of  the  Book  of  the  Popes  remains  a  masterly  work 
of  the  science  of  to-day.  His  researches  into  the  ori- 
gin of  Christianity  in  Gallia  means  the  final  burial  of 
numerous  fables.  The  Church  of  the  present  has  for 
such  men  neither  honors  nor  use;  so  much  the  better, 


4552 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


they  will  be  the  more  surely  preserved  for  the  priest- 
hood of  science. 

"It  is  only  a  section  of  the  vast  field  of  universal 
knowledge  which  I  can  review,  but  within  that  space 
France  presents  within  the  last  quarter  of  our  century 
a  transition  from  a  generally  prevailing  dilettante, 
declamatory,  massy,  hollow,  and  indefensible  litera- 
ture to  a  high,  meritorious,  intensive  intellectual  labor, 
founded  upon  correct  principles  and  sustained  with 
great  energy. 

"Such  a  phenomenon  cannot  fail  to  excite  a  great 
interest.  The  French  very  often  imagine  that  the 
Germans  cannot  sleep  easy  by  the  side  of  a  France 
awakened  to  an  intellectual  activit}',  with  high  aspira- 
tions and  manifestly  prospering.  Nothing  can  be  a 
greater  error.  What  is  threatening  to  us,  and  always 
will  be  so  threatening,  is  the  possibility,  which,  con- 
sidering the  emotional  Gallic  temperament,  ever  ex- 
ists, that  a  turbulent  minority  will  temporarily  seduce 
or  terrorise  the  good  sense  of  the  French  nation.  We 
have  no  fears  of  the  sound,  honestly  working  enlight- 
ened people.  Everybody  with  us,  I  believe,  thinks 
that  way,  from  the  Emperor  down  to  the  peasant.  Of 
the  Emperor  every  one  knows  it  who  wants  to  know 
it.  If  France  has  no  worse  enemy  than  him,  she 
could  disband  her  army  and  sell  her  fine  navy  to  the 
highest  bidder.  German  culture,  in  which  the  Em- 
peror shares,  is  fully  conscious  what  a  most  important 
part  France  has  had  and  still  has  in  the  intellectual 
culture  of  Europe.  Germany  knows  that  it  would  be 
almost  barbarism  to  ignore  this  element  or  to  desire 
its  extinction. 

"France  at  work  is  our  best  ally,  even  if  the  re- 
lations between  the  Quai  d'Orsay  and  our  imperial 
chancellor  are  still  cool  and  reserved.  Those  men, 
however,  who  have  weaned  France  from  empty 
phrases  and  have  led  it  to  honest  mental  labor  are  the 
benefactors  of  France  and  friends  of  Germany  whether 
they  will  or  not. 

"Amongst  those  are  few  who  could  equal  in  true 
merit  the  academician,  who  through  many  years  was 
our  guest  and  almost  our  fellow-citizen  at  beautiful 
Baden  Baden,  and  of  whom  we  have  been  bereaved 
sooner  than  was  expected  from  his  robust  constitu- 
tion, on  the  8th  of  February,  1894,  on  the  anniversary 
of  his  birth,  which  happened  on  the  8th  of  February, 
1822. 

"I  am  not  going  to  write  the  life  of  Du  Camp. 
He  has  done  that  himself,  as  far,  at  least,  as  his  lit- 
erary career  is  concerned,  for  the  Souvenirs  litteraires 
treat  in  fact  only  of  his  development  as  an  author,  of 
the  events  and  elements  which  modified  his  literary 
existence,  of  the  tendencies  to  which  he  devoted  him- 
self. The  personal  incidents  of  his  life,  particularly 
those  after  the  death  of  his  friend  Flaubert,  and  what 


refers  to  his  residence  in  Germany,  are  left  in  the 
background  in  the  Souvenirs.  The  whole  of  Maxima 
Du  Camp  cannot  be  learned  from  them.  Without 
having  had  personal  intercourse  with  him,  no  one 
could  know  him  and  judge  of  him  as  an  individual. 
As  an  author  he  has  given  to  the  public  a  great  part 
of  himself,  but  there  was  enough  left  which  could  not 
be  studied  and  enjoyed  except  at  his  home. 

"When  I  saw  Maxime  Du  Camp  the  last  time  at 
Baden  Baden  in  the  fall  of  1893,  I  asked  him  what  he 
then  was  writing  about.  'A  book  for  children,'  he 
replied.  A  few  months  after  this  appeared  his  Cre- 
puscule — propos  du  soir.  This  book  was  his  last  will 
and  testament.  In  its  way  it  was  in  truth  a  book  for 
the  youth,  that  is,  for  French  youth,  in  which  the 
author  in  the  evening  of  a  life  rich  in  precious  obser- 
vations preaches  most  forcibly  what  the  purport  of 
his  life  has  been.  '  Submission  to  the  commands  of 
duty,  honest  and  conscientious  labor,  unselfish  devo- 
tion to  the  highest  ideals  of  humanity.' 

"These  Fropos  du  soir,  considered  from  a  literary 
point  of  view,  do  not  rise  as  high  as  the  Souvenirs, 
which  are  fresher  and  more  sparkling,  and  the  colors 
of  which  are  more  varied  and  more  powerful.  They 
by  no  means  represent  a  systematic  work,  like  his 
works  founded  on  the  most  exact  researches  of  a  vast 
material,  on  Paris,  Its  Life  and  Its  Convulsions,  they  do 
not  equal  the  Charite  privee  of  Paris,  of  which  some 
leaves  are  amongst  the  noblest  produced  by  the  litera- 
ture of  the  nineteenth  century.  Written  at  an  ad- 
vanced age  and  under  the  pressure  of  a  painful  dis- 
ease, the  book  is  nevertheless  highly  interesting. 

"  Du  Camp  has  described  in  a  capital  manner  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Crepuscule  the  mental  condition 
under  which  these  conversations  were  written.  It  is 
that  of  an  old  man  still  in  full  possession  of  his  men- 
tal faculties,  but  reminded  by  many  things  that  the 
night  is  not  far  off.  Renunciation  and  submission  give 
to  age  the  peculiar  charm  ;  give  it  the  finest  adorn- 
ment of  the  sage,  the  indulgence  in  judging  of  things 
and  men,  so  rare  in  fiery  youth.  The  decline  of  phys- 
ical power  and  increasing  infirmities  and  sufferings, 
which  make  life  so  often  a  torture,  loosen  imperceptibly 
the  ligatures  by  which  we  are  habitually  bound  to  the 
present.  Our  thoughts  turn  to  the  past.  '  Somewhat 
half  drowsy,'  says  Du  Camp,  'we  look  back  to  the 
past.  Every  one  of  us  thinks  it  a  lost  paradise.  It 
is  an  illusion,  just  such  a  one  as  is  the  sight  of  moun- 
tains and  landscape  scenery.  From  afar  one  sees  only 
the  harmony  of  smooth  undulating  lines  and  of  lumi- 
nous half-subdued  colors.  On  nearer  view,  the  beau- 
tiful vision  vanishes.  Sand,  moors,  rift  and  ugly 
rocks  make  our  wanderings  heavy  and  burdensome.' 
It  is  just  the  same  with  the  good  old  times.  'If  by 
some  miracle  we  were  set  back,'  remarks  Du  Camp, 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


455: 


'  into  the  Paris  of  seventy  years  ago,  with  its  muddy, 
ill-paved  streets,  into  a  city  without  gas,  without  om- 
nibuses, without  tramways,  with  only  a  few  miserable 
hacks,  into  a  country  without  railroads,  through  which 
one  has  to  travel  in  slow  and  mean  stage-coaches,  with 
a  dear  and  badly-managed  letter-post,  into  a  country 
that  knows  not  the  electric  telegraph,  nor  chloroform, 
into  a  time  when  a  short  sea-voyage  took  weeks  or 
months,  we  would  not  be  inclined  to  praise  the  good 
old   times,  much   less   those   of   preceding  centuries. ' 

Upon  death,  Du  Camp  reflected  like  the  dying 
Tasso.  "  If  there  was  no  death,  nothing  could  be  more 
miserable  than  man."  What  he  hated  about  death  was 
"the  slow  dissolution  of  the  matter.  Nothing  has  been 
left  intact  with  the  poor  mortal.  Physical  pain  takes 
hold  of  him,  torturing  him  most  cruelly.  Who  wit- 
nesses this  struggle,  in  which  the  immorality  of  na- 
ture manifests  itself  with  all-overpowering  force,  must 
he  not  at  the  last  death-rattle  breathe  easier,  when  at 
last  the  suffering  is  over?  Certain  sects  announce  the 
departure  of  one  of  theirs  in  the  usual  phrase  :  Our 
brother  is  gone  to  rest.  That  reminds  one  of  the  ex- 
clamation of  Martin  Luther  in  the  churchyard  at 
Worms  :  'Invideo  quia  quiescunt.'  I  envy  those  here, 
for  they  do  have  rest." 

"  Du  Camp,  who  was  an  unbeliever,  was  honest 
enough  to  confess  that  he  became  irritated  at  the 
sight  of  physical  agony.  'When  death  performed  his 
work,  why  should  bodily  torture  be  added  ?  To  cease 
to  live  should  be  sufficient.  The  rest  is  superfluous, 
and  therefore  rank  injustice.' 

"Nevertheless  he  did  not  fail  to  acknowledge  the 
value  of  a  religious  conviction  in  this,  the  heaviest  of 
all  hours,  and  he  would  not  blame  those  who  in  that 
hour  resort  to  prayer.  'Life,'  he  said,  'is  so  rich  in 
misfortunes,  that  everything  ought  to  be  preserved 
that  can  help  man  to  support  it.  It  is  easy  enough  to 
deny  God,  but  He  has  not  been  supplied  as  yet  in  the 
hearts  of  those  who  need  faith.  If  the  human  race 
would  strip  itself  of  all  spiritual  ideas  and  sink  into 
the  bestiality  of  materialism,  the  individual  could  not 
in  heavy  afflictions  restrain  from  praying,  if  it  was  only 
by  an  involuntary  exclamation.'  " 

Maxime  Du  Camp  scourges  most  severely  vanity, 
according  to  him  the  first,  perhaps  the  worst,  of  vices. 

Mr.  Kraus  remarks  that  he  was  quite  right  in  this, 
as  it  is  a  vice  peculiarly  Gallic,  from  which  at  all  times 
and  particularly  since  Louis  XIV.,  the  self-glorifica- 
tion and  self-delusion  in  politics  and  literature  has 
grown.  From  this  vanity  a  great  many  other  vices 
have  sprung,  such  as  intemperance,  and  gambling. 

Du  Camp  confirms  the  extraordinary  increase  of 
alcoholism,  of  prodigality,  of  the  race  after  money, 
and  of  the  belief  that  wealth  is  the  test  of  a  man's 
worth.    '  To  be  nothing  but  rich, '  he  observes,  '  means 


to  be  nothing.'  He  also  denounces  debauchery  most 
bitterly,  and  in  his  work  on  Paris  he  has  devoted  a 
very  remarkable  chapter  to  this  subject.  He  did  not 
pose  as  an  immaculate  high  priest,  but,  as  he  tells  us 
in  his  Souvenirs,  he  had  at  an  early  time  rescued  him- 
self from  the  charming  circle  of  the  passions,  and  he 
frequently  declared  that  from  his  experiences  in  life  he 
had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  man  who  had  be- 
come the  slave  of  women  was  lost  to  every  high  aspira- 
tion. 

n  Amongst  the  Europeans  dwelling  on  this  side  of 
the  Alps  the  French  generally  travel  least.  On  this 
point  Du  Camp  differed  widely  from  the  mass  of  his 
fellow-citizens.  He  believed  the  best  way  to  come  to 
rest  was  to  move  about  constantly.  Liberty  and  sun- 
shine had  attracted  him  three  times  to  the  Far  East. 
'  I  do  not  know,'  he  says,  'what  migrating  bird  beats 
his  wings  within  me.  When  the  south  wind  blows  I 
become  languid  and  miserable,  like  an  exile  thinking 
of  his  far-off  fatherland.  It  is  always  the  South  and 
the  Orient  to  which  my  dreams  carry  me.  A  sort  of 
homesickness  forces  me  back  to  the  Land  of  the 
Palms.  A  family  tradition,'  he  tells  us  at  another 
place,  'makes  his  ancestors  descend  from  the  Spanish 
Moors.'  His  physiognomy  harmonised  with  this  sup- 
position. He  was  tall,  strongly  built,  his  head  was 
round,  his  hair  black  and  woolly,  his  eyes  of  sparkling 
darkness,  and  his  nose  somewhat  turned  up. 

"Our  present  time  loses  every  day  more  and  more 
the  taste  for  nature.  The  rush  to  the  large  cities, 
the  active  business-life,  the  withdrawal  of  the  higher 
classes  from  the  simple  joys  of  country-life,  has  broken 
the  bands  which  connect  us  with  nature.  'Contem- 
plating nature, '  he  says,  '  intoxicates  me. '  Yet  he  does 
not  think  it  advisable  to  revisit  scenes  which  gave 
unbounded  pleasure  to  the  youthful  traveller.  'What 
you  have  seen,'  says  Du  Camp,  'with  your  young 
eyes  and  have  loved  with  your  young  hearts,  let  it  re- 
main in  your  remembrance  intact,  returning  to  them 
with  an  aged  heart  and  without  the  feverish  dreams 
of  youth  you  will  find  all  changed.  Vieilles  amours  ct 
vieilles  demeures  il  n'y  faiU point  retourner.' 

"Du  Camp  is  a  decided  enemy  of  bureaucracy. 
'The  positions  of  public  functionaries,'  he  remarked, 
'  are  an  irremediable  evil.'  But  how  was  this  to  be 
changed  ?  The  institutions  of  the  France  of  to-day, 
which  in  great  part  date  from  the  first  Napoleon,  have 
rather  magnified  than  diminished  it.  The  increasing 
democratisation  has  not  upset  it,  and  has  not  robbed 
the  people  of  the  enjoyment  of  millions  of  functiona- 
ries." 

With  very  great  satisfaction  Du  Camp  has  ac- 
cepted the  principle  of  universal  military  service,  as  the 
means  of  a  national  education,  but  he  regretted  that 
the  system  of  volunteering   for   one  year,  introduced 


4554 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


into  the  French  army  after  the  German  model,  had 
not  been  maintained. 

"  He  hated  to  enter  into  political  life.  'Politics,' 
he  once  remarked,  'gives  back  its  adepts  exhausted, 
humiliated,  and  despairing,  when  there  is  no  further 
use  for  them.'  Politics,  as  Guizot  has  said,  is  a  re- 
pulsive and  wicked  evil.  To  play  at  politics  skilfully, 
it  is  necessary  to  get  rid  of  every  conviction,  for  con- 
viction is  by  its  nature  an  impeding  luggage,  which 
makes  marching  difficult,  and  may  prevent  the  exer- 
cise of  political  acrobatics  and  wire-dancing. 

"  But  a  man  like  Du  Camp  could  not  entirely  escape 
from  entering  into  some  relation  with  political  ideas 
and  events.  Strictly  speaking,  he  could  not  be  iden- 
tified with  either  of  the  great  parties  of  the  day.  It 
was  not  of  great  importance  to  him  in  whose  hands 
the  government  rested.  A  truly  loyal  and  liberal  gov- 
ernment, bent  to  carry  on  a  pure  administration,  was 
his  ideal.  Hence  he  did  not  oppose  the  government 
of  July,  and  regretted  its  fall,  though  he  conceded  its 
faults.  He  had  known  slightly  the  prince-president, 
to  whom  he  had  shown  his  photographs  of  Oriental 
monuments  and  scenery,  after  he  had  returned  from 
the  East.  After  the  coup  d'etat  he  never  visited  the 
Ely  see.  After  the  decree  of  the  17th  of  February, 
1852,  which  guillotined  the  free  press,  he  went  over  to 
Opposition.  He  conceded,  however,  that  the  France 
of  1852  was  more  eager  to  serve  than  her  new  master 
was  eager  to  rule,  and  that  Napoleon  HI.  frequently 
regretted  the  want  of  ability  and  the  overzealousness 
of  his  subordinates.  If  complaints  reached  him  on 
that  score,  he  used  to  shrug  his  shoulders,  saying  : 
'Ces  gens  la  sont  trop  betes.'  " 

In  his  various  visits  to  Italy,  Du  Camp  had  be- 
come thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  stupid  despot- 
isms of  Naples  and  Sicily.  Reason  enough  for  him  to 
join  Garibaldi's  expedition  in  i860.  He  has  described 
this  adventure  in  his  L'expcdition  de  deux  Sicilies. 
Many  years  ago  he  confessed  to  me  that  his  partisan- 
ship for  the  independence  of  Italy  had  been  the  great- 
est error  of  his  life.'  The  intimate  relation  existing 
between  him  and  Prince  Jerome  Napoleon  and  his 
sister  Mathilde  may  have  contributed  to  bring  him 
nearer  to  the  imperial  government  towards  the  end  of 
the  Empire.  In  his  Souvenirs  he  does  not  hesitate  to 
characterise  the  ministry  of  Chasseloup-Laubat  of  1869 
as  the  best  and  most  liberal  he  had  lived  to  see  in 
France  since  1832.  In  the  ministry  of  Olivier  he  had 
no  confidence,  yet  he  accepted  a  senatorship.  The 
war  of  1870  destroyed  the  prospect  of  a  quiet  develop- 

I  In  spite  of  the  generally  sound  and  liberal  political  views  of  M.  Du 
Camp,  he  still  remained  a  Frenchman  of  the  Richelieu  and  Thiers  school, 
according  to  which  the  safety  and  greatness  of  France  depends  upon  the  weak- 
ness and  distraction  of  her  continental  neighbors.  He  might  have  also  thought 
that  Italy  had  been  guilty  of  ingratitude  in  not  flying  to  the  help  of  France, 
when  engaged  in  her  war  with  Germany,  and  when  Italy  entered  into  the  Drei- 
bund,  which  certainly  every  Frenchman  bitterly  deplores. — Note  of  translator. 


ment  of  public  affairs.  The  revolution  of  the  4th  of 
September  appeared  to  him  as  the  greatest  stupidity 
France  ever  committed.  He  bewailed  the  shortsight- 
edness of  those  who  thought  everything  to  have  been 
gained  by  getting  rid  of  the  Bonapartes. 

"After  the  year  1871  Du  Camp  took  a  most  gloomy 
view  of  the  destiny  of  France.  He  put  but  small  trust 
in  the  leading  republican  rulers,  since  he  knew  that 
but  shortly  before  the  fall  of  the  Empire  the  very  mas- 
ter-spirits amongst  them  had  offered  themselves  to  the 
Emperor.  I  do  not  know  whether  it  is  known  what 
Du  Camp  told  me,  that  Clement  Duvernois  and  Leon 
Gambetta  were  willing  to  sell  themselves  to  Louis  Na- 
poleon. Gambetta  asked  a  domain,  and,  until  he 
could  find  a  place  in  the  ministry,  100,000  livres  rent."  ' 

After  the  death  of  Napoleon,  Du  Camp  thought 
anything  possible.  The  Orleans,  he  believed,  might 
have  had  a  chance,  if  they  had  been  willing  to  spend 
ten  millions.  For  a  time  he  thought  it  not  impossible 
for  Boulanger  to  come  to  the  front,  and  he  felt  deeply 
ashamed  of  his  country  that  this  might  happen.  Very 
amusing  and  not  yet  published  is  an  anecdote,  how 
Du  Camp  drew  from  the  'brave  General'  the  secret 
of  his  policy.  At  one  time  when  the  General's  star 
was  in  its  zenith,  a  lady  friend  of  Du  Camp  had  been 
invited  to  a  dinner,  where  she  was  to  have  the  Gen- 
eral at  her  side.  She  asked  Du  Camp  how  she  should 
conduct  herself  with  the  General.  He  instructed  her 
how  to  get  along  with  him,  who  was  so  fond  of  wo- 
men and  of  the  bottle.  When  he  would  feel  the  effect 
of  the  wine,  she  should  whisper  to  him  :  'Que  ferez- 
voiis,  quand  vous  serez  empereur?  '  Boulanger  fell  into 
the  trap,  and,  half-drunk  from  the  champagne  and  the 
charms  of  his  neighbor,  answered  :  'Bien  je  ferai  la 
nocc'     (I  am  going  to  amuse  myself. )- 

"Prince  Jerome  Napoleon  saw  in  Napoleon  I.  the 
ideal  of  the  revolution — fraternity  and  equality — real- 
ised, and  he  considered  himself  as  the  true  represen- 
tative of  his  uncle.  His  opposition  to  Napoleon  III. 
was  something  more  than  jealousy  and  caprice  ;  he 
saw  in  the  second  empire  on  many  points  a  falsifica- 
tion of  the  genuine  empire  and  of  the  ideas  of  1789. 
How  little  he  was  inclined  to  abandon  these  princi- 
ples, even  for  the  highest  price,  was  shown  by  a  re- 
markable attempt  to  negotiate  with  him,  which  Du 
Camp  communicated  to  me,  and  which,  as  far  as  I 
know,  was  never  made  known.  The  incident  must 
have  taken  place  soon  after  1874.      The  hopes  of  the 

1  Until  these  charges  are  substantiated  by  other  credible  testimony,  they 
ought  not  to  be  taken  for  granted.  Du  Camp  was  very  bitter  against  the  men  of 
the  third  Republic,  and  a  casual  remark  in  a  private  conversation  cannot  be 
accepted  as  proof  of  Gambetta's  political  depravity.  He  was  overambitious, 
a  democratic  absolutist,  but  not  venal  and  mercenary. — Note  of  translator. 

2This  anecdote,  if  true,  is  liable  to  a  different  interpretation.  The  ques- 
tion was  really  a  very  indiscreet,  if  not  an  impertinent,  one.  Boulanger,  how- 
ever, may  have  taken  it  cavalierly  as  a  mere  jest,  and  may  have  answered  it 
in  the  same  way.  — T'rrtKj, 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4555 


Royalists  had  been  wrecked,  the  Count  De  Chambord 
with  his  white  flag  had  become  impossible,  the  Or- 
leans had  missed  the  moment  when  the  Duke  D'Au- 
male  could  have  taken  up  the  lieutenancy  of  the  Em- 
pire. There  appeared  in  the  house  of  Prince  Jerome 
an  old  prelate  of  rank.  It  was  the  Cardinal  of  Bon- 
neschose.  The  Prince  knew  that  the  Archbishop  of 
Rouen  was  the  trusted  representative  of  the  conserva- 
tive union,  and  he  asked  him  what  he  was  bringing. 
'I  bring, '  replied  the  Cardinal,  'the  imperial  crown 
to  the  heir  of  Napoleon,  if  he  will  consent  to  promise 
us,  formally  and  solemnly,  the  restoration  of  the  Pope 
to  his  worldly  power.'  The  Prince  answered  with  a 
brief  and  categorical  'No.'  Twice  the  Cardinal  re- 
turned. He  declared  that  under  the  circumstances 
the  conservative  party  would  be  satisfied  with  a  writ- 
ten promise  to  be  kept  strictly  secret.  On  the  third 
visit  the  Cardinal  stated  he  would  be  satisfied  if  the 
Prince  would  verbally  promise  to  do  what  was  possible 
to  vindicate  the  rights  of  the  Holy  Father.  Every 
time  the  Prince  met  the  repeated  offer,  that  if  he  con- 
sented all  conservative  parties  would  unite  in  calling 
him  to  the  throne,  with  a  decided  '■Jc  ne  veux  pas..' 
This  broke  up  the  negotiation,  which  reminds  one  of 
the  history  of  the  Cumenian  Sybil.  Later  on  Du 
Camp  told  me  that  the  Prince  regretted  his  rude  re- 
fusal. 

"In  the  fall  of  1885,  when  I  had  become  more  inti- 
mately acquainted  with  Du  Camp,  I  found  him  much 
of  a  pessimist.  He  thought  that  France  was  lost, 
that  Germany  was  far  more  healthy,  and  he  hoped 
much  from  the  Hohenzollern,  though  he  felt  sure  that 
the  progress  of  dissolution  of  the  States  of  Europe 
could  not  be  prevented  in  the  long  run.  Some  one 
had  observed  to  him  that  the  universal  suffrage  was 
the  bacillus  which  would  infect  all  monarchies  of 
Europe,  and  in  the  end  destroy  them.  In  his  Crcpits- 
cule  Du  Camp  admitted  that  this  might  be  possible, 
but  if  the  monarchies  would  not  be  much  edified,  per- 
haps the  nations  would  not  fare  badly  by  it. 

At  another  time  he  remarked  that  the  universal 
suffrage  was  the  '  revanche '  of  France  for  Sadowa 
and  Sedan.  France  and  the  Republic  had  been  de- 
feated, but  had  had  its  revenge  in  having  inocculated 
the  German  Empire  with  the  universal  suffrage,  on 
which  every  monarchy  would  founder. 

When,  as  to  politics,  Du  Camp  had  not  taken  a 
decided  position,  his  enthusiasm  for  literature  and 
the  vocation  of  an  author  was  pure  and  thorough.  He 
says  in  his  Souvenirs  :  '  I  know  of  no  more  beautiful 
occupation  than  that  of  an  independent  and  unselfish 
author.'  He  remained  true  to  this  idea  to  his  last 
hour  and  has  affirmed  it  in  the  Crcpusciile :  '  I  owe  to 
this  modest  profession  of  a  pen-writer  {de  pliimitif)  the 
best  joys  of  my  life  and  the  peace  of  my  age.      The 


God  of  literature  bears  to-day  the  torch  which  en- 
lightens the  human  kind.' 

"When,"  remarks  Prof.  Kraus,  "  we  may  hereafter 
ask  for  an  entry  into  the  portals  of  heaven,  we  will 
hardly  be  asked,  how  much  we  have  written,  but,  cer- 
tainly, how  much  good  we  may  have  done.  Much  of 
our  literary  baggage  will  have  no  weight,  but  yet  there 
are  books  which  are  of  themselves  a  good  deed.  Du 
Camp  has  written  one  which  must  have  been  a  very 
strong  recommendation,  when,  armed  with  it,  he  pre- 
sented himself  to  St.  Peter.  This  is  Charitc  privce  a 
Paris.  Who  might  not  envy  him  for  having  written 
those  four  hundred  pages? 

"  Maxime  Du  Camp  was  from  his  youth  a  free- 
thinker, and  he  has  at  several  times  expressed  his  be- 
lief that  the  future  would  belong  to  free  thought.  But 
he  was  not  one  of  the  ordinary  unbelievers.  Above 
all  he  was  not  a  materialist.  In  his  Avani  prcpcs,  in 
his  Charitc  privce  he  openly  declared,  '  For  the  na- 
tions, as  well  as  for  the  individual,  spiritualism  has 
advanced  the  glory  of  the  human  race  ;  it  is  the  light 
which  has  illuminated  the  noblest  and  most  elevated 
souls.  Of  all  the  motives  for  altruism,  faith  is  the 
strongest.  I  conclude  from  this  that  in  the  labyrinth 
of  life  faith  is  as  yet  the  best  guide.  I  speak  of  this 
without  any  interest  of  my  own,  for  I  myself  could 
never  lay  hold  of  it.  Charity  guarantees  the  existence 
of  our  civilisation.  It  is  contended  that  morals  are 
sufficient.  I  am  of  the  opinion  of  Rivarol,  who  has 
said  that  "morals  without  religion  is  what  justice 
is  without  law-courts."  To  take  God  away  from  us, 
is  to  make  the  world  an  orphan.  Nihilism  is  of  all 
evils  the  worst,  for  he  who  adores  nothing  comes  very 
near  to  adoring  himself.  I  speak  of  faith  and  not  of 
the  Church,  matters  that  ought  not  to  be  confounded. 
The  Church  strives  to  rule  the  world,  hence  the  op- 
position. It  will  be  invincible  if  it  will  give  up  such 
an  autocracy.'  " 

Du  Camp  had  the  purest  and  highest  conceptions 
of  charity.  All  alms  were  to  him  acceptable,  even 
where  the  motives  of  the  giver  were  of  a  dubious  or 
impure  character.  But  the  highest  concept  of  altruism 
appeared  to  him  to  be  unselfishness,  which  found  its 
highest  reward  in  the  precious  feeling  of  the  spender, 
that  it  was  permitted  to  him  to  mitigate  the  misery  of 
another,  to  sacrifice  one's  self  in  favor  of  suffering 
fellow-beings.  Genuine  charity  he  considered  as  a 
virtue,  which  knows  of  no  difference  or  regard  of  party, 
nationality,  or  confession. 

"  To  the  end  of  his  life  he  believed  in  the  perfecti- 
bility of  man.  'Perhaps,'  he  says,  'it  is  a  dream, 
an  illusion,  but  I  will  not  give  it  up.  It  may  be  an 
irremediable  evil  with  me,  but  I  would  not  wish  to  be 
cured  of  it.'  " 

In  the  year  i860  we  learn  from   Du  Camp  that  he 


4556 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


was  stricken  down  with  a  most  painful  disease,  almost 
paralysing  him  for  three  years.  He  resorted  to  the 
baths  of  Baden  Baden  for  relief  and  was  restored  to 
health.  'Those  waters  have  saved  me,'  he  writes  in 
his  Souvenirs. 

"Since  that  time  he  has  clung  to  Baden  Baden. 
He  could  again  indulge  in  excursions,  in  the  pleasures 
of  the  chase.  He  used  to  pass  the  winter  at  Paris. 
But  for  a  long  series  of  years  he  resided  in  a  villa  of 
his  own  in  the  beautiful  Lichtenthaler  Avenue.  There 
his  Parisian  friends  called  upon  him,  but  there  were 
found  in  his  well-arranged  and  richly-ornamented 
home,  Germans,  Italians,  Englishmen,  Russians.  His 
salon  was  like  Du  Camp  himself,  international.  The 
owner  of  it,  as  he  wrote  himself,  had  travelled  too 
much  to  believe  with  all  his  love  for  his  own  country 
that  he  belonged  to  an  elecf  people.  For  him,  in  its 
absolute  sense,  a  grande  nation  did  not  exist.  His 
heart's  desire  would  have  been  a  union  of  Germany 
and  France,  in  which  both  nations  could  have  ex- 
changed their  good  qualities  and  reconciled  their  de- 
fective ones. 

His  relation  to  the  Grand  Duke  of  Baden  was  very 
characteristic.  The  Grand  Duke  treated  him  as  he 
would  a  confidential  friend;  Du  Camp  on  his  part  felt 
great  admiration  for  his  royal  host. 

In  concluding  his  essay.  Prof.  Kraus  writes:  "So 
lived  this  Frenchman  amongst  us,  French  to  the  core, 
and  intimate  with  all  of  us,  intimate  more  particularly 
with  that  Prince,  whom  the  German  people  have  rec- 
ognised as  the  most  experienced  counsellor  and  as 
their  truest  friend.  That  relation  belongs  now  to  his- 
tory and  ought  not  to  be  forgotten — in  spite  of  those 
who  stir  up  hatred  and  ill-feeling,  and  for  the  encour- 
aging example  of  those  who  aim  at  the  reconciliation 
of  the  great  nations.  Maxime  Du  Camp  has  labored 
more  than  many  others  in  that  great  work.  He  shall 
not  fail  to  be  honored  by  us.  This  thought  has  caused 
me  to  write  this  memoir,  and,  I  venture  to  believe,  in 
his  spirit ;  and  so  may  it  be  dedicated  to  his  memory 
and  to  all  who  are  of  good-will — pax  omnibus  bonae 
voluntatis." 


THE  FOREST. 

BY  PROF.  WILHELM  WINKLER. 

In  the  fir  forest  everything  is  still  apparelled  in 
the  green,  fresh  splendor  of  summer.  Like  the  col- 
umns of  a  mighty  dome  stands  the  vast  array  of  trees. 
Majestically  the  high  tops  and  crowns  are  arched,  and 
the  morning  sun  envelops  them  in  a  golden  web  of 
rays. 

What  was  each  of  these  arboreal  monarchs  a  hun- 
dred years  ago  ? 

A  tiny,  winged  seed  that  had  dropped  from  a  cone. 
The  rising  breath  of  the  valley,  warmed  by  the  heat 


of  the  sun,  bore  it  upwards  to  the  heights,  and  like  a 
descending  arrow  it  buried  itself  in  the  earth's  soft 
soil.  The  tiny  water  globules  that  hung  on  the  moss 
about  it,  lovingly  gave  it  to  drink,  and  fostered  it  into 
life.  Out  of  the  dead  seedlet  a  powerful  young  shoot 
sprang,  later  a  promising  sapling,  and  finally  the  forest 
giant  at  which  we  now  are  gazing  with  wonderment 
and  joy. 

But  how  did  the  tree  grow  to  such  greatness  and 
magnificence  ? 

By  the  harmonious  and  concerted  action  of  its 
roots,  trunk,  boughs,  branches,  and  leaves,  by  the  un- 
selfish labor  of  the;  millions  of  cells  that  compose  its 
various  organs.  Every  cell  labors  in  its  narrow,  mod- 
est sphere,  apparently  for  itself  alone,  yet  really  for 
the  whole.  The  work  of  all  the  cells  together  redounds 
to  the  benefit  of  the  cellular  tissues  ;  the  latter  com- 
pose the  various  organs  ;  and  these  unselfishly  further 
the  growth  and  prosperity  of  the  proud  plant. 

Whence  has  the  tree  derived  the  great  quantities 
of  materials  that  form  its  colossal  trunk,  its  countless 
powerful  boughs? 

Delicate  rootlets,  hardly  visible  to  the  naked  eye, 
have  conducted  water  to  it,  and  in  this  water  are  held  in 
solution  nutritive  substances  extracted  from  the  soil. 
The  tiny,  insignificant  leaves  have  taken  from  the  sur- 
rounding air  the  comparatively  diminutive  quantities 
of  carbonic  acid-gas  and  split  it  up  into  its  elements — 
carbon,  the  most  important  building  material  of  plants, 
and  oxygen,  the  vital  gas  of  man  and  animals.  The 
cells,  however,  have  retained  and  applied  to  the  uses 
of  the  tree  what  according  to  natural  law  is  the  primary 
constituent  of  the  plant  kingdom,  namely,  carbon,  and 
given  back  to  the  animal  kingdom  what  is  the  prime 
and  essential  requisite  of  its  life,  namely,  ox)'gen. 

In  ten  thousand  litres  of  atmospheric  air,  there  aire, 
as  we  know,  only  from  three  to  four  litres  of  carbonic 
acid-gas.  And  this  petty  quantity  of  gas  forms  the 
foundation  of  so  much  that  is  imposing  and  grand  ! 
That  whole  stupendous  mass  of  forest  that  stretches 
before  you,  as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach,  hiding  moun- 
tains and  hills  like  a  solidified  ocean,  has  passed 
through  the  little  chemical  laboratory  of  the  pine 
needle  and  the  cell. 

Hour  by  hour,  day  by  day,  week  by  week,  the 
needles  have  gathered  their  stores  ;  line  by  line,  inch 
by  inch,  step  by  step,  the  cells  have  builded,  without 
haste,  without  turmoil ;  the  prettiest  witness  of  the 
words:    "Pas  a  pas  on  va  loin." 

In  the  same  way  everything  really  great  and  per- 
manent both  in  the  State  and  in  humanity  grows, 
gradually  and  little  by  little. 

As  the  last  magnificent  outcome,  then,  of  the  har- 
monious and  constant  collaboration  of  minute  forces. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4557 


of  the  thrifty  accumulation  of  diminutive  masses,  of 
patient  waiting  for  the  requisite  lapse  of  time,  our 
forest  must  be  conceived,  which  enraptures  our  eye, 
purifies  our  air,  and  as  the  giver  of  wood  and  other 
bounties  plays  such  an  important  part  in  the  civilised 
life  of  man.  With  a  thousand  voices  the  wood  seems 
to  call  out  to  the  thoughtful  lover  of  nature  : 

"Despise  not  small  things,  they  conceal  in  them 
the  germs  of  all  that  is  great." 

But  the  wood  has  another  and  totally  different  sig- 
nificance. It  is  not  only  the  purifier  of  the  air,  and 
the  ornament  of  a  country,  but  it  is  also  its  preserver, 
fructifier,  and  supporter. 

The  trunks,  boughs,  branches,  and  leaves  of  the 
wood,  extending  with  their  myriad  arms  into  the  air, 
hold  fast  the  clouds,  chain  the  snows  and  the  rains, 
and  store  them  up  in  their  bosom,  to  send  down  with 
wise  economy  into  the  plains  below  the  vital  element 
of  all  life — water — spreading  there,  life,  growth,  bloom, 
and  prosperity. 

But  let  a  region  lose  its  forests,  then  the  protective 
garment  of  the  snow  becomes  its  destruction,  the 
blessing  of  the  thunder-storm  its  curse.  Think  only 
of  the  avalanches  which  undo  the  industry  of  man,  of 
the  floods  that  convert  mountains  and  valleys  into 
barren  wastes,  plains  into  swamps. 

Fortunate  the  land  that  still  fosters  its  forests. 
Thrice  fortunate  the  people  that  sturdily  defends  its 
forest  against  its  two  main  foes  :  unseeing  barbarism 
and  an  over-wrought  civilisation,  also  rendered  blind 
by  a  senseless  greed  of  gain. 

The  narrow-souled  commercial  spirit  of  the  Phoeni- 
cians robbed  Lebanon  of  its  magnificent  ceder  forests 
and  made  of  the  land  in  which  once  milk  and  honey 
flowed,  a  waterless  desert.  The  blind,  commercial 
greed  of  the  republic  of  Venice  desolated  our  Austrian 
Karst.  In  the  barren,  rainless,  high  plateaus  of  Spain, 
magnificent  foliage  once  cast  its  refreshing  shades  and 
made  of  the  home  of  the  Moors  a  land  of  paradisian 
fertility. 

Thus  civilisation  begins  with  making  land  produc- 
tive, and  ends,  when  once  it  enters  devious  ways,  by 
making  it  desolate.  It  begins  with  barbarism,  and 
ends,  as  history  teaches  us,  again  in  barbarism,  when 
the  nations,  corrupted  by  avarice  and  sensual  indul- 
gence, lose  sight  of  the  lessons  of  their  eternal  mother. 

*  '  * 

Every  tree  is  a  product  of  united  labor.     But  what 

happens  if  the  harmonious  co-operation  of  the  indi- 
vidual parts  of  the  tree  be  interrupted  in  some  man- 
ner? 

To  cite  only  a  single  instance  :  if  individual  cells 
or  associations  of  cells  of  the  roots,  trunk,  or  boughs,  as 
the  result  of  manifold  influences,  but  particularly  under 
the  blighting  effects  of  various  fungi  which  destroy  the 


lives  of  plants,  push  their  growth  beyond  the  limits  of 
their  normal  form,  selfishly  increase  their  size  at  the 
expense  of  other  cells,  and  in  accomplishing  their  end 
consume  nutritive  materials  which  should  be  applied 
to  the  support  of  the  other  cells,  tissues,  and  organs 
of  the  tree  ;  in  such  cases  that  malignant  cancerous 
affection  well  known  to  foresters,  makes  its  appearance 
in  the  life  of  the  tree. 

The  wood  no  longer  grows  the  yearly  rings  at  the 
affected  spot  ;  nevertheless,  the  diseased  organ  at  first 
swells  forth  in  unwonted  fulness.  But  if  the  skilful 
hand  of  the  forester  is  not  applied  at  the  proper  mo- 
ment to  set  a  limit  to  the  new  luxuriant  growth,  it  will 
slowly  but  surely  spread. 

Gradually  the  saps  of  the  tree  all  deteriorate.  The 
whole  tree  begins  to  pine.  Frequently  its  heart  is 
seized  with  the  rottenness  produced  and  disseminated 
by  the  cancerous  affection  inhering  in  its  bark. 

The  next  tempest,  that  only  clears  the  crowns  of 
the  sound  trees  of  their  withered  leaves  and  twigs, 
stretches  our  tree,  to  all  outward  appearances  sound, 
but  inwardly  rotten,  to  the  ground. 

"  Willst  du  dir  und  dir  nur  dienen,  nirgends  magst  du  Dank  erwerben  ; 
Schmachten  wirst  du  und  am  Ekel  vor  dir  selber  musst  du  sterben." 

sings  the  poet. 

* 
*  * 

Involuntarily  the  life  of  the  tree  reminds  us  of  the 
life  of  that  larger  co-operative  society  in  which  every 
man  performs  the  office  of  a  single  cell — the  State. 

As  in  the  tree  so  in  the  State  the  existence  of  the 
individual  parts  is  conditioned  solely  by  the  whole, 
and  the  whole  can  exist  only  provided  its  parts  flour- 
ish. As  the  individual  cell  separated  from  the  tree, 
that  is,  detached  from  the  community  of  cells,  per- 
ishes; as  its  life,  growth,  and  prosperity  is  conditioned 
solely  upon  the  existence  of  the  tree  ;  so  the  tree  as  a 
whole  can  live,  grow,  and  prosper  only  if  its  cells  are 
solidly  united  together,  and  its  organs  co-operate  un- 
selfishly and  harmoniously  in  the  general  well-being  of 
the  whole  tree,  and  so  indirectly  in  the  well-being  of 
each. 

The  same  holds  true  of  the  labor  of  individual  men 
and  of  individual  classes.  Here  in  the  cellular  com- 
munity of  the  tree,  perfect  equality  in  the  size,  form, 
and  function  of  the  cells  is  absolutely  impossible  ;  for, 
to  make  a  tree,  root-cells,  bast-cells,  wood-cells,  leaf- 
cells,  blossom-cells,  and  fruit-cells  must  exist,  each  of 
which  has  its  destined  functions  to  perform,  in  the 
service  and  for  the  welfare  both  of  the  tree  and  of  it- 
self. 

So  it  is  in  the  life  of  the  State.  Whilst  the  cells  of 
the  roots  are  gathering,  painfully  and  laboriously,  in 
the  dark  bosom  of  the  earth,  energy  for  the  tree  of 
which  it  is  itself  a  part,  the  cells  of  the  leaves  are 
working  in  the  glorious  sunshine,  the  cells  of  the  bios- 


4558 


XHK     OPEN     COITRX. 


soms  are  scattering  broadcast  balsamic  odors  into  the 
soft  springtime  airs.  Similarly  in  that  association  of 
men  called  the  State  perfect  equality  in  the  functions 
and  duties  of  individuals  is  a  sheer  impossibility,  at 
least  if  the  common  ends  are  to  be  attained. 

How  often  has  not  that  which  many  have  looked 
upon  as  higher  privileges  in  the  State,  on  closer  ex- 
amination turned  out  to  be  only  an  alluring  burden, 
reminding  the  man  of  insight  of  that  beautiful  fairy- 
tale of  the  garment  of  the  Happy  One  which  could  not 
be  found,  but  least  of  all  among  those  who  to  all  out- 
ward appearances  seemed  the  most  happy. 

Many  men  are  unable  their  whole  life  long  to  see 
their  own  real  happiness,  because  their  eyes  are  con- 
stantly fixed  on  the  supposed,  but  oftentimes  unreal, 
happiness  of  their  neighbors. 


BOOK  NOTICES. 

"The  Miniature  Series,"  which  has  been  running  now  since 
May  (Macmillan  &  Co.),  is  a  paper-bound  monthly  Library,  single 
copies  twenty-five  cents  each,  and  will  contain  for  the  coming 
year,  to  mention  only  a  few  numbers  :  Slmkespeare'' s  England,  by 
William  Winter  ;  The  Pleasures  of  Life,  by  Sir  John  Lubbock  ; 
The  Choice  of  Books,  by  Frederic  Harrison  ;  The  Aims  of  Literary 
Sltidv,  by  Hiram  Corson  ;  and  Amiel's  JoKriial,  translated  by  Mrs_ 
Humphry  Ward.  

Prof.  Richard  G.  Moulton  of  the  University  of  Chicago  is 
about  to  edit,  with  introductions,  a  series  of  books  called  The  Mod- 
ern Reader' s  Bible,  being  selections  from  the  Sacred  Scriptures. 
This  series  has  principally  literary  and  educational  ends  in  view 
although  it  cannot  fail  ultimately  of  a  salutary  ethical  and  reli- 
gious outcome.  It  is  based  upon  the  belief,  or  rather  fact,  that 
the  Bible  must  be  adapted  to  the  needs  of  the  modern  reader,  if 
its  literary  form  and  religious  contents  are  to  be  at  all  appreciated 
and  not  misunderstood.  The  text  will  be  that  of  the  revised  ver- 
sion, and  will  embody  the  best  results  of  the  new  criticism,  as  to 
the  arrangement  of  the  passages,  insertion  of  the  names  of  speak 
ers  in  dialogue,  etc.  The  first  volumes  issued  will  comprehend 
"Wisdom  Literature"  and  will  be  made  up  of  Proverbs,  Ecclesi. 
asticus,  Ecclesiastes,  and  the  Book  of  Job.  Macmillan  &  Co.  are 
to  be  the  publishers.  The  same  publishing  house  also  announces 
for  early  publication,  in  the  same  line.  Professor  Cheyne's  new 
work  Introduction  to  the  Book  of  Isaiah. 


Among  the  valuable  educational  books  which  D.  C.  Heath  & 
Co.  of  Boston  publish,  is  to  be  noted,  as  a  commendable  departure 
in  the  line  of  elementary  instruction,  A  Laboratory  Manual  in  Ele. 
mentary  Biology,  by  Emanuel  R.  Boyer,  lecturer  in  biology.  Ex- 
tension Department,  University  of  Chicago.  This  little  book  (235 
pages)  is  designed  to  serve  as  a  guide  in  the  practical  laboratory 
study  of  animal  and  plant  morphology,  in  preparatory  and  high 
schools.  Explanations  and  descriptions  of  the  methods  and  in- 
struments employed  are  given,  and  also  directions  for  sketches 
and  drawings,  a  list  of  works  of  reference,  and  an  index  with  deri. 
vations  of  technical  terms.  The  studies  embrace  the  Amoeba, 
Fresh-Water  Sponge,  Fresh-Water  Hydra,  Star-Fish,  Earthworm^ 
Crayfish,  Grasshopper,  Fresh-Water  Mussel,  River  Perch,  Frog, 
Turtle,  Pigeon,  Cat,  Green  Slime,  and  the  Yeast  Plant,  Brook- 
silk,  Green  Felt,  Stonewort,  Liverwort,  Common  Fern,  Scotch 
Pine,  Trillium,  Seeds  and  Seedlings.  Students  of  intelligence 
could  easily  use  this  book  without  a  teacher,  as  a  full  account  of 
the  laboratory  equipment  and  technique  is  given. 


Some  very  practical  and  sensible  suggestions  are  offered  To- 
-vards  Utopia  by  "A  Free  Lance  "  in  a  book  recently  published  by 
Swan  Sonnenschein  &  Co.,  London.  "Whilst  we  have  many  pop- 
ular imaginative  descriptions  of  this  fo«//<'/t'a' future  state, "  the 
author  says,  "  it  is  perhaps  somewhat  less  usual  to  enquire  what 
precisely  are  some  of  the  individual  natural  processes  by  which 
that  happy  consummation  can  be  brought  about ;  what,  if  any- 
thing, can  be  done  by  us  of  to-day  to  hasten  the  progress  ;  and 
what  price,  if  any,  must  be  paid  for  Utopia."  His  book  is  a  Jflw/Zi? 
of  the  kind  of  answer  which  he  judges  must  be  given  to  such  ques- 
tions. We  mention  the  titles  of  a  few  chapters  to  show  the  prac- 
tical spirit  with  which  the  author  has  addressed  his  question  : 
"Universal  Honesty  the  Best  Policy";  "The  Great  Servant- 
Question  "  ;  "A  Digression  Upon  Caste-Sympathy  ";  "  On  Choos- 
ing the  Least  Evil,  with  Farther  Remarks  Upon  Luxury  and 
Waste";  "The  Problem  of  Unpleasant  Occupations,  and  the 
Apotheosis  of  Manual  Work  "  ;  "  God  the  Almighty  Dollar. "  The 
book  will  bear  reading  by  non-Utopians  and  even  by  practical 
householders. 

NOTES. 

The  Archaeological  Institute  of  America  and  the  Managing 
Committee  of  the  American  School  of  Classical  Studies  at  Athens 
offer  for  the  year  1895-96  two  Fello-oships  in  Classical  Archaeology, 
each  of  the  value  of  six  hundred  dollars.  These  Fellowships  are 
open  to  all  Bachelors  of  Arts  of  Universities  and  Colleges  in  the 
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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  410. 

MAXIME  DU  CAMP.      G.  Koerner 4551 

THE  FOREST.      Prof.  Wilhelm  Winkler 4556 

BOOK  NOTICES 4558 

NOTES 4558 


The  Open  Court. 


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DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


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THE  BRITISH  DIAGORAS. 

BY  DR.    FELIX  L.    OS\V.\LD. 

The  philosopher  Condorcet,  in  his  essay  on  the 
"  Value  of  Public  Opinion,"  remarks  that  "  fame  may 
be  achieved  without  personal  effort,  since  many  princes 
are  born  with  a  hereditary  claim  to  immortality." 

It  is  equally  true  that  many  of  the  world's  benefac- 
tors ha*e  acquired  their  chief  claim  to  distinction  in 
spite  of  their  efforts, — by  the  failure  or  unforeseen  re- 
sults of  ^the  projects  that  formed  the  ideals  of  their 
Jives.  Two  alchemists,  in  quest  of  the  "philosopher's 
stone,"  i.  e.,  the  secret  of  turning  brass  into  gold, 
stumbled  upon  the  invention  of  gunpowder  and  por- 
celain. Columbus  achieved  his  great  discovery  in  the 
attempt  to  reach  Eastern  Asia  by  crossing  the  At- 
lantic and  apply  the  profits  of  his  conquests  to  the  re- 
demption of  the  Holy  Grave.  The  sectarian  fervor  of 
the  Mayflower  Pilgrims  sowed  the  seeds  of  that  polit- 
ical Protestantism  that  bore  its  fruits  in  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  and  Professor  Huxley,  the  would-be 
founder  of  an  agnostic  school  of  philosophy,  will  be 
remembered  chiefly  for  the  success  of  collateral  labors 
that  helped  to  extend  the  realm  of  the  knowable. 

Thomas  Huxley,  during  the  last  ten  years  of  his 
career,  could  claim  to  be  at  once  the  "best  rewarded 
and  best  hated  "  of  all  British  men  of  science,  and 
owed  his  distinction  in  both  respects  chiefly  to  the 
force  and  almost  unrivalled  lucidity  of  his  style  that 
made  his  name  the  dread  of  theological  controversial- 
ists and  a  star  of  the  lecture-hall  galaxy.  His  prepa- 
ratory studies  covered  a  large  field  of  inquiry,  but 
the  secret  of  his  literary  success  is  probably  identical 
with  that  of  the  remarkably  large  number  of  lawyers 
who,  like  Scott,  \'oltaire,  Goethe,  Brougham,  and  In- 
gersoll,  eventually  turned  their  attention  to  miscellane- 
ous literature,  viz.,  the  preliminary  training  in  the  art 
of  handling  abstruse  topics  in  an  attractive  and  intel- 
ligible manner. 

In  1846,  surgeon  Huxley,  one  of  the  most  ambi- 
tious young  graduates  of  the  Charing-Cross  Medical 
College,  applied  for  an  appointment  on  the  scientific 
staff  of  H.  M.  S.  "  Rattlesnake,"  a  vessel  equipped  to 
survey  the  intricate  channels  of  the  Barrier  Reef  that 
skirts  the  coast  of  Australia  for  a  distance  of  twelve 
hundred  miles.      The  application  was  endorsed  by  a 


number  of  recommendations  that  left  no  doubt  of  the 
candidate's  competence  and  his  appointment  as  assis- 
tant surgeon  eased  the  strain  on  his  private  resources 
without  seriously  interfering  with  his  project  of  scien- 
tific researches.  His  monographs,  published  in  the 
course  of  the  next  three  years  are  as  readable  as  his 
countryman's  "Letters  from  High  Latitudes,"  though 
it  might  be  doubted  if  Voltaire  himself  could  have 
struck  many  sparks  from  such  topics  as  "The  Anat- 
omy and  Affinities  of  thfe  Family  of  the  Medusa?," 
"The  Morphology  of  Cephalous  Mollusks,"  or  "Anat- 
omy of  the  Intertropical  Brachiopoda."  His  treatise 
on  the  first  of  those  ultra-dry-as-dust  subjects  was  ac- 
tually reprinted  and  popularised  by  the  publishers  of 
PhilosopJtical  Transactions,  and  with  the  addition  of 
chatty  foot-notes  was  made  interesting  enough  to 
create  a  demand  for  a  second  edition. 

After  that  tour  de  force  it  was  a  mere  trifle  for  the 
ingenious  young  savant  to  make  his  Observations  on 
Glacip-s  as  attractive  as  a  novel,  and  in  1854  he  was 
appointed  professor  of  natural  history  in  the  Royal 
College  of  Mines,  in  place  of  Dr.  Edward  Forbes,  and 
held  that  office  combined  with  the  curatorship  of  the 
Museum  of  Practical  Geology.  One  of  the  terms  of 
the  Professor's  appointment  involved  the  duty  of  de- 
livering a  yearly  course  of  six  lectures  to  workingmen, 
and  the  reprints  of  some  of  these  lectures  (on  a  variety 
of  zoological,  biological,  and  sanitary  topics)  were  sold 
together  with  Charles  Reade's  short  stories  and  pop- 
ular song-books,  on  the  book-stands  of  the  English 
railway  stations.  In  1856,  i.  e.,  just  ten  j'ears  after 
the  publication  of  his  first  essay,  he  could  afford  to 
treat  himself  to  a  six  month's  vacation,  and  accom- 
panied his  friend  Tyndall  to  Switzerland.  His  notes 
on  that  trip  furnished  material  for  a  large  number  of 
treatises  and  magazine  contributions,  and  on  his  re- 
turn to  London  and  the  publication  of  his  work  on 
Man's  Place  in  Nature,  honors  were  showered  upon 
him  till  he  became  the  greatest  living  pluralist  of  sec- 
ular office-tenure,  and  the  appointments  which  the 
state  of  his  health  obliged  him  to  resign  in  1885  in- 
cluded that  of  an  Examiner  in  the  University  of  Lon- 
don, FuUerian  Professor  at  the  Royal  College  of  Sur- 
geons, President  of  the  Ethnological  Society,  Presi- 
dent of   the  British  Association,  Secretary  and  Presi- 


4560 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


dent  of  the  Geological  Societ)',  Secretary  of  the  Royal 
Society,  Inspector  of  the  Royal  Commission  of  Sea 
Fisheries,  and  several  educational  committees.  Be- 
sides, he  was  a  member  of  numerous  foreign  scientific 
associations,  of  the  Institute  of  France,  of  the  Berlin 
Academy,  etc.,  etc.,  and  received  medals  from  not  less 
than  twenty-three  different  universities  and  learned 
societies.  His  contributions  to  the  periodical  press 
were  in  great  request,  and  those  almost  endless  de- 
mands upon  his  mental  resources  may  have  first  sug- 
gested the  idea  of  narrowing  the  scope  of  discussion 
by  discouraging  a  certain  class  of  metaphysical  con- 
troversies. 

It  has  been  justly  remarked  that  Freethought  ought 
to  have  a  constructive  as  well  as  destructive  mission, 
that  no  physical  or  hyperphysical  creed  can  be  founded 
on  negative  dogmas  and  that  in  all  branches  of  human 
pursuit  the  knowable  concerns  us  more  than  the  un- 
knowable (or  rather  unknown),  but  on  the  other  hand 
some  of  the  opponents  of  the  accomplished  sceptic 
have  gone  too  far  in  describing  his  doctrine  as  "mod- 
ern Pyrrhonism." 

Pyrrho,  the  all-doubter,  denied  the  competence  of 
human  reason,  not  only  in  regard  to  metaphysical 
speculations,  but  as  to  all  problems  of  cosmology, 
astronomy,  and  biology;  he  ridicules  the  attempts  of 
star-gazers  to  solve  the  mysteries  of  the  solar  system, 
of  ethnologists  who  ponder  the  origin  of  autochthones, 
"that  may  or  may  not  have  sprung  from  grasshoppers 
for  all  that  we  can  know  or  should  care";  he  gcouts 
the  idea  of  ascertaining  the  principles  of  a  true  aristo- 
cratic administration,  "the  government  of  the  best," 
the  causes  of  earthquakes  and  storms,  the  origin  of 
life  (spontaneous  generation  having  been  discussed  by 
some  of  his  contemporaries),  and,  like  Socrates  in  his 
despondent  moods,  holds  that  the  main  test  of  true 
wisdom  is  the  readiness  to  admit  that  we  can  really 
know  nothing  at  all. 

Huxley's  agnosticism  had  a  very  different  signifi- 
cance. He  calls  attention  to  the  enormous  amount  of 
time,  labor,  and  parchment  which  the  scholastic  vi- 
sionaries of  the  Middle  Ages  wasted  on  purely  fatuous 
topics.  He  mentions  theologians  who  quarrelled  like 
bull-dogs  about  the  gala-day  dress  of  the  Holy  Virgin 
and  the  comparative  speed  of  winged  demons  and 
heavenly  messengers.  He  enumerates  scores  of  theo- 
sophical  problems  that  have  been  argued  with  battle- 
axes,  though  a  vestige  of  common  sense  should  have 
recognised  them  as  more  unprofitable  than  a  dispute 
about  the  age  of  the  man  in  the  moon.  He  admits 
that  the  comparative  importance  of  the  various  sci- 
ences must  remain  a  mooted  question,  but  urges  the 
expedience  of  avoiding  further  waste  of  time  by  pro- 
claiming a  truce  in  squabbles  on  plainly  unknowable 
topics — "evasive  subjects,"  as  he  once  calls  them  in 


deference  to  his  critics.  Like  Kant,  he  holds  that  the 
Vingc  an  sick,  the  essence  of  which  phenomena  are 
the  reflexion,  must  remain  inscrutable,  and  he  admits 
a  misgiving  that  the  Proteus  of  animated  nature,  the 
Urkeim  of  organic  life,  will  continue  to  evade  the 
grasp  of  protoplasm-mongers,  but  his  chief  protests 
are  aimed  against  theological  wind- mill  fights,  and  it 
is  not  improbable  that  the  main  motive  of  his  "agnos- 
tic" argumentations  was  the  desire  to  moderate  the 
virulence  of  hyperphysical  controversies  by  showing 
the  slender  basis  for  dogmatic  positivism  on  either 
side.  He  is,  indeed,  fair  enough  to  rebuke  atheistical 
bigotry  in  its  aggressive  forms,  as  in  a  remarkable 
passage  of  his  Life  of  Hume,  where  he  exposes  the 
fallacy  of  certain  ex-cathedra  statements  of  what  Hein- 
rich  Heine  once  called  the  "high  clergy  of  material- 
ism." 

It  would  also  seem  that  Huxley's  own  tenets  as  to 
the  limits  of  the  knowable  underwent  considerable 
modifications  in  the  course  of  the  last  fifteen  years. 
Previous  to  1862  he  appears  to  have  tried  to  avoid 
theological  discussions  altogether  —  a  maxim  which 
Professor  Helmholtz,  by  the  way,  contrived  to  observe 
to  the  very  end  of  his  literary  career.  But  in  his  Lay 
Sennotis  and  some  of  his  magazine  articles  and  bio- 
graphical sketches  there  occur  passages  that  evince  a 
leaning  to  his  friend  Tyndall's  type  of  pantheism,  and 
after  the  publication  of  the  Gladstone  controversy, 
Huxley  stuck  to  his  "agnosticism"  mainly  as  to  a 
shield  against  the  charge  of  irreligion. 

The  hue  and  cry  of  the  atheist-baiters  has  really 
been  abated,  if  not  silenced,  by  the  plea  of  neutrality, 
and  Huxley's  shibboleth  became  almost  as  popular 
with  a  certain  class  of  non-aggressive  freethinkers  as 
Darwin's  "universal  solvent  of  biological  difficulties," 
the  "survival  of  the  fittest,"  "  Do  you  deny  the  om- 
nipotence of  the  Creator?"  "Dare  you  question  the 
doctrine  of  resurrection?  Of  sheol  and  paradise?" 
were  questions  that  had  not  lost  their  peril  since  the 
abolishment  of  the  Inquisition.  "Deny  it?  No,  in- 
deed," the  defendant  could  now  reply,  with  an  Amer- 
ican disciple  of  Huxley,  "positive  denial  would  be  as 
absurd  as  positive  assertion,  but  there  can  be  no  pos- 
sible harm  in  being  honest  enough  to  confess  the  sim- 
ple truth  that  we  cannot  know  anything  about  it." 

Gnostics  like  Plotinus  might  have  suggested  the 
expedience  of  revising  that  tenet  by  approaching  the 
problems  of  soul-life  from  a  different  point  of  view, 
but  Huxley's  friends  and  foes  fell  to  quarrelling  about 
the  duty  of  belief  in  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  sense  of 
the  word,  and  in  the  meantime  the  patriarch  of  agnos- 
ticism availed  himself  of  the  respite  to  continue  his 
biological  studies,  and  enjoy  his  intervals  of  literary 
labor  in  the  Scotch  and  Swiss  Highlands.  But  when 
his  personal  preference  for  neutrality  was  misconstrued 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4561 


in  too  provoking  a  manner,  the  ex-champion  of  the 
Ealing  Debating  Club  decided  to  try  conclusions  with 
a  representative  orthodox,  and  adroitly  managed  to 
let  his  opponents  bear  the  odium  of  the  challenge  to 
the  Gladstone  controversy.  In  a  political  arena  the 
sage  of  Hawarden  could  have  held  his  own  against 
any  European  contemporary,  but  had  no  reason  to 
thank  the  friends  who  had  urged  him  to  encounter  the 
great  biologist  on  his  own  ground.  No  forensic  ability 
could  outweigh  that  disadvantage,  and  he  proved  to 
be  as  clearly  out  of  his  element  as  Samuel  Johnson 
arguing  on  politics. 

The  result  of  that  controversy  secured  the  victor 
for  years  from  the  risk  of  direct  attacks,  but  Huxley 
was  far  from  overrating  the  significance  of  that  triumph 
and  still  further  from  underrating  the  difficulties  of  a 
general  educational  reform.  In  his  last  years,  and 
after  experience  had  cooled  the  optimism  of  his  re- 
generation-zeal period,  he  often  spoke  of  the  hope- 
lessness of  his  pet  projects,  and  the  futility  of  individ- 
ual efforts  against  the  power  of  conservatism,  the 
dead-weight  of  stolid  ignorance,  and  the  influence  of 
personal  interest  and  the  female  instinct  of  subordina- 
tion— all  potent  allies  of  the  established  state  of  dog- 
matic affairs. 

Still  he  found  solace  in  the  thought  that  his  seed 
had  not  all  fallen  on  barren  ground,  and  what  the 
Duke  of  Argyle  called  the  "dreariness  of  his  Saddu. 
ceeism  "  must  for  years  have  been  clieered  by  guaran- 
tees of  an  eternal  abode  in  the  Temple  of  Science. 


CAN  CANADA  BE  COERCED  INTO  THE  UNION? 

A  Canadian  View. 

BY  PROF.   J     CLARK  MURRAY. 

Most  of  those  who  read  this  question  will  answer 
it  probably  at  once,  and  possibly  with  an  expression 
of  some  sentiment, — surprise,  ridicule,  or  even  mdig- 
nation.  The  United  States  are  commonly  supposed 
to  have  abandoned  so  completely  the  ideas  and  senti- 
ments of  militar}'  civilisation,  that  the  spirit  which 
seeks  national  glory  in  the  extension  of  empire  by  con- 
quest is  conceived  to  be  extinct  among  the  American 
people.  I  confess  myself  one  of  those  who  cherish  this 
pleasing  view  of  popular  feeling  even  more  strongly 
than  many  Americans.  The  prospect,  therefore,  of 
the  United  States  seeking  to  annex  Canada  by  mili- 
tary force  is  one  that,  to  my  mind,  may  be  left  out  of 
account. 

But  there  are  other  forms  of  coercion  besides  that 
of  physical  compulsion,  and  these  are  sometimes  ad- 
vocated as  legitimate  and  effective  means  of  compel- 
ling Canada  to  sever  her  connexion  with  Great  Britain 
and  enter  into  political  union  with  the  United  States. 
The  peculiar   form   of   coercive  policy  proposed  has 


evidently  been  suggested  by  the  weakening  of  military 
sentiment  and  the  predominance  of  the  industrial 
spirit  in  American  society.  It  is  the  international 
trade  between  Canada  and  the  United  States  that  is 
believed  to  furnish  an  instrument  of  coercive  action  ; 
and  the  assumption  is  made  that  a  particular  commer- 
cial policy  of  the  United  States  towards  Canada  would 
render  existence,  or,  at  least,  tolerable  existence,  im- 
possible for  the  latter,  except  as  an  integral  part  of  the 
former. 

In  some  quarters  there  is  evidence  of  a  disposition 
to  adopt  such  a  policy.  The  evidence  is  not  confined 
to  unauthoritative  utterances  of  irresponsible  individ- 
uals, nor  even  to  the  electioneering  oratory  of  party 
politicians  carried  away  by  the  exigencies  of  rhetoric 
or  of  political  partisanship.  The  proposed  coercion  is 
not  even  a  merely  temporary  "plank"  inserted  into  a 
political  "platform  "  for  the  purpose  of  strengthening 
a  party  at  the  polls.  It  seems  rather  to  be  indissolubly 
associated,  in  some  minds  at  least,  with  the  fiscal 
policy  which  has  directed  the  government  of  the  United 
States  for  many  years  under  Republican  rule.  That 
policy  proceeds  on  the  theory,  that  the  industrial  well- 
being  of  a  nation  requires  it  to  sell  as  much  as  possi- 
ble to  other  nations,  while  buying  as  little  as  possible 
from  them  in  return.  Access  to  the  markets  of  the 
United  States  is  therefore  considered  a  boon  for  which 
other  nations  will  always  be  willing  to  offer  a  substan- 
tial equivalent  ;  and  accordingly  it  is  held  to  be  a  wise 
policy  on  the  part  of  the  United  States  to  reserve  this 
boon  as  a  means  of  wringing  from  other  nations  an 
equivalent  benefit  for  the  American  people.  As  an 
obvious  logical  result  of  this  theory  it  has  been  re- 
peatedly contended  that  Canada  may  be  forced  into 
valuable  concessions  to  the  United  States  by  the  offer 
of  access  to  their  markets  ;  and  she  has  been  often 
explicitly  told  that,  if  she  wishes  unrestricted  freedom 
of  trade  with  the  States,  she  must  assume  the  same 
political  relation  to  them,  which  they  hold  to  one  an- 
other. 

This  attitude  towards  Canada  has  probably  never 
found  a  more  explicit  advocacy  than  in  a  recent  num- 
ber of  Tlu  Foriini.  Mr.  Carnegie  has  long  been  a 
prominent  supporter  of  the  protective  policy  which 
has  regulated  the  tariff  of  the  United  States.  At  the 
same  time  his  eminent  practical  intelligence  has  main- 
tained a  peculiar  moderation  in  his  defence  and  expo- 
sition of  the  policy,  adapting  it  rather  to  the  wants  of 
his  country  and  of  his  time  than  to  the  requirements 
of  an  abstract  theory.  He  has  also  distinguished  him- 
self by  the  advocacy  of  very  noble  views  with  regard 
to  the  employment  of  wealth  ;  and  the  splendid  mu- 
nificence of  his  benefactions  proves  that  his  views  are 
not  relegated  to  the  domain  of  idle  theory.  The  fact 
also,  that  the  beneficiaries  of  his  liberality  have  often 


4562 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


been  foreigners,  proves  that  the  obligations  of  wealth 
are  not,  in  his  mind,  fettered  by  a  narrow  moral  na- 
tionalism which  would  interfere  with  the  wider  claims 
of  universal  humanity.  All  this  gives  a  deeper  signif- 
icance to  the  policy  of  coercion  which  he  proposes  in 
dealing  with  Canada.  Fortunately  he  is  to  be  com- 
mended for  having  the  courage  of  his  convictions.  He 
makes  no  attempt  to  tone  them  down.  He  does  in- 
deed take  care  to  disavow  any  hostile  sentiment  to- 
wards Canada  in  advocating  a  coercive  policy.  He 
claims  that  the  policy  is  dictated  by  genuine  friendli- 
ness. But  his  friendliness  is  that  of  the  father  who 
thinks  that  he  would  be  hating  his  son  if  he  spared  the 
rod.  It  is,  in  fact,  in  the  capacity  of  a  Russian  "  Lit- 
tle Father  "  or  Czar,  that  he  describes  the  poHcy  which 
would  govern  his  adjustment  of  the  United  States 
tariff.  But  it  is  only  fair  to  let  him  explain  himself  in 
his  own  words : 

"Although  I  am  opposed  to  taxing  the  food  and  the  necessa- 
ries of  the  people,  I  should  make  an  exception  in  regard  to  pro- 
ducts of  Canada,  and  this  without  regard  to  the  doctrines  of  either 
free  trade  or  protection,  but  as  a  matter  of  high  politics.  I  think 
we  betray  a  lack  of  statesmanship  in  allowing  commercial  advan- 
tages to  a  country  which  owes  allegiance  to  a  foreign  power  founded 
upon  monarchical  institutions  which  may  always  be  trusted  at 
heart  to  detest  the  Republican  idea.  If  Canada  were  free  and  in- 
dependent and  threw  in  her  lot  with  this  continent,  it  would  be  a 
different  matter.  So  long  as  she  remains  upon  our  flank  a  possible 
foe,  not  upon  her  own  account,  but  subject  to  the  orders  of  a  Eu- 
ropean power,  and  ready  to  be  called  by  that  power  to  exert  her 
forces  against  us  even  upon  issues  that  may  not  concern  Canada, 
I  should  let  her  distinctly  understand  that  we  view  her  as  a  menace 
to  the  peace  and  security  of  our  country,  and  I  should  treat  her 
accordingly.  She  should  not  be  in  the  Union  and  out  of  the  Union 
at  the  same  time,  if  I  could  prevent  it.  Therefore,  I  should  tax 
highly  all  her  products  entering  the  United  States  ;  and  this  I 
should  do,  not  in  dislike  for  Canada  but  for  love  of  her,  in  the 
hope  that  it  would  cause  her  to  realise  that  the  nations  upon  this 
continent  are  expected  to  be  American  nations,  and,  I  trust,  finally 
one  nation  so  far  as  the  English-speaking  portion  is  concerned.  I 
should  use  the  rod  not  in  anger  but  in  love  ;  but  I  should  use  it. 
She  would  be  either  a  member  of  the  Republic,  or  she  should 
stand  for  her  own  self,  responsible  for  her  conduct  in  peace 
and  war,  as  other  nations  are  responsible,  and  she  should  not 
shield  herself  by  calling  to  her  aid  a  foreign  power.  This  is,  as  I 
have  said,  neither  free  trade  nor  protection,  but  it  does  bear  upon 
the  subject  of  the  tariff.  I  would  tax  Canadian  articles  so  long  as 
Canada  continued  the  subordinate  of  a  European  power."' 

A  deeper  significance  is  given  to  these  utterances 
by  another  in  the  same  number  of  77;;?  Forum.  In 
an  article  on  "Our  Blundering  Foreign  Policy,"  Sen- 
ator Lodge  says  :  "  The  Government  of  Canada  is  hos- 
tile to  us.  They  lose  no  opportunity  of  injuring  us. 
They  keep  open  the  question  of  the  fisheries  both  in 
the  Atlantic  and  in  the  Pacific,  and  complicate  con- 
stantly our  relations  with  Great  Britain.  Yet  when 
the  Democratic  party  passes  a  tariff,  they  select  Can- 

IThe  Forum,  March,  1S95,  p.  25. 


ada  as  the  country  to  be  particularly  favored.  If 
Canada  desires  the  advantages  of  our  great  markets, 
let  her  unite  with  us  entirely  or  as  to  tariffs.  Until 
she  does  so,  it  is  our  obvious  policy  to  exclude  her 
from  our  markets  and  give  her  no  advantages  of  any 
kind  ";  and  so  on  in  a  similar  strain. 

We  have  nothing  to  do  with  Mr.  Lodge's  indictment 
against   either  the   Government  of  Canada  or  that  of 
the  Democratic  party  in  the  United  States;  but   it  is 
certainly  of  no  little  import  that  in  a  single  number  of 
T/u-  Forum  two  writers  shoidd  give  utterance  to  senti- 
ments of  such  a  similar  drift  on  the  policy  which  the 
United  States  ought  to   adopt  towards  Canada.      For 
these  are  the  sentiments  of  men  belonging  to  the  parly 
that  will  rule  in  the  next  Congress  and  probably  enough 
also  in   the  White   House,  after  the  next  presidential 
election.      This  fact  seems  to  imply  a   call  to  Amer- 
icans   and    Canadians    alike    to    look   at    the    subject 
with  earnest  eyes,  as  one  which  they  may  be  required 
to  consider  practically  ere  long.      It  may  not  be  with- 
out  interest,    therefore,    to   learn   how   the  subject   is 
viewed  by  a  Canadian;  but  the  misgivings,  which  oc- 
cur to  me  in  connexion  with  the  proposed  policy,  are 
based  on  universal  principles  of  human  nature  which 
may  be  pleaded  with   equal  propriety  from  an  Ameri- 
can point  of  view.     Fortunately,  indeed,  Mr.  Carnegie 
himself  starts  from   a  universal  law  of   international 
morality,  in   regard   to  which  he  and   his   opponents 
must  be  agreed.      He   protests   against  his  proposal 
being  viewed  as  a  dictate   of   hostile   sentiment,  and 
contends  even  that  it  expresses  the  truest  friendliness 
to  Canada.    This  position  is  peculiarly  welcome  in  the 
present  question.      The  United  States  and  the  United 
Kingdom  represent  more  fully  than  any  other  nation 
the  ideal  to  which  the  political  evolution  of  society  is 
tending  ;  and  the  disaster  to  humanity  would  be  sim- 
ply incalculable,  if,  instead   of  co-operating  in   their 
common   task   of    illustrating   the   practicability   of   a 
people  governing  itself,  they  were  to  waste  their  ener- 
gies in  the  infliction  of  injury  upon  one  another.      No 
greater  enemy  of  the  human  race  could  well  be  con- 
ceived  than  one  who   should  deliberately  stir  up  war 
between  the  two  countries,  whether  on  a  Canadian  is- 
sue or  on  any  other.   All,  therefore,  who  are  interested 
in  the  present  question  may  be  assumed  to  start  with 
a  common  desire   to  maintain  the  friendliest  possible 
relation  between  the  United  States  and  Canada. 

But  Mr.  Carnegie  contends  that  the  present  politi- 
cal position  of  Canada  is  incompatible  with  a  friendly 
relation  to  the  United  States,  and  it  is  upon  this 
ground  that  he  advocates  the  exercise  of  a  kindly  co- 
ercion to  make  her  abandon  her  position.  There  are 
thus  two  questions  forced  upon  us:  (i)  whether  the 
position  of  Canada  justifies  Mr.  Carnegie's  fears;  (2) 
whether  the  policy  of  coercion,  which  he  advocates, 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4563 


presents  any  reasonable  probability  of  being  success- 
ful. 

I.  The  position  of  Canada  as  a  part  of  the  British 
empire  is  described  as  "a  menace  to  the  peace  and 
security  of  our  country."  It  is  not  easy  to  find  wherein 
this  menace  consists;  but  if  I  trace  Mr.  Carnegie's 
thought  correctly,  there  are  in  his  mind  two  facts 
which  make  the  position  of  Canada  menacing  to  the 
United  States. 

I.  The  first  is,  that  she  may  be  called  upon,  at  the 
dictation  of  a  European  power,  to  make  war  upon  the 
United  States,  even  upon  issues  in  which  her  own  in- 
terests might  not  be  involved.  In  estimating  the  rea- 
sonableness of  this  fear,  it  is  necessary  to  observe  that 
Mr.  Carnegie  does  not  dread  a  position  in  which  Can- 
ada would  be  an  independent  nation — independent  of 
the  United  States  as  well  as  of  Great  Britain.  It  is 
simply  her  connexion  with  a  European  power  that 
forms  in  his  mind  a  menace  to  American  peace  and 
security.  In  discussing  this  allegation  it  is  not  wholly 
useless  to  bear  in  mind  that  war  is  a  result,  not  so 
much  from  the  external  relations  of  men,  as  from  their 
internal  passions.  As  long  as  the  unsocial  passions  of 
men  wield  their  wide  and  powerful  influence  over  hu- 
man life,  no  ingenuity  of  statecraft  can  exclude  the 
possibility  of  conflict.  The  closest  political  alliance 
has  never  prevented  civil  war  when  the  interests  of 
different  districts  or  of  different  classes  in  the  same 
country  became  irreconcilable.  The  present  genera- 
tion does  not  require  to  be  reminded  that  the  most 
terrible  war  which  it  has  seen  was  that  which  raged 
for  years  between  different  States  of  the  American 
Union.  Am  I  wrong  in  saying  that  many  a  patriotic 
American  fears  at  times  that  the  divergent  interests  of 
North  and  South,  of  East  and  West,  of  agriculture 
and  manufactures,  with  the  old  feud  of  rich  and  poor 
shaping  itself  into  a  life-and-death  struggle  of  democ- 
racy with  plutocracy,  form  a  far  more  serious  menace 
to  the  peace  and  security  of  his  country  than  the  atti- 
tude or  the  ambitions  of  any  foreign  power?  Even  the 
annexation,  therefore,  of  the  Canadian  provinces  to 
the  United  States  could  not  prevent  the  possibility  of 
war.  In  truth,  under  certain  contingencies,  which 
will  be  noticed  immediately,  such  annexation  might 
only  add  to  the  disintegrating  forces  already  at  work- 
in  the  Union. 

But  the  plea  is  that  the  peril,  arising  from  the  posi- 
tion of  Canada,  would  be  removed  if  she  separated 
from  Great  Britain  and  became  an  independent  na- 
tion. To  this  it  is  surely  an  obvious  rejoinder,  that 
the  dangers  of  international  friction  are  very  seriously 
aggravated  by  nations  being  independent,  and  indeed 
precisely  in  proportion  to  the  completeness  of  their 
independence.  This  gave  a  favorite  argument  to  the 
great  economists  of  the  early  part  of  our  century,  who 


advocated  the  abolition  of  the  restrictions  that  fettered 
international  trade.  They  pleaded  that,  the  more 
completely  nations  interchange  their  respective  pro- 
ducts, they  become  the  more  intimately  dependent  on 
one  another,  so  that  all  the  inducements  to  peace,  all 
the  deterrent  motives  against  war,  must  be  powerfully 
strengthened,  and  the  very  prospect  of  war  be  almost 
entirely  removed  from  the  calculations  of  international 
diplomacy.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  this  plea,  it  will 
at  least  be  acknowledged  that  a  people,  maintaining 
political  isolation,  may  rusli  into  war  without  regard 
to  the  rest  of  the  world;  but  if  they  form  part  of  a 
larger  federation,  they  are  checked  in  all  their  differ- 
ences with  foreign  peoples  by  being  obliged  to  consult 
the  interests  and  wishes  of  the  whole  federation  to 
which  they  belong.  It  would  not  be  difficult  to  show 
that,  in  this  respect,  the  connexion  of  the  different 
parts  of  the  British  Empire  has  been  in  the  interests 
of  peace  with  the  rest  of  the  world.  On  the  one  hand. 
Great  Britain  must,  in  international  differences,  keep 
in  view  the  security  of  all  parts  of  her  widely  scat- 
tered empire,  while  not  a  portion  of  that  empire  can 
venture  upon  a  transaction  in  any  way  menacing  to 
another  nation  without  considering  whether  she  will 
be  sustained  by  the  empire  to  which  she  belongs.  At 
this  very  moment  Canada  has  .adopted  a  Copyright 
Act  which,  in  the  opinion  of  many,  would  lead  to  un- 
pleasantness with  the  United  States,  if  not  with  other 
nations  as  well  ;  but  as  the  Act  affects  the  rights  of 
authors  in  all  parts  of  the  British  Empire,  the  Impe- 
rial Government  has,  in  the  exercise  of  its  constitu- 
tional authority,  refused  to  confirm  the  Act,  and  has 
thus  prevented  the  international  irritation  which  it 
might  have  caused.  There  are  other  instances  in  which 
the  connexion  of  Canada  with  the  British  Empire  has 
forced  her  into  a  more  conciliatory  attitude  towards 
the  United  States  than  she  might  have  adopted  if  she 
had  been  completely  independent.  The  truth  is,  that 
the  ardor  of  Canadian  patriotism  has  repeatedly  mani- 
fested itself  in  a  complaint  that  the  interests  of  Canada 
were  being  sacrificed  to  those  of  the  Empire.  Whether 
the  complaint  has  been  well  founded  or  not,  it  is  at 
least  a  proof  that  the  connexion  of  Canada  with  Great 
Britain,  instead  of  being  a  menace  to  the  peace  of  the 
United  States,  is  a  far  stronger  safeguard  against  any 
hostile  collision  between  the  two  countries  than  could 
possibly  be  secured  by  independence. 

2.  But  the  danger,  arising  from  Canada's  position, 
is  ascribed  not  only  to  the  fact  that  she  is  subject  to 
another  power,  but  that  the  power,  with  which  she  is 
connected,  is  monarchical.  It  is,  we  are  told,  "a  for- 
eign power  founded  upon  monarchical  institutions, 
which  may  always  be  trusted  at  heart  to  detest  the 
Republican  idea."  Here  again  it  is  not  easy  to  follow 
the  writer's  thought.     I  take  it  that  by  "the  Repub- 


45^4 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


lican  idea"  is  meant  the  essential  principle  of  popular 
government,  —  "the  government  of  the  people  by  the 
people  for  the  people."  But  why  are  British  institu- 
tions described  as  in  any  way  out  of  harmony  with 
this  political  principle?  It  is  quite  true  that  British 
institutions  are  in  a  sense  monarchical  ;  but  are  they 
so  in  any  sense  that  is  incompatible  with  popular  gov- 
ernment ?  A  monarchy,  in  the  unqualified  sense  of 
the  term,  is  of  course  a  government  in  which  supreme 
authority  is  vested  in  the  will  of  a  single  individual. 
But  it  requires  no  profound  knowledge  either  of  polit- 
ical science  or  of  British  history  to  learn  that,  if  this 
is  what  we  are  to  understand  by  monarchy,  then  the 
government  of  Great  Britain  is  not  monarchical.  The 
form  of  a  monarchy  is  indeed  retained,  but  the  form 
alone.  The  question  may  of  course  be  raised,  whether 
the  British  people  have  done  wisely  in  retaining  even 
the  form  of  monarchical  government  after  eliminating 
its  essential  principle.  But  that  question  does  not 
concern  us  here.  The  fact  in  which  we  are  interested 
is,  that  the  British  people  have  attained  a  government 
which,  while  carried  on  under  monarchical  forms,  is 
yet  as  completely  popular  as  any  people  have  ever  en- 
joyed. 

Moreover  it  is  not  to  be  overlooked  that  the  British 
constitution  is  not  one  that  has  been  formed  by  a 
single  stroke  of  legislation  and  imposed  upon  a  people 
unaccustomed  to  the  usages  which  it  implies.  Its 
origin  is  very  different  from  that.  All  the  inspiring 
traditions  of  political  history  in  Britain,  all  the  polit- 
ical habits  which  the  struggles  of  that  history  have 
trained,  have  woven  the  ideas  and  sentiments  of  pop- 
ular government  into  the  very  fibre  of  British  political 
life.  There  are  not  a  few  Americans  who  will  join  me 
in  questioning  whether  their  own  constitution  furnishes 
a  more  effective  method  of  realising  the  deliberate  will 
of  the  people  than  that  which  is  provided  by  the  Brit- 
ish constitution  and  the  usages  of  political  life  in  Brit- 
ain. Americans,  indeed,  are  apt  to  be  misled  by  a 
superficial  analogy  into  the  illusion,  that  the  British 
monarch  is,  like  their  president,  a  real  ruler,  instead 
of  being  merely  the  pro  forma  head  that,  standing 
above  all  parties  and  their  changes,  forms  a  living 
symbol  of  the  unity  and  continuity  of  national  life.  A 
similar  analogy  seems  to  produce  at  times  a  similar 
mistake  with  regard  to  the  real  function  of  the  British 
House  of  Lords.  Not  only  is  the  obstructive  power 
of  this  chamber  compared  with  that  of  the  American 
Senate,  but  it  is  even  imagined  to  be  vastly  greater  in 
consequence  of  the  fact  that  the  chamber  is  composed 
of  hereditary  peers.  But  here  again  the  evolution  of 
political  life  has  taken  from  the  Lords  as  completely 
as  from  the  monarch  all  power  of  permanent  obstruc- 
tion to  the  popular  will  as  constitutionally  expressed 
in  the  House  of  Commons.     If  the  Lords  attempted 


such  permanent  obstruction,  the  constitution  provides 
an  easy  remedy  ;  the  power  of  the  obstructive  major- 
ity in  the  Upper  House  could  be  swamped  by  the 
ministry  creating  a  sufficient  number  of  new  peers.  A 
ministry,  indeed,  which  ventured  upon  such  a  drastic 
measure,  would  require  to  be  very  sure  of  retaining 
the  confidence  of  the  Commons,  and  the  Commons 
themselves  would  generally  make  sure  that,  in  sup- 
porting the  ministry,  they  would  retain  the  confidence 
of  their  constituents.  But  in  truth  the  House  of  Lords 
shows  no  desire  or  purpose  to  set  itself  in  persistent 
opposition  to  the  popular  will.  It  does  indeed  ques- 
tion, and  it  questions  reasonably  at  times,  whether  the 
measures,  sent  up  from  the  Lower  House,  would  be 
sustained  by  the  voice  of  the  people  ;  and  in  this  re- 
spect it  has  become  an  effective  safeguard  of  popular 
rights  against  any  abuse  by  the  Commons  of  the  power 
with  which  they  are  temporarily  entrusted.  Notwith- 
standing all  the  obloquy  that  has  recently  been  heaped 
upon  the  House  of  Lords  by  the  advocates  of  Home 
Rule,  that  House  is  really  defending  the  right  of  the 
people  to  have  an  opportunity  of  pronouncing  upon 
such  a  radical  change  in  the  constitution  of  the  United 
Kingdom  before  the  change  is  finally  adopted. 

It  is  therefore  difficult  to  comprehend  how  British 
institutions  can  be  supposed  to  be  in  any  way  calcu- 
lated to  produce  a  detestation  of  "the  republican 
idea."  There  is  probably  not  a  single  Canadian  who 
does  not  believe  that,  under  British  institutions,  we 
enjoy  a  more  effective  government  of  the  people  by 
the  people  and  for  the  people  than  could  be  secured 
by  the  methods  of  the  American  Constitution.  If  ever 
the  Provinces  of  the  Dominion  become  States  of  the 
Union,  there  is  little  doubt  that  they  will  unanimously 
demand  the  retention  of  their  own  system  of  respon- 
sible government. 

II.  But  let  us  waive  the  conclusion  to  which  the 
above  reasoning  points.  Let  it  be  admitted,  for  the 
nonce,  that  the  position  of  Canada  as  a  part  of  the 
British  Empire  is  a  real  menace  to  the  United  States, 
and  that  therefore  American  policy  ought  to  aim  at 
the  annexation  or  independence  of  the  Dominion.  The 
question  is  still  unanswered,  whether  the  policy  pro- 
posed by  Mr.  Carnegie  is  likely  to  secure  its  object. 
This  object  may,  for  clearness  of  discussion,  be  viewed 
under  two  aspects.  The  proposed  policy  aims  first  at 
the  /w///<v//(7/(' object  of  injuring  the  industries  of  Can- 
ada, but  with  the  ultiinate  object  of  coercing  her  to 
sever  her  connexion  with  Great  Britain,  if  not  to  join 
the  United  States.  Is  either  of  these  aims  so  certain 
as  to  justify  the  policy  by  which  they  are  to  be  at- 
tained ? 

I.  The  iniiiiediate  object  of  inflicting  injury  upon 
Canada  is  advocated  by  Mr.  Carnegie  "without  re- 
gard to  the  doctrines  of  free  trade  or  protection,"  but 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4565 


he  acknowledges  that  "it  does  bear  upon  the  subject 
of  the  tariff."  That  is  to  say,  the  proposed  poHcy  of 
coercion  assumes  the  certainty  of  particular  results 
anticipated  from  a  protective  or  prohibitory  tariff. 
Now,  it  is  precisel}'  the  uncertainty  of  the  anticipated 
results  that  justifies  doubt  with  regard  to  the  success 
of  the  policy  proposed  for  the  injury  of  Canada.  It  is 
not  indeed  to  be  denied  that  one  nation  can  injure 
another  by  an  exclusive  tariff.  American  demand  may 
stimulate  various  industries  in  foreign  countries,  and 
these  may  thus  become  dependent  on  the  markets  of 
the  United  States.  They  may,  therefore,  certainly  be 
ruined  by  a  sufficiently  restrictive  tariff,  and  sympa- 
thetic imagination  maybe  left  to  picture  the  suffering 
which  may  thus  be  caused  among  an  industrious  and 
unoffending  population.  But  the  injury  produced  in 
this  way  must  at  worst  be  temporary.  Labor  will  not 
continue  to  be  expended  in  occupations  that  are  not 
remunerative,  and  it  requires  merely  time  to  readjust 
the  employments  of  the  laborers  injured.  Such  re- 
adjustments are  perpetually  rendered  inevitable  by 
the  numerous  vicissitudes  to  which  trade  is  subject. 
Indeed,  until  we  adopt  a  larger  measure  of  concerted 
action  in  the  production  and  distribution  of  wealth,  it 
may  be  questioned  whether  the  distress  caused  by  a 
revolutionary  invention  like  the  steam-loom  is  not 
greater  than  any  which  nations  can  inflict  upon  one 
another  by  hostile  tariffs. 

Let  it  be  granted  then  that  Canada  may  be  really 
injured  by  exclusion  from  the  markets  of  the  United 
States.  The  extent  of  the  injury  possible  or  probable 
cannot  be  determined  without  an  infinitude  of  statis- 
tical detail  in  reference  to  the  trade  between  the  two 
countries  ;  and  even  after  the  most  industrious  stud}' 
of  statistics  the  conclusion  would  be  uncertain.  We 
find  it  difficult  to  compass  the  manifold  complicaiions 
of  existing  social  phenomena,  and  we  are  completely 
baffled  in  trying  to  calculate  the  contingencies  that 
may  arise  when  men  are  driven  by  the  struggle  for 
existence,  or  allured  by  the  temptations  of  luxurj',  or 
stimulated  by  heroic  endeavor  and  self-sacrifice.  But 
in  any  case,  Mr.  Carnegie's  party  has  already  gauged 
pretty  accurately  the  extent  of  the  damage  which  can 
be  inflicted  upon  Canada  by  their  policy.  No  admin- 
istration is  likely  to  venture  farther  in  this  direction 
than  the  tariff  associated  with  the  name  of  Mr.  McKin- 
ley.  But  it  is  a  patent  fact  that  during  the  years 
which  have  passed  since  that  tariff  was  adopted,  the 
people  of  Canada  have  suffered  less  from  industrial 
depression  than  the  people  whom  it  was  designed  to 
benefit.  Evidently  coercionists  must  harden  their 
sympathies  to  face  a  much  wider  desolation  among 
the  people  whom  they  intend  to  coerce. 

2.  But  grant  that  the  industrial  life  of  Canada 
could  be  completely  paralysed  by  a  sufficiently  restric- 


tive tariff  in  the  United  States,  and  that  thus  the  im- 
mediate object  of  a  coercive  policy  could  be  attained 
with  certainty:  still  the  question  is  undecided,  whether 
this  result  would  secure  the  iilti)nate  object  of  coercing 
Canada  to  separate  from  Great  Britain.  It  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  a  tariff,  thus  expressly  designed  as 
an  attack  upon  Canada,  would  be  liostile  ;  it  would 
certainly,  in  its  ethical  import,  though  not  in  the  tech- 
nical definitions  of  international  law,  be  an  act  of  ivar. 
It  is  useless  to  plead  that  there  is  no  intention  to  make 
any  military  or  naval  demonstrations  against  Canada, 
hi  its  spirit  the  policy  of  coercion  would  be  an  act  of 
war  as  thoroughly  as  if  the  United  States  were  to  send 
armies  and  gunboats  to  shatter  the  factories  and  rav- 
age the  fields  of  Canada.  Nor  is  the  policy  rendered 
less  truly  hostile  by  the  plea  that  the  rod  of  coercion 
would  be  used,  "not  in  anger,  but  in  love."  Probably 
most  of  the  great  military  conquerors,  certainly  many, 
defended  their  conquests  by  a  similar  philanthropic 
plea.  They  claimed  the  right  to  decide  what  political 
alliance  was  best  for  the  country  invaded,  and  to  co- 
erce it  into  the  acceptance  of  their  decision.  Such  an 
assumption  was  not  out  of  harmony  with  the  ideas  of 
the  militant  civilisations  of  the  Old  World  ;  but  it  is 
an  anachronism  amid  Anglo-Saxon  civilisation  at  the 
close  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  a  political  sole- 
cism on  the  continent  of  North  America.  For  the 
usurpation  by  the  United  States  of  a  right  to  decide 
the  polity  of  Canada  would  be  treason  to  the  immor- 
tal truths  out  of  which  they  took  their  origin.  If  the 
American  colonies,  in  declaring  their  independence, 
did  not  proclaim  the  inalienable  right  of  all  peoples  to 
secure  life,  liberty,  and  happiness  under  such  forms 
of  government  as  they  voluntarily  elect,  then  the  his- 
tory of  the  Revolution  has  been  wholly  misread. 

But  even  if  the  proposed  policy  of  coercion  were 
justifiable  in  the  light  of  the  highest  righteousness, 
what  effect  might  it  be  expected  to  produce  upon  Can- 
adian sentiment  towards  the  United  States  ?  To  fore- 
cast the  effect  Americans  are  not  left  entirely  to  con- 
jecture. They  know  that,  about  the  middle  of  last 
century,  the  thirteen  colonies,  out  of  which  the  United 
States  have  grown,  seemed  so  divergent  in  their  in- 
terests, that  their  union  was  very  generally  believed 
to  be  an  impossibility.  But  whenever  a  policy  of 
coercion  was  adopted  by  the  British  Government  with 
the  view  of  imposing  on  them  political  measures  to 
which  they  had  not  given  their  consent,  they  became 
at  once  united  against  a  common  foe.  History  is  not 
without  parallel  instances.  One  of  these  may  be  spe- 
cially signalised  as  likely  to  come  home  to  Mr.  Car- 
negie himself.  At  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth 
century  the  word  Scot  was  but  the  name  of  one  among 
a  number  of  heterogeneous  races  inhabiting  North 
Britain.   Ere  the  century  closed  these  had  been  welded 


v^ 


-v* 


4566 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


into  one  by  the  great  Plantagenet,  whose  curious  epi- 
taph fitly  dubs  him  the  Hammer  of  the  Scots — Mal- 
leus Scotorum.  Few  will  deny  that  the  main  idea, 
which  governed  Edward's  policy,  was  in  the  interests 
of  general  peace  and  orosperity.  It  evidently  aimed 
at  uniting  under  one  government  all  the  different  parts 
of  the  island,— Scotland  and  Wales  as  well  as  Eng- 
land. But  the  mistake  of  Edward  lay  in  the  method 
adopted  for  realising  his  idea.  And  Mr.  Carnegie  has 
no  reason  to  anticipate  that  the  spirit,  which  resents 
coercion  even  for  a  good  purpose  has  died  out  in  Can- 
ada or  among  men  in  general.  It  is  a  matter  of  seri- 
ous concern  with  many  Canadians,  that  the  Provinces 
of  their  Dominion  are  so  divided,  not  only  by  geo- 
graphical situation,  but  by  racial,  linguistic,  and  reli- 
gious differences,  that  it  is  difficult  to  evoke  or  sustain 
among  them  a  sentiment  of  national  union.  Is  it  not 
just  possible  that  the  storm  of  indignation,  stirred  by 
a  deliberate  attempt  at  foreign  coercion,  might  fan  the 
national  sentiment,  smouldering  in  the  heart  of  Young 
Canada,  into  a  fierce  white  heat,  such  as  would  fuse 
all  differences  into  one  resolute  will  :  "  We  may  differ 
in  opinion  as  to  what  the  future  of  our  country  should 
be,  but  there  is  one  point  on  which  we  are  all  agreed  : 
our  future,  whatever  it  is  to  be,  shall  be  decided  by 
our  own  free  election  ;  it  shall  not  be  forced  upon  us 
by  the  dictation  of  a  foreign  power."  And  there  is  no 
genuine  American  who  would  not  generously  acknowl- 
edge, that  the  Canadians  resisting  coercion,  not  the 
politicians  adopting  it,  were  the  true  representatives 
of  the  spirit  that  animated  the  heroes  of  the  Revolu- 
tion. Of  course  Mr.  Carnegie  may  question  whether 
there  is  a  sufficient  number  of  heroic  natures  in  Can- 
ada to  accept  the  poverty  inflicted  by  his  policy  in 
preference  to  national  humiliation.  On  that  I  hazard 
no  rash  assertion.  But  men  have  often,  before  this, 
preferred  poverty  with  honor  to  riches  with  disgrace  ; 
and  they  can  do  it  again.  The  advocates  of  coercion 
must  therefore  calculate  on  the  possibility  of  being 
confronted  with  a  competent  number  of  ardent  leaders 
in  Canada,  who  would  refuse  to  sell  their  birthright 
as  free  men  for  any  mess  of  the  richest  pottage  which 
the  markets  of  the  United  States  could  supply. 

But  now,  to  bring  the  whole  argument  to  a  close, 
suppose  the  worst  comes  to  the  worst  with  Canada, 
and  the  policy  of  coercion  accomplishes  all  that  its 
most  hopeful  advocates  anticipate.  The  Canadian 
people  struggle  for  industrial  existence  for  a  time  ; 
and,  realising  at  last  the  hopelessness  of  the  struggle, 
yield  to  what  appears  an  inevitable  fate.  The  United 
States  would  then  have,  along  their  northern  border, 
instead  of  a  friendly  foreign  power,  a  number  of  new 
States  with  some  five  millions  of  people  sitting  in  sul- 
len discontent  at  having  been  unwillingly  forced  into 
the  Union  by  the  rod  of  tariff  coercion.      Is  it  to  be 


supposed  that,  with  the  disintegrating  forces  already 
at  work  in  the  Union,  the  new  States  would  be  no 
longer  "a  menace  to  the  peace  and  security  of  our 
country  ?  " 

Throughout  the  above  argument  I  have  followed 
Mr.  Carnegie's  lead,  and  avoided  complicating  the 
discussion  by  reference  to  the  doctrines  of  free  trade 
and  protection  ;  but  it  is  obvious  that  the  question 
would  be  completely  altered  if  either  the  United  States 
or  Canada  or  both  were  to  adopt  a  policy  of  free  trade. 
I  have  also  avoided  all  discussion  on  the  desirability 
of  annexation  or  independence  for  Canada.  The  truth 
is,  if  I  were  an  American  citizen,  patriotically  eager 
to  see  the  Canadian  Provinces  becoming  States  in  the 
Union,  I  should  have  felt  myself  free  to  condemn,  in 
stronger  language  than  I  have  used,  any  attempt  to 
attain  the  object  desired  by  coercive  methods.  I  be- 
lieve that  such  an  attempt  would  simply  tend  to  create 
a  feeling  of  irritation  on  both  sides,  which  might  not 
only  defer  the  political  union  of  the  two  countries  for 
generations,  but  even  mar  the  pleasantness  of  inter- 
course which  they  enjoy  at  present. 


NOTES. 

77/t'  Tibctnn  Organ  of  thd  Tibetan  Mission  Union,  Toronto, 
Canada,  begins  a  series  of  articles  on  "The  Life  and  Teachings 
of  the  Buddha,"  in  the  hope  of  dispelling  the  ignorance  and  in- 
difference regarding  both  the  founder  and  the  religion  of  Bud- 
dhism. We  read  in  this  article:  "  We  shall  never  gain  the  non- 
Christian  nations  until  we  treat  their  religions  with  justice,  and 
until  courtesy,  respect,  and  love  take  the  place  of  the  contempt 
which  is  now  so  general,  and  the  only  excuse  for  which  is,  that  it 
is  largely  based  upon  ignorance." 

The  Tibetans  will  be  benefited  by  Christian  missions  sent  in 
this  spirit,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  they  will  learn  through  Chris- 
tian missionaries  how  far  their  present  religion  is  removed  from 
the  original  teachings  of  Buddha.  Their  trust  in  ritualism,  their 
superstitious  fears,  their  hierarchical  institutions  are  un-Buddhis- 
tic,  and  the  Christians  who  come  to  them  are  nearer  to  Buddha 
than  their  own  lamas.  Let  the  Tibetans  receive  the  Gospel  of 
Christ,  and  let  Christian  countries  receive  the  Gospel  of  Buddha. 
Only  by  keeping  our  minds  open  to  all  views,  can  we  learn  to  dis- 
criminate and  to  hold  fast  that  which  is  good. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE   MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.   PAUL  CARUS,   EniTOE. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  411. 

THE  BRITISH   DI,\GORAS.     Dr.  F.  L.  Oswald 4559 

CAN  CANADA  BE  COERCED  INTO  THE  UNION?    (A 

Canadian  View.)     Prof.  J.  Clark  Murray 4561 

NOTES 4566 


The  Open  Court. 


A   WEEKLY  JOUKNAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  412.     (Vol.  IX.— 29  ) 


CHICAGO,   JULY   18,   1895. 


)  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
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CHINESE    EDUCATION    ACCORDING    TO   THE    "  BOOK 
OF  THREE  WORDS." 

THE     CHINESE     CIVILISATION. 

The  Chinese  are  the  most  conservative  people  in 
the  world.  Their  very  language  and  modes  of  writing 
impress  their  thoughts  with  a  stereotype  rigidity  and 
make  the  rise  of  new  ideas 
extremely  difficult,  if  not 
practically  impossible.  It 
is  natural  that  under  these 
conditions,  reverence  for 
the  past  has  become  the 
highest  virtue  and  a  criti- 
cism of  the  traditional  phi- 
losophy and  ethics  is  almost 
looked  upon  as  a  crime. 

China  reached  a  high 
state  of  civilisation  several 
centuries  before  Confucius, 
who  lived  about  500  B.  C; 
yet  in  spite  of  the  ability 
displayed  by  many  of  their 
scholars  the  Chinese  have 
during  these  twenty-three 
hundred  years  made  com- 
paratively little  progress. 
Confucius  was  himself  so 
overawed  with  the  great- 
ness of  the  classical  books 
of  his  time  that  he  has  pro- 
duced no  original  works  of 
his  own.  His  life-work  is 
that  of  a  moral  reformer, 
his  literary  products,  how- 
ever, are  limited  to  writ- 
ing history  and  editing  the 
books  of  ancient  sages  and 
poets.  His  Liin  Yti,  or 
' '  Sayings  and  Talks, "  were 
not  written  by  him,  but  by  some  of  his  disciples.  All 
the  authors  of  later  centuries,  among  them  many  able 
minds,  are  so  impressed  with  the  perfection  of  their 
ancient  traditions  that  they  have  never  ventured  to  be 
anything  more  than  epigones.  There  is  no  attempt  at 
independence  of  thought,  no  aspiration   for  attaining 


l!& 


g^  :^  H  tf  ^^ /V  -^ 


14  # 


<^  -i^ 


^ 


n^Mm^ 


higher  aims  ;  the  very  notion  of  progress  seems  to  be 
excluded."  Consider  only  that  the  soil  in  China  is  tilled 
to-day  according  to  prescriptions  given  in  a  book  writ- 
ten more  than  two  thousand  and  three  hundred  years 
ago,  and  the  plan  of  education  is  based  upon  a  treatise 
written   by  Wang   Po   Heu  in   the  thirteenth  century 

of  the  Christian  era. 

The  Chinese  language 
is  atomic  in  its  nature  ;  in- 
flexion is  unknown.  Every 
word  consists  of  a  syllable 
which  is  and  always  re- 
mains an  unchangeable 
unity.  Chinese  writing  is 
not  phonetic,  but  ideo- 
graphic ;  every  word  has  its 
own  sign.  This  condition 
makes  the  Chinese  lan- 
guage at  once  difficult  and 
easy,  and  we  can  learn  the 
meaning  of  Chinese  char- 
acters without  knowing 
their  pronunciation.  How- 
ever, while  a  beginner  may 
be  delighted  with  the  facil- 
ity with  which  he  can  un- 
derstand the  significance  of 
isolated  characters,  he  will 
soon  be  confronted  with  a 
string  of  them,  all  of  which 
he  may  singly  know  per- 
fectly well,  but  he  is  baffled 
at  their  combination.  We 
might  as  well  try  to  find  out 
the  meaning  of  an  English 
word  such  as  adorable  by 
considering  the  etymology 
of  (7</=to,  OS,  c/'/V^  mouth, 
and  <7/'/c^ capable.  It  is 
chiefly  by  means  of  fixed  rules  of  precedence  or  se- 
quence that  the  unwieldy  characters  are  woven  into 
definite  phrases,  sentences,  and  periods.  Here  prac- 
tice alone  can  help  in  unravelling  their  meanings. 

The   Chinese   possess   several   classical   books    on 
education,  among  which  we  mention  "The  Juvenile 


4568 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


Instructor  "  or  .9/(?r' //>'('/;,  "The  Complete  Collection 
of  Family  Jewels,"  extracts  from  which  Dr.  Morrison 
has  published  in  the  Chinese  repository  (Vol.  IV.,  p. 
83-87,  306-316),  "The  Odes  for  Children"  or  Yin 
Hioh  Shi-tieh,  and  "The  Twenty-four  Stories  of  Filial 
Piety."  "  The  Woman  Instructor  "  by  Luh  Chan  is 
of  a  comparatively  recent  date.  All  these  books  con- 
tain occasional  gems  of  fine  sentiment  but  very  little 
useful  information. 

In  the  Siao  Hioh  we  read  : 

"  Let  children  always  be  taughl  to  speak  the  simple  truth  ;  to 
stand  erect  in  their  proper  places  and  listen  with  respectful  atten- 
tion." 

In  "The  Complete  Collection  of  Family  Jewels  " 
the  author  insists  on  the  maxim  which  the  Romans 
expressed  by  multuni  tion  miilta  ;  he  says  : 

■'  Better  little  and  fine  than  much  and  coarse."' 

In  "The  Odes  for  Children"  we  find  this  beauti- 
ful passage  : 

"  In  all  the  world  nothing  is  impossible,  if  the  heart  of  man 
only  is  resolute." 

The  literary  primer  of  China  is  the  Ts  ieii-tsz'-ttjen 
or  the  book  of  a  thousand  characters,  which  every  Chi- 
nese pupil  has  to  learn  by  heart  so  as  to  be  able  to 
read  and  write  it.  The  book  consists  of  two  hundred 
and  fifty  rhymed  verses,  each  one  containing  four 
characters  so  arranged  as  to  give  sense.  In  the  whole 
book  not  two  characters  are  alike,  and  yet  it  contains 
comparatively  few  obscure  passages.  The  legend  goes 
that  one  of  the  Chinese  emperors  of  the  Liang  dynasty 
had  ordered  his  minister  of  State,  Wang  Hi  Chi,  to  se- 
lect the  one  thousand  most  important  characters  and 
arrange  them  in  good  order.  The  minister  instructed 
Cheu-Hing-tsun  (surnamed  Sz'-tswan)  of  Hiang  to  put 
them  in  verse  ;  this  scholar  did  so  in  one  night  and  re- 
ceived a  handsome  honorarium  in  gold  and  silk,  but 
his  hair  had  turned  grey  in  his  lucubrations.  The 
book  begins  : 

"The  heaven  is  blue,  the  earth  is  yellow,  the  universe- was 
vast  and  formless  (viz.  in  the  beginning)." 

Here  are  a  few  quotations  from  the  same  source  -1^ 

"  Do  not  speak  of  other  people's  faults. — 
"  Cease  to  brag  of  your  own  superiority. — 
"  Let  your  promises  be  such  as  may  be  fulfilled. — 
"If  your  body  is  erect,  your  shadow  will  be  straight. — 
"  A  foot  of  jade  is  not  to  be  valued,  but  an  inch  of  time  must 
be  appreciated. — 

"The  husband  commands,  the  wife  obeys. — 
"Leave  behind  none  but  purposes  of  good. — 
"Know,  judge,  and  control  thyself  ! — 

1  Quoted  from  Williams's  Middle  Kinsdom,  I.,  pp.  522,  524,  and  533. 

-'The  idea  universe  consists  of  two  characters,  of  which  the  first  means 
.' wing,"  the  second  "  from  the  beginning  until  now."  By  "wings"  the  Chi- 
nese understand  not  only  the  wings  of  a  bird  but  also  the  two  ends  of  a  roof. 
The  combination  of  the  two  words  suggests  the  idea  of  utmost  limits  in  space 
and  time. 

3 Translated  into  English  mainly  with  the  help  of  Stanislaus  Julien's 
French  transliteration  of  the  TsHen-Tsz'-lVen.     Paris,  :864. 


"  A  correspondent  should  be  brief  and  concise. — 
"The  heart  if  troubled  wears  out  the  mind. — 
"When  satirised   and  admonished  exr.mine  yourself,  and   do 
this  the  more  when  favors  increase." — 

The  resources  of  China  are  untold  and  the  poten- 
tialities of  the  various  nations  who  live  in  that  vast 
territory  are  great,  if  but  the  spell  of  their  conserva- 
tism could  be  broken.  Possibly  there  is  no  remedy 
but  dire  affliction,  and,  taking  this  view,  we  antici- 
pate that  the  late  war  with  Japan,  apparently  so  disas- 
trous to  the  Chinese,  will  mark  the  beginning  of  a  new 
era  in  the  civilisation  of  Eastern  Asia.  It  will  open 
their  eyes  and  lead  them,  against  their  will,  but  for 
their  own  advantage,  out  of  their  narrowness  upon  the 
path  of  progress  to  a  nobler  unfoldment  of  life  and 
national  prosperity. 

Girls  are  educated  in  China  in  a  different  way  than 
boys  as  we  learn  from  "The  Girl's  Primer."  They 
are  as  much  as  possible  separated  and  are  not  allowed 
to  sit  together  on  the  same  mat  or  eat  together.  Even 
the  reply  "yes  "  is  different  for  both  sexes  :  a  boy  says 
wei,  a  girl  yen. 

The  fault  of  the  Chinese  is  rather  over-education 
than  lack  of  education.  There  are  schools  every- 
where. Even  as  far  back  as  in  the  days  of  Confucius, 
as  we  read  in  the  "  Book  of  Rites,"  every  village  had 
its  school,  every  county  seat  its  academy,  every  pro- 
vincial metropolis  its  university.  High  positions  are 
open  only  to  those  who  have  passed  through  a  severe 
ordeal  of  innumerable  competitive  examinations.  Thus 
the  literary  class  alone  hold  the  honors  of  nobility  and 
the  prerogatives  of  the  administration. 

"THE   BOOK   OF  THREE   WORDS." 

As  we  expect  that  our  readers  are  deeply  interested 
in  the  subject  we  here  present  a  translation  of  the  fa- 
mous Chinese  treatise  on  education,  which  has  never 
been  completely  translated  into  English.  The  original 
being  written  in  verses,  of  three  words  each,  alternately 
rhyming,  is  called  the  book  of  three  words.  Its  author, 
Wang-Po-Heu,  lived  under  the  Song  dynasty  which 
flourished  till  1277,  A.  D.  At  the  same  time  we  repro- 
duce the  first  seventy-two  characters  in  the  original 
Chinese  from  C.  Fr.  Neumann's  edition,  and  transcribe 
their  pronunciation  according  to  W.  Williams's  Sylla- 
bic Dictionary,  adding  a  brief  explanation  of  their 
meaning. 

I  take  this  occasion  to  express  publicly  my  indebt- 
edness to  Dr.  Heinrich  Riedel  of  Brooklyn,  N.  Y., 
who  in  many  ways  has  greatly  aided  me  in  my  Chinese 
studies.  Without  his  kind  assistance  I  could  have 
done  nothing.  The  following  translation  is  based 
mainly  on  the  authority  of  Stanislaus  Julien,  whose 
Latin  version  is  very  literal.  I  have  partly  compared 
it  with  the  original,  and  utilised  at  the  same  time  C. 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4569 


Fr.  Neumann's  German  translation  and  the  fragments 
found  in  Williams's  Middle  Kingdom,  Vol.  II.,  pp.  527 
et  seq. 

TRANSLATION  OF   "THE   BOOK  OF  THREE  WORDS." 

The  following  translation,  although  awkward,  is  as 
literal  as  a  translation  from  the  Chinese  into  English 
can  be.  The  historical  material  in  the  footnotes  is 
based  upon  the  information  given  by  C.  Fr.  Neumann 
in  his  Lehrsaal  des  Mittelreiches,  Miinchen,  1836. 

I-       6.   From   the  beginning  of  man,  his   nature  is  rooted  in 

goodness. 
7-     12.   Naturally  men   comply  with    their   immediate   duties; 
training  adapts  them  to  wider  spheres.' 
13-     iS.   If  not  educated  their  nature  is  changed  (for  worse). 
19-     24.   Education   in   its   methods   chiefly   acquires   value   by 

close  attention. 
25-     30.   Of  old,  Mencius's  mother  selected  on  account  of  the 

neighborhood  a  residence. 
31-     36.   Because  her  son  did  not  learn,  she   moved  away  with 

her  loom  and  shuttle. 
37-     42.   Teu  of  Yen  Shan  was  in  possession  of  the  rule  of  justice. 
43-     48.   He  educated  five  sons  and  all   their  names  became  fa- 
mous. 
49-     54.   To  raise  (children)  without  education,  is  a  father's  fault. 
55-     60.   And  if  instruction  is  not  strict  it  exhibits  the  teacher's 

indolence. 
61-     66.   If  a  boy  does  not  learn,  his  behavior  is  improper. 
67-     72.   And  if  a  youth  does  not  study  what  will  he  do  as  an 

old  man  ? 
73-     78.   A  gem,  if  not  cut,  is  a  thing  of  no  use. 
79-     84.   And  if  a  man  does  not  study  he  will  never  learn  his  du- 
ties. 
85-     90.    If  a  man  has  a  son  he  must  take  him  in  his  youth 
gi-     96.   To  a  teacher  and  a  friend  so  as  to  teach  him  propriety 

and  urbanity. 
97-   102.    Hiang  when  nine  years  old  could  warm  the  blankets 

(of  his  parents). 
103-  108.   Respect  for  parents  is  what  must  be  observed. 
109-  114.   Yung  when  four  years  old  could  renounce  a  pear. 
115-  120.   To  show  reverence  to  your  elder  brother  is  necessary 

to  learn  early. 
121-  126.  The  most  important  thing  is  piety  toward  parents,  and 
reverence  of  younger  brothers  toward  elder  brothers. 
In  the  second  place  only  stands  learning  and  com- 
prehension. 
127-  132.  Learn  first  a  few  numbers,  then  a  few  words  [charac- 
ters] . 

1  As  to  the  second  double  triad  (words  7-12)  the  commonly  adopted  inter- 
pretation reads  as  follows  :  "  By  nature  men  are  mutually  akin  ;  by  practice 
they  are  mutually  estranged." 

Dr.  Riedel,  my  Chinese  instructor,  writes  as  fellows :  "I  differ  in  my  in- 
terpretation not  only  from  all  translators  but  also  from  the  Chinese  commen- 
tators ;  and  yet  I  venture  to  defend  it.  I  grant  that  at  first  sight  we  may  read  ; 
'  By  nature  (men)  are  drawn  close  together,  by  practice  (habit,  custom)  they  are 
distanced.'  But  is  this  idea  in  place  in  a  marvellously  concise  hj ^etpii^iov 
of  Chinese  education,  standing  between  the  two  propositions  that  man's  fun. 
damental  disposition  is  good  and  that  education  is  indispensable.  I  believe 
the  author  means  to  say  that  man's  good  disposition  acts  satisfactorily  in  the 
narrow  sphere  of  life,  viz.  in  the  family  circle,  etc.,  but  is  not  sufficient  to  en- 
sure proper  behavior  in  the  more  distant  sphere  of  public 'duties.  I  construe 
siang  in  numbers  8  and  11  in  a  verbal  sense,  'to  be  mutual:  to  interact;  to 
blend  with  ;  to  lead  on  to,'  a  translation  justified  by  grammar  and  dictionary." 
Accordingly  we  had  better  translate:  "  By  nature  men  adapt  themselves  to 
their  near  relations:  but  practice  (education)  is  necessary  to  adapt  them  to 
their  distant  duties." 


133-   138-   From  one  to  ten,  from  ten  to  one  hundred, 

139-  144.  From  one  hundred  to  one  thousand,  from  one  thousand 
to  ten  thousand. 

145-   150.   There  are  three  powers  :   heaven,  earth,  and  man. 

151-  156  There  are  three  lights  :  the  sun,  the  moon,  and  the 
stars. 

157-  162,  There  are  three  bonds  ;  between  prince  and  minister, 
justice  ; 

163-  168.  Between  father  and  son,  affection  ;  between  man  and 
wife,  concord 

169-  174.  There  are  spring  and  summer,  there  are  autumn  and 
winter 

175-  180.   These  four  seasons  follow  one  another  without  end. 

181-  186.   There  are  South  and  North  ;   there  are  West  and  East. 

187-  192.  These  are  the  four  quarters  which  have  to  be  referred 
to  the  Middle. 

193-   198.   There  are  water,  fire,  wood,  metal,  and  earth. 

199-  204.   These  five  elements  are  based  upon  number. 

205-  210.  There  is  humanity,  justice,  propriety,  prudence,  and 
truthfulness. 

211-  216.   These  five  norms  must  not  be  trespassed. 

217-  222.  There  are  rice,  millet,  maize,  wheat,  sorghum,  and  tsi- 
grass 

223-  228.  These  are  the  six  species  of  corn  on  which  men  sub- 
sist. 

229-  234    There  are  horses,  cattle,  sheep,  fowl,  dogs,  and  swine 

235-  240.   These  are  the  six  domestic  animals  which  men  raise. 

241-  246.   There  are  joy  and  wrath,  there  are  pain  and  fear, 

247-  252  Love,  hatred,  and  desire.  These  are  the  seven  emo- 
tions. 

253-  258.   Gourd,  terra  cotta.  leather,  wood,  stone,  and  metal, 

259-  264.   Silk  fibre,  bamboo,  produce  the  eight  notes. 

265-  270.  The  great-great  grandfather,  the  great  grandfather,  the 
grandfather,  the  father,  and  myself, 

271-  276.    Myself,  my  son.  my  son  and  my  grandchild, 

277-  282.  My  son  and  my  grandchild,  and  also  my  great  grand- 
child and  my  great-great  grandchild, 

283-  288.  These  are  the  nine  degrees  of  direct  consanguinity 
among  men. 

289-  294.  The  affection  between  father  and  son,  the  concord  be- 
tween man  and  wife, 

295-  300.  The  elder  brother's  kindness,  the  younger  brother's  re- 
spect, 

301-  306.  Reverence  between  seniors  and  juniors,  friendship 
among  associates 

307-  312  On  the  part  of  the  sovereign,  regard,  on  the  part  of  the 
minister,  loyalty, 

313-  318.  These  are  the  ten  virtues  which  constitute  human  so- 
ciety. 

319-  324.  Whoever  educates  children  must  go  to  the  kernel  of 
things  and  must  be  searching, 

325-  330  (He  must)  investigate  the  etymology,  make  clear  periods 
and  punctuation. 

331-  336.   Those  who  learn  must   make  a  beginning  in  this  way  : 

337-  342.  When  the  book  Sino-//io/:  (the  primer')  is  finished  one 
proceeds  to  the  "  Four  Books." 

343-  348.  The  Liin-Yii  (the  book  of  colloquies),  contains  twenty 
chapters. 

349-  354-  AH  disciples  learn  by  heart  the  noble  words  (of  the 
master,  viz    Confucius). 

355-  360.  Mencius  then  (is  to  be  studied),  in  seven  chapters  com- 
plete 

361-  366.  He  discusses  righteousness  (Tao)  and  virtue  (Teh)  :  he 
speaks  of  humanity  and  justice. 

IThe  primer  contains  instruction  in  the  first  rules  of  decency  and  pro- 
priety. 


4570 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


367- 
373- 
379- 
385- 
391- 

397- 
403- 

409 

415 

421 

427 

433 

439- 

445- 

451- 
457- 

463- 

4G9- 
475- 
481- 


402. 


408. 


-  414 


372,  The  author  of  the  book  C/iuiig-i'mig- (viz.,  keeping  the 
middle  path  with  constancy),  was  K'ung-Ki.' 

378.  The  middle  that  does  not  decline,  that  is  constant  and 
does  not  change. 

384.  The  author  ot  the  book  Ta-llioh  (the  text-book  for  the 
adult)  was  Tseng-Tsz'.- 

390.  He  begins  with  self-culture  and  home  management, 
proceeding  to  administration  and  government. 

396.   As  soon  as  tliao  A'ing  (the  book  on  the  child's  love  of 
parents)  is  mastered  and  the  four  books  are  learned 
by  heart, 
Then  the  six  canonical  books  must  be  attacked  and  one 

must  begin  to  study  them. 
The  S/ii-A'ins^,  the  Book  of  Hymns,  the  S/iu-Kiiig,  the 
Book  of  Annals,  the  Yih-A'ing,  the  Book  of  Changes, 
the  Books  of  Rites  (being  the  Cheu-l.i  and  Li-A'i). 
and  Ch^iin  T'siii  (spring  and  autumn)." 
These  are  called  the  Six  A'ing  {y'lz.  canonical  books), 
which  must  be  explained  and  studied. 

420.  We  have  the  Lien-Shan  (the  vapor-emitting  mountain) 
and  we  have  the  /Cwci-  Ts'ang(the  treasure  chamber).'' 

426.   We  have  the  Cheu-Vili,  having  three  parts  which  must 
be  accurately  pondered  on. 
We  have  laws  and  counsels,  we  have  precepts  and  ex- 
hortations. 
We  have  edicts  and  mandates  :   the  Slni-Kitig,  the  con- 
tents of  which  are  the  annals. 

444.  Our  Cheu-Kung  has  written  the  Chcu-Li,  the  Book  of 
Ceremonies  of  the  Cheu  dynasty.'' 

450.  He  instituted  the  six  classes  of  magistrates''  and  estab- 
lished the  body  politic. 

456.   The  elder  and  the  younger  Tai   interpreted   the  Li-A'i, 

462.  Which  recorded  the  words  of  sages,  the  rites,  and  the 
rules  of  music. 

468.  There  is  the  book  of  the  morals  of  the  kingdoms.  There 
are  the  JV7,"  the  Books  of  Praises  and  Song,  the  Book 
of  Hymns. 

474.  These  are  called  the  four  poetical  books  which  must  be 
read  and  sung. 

480,  Where  the  S/ii-LCing,  the  Books  of  Songs,  stops,  the 
Book  of  Spring  and  Autumn  begins. 

486.  It  contains  praise  and  blame.  Discriminates  between 
good  and  evil. 


432 


-  438 


1  K'ung-Ki  is  the  grandson  of  K'ung-tsz'  (Confucius)  generally  known  under 
the  honorary  title  of  Tsz'-Sz' .  He  died  in  the  year  453  B.  C.  in  the  sixty-second 
year  of  his  age,  leaving  one  son  of  the  name  Tsz'-Shang,  who  is  the  ancestor 
of  the  K'ung-Tsz'  family  that  is  flourishing  to  the  present  day.  The  purpose  of 
the  Chung-Yung,  or  the  path  of  the  unchangeable  middle,  a  book  so  much  ad- 
mired by  the  Chinese,  is  to  show  that  he  only  who  walks  in  the  middle  path 
can  be  happy. 

2Tseng-tsz',  the  most  famous  disciple  of  K'ung-Tsz',  born  about  505  B.  C. 
and  regarded  ar.  the  best  commentator  of  the  master's  doctrine.  The  first  part 
of  the  book  is  ascribed  to  K'ung-Tsz'  himself  and  is  regarded  as  a  model  of 
high  style.     Tseng-tsz'  added  his  explanations  in  ten  chapters. 

■'iThe  Book  on  Spring  and  Auturnn  contains  the  history  of  the  empire  Lu. 
narrating  events  from  722-481  B.  C.  It  was  written  by  Confucius  who  uses  the 
historical  material  in  an  educational  way  for  his  political  purposes.  The  book 
is  regarded  as  a  model  of  historical  style. 

4"  Vapor  emitting  mountain  "  is  the  name  of  the  dynasty  Hia  because  the 
comprehension  of  the  nature  of  things  arose  from  it,  as  vapors  rise  from  moun- 
tains. The  Shan  or  Yii  dynasty  is  called  treasure  chamber  because  under 
their  rule  the  essence  of  all  things  was  well  preserved.  The  books  are  now  lost. 

ft  It  is  said  to  contain  expositions  of  astrology  and  magic. 

6The  six  classes  of  magistrates  are  the  magistrates  of  heaven,  earth, 
spring,  summer,  autumn,  and  winter.  Eacii  class  had  its  own  implements 
which  had  to  be  used  in  a  special  way. 

7  The  Books  of  Praises,  the  two  la,  contain  songs  of  the  Cheu  dynasty  in 
praise  of  virtuous  men  in  a  distinguished  position,  and  also  in  the  humbler 
walks  of  life. 


493- 

498. 

499- 

504. 

505- 

510. 

511- 

516, 

517- 

522. 

523- 

528. 

529- 

535- 
541- 

547- 
553- 

559- 
565- 


540. 
546. 

552. 


487-  492.   As  the   three  commentators  (viz.  of  the  Annals  of  Lu) 
we  have  Kung-  Yang, 
We  have  Tso-Shi  and  we  have  A'ti-Liang. 
As  soon  as  the  canonical  books  are  clearly  understood 

then  the  philosophers  must  be  read. 
Grasp  of  them   that  which  is  essential,  and  remember 

their  doctrines. 
As  the  five  philosophers  we  have  Siin,'  Yang,- 
Wen-Chung-Tsz'-'  Lao,"*  and  Chwang.'' 
528.   If  the  canonical   books   and  the  philosophers  are  mas- 
tered one  must  read  the  historians. 
534    One  must  learn  the  tables  of  successive  generations, 
and  note  their  end  and  beginning, 
From  Fuh-Hi  and  Shin-Nung  to  Hoang-Ti. 
These  are  the  three  illustrious  ones  who  lived  in  an- 
cient times. 
T'ang  and  Yeu-Yii  are  the  two  emperors. 
558.   One  with  greetings  left  to  the  other  the  empire.    Their 

age  is  called  the  time  of  prosperity." 
564.   Yii  of  the  Hia  dynasty,  T'ang  of  the  Shang  dynasty. 
570.   Wen-Wang  and  Wu-Wang  of  the  Cheu   dynasty  are 
called  the  three  great  emperors. 
571-576.    In  the  Hia  dynasty  the   imperial  power  was  transmitted 
from  father  to  son.     The  government  remained  in 
the  family. 
577-  582    After  four  hundred  years  the  rule  of  the  Hia  dynasty 

was  transferred  to  some  one  else. 
583-  588.   Ch'ing  T'ang  overthrew  Hia  and   its  rule  is  called  the 
Shang, 
Which  staid  six  hundred  years  until  Cheu  and  then  ex- 
pired. 
Wu-Wong  of  the  dynasty  Cheu  began  his  reign  by  kill- 
ing Cheu-Sin,' 
601-  606.   The  dynasty  Cheu  lasted  eight  hundred  years,  an  ex- 
tremely long  time. 
When  the  dynasty  Cheu  transferred  the  government  to 

the  East  the  royal  power  began  to  decay. 
People  took  to  shield  and  lance.    The  great  went  about 

intriguing. 
This  is  the  beginning  of  the  book  of  spring  and  autumn 
(the  annals  of  Lit)  after  which  the  era  of  the  warring 
kingdoms  began.** 
Five  usurpers  arose  to  power,  seven  heroes  appeared. 
Ying-Ts'in-Shi  began  to  reunite  the  empire. 
And  handed   it  over  to  'Rh-Shi.     Ts'u  and  Han  con- 
tended against  each  other. 
Kao-Ts'u  rose,  and  the  dynasty  Han  became  founded. 
When  it  came  to  Hiao-P'ing,  Wang-Mang  usurped  the 
empire. 
660.   Then  Kwang-Wu  rose,  and  his  government  was  called 
the  Eastern  Han. 


589-  594- 


595-  600. 


607-  612. 
613-  618. 
619-  624. 


625- 
631- 
637- 

643- 
649- 

655- 


630. 
636. 
642. 

648. 
654- 


1  Siin-Tsz',  whose  proper  name  is  Hoang-Chang,  lived  under  the  dynasty 
Cheu,  belongs  to  the  school  of  Confucius.  His  work,  so  far  as  it  is  extant, 
consists  of  two  parts.     He  moralises  on  diligence,  study,  and  virtue. 

2Yang-Tsz'  or  Yang-Hiang  lived  in  the  Han  dynasty  and  wrote  two  books 
on  "What  Is  Right  ?  "  {Fa- Yen),  and  on  "  The  Great  Norm  "  (  Tai-Hien-King) . 

^  Wen-Chung-Tsz'  lived  under  the  dynasty  Sui  and  at  the  beginning  of  the 
dynasty  T'ang. 

•1  Lao-Tsz'  is  the  well  known  author  of  the  Tao-Teh-King. 

.'>  Chwang-Tsz'  and  Liu-Tsz'  are  prominent  teachers  among  the  Taoists. 
They  lived  in  the  fourth  century  A.  D. 

li  T'ang  or  T'ang-Vao  began  to  rule  in  2357  B.  C.  Yeu-Yfl  (commonly 
called  ShUn)  was  nominated  by  him  as  his  successor  in  2285  B.  C,  but  was  un- 
able to  secure  the  empire  for  his  son.  Accordingly,  the  emperor  ShQn  nomi- 
nated Yii,  who  became  the  founder  of  the  dynasty  Hia  in  205  B.  C. 

7  The  battle  in  the  plains  of  Mo-Yeh  in  the  year  1123  terminated  the  fate  of 
the  Shang  dynasty,  the  last  emperor  of  which  was  Cheu-Sin. 

«About  440  A.  D. 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4571 


661-  666.   After  400  years  it  ended  with  the  Emperor  Hien-Ti. 

667-  672.  Wei-Sho  and  \Vu  contended  about  the  possessions  of 
Han. 

673-  678.  These  are  the  three  kingdoms  which  lasted  until  the 
two  Tsin. 

679-  6S4.   Sung  and  Ts'i  came  next,  and  Liang  and  Ch'in  followed. 

685-  690.  They  were  the  sovereign  kingdoms  having  as  a  capital 
Kin-Ling-Wu. 

6gi-  696.  The  kingdom  Wei  of  the  North  was  divided  into  an 
Oriental  and  Occidental  part. 

697-  702.  The  Cheu  of  the  family  Yii-Wen  and  the  Tsi  of  the 
family  Kao. 

703-  708.  They  came  down  to  the  dynasty  Sui,  which  reunited  all 
parts  of  the  empire. 

709-  714.  They  in  their  turn  did  not  transmit  thei  empire,  but 
lost  the  inheritance  of  the  government. 

715-  720.   Kao-Tsu  of  the  T'ang  dynasty  led  the  patriotic  troops, 

721-  726.  And  discontinued  the  disorders  of  the  Sui  rule,  laying 
the  foundations  of  his  dynasty. 

727-  732.  Twenty  times  the  government  changed  in  the  three 
hundred  following  years. 

733-  73S.  The  Liang  destroyed  the  T'ang,  and  the  empire  was 
changed. 

739-  744.  The  Liang,  the  T'ang,  the  T'sin,  the  Han,  and  the 
Cheu 

745-  750.  Are  called  the  five  imperial  families,  each  one  having 
its  own  peculiar  origin. 

751-  756.   Now  the  glorious  Sung  rose  in  succession  to  the  Cheu. 

757-762.  Eighteen  rulers  followed  one  another.  A  Southern  and 
a  Northern  part  were  consolidated. (?) 

763-  768.   The  seventeen  historical  chapters  contain  all  this. 

769-  774.  They  relate  times  of  peace  and  disturbance.  Through 
them  we  can  learn  the  beginning  and  end  of  dynas- 
ties. 

775-  7S0.   He  who  writes  history  and  examines  its  true  narratives. 

7S1-  786.  Will  penetrate  the  past  and  the  present  as  if  he  had 
seen  them  with  his  own  eyes. 

787-  792.  With  your  mouth  (viz.,  aloud)  you  must  read,  and  in 
your  mind  you  must  weigh. 

793-  798.   In  the  morning  be  at  work  ;   in  the  evening  be  at  work. 

799-  804.  Once  Chung-Ni '  (that  is,  Confucius)  was  the  disciple 
of  Hiang-Toh. 

805-  810.  The  saints  and  sages  of  antiquity  were  all  diligent  stu- 
dents. 

811-  S16.  Chao,  called  Chung-Ling  (viz.,  the  imperial  scribe), 
studied  the  book  Liin-yii  (the  Confucian  Dialogues). 

817-  822.  Although  he  held  a  high  office,  he  studied,  neverthe- 
less, assiduously. 

823-  828.  The  former  straightened  the  leasees  of  the  P'u  plant , 
the  latter  stripped  off  bamboo  bark  (viz.,  for  writing). 

829-  834.  Both  lacked  books  and  yet  devoted  themselves  to  sci- 
ence. 

835-  840.  The  one  (lest  he  might  fall  asleep)  suspended  by  (the 
hair  of)  his  head  to  a  rafter  of  the  ceiling.  The 
other  one  wounded  his  thigh  with  an  awl. 

841-  846.  Although  both  had  no  instructors,  they  trained  them- 
selves by  their  own  exertions. 

S47-  852.  One  read  by  the  glow-worm's  light,  another  by  the 
snow's  reflexion. 

853-  858.  Although  their  home  was  poor,  they  never  ceased 
studying. 

1  Confucius  was  the  second  son  of  his  father,  on  account  of  which  he  was 
surnamed  Chung.  And  because  his  mother  after  her  marriage  made  a  pil 
grimage  to  the  Mount  Ni-Kieu,  where  she  prayed  for  a  son,  his  second  sur- 
name was  Ni.  Confucius's  family  name  is  K'ung  ;  his  personal  name  is  Kieu, 
the  second  part  of  the  name  of  the  mountain.     Tsz'  (scholar)  is  his  title. 


859-  864.   This  one  carried  wood,  that  one  put  his  books  on  the 

horns  of  the  cattle, 
865-  870,   Although  both  sweated,  yet  they  studied  hard. 
871-  876.   Su-Lao  Ts'iuen,  when  twenty-seven  years  old, 
877-  882.   Was  seized  with   a   love  of  study  and  began  to  read 

books. 
883-  888,   When  he  became  old  he  was  sorry  for  having  begun  so 

late, 
8S9-  S94,   You,  who  are  young  scholars,  should  in  season  consider 

this. 
895-  900.   When  Liang  Hao  was  eighty-two  years  old, 
901-  go6.   He  replied  in  the  imperial  hall  to  all  questions  and  ob- 
tained the  first  place  among  the  learned. 
907-  912,   At  late  years  he  made  such   great  progress  that  all  re- 
garded him  as  a  prodigy, 
913-  91S.   You,  who  are  young  scholars,  should  impress  it  strongly 

upon  your  mind. 
919-  924.   Yung  when  eight  years  old  could  recite  the  odes. 
925-  930.   Li-Mi,  seven  years  old,  could  play  chess. 
931-  936.   These  men  were  highly  gifted  and  people  called  them 

distinguished, 
937-  942,   You  who  study  in  your  youth  should  imitate  them. 
943-  948.   Ts'ai-Wen-Hi  could  play  well  on  the  k'in  (a  musical 

instrument). 
949-  954.   Sie-Tao-Wen  could  write  poetry. 
955-  960.   These  women  were  also  clever  and  gifted. 
961-  966.   You,  my  lads,  should  distinguish  yourselves. 
967-  972.   Under  the  dynasty  T'ang  Lieu  Yen,  seven  years  old, 
973-  978.   Was  praised  as  a  spiritual  boy,  and  was  appointed  lit- 
erary censor, 
979-  984.  Although  of  tender  age,  he  obtained  a  position, 
9S5-  990.   You,  who   study   in  your  youth,   aspire   and   you   will 

succeed- 
991-  996-    All  those  who  are  diligent  will  acquire  like  honors, 
997-1002,   The  dog  watches   at  night,    the  cock   announces    the 

dawn. 
1003-1008,   If  you  do  not  study,  how  can  you  become  men  ? 
1009-1014.   The  silk-worm  spins  silk.      The  bee  gathers  honey. 
1015-1020.   If  men  do  not  study  they  will  be  inferior  to  beasts. 
1021-1026.    He   who  studies   in   his  youth  will  be  prepared  to  act 

when  of  age. 
1027-1032.   High   he  can  rise  to  princely  honor,  and  can  below  be 

a  blessing  to  the  people. 
1033-1038.   Extend  your  fame  for  the  honor  of  father  and  mother. 
1039-1044,   Glory  you  may  add   to  your  ancestors,  and  transmit  it 

to  your  posterity. 
1045-1050.   Some  men  bequeath  to  their  children  gold-filled  boxes, 
1051-1056.   But  I  instruct  children  only  with  this  one  booklet. 
1057-1062.   Diligence  is  meritorious.      Play  brings  no  returns. 
1063-1068.   Beware  ;   rouse  all  your  energies. 

EXPLANATION     OF    THE    FIRST    SEVENTY-TWO   CHARACTERS. 
—     sail,  three. 


A 


I     Title 
jt J    tsz\  character  (a  written   '.      c  j. 

^        ^^--d*  I    book.' 

Jfni    k'»S<  canonical  book.  | 

zhin.  man,  (humanity).  .,3^^    /s'u,  beginning. 


la/ 


hi,   (a  character  used  to  i^i      sing,    nature,     character, 
refer  to  the  preceding,  l-t''      disposition,  naturally, 
indicating     a     relation  ^     p^„    root  (radically), 
which  we  commonly  ex- 
press   by    the    genitive  ^^    s/ieii,  good,  virtuous, 
case.)  ■»" " 


4572 

M,    sing,  nature  (see  4). 

t^-.   siang,    mutually    (comply 
TO  «      with,  adapt  to). 

Jji.    /6!H,  near  (in  time  or  place). 

JVf    sill,  habit,  practice. 
Q  10 

•  ^    siang,     mutually    comply 
1*9  "     with  (see  8). 

tj-,    yui>!,  distant  (in  time  or 
5S-12    place). 

-it    ken,  if. 

— y    ^(</i,  not  (compare  64). 

--^^  14 

kino,    instruction,     teach- 
'5     ing. 

lA.     .«'«^,  nature  (see  4). 
•j-t     >">' ,  then. 
^^®.    '^ ''"'  change. 

;&/«(),  instruction  (see   15). 
19 

-J^    <-///,  its  (see  2). 
♦■^  20 

{•M-    ^(70,  reason,  norm. 
,«*«-    X-7(/c/,  precious,  chiefly. 

■•\»     /,  through,  here  a  verb,  to 
23    go  through,  to  use. 

•^    (h'uen,  bent  on,   attentive 
'^*24    to    (here   singleness   of 
purpose. 

^^    sill,   anciently  (the   Latin 

a  25      o/;»;). 

_2_  Meng,  Mencius  (the  name 
.3^20  of  a  well-known  Chi- 
nese philosopher). 

TTT     ;«»,  mother. 
Ty;27 

J.g    /ii"/!,  select. 


THE    OFEN    COURT. 


J^ 


//«,  neighborhood. 
7;'k,  dwelling. 


--,     /j:',   son,  boy,  child  (also 
"J     31     used    in    the    sense    of 
"heir   of   ancient    wis- 
dom," or  "  sage." 

"Jf^    pull,  not. 
-^  •  32 

\\t.    hioli,  learn,  study. 

Igil    t-ivan,  break  off,   remove. 


fr: 


ki,  loom. 


sliii,  shuttle. 


kiao,     educate,     teaching 
'    (see  15). 


tTeu,  the  name  of  a  man  ; 
''•"     the  word  means  the  hole 
bored  by  a  drill. 

.„^j*  I  Yen-Shan,  the  name  of 

y  "it  **  [  a  hamlet  {yen  means 

1  "swallow, "  and  j//(7« 

W  '»  J  "  mountain." 

-ti    veil,  having. 
^  4c'i 

-j^     /,  right,  law,  justice. 

.  t  I    fling,  square,  lot,  allotted 
./J  ^     part. 

T^  7i'»,  five. 

Jip,  At;',  boys,  sons  (see  31). 

..f^  ming,  name. 
^^_/-/«,  all. 

-}»g  rung,  rising  high. 

^^,  rung,  nourish. 

"y  />;(//,  not  (see  32). 

-n"*  .'.II 

jtt  kino,  educate  (see  15). 

-iit  fii,  father. 

■J^  ihi,  his  (see  2). 

/M  /{■-['(?,  transgression. 

^'tg  kino,  instruction   (see  15). 

"T^  puh,  not  (see  14). 

fr«.  j/i'H,  severe,   stern,    rigor- 

^5'      OUS. 

Ae    sz\  teacher. 
PW  .w 

»-^     (hi,  his  (see  2). 
Afe    /<',  indolence. 
:^^/.=',boy. 
"y*    ptili,  not  (see  14). 
^JT     ///()//,  learn  (see  33). 


^p(M 


^;f. 


and  62  is  a  single  nega- 
tion, the  "not"  in  64 
implies  regret  or  blame) 

so,  what  (objective  case  of 
'     relative  pronoun). 

behoove. 


"7*    pull,  not  (see  14). 


^1.    yen,  youth. 


liioli,  studying  (see  33). 

"■» 

loo,  old  man. 
I 

ho,  who,  what  (interroga- 
"'     tive  pronoun  ;  compare 
65). 
toel,  to  do. 


The  etymology  of  the  characters  is  principally 
based  on  ideographic  combinations,  partly  upon  pho- 
netical  considerations,  often  obscure,  not  seldom  quite 
arbitrary.  In  many  instances  it  exhibits  pictures  of 
things,  and  is  sometimes  very  curious  on  account  of 
the  peculiar  thought-ingredients  of  an  idea.  Here  are 
some  striking  examples. 

The  character  tsz'  (see  word  31  et  alibi'),  which 
means  "  son,  boy,  or  sage  "  (viz.,  heir  of  old  wisdom), 
is  a  conventional  abbreviation  of  the  picture  of  a  child 
with  a  head  and  two  arms.  If  this  same  sign  is  roofed, 
as  in  tsz" ,  the  second  word  of  the  title  of  this  treatise) 
it  means  "letter,  character,  word,  or  ideogram."  It 
represents  the  "sage  housed"  in  the  stable  form  of 
writing. 

Word  3  of  the  title,  king.  Its  radical  is  the  left 
part  "silk,"  the  material  worked  upon;  the  upper 
half  of  the  right  part  shows  it  in  the  proper  arrange- 
ment for  the  "working  hand,"  that  is  meant  by  the 
lower  half.  The  whole  literally  "  the  warp  of  a  web," 
then  by  metaphor:  "canon,  law,  the  constitutional 
parts  of  a  system  or  doctrine."  Its  alliance  with  its 
correlative  ivei,  "  woof,"  is  used  to  designate  any  com- 
plete system  of  exposition,  "constitution  and  by- 
laws," as  it  were.  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  our 
"canon,"  6  Havoov,  according  to  some  philologists,  is 
also  originally  that  part  of  the  loom  over  which  the 
warp  is  arranged. 

Word  3,  ////,  "beginning,"  consists  of  the  charac- 
ters "clothes"  and  "knife,"  meaning  the  time  when 
the  dress  was  cut  for  being  made. 

Word  4,  sing,  "character,"  is  a  compound  of 
"heart"  and  "to  grow." 

Word  10,  sill,  "practice,"  shows  in  its  upper  part 
the  character  "feathers  or  wings,"  in  its  lower  part 
the  character  "white."  A  bird  shows  the  white  part 
of  his  wings  in  spreading  them,  viz.,  he  practices  fry- 
ing. 

Word  15,  kiao,  "education,"  is  peculiarly  interest- 
ing, as  it  reveals  to  us  the  educational  methods  of  the 
ancient  Chinese.  On  the  left  hand  below,  the  symbol 
"boy"  is  at  once  recognised,  the  upper  part  is  an  ab- 
breviation of  the  "old  man,"  and  that  on  the  right 
hand  symbolises  "whipping  or  beating." 

There  are  some  symptoms  which  indicate  that  the 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4573 


inventors  of  these  characters  must  have  been  shep- 
herds. The  upper  part  of  No.  6,  shen,  "good,"  of  No. 
41,  "right"  or  "  justice,"  and  of  No.  \<^,  yang,  "nour- 
ish," is  the  same  radical  meaning,  "sheep."  The 
sense  of  the  lower  part  of  No.  6  is  not  clearly  estab- 
lished, of  No.  41  it  means  "mine,"  of  No.  49  "feed." 
Thus  goodness  is  expressed  somehow  in  terms  of  a 
shepherd's  main  property;  nourishing  is  conceived  as 
the  feeding  of  lambs,  and  right  and  justice  is  repre- 
sented as  the  personal  ownership  of  a  sheep. 

The  character  hioh,  "studying  or  learning,"  in  Nos. 
33,  63,  and  69,  consists  in  its  lower  part  of  the  radical 
/j-s',  "character  or  word-symbol, "  in  its  upper  part  re- 
minds one  of  a  rat's  head.  No  doubt,  it  means  to  gnaw 
at  characters  persistently,  in  order  to  insure  complete 
digestion.  Dr.  Riedel  quotes  an  old  Chinese  admoni- 
tion :  "Characters'  must  be  masticated,  ruminated, 
and  re-niasticated. "  Does  not  the  appearance  show 
that  in  "learning"  [viz.,  in  the  character  "learning" 
as  it  appears  in  Nos.  jiTi-:  63,  6g]  the  knob  of  the  "lid" 
above  the  character  "boy"  has  already  been  chewed 
into  a  pulp  by  the  sharp  teeth  of  the  rat? 

The  character  jci"//,  "youth,"  No.  67,  consists  of  the 
radicals  "  immature  "  on  the  left  hand  and  "  strength  " 
on  the  right  hand. 

The  radical  symbolising  "progress"  is  of  frequent 
occurrence.  We  find  it  in  these  few  verses  not  less 
than  five  times,  in  Nos.  9,  12,  18,  21,  and  54.  The 
Chinese  are  fond  of  comparing  it  to  a  gondola,  carry- 
ing that  part  of  the  character  which  gives  it  its  peculiar 
application  ;  so  in  No.  9  as  "near,"  in  No.  i  2  as  "far," 
in  No.  18  as  "change,"  in  No.  54  as  "beyond  the 
limit,"  in  No.  21  as  "the  head  or  the  beginning,"  which 
means  the  path  of  reason.  p.  c. 


THE  LITERARY  ACHIEVEMENTS  OF  THE  EXILE. 

BY  PROF.    C.   H.  CORNILL. 

In  the  generation  succeeding  Ezekiel  no  prophet 
appeared  in  Babylon.  Literary  work  followed  other 
paths  and  other  aims.  The  task  which  now  devolved 
on  the  nation  was  the  inventorying  of  the  spiritual 
property  of  Israel  ;  possibly  the  people  also  began  at 
this  time  the  collecting  of  the  prophetic  writings ;  at 
any  rate  they  busied  themselves  extensively  with  the 
historical  literature  of  the  past. 

The  great  philosopher  Spinoza  had  observed  that 
the  historical  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  as  now 
known  to  us,  form  a  continuous  historical  whole,  nar- 
rating the  history  of  the  people  of  Israel  from  the  crea- 
tion of  the  world  to  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  and 
marshalling  all  materials  under  causal  points  of  view 
of  a  distinctively  religious  character.  This  biassed  but 
magnificent  account  of  the  past  life  of  the  chosen  peo- 

IThe  sign  for  "character"  (see  word  3  of  the  title)  exhibits,  as  mentioned 
above,  the  symbol  of  a  child  under  a  roof. 


pie  was  undertaken  during  the  Babylonian  exile,  as  we 
can  discover  from  indubitable  literary  evidence. 

At  the  time  in  question  all  the  outward  and  speci- 
fically psychological  conditions  existed  which  favored 
such  a  bent  of  the  mind.  The  destruction  of  State 
and  nationality  awakened  a  new  interest  in  the  past. 
As  in  the  time  of  Germany's  profoundest  national  dis- 
grace, under  the  compulsory  dominion  of  Napoleon, 
the  love  of  the  nation's  all  but  forgotten  past  was  re- 
aroused  to  life,  and  people  buried  themselves  with  lov- 
ing discernment  in  the  rich  depths  of  German  min- 
strels}', beginning  once  more  to  understand  the  German 
art  of  bygone  days  ;  as  the  Germans  recalled  to  mind 
the  names  of  Henry  the  Fowler,  Frederick  Barbarossa, 
Walther  von  der  Vogelweide,  and  Albrecht  Diirer  :  so, 
during  the  captivity  in  Babylon,  the  Jews  lost  them- 
selves in  the  stories  of  Moses  and  David,  Samuel  and 
Elijah.  They  wanted  to  lift  themselves,  by  a  stud}'  of 
their  ancient  greatness  and  b}'  memories  of  the  past,  to 
a  plane  where  they  could  resist  the  present,  and  pre- 
serve themselves  for  the  future. 

In  thus  contemplating  the  past,  however,  it  was 
necessary  to  explain  above  all  how  the  dread  present 
had  come  to  pass.  For  those  exiled  compilers  and 
expounders  of  the  ancient  historical  traditions  of  Is- 
rael, as  for  Ezekiel,  the  problem  of  all  problems  was 
the  vindication  of  God,  that  is,  a  theodicy.  And  this 
theodicy,  as  in  the  case  of  Ezekiel,  was  conducted  to 
show  that  all  must  have  happened  exactly  as  it  did. 
All  the  evil  which  befell  Israel  is  a  punishment  for  sins 
and  especially  for  the  worship  of  idols.  The  sins  of 
Jeroboam,  who  exhibited  two  golden  calves  at  Dan 
and  Bethel,  hastened  the  destruction  of  Israel,  and 
the  sins  of  Manasseh,  who  had  offered  sacrifices  in  the 
temple  of  Jerusalem  to  Baal  and  to  the  stars,  could 
only  be  atoned  for  by  the  destruction  of  Judah,  de- 
spite the  radical  conversion  and  reforms  of  his  grand- 
son Josiah.  Thus  arose  this  prophetic  exposition  of 
the  history  of  Israel,  which  converts  the  historian  into 
a  prophet  with  his  eyes  turned  to  the  past. 

But  this  historical  writing  has  not  only  a  theoreti- 
cal side,  looking  back  to  the  past,  but  also  an  emi- 
minently  practical  side,  looking  forward  to  the  future. 
The  Jews  have  a  firm  hope  in  the  restoration  of  the 
nation,  for  which  they  possessed  an  infallible  guaran- 
tee in  the  prophetical  promise.  Ever  since  Hosea  the 
prophets  had  distinctly  announced  the  judgment,  but 
only  seen  in  the  judgment  the  necessary  transition  to 
the  final  salvation.  On  this  latter  they  counted,  and 
prepared  themselves  for  its  arrival.  And  this  prophetic 
history  of  the  past  shall  be  both  a  warning  and  a  guid- 
ance for  the  future:  the  new  Israel  risen  again  from 
the  tomb  of  captivity  shall  avoid  the  sins  and  errors  of 
the  old  Israel,  which  caused  her  destruction.  We  have 
thus  in  the  historical  work  of  the  exile  a  sort  of  applied 


4574 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


prophecy,  whsse  influence  and  efficacy  were  perhaps 
even  greater  than  that  of  prophecy  itself. 

We  see  thus  that  the  exiles  lived  in  constant  hope. 
Nor  had  they  long  to  wait  for  its  fulfilment.  Seventy 
years  was  the  time  fixed  by  Jeremiah  as  the  period 
of  the  Chaldean  rule.  But  forty-eight  years  after  the 
destruction  of  Jerusalem  the  kingdom  of  Babylon  had 
ceased  to  exist,  and,  in  the  year  following,  the  new 
king  granted  to  the  exiles  the  long-wished-for  permis- 
sion to  return  to  the  land  of  their  fathers.  The  Baby- 
lonian kingdom  rested  wholly  on  the  person  of  its 
founder,  and  only  survived  his  death  twenty-three  years. 

Nebuchadnezzar  is  styled  by  modern  historians, 
not  unjustly,  "the  great."  He  is  the  most  towering 
personality  in  the  whole  history  of  the  ancient  Orient, 
and  a  new  era  begins  with  him.  The  greatness  of  the 
man  consists  in  the  manner  in  which  he  conceived  of 
his  vocation  as  monarch.  Nebuchadnezzar  was  a  war- 
rior as  great  as  any  that  had  previously  existed.  He 
had  gained  victories  and  made  conquests  equal  to 
those  of  the  mightiest  rulers  before  him.  But  he-never 
mentions  a  word  of  his  brilliant  achievements  in  any 
of  the  numerous  inscriptions  we  have  of  him.  We 
know  of  his  deeds  only  through  the  accounts  given  by 
those  whom  he  conquered,  and  from  strangers  who 
admired  him.  He  himself  tells  us  only  of  buildings 
and  works  of  peace,  which  he  completed  with  the  help 
of  the  gods,  whom  he  worshipped  with  genuine  rev- 
erence. The  gods  bestowed  on  him  sovereignty,  that 
he  might  become  the  benefactor  of  his  people  and 
subjects.  He  rebuilt  destroyed  cities,  restored  ruined 
temples,  laid  out  canals  and  ponds,  regulated  the 
course  of  rivers,  and  established  harbors,  so  as  to 
open  safe  ways  and  new  roads  for  commerce  and 
traffic.  We  see  in  this  a  clear  conception  of  the  moral 
duties  of  the  State,  where  its  primary  object  is  to  be- 
come a  power  for  civilisation. 

Forty-three  years  were  allotted  to  Nebuchadnez- 
zar, in  which  he  reigned  to  the  welfare  of  humanity. 
He  died  in  the  year  561.  Destiny  denied  to  him  a 
befitting  successor.  His  son.  Evil  Merodach,  was 
murdered  two  years  after,  for  his  atrocities  and  disso- 
luteness, by  his  brother-in-law,  Nergalsharezer,  who 
must  have  been  a  descendant  of  the  older  line  of  Baby- 
lonian kings.  At  his  death  four  years  later,  Nergal- 
sharezer was  able  to  bequeath  the  empire  intact  to 
his  son  Labasi-marduk.  But  as  this  king,  according 
to  the  Babylonian  historian  Berosus,  exhibited  a  thor- 
oughly bad  character,  he  was  slain  by  his  courtiers 
after  nine  months  of  sovereignty,  and  Nabu-nahid 
ascended  the  throne,  555  B.  C,  as  the  last  of  the 
Babylonian  kings.  Nabu-nahid,  or  Nabonidus,  ap- 
pears to  have  been  a  personally  mild  and  just  ruler, 
with  literary  and  antiquarian  tastes,  to  which  we  owe 
much   that   is  important.      But  a  storm  lowered  over 


his  head,  which  was  soon  to  destroy  with  the  rapidity  of 
lightning  both  himself  and  his  kingdom. 

Cyrus,  the  Median  viceroy  of  that  primitive  and 
robust  nation  of  hunters  and  horsemen,  the  Persians, 
had  shaken  off  the  Median  yoke.  In  the  year  550  he 
had  conquered  and  taken  prisoner  Astyages,  the  last 
Median  king,  and  captured  his  capital  Ecbatana.  Four 
years  later,  Lj-dia,  the  powerful  neighboring  empire  of 
Cyrus,  succumbed  to  his  resistless  courage  and  energy. 
And  now  the  destruction,  or  at  least  the  conquest,  of 
the  Babj'lonian  empire  was  but  a  question  of  time.  A 
mighty  seething  was  taking  place  among  the  Jewish 
exiles.  Anxiously  and  full  of  confidence  thej'  awaited 
the  saviour  and  avenger  who  would  destro}'  Babylon 
and  again  restore  Jerusalem.  And  in  this  period  of 
the  gathering  storm,  the  stillness  before  the  tempest, 
prophecy  again  lifted  up  its  voice  in  one  of  its  noblest 
and  grandest  representatives,  the  great  Unknown,  who 
wrote  the  concluding  portions  of  the  Book  of  Isaiah, 
and  who  is  therefore  called  the  Second,  or  Deutero- 
Isaiah. 

NOTES. 

We  are  in  receipt  of  a  long  and  interesting  letter  from  the 
Hon.  M.  Hameed-Ullah,  a  Mohammedan  scholar  of  high  stand- 
ing, late  editor  of  the  Allaliabad  Kcvieui,  and  now  judge  of  the  high 
court  at  Hyderabad,  Deccan.  He  writes:  "As  far  as  I  know  the 
God  of  the  Moslems  is  a  superpersonal  Deity,  that  is  to  say,  He 
is  'one,  eternal,  begetteth  not,  neither  is  He  begotten  ;  and  there 
is  not  any  one  like  unto  Him.'  The  above  are  the  words  of  Chap- 
ter CXn.  of  the  Koran.  Our  commentators  have  written  long 
dissertations  on  these  few  words ;  but  unfortunately  none  of  them 
are  available  for  English  scholars.  The  Mohammedans  are  taught 
to  believe  that  God  can  hear  but  has  no  ears,  he  can  see  but  has 
no  eyes,  he  can  smell  but  has  no  nose,  he  can  taste  but  has  no 
tongue,  and  so  on.  It  is  by  means  of  negatives  that  the  attributes 
of  God  are  explained  to  us.  As  far  as  my  conception  of  God  is 
concerned,  and  I  believe  it  is  the  Moslem  conception,  there  is  no 
Personality,  strictly  speaking.  I  do  not  think  that  the  belief  of 
'people  being  gathered  together  before  Him  on  the  Day  of  Judg- 
ment,'or  that  'the  Prophet's  having  received  revelations  from 
God,'  or  that  'His  sitting  upon  a  throne '  will  make  God  personal. 
In  short,  my  idea  is  that  your  Religion  of  Science  contains  noth- 
ing which  is  not  equally  to  be  found  in  Islam  in  a  somewhat  modi- 
fied form.     And  no  wonder  that  it  is  so,  because  Truth  is  one." 

THE    OPEN    COURT. 

"  THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  ST., 

CHICAGO.  ILLINOIS.  POST  OFFICE  DRAWER  F. 
E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher.  DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 

TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  412. 

CHINESE     EDUCATION      ACCORDING      TO      THE 

"BOOK    OB     THREE    WORDS."     Editor 4567 

THE  LITERARY  ACHIEVEMENTS  OF  THE  EX- 
ILE.    Prof,  C.  H.  Cornill 4573 

NOTES 4574 


Hi 


The  Open  Court. 


A   ■iVEEKLY   JOUKNAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  413.     (Vol.  IX.— 30.) 


CHICAGO,  JULY  25,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
I  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.— Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher, 


ADVENTURES  OF  A  PARABLE. 


BY    M.    D.    CONWAY. 


The  parable  of  the  talents  is  believed  by  Professor 
Jacobi  to  have  originated  in  India.  In  Volume  XLV. 
of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  devoted  to  Jain  Scrip- 
tures, the  Professor  translates  the  Uttarddhyana,  which 
contains  a  parable  of  "  The  Three  Merchants. "  Of 
this  Mr.  Virchand  Gandhi  made  for  me  a  more  care- 
ful translation,  as  follows  : 

"Three  merchants  set  out  on  their  travels,  each 
with  his  capital.  One  of  them  gained  much;  the  sec- 
ond returned  with  his  [original]  capital ;  the  third  re- 
turned, having  lost  his  capital. 

"The  capital  is  human  life,  the  gain  its  perfection. 
Losing  that  capital,  man  must  be  born  the  denizen  of 
a  degraded  world,  a  brute  animal.  There  are  two 
paths  the  evil  man  must  tread, — physical  degradation, 
moral  misery.  For  the  slave  of  lust  forfeits  both  outer 
and  inner  life  :  having  forfeited  these  he  must  suffer 
those  two  conditions  of  unhappiness  ;  and  it  will  be 
difficult  for  him  to  attain  an  upward  course  for  a  long 
time.  He  who  returns  with  his  capital  unincreased, 
is  born  again,  an  unimproved  man.  Those  who  through 
exercise  of  various  virtues  become  religious  house- 
holders are  the  twice-born  men  ;  for  all  beings  reap 
the  fruit  of  their  actions.  But  he  who  increased  his 
capital  is  to  be  compared  to  one  who  practises  emi- 
nent virtues.  The  excellent  man  attains  with  joy  the 
state  of  the  most  perfect  beings  in  the  universe." 

Such  is  the  Jain  parable,  uttered  pretty  certainly 
before  our  era.  The  next  trace  of  it  is  in  "The  Gos- 
pel According  to  the  Hebrews."  The  exact  words 
are  lost,  but  the  substance  is  preserved  bj'  Eusebius 
(  Theophania^ : 

"The  Gospel  which  comes  to  us  in  Hebrew  char- 
acters has  directed  the  threat,  not  against  the  hider 
[of  his  talent],  but  against  the  abandoned  liver.  For 
it  has  included  three  servants,  one  which  devoured 
the  substance  with  harlots  and  flute-women,  and  one 
which  multiplied,  and  one  which  hid  the  talent :  then 
that  one  was  accepted,  one  only  blamed,  and  one  shut 
up  in  prison." 

There  is  here  evidence  that  in  one  (and,  I  have  no 
doubt,  the  earliest)  use  of  the  parable  by  Jesus  it  con- 
tained a  feature  of  the  "Prodigal  Son,"  whose  elder 


brother  said,  "He  hgth  devoured  thy  substance  with 
harlots,"  the  phrase  "abandoned  living  "  (Luke)  point- 
ing to  the  same  conclusion.  In  this  earlier  version, 
the  Prodigal  was  not  welcomed  home  again,  but  im- 
prisoned. This  continues  the  purely  moral  lesson  of 
the  Jain  parable,  but  when  we  next  meet  the  story,  it 
is  strangely  altered.  This  is  in  Matthew  XXV.,  where 
neither  of  the  three  servants  has  lost  the  money  en- 
trusted to  him  :  punishment  is  awarded  to  the  servant 
who  was  given  least,  and  who  merely  kept  that  with- 
out increasing  it.  The  ethical  significance  of  the 
Hindu  and  Hebrew  versions,  which  applied  the  par- 
able to  personal  conduct,  is  in  Matthew  detached  by 
the  curious  ojfder  that  the  one  talent  (Sioooj  shall  be 
taken  from  him  who  did  not  multiply  it,  and  given  to 
him  who,  with  five  times  as  much  capital,  had  doubled 
it.  But  the  servant  with  two  talents  had  also  doubled 
them,  and  why  was  the  larger  capitalist  favored?  It  is 
no  explanation  to  say,  "For  unto  every  one  that  hath 
shall  be  given,  and  he  shall  have  abundance  ;  but  from 
him  that  hath  not  shall  be  taken  even  that  which  he 
hath."  Why?  This  version  of  the  parable  diverts  it 
from  equitable  human  affairs,  and  the  only  thing  it 
seems  to  fit  is  the  issue  between  the  Jewish  and  the 
Gentile  converts.  Matthew  was  written  in  the  inter- 
est of  the  Jewish  Christians,  who  claimed  supremacy 
in  the  coming  Messianic  dominion.  They  were  the 
servant  given  five  talents,  the  Gentile  converts,  not 
being  under  the  Abrahamic  covenant,  receiving  only 
two  ;  while  the  unconverted  Gentiles,  who  were  given 
one  talent,  in  being  offered  the  Gospel,  but  did  not 
improve  their  opportunity,  must  be  cast  into  outer 
darkness.  This  unimproved  talent  is  transferred  to 
the  Jewish  Christians,  because  they  added  acceptance 
of  the  Messiah  to  the  advantage  of  being  the  chosen 
people.  That  the  Matthew  version  was  aiming  at 
something  of  this  controversial  kind  is  confirmed  by 
the  fact  that  the  parable  is  here  connected  with  de- 
scriptions of  the  coming  of  Christ  to  judge  and  rule 
the  world.  I  need  hardly  remind  your  readers  that 
these  notions  and  issues  belong  to  a  time  long  after 
the  death  of  Jesus,  and  that  he  could  not  have  spoken 
any  such  parable  as  that  recorded  in  Matthew. 

In  Luke,  written   in  the  interest  of  Gentile  Chris- 
tians, the  parable  presents  another  remarkable  change. 


4576 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


Here  we  find  human  equality :  each  servant  is  en- 
trusted with  the  same  sum, — one  mina  (about  Si 6). 
One  increases  it  by  ten,  and  rules  ten  cities  ;  another 
by  five,  and  rules  five  cities  ;  while  the  third,  who  hid 
his  mina,  simply  loses  it.  Here  also  the  unincreased 
money  is  given  to  the  servant  who  had  earned  ten, 
but  in  this  case  there  is  no  unfairness :  this  one  had 
received  no  more  than  the  others,  and  had  shown 
twice  as  much  industry  as  the  servant  who,  with  the 
same  capital,  had  earned  only  five  minas.  In  Luke 
the  Gentile  Christian  reminds  the  Jewish  that  if  he 
receives  more  it  must  not  be  by  favoritism,  as  the  ver- 
sion in  Matthew  implies,  but  by  larger  service  :  the 
tribal  Jehovah  has  made  way  for  the  equal  Father  of 
all. 

It  is  noticeable  that  in  the  three  Christian  ver- 
sions given  above,  the  number  of  traders  in  the 
Hindu  parable  persists, — three.  In  Luke  the  par- 
able sets  out  with  ten  servants,  to  each  of  whom 
a  mina  is  given,  but  only  three  are  called  to  account. 
In  Matthew  this  parable  is  immediately  preceded  by 
that  of  the  ten  virgins,  in  which  also,  perhaps,  there 
may  be  a  fling  at  the  Gentiles,  as  having  no  sacred  oil 
in  their  classical  lamps.  And  it  may  be  that  the  num- 
ber ten,  with  which  the  parable  in  Luke  begins,  may 
be  a  relic  of  some  version  of  the  ten  virgins  cut  out  by 
a  Judaiser  for  not  being  harmonious  with  that  in  Mat- 
thew, its  place  being  supplied  by  a  weak  little  story  of 
the  servants'  rebellion,  obviously  interpolated.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  the  parable  of  the  talents  is  in  Luke 
humanised  again,  after  being  wrested  in  Judaising 
Matthew  to  a  quasi-ecclesiastical  purpose.  But  it  was 
presently  perverted  again,  and  this  time  by  a  fatalistic 
theology.  At  least  it  appears  to  me  to  have  influenced 
the  parable  of  the  willow  boughs  in  the  apocryphal 
"Shepherd  of  Hermas."  An  angel  cuts  rods  from  a 
willow  tree,  and  distributes  them  among  a  number  of 
people,  who  plant  them.  When  the  rods  are  re- 
demanded,  some  are  brought  back  dry,  some  rotten, 
others  half  green,  others  again  green,  as  they  had  re- 
ceived them,  while  a  certain  number  are  returned  cov- 
ered with  leaves,  and  a  few  with  fruit, — even  willow 
fruit  being  possible  with  angels.  But  these  varied  re- 
sults are  due  to  different  outpourings  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  under  divine  predetermination,  and  by  no 
means  to  the  different  degrees  of  human  enterprise, 
as  taught  in  Luke  and  in  the  Hindu  parable. 

There  is  good  ground  for  believing  that  Jesus  did 
really,  in  some  form,  use  this  ancient  Oriental  parable 
of  "The  Three  Merchants."  There  could  hardly  be 
three  independent  versions  ascribed  to  him, — for  they 
are  too  different  to  have  been  copied  one  from  another, 
— had  he  not  said  something  of  the  kind.  But  which 
of  them  did  he  utter?  That  in  Matthew  may  be  set 
aside,  for  the  reason  above  given  :   it   is  an  anachro- 


nism.     It  lies  then  between  that  in  the  early  Aramaic 
Gospel,  as  preserved  by  Eusebius,  in  which   the  re- 
jected servant  is  he  who  wasted  his  substance  in  im- 
moral  indulgences,  and   the  version  in   Luke,  which 
fixes  the  stigma  on  him  who  hid  his  capital  in  a  nap- 
kin.     (Perhaps   there   is   in  this   napkin,  aovSapiov, 
some  connotation  of  the  prodigal's  sensualism,  at  once 
the  temptation  and  the  arrest  of  spiritual  talent.)    Al- 
though the  Hebrew  version   is   nearer  to  the   Hindu, 
being  like  it  a  purely  ethical  instruction,  and  no  doubt 
earlier  than  the  version  in  Luke,  which  upholds   self- 
truthfulness,  there   are  some  literary  indications,  ob- 
vious to  exact  readers,  that  the  two  represent  varied 
phases   of   one   mind.      Probably  Jesus   modified   his 
views,  as  many  a   thinker  does  after  beginning  with  a 
remorseless   attitude   towards   all  offenders  against  a 
sanctified  standard  of  morality,  which  he  subsequently 
discovers  to  be  largely  theological.   The  young  prophet 
had   a   great   deal  to  learn  :   he  had  to  see  the  erring 
woman   kneeling   at   his  feet,  to  be  shielded  or  to  be 
delivered  up  to  the  cruel  death  ordered  by  Yahveh  :   he 
was  to  feel  the  spikenard  of  another  sinful  woman  on 
his  head,  her  tears  upon   his   feet,  and  contrast  these 
with   the   Pharisee's   self-righteous  scorn.      Many  ex- 
periences may  have  led  the  zealot  to  lay  aside  his  whip 
of   small   cords,    to   take   out   of  prison   the   prodigal 
thereto  condemned  in  his  earlier  parable,  and  weave  a 
happier   fable  around   him,  and  ascribe  the  only  irre- 
mediable loss  to  the  hider  of  his  talent,  the  indolent 
or  cowardly  concealer  of  his  truth,  the  faithless  mind. 


DEUTERO-ISAIAH. 

BY  PROF.    C.    H.    CORNILL. 

It  is  now  generally  admitted,  and  may  be  regarded 
as  one  of  the  best  established  results  of  Old  Testament 
research,  that  the  portion  of  our  present  Book  of  Isaiah 
which  embraces  Chapters  40  to  66,  did  not  emanate 
from  the  prophet  Isaiah  known  to  us,  but  is  the  work 
of  an  unknown  prophet  of  the  period  towards  the  end 
of  the  Babylonian  captivity. 

In  many  respects  this  Deutero-Isaiah  must  be  ac- 
counted the  most  brilliant  jewel  of  prophetic  litera- 
ture. In  him  are  gathered  together  as  in  a  focus  all 
the  great  and  noble  meditations  of  the  prophecy  which 
preceded  him,  and  he  reflects  them  with  the  most 
gorgeous  refraction,  and  with  the  most  beauteous  play 
of  light  and  color.  In  style  he  is  a  genius  of  the  first 
rank,  a  master  of  language,  and  a  proficient  in  diction 
equalled  by  few.  One  feels  almost  tempted  to  call  him 
the  greatest  among  the  prophets,  were  it  not  that  we 
find  in  him  the  most  distinct  traces  that  the  Israelitish 
prophecy  had  reached  once  for  all  its  culminating 
point  in  Jeremiah,  and  that  we  are  now  starting  on  the 
downward  slope.  These  traces,  it  is  true,  are  scat- 
tered and  sporadic  in  Deutero-Isaiah,  but  they  are  the 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4577 


more  striking  in  connexion  with  a  mind  of  such  pre- 
eminence. Prophecy  has  now  a  drop  of  foreign  blood 
in  its  veins,  which  the  first  Isaiah  or  Jeremiali  would 
have  repudiated  with  indignation.  The  influence  and 
views  of  Deuteronomy,  which  first  disintegrated  and 
then  completel}'  stifled  prophec}',  now  begin  to  make 
themselves  felt. 

The  fundamental  theme  and  the  burden  of  his  mes- 
sage is  told  by  Deutero-Isaiah  in  the  first  words  of  his 
book,  which  also  form  the  beginning  of  Handel's  Mes- 
siah, and  are  well-known  to  every  lover  of  music  in  the 
wondrously  solemn  strains  of  the  master  : 

"Comfort  ye,  comfort  ye  my  people,  saith  your 
God.  Speak  ye  comfortably  to  Jerusalem  and  cry  unto 
her  that  her  day  of  trial  is  accomplished  and  that  her 
iniquity  is  pardoned  ;  for  she  hath  received  of  the 
Lord's  hand  double  for  all  her  sins." 

In  the  wilderness  the  way  shall  be  prepared  for 
God  and  his  people  returning  to  their  home  : 

"  Prepare  ye  in  the  wilderness  the  way  of  the  Lord, 
make  straight  in  the  desert  a  highway  for  our  God. 
Every  valley  shall  be  exalted,  and  every  mountain  and 
hill  shall  be  made  low  ;  and  the  crooked  shall  be  made 
straight  and  the  rough  places  plain.  For  now  the 
glory  of  the  Lord  shall  be  revealed,  and  all  flesh  shall 
see  it,  for  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  hath  spoken  it." 

And  all  these  wonders  shall  be  fulfilled,  for  no 
power  in  man  can  hinder  God's  work,  because  his 
promise  remains  eternally. 

"All  flesh  is  grass,  and  all  the  splendor  thereof  is 
as  the  flower  of  the  field.  The  grass  withereth,  the 
flower  fadeth  :  because  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  bloweth 
upon  it.  The  grass  withereth,  the  flower  fadeth,  but 
the  word  of  our  God  shall  stand  forever." 

And  now  Jerusalem  lying  in  its  ruins  is  addressed, 
and  the  joyful  message  shouted  to  the  other  Jewish 
towns  that  were  demolished  : 

"O  Zion  that  bringeth  good  tidings,  get  thee  up 
into  a  high  mountain.  O  Jerusalem  that  bringeth  good 
tidings,  lift  up  thy  voice  with  strength  ;  lift  it  up,  be 
not  afraid  ;  say  unto  the  cities  of  Judah,  Behold  your 
God  !  Behold  the  Lord  God  will  come  with  strong 
hand  and  his  arm  shall  rule  free  in  his  omnipotence  : 
behold  his  reward  is  with  him,  and  his  recompense  be- 
fore him.  He  shall  feed  his  flock  like  a  shepherd  ;  he 
shall  gather  the  lambs  in  his  arms,  and  carry  them  in 
his  bosom,  and  shall  gently  lead  those  that  are  with 
young." 

What  fills  the  prophet  with  this  hope,  that  whicl 
has  given  him  the  assurance  that  now  the  salvation 
promised  by  God  is  about  to  be  accomplished,  are  the 
victories  and  deeds  of  Cyrus,  by  which  the  king  had 
proved  himself  to  be  the  chosen  weapon,  the  executor 
of  the  divine  judgment  on  Babylon. 

"Who  hath  raised  up  the  man  from  the  east,  in 


whose  footsteps  victory  follows,  hath  given  the  nations 
before  him,  and  made  him  rule  over  kings?  hath  given 
them  as  dust  to  his  sword,  and  as  the  driven  stubble  to 
his  bow?  He  pursueth  them,  and  passeth  on  safely, 
even  by  ways  that  his  feet  have  never  trodden." 

"I  have  raised  up  him  from  the  north  and  he  shall 
come  :  from  the  rising  of  the  sun  shall  he  call  upon 
my  name,  and  he  shall  come  upon  princes  as  upon 
mortar,  and  as  the  potter  treadeth  clay." 

"I  have  raised  him  up  for  victory  and  I  will  make 
straight  all  his  ways  ;  he  shall  build  my  city  again,  and 
he  shall  let  my  exiles  go  free." 

"  I  shall  call  a  ravenous  bird  from  the  east,  and  the 
man  that  executeth  mj'  counsel  from  a  far  country  ; 
yea,  I  have  spoken  it,  I  will  also  bring  it  to  pass  ;  I 
have  purposed  it,  I  will  also  do  it." 

God  loves  him,  and  has  chosen  him  to  perform  his 
pleasure  on  Babylon  and  execute  his  judgment  on  the 
Chaldeans. 

"I,  even  I,  have  spoken  ;  yea,  I  have  called  him, 
I  have  brought  him  hither,  and  his  way  shall  be  pros- 
perous." 

Cyrus  is  even  called  directly  by  name,  so  that  there 
may  not  be  the  slightest  doubt  as  to  the  upshot  of  the 
matter  : 

"  I  am  the  Lord  that  saith  of  Cj'rus  :  He  is  my 
shepherd  and  shall  perform  all  my  pleasure,  even  say- 
ing to  Jerusalem,  Thou  shalt  be  built,  and  to  the  tem- 
ple, thy  foundation  shall  be  laid  again." 

"Thus  saith  the  Lord  to  his  anointed,  to  Cj'rus, 
whose  right  hand  I  have  strengthened,  to  subdue  na- 
tions before  him  ;  and  the  doors  shall  open  before  him, 
and  the  gates  shall  not  be  shut.  I  myself  will  go  be- 
fore thee  and  make  the  rugged  places  plain  ;  I  will 
break  in  pieces  the  gates  of  brass,  and  cut  in  sunder 
the  bars  of  iron  ;  and  I  will  give  thee  the  treasures  of 
darkness,  and  hidden  riches  of  secret  places,  that  thou 
mayest  know  that  I,  the  Lord,  which  call  thee  by  name, 
am  the  God  of  Israel." 

Here  the  prophet  calls  the  Persian  conqueror  by  the 
most  honorable  names,  "  Shepherd,"  even  "anointed 
of  God,"  and  here  must  be  considered  the  curious  fact, 
that  he  nowhere  speaks  of  a  future  Messiah  of  the 
house  of  David,  but  that  he  is  always  concerned  sim- 
ply with  God  on  the  one  hand,  and  with  Israel  and 
Jerusalem  on  the  other.  This  seems  to  have  met  with 
lively  opposition  from  his  first  hearers.  They  cannot 
bring  themselves  to  find  in  a  Gentile  the  executor  of 
that,  which  according  to  general  expectation  the  ideal 
Son  of  David  should  accomplish  ;  and  thus  Deutero- 
Isaiah  in  a  very  remarkable  passage  chides  their  ques- 
tionings and  anxieties,  which  is  tantamount  to  a  criti- 
cism of  the  plan  of  God,  who  has  decided  upon  this 
Persian  king  as  his  shepherd  and  as  his  anointed.  And 
that  leads  us  to  a  cardinal  feature  in  Deutero-Isaiah, — 


4578 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


namely,  the  stress  he  lays  on  the  omnipotence  of  God, 
and  which  the  prophet  never  wearies  of  repeating  in 
ever  newer  and  loftier  variations : 

"Who  hath  measured  the  waters  in  the  hollow  of 
his  hand,  and  meted  out  heaven  with  the  span,  and 
comprehended  the  dust  of  the  earth  in  a  measure  and 
weighed  the  mountains  in  scales,  and  the  hills  in  a 
balance?  " 

"Behold  the  nations  before  him  are  as  a  drop  of  a 
bucket  and  are  counted  as  the  small  dust  of  a  balance  : 
behold  he  weigheth  the  isles  as  dust.  And  Lebanon 
is  not  sufficient  for  wood  to  burn,  nor  the  beasts  thereof 
sufficient  for  a  burnt  offering.  All  nations  before  him 
are  as  nothing  :  and  they  are  counted  to  him  less  than 
nothing,  and  vanity." 

"It  is  he  that  sitteth  upon  the  circle  of  the  earth, 
and  the  inhabitants  thereof  are  as  grasshoppers  ;  that 
stretcheth  out  the  heavens  as  a  curtain,  and  spread- 
eth  them  out  like  a  tent  to  dwell  in." 

"  Lift  up  your  eyes  to  heaven.  Who  hath  created 
this?  He  that  bringeth  out  their  host  by  number  and 
calleth  them  all  by  names  ;  for  that  he  is  strong  in 
power,  not  one  faileth." 

This  omnipotent  God  of  Israel  is  the  only  God  in 
Heaven  and  on  earth,  everlasting,  eternal,  the  first 
and  the  last,  and  beside  Him  there  is  no  God.  Deutero- 
Isaiah  lays  special  emphasis  on  this  point.  No  one 
has  held  up  to  scorn  more  bitterly  than  he  the  idols  of 
the  heathen,  and  proved  their  emptiness  and  impo- 
tence. 

"The  workman  melteth  a  graven  image,  and  the 
goldsmith  spreadeth  it  over  with  gold,  and  casteth 
thereon  silver  chains.  He  that  is  too  impoverished 
for  such  an  outlay  chooseth  a  tree  that  will  not  rot  ; 
and  seeketh  unto  him  a  cunning  workman  to  prepare 
a  graven  image,  that  shall  not  rock." 

"They  helped  every  one  his  neighbour  and  every 
one  said  to  his  brother,  Be  of  good  courage.  So 
the  workman  encouraged  the  goldsmith,  and  he  that 
smootheth  with  the  hammer  him  that  smiteth  the  an- 
vil, saying  of  the  soldering.  It  is  good  :  and  he  fasten- 
eth  it  with  nails,  that  it  should  not  be  moved." 

"  They  lavish  gold  out  of  the  bag,  and  weigh  silver 
in  the  balance,  and  hire  a  goldsmith,  and  he  maketh 
it  a  god  :  they  fall  down,  yea,  they  worship  it.  They 
bear  him  upon  the  shoulder,  they  carry  him,  and  set 
him  in  his  place  and  he  standeth  ;  from  his  place  shall 
he  not  remove:  yea,  one  shall  cry  unto  him,  yet  he 
cannot  answer,  nor  save  him  out  of  his  trouble." 

And,  again,  in  the  principal  passage  : 

"Who  hath  formed  a  god,  or  molten  a  graven 
image  that  is  profitable  for  nothing?  Behold  all  his 
fellows  shall  be  ashamed,  for  the  workmen  they  are 
men.  The  smith  with  the  tongs  both  worketh  in  the 
coals   and   fashioneth   with  hammers,  and  worketh  it 


with  the  strength  of  his  arms  ;  he  groweth  hungry  and 
his  strength  faileth  :  he  drinketh  no  water  and  is  faint. 
The  carpenter  stretcheth  out  his  rule,  he  marketh  it 
out  with  a  line,  he  fitteth  it  with  planes,  and  he  mark- 
eth it  out  with  the  compass,  and  shapeth  it  after  the 
figure  of  a  man,  according  to  the  beauty  of  a  man,  to 
dwell  in  a  house.  He  heweth  him  down  cedars  and 
taketh  the  holm-tree  and  the  oak  which  he  strengthen- 
eth  for  himself  among  the  trees  of  the  forest ;  he  planteth 
a  fir-tree  and  the  rain  doth  nourish  it,  that  it  shall  be 
for  a  man  to  burn.  And  he  taketh  thereof  and  warmeth 
himself ;  yea,  he  kindleth  it  and  maketh  bread  ;  yea, 
he  maketh  a  god  and  worshippeth  it ;  he  maketh  it  a 
graven  image  and  faileth  down  thereto.  He  burnetii 
part  thereof  in  the  fire  ;  with  part  thereof  he  eateth 
flesh  ;  he  roasteth  roast  and  is  satisfied  ;  yea,  he  warm- 
eth himself  and  saith.  Aha,  I  am  warm,  I  have  felt  the 
fire  :  And  the  residue  thereof  he  maketh  a  god,  even 
his  graven  image  :  he  faileth  down  unto  it  and  wor- 
shippeth it,  and  prayeth  unto  it,  and  saith.  Deliver 
me  ;  for  thou  art  my  god.  .  .  .  And  none  considereth 
in  his  heart,  neither  is  there  knowledge  nor  under- 
standing to  say,  I  have  burned  part  of  it  in  the  fire  ; 
yea,  also  I  have  baked  bread  upon  the  coals  thereof ; 
I  have  roasted  flesh  and  eaten  it  :  and  shall  I  make  the 
residue  thereof  an  abomination?  shall  I  fall  down  to 
the  stock  of  a  tree?  " 

And  the  exclusive  divinity  of  this  God  of  Israel  is 
now  proved  by  Deutero-Isaiah  most  characteristically 
from  the  prophecy  :  he  is  the  only  One  who  has  pre- 
viously foretold  the  future  : 

"Thus  saith  the  Lord,  the  King  of  Israel,  and  his 
redeemer,  the  Lord  of  hosts.  I  am  the  first  and  I  am 
the  last  ;  and  beside  me  there  is  no  God.  Who  is  as 
I?  Let  him  stand  forth  and  say  it  and  declare  it,  and 
set  it  opposite  to  me.  And  the  things  that  are  com- 
ing, and  that  shall  come  to  pass,  let  them  declare. 
Fear  ye  not,  neither  be  afraid  :  have  I  not  declared 
unto  thee  of  old,  and  shewed  it?  ye  even  are  my  wit- 
nesses, whether  there  be  a  God,  whether  there  be  a 
rock  beside  me?  " 

This  God  of  prophecy,  whose  predictions  never 
fail,  had  long  foretold  that  Babylon  must  fall,  and  He, 
the  Almighty,  before  whom  the  people  are  as  nothing. 
He  will  now  carry  out  His  plan,  through  Cyrus,  His 
shepherd  and  His  anointed.  The  impending  destruc- 
tion of  the  Babylonian  tyrant,  of  his  kingdom,  and 
of  his  cit)',  is  described  in  the  most  vivid  colors  of 
hatred  and  scorn.  And  then  shall  take  place  the  re- 
turn of  Israel  to  the  land  of  its  fathers.  God  himself 
heads  the  procession  and  makes  in  the  wilderness  a 
safe  way  through  shady  trees  and  rippling  fountains, 
that  they  may  build  at  last  the  new  Jerusalem,  whose 
splendor  the  prophet  depicts  in  the  most  gorgeous 
colors. 


THE    OF»EN    COURT. 


4579 


"For  the  mountains  shall  depart  and  the  hills  be 
removed,  but  my  kindness  shall  not  depart  from  thee, 
neither  shall  the  covenant  of  my  peace  be  removed, 
saith  the  Lord  that  hath  mere}-  on  thee.  O  thou  af- 
flicted, tossed  with  tempests,  and  not  comforted,  be- 
hold I  will  set  th)'  stones  in  fair  colors  and  lay  thy 
foundations  with  sapphires.  And  I  will  make  thy  pin- 
nacles of  rubies,  and  thy  gates  of  carbuncles,  and  all 
thy  border  of  precious  stones.  And  all  who  build  thee 
shall  be  taught  of  the  Lord  and  great  shall  be  the 
peace  of  th}'  children.  In  righteousness  shalt  thou  be 
established ;  thou  shalt  be  far  from  oppression  for 
thou  shalt  not  fear,  and  from  terror  for  it  shall  not 
come  near  thee.  If  bands  gather  together  against  thee, 
it  shall  not  be  from  me  :  and  whosoever  shall  gather  to- 
gether against  thee  shall  fall  because  of  thee."  "I  will 
make  thy  officers  peace,  and  thine  exactors  righteous- 
ness .  .  .  and  thou  shalt  call  thy  walls  Salvation,  and 
thy  gates  Praise.  The  sun  shall  be  no  more  thy  light 
by  day;  neither  for  brightness  shall  the  moon  give 
light  unto  thee  ;  but  the  Lord  shall  be  unto  thee  an 
everlasting  light,  and  thy  God  thy  glory.  .  .  .  Thy 
people  also  shall  be  all  righteous  ;  the)'  shall  inherit 
the  land  forever,  the  branch  of  my  planting,  the  work 
of  my  hands,  that  I  ma}'  be  glorified." 

Brilliant  as  all  this  is,  however,  it  is  in  a  manner 
only  a  secondary  achievement  of  Deutero-Isaiah.  His 
special  and  fundamental  conception  is  different,  and 
infinitely  more  profound  than  this.  He  adopted  the 
idea,  first  clearly  conceived  by  the  original  Isaiah,  of 
a  world's  history,  but  widened  it  and  deepened  it  by  a 
combination  with  one  of  Jeremiah's  thoughts.  Accord- 
ing to  Jeremiah,  all  men  and  all  nations  are  destined 
and  called  upon  to  turn  to  God  and  become  His  chil- 
dren. Deutero-Isaiah  sees  in  this  the  final  aim  of  the 
history  of  the  world,  towards  which  its  entire  develop- 
ment and  guidance  strives.  "  My  house  shall  be  called 
a  house  of  prayer  unto  all  nations." 

Now,  this  gives  to  him  an  entirel}-  new  foundation 
for  his  contemplation  of  Israel.  Israel  alone  knows 
and  possesses  the  true  God.  Only  through  Israel  can 
the  other  nations  learn  to  know  Him,  and  thus  Israel 
becomes  the  servant  and  messenger  of  God,  the  laborer 
and  herald  of  God  to  man.  Israel  is  to  mankind  what 
the  prophet  is  to  Israel.  God  is  the  God  of  the  whole 
earth,  and  Israel  His  prophet  for  the  whole  earth. 
Thus  may  we  sum  up  most  succinctly  the  theology  of 
Deutero-Isaiah.      He  says: 

"  But  thou,  Israel,  my  servant,  Jacob  whom  I  have 
chosen,  the  seed  of  Abraham,  my  friend  ;  thou  whom 
I  have  taken  hold  of  from  the  ends  of  the  earth,  and 
called  thee  from  the  corners  thereof,  and  said  unto 
thee,  Thou  art  my  servant ;  I  have  chosen  thee  and 
not  cast  thee  away;  fear  then  not  for  I  am  with  thee; 
be  not  dismayed,  for  I  am  thy  God :   I  will  strengthen 


thee  ;  yea,  I  will  help  thee  :  yea,  I  will  uphold  thee 
with  the  right  hand  of  my  righteousness.  Behold  all 
they  that  are  incensed  against  thee  shall  be  ashamed 
and  confounded  :  they  that  strive  with  thee  shall  be  as 
nothing,  and  shall  perish.  .  .  .  For  I  the  Lord  thy 
God  will  hold  thy  right  hand,  sajing  unto  thee.  Fear 
not  ;  I  will  help  thee.  Fear  not,  thou  worm  Jacob, 
thou  maggot  Israel ;  I  will  help  thee,  saith  the  Lord, 
and  thy  redeemer,  the  Holy  One  of  Israel." 

"It  is  too  light  a  thing  that  I  should  raise  up  the 
tribes  of  Jacob,  and  restore  the  preserved  of  Israel:  I 
will  also  give  thee  for  a  light  to  the  Gentiles,  that 
thou  maj'est  be  my  salvation  unto  the  ends  of  the 
earth  " 

"Behold  my  servant,  whom  I  uphold;  mine  elect, 
in  whom  my  soul  delighteth ;  I  have  put  mj'  spirit 
upon  him  ;  he  shall  bring  forth  judgment  to  the  Gen- 
tiles. ...  A  bruised  reed  shall  he  not  break,  and  the 
smoking  flax  shall  he  not  quench  :  he  shall  bring  forth 
judgment  in  truth.  He  shall  not  quench,  nor  shall  he 
bruise,  till  he  have  set  judgment  in  the  earth,  and  the 
isles  shall  wait  for  his  law." 

And  here  Deutero-Isaiah  obtains  a  clue  to  the  enig- 
matical history  of  Israel.  All  Israel's  sufferings  have 
been  borne  in  its  vocation  as  servant  of  God.  "  Who 
is  blind,  but  my  servant?  or  deaf,  as  my  messenger 
that  I  send?  who  is  blind  as  my  trusted  one,  and  deaf 
as  the  LjOrd's  servant?" 

But  this  also  did  God  will  and  suffer.  In  the  un- 
worthiness  of  the  instrument  does  the  splendor,  the 
greatness  of  God  disclose  itself,  who  knows  how  to 
fulfil  His  plans  in  mysterious  ways.  Even  in  Israel 
those  only  become  the  servant  of  God  who  have  re- 
turned to  Jacob,  who  are  of  broken  heart  and  contrite 
spirit  ;  and  thus  the  tribulations  of  Israel  serve  the 
great  universal  plan,  in  that  they  educate  Israel  for  its 
mission  in  the  world,  its  everlasting,  high  vocation. 
Israel  is  the  suffering  servant  of  God,  on  whom  the 
punishment  falls,  that  the  salvation  of  the  world  may 
come  to  pass,  and  through  whose  wounds  all  shall  be 
saved.  Israel's  forced  sufferings  were  borne  for  its 
own  and  for  the  world's  salvation,  that  Israel,  purified 
and  refined  through  sorrows,  might  become  a  light  to 
the  Gentiles  and  a  blessing  to  the  whole  world. 

A  more  magnificent  theology  of  history,  if  I  may 
be  allowed  the  expression,  than  that  of  Deutero-Isaiah, 
has  never  been  given. 

And  yet  this  sublime  mind  cannot  withdraw  itself 
altogether  from  the  influences  of  the  time,  and  so  Deu- 
tero-Isaiah falls  short  of  the  eminence  of  Jeremiah, 
and  begins  the  declining  line  of  prophecj'.  Jeremiah's 
circumcision  of  the  heart  becomes  in  him  the  circum- 
cision of  the  flesh  ;  to  him  the  sanctity  of  the  new  Je- 
rusalem mainly  consists  in  that  it  shall  not  be  inhabited 
by  the  uncircumcised  and  the  impure  ;  the  converted 


4580 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


Gentiles  he  looks  upon  only  as  Jews  of  the  second  or- 
der. In  that  Israel  had  to  suffer  for  the  world,  shall 
it  in  the  concluding  age  of  salvation  rule  over  the 
world.  Kings  shall  lie  prostrate  before  this  people 
and  lick  the  dust  from  off  their  feet.  All  the  nations 
shall  bring  their  treasures  and  riches  to  Jerusalem. 
The  people  or  kingdom  which  does  not  do  homage  to 
Israel  shall  perish ;  yea,  all  nations  shall  worship  Is- 
rael, and  do  menial  service  for  Israel,  tend  its  flocks, 
and  till  its  fields  and  vineyards,  whilst  Israel  shall 
consume  the  riches  of  the  nations,  and  be  made  a 
praise  in  the  earth.  Jeremiah  could  not  have  written 
such  sentences.  Here  we  remark  that  with  Deutero- 
Isaiah  we  are  no  longer  in  Israel,  but  have  reached 
Judaism. 

The  deliverance  of  Israel  so  fervidly  hoped  for  and 
foretold  with  such  assurance  by  Deutero-Isaiah  did  in 
reality  take  place.  With  the  lightning-like  rapidity 
peculiar  to  him,  Cyrus  had  also  overthrown  the  king- 
dom of  Babylon.  On  the  3d  of  November,  538,  he  made 
his  triumphal  entry  into  Babylon.  The  kingdom  of 
Nebuchadnezzar  ceased  to  exist.  And  within  a  year 
after  the  capture  of  Babylon  the  new  ruler  actually 
gave  the  exiles  permission  to  return  to  Jerusalem.  In 
the  spring  of  537  B.  C.  they  began  their  journey,  and 
with  it  begins  a  new  chapter  in  the  history  of  Israel 
and  of  prophecy. 


DICKENS  IN  AMERICA. 


BY  F.    M.  HOLLAND. 


On  the  last  day  of  January,  1842,  he  wrote  thus  to 
his  friends  from  Boston,  where  he  had  just  arrived  : 
"I  can  give  you  no  conception  of  my  welcome  here. 
There  never  was  king  or  emperor  upon  the  earth  so 
cheered  and  followed  by  crowds,  and  entertained  in 
public  at  splendid  balls  and  dinners,  and  waited  upon 
by  public  bodies  and  deputations  of  all  kinds.  I  Ifeve 
had  one  from  the  far  West — a  journey  of  two  thousand 
miles.  If  I  go  out  in  a  carraige,  the  crowd  surround 
it  and  escort  me  home  ;  if  I  go  to  the  theatre  the  whole 
house  (crowded  to  the  door)  rises  as  one  man  and  the 
timbers  ring  again.  You  cannot  imagine  what  it  is.  I 
have  five  great  public  dinners  on  hand  at  this  mo- 
ment, and  invitations  from  every  town  and  village  and 
city  in  the  States.  ...  I  have  heard  from  the  univer- 
sities. Congress,  Senate,  and  bodies  public  and  pri- 
vate; of  every  sort  and  kind.  '  It  is  no  nonsense  and 
no  common  feeling,'  wrote  Dr.  Channing  to  me  yes- 
terday. '  It  is  all  heart.  There  never  was,  and  never 
will  be  such  a  triumph.'  " 

An  invitation  to  a  public  dinner  in  New  York  was 
given  by  her  merchants  on  account  of  his  "labors  in 
the  cause  of  humanity";  and  the  Hartford  draymen 
turned  out  in  their  blue  frocks,  because  they  had  read 


his  novels  and  knew  what  right  he  had  to  say,  as  he 
did  in  i860,  "  I  have  been  the  champion  and  friend  of 
the  workingman  all  through  my  career."  Webster 
declared  that  he  had  done  more  for  the  relief  of  the 
poor  than  all  the  British  statesmen  ;  and  Channing 
called  attention  to  what  he  had  done  "  to  awaken  sym- 
pathy with  our  race,"  and  especially  "towards  the  de- 
pressed multitude,"  disregarded  elsewhere,  but  al- 
lowed a  fair  chance  to  develop  and  prosper  in  America. 
The  novels  he  had  already  published,  and  especially 
the  Old  Curiosity  Shop,  Nicholas  Nicklchy,  and  Oliver 
Twist,  are  even  more  interesting  on  account  of  the 
vigor  with  which  Dickens  denounced  oppression  of 
children,  than  of  the  delight  with  which  he  pictured 
the  innocent  amusements  of  the  masses.  Enjoyment 
of  Christmas,  for  instance,  had  been  recommended  by 
the  Pickwick  Papers,  in  a  story  about  Gabriel  Grub 
and  the  Goblins  which  was  a  foretaste  of  the  Christmas 
Carol.  What  did  most  to  make  Dickens  popular  in 
America  was  the  pathos  with  which  he  had  drawn  a 
character  whose  name  might  have  been  given  to  the 
Old  Curiosity  Shop,  if  the  publication  of  that  story  as  a 
serial  had  not  led  to  the  selection  of  a  title  before 
many  chapters  were  written.  It  was  pre-eminently  as 
the  author  of  Little  Nell  that  Dickens  was  welcomed 
to  America. 

The  first  interruption  of  these  pleasant  relations 
was  made  by  his  protesting  against  the  refusal  of  our 
nation  to  enable  him  and  other  British  authors  to  de- 
rive any  profit  from  the  sale  of  their  works  in  the 
United  States.  He  had  just  ground  for  complaint. 
The  refusal  of  international  copyright  has  been  de- 
fended by  the  plea,  that  America  needed  cheap  books  ; 
but  there  was  still  greater  need  of  her  maintaining 
honesty.  The  cost  of  reprinting  would  not  have  been 
much  increased,  if  the  British  author  could  have  col- 
lected a  royalty  ;  and  popular  works  were  already  pub- 
lished so  cheaply  by  English  printers,  as  to  prove  that 
American  copyrights  would  have  induced  these  men 
to  supply  our  people  at  very  low  prices.  Dickens  had 
a  right  to  think  that  books  which  brought  him  honor 
in  America,  ought  also  to  bring  him  money;  but  was 
it  wise  to  say  so  at  a  complimentary  dinner  ?  Is  that 
the  best  place  for  a  gentleman  to  try  to  collect  a  debt 
of  his  host  ?  Dickens  was  rightly  said  by  Irving  to  be 
the  guest  of  the  nation  ;  and  I  fear  that  he  abused  the 
privilege.  Great  Britain  wronged  him  in  much  the 
same  way,  by  forcing  him  to  let  his  novels  be  dram- 
atised and  travestied  without  permission  or  compen- 
sation ;  but  all  he  had  to  say  in  complaint,  I  think, 
had  been  put  into  the  mouth  of  Nicholas  Nickleby. 
He  might  easily  have  disposed  of  the  international 
copyright  question  where  Mr.  Pickwick  is  advised  to 
write  a  book  pitching  into  the  Americans  :  and  what- 
ever he  said  on  this  subject  in  print  would  have  been- 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4581 


seen  by  those  publishers  who  were  most  to  blame.  He 
preferred  to  make  his  complaints  at  dinner-parties, 
where  he  says  "I  felt  as  if  I  were  twelve  feet  high, 
when  I  thrust  it  down  their  throats."  He  was  severely 
censured  in  anonymous  letters  as  well  as  in  the  news- 
papers ;  and  when  he  came  to  New  York,  the  dinner- 
committee,  ' '  composed  of  the  first  gentlemen  in  Amer- 
ica, "  he  saj's,  begged  him  to  let  the  subject  rest,  though 
the}'  all  agreed  with  him.  He  refused  to  follow  their 
advice  ;  a  public  meeting  was  held  in  opposition,  by 
men  who  argued  that  international  copyright  would 
make  it  too  difficult  to  expunge  attacks  on  slavery; 
and  the  justice  which  he  demanded  was  not  granted 
until  long  after  he  had  given  up  agitation. 

It  was  after  this  disappointment  that  he  decided 
not  to  accept  any  more  public  dinners,  and  that  he  be- 
gan to  complain  of  many  discomforts.  He  could  not 
go  out  without  being  followed  by  such  crowds  that  he 
saw  nothing  else.  He  was  preached  at  when  he  went 
to  church.  His  rooms  were  overrun  by  curious  visi- 
tors ;  he  was  forced  to  give  receptions  where  he  an- 
swered questions  and  shook  hands  until  he  was  tired 
out  ;  and  a  Philadelphia  politician  took  advantage  of 
a  permission  to  introduce  a  few  friends,  and  gave  out 
such  general  invitations  in  the  papers  as  brought  to- 
gether crowds  of  citizens,  before  whom  Dickens  was 
shown  off  as  coolly  as  if  he  had  been  a  hippopotamus. 
To  these  trials,  was  soon  added  that  of  a  long  journey 
by  stage  and  steamboat  westward,  among  people 
whose  habit  of  chewing  tobacco  was  extremely  annoy- 
ing. These  troubles  were  certainly  serious ;  but  I 
suspect  that  Dickens  would  have  been  much  more  pa- 
tient, if  he  had  felt  sure  of  his  copyrights.  It  is  also 
probable,  that  his  spirits  had  already  been  impaired 
by  overwork.  He  had  complained  often  of  ill-health 
before  leaving  England  ;  and  he  was  obliged  soon 
after  his  return  to  take  more  than  two  years  for  com- 
parative idleness.  All  these  circumstances  prevented 
his  seeing  America  at  her  best.  Indignation  at  slav- 
ery did  much  to  make  him  say  in  his  letters  :  "I  don't 
like  the  country.  I  would  not  live  here  on  any  con- 
sideration. ...  I  think  it  impossible  for  any  English- 
man to  live  here  and  be  happy."  It  must  be  remem- 
bered, that  Miss  Martineau  was  more  of  an  abolitionist 
than  Dickens,  and  had  done  at  least  as  good  work  for 
international  copyright ;  that  she  travelled  much  longer 
than  he  did  in  the  United  States  ;  and  that  she  came 
very  near  deciding  to  become  an  American. 

Dickens  called  his  account  of  his  travels  American 
Notes  for  General  Circulation;  but  they  ceased  to  cir- 
culate long  ago.  Martin  Chiizzletvit  is  well  worth  read- 
ing, if  only  for  such  inimitably  funny  characters  as 
Sarah  Gamp,  Pecksniff,  and  Tapley ;  whose  hopeful- 
ness and  readiness  to  help  others  keep  him  always 
jolly,  even  in  America.    This  country  is  not  described 


in  his  spirit,  but  decidedly  in  that  of  the  exacting  and 
irritable  young  Martin,  whose  selfishness  has  to  be 
cured  by  severe  sickness  in  the  poverty-stricken 
swamp,  where  he  had  sought  a  home,  and  by  the  ad- 
ditional infliction  of  the  detestable  society  of  such 
swindlers  and  bores  as  constituted  the  population  of  a 
typical  western  city  according  to  this  novelist.  And 
yet  he  tells  us  in  the  American  Notes  that  he  met 
gentlemen  at  St.  Louis  who  were  "the  soul  of  kind- 
ness and  good  humor,"  and  adds,  "I  shall  not  easily 
forget,  in  junketings  nearer  home  with  friends  of  older 
date,  my  boon  companions."  That,  in  his  own  words, 
he  "made  them  all  stark,  staring,  raving  mad  across 
the  water,"  can  easily  be  understood,  if  only  on  ac- 
count of  his  descriptions  of  American  newspapers  and 
journalists. 

Twenty-five  years  went  by  between  the  first  and 
second  visits  of  Dickens  to  America  ;  and  in  this  in- 
terval he  published  Dombey  and  Son,  David  Copper- 
field,  Bleak  Hotise,  Hard  Times,  Little  Dorrit,  A  Tale 
of  Two  Cities,  Great  Expectations,  Our  Alutual  Friend, 
and  many  short  stories.  Some  of  these  latter,  for  in- 
stance, the  Cricket  on  the  Hearth,  gave  extremely  pop- 
ular pictures  of  his  favorite  scene,  a  happy  home. 
The  pathos  of  Dr.  Marigold's  Prescriptions  secured  a 
sale  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  copies  in  the 
first  week.  No  one  can  calculate  what  was  done  by 
the  Christmas  Carol  in  both  England  and  America,  for 
the  observance  of  that  festival  of  domestic  happiness 
and  neighborly  charity  which  was  condemned  by  the 
Puritans  because  it  gave  too  much  pleasure. 

America  welcomed  him,  in  November,  1867,  as 
kindly  as  before,  and  more  considerately.  He  acknowl- 
edged that  there  was  great  improvement,  especially  of 
the  newspapers,  and  confessed  he  had  changed  for 
the  better  himself.  His  readings  were  so  fascinating 
that  crowds  waited  twelve  hours  in  the  streets,  on 
winter  nights,  for  a  chance  to  buy  good  seats.  No 
hall  was  large  enough  ;  and  his  profits  amounted  to 
nearly  one  hundred  thousand  dollars.  He  was  claimed 
to  be  better  known  here  than  in  England  ;  and  the 
Forum,  for  December,  1893,  tells  how  the  most  pop- 
ular novel,  even  at  this  recent  date,  in  America  is 
found  to  be  David  Coppcrfield.  This  unrivalled  suc- 
cess was  due  to  indefatigable  and  systematic  labor, 
but  scarcely  to  any  advantages  of  birth  or  education. 
He  was  particularly  deficient  in  Latin  and  Greek,  as 
was  also  the  case  with  Irving,  Howells,  Lincoln,  and 
Frederick  Douglass.  Perhaps  they  wrote  all  the  better 
English  for  this.  Schiller  found  that  he  lost  skill  in 
his  own  language,  when  he  paid  too  much  attention  to 
foreign  tongues.  How  little  Dickens  cared  about  an- 
cestry, may  be  judged  from  the  frequency  with  which 
good  people  are  said  to  have  been  illegitimate.  It  is 
a  curious  question,  by  the  way,  whether  the   original 


4582 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


intention  was  to  make  Quilp  the  father  of  the  Mar- 
chioness. 

Better  education  might  have  made  Dickens  more 
instructive,  but  not  more  interesting.  His  ideals  are 
too  spontaneous  and  impulsive  ;  his  favorites  are  some- 
times dissipated  ;  and  he  is  too  ready  to  couple  dis- 
honesty with  business  habits.  But  these  are  trifles, 
compared  with  what  he  has  done  to  help  us  do  our 
daily  duty  cheerfully,  and  sympathise  with  all  the  un- 
fortunate and  oppressed.  Already  we  hear  of  a  new 
religion,  to  consist  mainly  in  a  sympathy  which  shall 
make  all  mankind  one  happy  family.  Such  a  religion 
would  be  better  than  all  the  others  ;  and  it  might  re- 
ceive these  novels  among  its  sacred  books. 


THE  STANDARD  DICTIONARY. 

BY  THOMAS  J.   M'CORMACK. 

The  second  volume  of  Funk  &  Wagnalls's  new  Standard  Dic- 
tianarv  of  the  English  language,  which  completes  one  of  the  mosj 
extensive  and  useful  lexicographical  undertakings  of  the  century 
comprises  the  letters  from  M  to  Z,  together  with  the  matter  usually 
embraced  in  the  appendixes  of  modern  dictionaries.  In  the  pres- 
ent case  this  appendix  is  very  rich,  and  constitutes  one  of  the  most 
valuable  features  of  the  new  dictionary.  As  it  is  an  element  which 
largely  determines  one's  choice  of  a  dictionary,  we  may  devote  a 
few  words  to  it.  It  consists  (r)  of  a  language-key  which  gives 
the  pronunciation  and  accents  of  the  letters  of  the  principal  an- 
cient and  modern  languages ;  (2)  of  a  statement  of  principles 
and  explanations  of  the  new  scientific  alphabet  which  has  been 
adopted  by  the  American  Philological  Association  and  the  Amer- 
ican Spelling  Reform  Association,  and  which  has  been  used  in 
giving  the  pronunciation  of  words  in  the  Standard;  (3)  of  a  com- 
prehensive vocabulary  of  proper  names  of  all  kinds,  with  their 
pronunciations,  and  much  definitive  etymological,  historical,  and 
statistical  information ;  (4)  of  a  useful  glossary  of  foreign  words, 
phrases,  etc.,  current  in  English  literature,  where  we  notice  a  new 
departure  in  the  reception  of  German  phrases  and  proverbs,  and 
also  in  the  idiomatic  renderings  which  the  editor  has  given  of 
foreign  adages ;  (5)  of  examples  of  faulty  diction,  a  department 
which  greatly  enhances  the  usefulness  and  convenience  of  the 
work,  and  which  has  been  edited  with  much  discrimination  and 
common  sen':e  ;  (6)  of  an  exhaustive  collated  list  of  disputed 
spellings  and  pronunciations  ;  and  {7)  of  a  list  of  abbreviations 
and  contractions,  arbitrary  signs  and  symbols,  used  in  the  sciences, 
in  commerce,  in  typography,  together  with  a  vocabulary  of  sym- 
bolic flowers  and  gems. 

We  may  be  allowed  to  recall  to  the  notice  of  our  readers  (for 
a  fuller  review  see  No.  345  of  The  Open  Court)  the  chief  distin- 
guishing features  of  the  Standard  Dictionary,  as  the  work  is  one 
which  in  practical  convenience  and  cyclopaedic  scope  is,  for  its 
limits,  perhaps  unexcelled.  The  Dictionary  contains  2,318  pages, 
5,000  illustrations,  301,865  vocabulary  terms,  which  is  more  than 
twice  the  number  of  terms  in  any  single-volume  dictionary,  and 
75,000  more  than  in  any  other  dictionary  of  the  language.  It 
should  be  mentioned,  however,  that  the  large  number  of  words 
which  it  contains  in  excess  of  the  other  dictionaries  has  been  ob- 
tained by  admitting  all  neoterisms,  slang,  and  dialectic  words 
discoverable  in  literature  of  good  standing  and  all  obtainable 
technical  and  scientific  terms,  which  latter  are  being  invented 
nowadays  with  such  startling  rapidity  that  no  dictionary  can  hope 
to  keep  pace  with  them.  Two  hundred  and  forty-seven  editors 
and  specialists,  and  five  hundred  readers  for  quotations  were  en- 
gaged upon  the  work,  and  its  cost  was  nearly  $1,000,000.  In  typo- 


graphical execution  and  economical  arrangement  it  leaves  nothing 
to  be  desired.  The  excellent  plan  has  been  adopted  of  giving  the 
most  common  definition  of  a  word  first,  placing  its  etymology  and 
remoter  meanings  last.  The  sources  of  quotations  are  indicated, 
which  is  also  a  decided  improvement  on  the  old  method.  For  the 
first  time  in  dictionary  making,  it  is  claimed,  an  attempt  has  been 
made  to  reduce  the  compounding  of  words  to  a  scientific  system. 
The  hyphen  and  diaeresis  in  the  middle  of  words  have  been  done 
away  with,  and  a  much  wished  for  simplicity  and  uniformity  ob- 
tained on  this  head.  Especially  noteworthy  are  the  colored  pic- 
torial illustrations,  the  copy  and  plates  of  which  were  prepared  by 
Tiffany  of  New  York,  Kurtz  of  New  York,  and  Prang  of  Boston. 
To  the  latter  also  belongs  that  masterpiece  of  lithographic  art  found 
in  Volume  I.,  under  Gem,  and  the  plates  of  flags.  Prang  also  pre- 
pared the  color-plates  of  the  spectrum.  Synonyms  and  antonyms 
have  received  careful  attention, — the  work  here,  in  fact,  is  excel- 
lent,— and  it  is  also  pleasing  to  note  that  some  sort  of  a  system 
has  been  observed  in  the  elaboration  of  the  definitions,  based  on  a 
reasoned  view  of  knowledge  as  an  organic  whole,  so  that  we  have  a 
' '  Standard  "  scheme  of  nature,  a  ' '  Standard  "  scheme  of  the  super- 
natural, a  "  Standard"  scheme  of  science,  a  "Standard"  scheme 
of  philosophy,  etc.,  which,  if  artificial  and  ofttimes  perilous,  at 
least  affords  a  good  working  basis  for  concise  and  harmonious  pre- 
sentation. 

In  a  broad  sense  the  Dictionary  is  essentially  a  people's  book, 
and  arranged  almost  entirely  with  practical  ends  in  view.  In 
cases  of  doubtful  orthography,  pronunciation,  etc.,  the  final  deci- 
sions of  the  Dictionary  have,  it  would  seem,  gone,  with  the  popu- 
lar current,  but  in  the  more  radical  lexicographic  movements  of 
late  times,  where  they  affect  the  form  of  language  as  a  whole,  the 
editors  have  exercised  a  wise  and  laudable  conservatism.  There 
is  no  question  but  the  Standard  Dictionary  is  the  most  useful  and 
practical  word  book  which  the  general  student  or  reader  could 
have.  Price,  single-volume  edition,  $12,  $14,  and  $18  ;  two-volume 
edition,  $15,  $17,  and  $22,  according  to  binding.  Funk  and  Wag- 
nails  Co.,  New  York  ) 

NOTES. 

The  Christian  Unity  Conference  is  now  in  session  at  Oak 
Island  Beach,  Long  Island,  N.  Y.  The  idea  of  the  Conference  is 
to  bring  the  various  denominational  divisions  of  Christianity  in  the 
United  States  closer  together,  and  to  effect  some  kind  of  organic 
Christian  unity.  Addresses  will  be  made  by  the  Rev.  Josiah 
Strong,  the  Rev.  Madison  C.  Peters,  the  Rev.  Franklin  Noble, 
the  Rev.  J.  Winthrop  Hegeman,  the  Rev.  James  DeWolf  Perry, 
and  many  others.  Swami  Vivekananda  and  Dr.  Paul  Carus  will 
speak  on  the  World's  Religious  Parliament  Extension.  The  offi- 
cers of  the  Conference  have  chosen  as  their  place  of  meeting  one 
of  the  pleasantest  resorts  on  the  Atlantic  Coast,  and  a  large  at- 
tendance may  be  expected,  as  also  beneficent  results. 

THE    OPEN    COURT. 

"  THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  ST., 

CHICAGO.  ILLINOIS.  POST  OFFICE  DRAWER  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION  i 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  413. 

ADVENTURES  OF  A  PARABLE.     Moncure  D.  Conway  4575 

DEUTERO  ISAIAH.     Prof.  C.  H.  Cornill 4576 

DICKENS  IN  AMERICA.     F.  M.  Holland 4580 

THE  STANDARD  DICTIONARY.      Thomas  J.   McCor- 

MACK 4582 

NOTES 4582 


Hi- 


The  Open  Court. 


A  VyEEKLY  JOUENAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  414.     (Vol.  IX— 31.) 


CHICAGO,   AUGUST  i,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
I  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.— Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


NOT  IRRELIGION,  BUT  TRUE  RELIGION. 

"  I  am  not  come  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil." 

A  PAMPHLET  lies  before  me  entitled  "  Religion  and 
Science,  the  Reconciliation  Mania  of  Dr.  Paul  Carus 
of  T/ie  Open  Cf^/r/ Analysed  and  Refuted  byCorvinus." 
It  is  a  reprint  of  a  series  of  articles  which  appeared  in 
the  Freethoiight  Magazine,  published  and  ably  edited 
by  H.  L.  Green  at  Chicago,  Illinois.  Corvinus  is  a 
nom  de  plume  which  hides  a  man  of  obviously  serious 
conviction  and  earnest  intentions.  The  real  name  of 
the  author  of  the  pamphlet  is  unknown  to  me,  and  I 
have  reason  to  believe  that  I  never  met  him.  Why 
he  selected  the  pseudonym  Corvinus,  i.  e.  ravenlike, 
whether  in  honor  of  John  Hunyady,  the  hero  of  Hun- 
gary and  the  collector  of  the  famous  library  of  manu- 
scripts which  was  destroyed  by  the  Turks,  or  of  some 
member  of  the  Roman  family  of  the  Valerians,  who 
distinguished  themselves  as  generals  and  protectors 
of  literature,  remains  a  mystery  to  me.  May  be  that 
my  critic  wrote  under  this  name  that  it  might  be  ful- 
filled which  was  spoken  by  the  prophet  Horace,  who 
said : 

"Publicola  atque 
Corvinus.  patriis  intermiscere  petita 
Verbis  foris  inalis — " 

Which  for  the  present  purpose  we  venture  to  trans- 
late "Publicola  and  Corvinus  mixed  up  their  Latin 
and  Greek  pretty  badly." 

Identifying  the  negativism  of  his  peculiar  free- 
thought  with  Science,  and  Religion  with  superstition, 
Corvinus  denounces  every  attempt  at  reconciliation 
between  Religion  and  Science,  and  condemns  my  ex- 
positions of  a  religion  that  would  be  in  accord  with 
Science  as  a  "conglomeration  of  self-contradictory 
ideas,"  which  display  "inconsistency"  and  "ambigu- 
ity." He  calls  me  a  "freethinker  in  disguise,"  and 
contrasts  such  passages  in  which  I  appear  as  "virtually 
a  freethinker"  with  others  in  which  I  maintain  the  ex- 
istence of  God  and  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 

There  are  plenty  of  misrepresentations  in  Corvi- 
nus's  criticism,  but  they  are  apparently  involuntary. 
It  is  true  that  I  use  many  old  words,  such  as  Religion, 
God,  soul,  and  immortality,  in  a  new  sense,  but  I  have 
always  been  careful  to  explain  what  I  mean.  Had  I 
ever  tried  to  dodge  the  truth,  or  leave  people  in  doubt 
as  to  my  opinions,  there  would  be  some  justice  in  the 


accusations  of  Corvinus.  The  fact  is  that  my  defini- 
tions are  more  definite  than  those  handed  down  to  us 
by  tradition. 

My  method  of  conciliation  consists  in  showing  the 
dogmatic  believer  a  way  out  of  his  narrowness.  I 
undertake  to  instruct  him  in  the  meaning  of  his  reli- 
gion, pointing  out  how  he  can  decipher  the  symbols 
of  his  creed  and  transfigure  them  into  exact  truth.  At 
the  same  time  I  give  to  the  freethinker  the  key  which 
will  unlock  the  mysteries  of  traditional  religion,  and 
exhibit  the  significance  of  their  peculiar  forms,  so  full 
of  beauty  and  comfort  to  the  believer,  and  so  grotesque 
to  the  uninitiated. 

That  Corvinus  judges  rashly  of  the  work  which  I 
do,  is,  in  my  opinion,  simply  due  to  the  fact  that  he 
never  felt  the  need  of  a  reconciliation  of  religion  with 
science,  and  science  with  religion.  He  knows  neither 
the  real  character  of  the  religious  people  of  to-day, 
nor  does  he  understand  the  historical  import  of  reli- 
gion. He  only  knows  the  little  circle  of  his  own  so- 
ciety, in  which  freethought  prevails,  and  he  has  prob- 
ably never  investigated  the  evolution  of  moral  ideals, 
which,  without  religion,  would  never  have  been  dis- 
seminated or  enthusiastically  received  among  the 
masses  of  mankind.  Morality  without  religion,  and  of 
course  we  mean  here  religion  in  the  highest  sense  of 
the  word,  would  have  simply  been  fear  of  the  police 
and  nothing  more. 

I  cannot  enter  here  into  a  detailed  exposition  of  all 
the  misconceptions  of  which  Corvinus  is  guilty;  but  I 
shall  point  out  that  he  has  misunderstood  the  most 
important  side  of  my  position.  He  sees  the  negations 
alone  of  my  philosophy,  which  ally  me  so  strongly 
with  the  freethinker  party,  but  not  its  affirmations, 
and  I  would  say,  that  if  to  be  a  freethinker  means  to 
be  purely  negative  and  to  reject  wholesale  everything 
that  has  been  established  by  the  millennial  evolution 
of  religion,  I  am  not  a  freethinker,  but  I  am  an  ortho- 
dox among  the  orthodox ;  nay,  an  arch-orthodox,  for 
while  the  old-fashioned  orthodoxy  claims  to  be  a  sys- 
tem of  belief,  the  new  orthodoxy  which  is  implied  in 
the  Religion  of  Science  claims  to  be  based  on  a  firmer 
foundation  than  mere  belief.  It  is  built  upon  evidence 
which  can  be  refused  only  by  those  who  are  unable  to 
comprehend  the  import  of  facts. 


45^4 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


To  Corvinus,  all  religions,  and  especially  Chris- 
tianity, are  errors  and  unmitigated  nonsense,  while  I 
see  in  them  the  development  of  that  most  important 
side  of  man's  nature,  which  determines  the  character 
of  his  life.  In  my  opinion,  the  very  idea  of  "a  system 
of  pure  ethics"  is  unscientific.  Ethics  is  always  the 
expression  of  a  world-conception.  Every  religion  and 
every  philosophy  has  its  own  ethics.  Cut  ethics  loose 
from  its  basis,  and  it  remains  an  arbitrary  system  of 
rules  without  either  raison  d'etre  or  authority.  The 
raison  d'etre  of  moral  commandments  is  the  most  es- 
sential part  of  ethics  ;  it  is  the  root  from  which  moral- 
ity springs,  and  whatever  this  raison  d'etre  be,  it  is 
the  religion  of  the  man  who  owns  it.  If  there  are  men 
who  have  no  other  raison  d'etre  for  moral  conduct  than 
their  own  personal  welfare,  I  would  say  that  their  re- 
ligion consists  in  the  attainment  of  happiness.  If  they 
recognise  no  authority  to  which  they  bow  save  their 
own  pleasure  or  displeasure,  their  God  is  Self.  Now, 
it  has  been  maintained  by  some  freethinkers  that  the 
very  nature  of  freethought  consists  in  this  unshackled 
freedom,  and  I  would  say  that  if  their  conception  is 
truly  legitimate  freethought,  I  am  no  freethinker,  for 
I  believe,  nay,  I  know,  that  there  is  a  power  in  this 
world  which  we  have  to  recognise  as  the  norm  of 
truth  and  the  standard  of  right  conduct;  and,  indeed, 
there  are  conditions  in  which  our  personal  happiness 
may  seriously  come  into  conflict  with  our  duties.  In 
this  sense  I  uphold  the  idea  of  God  as  being  a  supreme 
authority  for  moral  conduct,  the  presence  of  which  in 
life  can  only  be  denied  by  men  whose  opposition  to 
the  false  dogmatism  of  the  traditional  religions  leads 
them  to  deny  also  their  truth,  which  is  the  very  es- 
sence and  the  cause  of  their  continued  existence. 

Religion,  as  it  originates  among  the  various  na- 
tions of  the  world,  is  not  the  product  of  systematised 
investigation,  but  of  race  experience.  It  is  natural 
that  truths  of  great  importance  were,  long  before  a 
scientific  investigation  could  explain  their  nature,  in- 
vented by  instinct.  Thus  the  Egyptians  invented  im- 
plements, the  use  of  which  is  based  upon  laws  utterly 
unintelligible  in  those  days.  In  the  same  way  moral 
truths  were  proclaimed  by  the  prophets,  who  felt  their 
significance  without  being  able  to  explain  them  by  a 
philosophical  argumentation,  and  it  is  to  the  enormous 
practical  importance  of  these  truths  that  they  owe 
their  survival.  To  show  justice  and  mercy  to  enemies 
appears  at  first  sight  foolish,  but  experience  has  taught 
that  the  men  who  insisted  on  this  principle  were  right, 
and  the  belief  in  their  divine  mission  became  by  and 
by  established.  The  prophets  of  almost  all  nations 
were  persecuted,  but  their  doctrines  survived,  and  led 
naturally  enough  to  the  foundation  of  institutions  such 
as  the  synagogue  of  the  Jews,  the  church  of  the  Chris- 
tians, the  sangha  of  the  Buddhists. 


The  religious  conception  which  it  is  my  life-work 
to  uphold,  is  simple  enough,  yet  I  find  that  Corvinus 
has  radically  misunderstood  its  main  significance,  with- 
out which  all  my  writing  would  indeed  be  a  mere 
quibbling  of  words  and  an  ambiguous  display  of  old 
phrases,  not  in   a  new  sense,  but  without  any  sense. 

One  instance  will  be  sufficient  to  point  out  the  mis- 
conception of  Corvinus.  Corvinus  declares  that  God 
is  with  me  "only  an  idea,"  implying  that  it  is  no  real- 
ity.     He  says  (p.  31): 

"  If  God  is  being  defined  simply  as  abstract  thought,  an  idea, 
as  something  existing  oji/v  in  imagination  and  not  in  reality,  it  is 
meaningless  to  say  science  is  a  revelation  of  God." 

And  he  adds  : 

"  Science  is  the  achievement  of  man  and  nothing  else." 

In  opposition  to  his  statement  I  say  that  the  idea 
of  God  is  an  abstract  thought,  but  God  himself  is  a 
reality.  There  is  no  abstract  thought  but  it  is  in- 
vented to  describe  a  reality.'  If  the  term  "  God  "  did 
not  describe  an  actual  reality,  it  would  be  meaning- 
less to  speak  of  Science  as  a  revelation  of  God.  I 
grant  that  Science  is  "the  achievement  of  man,"  but 
that  is  one  side  only  of  the  truth.  Far  from  being 
"the  achievement  of  man  and  nothing  else"  Science  is 
in  its  very  essence  superhuman.  Man  cannot  invent 
mathematics ;  he  must  discover  its  theorems.  He 
cannot  make  the  laws  of  nature  ;  he  must  describe 
them.  He  cannot  establish  facts;  he  must  investi- 
gate, and  can  only  determine  the  truth.  Nor  can  he 
set  up  a  code  of  morals,  but  he  must  adapt  himself  to 
the  eternal  moral  law  which  is  the  condition  of  human 
society  and  the  factor  that  shapes  the  human  of  man. 

Here  is  the  point  where  Corvinus  radically  differs 
from  my  position.  He  says,  quoting  a  misunderstood 
passage  from  Haeckel  : 

"  'Constantly  to  speak  of  the  moral  laws  of  nature  proves 
blindness  to  the  undeniable  facts  of  human  and  natural  history.'" 

Corvinus  adds : 

"All  moral  laws  from  their  beginning  in  the  dim  past  among 
our  rude,  savage-like  predecessors  up  to  the  noblest  conceptions 
of  modern  ethics,  were  conceived,  proposed,  and  consequently 
established  by  man." 

Corvinus  says  that  "necessity  gave  birth  to  these 
moral  laws,"  meaning  probably  by  necessity  "the 
needs  of  man."  I  accept  his  reply,  and  would  say 
that  the  needs  of  man  indicate  the  presence  of  a 
higher  necessity,  viz.,  of  that  necessity  which  we  trace 
in  the  harmony  of  natural  laws  and  in  the  peculiarly 
complicated  simplicity  of  mathematics.  This  higher 
necessity  is  the  ultimate  raison  d'etre  of  the  moral  law, 
and  it  is  a  characteristic  feature  of  that  omnipotent 
presence  which  we   can   trace  everywhere.      Intrinsic 

1  An  apparent  exception  to  this  rule  is  the  conception  of  the  irrational  in 
mathematics.  The  irrational  is  a  symbol  representing  a  function  which  can- 
not be  executed.  Root-extraction  from  — i  is  as  impossible  as  the  squaring  of 
the  circle. 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4585 


necessity  means  eternality,  immutability,  stern  and 
inflexible  authority — in  a  word,  it  means  God. 

Corvinus  confounds  two  things  :  moral  injunctions, 
and  the  natural  law  of  morality.  Moral  injunctions  are 
proposed  and  established  by  man  in  his  anxiety  to 
adapt  himself  to  the  moral  law,  exactly  as  an  architect 
may  write  down  the  rules  for  building  bridges  so  that 
according  to  the  material  which  he  uses  the  law  of 
gravitation  should  not  be  infringed  upon.  If  the  archi- 
tect's rules  are  in  conformity  with  the  natural  con- 
ditions such  as  scientists  formulate  in  what  is  called 
laws  of  nature,  he  will  be  able  to  build  boldly  and  yet 
securely.  And  if  the  laws  of  legislators  are  based  upon 
a  correct  conception  of  the  moral  law  of  nature,  the 
nations  who  adopt  them  will  prosper  and  progress. 

It  appears  that,  according  to  Corvinus,  the  moral 
law  of  nature  is  a  nonentity,  while  the  injunctions  of 
law-givers  are  all  that  can  be  called  a  moral  law.  The 
fact  is  just  the  reverse.  The  moral  law  of  nature  is 
the  eternal  abiding  reality,  while  the  laws  and  injunc- 
tions of  man  are  only  its  transitory  and  more  or  less 
imperfect  expressions.  The  moral  law  of  nature  alone 
partakes  of  that  feature  which  in  all  religions  is  at- 
tributed to  God.  It  is  eternal,  it  is  omnipresent,  it  is 
irrefragable.  Certainly  the  moral  law  is  not  a  con- 
crete object,  not  an  individual  fact,  not  a  personal 
being,  but  for  that  reason  it  is  not  a  nonentity.  It 
cannot  be  seen  with  the  eye,  or  heard  with  the  ear,  or 
tasted  with  the  tongue,  or  touched  with  the  hands.  It 
is  one  of  those  higher  realities  which  can  only  be  per- 
ceived by  the  mind.  The  senses  are  insufficient  to 
encompass  it,  but  any  normal  mind  can  grasp  it. 

There  was  in  the  Middle  Ages  a  philosophical 
party  called  the  Nominalists,  who  denied  the  objective 
existence  of  ideas,  declaring  ideas  to  be  mere  names 
without  any  corresponding  reality.  Their  adversa- 
ries, called  the  Realists,  believed  in  the  reality  of  ideas. 
And  while  the  nominalistic  philosophy  was  rejected, 
it  began  to  flourish  again  and  found  its  mightiest  ex- 
pression in  the  transcendental  idealism  of  the  great 
sage  of  Konigsberg.  Spencer's  agnosticism  is  its  most 
modern  offshoot.  In  him  Nominalism  reached  its  final 
reductio  ad  absiirdum.  On  this  line  of  thought  the 
whole  universe  has  become  intrinsically  incomprehen- 
sible. 

Corvinus  is  apparently  a  nominalist.  Ideas  are  to 
him  mere  ideas,  i.  e.,  subjective  inventions  without 
objective  reality;  and  science,  that  most  methodical 
system  of  ideas,  is  not  a  revelation  of  objective  truth, 
but  "the  achievement  of  man  and  nothing  else."  It 
is,  accordingly,  in  the  same  predicament  as  the  names 
of  the  nominalists,  and  he  who  studies  science  is  like 
Hamlet  in  one  of  his  erratic  moods  reading,  as  he 
says,  "Words,  words,  words."  Science  would  be 
mere  words  without  any  objective  significance. 


Now  I  will  not  quarrel  with  Corvinus  about  names. 
He  has  an  inherited  objection  to  the  very  word  "God." 
I  will  not  now  apply  the  name  God  to  that  peculiar  pres- 
ence of  superhuman  reality  which  the  various  sciences 
reveal  to  us  in  parts,  but  I  insist  on  its  being  a  reality; 
indeed,  I  maintain  that  it  is  the  most  real  reality  in 
the  world.  We  may  call  it  cosmic  order,  or  law  {Ge- 
setzinassig/;t'it),  or  necessity,  or  the  eternal,  or  the  im- 
mutable, or  the  omnipresent,  the  absolute,  or  the  pro- 
totype of  mind,  or  the  standard  of  rationality,  or  the 
universal  Logos,  or  the  authority  of  conduct.  But  it 
exists,  in  undeniable  objectivity.  We  cannot  mould  it 
or  shape  it,  but,  on  the  contrary,  we  are  the  products 
of  its  handiwork.  Every  arithmetical  formula,  every 
law  of  nature,  every  truth,  is  a  partial  revelation  of 
its  character,  and  there  is  nothing  in  the  infinite  uni- 
verse but  is  swayed  by  its  influence.  It  encompasses 
the  motions  of  the  infinitesimal  atoms  and  of  the 
grandest  suns  ;  it  is  the  logic  of  man's  reason  and  the 
nobility  of  man's  moral  aspirations. 

It  is  true  that  I  deny  the  existence  of  an  individual 
God.  In  this  sense  I  am  an  outspoken  atheist.  Never- 
theless, I  declare  most  emphatically  that  God  is  a  rtal- 
ity,  and  indeed,  God  is  a  super-individual  reality.  In 
Mr.  Corvinus's  opinion  this  is  a  flat  contradiction  and 
he  has  no  other  explanation  of  it  than  by  considering 
it  as  a  tergiversation.  He  puts  it  down  as  a  mania 
through  which  I  try  to  reconcile  the  errors  of  the  past 
with  the  truths  of  modern  times.  By  truths  of  mod- 
ern times  he  understands  negations  of  all  and  any  posi- 
tive issues  in  religion,  so  that  as  soon  as  I  attempt  to 
formulate  freethought  in  positive  terms,  which  is  tan- 
tamount to  recognising  the  truth  in  our  traditions,  he 
decries  me  for  pandering  to  popular  superstitions. 

In  my  opinion  freethought  has  been  barren  because 
of  its  negativism  and  it  is  left  behind  the  times  be- 
cause it  has  failed  to  come  out  with  positive  issues, 
and  now  that  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.  is  pro- 
pounding a  constructive  freethought,  its  work  is  sus- 
pected, criticised,  and  rejected.  In  spite  of  the  nega- 
tions of  Corvinus,  I  insist  that  the  reality  of  God  is  an 
undeniable  fact,  scientifically  provable  by  unfailing 
evidence.  It  can  be  established  so  surel}'  that  Cor- 
vinus, as  soon  as  he  grasps  the  meaning  of  the  idea, 
would  say  that  it  is  a  truism. 

Philosophical  materialism  has  so  strongly  affected 
our  ideas  that  the  average  mind  is  incapable  of  be- 
lieving in  immaterial  realities.  First,  the  immaterial 
realities  of  natural  laws  were  represented  as  personal 
beings,  then  as  metaphysical  essences,  and  now  since 
we  know  that  metaphysicism  is  untenable  their  very 
existence  is  denied,  and,  being  recognised  as  immate- 
rial, they  are  declared  to  be  unreal.  But  the  objective 
reality  of  form  and  the  laws  of  form  is  exactly  the  truth 
which  we  must  learn  to  appreciate. 


4586 


THE    OPEN    COURX. 


That  which  the  senses  do  not  perceive,  but  is  dis- 
cernible by  the  mind,  is  not  non-existent  but  possesses 
a  higher  kind  of  existence.  It  constitutes  the  unity  of 
the  universe  and  the  harmony  of  its  order.  Without 
it,  the  world  would  not  be  a  cosmos  but  an  incoherent 
chaos  ;  nature  would  be  matter  in  motion,  without  any 
regularity  of  mechanical  adjustment  and  the  system  of 
thought-forms  which  constitutes  the  superiority  of  the 
human  mind  would  never  have  developed.  Without 
it.  Science  would  be  mere  verbiage.  Religion  meaning- 
less, and  ethics  an  impossibility. 

The  new  philosophy  which  I  represent — call  it 
Monism,  or  the  new  Positivism  (for  it  differs  from 
Comtean  Positivism),  or  the  philosophy  of  science,  or 
the  new  Realism — insists  on  the  reality  of  form,  of  re- 
lations, and  the  significance  of  ideas.  The  soul  of 
man  is  not  in  his  blood  but  in  his  mind.  He  is  not  a 
mere  heap  of  atoms.  He  consists  of  ideas.  His  ex- 
istence is  not  purely  material.  It  is  also,  and  princi- 
pally, spiritual.  We  grant  that  there  is  no  egosoul. 
There  is  as  little  a  metaphysical  thing-in-itself  of  man 
as  there  is  a  thing-in-itself  of  a  watch,  or  of  a  tree,  or 
of  a  natural  law.  But  nevertheless,  just  as  much  as 
that  combination  which  makes  of  a  spring,  cogs  and 
wheels,  an  instrument  called  a  watch,  is  not  a  non- 
entity but  a  reality,  in  the  same  way  man's  soul  in 
spite  of  the  non-existence  of  a  metaphysical  ego-soul 
is  not  a  nonentity  but  a  reality ;  and  the  mould  into 
which  we  have  been  cast  is  that  divinity  of  the  world 
which  was  at  the  beginning  and  will  remain  for  ever 
and  aye. 

If  there  is  anything  that  deserves  the  name  of  God- 
head, it  is  this  peculiar  supersensible  Reality,  the  vari- 
ous aspects  of  which  are  revealed  in  glimpses  that  we 
receive  in  Religion,  in  Ethics,  and  in  Science.  For 
here  alone  the  attributes  of  divinity  are  found,  viz., 
omnipresence  and  universality,  immutability  and  eter- 
nity, intrinsic  necessity  and  irrefragibility.  It  is  one 
and  the  same  in  all  its  various  revelations,  in  mathe- 
matical theorems  and  in  ethical  injunctions.  There  is 
no  wisdom,  but  it  is  a  comprehension  of  its  truth. 
There  is  no  virtue,  but  it  is  a  compliance  with  its  dis- 
pensations. There  is  no  genuine  piety,  but  it  is  a  de- 
votion to  its  beauty  and  sovereignty.  If  there  are 
gods  of  any  kind,  it  is  the  God  of  gods,  and  if  the 
word  supernatural  has  any  sense,  here  is  it  applicable  ; 
for  here  we  have  the  conditions  for  all  possible  worlds, 
and  it  would  remain  such  as  it  is,  even  if  nature  did  not 
exist.  The  simplest  formulas  of  arithmetic  as  much 
as  the  noblest  moral  laws,  which  constitute  the  superi- 
ority of  love  over  hate  and  of  compassion  over  ferocity, 
hold  good  for  this  actual  world  of  ours  not  less  than  for 
any  possible  world. 

Thus  we  learn  that  if  God  is  not  wise  like  a  sage, 
he  is  infinitely  more  than  wise;  he  is  that  which  con- 


stitutes the  essence  of  all  wisdom.  God  is  not  good 
like  a  well-meaning  man  ;  he  is  more  than  a  philan- 
thropist. God  is  the  measure  of  goodness  and  the 
moral  law  of  life. 

When  Corvinus  speaks  of  God  he  means  the  God- 
conception  of  average  Christianity.  But  we  can  assure 
him  that  the  masses  are  not  responsible  for  the  religion 
which  they  espouse,  while  many  leaders  in  the  churches 
are  far  from  believing  in  an  individual  God.  They 
may  not  be  clear  as  to  the  nature  of  God.  They  be- 
lieve in  Him  without  comprehending  his  Being ;  but 
I  maintain  that  upon  the  whole  they  have  an  aspiration 
toward  a  higher  conception  and  that  in  the  long  run  of 
the  historical  evolution  of  mankind  they  will  more  and 
more  accept  the  idea  of  God  as  I  conceive  it  now. 
They  try  to  conceive  the  idea  of  God  as  a  truly  super- 
personal  God,  and  at  the  same  time  think  of  him  still 
as  an  individual  being,  a  huge  world-ego.  But  I  ven- 
ture to  say  that  this  combination  is  self-contradictory. 
If  such  an  individual  God,  a  kind  of  world-ego,  a  dis- 
tinct and  single  being,  existed,  if  this  God  were  a  be- 
ing who  had  been  the  creator  of  the  universe  and  is 
now  its  governor  and  supreme  ruler,  I  would  say  that 
that  superpersonal  God  whose  revelation  we  find  in 
science,  and  whose  essence  is  that  indescribable  pres- 
ence of  law  and  cosmic  order,  must  be  considered  su- 
perior to  him. 

Suppose  we  call  an  individual  God,  after  the  pre- 
cedent of  the  gnostics,  "  Demiurge  "  or  world-archi- 
tect and  represent  him,  not  as  the  prototype  of  all 
personality,  but  as  an  actual  person  like  ourselves,  only 
infinitely  greater.  Now,  suppose  that  it  was  he  who 
made  the  world  as  a  watchmaker  makes  a  watch,  that 
he  regulates  it  as  we  wind  and  set  our  watches,  and 
that  he  owns  and  rules  it,  and  keeps  it  in  order.  Must 
we  not  grant  at  once  that  the  Demiurge,  though  in- 
finitely greater  than  man,  would  not  be  the  supreme 
Reality  ?  He  would  have  to  obey  those  supernatural 
laws  of  nature  which  constitute  their  intrinsic  neces- 
sity. He  would  not  be  the  ultimate  ground  of  moral- 
ity and  truth.  There  is  a  higher  authority  above  him. 
And  this  higher  and  highest  authority  is  the  God  of 
the  Religion  of  Science,  who  alone  is  worthy  of  the 
name  of  God.  The  God  of  the  Religion  of  Science  is 
still  the  God  of  the  Demiurge.  The  Demiurge  could 
have  created  the  world  only  by  complying  with  the 
eternal  and  unalterable  laws  of  being  to  which  he 
would  be  not  less  subject  than  all  his  creatures. 

Taking  this  ground,  we  say  that  the  God  of  the 
Religion  of  Science  alone  is  God,  and  not  the  Demi- 
urge in  whom  a  great  number  of  the  Christians  of  to- 
day still  believe.  The  Demiurge  is  a  mythical  figure, 
and  belief  in  him  is  true  paganism.  Monotheism  in 
this  sense  is  only  a  polytheism  which  has  reduced  the 
number  of  its  gods  to  one  single  god-being.   The  God 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


45«7 


whom  the  Religion  of  Science  proclaims  is  not  a  sin- 
gle God-Being,  but  it  is  the  one,  the  sole,  the  self- 
consistent,  universal  sameness  of  divinity  that  is  the 
all-pervading  condition  of  any  possible  world  as  a 
cosmic  universe. 

The  God  whom  the  Religion  of  Science  proclaims 
is  not  a  new  God,  but  it  is  the  old  God  proclaimed 
by  every  genuine  prophet,  among  the  Jews  and  also 
among  the  Gentiles,  only  purified  of  its  paganism. 

The  philosophy  of  science  is  not  an  absolutely  new 
philosophy,  but  only  a  more  distinct  formulation  of 
the  principles  which  have  long  been  practiced  among 
scientists.  In  the  same  way,  the  Religion  of  Science 
is  not  a  radically  new  religion,  but  a  religious  reform 
which,  according  to  the  needs  of  the  time,  matures 
the  old  religions  and  opens  a  vista  into  the  future,  in 
which  the  most  radical  freethought  is  reconciled  with 
the  most  rigorous  orthodoxy.  And  this  is  not  done  by 
artificial  phrases  or  by  tergiversation,  but  by  fusing 
religion  in  the  furnace  of  science,  and  by  sifting  our 
religious  traditions  in  the  sieve  of  critique. 

As  the  God  of  the  Religion  of  Science  is  not  a 
mere  idea  without  reality,  so  the  immortality  of  the 
soul  is  not  purely  imaginative  but  actual.  Corvinus 
declares  that 

"  It  is  perfectly  immaterial  to  man  as  regards  his  own  person, 
whether  the  truths  and  noble  sentiments,  which  he  cherished  dur- 
ing his  lite,  are  still  with  mankind,  after  death  or  not,  if  he  does 
not  enjoy  self-consciousness." 

That  the.  truth  and  noble  sentiments  which  a  man 
cherishes  during  his  life  should  remain  with  mankind 
after  his  death  is,  in  my  humble  opinion,  whether  or 
not  his  consciousness  continues,  not  immaterial,  but  of 
the  utmost  importance.      Corvinus  says  : 

"  It  is  preposterous  to  assume  that  the  fruits  of  the  practice 
of  virtue  will  benefit  him  in  the  least  if  he  ceases  to  live  as  a  con- 
scious being." 

I  make  bold  to  say  that  there  is  no  man,  not  even 
Corvinus  himself,  who  would  be  so  utterly  indifferent 
about  his  sympathies  concerning  the  fate  of  his  chil- 
dren, of  mankind  in  general,  and  above  all  of  his  as- 
pirations. It  is  a  fact  that  men  who  do  not  believe  in 
the  immortality  of  their  individual  self  gladly  die  that 
their  ideals  may  live,  and,  verily,  our  ideals  are  the 
better  part  of  our  selves;  they  are  our  spiritual  life. 
If  they  continue,  we  can  truly  say  that  we  continue  to 

live  in  them. 

* 
*  * 

Corvinus  has  recognised  that  there  is  dross  in  re- 
ligion, and  therefore,  to  him,  religion  is  unmitigated 
superstition.  Because  like  him  I  discard  the  dross  he 
calls  me  a  freethinker,  but  because  I  keep  the  gold  he 
declares  that  I  suffer  from  the  reconciliation  mania. 

p.  c. 


THE  RETURN  FROM  THE  CAPTIVITY. 

BY   PROF.    C.    H.   CORNILI,. 

Cyrus,  the  conqueror  and  new  ruler  of  Babylon,  at 
once  gave  to  the  Jewish  exiles  permission  to  return  to 
their  native  land,  and  supported  and  helped  them  in 
every  way.  We  have  no  reason  to  doubt  the  assertion 
that  he  provided  the  means  for  rebuilding  the  demol- 
ished temple  from  the  funds  of  the  Persian  treasury, 
and  that  he  ordered  the  sacred  vessels  of  the  ancient 
temple  which  had  been  plundered  by  the  Chaldeans, 
so  far  as  they  still  existed  or  were  recognisable,  to  be 
returned  to  the  homeward-bound  Israelites. 

The  question  has  been  raised,  why  Cyrus  should 
have  exhibited  such  sympathy  for  the  Jewish  exiles 
and  espoused  so  cordially  their  cause,  and  the  reason 
of  it  had  been  sought  in  a  certain  supposed  affinity 
between  the  Ahura-Mazda  religion  avowed  by  Cyrus 
and  his  Persians,  and  the  God-belief  of  the  Israelites. 
In  point  of  fact  a  certain  similarity  may  be  traced  be- 
tween the  pure  and  profound  Persian  worship  of  light 
and  the  belief  of  the  Jewish  exiles  in  Babylon,  whilst, 
on  the  other  hand,  to  a  Mazda-Yasnian,  like  Cyrus, 
the  Babylonian  cult  must  have  appeared  in  the  highest 
degree  unsympathetic  and  ludicrous. 

But  Cyrus  was  not  a  sentimental  man,  and  religious 
fanaticism  was  as  foreign  to  him  as  to  his  people. 
We  have  to  recognise  in  the  liberation  of  the  Jews 
merely  a  political  action,  the  reason  of  which  is  very 
apparent.  Now  that  Babylon  had  been  overthrown, 
there  existed  but  one  powerful  state  bordering  on  the 
kingdom  of  Persia,  and  that  was  the  old  land  of  the 
pyramids — Egypt,  which  just  at  this  time  was  enjoy- 
ing a  new  lease  of  vigor  under  the  long  and  prosperous 
reign  of  Amasis,  and  was  taking  an  important  part  in 
politics.  As  early  as  the  year  547  Egypt  had  joined  a 
powerful  coalition  against  the  young  and  rising  king- 
dom of  Persia  ;  long  before,  the  Assyrians  had  fought 
against  Egypt  and  temporarily  subdued  it,  and  like- 
wise Nebuchadnezzar  had  waged  war  with  this  coun- 
try. It  lay  in  the  logic  of  facts  and  circumstances, 
accordingly,  that  sooner  or  later  hostilities  between  the 
two  neighboring  powers  must  break  out ;  and  there- 
fore it  was  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world  that 
such  a  clear-sighted  and  far-seeing  man  as  Cyrus 
should  prepare  for  it.  The  restoration  of  Jerusalem 
and  of  Judah,  then,  was  a  mere  link  in  the  chain  of 
these  preparations.  Judaea  was  the  province  border- 
ing on  Egypt,  and  Jerusalem  the  natural  basis  of 
operations  for  a  campaign  directed  against  the  valley 
of  the  Nile.  We  can,  therefore,  well  understand  that 
it  appeared  desirable  to  Cyrus  to  know  that  a  people 
dwelt  there  who  was  bound  to  him  by  the  most  power- 
ful ties  of  gratitude,  and  on  whose  faithfulness  and 
devotion  he  could  confidently  rely. 

If  Cyrus  laid   stress  on  the  religious  element  and 


4588 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


proved  himself  a  worshipper  of  the  God  of  the  Jews, 
his  attitude  in  this  respect  simply  coincides  with  his 
maxims  of  government,  as  we  may  show  by  documen- 
tary evidence.  A  considerable  number  of  inscriptions 
concerning  Cyrus  exist,  which  he  as  king  of  Babylon 
ordered  to  be  made  in  the  old  Babylonian  cuneiform 
character,  and  in  these  Cyrus  appears  as  the  most  de- 
vout servant  and  sincere  worshipper  of  the  Babylonian 
gods.  He  returns  thanks  to  Merodach  and  to  Nebo 
for  the  protection  accorded  to  him,  and  grants  spe- 
cial privileges  to  their  temples  and  priests.  The 
conduct  of  Cyrus  towards  the  Jewish  exiles  must  be 
considered  from  this  twofold  point  of  view,  which 
does  not  exclude  the  additional  possibility  that  in  their 
fervid  expectation  of  the  fall  of  the  Babylonian  tyrant, 
the  Jews  took  an  active  part  in  the  operations  and 
both  countenanced  and  aided  Cyrus  and  his  Persians 
in  their  enterprise  against  Babylon,  for  which  the 
Persians  showed  themselves  thankful. 

In  the  spring  of  the  year  537  B.  C.  the  Israelites 
began  their  homeward  march.  They  numbered  about 
50,000  souls  and  were  evidently  members  of  all  the 
families  of  the  house  of  Judah.  They  were  under  the 
leadership  of  the  Persian  commissary  Sheshbazzar. 
The  government  and  management  of  internal  affairs 
was  lodged  in  a  council  of  twelve  confidential  advis- 
ors, among  whom  and  occupying  the  highest  offices 
were  Zerubbabel,  the  grandson  of  King  Jehoiachin, 
and  Joshua,  the  grandson  of  Seraiah,  the  last  priest 
of  the  temple  of  Jerusalem  put  to  death  under  Ne- 
buchadnezzar. 

It  has  often  been  supposed  that  the  worldly-minded 
of  the  Jewish  nation  remained  behind  in  Babylon  in  as- 
sured and  comfortable  positions,  and  had  no  desire  to 
risk  the  dangers  of  the  march,  or  the  hardships  of  lay- 
ing out  and  newly  settling  a  devastated  country.  But 
this  view  is  totally  false  and  in  contradiction  to  well- 
established  facts.  We  shall  soon  see  that  the  ones 
who  remained  behind,  in  the  end  really  led  the  work 
of  reform,  and  victoriously  carried  out  the  rehabilita- 
tion and  completion  of  the  religious  system  against 
the  will  of  those  who  returned  in  537. 

Immediately  on  the  arrival  of  the  exiles  the  altar 
was  erected  on  the  sacred  spot  where  once  had  stood 
the  sacrificial  altar  of  the  temple  of  Solomon,  and  the 
autumn  festival  of  the  year  537  could  therefore  be  cele- 
brated with  a  solemn  oblation  to  the  God  of  Israel. 
Unfortunately  we  have  only  meagre  and  incomplete 
details  regarding  the  370  years  which  intervene  be- 
tween this  event  and  the  outbreak  of  the  Maccabaean 
revolt ;  only  isolated  moments  and  events  are  at  all 
well  known  to  us,  and  these,  although  they  throw  a 
ray  of  light  now  and  then  into  the  dense  obscurity  of 
this  period,  yet  ofttimes  present  more  puzzles  than 
they  solve. 


In  537  the  cult  was  restored,  but  the  most  definite 
and  indubitable  evidence  forces  us  to  conclude  that 
no  attempt  was  made  to  rebuild  the  temple  for 
seventeen  years.  On  the  other  hand,  highly  momen- 
tous transformations  must  have  taken  place  within 
the  priesthood  ;  for  in  the  year  520  we  suddenly  find 
a  high-priest  of  whom  there  is  no  premonitory  trace 
in  the  Israel  of  the  pre-exilic  period,  and  of  whom 
absolutely  nothing  is  known  either  in  Deuteronomy, 
or  by  Ezekiel.  I  regret  that  I  am  unable  to  enter 
more  minutely  into  this  matter,  for  it  is  as  important 
as  it  is  interesting.  It  is  to  be  observed  that  in  the 
year  520  prophecy  once  more  awoke.  And  here  again 
a  great  historical  crisis  was  its  origin.  Cambyses,  the 
degenerate  son  and  successor  of  the  great  Cyrus,  had 
indeed  subdued  Egypt  in  525,  and  thus  inserted  the 
keystone  in  the  arch  of  the  Persian  empire  ;  but  he 
was  very  near  destroying  it  by  his  cruelty  and  tyranny. 
In  522  the  Magus  Gaumata  gave  himself  out  to  be 
the  brother  of  Cambyses  whom  the  latter  had  secretly 
put  to  death,  and  called  upon  the  Persian  people  to 
rid  themselves  of  this  monster.  Cambyses  marched 
against  him,  but  committed  suicide  in  Hamath  in 
Syria,  leaving  no  son.  The  Magus  ruled  for  nearly  a 
year  unmolested,  till  Darius,  who  was  directly  con- 
nected with  the  royal  house  through  a  branch  line, 
claimed  his  rights  as  heir,  and  aided  by  the  noblest 
families  of  Persia,  put  the  Magus  to  death  in  the 
autumn  of  the  year  521.  That  was  the  signal  for  up- 
risings throughout  the  whole  of  the  empire.  Excite- 
ment reigned  everywhere.  Two  full  years  Darius  had 
to  struggle  with  difficulties  of  every  kind,  till  at  last 
he  succeeded  in  restoring  order  and  consolidating  the 
kingdom  of  Persia,  a  consolidation  which  lasted  more 
than  two  centuries. 

In  this  restless  and  seething  period  prophecy  was 
again  aroused.  Suddenly  Zerubbabel  of  the  house  of 
David  appears  as  the  Persian  viceroy  in  Judaea.  It  is 
possible  that  Darius  did  this  to  win  over  the  sym- 
pathies of  the  Jews,  and  to  assure  himself  of  their 
help  at  a  period  when  his  sovereignty  was  gravely 
threatened. 

In  the  year  520  a  bad  harvest  seems  to  have 
brought  famine  and  hunger  into  the  land  ;  and  at  this 
crisis  appeared  an  aged  and  venerable  man,  Haggai, 
who  had  seen  with  his  own  eyes  the  old  temple  and 
the  old  Jerusalem,  and  who  must  therefore  have  been 
in  his  seventies,  with  words  of  warning  and  exhorta- 
tion. The  famine  had  been  the  punishment  of  God 
for  that  the  people  dwelt  in  ceiled  houses,  whilst  His 
house  lay  waste.  Undaunted  and  unconcerned  should 
they  go  to  work,  for  a  grand  future  was  in  store  for 
this  new  temple,  and  Zerubbabel  himself  should  be 
their  Messiah.      Saith  Haggai: 

"Yet  now  be  strong,   O  Zerubbabel,   be  strong,    O 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4589 


Joshua,  he  strong  all  ye  people,  and  work,  for  I  am 
with  you,  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts  .  .  .  and  my  spirit 
remaineth  among  you  .  .  .  For  thus  saith  the  Lord  of 
■  hosts  :  Yet  once,  it  is  a  little  while,  and  I  will  shake 
the  heavens,  and  the  earth,  and  the  sea,  and  the  dry 
land.  And  I  will  shake  all  nations,  and  the  valuable 
things  of  all  nations  shall  come,  and  I  will  fill  this 
house  with  glor)'.  The  silver  is  mine,  and  the  gold 
is  mine,  and  the  latter  glory  of  this  house  will  be 
greater  than  the  former,  and  in  this  place  will  I  give 
peace." 

And  to  Zerubbabel  specially  He  saith  : 

"I  will  shake  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  and  I 
will  overthrow  the  throne  of  kingdoms,  and  I  will  de- 
stroy the  strength  of  the  kingdoms  of  the  heathen  ; 
and  I  will  overthrow  the  chariots  and  those  that  ride 
in  them,  and  the  horses  and  their  riders  shall  come 
down,  every  one  by  the  sword  of  his  brother.  In  that 
day  will  I  take  thee,  O  Zerubbabel,  my  servant,  and  I 
will  make  thee  as  a  signet:    for  I  have  chosen   thee." 

As  we  are  told  by  Haggai,  the  cornerstone  of  the 
new  temple  was  actually  laid  on  the  24th  of  De- 
cember, 520.  We  can  plainly  see  the  influence  and 
reflexion  of  the  ideas  of  Isaiah  and  Deutero-Isaiah  in 
Haggai.  Haggai  has  given  us  nothing  of  his  own  ; 
yet  in  its  simple  and  unpretentious  style  his  little 
book  has  something  peculiarly  touching  in  it,  and 
brings  before  us  vividly  and  immediately  the  feelings 
and  views  of  the  time. 

Contemporaneously  with  Haggai  appeared  another 
prophet  with  the  same  views  and  with  the  same  aims 
— Zechariah.  His  book  has  the  same  subject  as  that 
of  Haggai  :  the  rebuilding  of  the  temple  and  the 
future  Messianic  kingdom  of  Zerubbabel.  But  in  a 
literary  point  of  view  Zechariah  is  highly  remarkable 
and  unique.  He  has  abandoned  the  old  style  of 
prophecy,  which  was  that  of  the  discourse  or  sermon, 
and  depicts  in  its  stead  visions  which  he  has  seen, 
and  which  are  explained  to  him  by  an  angel.  Zech- 
ariah clothes  his  ideas  in  mj'steriously  symbolical 
events,  which  is  indubitable  proof  that  prophecy  has 
loosed  itself  from  its  natural  soil  and  developed  into  a 
purely  literary  creation.  It  may  be  compared  to  a 
book-drama  of  to-day.  In  all  these  productions  of  art 
the  emotional  and  passionate  elements  are  wanting 
which  are  to  be  found  in  the  older  prophetic  writings, 
and  which  Haggai  himself  still  knew  how  to  preserve. 
Just  as  religion  since  Deuteronomy  had  become  a 
book-religion,  so  now  prophecy  became  purely  literary 
in  form.  The  thought  of  a  personal  and  direct  in- 
fluence has  totally  disappeared. 

The  altered  relation  of  the  prophet  towards  God 
is  also  noteworthy.  Whilst  the  older  prophets  feel 
themselves  to  be  completely  one  with  God,  who  is 
ever  present  and  living  in  them,  God  now  grows  more 


and  more  transcendent ;  the  direct  personal  inter- 
course of  the  prophet  with  God  ceases  ;  an  angel  steps 
in  between,  who  communes  with  him  as  intermediary. 
Zechariah  has  at  his  disposal  a  rich  and  lively  fantas}', 
and  his  book  is  highly  interesting  and  in  its  kind  ex- 
cellent ;  but  it  is  nevertheless  a  clear  witness  of  the 
growing  deterioration  of  prophecy. 

Especially  typical  of  the  conceptions  of  the  time 
is  the  first  of  his  visions.  A  man  stands  among  m3'rtle 
trees,  to  whom  come  four  apocalyptical  riders  on  four 
horses  of  different  colors.  These  horseman  have  been 
sent  to  walk  to  and  fro  through  the  earth  and  bring 
news  of  what  takes  place.  And  they  answer  and  say  : 
"We  have  walked  to  and  fro  through  the  earth,  and 
behold,  all  the  earth  sitteth  still  and  is  at  rest."  Then 
the  angel  who  explains  the  vision  to  the  prophet  ex- 
claims :  "O  Lord  of  hosts,  how  long  wilt  thou  not 
have  mercy  on  Jerusalem  and  on  the  cities  of  Judah, 
against  which  thou  hast  had  indignation  these  three- 
score and  ten  years  ?  " 

From  the  revolution,  from  the  overthrow  of  all  ex- 
isting circumstances,  Israel  expects  the  realisation  of 
its  hopes  of  the  future,  the  destruction  of  the  king- 
doms of  this  world  and  the  foundation  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God.  The  events  of  the  world  were  followed  with 
anxious  curiosity;  whenever  a  storm  gathered  on  the 
political  horizon,  men  lielieved  they  saw  in  it  the 
signs  of  the  great  future.  Thus  was  this  unrestful  and 
critical  period  of  the  Persian  empire  a  time  of  great 
exitement  among  the  Jews,  and  was  looked  upon  by 
them  all  in  the  same  way.  We  learn  from  Zechariah 
the  remarkable  fact  that  the  Jews  who  had  remained 
behind  in  Babylon  sent  at  this  time  a  golden  crown 
to  Jerusalem  to  be  worn  by  Zerubbabel  as  the  future 
Messiah  King.  It  is  the  electrification,  so  to  speak, 
of  an  atmosphere  heavy  with  storm,  which  we  feel  in 
the  Book  of  Zechariah. 

But  all  hopes  were  in  vain.  Darius  proved  him- 
self equal  to  the  situation  ;  the  Persian  empire  stood 
firmer  than  ever,  and  all  remained  as  before.  In  the 
meanwhile  the  building  of  the  temple  made  rapid  pro- 
gress ;  the  Satrap  of  the  province,  on  the  other  side 
of  the  Euphrates,  to  which  Judah  belonged,  named 
Tatnai,  asked  officially  for  orders.  Darius  expressly 
permitted  the  completion  and  also  promised  state-aid. 
The  Satrap  Tatnai  took  the  matter  up,  and  on  the 
third  day  of  March,  515,  the  new  temple  was  com- 
pleted after  four  and  a  half'years'  work. 


THE  BUTTERFLY. 


BY  PROF.  WILHELM  WINKLER. 


On  the  ruddy  cheek  of  a  ripening  apple  a  bril- 
liantly colored  butterfly  sits.  It  is  a  peacock  butter- 
fly.     Playfully  it  opens  and  shuts  its  gorgeous  wings. 


4590 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


on  which  its  bright  dappled  eyes  glitter  like  jewels  in 
the  sunshine. 

Below,  on  the  prickly  nettle-bushes,  along  the 
rough  stalks,  black  caterpillars  are  creeping,  equipped 
with  huge  spines.  On  the  branches  of  the  garden 
hedge,  polished  angular  pupae  hang,  with  their  heads 
downwards,  scarcely  exhibiting  a  symptom  of  life. 
The  butterfly  now  rises,  and  in  rapid  zigzag,  now  soar- 
ing, now  flying,  it  alights  on  a  nettle- leaf,  where  it  lays 

its  eggs. 

Egg— caterpillar— pupa— butterfly!  With  marvel- 
lous instinct,  the  butterfly  selects  the  spot  and  plant 
where  its  offspring,  which  it  is  never  to  see,  can  find 
the  requisite  conditions  of  life  and  development.  The 
egg,  so  diminutive  and  insignificant,  braves  the  rigor 
of  the  winter,  and  in  the  warm  days  of  spring  it  gives 
life  to  the  caterpillar.  Like  a  tube  constantly  expand- 
ing, the  caterpillar  creeps  along  on  its  sixteen  feet 
from  one  nettle  to  another,  unmindful  of  the  stinging 
hairs.      Leaf  after  leaf  falls  under  its  sharp  jaws. 

At  last  the  caterpillar  becomes  a  pupa  or  chrysa- 
lis, and  from  the  pupa,  as  from  a  coffin,  arises  thg 
gorgeous  daughter  of  the  sun. 

Like  a  flower  endowed  with  life,  the  butterfly  soars 
from  blossom  to  blossom,  sipping  only  the  nectar. 

Involuntarily  we  are  reminded  here  of  the  words 
of  the  great  Konigsberg  philosopher,  Kant,  who  says: 

"I  make  bold  to  say  that  the  constitution  of  all 
the  bodies  in  the  heavens,  the  cause  of  their  motions, 
in  brief,  the  origin  of  the  whole  present  structure  of 
the  universe,  will  be  understood  before  the  production 
of  a  single  caterpillar,  of  a  single  common  weed  shall 
be  clearly  and  perfectly  explained  on  mechanical  T^  "H  P  OPEN  COURT 
grounds."^ 


other  who  went  to  set  traps,  set  them  so  well  that  he 
caught  much  game,  so  weighty,  that  on  the  way  home 
he  stumbled  and  fell ;  but,  far  from  injuring  him,  his 
fall  caused  a  rock  to  move,  and  lo!  beneath  it  a  great 
carbuncle,  which,  taking  home,  in  a  month  he  sold. 
The  neighbors  are  not  neighbors  now,  because  noth- 
ing estranges  more  than  change  of  fortune. 

WHENCE? 

BY  ].   ARTHUR  EDGERTON. 

I  do  not  know.     I  seem  a  child  at  play 

Before  the  viewless  mystery  of  life, 

And  know  not  it  is  there  :  except  at  times 

There  comes  to  me  a  sense  unnamable; 

The  veil  seems  just  a  little  drawn  ;  I  see 

An  awful  glimpse  that  shakes  my  inmost  soul. 

It  may  be  but  a  look,  a  word,  a  face, 

A  strain  of  music,  or  a  laugh,  a  song, 

And  all  the  world  goes  fading  into  dream. 

I  seem  to  feel  all  this  has  been  before. 

There  rises  up  a  something  in  my  soul, 

A  something  of  unutterable  age, 

As  old  as  life,  aye,  and  as  old  as  death. 

That  gazes  through  my  eyes  upon  the  world, 

And  brings  a  sense  of  loneliness,  a  gleam 

Of  fearful  knowledge,  then  it  fades  away. 

It  was  more  frequent  in  my  early  years, 

Before  I  clogged  my  soul  with  flesh  and  sin  ; 

But  even  yet  it  comes  to  me  at  times ; 

And  once — I  know  not  what  the  cause — it  came, 

And  in  the  frenzy  burst  from  out  my  lips 

The  one  involuntary  cry,  "I  know"; 

And  then  it  left  me  helpless  as  a  child  ; 

The  dream  died  from  me  ;  and  I  went  my  way 

Into  the  world  of  toil  and  commonplace. 


Certainly,  no  other  development  in  nature  has  fur- 
nished the  reflecting  mind  of  man  with  more  material 
for  portentous  comparisons  than  the  development  of 
the  butterfly.       

FABLES  FROM  THE  NEW  .^SOP. 

BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 


"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HECEI^ER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION; 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 


The  Neighbors. 

Somewhere  in  Argolis,  near  the  sea,  two  men  dwelt 
with  their  families,  side  by  side,  in  cottages  of  much 
the  same  style  and  furnishing.  After  dwelling  thus  in 
amity  for  several  years  a  day  came  when  the  two  set 
forth  as  usual  at  dawn  to  provide  for  their  families. 
"I  go  north  to  fish,"  said  one.  "And  I,"  said  the 
other,  "go  south  to  trap  game."  So  each  went  his 
own  way;  but  by  nightfall  their  fate  (thus  far  strangely 
even)  divided  altogether;  for  the  fisher  who  went 
north  found  no  fish,  and  lost  his  net,  and  stumbled 
and  fell  upon  the  rocks  and  hurt  his  leg  so  badly  it 
was  a  full  month  before  he  went  forth  again.    But  the 

\Allgemeine  Naturgesc/iichte  und  Tkeorie  des  Hiinmels.     1755.     Vorrede. 


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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  414. 

NOT  IRRELIGION  BUT  TRUE  RELIGION.   Editor.   4583 
THE    RETURN    FROM    THE    CAPTIVITY.     Prof.  C. 

H.    CORNILL 4587 

THE  BUTTERFLY.     Prof.  Wilhrlm  Winkler 4589 

FABLES    FROM    THE    NEW    ^ESOP.     The   Neighbors. 

HuDOR  Genone 4590 

POETRY. 

Whence  ?    J.  Arthur  Edgerton 459° 


^^ 


The  Open  Court. 


A  ■HTEEKLY   JOUKNAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  415.     (Vol.  IX.— 32.) 


CHICAGO,   AUGUST  8,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
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GREATNESS  AS  A  FINE  ART. 

BV  .S.    MILLINGTON   MILLER,    M.    D. 

I  THINK  I  can  present  a  series  of  facts,  which,  taken 
together,  indicate  that  it  is  possible,  comparatively 
speaking,  to  make  a  Napoleon  out  of  an  idiot.  This 
should  be  entirely  too  sensational  as  the  title  of  an  ar- 
ticle written  for  a  serious  periodical,  and  yet  I  do  not 
know  of  any  other  collection  of  words  which  so  clearly 
expresses  what  I  have  in  mind.  The  only  proof  of 
my  theory  would  be  the  actual  construction  of  a  very 
high  type  of  man  out  of  a  very  low  one,  and  as  I  can- 
not do  this  in  sight  of  the  public,  I  am  constrained  to 
rely  upon  a  narrative  of  facts  which  go  far  in  my  esti- 
mation to  prove,  not  only  the  possibility,  but  also  the 
likelihood  of  such  an  accomplishment. 

In  order  that  I  may  be  thoroughly  understood,  it 
will  be  necessary  that  I  give  a  preliminary  description 
of  just  what  the  brain  and  central  nervous  system  of 
man  includes.  In  doing  this  I  will  try  to  be  as  brief 
and  clear  as  possible.  The  various  senses,  have,  pri- 
marily, "end-organs,"  as  they  are  called,  such  as  the 
retina  of  the  eye,  the  taste-buds  of  the  tongue,  and  an 
equally  complicated  apparatus  in  the  ear.  These  ' '  end- 
organs  "  receive  and  condense  the  impressions  obtained 
from  the  outer  world.  Between  these  "end-organs" 
and  the  sense-centres  in  the  cortex  of  the  cerebrum, 
(which  sense-centres  have  of  late  years  been  quite  ac- 
curately localised,)  extend  the  various  nerves  of  sense, 
such  as  the  optic,  auditory,  olfactory  nerve,  etc. 

These  nerves  consist  of  an  endless  number  of  fibres 
contained  within  an  enveloping  sheath.  Each  fibre 
has  what  is  known  as  an  "axis-cylinder," — a  central 
tube  of  microscopical  dimensions,  filled  with  still  more 
microscopical  cells.  These  cells  are  free  to  move 
within  certain  limits,  and  able  to  transfer  impression 
the  one  to  the  other,  in  a  way  not  entirely  known  to 
us,  but  much  resembling  in  point  of  routine  the  con- 
duction of  electricity  along  an  iron  wire.  These  in- 
going or  afferent  nervous  fibres  end  each  of  them  in  a 
grey  tissue-cell  of  the  sense- centre.  From  this  grey 
tissue-cell  of  the  sense-centre  other  fibres  extend 
to  the  cells  of  the  motor  centres,  and  from  these 
motor-centre  cells  still  a  third  set  of  nervous  fibres 
(the  efferent  nerves)  carry  messages  or  orders  to  the 
muscles  all  over  the  body.     The  whole  passage-way, 


from  the  "end-organ  "  of  one  fibre  of  the  optic  nerve 
in  the  retina,  to  the  "other  end-organ  "  of  the  fibre  of 
a  nerve,  supplying,  we  will  say,  a  muscle  in  the  thumb, 
is  an  open  canal.  Its  long  and  narrow  channel  is 
filled  with  the  cells  above  described,  and  widens  at 
two  places  into  what  we  may  describe  as  a  lake  full  of 
cells.  These  two  lakes  correspond  to  the  sense-centre 
and  the  motor-centre  cells  in  the  brain.  The  human 
body  is  a  system  of  wheels  within  wheels.  Big  cells 
have  an  endless  number  of  little  cells  floating  more  or 
less  freely  within  them,  just  as  "big  fleas  have  little 
fleas  to  bite  them." 

The  color  of  the  rose  is  focussed  on  the  retina  of 
the  eye,  and  an  impulse  of  its  color  and  shape  flows 
along  from  particle  to  particle  in  the  "axis-cylinder" 
of  some  particular  optic  nerve,  and  is  discharged  into 
the  small  sea  of  particles  in  its  particular  sense-cell  in 
the  cortex.  Here  a  process  takes  place  which  we  do 
not  understand,  but  which  we  call  a  "sensation  of  the 
rose,"  and  either  in  this  sense-cell  or  in  the  motor  cell 
with  which  it  is  connected,  or  in  the  fibre  connecting 
the  two  cells,  a  thought  originates  and  an  order  is  sent 
down  the  efferent  nerve  of  action  to  the  muscles  of 
the  thumb  and  hand,  bidding  them  pluck  the  rose  and 
hold  it  to  the  nose  that  we  may  smell  it. 

That  afferent  and  efferent  nervous  fibres  differ  only 
in  their  function  of  carrying  messages  in  different  di- 
rections is  best  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  if  a  rat's 
tail  be  cut  off  short  at  its  junction  with  the  bodj',  and 
the  pointed  end  denuded  of  skin  and  united  by  suture 
with  the  body,  the  former  base  will  be  the  tip,  which 
will  curl  up  as  soon  as  this  appendage,  called  a  tail, 
has  healed  in  place. 

In  the  spinal  cord  itself  there  are  what  is  known  as 
reflex  nervous  centres,  which  have  themselves  the 
power  of  receiving  impressions  and  changing  them 
into  muscular  action  without  the  necessity  for  mental 
thought.  If  we  sit  down  on  a  pin,  the  sensation  of 
pain  is  carried  at  once  to  the  brain,  but  a  centre  in 
the  spine  first  receives  the  impression  and  sends  out 
a  sharp  command  which  lifts  the  body  out  of  the  chair 
simultaneously,  if  not  before  we  are  cognisant  of  pain 
in  the  pinprick.  The  action  of  this  reflex  centre  in 
the  spinal  cord  is  as  easy  a  one  for  us  to  understand,  as 
it  is  for  us  to   pull  a  rope  or   wire  in  one  direction 


4592 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


knowing  that  there  is  an  apparatus  fitted  to  its  other 
end  so  constructed  as  to  pull  another  rope  or  wire  in 
an  opposite  direction. 

But  when  that  thing  which  we  vaguely  call  thought 
or  7uill  is  brought  into  the  by-play,  an  element  is  in- 
troduced which  is  entirely  without  our  comprehension 
of  the  correlation  of  mechanical  or  physical  forces. 

As  there  are  an  enormous  number  of  "  rods  and 
cones"  in  the  retina  of  the  eye,  and  an  enormous 
number  of  fibres  in  the  optic  nerve,  and  an  enormous 
number  of  sense  and  motor  cells  in  the  cortex  of  the 
cerebrum,  it  is  quite  reasonable  to  take  it  for  granted 
(at  least  until  a  more  accurate  knowledge  has  shown 
the  supposition  to  be  a  false  one),  that  each  particular 
impression  of  sight  may  employ  one  fixed  fibre  de- 
bouching into  the  same  sense-cell  in  the  cortex,  each 
time  that  that  particular  sensation  affects  the  brain. 
And  that  the  particular  motion  or  motions  which  that 
sensation  produces  may  come  from  one  particular  mo- 
tor-cell centre  connected  by  the  same  fibre  with  the 
same  sense-centre  which  originally  and  always  receives 
the  same  impressions.  Physiological  investigation 
gives  considerable  color  to  this  partial  explanation  of 
thought. 

This  subject  is  naturally  a  difficult  one  to  explain 
understandably,  and  I  liave  done  my  best  to  make  it 
as  brief  and  as  clear  as  possible.  With  this  introduc- 
tion I  think  it  will  be  in  order  to  introduce  my  facts. 

It  is  evidently  a  function  of  the  will  in  each  indi- 
vidual to  send  out  certain  orders  to  the  muscles,  or  to 
reach  such  mental  conclusions  as  may  be  justified  by 
the  understanding.  And  it  is  a  well-established  fact 
that  the  concentration  of  this  will  upon  any  particular 
portion  of  the  body  can  and  does  produce  physiologi- 
cal and  pathological  changes  there.  The  thin,  tightly 
drawn  lips  of  the  ascetic  are  brought  into  this  condi- 
tion of  tenseness  and  constant  contraction  by  his  own 
will  power.  Duty  and  high  thoughts  banish  all  ideas 
of  sensuality  and  pleasure  from  his  mind,  and  his  lips 
are  but  a  reflex  of  the  sternness  of  his  purpose,  and  of 
the  narrowness  and  straightness  of  his  path. 

The  truth  of  the  Biblical  query  as  to  who  can  add 
a  cubit  to  his  stature  by  the  thought  of  it,  is  open  to 
serious  question.  There  seems  to  be  no  good  reason 
why  a  man  by  constantly  stretching  his  body,  and  by 
keeping  his  thoughts  all  the  time  fixed  on  that  pur- 
pose, may  not  in  reality  cause  the  very  condition 
of  affairs  that  he  desires  to  come  to  pass. 

There  is  unquestionable  authenticity  in  medical 
literature  for  the  fact  that  heart  disease  is  frequently 
and  actuallj'  produced  by  a  state  of  mind  which  not 
only  dreads  but  anticipates  such  an  occurrence.  And 
the  saying  is  well  known  that  ninety-nine  people  out 
of  a  hundred,  who  die  of  the  plague,  never  have  it. 

Whatever  cures  may  have  been,  or  may  be,  effected 


by  "Christian  Scientists"  are  undoubtedly  produced 
by  this  undeniable  dominion  of  the  will  over  the  tis- 
sues of  the  mind  and  body.  There  is  also  truth  in 
phrenology  and  physiognomy.  The  truth  is  twofold, 
not  only  that  certain  conditions  of  head  and  face  indi- 
cate the  possession  of  certain  mental  qualities,  but 
also  that  the  will  itself,  by  repeated  blows  of  itself  on 
certain  parts  of  the  body,  can  and  does  by  the  very 
act  cause  blood  to  tend  to  those  parts,  and  so  produce 
an  entirely  original  and  phenomenal  development 
there. 

Scattered  all  over  the  tactile  surfaces  of  the  body, 
and  particularly  numerous  and  highly  developed  on 
the  inner  surfaces  of  the  fingers  and  thumb  are  the 
"end-organs  "  of  the  sense  of  touch,  the  so-called  Pa- 
cinian corpuscles.  These  bulbs  contain  within  them 
a  nerve  stem  and  a  venous  and  arterial  distribution. 
Post-mortems  made  on  the  congenitally  blind,  or  upon 
those  who  have  been  blind  for  a  considerable  portion 
of  their  lives,  have  shown  that  these  Pacinian  corpus- 
cles are  wonderfully  developed  in  this  afflicted  class. 
Instead  of  their  main  nerve-stem  an  infinite  number 
of  delicate  nervous  tendrils  are  found  branching  off 
from  this  trunk — as  fine  a  mesh  as  that  of  the  floating 
sea-weed,  with  every  fairy  thread  awake,  and  ready  to 
grasp  its  food. 

The  explanation  of  this  extreme  state  of  develop- 
ment is  simply  this.  The  Mutual  Aid  Society  of  the 
Senses,  whose  principal  business  it  is  to  provide  the 
best  possible  crutch  for  a  disabled  sister — (any  one  of 
the  five  senses  which  may  be  lost)  provides  for  the 
blind  man  an  eye  in  his  sense  of  touch,  and  the  con- 
stant concentration  of  the  blind  man's  mind  upon  his 
finger-tips.  And  the  very  double  dut)'  which  these 
organs  are  led  to  perform,  has  given  rise  to  a  much 
greater  and  more  efficient  sensitiveness  on  their  part 
than  they  conserve  in  the  average  individual. 

The  "end-organs"  of  hearing  in  the  blind  man 
show  a  like  extraordinary  condition  of  development. 
His  ear  for  music  is  very  much  truer  on  general  prin- 
ciples than  is  the  case  in  the  average  man.  And  he 
hears  much  softer  and  finer  sounds  than  cause  any 
noticeable  impression  on  our  ears.  The  waves  of 
sound  which  beat  upon  every  wall  and  tree  like  bil- 
lows upon  the  shores  of  the  sea,  and  are  thrown  back- 
in  sound  echoes  from  these  walls  and  trees,  produce 
a  distinct  sensation  upon  the  tympanum  of  the  blind 
man's  ear.  He  will  tell  you  that  he  hears  a  tree  or  a 
wall  as  he  approaches  it.  This  is  but  another  exam- 
ple of  the  development  of  tissue  and  function  by  ex- 
traordinary necessity  for  use. 

Laryngological  examination  of  the  throat  of  those 
who  are  congenitally  deaf,  and  who  grow  up  without 
using  the  voice  articulately,  invariably  discloses  a 
flabby   and   toneless  condition   of    the   vocal  chords. 


{ 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4593 


They  hang  down  like  a  sagging  rope,  and  are  not 
tense  and  taut  like  the  strings  of  a  piano.  But  when 
such  a  child  is  placed  in  an  institution  for  the  oral 
education  of  the  deaf,  and  is  put  through  the  course 
of  instruction  now  so  admirably  pursued  in  such 
schools,  these  vocal  chords,  which  originally  lacked 
tonicity,  are  gradually  developed  and  brought  into  a 
condition  of  practical  usefulness  for  articulate  speech. 
This  is  done  by  causing  the  little  pupil  to  place  one 
hand  on  the  lips  and  the  other  on  the  throat  of  his  in- 
structress, and  so,  at  tlie  same  time,  to  feel  the  vibra- 
tions produced  by  the  "a"  sound,  and  notice  the 
movements  of  tongue  and  lips  to  which  it  gives  rise. 
After  receiving  these  sensations  of  touch  and  sight  for 
a  longer  or  shorter  period,  he  is  persuaded  to  try  and 
imitate  them,  and  when,  after  repeated  efforts,  the 
sound  which  he  makes  is  the  same  as  the  true  sound 
of  the  "a,"  some  little  reward  is  given  to  the  child,  in 
the  shape  of  a  flower,  or  toy,  or  piece  of  candy. 

This  process  of  education  is  continued  until  the 
pupil  has  mastered  all  the  vowel  and  consonant  sounds 
and  finally  the  word  sounds,  which  they  form  when 
uttered  together.  Here,  again,  the  concentration  of 
the  will  upon  undeveloped  organs  has  by  patience  and 
in  time  developed  them,  and  at  the  same  time  caused 
the  deaf  child  to  find  a  new  ear  in  the  shape  of  its  eye 
and  sense  of  touch. 

A  gentleman  connected  with  one  of  the  largest  in- 
stitutions for  the  education  of  the  deaf  in  this  country 
has  recently  corroborated  over  his  own  signature  the 
report  of  an  interview  in  which  the  statement  was 
made  that  he  could  cure  not  only  dumbness,  but 
deafness,  by  hypnotism.  As  the  hypnotic  influence  is 
usually  believed  to  be  carried  to  the  motor  centres  in 
the  brain  through  the  auditory  nerve,  and  as  the  audi- 
tory nerves  of  his  pupils  are  congenitally  defective,  I 
do  not  understand  what  medium  he  employs  to  estab- 
lish the  power  of  his  own  will  in  the  motor  centres  of 
the  child's  brain. 

This  slight  (?)  difficulty  obviated,  however,  there 
is  no  earthly  reason  why  his  will,  working  through 
these  motor  centres  on  the  toneless  vocal  chords  of 
the  congenitally  deaf  child,  should  not  stimulate  them 
first  into  action  and  then  into  genuine  and  constant 
growth.  The  orally  educated  child  learns  this  method 
of  development  by  methods  which  I  have  already  de- 
scribed, but  which  necessitate  the  employment  of  his 
own  volition.  If  some  means  has  been  found  by  which 
a  stronger  volition  than  his  own  may  beat  upon  his 
brain-centre,  the  education  of  such  a  child  is  by  this 
very  power  of  interference  immeasurably  simplified. 

All  that  will  be  necessary  in  passing  is  simply  to 
refer  to  Herr  Sandow  and  to  the  very  admirable  book 
which  he  has  written,  showing  how  the  muscles  of  the 
body  of   man   may  be  so   educated  and  developed  by 


the  scientific  concentration  of  the  intelligence  and  the 
will  upon  them,  as  to  create  a  giant  out  of  a  weakling 
— other  conditions,  such  as  environment,  type,  food, 
etc.,  being  satisfactory. 

This  brings  me  finally  to  the  consideration  of  man's 
power  over  brain-tissues,  and  to  the  narration  of  a 
certain  line  of  facts  which  show  that  it  is  easily  possi- 
ble for  an  intelligent  will  to  take  hold  of  ver)-  poor 
brain-material,  in  the  shape  of  exceedingly  simple  or 
coarse  sense  and  motor  cells,  and  educate  them  in 
time  into  very  complex  and  very  fine  organs  of  recep- 
tion and  performance. 

There  is  an  institution  at  Elwyn,  Pennsylvania, 
which  affords  a  school  and  home  for  over  a  thousand 
"castaways  of  the  mind."  The  idiots  that  enter  this 
institution  are,  most  of  them,  more  deficient  in  moral 
sense  than  the  dog,  and  far  more  poorly  provided  with 
physical  senses  than  that  intelligent  animal. 

There  are  two  classes  of  idiots  admitted  into  this 
institution — the  nervous  and  the  apathetic.  The  former 
class  are  capable  of  immeasurable  improvement,  but 
the  present  methods  of  education  are  only  able  to  par- 
tially improve  the  latter.  It  is  considered  "  a  good 
day's  work"  if  an  apathetic  idiot  is  turned  into  a  man 
who  can  be  relied  upon  to  peel  a  certain  quantity  of 
potatoes  skilfully  every  day,  or  to  drive  a  herd  of  cows 
out  to  pasture  at  dawn,  watch  them  during  the  day, 
and  drive  them  back  again  at  evening. 

The  other  class — the  nervous  idiots — may  be  quite 
as  poorly  equipped  mentally  as  the  apathetic  when 
they  enter  the  institution.  The  taste  of  salt  may  give 
them  more  pleasure  than  the  taste  of  sugar.  The 
smell  of  the  onion  produce  a  greater  ecstasy  of  olfac- 
tion than  the  odor  of  the  rose.  They  may  gaze  on  the 
full  brightness  of  the  sun  without  winking.  They  may 
run  their  finger  carelessly  along  the  edge  of  a  sharp 
knife  and  stare  in  amazement  at  the  curious  flow  of 
blood  which  follows  the  act.  The  sharp  severance  of 
the  flesh  has  given  them  no  appreciable  pain. 

These  children  are  taken  in  hand  and  developed 
sense  by  sense.  Repeated  blows  of  sight  are  sent 
through  the  optic  nerve,  until  the  sight  centre  in  the 
brain  takes  upon  itself  development.  The  same  course 
is  pursued  with  the  sense  of  hearing  and  of  smell. 
This  kind  of  education  requires  infinite  patience  and 
a  long,  long  time,  but  it  bears  rich  fruit  in  the  end. 
The  sense  cells  in  the  brain,  useless  at  first,  and  in- 
competent of  intelligent  performance,  do  actually  grow 
in  size  and  capacity,  and  ten,  fifteen,  or  twenty  years 
as  the  case  may  be,  finally  produce,  at  least  an  aver- 
age, if  not  a  superior,  member  of  societ}'. 

I  have  read  with  great  pleasure  an  article  in  the 
October  issue  of  the  New  Seience  Review,  by  Professor 
Jordan,  in  which  he  takes  very  proper  and  scientific 
exception  to  the  present  methods  of  so  called  educa- 


4594 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


tion,  and  shows  that  the  tendency  of  the  prevalent 
system  is  simply  to  stuff  the  child's  mental  storehouse 
with  facts  which  never  blossom  or  ripen  into  practical 
expression.  His  epigram  is  that  the  effort  of  this 
method  of  education  seems  to  be  simply  to  produce 
impression,  without  an  adequate  expression. 

I  think  Dr.  Jordan  would  secure  a  very  much  more 
lasting  foundation  for  his  just  criticism  of  what  is 
practically  all  wrong,  if  he  were  to  say  that  there  is 
not  enough  impression  produced  to  give  rise  to  the 
proper  expression.  The  sense  and  motor  centres  of 
the  brain,  in  order  to  give  rise  to  intelligent  and  prac- 
tical action,  need  to  have  a  habit  formed,  the  habit  of 
knowing  that  a  certain  sense-impression  calls  for  just 
one  particular  kind  of  action.  This  rule  is,  of  course, 
equally  applicable  to  those  processes  which  we  call 
"memory"  and  "thought." 


WHY  BUDDHISM? 

BY  C.    PKOUNDES. 

The  hold  which  Buddhism  has  upon  the  majority 
of  Asiatics  is  deeply  rooted  in  the  inner  life  of  its  de- 
votees and  appears  prominently  in  the  obsequies,  me- 
morial services,  and  ancestral  rites,  which  form  an 
integral  part  of  their  monotonous  existence.  The 
arguments  against  Buddhism  are  so  very  easily  applied 
to  other  competing  forms  of  religion,  that,  as  a  rule, 
the  propagandists  of  alien  creeds  are  more  successful 
in  destructive  criticism  than  in  constructive  work. 
Real  converts  are  rarely  met  with,  while  perverts  to 
materialism,  scepticism,  and  irreligion  are  many — not 
quite  the  chicks  the  missionaries  desire  to  hatch. 

During  the  present  century  very  large  sums  have 
been  expended  annually  in  Asia,  as  well  as  elsewhere, 
in  mission-work,  and  a  great  many  more  or  less  com- 
petent and  enthusiastic  men  and  women  from  Europe 
and  America  have  devoted  their  lives  to  the  work  of 
proselytising.  Others  enter  upon  the  work  with  less 
noble  and  more  mercenary  motives.  Of  late  years 
much  of  the  money  and  material  hitherto  devoted  to 
the  Pacific  Islands,  etc.,  has  been  diverted  to  Asia. 
Japan  and  other  countries  having  a  civilisation,  reli- 
gion, and  literature  of  their  own,  are  receiving  much 
attention,  to  the  neglect  of  other  lands  where  none  of 
these  good  things  exist.  The  needs  of  those  "nearer 
home"  have  been  ignored,  whilst  those  afar  off  are 
courted  and  petted. 

Foreign  missionaries  in  Asia,  in  Japan,  for  instance, 
are  now  very  numerous,  and  representatives  from 
nearly  every  civilised  nation  and  of  nearly  all  the  nu- 
merous Christian  sects  are  competing  keenly  for  con- 
verts. The  inducements  held  out  to  the  young  of  both 
sexes  are  too  attractive,  the  temptation  is  too  strong, 
especially  to  the  indigent  classes,  to  be  resisted.  The 
opportunities  for  obtaining  an  education,  which  is  in 


itself  a  sure  highroad  to  lucrative  employment,  attract 
the  young  Japanese,  especially  the  scions  of  old  feudal 
retainers,  who  still  cling  to  the  traditions  of  superior 
birth,  and  whose  pride  makes  them  unwilling  to  learn 
a  trade  or  to  keep  a  shop,  and  whose  ambition  is  offi- 
cial employment,  military  or  civil,  as  school-teachers, 
interpreters,  or  clerks. 

It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  therefore,  if  the  mis- 
sion schools  are  crowded  with  pupils,  and  if  more 
applicants  than  can  be  accommodated  wait  outside. 
Of  the  pupils,  however,  it  is  an  admitted  fact  that  but 
a  tithe  really  become  sincere  converts,  though  many, 
for  the  time  being,  profess  to  believe. 

A  constant  weeding  out  of  the  less  zealous  and 
suspected  pupils  makes  room  for  others;  and  those  so 
turned  adrift  become  the  most  active  and  bitter  op- 
ponents of  the  introduction  of  the  alien  creed.  Whilst 
there  is  but  a  very  small  percentage  of  families  in  the 
country  who  wholly  ignore  Buddhist  rites,  there  are 
many  individual  members  who  have  not  been  suffi- 
ciently instructed  in  Buddhism,  or  who  have  imbibed 
a  dislike  for  the  ancient  faith,  from  having  seen  iso- 
lated cases  of  misconduct  amongst  the  bonzes,  or  from 
having  observed  the  activity  and  zeal,  superior  educa- 
tion, and  purer  life  of  the  foreign  missionaries  as  a 
body.  It  is  not  proposed  to  put  forward  here  the 
arguments  for  and  against  Christianity;  but  a  brief 
outline  of  the  native  attitude  towards  it,  some  of  tlie 
native  objections,  may  not,  perhaps,  be  altogether  out 
of  place. 

As  to  the  controversies  amongst  the  Christians 
themselves, — to  say  nothing  of  anti-Christian  argu- 
ments,— the  natives  refuse  to  accept  the  translations 
of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  as  correct,  the  origi- 
nals as  authentic,  or  the  Bible,  in  whole  or  in  part,  as 
divinely  inspired.  Enough  is  now  universally  taught 
and  widely  known  of  science,  history,  philosophy,  and 
logic  to  preclude  the  blind  acceptance  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, which  the  natives  know  that  the  Jews  themselves 
reject. 

The  prophecies,  it  is  said,  are  doubtful  from  the 
historical  point  of  view  and  very  suspicious  of  "being 
wise  after  the  event."  The  ethics  are  challenged,  from 
the  Buddhistic  and  Confucian  standpoint,  as  well  as 
from  a  modern  point  of  view. 

As  to  the  scheme  of  redemption,  it  is  true  that  in 
both  Japanese  and  Chinese  Buddhism,  the  saving  help 
of  the  Amido  (Amitayus)  and  other  Buddhas  and 
Bodhisattvas  is  invoked,  but  the  dogma  of  each  and 
every  Christian  sect  does  not  appeal  to  the  native 
mind  as  logical,  reasonable,  or  at  all  necessary;  it  is 
even  ridiculed  by  the  educated.  The  blood  and  fire 
methods  of  the  Salvation  Army  disgust  the  better 
class.  Puritanism  will  never  get  a  footing  in  the  Far 
East ;  and  the  prevalence  of  the  Mahayana  Buddhism 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4595 


is  a  ground  in  which  it  is  not  easy  to  plant  the  seed  of 
weedy  Calvinism,  of  the  "dour"  Presbyterianism,  or 
of  the  lurid  and  sombre  Lutheranism.  The  sacrament 
of  the  mass,  prayers  for  the  dead,  have  their  counter- 
parts and  similitudes  in  Buddhism,  but  the  Eucharist, 
the  bread  and  wine,  have  no  parallel.  The  aid  of  the 
bonze  is  not  invoked  in  marriages,  although  he  is 
usually  invited  to  partake  of  the  feasting,  but  the  in- 
fant is  taken  to  the  temple  and  to  the  shrine  of  the 
tutelar)'  deity  of  the  family. 

The  Christian  priest  has  certainly  some  hold  on  the 
parishioners,  especially  in  the  old  Catholic  Church, 
from  birth  to  death,  and  after  ;  but  the  Buddhist  bonze 
enters  more  closely  into  the  home  life,  each  family 
having  a  domestic  altar,  before  which  the  bonze  most 
acceptable  to  the  familj'  periodically  officiates. 

In  some  sects  the  memorial  tablets  of  deceased 
relatives  are  lodged  in  the  temple,  others  retain  them 
on  the  family  altar.  For  some  period  after  the  decease 
of  a  member  of  the  household  services  are  held  at  the 
domestic  altar,  as  well  as  at  the  temple  and  in  the 
cemetery;  each  family  having  its  own  section,  tombs, 
etc.  In  the  case  of  cremation,  the  ashes  are  consigned 
to  the  receptacle  under  the  tombstone,  if  not  conveyed 
to  some  more  hallowed  spot,  celebrated  shrine  or  tem- 
ple, for  deposit  there. 

In  contrasting  Buddhism  with  other  competing 
creeds,  the  history  of  Buddhism  in  the  East  is  com- 
pared with  that  of  Christianity  in  the  West,  for  exam- 
ple, in  Spain,  America,  or  Russia.  Whilst  some  of 
the  theories  of  the  Western  creed  are  stamped  as  ad- 
missible, it  is  claimed  that  all  that  is  good  therein  may 
be  found  to  a  fuller  extent  in  Buddhism,  unfettered 
and  unalloyed  by  much  of  what  is  objectionable  in 
Christianity. 

The  fact  that  Buddhism  has  grown  up  amongst  the 
people  and  adapted  itself  to  their  needs  and  senti- 
ments, appealing  to  the  emotional  phases  of  their 
character,  and  that  patriotism,  loyalty,  etc.,  form  sa- 
lient features  of  it,  is  of  itself  evidence  of  tlie  stability, 
in  one  or  other  of  its  numerous  forms,  of  this  creed. 
With  all  the  imperfections  that  it  may  appear  to  pos- 
sess to  the  Occidental  mind,  Buddhism  has  been  a 
great  power  for  good  throughout  all  Asia  during  more 
than  twenty  centuries.  Art,  literature,  civilisation, 
skilled  labor,  agriculture,  all  have  been  advanced  by 
the  introduction  of  Buddhism  ;  its  advent  being  co- 
eval universally  with  peace,  prosperity,  and  progress; 
its  decline  having  been  followed  in  every  country  by 
the  downfall  of  the  people. 

Recently  the  Christian  missionaries  have  been 
"making  a  bid"  for  native  popularity — a  desperate 
struggle  to  arrest  the  decline  dating  from  years  gone 
by,  when  the  old-time  prohibitions  were  relaxed,  after 
more  than  two  centuries  of  hostility  and   persecution, 


and  meteor  like,  a  brilliant  but  transitory  prospect 
opened  up  for  the  propagandists.  The  warlike  spirit 
lately  aroused  is  now  loudly  applauded,  and  the  Japa- 
nese conquest  of  China  encouraged.  Do  these  mis- 
sionary people  hope,  and  really  expect,  to  benefit  by 
the  defeat  of  the  Chinese  government,  that  they  are 
so  ready  to  go  out  of  their  way,  and  instead  of  being 
men  of  peace,  turn  their  coats  inside  out  and  assume 
the  Jingo  character  !  No  one  with  a  knowledge  of 
China  and  of  Japan  can  do  otherwise  than  sympathise 
with  the  Japanese  in  their  struggle  and  hope  that  they 
will  be  successful  in  giving  the  Pekin  government  and 
its  Manchu  hordes  a  much  needed,  even  if  severe,  les- 
son ;  so  as  to  open  up  the  vast  territories  of  Eastern 
Asia  to  progress  and  civilisation.  But  the  representa- 
tives of  foreign  missionary  societies  appear  to  be  going 
somewhat  out  of  their  way,  straying  far  from  the  legiti- 
mate path  of  their  duty,  in  blatantly  and  persistently 
advocating  an  aggressive,  warlike  policy.  Is  the  hope 
father  to  the  thought,  that  there  is  in  the  near  future 
a  "good  time  "  coming  for  missionaries  in  China,  etc., 
as  the  result  of  a  sanguinary  conflict? 

The  attitude  of  the  Buddhist  theocracy,  the  sacer- 
dotal class,  forms  a  strong  contrast  to  all  this.  Whilst 
patriotic  in  no  less  a  degree  than  their  lay  compatriots, 
the)-  have  been  busily  occupied  in  holding  services  in 
honor  of  those  who  have  fallen  on  the  field,  in  address- 
ing those  going  to  the  front,  in  organising  local  so- 
cieties to  send  to  the  men  in  the  field  extra  comforts, 
reading  matter,  warm  underclothing,  etc.;  in  aiding 
the  wives,  children,  old  people,  and  others  dependent 
upon  the  men  under  arms,  and  in  providing  for  those 
deprived  of  their  bread  winner  by  death  or  disability. 
Whilst  the  Christian  clergy  expend  much  time  and 
energy  on  polemics,  in  attacking  not  only  Buddhism, 
Hinduism,  Mohammedanism,  etc.,  but  also  in  con- 
troversy amongst  themselves;  the  Buddhist  bonze  of 
each  sect  attends  to  his  own  duties,  and,  with  rare  ex- 
ceptions, is  on  friendly  terms  with  the  bonzes  of  other 
sects,  as  well  as  with  those  of  his  own. 

It  is  all  too  true,  and  more  the  pity  it  is  that  it  is  so, 
that  the  converts  (nominal)  to  Christianity  are  largely 
natives  whose  conduct  is  such  that  by  the  general 
opinion  of  foreign  residents  such  converts  are  not  the 
most  desirable  class  to  employ.  The  true  Buddhist 
has  ever  in  mind  the  fear  of  punishment  hereafter  for 
misdeeds,  not  to  be  lightly  atoned  for.  "  The  naughty 
little  boy  who  is  always  ready  to  say  he  'is  sorry,'  if 
he  is  assured  that  this  will  obtain  forgiveness,"  has 
no  counterpart  in  true  Buddhism  ;  and  the  too  easily 
purchased  pardon  of  Christian  mission  teaching  is 
viewed  as  a  danger,  from  the  ethical  standpoint,  by 
the  educated  and  intelligent  Asiatic. 

A  religion  that  has  no  preventive  power,  no  deter- 
rent influence   to   check   wrong   doing,  becomes   little 


4596 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


more  than  gross  superstition  ;  and  like  a  too  complai- 
sant bankruptcy  court,  that  facilitates  the  whitewash- 
ing of  dishonest  traders,  leaving  the  victimised  suffer- 
ers without  redress,  the  hostile  competitors  of  Bud- 
dhism offer  too  cheap  and  too  easy  a  path  to  future 
bliss  and  pardon  for  all  transgressions.  The  native 
creed  offers  something  better,  more  logical,  and  sup- 
ported by  higher  ethical  doctrine. 

The  missionary  who  cleverly  evades  the  weak  points 
in  the  older  sectarian  Christian  dogmas,  and  puts  more 
prominently  forward  the  "  up  to  date  "  teaching  of  the 
more  advanced  liberal  sects,  gains  a  hearing  ;  but  he 
has  to  jettison  nearly  everything  that  the  churches 
have  fought  for,  which  myriads  have  battled  for,  even 
unto  death.  Western  civilisation  and  progress,  the 
mechanical  arts,  medicine,  chemistry,  etc.,  are  held 
up  as  the  resii/ts  of  the  Western  creed,  the  truth  is 
concealed,  "that  it  is  in  spite  of,  rather  than  in  con- 
sequence of,  religion  "  that  the  Occident  is  in  advance 
of  the  Orient ;  and  the  true  condition  of  the  toiling 
masses  of  Europe,  America,  Australia,  etc.,  is  never 
hinted  at,  indeed,  the  pupils  in  the  missionary  semi- 
naries are  usually  kept  ignorant  even  of  the  fact  that 
Christianity  is  itself  divided  into  numerous  hostile 
sects,  that  revile  each  other  with  unmitigated  animos- 
ity. 

The  foreign  missions  undoubtedly  benefit  the  na- 
tives of  the  countries  where  they  are  located.  The 
money  spent  in  building,  maintenance,  wages,  etc., 
circulates  large  sums.  Cheap  and  superior  education 
(with  certain  limitations)  is  afforded,  and  not  a  few 
select  pupils  are  subsidised.  Decidedly  the  natives 
have  the  best  of  the  bargain  ;  they  win  on  the  toss, 
heads  or  tails.  Now,  if  the  subscribers  could  see  the 
facts  for  themselves,  and  also  examine  the  condition 
of  their  own  locality,  would  they  not  find  much  nearer 
their  own  homes  the  opportunity  of  exercising  their 
charity — the  aged,  tlie  hopelessly  downtrodden,  the 
sick,  the  groan  of  the  bread-winner,  seeking  for  honest 
work  in  vain,  whilst  those  dependent  upon  him  are 
in  dire  need  ;  the  wail  of  the  poor  woman,  with  her 
little  ones,  the  cry  of  the  hungry  and  ragged  in  the 
cold  !  Do  not  such  sounds  reach  the  donors  to  for- 
eign missions  ? 

Personal  observation  of  the  relative  position  of  the 
missionary  abroad  and  the  worker  at  home  (say  the 
curate  of  an  East  End  parish,  of  such  a  district  as,  un- 
fortunately, may  be  found  in  any  large  city  in  Europe, 
America,  or  the  Colonies)  enables  a  comparison  to  be 
drawn. 

The  missionary,  invariably  well  housed,  and,  with 
few  exceptions,  well  paid,  duties  light,  away  from  irk- 
some observation  and  criticism,  and  with  ample  leisure 
for  study  and  recreation.  Such  conditions  of  life  are 
infinitely  superior  to  those  of  the  poor  curate,  ill  paid 


and  overworked,  neither  too  well  clothed  nor  too  well 
fed,  working  amongst  the  lowest  of  his  race,  amidst 
constantly  harrowing  scenes,  squalor,  want,  wretched- 
ness of  the  most  abject  kind,  where  indescribable  filth 
accumulates,  and  sickness,  contagions,  and  infections 
abound.  The  missionary  and  his  family,  sent  out  at 
great  expense,  maintained  for  years  whilst  gaining  ex- 
perience and  learning  the  vernacular,  and  finally,  fre- 
quently just  when  he  may  begin  to  be  useful,  returning 
to  his  native  land,  and  dropping  into  a  "fat"  living,  a 
good  income,  and  comfortable  home,  with  congenial 
surroundings.  The  poor  curate,  too  often  an  early  vic- 
tim to  the  life  led  during  his  apprenticeship,  as  a  worker 
in  slums.  And  of  the  two  which  has  been  the  most 
useful  ?  Is  it  really  not  a  matter  for  public  considera- 
tion, this  misdirection  of  means  and  work? 

And  this  (V  propos  of  "  Why  Buddhism  ?  "  Instead 
of  trying  to  pull  down,  without  any  prospect  of  being 
able  to  put  in  its  place  a  better  structure,  might  we 
not  do  something  more  and  better  with  Buddhism  ? 
Instead  of  uprooting  the  old,  and  planting  in  its  stead 
that  which  may  run  to  weeds  and  be  barren  of  good 
fruit,  might  we  not  cultivate  the  old  well-rooted  stock 
and  engraft  and  develop  good  fruit  therefrom? 

The  faults  of  modern  popular  Buddhism  lie  partly 
with  the  incumbents  of  the  temples,  their  juniors  and 
pupils,  and  partly  with  their  lay-followers  and  sup- 
porters. 

Buddhism  in  Japan  is  now,  as  it  has  been  for  a 
score  of  years,  entirely  dependent  upon  the  public: 
the  families  who  call  in  the  bonzes  to  ofiticiate,  and 
whose  members  attend  the  services  in  the  temples. 
The  bonze  is  now  at  the  mercy  of  public  opinion,  and 
is,  therefore,  much  more  careful  than  of  old  not  to 
commit  any  act  to  bring  him  into  disrepute.  A  better 
system  of  recruiting,  and  better  education  of  the  youths 
who  are  to  become  bonzes  is  imperatively  needed. 

Schools  have  long  existed,  and  of  late  years  prepa- 
ratory seminaries  have  been  established  in  many  dis- 
tricts, besides  colleges  at  the  head  centres  of  the  prin- 
cipal sects.      But  there  is  yet  much  to  be  desired. 

The  sacerdotal  class  have  yet  to  learn  the  much- 
needed  lesson  that  "the  congregations  and  temples 
do  not  exist  for  the  benefit  of  the  clergy,"  hereditary 
or  otherwise  ;  but  "  that  the  temples  and  their  incum- 
bents exist  for  the  benefit  and  welfare  of  the  people," 
that  the  temples  and  their  furniture,  art  treasures, 
curiosities,  etc.,  are  not  the  private  property  of  the 
bonze,  but  public  property  of  which  he  is  merely  the 
custodian. 

Whilst  too  close  alliance  of  all  the  priests  of  all  the 
sects  might  become,  in  a  certain  sense,  a  danger  in 
certain  contingencies,  yet  more  harmonious  and  con- 
certed action  is  desirable,  and  a  good  strong  "United 
Action   Committee"   is  an  urgent  need,  especially  for 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4597 


work  in  other  countries.  Certain  of  the  sects  and  sub- 
sects  desire  to  work  independently  and  are  adverse  to 
CO  operation,  which  weakens  all  their  good  endeavors, 
and  makes  such  competition  as  exists  not  of  a  healthy 
character. 

Instead  of  costly  foreign  missions,  secular  educa- 
tion might  be  left  to  the  existing  public  schools,  which 
are  rapidly  progressing  in  the  quality  of  instruction 
and  native  teachers,  and  increasing  in  number. 

A  central  theological  university  is  a  want  to  be 
supplied  in  the  future,  and  the  sooner  the  better  ;  the 
existing  sectarian  colleges  exhibiting  a  very  narrow 
curriculum.  Examination  and  a  test  limit,  to  be 
steadily  raised  year  by  year,  should  be  enforced,  and 
the  ordinary  secular  subjects  made  compulsory. 

Whilst  interference  with  the  existing  rites  and  cer- 
emonies, handed  down  from  ancient  times,  is  to  be 
deprecated,  yet  a  higher  standard  in  preaching,  in 
lectures,  and  in  the  general  teaching  of  the  laity  is 
urgently  needed. 

It  must  be  understood  that  religion  is  something 
more  than  donations  to  temples,  attendance  at  service, 
employing  bonzes  at  home,  giving  to  them  money  and 
clothes,  or  entertaining  them.  Not  mere  prostration 
before  the  altar  and  shrine,  the  repetition  of  invoca- 
cations,  nor  the  "telling"  of  beads  over  and  over,  but 
something  more  than  this  is  true  religion,  true  Bud- 
dhism. "Ceasing  to  do  evil,  striving  to  do  good,  be- 
ing mindful  of  our  fellow  human  beings,  loving  kind- 
ness to  all  creatures,  remembering  the  four  truths, 
observing  the  five  great  precepts,  not  to  violate  the 
prohibitions,  to  walk  in  the  eightfold  path," — in  these 
alone  .consists  true  Buddhism. 

And  so  we  get  our  answer  to  the  question,  "Why 
not  some  other  creed?"  That  answer  is,  because  in 
Buddhism  we  find  all  that  is  needed  for  the  founda- 
tion of  a  pure  ethical  religion  that  will  be  helpful  and 
hopeful,  making  the  world  we  live  in  brighter,  and  its 
people  happier.  We  ourselves  are  better  and  more 
able  to  make  the  world  and  our  fellow-beings  happier 
for  that  we  have  been  now  once  more  born  into  it. 

All  this  lies  in  the  name  of  Buddhism,  which  trans- 
lated means  "enlightenment  of  the  intellect,"  "awak- 
ening of  the  conscience."  And  hereby  and  herein  is 
answered  the  question  that  heads  this  article,  "Why 
Buddhism?" 


FABLES  FROM  THE  NEW  /ESOP. 


BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 


The  Serving  Spy, 

A  CERTAIN  rich  man  had  a  handsome  estate,  but 
wishing  to  take  a  journey  into  a  far  country,  he  did 
not  care  to  let  his  estate  to  a  stranger.  So  he  be- 
thought him  of  a  man  and  his  wife,  who  though  not 
possessing   a   fortune  were  yet  well  bred.      Them   he 


entreated  to  come  and  dwell  in  his  palace  and  care  for 
his  estate  so  long  as  he  should  be  gone. 

The  two  agreed  with  alacrity,  for  they  had  lived  in 
a  mean  way,  and  here  they  could  have  luxury  without 
cost,  and  for  return  all  they  had  to  do  was  to  see  that 
no  one  entered  upon  the  estate  or  despoiled  it. 

"One  thing  only  I  ask  you  to  favor  me  with,"  said 
the  rich  man.  "I  have  a  tried  and  faithful  servant 
called  Conscience,  and  him  I  desire  you  to  retain  in 
3'our  service." 

They  agreed  readily  to  this  ;  but  after  the  rich 
man  had  gotten  away,  the  wife  began  to  misuse  his 
goods,  to  go  away  on  visits,  and  to  entertain  guests 
who  were  careless  and  wasteful.  The  husband  tried 
to  control  his  wife,  but  could  not.  One  day  she  came 
to  him  in  a  rage.  "That  serving  man.  Conscience," 
she  said,  "  I  observed  writing  down  something  daily, 
perhaps  for  the  purpose  of  acquainting  my  lord  of  our 
doings.  I  am  going  to  circumvent  him  ;  I  shall  send 
him  away." 

"That  you  cannot  do,"  replied  the  husband,  "his 
sort  are  not  so  easily  gotten  rid  of." 

"Well,  at  least,"  continued  the  woman,  "I  shall 
watch  carefully,  and  some  time  when  he  is  asleep  I 
shall  come  unawares,  and  take  what  he  has  written 
and  destroy  it." 

"That  you  cannot  do,"  said  the  husband,  "for 
folk  like  him  are  not  to  be  taken  unawares,  and  they 
never  sleep.  I  will  tell  you  a  better  way,  and,  indeed, 
the  onl}'  way  to  circumvent  him." 

And  when  his  wife  asked  what  that  way  might  be, 
he  answered:  "Let  us  see  to  it  that  we  do  nothing 
that  we  should  be  ashamed  our  lord  should  know, — 
so  when  he  returns  from  his  journey  we  shall  not  be 
unwilling,  but  rather  glad,  that  our  servant  may  show 
him  all  that  was  written. 


The  Puzzled  Philosopher. 

A  PHILOSOPHER  dwelt  in  a  house  owned  by  Cleon. 
But  one  day  Cleon  came  to  the  philosopher  and  said  : 
"Why  have  you  not  sent  me  the  money  for  last 
month's  rent  ?"  The  philosopher  said  he  knew  of  no 
reason  except  that  he  had  no  money,  having  gotten  to 
the  bottom  of  his  purse. 

"You  will  have  to  move  out,"  said  Cleon,  "to 
make  room  for  a  cordwainer  I  know,  who  wants  this 
house  and  has  money." 

"Would  you  then,"  said  the  philosopher,  "turn 
me  out,  when  I  am  so  comfortable  here,  having  dwelt 
in  this  house  thirty  years  ?  " 

"It  is  my  comfort,"  said  Cleon,  "and  not  yours, 
that  I  consider. " 

"Then  you  prefer  a  cordwainer,  I  conclude,  to  a 
philosopher." 


4598 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


"No,"  said  Cleon,  "a  landlord  has  no  preference, 
except  to  prefer  rent-money  to  no  rent-money." 

So  the  cordwainer  moved  into  the  philosopher's 
house,  and  the  philosopher  went  to  live  in  the  mean 
hovel  of  the  cordwainer. 

But,  once  there,  although  contented  enough,  (be- 
cause he  was  a  philosopher,)  yet  he  could  not  avoid 
the  obtrusive  facts  of  the  absence  of  all  those  things 
which  in  his  former  habitation  had  grown  habitual  to 
him. 

This  was  the  first  thing  that  puzzled  him  :  How 
that  which  was  not  could  be  so  obtrusive.  "What," 
said  he,  "can  be  so  entirely  non-existent  as  a  nega- 
tion ?  And  yet  here  I  am  confronted  with  an  obtrusive 
negation." 

"I  miss,"  said  he  again,  "a  chest  of  drawers,  a 
table,  a  fire-place,  and  the  scenery  from  the  window 
where  I  used  to  sit.  I  wonder  if  it  will  be  so  after  we 
are  driven  out  from  our  bodies,  because  Death,  the 
final,  inexorable  landlord,  demands  a  rental  we  can- 
not pay." 

In  time,  however,  the  philosopher  gradually  ceased 
being  oppressed  by  the  obtrusive  memories,  and  grew 
accustomed  to  new  associations. 

"  I  wonder,"  said  he,  "if  it  will  be  so  when  we  are 
immortals, — after  death  at  first  painful  regrets  for 
what  we  have  lost,  and  in  the  end  nothing  of  the  old 
but  faint  memories  and  a  new  set  of  associations.  I 
wonder  always,  and  wonder  most,  if  philosophy  will 
ever  be  anything  better  than  clever,- wondering  about 
the  wonderful." 


CREEDS. 

BY  PROF.   E.    EMERSON, 

Long  years  I've  spent  in  study  over  creeds; 

Perplexed  by  questions  deep  beyond  reply; 

Now  tempted  to  affirm,  now  to  deny; 
Sad,  paralysing  influence  on  good  deeds. 

What  joy  to  follow  where  calm  nature  leads  ! 

And  roam  in  woods  or  fields  which  round  us  lie ; 

To  gather  flowers,  or  behold  the  sky; 
And  thence  invoke  that  peace  the  spirit  needs. 

All  nature  speaks  to  man  with  tranquil  voice; 

He,  too,  her  child,  is  nurtured  on  her  breast; 

She  shows,  full  oft,  for  him  a  smiling  face. 
But  not  alone  for  him.     The  fields  rejoice. 

Birds  sing,  sun  shines,  vexed  ocean  sinks  to  rest. 

Bright  stars  roll  on  in  the  vast  sea  of  space. 


NOTES. 

We  remind  our  readers  that  Mr.  C.  Pfoundes,  the  author  of 
the  article  ' '  Why  Buddhism  ? "  in  the  present  number  of  The  Open 
Court,  is  a  native  Englishman  now  residing  in  Japan,  and  a  duly 
initiated  member  of  several  of  the  most  prominent  Buddhistic 
sects  of  that  country.  He  has  lectured  both  in  the  United  States 
and  Great  Britain. 


In  mathematics  we  have  recently  received  several  brochures, 
— all  of  an  abstruse  character  and  not  adapted  to  the  comprehen- 
sion of  the  average  reader, — from  Professor  H.  Schubert  and 
Professor  V.  Schlegel,  both  of  Germany.  They  refer  to  questions 
in  the  theory  of  numbers  and  the  geometry  of  K-dimensional 
space. 

The  attention  of  teachers,  educationists,  and  school-trustees, 
as  also  of  the  public  at  large,  should  be  called  to  a  little  circular 
letter.  Are  Our  Schools  in  Danger  ?  by  Mr.  Edwin  Ginn,  the  head 
of  the  well-known  school-book  house  of  Boston.  Mr.  Ginn  com- 
ments severely  on  the  methods  employed  by  the  American  Book 
Company  to  crush  out  free  competition  in  the  school-book  trade, 
and  adverts  to  the  grave  social  and  political  dangers  which  are 
involved  in  the  practices  of  the  Company,  for  instance  their  offer 
of  their  own  books  free  in  exchange  for  those  of  other  publishers 
already  in  use  in  the  schools.  Mr.  Ginn's  pamphlet  deserves  con- 
sideration from  all  who  would  exclude  politics  from  our  educa- 
tional system. 

The  first  number  of  a  new  quarterly,  Tlie  American  Historical 
Jieview,  to  appear  October  first,  is  announced  by  Macmillan  &  Co. 
The  Board  of  Editors  includes  George  B.  Adams,  Professor  of 
History,  Yale  University ;  Albert  Bushnell  Hart,  Professor  of 
History,  Harvard  University;  Harry  P.  Judson,  Professor  of  Po- 
litical Science,  University  of  Chicago;  John  Bach  McMaster, 
Professor  of  American  History,  University  of  Pennsylvania; 
William  M.  Sloane,  Professor  of  History  and  Political  Science, 
Princeton,  and  H.  Morse  Stephens,  Professor  of  Modern  Euro- 
pean History,  Cornell  University,  and  is  represented  by  Professor 
J.  F.  Jameson,  Providence,  R.  I.,  Managing  Editor.  The  Review 
is  to  be  made  the  vehicle  of  matter  interesting  and  valuable  to  in- 
telligent and  educated  people  who  are  not  specialists;  but  is  par- 
ticularly designed  to  aid  those  engaged  in  the  study  or  teaching  of 
history  to  reach  the  most  recent  literature  of  their  subject  and  to 
place  before  other  historical  scholars  the  results  of  their  own  in- 
vestigation. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  415. 

GREATNESS  AS  A   FINE  ART,      S     Millington   Mil- 
ler    4591 

WHY  BUDDHISM  ?     C.  Pfoundes 4594 

FABLES  FROM  THE  NEW  ^SOP.     The  Serving  Spy. 

The  Puzzled  Philosopher.     Hudor  Genone 4597 

POETRY. 

Creeds.     Prof.  E.  Emhrson 4598 

NOTES 4598 


\1 


The  Open  Court. 


A  -WZ-EEKLY  JOURNAL 


DEMOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  416.     (Vol.  IX.— 33.) 


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EZRA  AND  NEHEMIAH. 

BY  PROF.    C.    H.  CORNILL. 

Let  us  now  tr}'  to  picture  to  ourselves  the  feelings 
with  which  the  Jewish  people  contemplated  this  new 
temple  of  their  God.  Elated  they  were  not,  they  could 
not  be.  On  the  contrary  the}'  must  have  felt  deeply 
depressed,  knowing  themselves  in  a  certain  measure 
to  be  disappointed  in  all  their  hopes.  The  worst  of 
all  was  not  that  this  new  temple  in  no  wa)'  rivalled  the 
magnificence  and  splendor  of  the  old  temple  of  Solo- 
mon. A  still  heavier  sorrow  weighed  down  their 
hearts.  God  had  broken  his  word,  had  not  fulfilled 
his  promises,  had  abandoned  his  people.  What  had 
not  the  prophets  foretold,  as  destined  to  happen  after 
the  Babylonian  captivit}'?  What  brilliant  images  had 
they  not  drawn  of  the  future  Israel  and  the  new  Jeru- 
salem? Deutero-Isaiah  especiall)'  had  forced  these 
hopes  to  the  topmost  pitch,  and  a  reaction  could  not 
fail  to  take  place, — a  reaction  of  the  saddest  and  most 
painful  kind.  When  the  reality  was  compared  with 
the  gorgeous  predictions  of  the  propliets,  the  effect 
must  have  been  overpowering. 

Where  had  any  alteration  taken  place?  Nowhere. 
The  Persians  had  taken  the  place  of  the  Babylonians, 
but  the  Gentile  power  remained  as  firm  as  ever.  Re- 
turned to  the  old  land  of  their  fathers,  they  had  to 
struggle  hard  for  existence  ;  the  conditions  of  life  were 
extremely  meagre  ;  only  a  very  small  part  of  Jerusalem 
had  been  rebuilt,  a  wretched,  unfortified  country-town 
with  an  indigent  population,  not  even  the  shadow  of 
what  it  once  had  been,  which  in  the  fantasy  of  this 
posthumous  generation  assumed  ever  more  brilliant 
colors.  And  this  God  who  had  not  kept  his  prom- 
ise, who  had  in  no  way  shown  his  power,  demanded 
yet  more  at  their  hands.  He  called  for  a  costly  cultus 
and  ritual,  and  a  mode  of  life  governed  by  the  harshest 
laws.  Was  it  not  then  better  to  become  even  as  the 
Gentiles,  whose  power  flourished  unabated  and  who 
enjoyed  unbounded  happiness?  Thus  must  disappoint- 
ment and  bitterness  have  filled  the  hearts  of  the  Jews, 
and  showed  itself  in  indifference  or  even  in  enmity 
against  this  deceitful,  powerless  Deity.  And  that  these 
moods  graduall}'  did  gain  possession  of  the  majority  of 
the  people  in  Jerusalem  and  Judaea,  and  that  particu- 
larly the  leading  men  and  priests  were  dominated  by 


them,  we  have  classic  proof  in  a  book  of  prophecy 
written  fifty  years  after  Zechariah,  and  known  to  us 
as  Malachi.  Malachi  describes  to  us  most  faithfully 
the  temper  of  the  Jews  who  had  strayed  from  God, 
and  who  sought  through  careless  indifference  or  frivo- 
lous mockery  to  disregard  the  misery  of  their  time. 

"  Ye  have  wearied  the  Lord  with  your  words.  Yet 
ye  say.  Wherein  have  we  wearied  him?  In  that  ye 
say.  Every  one  that  doeth  evil  is  good  in  the  sight  of 
the  Lord  and  he  delighteth  in  them  ;  else,  where  is 
the  God  of  judgment  ?  .  .  .  Your  words  have  been  stout 
against  me,  saith  the  Lord.  Yet  ye  say,  Wherein  have 
we  spoken  against  thee?  Ye  have  said,  It  is  vain  to 
serve  God  :  and  what  profit  is  it  that  we  have  kept  his 
charge,  and  that  we  have  walked  mournfully  before 
the  Lord  Zebaoth  ?  And  now  must  we  call  the  proud 
happy  ;  yea,  they  that  work  wickedness  are  built  up  ; 
yea,  they  tempt  God  and  are  delivered." 

And  how  in  such  moods  religious  duties  were  per- 
formed, Malachi  relates  most  drastically  : 

"A  son  honoureth  his  father,  and  a  servant  his 
master  :  but  if  I  be  a  father  where  is  my  honour?  and 
if  I  be  a  master,  where  is  my  fear?  saith  the  Lord  Ze- 
baoth unto  you,  O  priests,  that  despise  my  name.  And 
ye  sa}',  Wherein  have  we  despised  thy  name?  Ye  offer 
polluted  bread  upon  mine  altar  .  .  .  thinking.  The  ta- 
ble of  the  Lord  is  contemptible.  And  when  ye  offer 
the  blind  for  sacrifice  it  is  no  evil,  and  when  ye  offer 
the  lame  and  sick,  it  is  no  evil.  Present  it  now  unto 
th}'  governor;  will  he  be  pleased  with  thee?  or  show 
thee  favour  ?  ...  Ye  have  brought  the  blind,  the  lame, 
and  the  sick  :  thus  ye  bring  the  offering  :  should  I  ac- 
cept this  of  your  hand?  saith  the  Lord.  Cursed  be 
the  deceiver  which  hath  in  his  flock  a  male  beast  that 
he  has  vowed,  but  sacrificeth  unto  the  Lord  a  blem- 
ished thing  ;  for  I  am  a  great  King,  saith  the  Lord  Ze- 
baoth, and  my  name  is  honoured  among  the  nations." 

On  the  other  hand,  Malachi  lays  great  stress  upon 
the  judgment,  which  is  sure  to  come,  and  which  will 
show  that  devotion  and  fear  of  God  are  not  empty 
dreams.  But  first,  God  must  cause  a  purifying  and 
refining  of  his  people  to  take  place,  and  will  send  Eli- 
jah, the  prophet,  for  this  purpose,  prior  to  the  coming 
of  the  great  and  dreadful  day. 

We  cast  here  a  glance  into  an  exceedingly  momen- 


4600 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


tous  crisis.  Should  such  moods  gain  full  swa)',  should 
they  succeed  in  laying  hold  of  all  the  people,  then 
there  was  an  end  of  Judah  and  of  religion.  But  Ma- 
lachi  speaks  of  men  who  fear  the  Lord,  who  are  in- 
scribed in  God's  remembrance-book,  of  a  party,  who 
in  opposition  to  those  moods  and  strivings  clung  all 
the  more  closely  to  the  despised  and  rejected  religion. 
These  did  not  deny  the  events  and  causes  on  which 
this  indifference  and  scepticism  were  based,  but  drew 
from  them  quite  different  conclusions. 

"The  proud  and  they  that  work  wickedness,"  as 
Malachi  terms  them,  sought  to  lay  the  blame  of  the 
non-fulfilment  of  the  hoped  for  prophecies  on  God, 
who  either  could  not  or  would  not  perform  them  ;  the 
devout  lay  the  blame  on  themselves.  They  did  not 
ask  what  it  was  incumbent  on  God  to  do,  but  what 
thev  should  and  could  have  done.  It  was  foolishness 
and  sin  to  doubt  God's  omnipotence.  If  he  had  not 
performed  his  promise,  he  had  been  unable  to  do  so  on 
Israel's  own  account,  the  nation  itself  was  not  yet  fully 
worthy  of  its  great  future.  Therefore,  they  must  strive 
to  repair  their  shortcoming  by  redoubled  piety.  This 
is  the  legalism  and  the  "  salvation  by  works  "  of  the 
later  Judaism. 

We  shall  never  rightly  understand,  nor  rightly 
value  this  tendency,  until  we  thoroughly  comprehend 
its  origin.  That  origin  was  the  Messianic  hope.  Is- 
rael lives  entirely  in  the  future,  entirely  in  hope,  and 
is  determined  to  leave  nothing  undone  to  hasten  that 
future  ;  it  will,  so  to  speak,  wrest  it  from  God,  compel 
him  to  perform  his  promises,  by  sweeping  away  the 
only  impediment  to  their  fulfilment. 

But  this  little  band  of  devout  men  in  Jerusalem 
could  not  have  brought  about  of  themselves  the  triumph 
of  their  intentions  ;  help  was  necessary  from  outside. 
That  help  was  granted,  and  from  Babylon.  The  Jews 
who  had  remained  in  Babylon  had  outstripped  those 
who  had  returned  to  Jerusalem.  An  entire  school  of 
men  had  been  established  there,  who  worked  out  the 
ideas  of  Ezekiel,  and  drew  the  last  conclusions  of  Deu- 
teronomy. The  work  of  this  school  had  found  its  lit- 
erary embodiment  in  the  juridical  parts  of  the  first 
books  of  the  Pentateuch,  usually  known  as  the  funda- 
mental writing,  or  priestly  code,  to  which,  for  ex- 
ample, the  whole  of  the  third  book  of  Moses,  Leviti- 
cus, belongs.  This  is  the  legislation,  which  is  usually 
regarded  as  the  specific  work  of  Moses,  and  which 
naturally  comes  first  to  mind  when  we  speak  of  Mo- 
saism. 

This  book  was  written  in  Babylon  about  500  B.C., 
and  was  regarded  there  as  important  and  sacred. 
The  hour  was  soon  to  come  in  which  it  should  ac- 
complish its  mighty  mission.  The  Jews  of  Babylon 
were  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  events  that  hap- 
pened in  Judaea;  and  thus  the  extremely  serious  turn 


that  matters  were  taking  there  could  not  remain  con- 
cealed from  them.  The}  determined  on  taking  an  ac- 
tive part.  Ezra,  a  near  relative  of  the  high-priest's 
family  in  Jerusalem,  and  sprung  from  the  same  tribe, 
placed  himself  at  the  head  of  the  undertaking.  He 
obtained  from  the  Persian  king,  Artaxerxes  (Long- 
hand), a  decree  giving  him  full  power  to  reform  mat- 
ters in  Judah  and  Jerusalem,  "according  to  the  book 
of  the  law  of  God,  which  was  in  his  hand  "  (that  is, 
the  so-called  priestly  code). 

On  the  1 2th  of  April,  458,  the  Jews  left  Babylon 
and  arrived  in  Jerusalem  on  the  first  day  of  August. 
They  numbered  about  1700  men;  the  figure  of  the 
women  and  children  is  not  given.  Ezra  found  matters 
•n  Jerusalem  to  be  far  worse  and  more  comfortless 
than  he  had  feared.  Nevertheless,  he  began  his  work 
of  reformation,  but  had  to  quit  the  field  owing  to  the 
violent  and  bitter  resistance  which  he  met  with,  till 
thirteen  years  later  a  man  after  his  own  heart,  Nehe- 
miah,  a  Babj'lonian  Jew  who  had  attained  the  position 
of  favorite  and  cup-bearer  to  King  Artaxerxes,  begged 
for  the  post  of  Persian  governor  of  Judaea,  which  had 
become  vacant.  And  now  the  strong  arm  of  the  law 
was  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  work  of  reform,  and 
both  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  took  up  with  vigor  and  zeal 
the  neglected  task.  In  October,  444,  a  great  gather- 
ing of  the  people  was  held.  Here  the  nation  bound 
itself  by  oath  to  Ezra's  book  of  the  law,  as  it  had  done 
177  years  previously  under  Josiah  to  Deuteronom}'. 
Still  man}'  a  hard  and  bitter  struggle  was  to  be  fought, 
but  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  carried  their  cause  through, 
and  broke  down  all  opposition.  Those  who  could  not 
adapt  themselves  to  the  new  condition  of  affairs,  left 
the  country  to  escape  elsewhere  the  compulsion  of  the 
law. 

These  events  are  of  immeasurable  importance  and 
of  the  greatest  interest.  Through  them  Judaism  was 
definitively  established  ;  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  are  its 
founders. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied,  much  less  concealed,  that 
this  Judaism  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  displays  few  en- 
gaging traits.  If  soon  after  its  establishment  we  no- 
tice that  the  Jew  is  everywhere  an  object  of  hatred  and 
distrust,  the  fact  is  owing  to  the  distinctive  stamp  of 
his  religion.  When  the  Jew  cut  himself  off  brusquely 
and  contemptuously  from  all  non-Jews,  when  all  men 
who  did  not  belong  to  his  religious  community  were 
for  him  but  heathens,  unclean  persons  with  whom  he 
could  not  eat,  or  even  come  in  contact,  without  thereby 
becoming  himself  unclean,  when  he  appeared  before 
them  with  the  pretension  of  alone  being  the  good  man, 
the  beloved  of  God,  whilst  all  others  had  only  anger 
and  destruction  to  expect  at  God's  hand,  and  when  he 
thirsted  for  this  as  the  final  object  of  his  most  fervent 
wishes  and   his  devoutest  hopes,  it  is  not  to  be  won- 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4601 


dered  that  he  did  not  reap  love,  but  that  the  heathens 
retorted  with  direst  hatred  and  detestation.  Here, 
too,  we  will  recall  to  mind  the  picture  which  Deutero- 
Isaiah  drew  of  Israel,  where,  as  the  servant  of  God,  it 
is  despised  and  contemned  for  the  welfare  of  the  earth. 
That  the  development  of  Judaism  took  this  special 
direction  was  a  necessity  of  the  histor}'  of  religion. 

For  the  heaviest  struggle  of  Judaism  still  awaited 
it;  the  struggle  against  Hellenism.  One  hundred  and 
twenty-five  years  after  Ezra,  Alexander  the  Great  de- 
stroyed the  Persian  empire  and  made  the  Greeks  the 
sovereign  people  of  the  Eastern  world.  Through  this 
a  profound  transformation  was  begun,  which  spread 
with  startling  rapidity  and  irresistible  might,  and  led 
finally  to  the  denationalising  of  the  East.  That  which 
the  Assyrians  had  undertaken  by  brute  force,  the  Hel- 
lenes surmounted  by  the  superior  power  of  mind  and 
culture.  Greece  destroyed  the  nationalities  of  the 
East  by  amalgamating  them  with  itself  and  conquer- 
ing them  inwardly.  Only  one  Eastern  nation  with- 
stood the  process  of  dissolution,  yea,  more,  absorbed 
into  itself  the  good  of  Hellenism,  and  thus  enriched 
and  strengthened  its  own  existence;  and  that  was  the 
Jewish.  If  it  were  able  to  do  this,  it  was  because  Ezra 
and  Nehemiah  had  rendered  it  hard  as  steel  and  strong 
as  iron.  In  this  impenetrable  armor  it  was  insured 
against  all  attacks,  and  thus  saved  religion  against 
Hellenism.  And  therefore  it  behooves  us  to  bless  the 
prickly  rind,  to  which  alone  we  owe  it,  that  the  noble 
core  remained  preserved. 


OTHER  WORLDS  THAN  OURS. 


BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 


I  HAVE  been  a  great  traveller,  not  only  about  this 
little  planet  of  ours,  where  I  have  seen  strange  places, 
but  in  various  directions  within  and  without  the  solar 
system.  Travel  of  the  ordinary  sort  has  a  tendency  to 
broaden  the  mind.  That  all  admit  ;  how  much  broader 
then  must  his  mind  be  who  has  journeyed  through 
space  and  seen,  as  I  have,  the  great  processes  of  na- 
ture developing  under  other  conditions  and  circum- 
stances radically  different  from  those  prevalent  here. 

First  and  last,  a  great  deal  of  nonsense  has  been 
talked  and  written  and  printed  about  Nature,  as  if  any 
one  had  the  qualifications  to  treat  that  great  subject 
properly  who  had  not  tested  facts,  witnessed  opera- 
tions, and  investigated  processes. 

A  friend  of  mine,  who  is  really  very  well  read,  and 
who  is  the  author  of  an  admirable  treatise  on  aspara- 
gus-beds, undertook  to  write  a  work  on  Rome.  He 
called  his  book  :  Rome,  Her  History,  Palaces,  Ruins, 
and  Ecclesiastical  System. 


He  lives  in  Schenectady.  Happening  to  meet  him 
soon  after  I  had  finished  reading  his  book,  I  asked 
him  where  he  stopped  when  he  was  visiting  Rome. 

"Stopped  ?  "  said  he,  "  I  never  stopped  anywhere. 
I  never  have  been  in  Rome." 

It  turned  out  that  he  had  written  his  book  in  Sche- 
nectady. Think  of  that, — written  all  about  the  pal- 
aces, ruins,  and  ecclesiastical  system  of  Rome  in 
Schenectady,  without  stopping  at  all  in  Rome. 

I  did  want  awfully  to  tell  him  where  it  was  he  ought 
to  have  stopped,  which  was  before  he  began ;  but 
civility,  that  bane  of  veracity  and  boon  to  peace,  pre- 
vented me. 

Recently  another  friend, — a  clergyman, — delivered 
a  lecture  in  aid  of  the  cushion  fund  of  his  church,  his 
subject  being  :  "Are  the  Stars  Inhabited?"  He  sent 
me  a  complimentary  ticket  to  the  lecture,  so  I  went  i.o 
hear  it.  My  friend  is  a  fine  speaker,  and  his  discourse 
was  not  lacking  in  sprightliness.  He  had  a  great  deal 
to  say  about  the  power  and  wisdom  of  the  Almighty; 
but  he  certainly  told  us  no  new  facts,  and  his  ideas  of 
the  limitations  of  the  Almighty's  power  and  the  nature 
of  his  wisdom  were  utterly  vague  and  mostly  errone- 
ous. As  a  clergyman,  of  course,  he  ought  to  have 
known  something  about  these  things,  but  it  appeared 
he  didn't.  He  could  not  even  answer  his  own  ques- 
tion. 

Now,  as  it  happens,  there  are  a  great  many  ques- 
tions which  a  minister  of  the  Gospel  cannot  answer 
that  are  easy  enough  for  a  traveller. 

Are  the  stars  inhabited  ?  No,  they  are  not ;  the 
stars  are  not  inhabited,  unless  by  beings  capable  of 
inhabiting  a  dynamo.  That  is  what  the  stars  are, — 
dynamos, — dynamos  of  electricity,  light,  heat,  actin- 
ity,  all  forms  of  energy;  in  one  word,  they  are  dyna- 
mos of — influence.  That  is  what  our  sun  is,  and  the 
stars  are  similar.  Don't  take  my  word  for  it,  —  I'll 
want  your  faith  for  my  word  further  on, — ask  the  spec- 
troscope. 

As  to  that  word  "inhabited";  do  you  fully  realise 
its  significance  ?  The  inhabited  locality  must  be  a 
"habitat,"  must  it  not,  a  place  fitted  for  an  inhabi- 
tant? It  was  not  so  many  years  ago  that  you  would 
have  been  smiled  to  scorn  to  have  called  a  drop  of 
water  "inhabited,"  and  yet  the  microscope  proves 
that  it  is. 

"But,"  you  say,  perhaps,  "an  inhabitant, —  at 
least,  as  applied  to  this  and  other  worlds, — means  for 
the  purposes  of  our  inquiry  rational  beings  like,  or  at 
least  not  unlike,  ourselves." 

Let  us  call  it  that.  And  assuming  that  the  word 
"inhabitant"  is  practically  equivalent  to  human  be- 
ing, note  the  circumstances  of  our  own  solar  system. 
We  have  seen  that  the  sun  is  incapable  of  sustaining 
the   kind   of   life   we  know  as  human.      Salamanders 


4602 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


might  perhaps  live  there,  if  there  were  salamanders; 
but  not  men. 

Yet  we  have  an  inhabited  earth.  Between  us  and 
our  dynamo  there  are  two  planets  ;  of  Mercury  we 
know  little,  and  that  little  unfavorable  ;  but  Venus 
would  need  only  a  trifling  change  of  density  in  its 
atmosphere  to  fit  it  for  the  residence  of  intelligences. 
Beyond  the  earth  the  planetoids  seem  to  lack  reason- 
able conditions  of  life,  but  Mars  appears  even  more 
favorably  situated  than  Venus.  Jupiter  and  Saturn, 
if  the  best  reports  are  to  be  relied  on,  are  in  a  state  of 
igneous  fluidity,  and  it  is  probable  that  the  same  state 
of  affairs  exists  in  Neptune  and  Uranus.  So  much 
for  the  solar  system. 

Perhaps  you  may  think  I  was  unwise  to  use  the 
expression  "limitations  on  the  power  of  the  Almighty." 
I  may  have  been  unwise  ;  I  admit  that,  because  of  all 
foolish  things  the  most  foolish  is  for  any  one  to  defy 
the  opinion  of  every  one. 

Yet  explanation  is  quite  different  from  defiance, 
and  it  is  one  thing  to  be  unwise  and  another  to  be  un- 
true. I  myself  believe  in  the  Almighty,  but  I  also 
believe  in  His  limitations. 

These  I  do  not  get  entirely  from  my  observations 
of  nature,  extensive  as  they  have  been.  I  get  them 
quite  as  clearly  and  less  laboriously  from  the  "revealed 
word" — the  Bible.  There  we  are  told  God  cannot 
change,  cannot  lie,  and  is  the  same  yesterday,  today, 
and  forever. 

That  seems  to  be  a  reliable  sort  of  an  Almighty, 
wholly  different  from  the  God  of  nature,  of  which  we 
now  and  then  hear  so  much. 

I  learn  also  (from  that  same  Word  of  God)  that 
we  mortals  are  made  in  God's  own  image  ;  and  there- 
fore I  conclude  that  in  myself  I  have  a  sample,  so  to 
speak,  of  divinity.  Inestimable  advantage,  is  it  not, 
to  have  a  sample  ?  In  geometry  the  triangle,  for  in- 
stance. How  sure  we  are  that  the  properties  of  that, 
or  any  other  regular  figure,  are  permanent  properties 
of  all  similar  figures,  no  matter  what  their  size. 

Another  important  piece  of  information  I  got  from 
the  Bible  :  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven  was  within  me. 
Before  thoroughly  understanding  all  these  great  prin- 
ciples I  was  bewildered  in  the  contemplation  of  the 
multitude  of  phenomena  of  life.  Now,  while  I  have 
not  ceased  to  seek  for  phenomena,  a  new  fact  is  no 
longer  a  new  mystery.  I  understand  that  as  in  mj'- 
self,  while  my  body  changes  daily,  and  is  wholly  re- 
newed every  few  years,  and  while  my  mind  vacillates 
most  unreasonably,  there  is  something  about  me  which 
has  up  to  this  time  remained  permanent — my  life.  I 
know,  of  course,  that  there  is  a  limit  to  its  permanence, 
but  it  is  a  great  comfort  to  me  (and  it  ought  to  be  to 
all)  that,  like  the  triangle  of  chalk  on  a  blackboard, 
though   the  chalk  may  be  rubbed  off,  its  properties 


endure,  and  that  it  and  we  are  images  (or  functions) 
of  the  larger  life  which  is  conclusively  permanent. 

I  infer  therefore  that  life  is  composed  of  two  fac- 
tors, one  continually  changing  ;  the  other  continuously 
the  same. 

I  find  myself  limited  physically.  I  certainly  had 
no  power  over  myself  that  I  could  elect  what  my  sta- 
ture should  be,  or  the  color  of  my  eyes  or  hair  ;  and 
it  appears  equally  evident  that  I  could  not  have  en- 
dowed myself  with  faculties  different  from  those  I 
possess.  I  might  study  music  till  I  contrived  to  play 
tunes  quite  passably ;  I  could  perhaps  by  diligence 
learn  to  put  paint  onto  canvas,  but  I  could  never 
really  be  a  musician,  or  an  artist,  because  the  faculty 
of  music  or  art  has  been  denied  me. 

So  you  see  there  are  degrees  of  ability  in  a  human 
being,  and  that  there  must  also  be  degrees  in  the 
divine  being.  The  Almighty  could  perhaps  have 
created  worlds  that  were  square  instead  of  round,  but 
if  he  had  created  a  square  world  he  could  not  have 
created  one  in  which  the  diagonal  was  not  the  longest 
right  line. 

There  is  no  need  to  multiply  examples  ;  but,  as 
was  suggested  previously,  there  might  possibly  be 
salamanders  capable  of  inhabiting  a  dynamo,  but  for 
men  constituted  anything  like  ourselves,  conditions 
similar  to  those  on  this  earth  are  essential. 

These  conditions  I  have  found  prevail  everywhere 
throughout  the  universe.  Every  star  that  you  see 
twinkling  nightly  in  the  sky  has  an  invisible  retinue 
of  worlds  formed  like  itself  by  the  operation  of  that 
changeless  sequence  which  men  call  "law,"  but 
whose  better  name  would  be  cosmic  life.  Among 
these  stellar  families  always  one  or  more  members 
have  evolved  conditions  suitable  for  intelligent  ex- 
istence, and  (as  effects  always  inevitably  follow 
causes)  suitable  conditions  invariably  produce  pro- 
ducts fitted  for  their  utilisation. 

I  tell  you  these  things  so  that  you  may  see  clearly 
that  what  I  profess  to  have  witnessed  in  other  worlds 
may  not  seem  so  utterly  incredible  as  otherwise  it 
might. 

At  first  it  occurred  to  me  to  make  a  catalogue 
(like  Groombridge's)  of  those  planets  which  I  had 
visited  in  the  course  of  my  journeys  ;  but,  deeming 
this  on  the  whole  likely  to  prove  tedious,  I  sub- 
stitute a  brief  account  of  the  more  salient  character- 
istics of  a  few  remote  orbs,  planets  of  other  suns  than 
ours,  but  where  I  found  life  existed  in  the  main  as  it 
exists  upon  this  world. 

In  the  planet  Amoris,  fourth  from  Antares,  that 
red  star  which  in  summer  nights  may  be  readily  des- 
cried near  the  zodiac  in  the  south,  civilisation  has 
progressed  far  beyond  the  crude  system  that  prevails 
with  us. 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4603 


Life  goes  on  in  all  essential  respects  as  our  own, 
with  some  singular  exceptions — at  death  no  property 
can  be  willed.  All  that  any  one  dies  possessed  of 
reverts  at  once  to  the  uses  of  the  community — to  the 
State,  as  we  should  call  it,  although  there  I  found 
practical!}'  no  State,  nor  anything  that  a  citizen  of 
Earth  would  be  likely  to  consider  as  government. 

The  consequences  are  not,  as  one  might  think, 
a  luxurious  life  for  his  family  who  had  acquired 
wealth,  and  then  a  sudden  descent  into  a  poverty 
more  deplorable  for  the  luxurj',  but,  on  the  contrary, 
he  whose  foresight,  industry  and  sagacit)'  have  en- 
abled him  to  acquire  fortune,  invariably  distributes  it 
judiciously,  not,  as  we  do,  at  death,  but  during  his 
life  time. 

Then  the  knowledge  that  their  parents'  or  relatives' 
fortunes  are  not  in  any  event,  either  b}'  devise  or  in- 
heritance, to  be  theirs,  becomes  the  highest  possible 
incentive  to  thrift,  industrj'  and  diligence  to  the 
young. 

There  is  nothing  like  grinding  poverty  in  Amoris, 
and  the  instances  of  very  large  aggregations  of  wealth 
are  exceedingly  rare. 

But  while  the  devise  of  tangible  property  is  un- 
known, a  testator  possesses  the  power  and  right  to 
bequeath  possessions  of  inestimably  more  value. 

I  happened  to  become  very  friendly  with  a  legal 
practitioner  in  that  planet,  and,  on  m}'  expressing  an 
interest  in  the  subject,  he  kindly  loaned  me  a  certified 
copy  of  a  will  which  he  had  recentl}'  offered  for  pro- 
bate. 

Perhaps  I  can  not  do  better  than  to  quote  from 
the  will  its  chief  provisions  : 

"In  the  Name  of  God  Ajien,  I  Felix  Spese,  be- 
ing of  sound  mind,  do  make  and  publish  this  as  my 
last  Will  and  Testament. 

"First,  I  give  to  my  wife  Dora  my  administrative 
abilit}',  together  with  all  the  tenements,  hereditaments 
and  appurtenances  thereunto  belonging  or  in  any  wise 
appertaining. 

"Second,  I  give  to  my  eldest  son  Agra  my  ami- 
able disposition. 

"Third,  I  give  to  my  daughter  Marah  my  love  of 
children,  commonly  called  my  philoprogenitiveness, 
for  her  use  during  her  natural  life,  with  remainder 
to  my  granddaughter,  Clara,  daughter  of  the  said 
Marah. 

"Fourth,  1  give  to  my  son  Foibel  my  courage  and 
determination. 

"Fifth,  I  give  to  my  youngest  daughter  Dactj'l 
my  literary  faculty  and  command  of  language. 

"Sixth,  1  give  to  my  niece  Jane  my  organ  of  ap- 
petite, commonly  called  my  aliamentiveness,  she  be- 
ing destitute  of  proper  nutrition,  owing  to  her  inability 
to  assimilate  food." 


I  made  a  copy  of  the  will  at  the  time,  so  that  I 
can  certify  to  its  correctness. 

A  few  weeks  after  this,  that  is  about  six  months 
after  Mr.  Spese's  death,  my  friend,  the  law}-er,  took 
me  to  call  upon  the  family. 

My  friend,  knowing  that  1  was  a  stranger  on  the 
planet,  and  therefore  naturally  interested  in  its  civil- 
sation  and  especial!}'  in  those  matters  where  theirs 
and  ours  differed,  took,  occasion  to  ask  Miss  Dactyl 
about  what  he  called  the  investment  of  her  mother's 
right  of  dower. 

"Oh!  Doctor,"  exclaimed  the  young  woman  with 
animation,  "mama  has  done  so  well.  It  is  wonderful 
how  much  better  she  keeps  house  than  formerly.  She 
knows  now  fully  a  day  ahead  what  there  is  to  be  for 
meals,  always  has  change  ready  to  pay  for  things  sent 
home,  and  invariably  has  a  place  for  everything  and 
keeps  everything  in  its  place,  and — would  you  believe 
it? — never  puts  pins  in  her  mouth." 

"I  am  so  glad,"  replied  the  doctor  (did  I  mention 
that  ethical  practitioners  were  called  doctors  in  Amo- 
ris? Well,  they  were).  "I  am  so  glad.  But  tell  me 
about  your  sister  Marah — " 

"Oh!  Marah.  She  is  very  comfortably  situated. 
She  nurses  her  baby  now  herself,  and  little  Georgie  is 
allowed  to  come  to  the  table  and  goes  driving  with 
her  daily.  But  you  ought  to  see  brother  Agra.  He 
used  to  be  so  cross  and  unkind,  but  now  he  is  a 
changed  man — so  benevolent,  why,  now  he  will  even 
go  with  me  to  garden  and  theatre  parties.  Think  of 
that !" 

"And  Foibel?" 

"Foibel,  too,  is  quite  changed.  You  know  he  was 
proposing  to  marry  Miss  Tart,  and  we  all  feared  that 
her  family  would  make  his  life  a  burden.  But  with 
his  present  patrimony  (she  added  with  a  smile)  there 
is  no  danger  of  that.  It  is  amusing  to  see  him  spunk 
up  to  his  prospective  father-in-law." 

Perhaps  you  may  smile  at  this,  and  some  may 
even  accuse  me  of  drawing  upon  my  imagination.  It 
is  contrary  to  custom  here  that  property  in  goods  and 
chattels  could  not  be  bequeathed  ;  but  this  you  under- 
stand, not  as  quite  probable,  but  as  possible.  The 
other  statements,  of  course,  you  totally  disbelieve. 
Why  should  you  ?  You  reply  that  such  things  are 
inconceivable,  because  contrary  to  experience.  That 
is,  I  admit,  a  reason  to  doubt,  but  none  for  unquali- 
fied disbelief.  Why,  in  another  planet  I  stopped  at, 
the  inhabitants  were  all  of  one  sex  (babies  being 
produced  directly  from  certain  protoplasmic  geysers) 
and  refused  utterly  to  credit  my  assertion  that  upon 
earth  there  were  two  kinds  of  human  beings  differing 
not  only  physically  but  mentally  ;  that  they  were  in 
almost  all  respects  the  exact  opposites  of  each  other. 

"Such  a  state  of  affairs,"  these  people  said,  "was 


4604 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


absurd,  because  nothing  was  better  ascertained  than 
that  opposition  meant  antagonism.  If  ever  two  sets 
of  inhabitants  could  have  been  created,"  which  they 
claimed  uncivilly,  and  in  spite  of  my  word,  was  im- 
possible, "the  inevitable  result  would  have  been  war, 
and  in  the  end  the  extermination  of  the  weaker." 

How  guarded  we  ought  to  be  in  forming  opinions 
concerning  matters  of  which  we  have  had  no  experi- 
ence !  As  to  the  custom  in  Amoris  of  devising  prop- 
erty in  capacity,  which  you  find  so  difficult  to  credit, 
that  was,  after  all,  only  natural  under  the  circum- 
stances. Observe  that  with  us  what  we  call  natural 
law  provides  by  heredity  for  the  transmission  of  qual- 
ities. The  workings  of  this  law  are  obscure,  but  the 
results  are  surprisingly  certain,  while  they  seem  to 
be  exceedingly  capricious. 

The  province  of  reason  is  especially  to  remedy  the 
caprice  of  nature,  or  rather  (as  the  jurists  of  Amoris 
say)  to  thwart  the  malicious  and  unconscious  design 
of  the  natural  order.  That  is,  I  think,  only  another 
way  of  putting  the  edict  which  the  Bible  declares  to 
have  been  given  to  our  progenitors  to  subdue  the 
world. 

The  Amorite  children,  having  been  taught  from 
their  early  youth  to  expect  no  patrimony  in  goods, 
but  to  expect  that  of  brain-power,  received  this  ex- 
pectation in  the  spirit  of  faith,  and  the  natural  result 
of  faith  followed  :  what  they  believed  in  they  attained. 

The  same  law  as  to  mentality  prevailed  with  them, 
as  with  us  applies  to  physical  things.  For  instance, 
one  may  believe  (after  a  fashion)  that  his  father  will 
leave  him  his  fortune;  but  until  he  actually  does 
leave  it,  and  actual  possession  is  entered  upon,  the 
"belief"  lacks  its  real  value.  Such  "belief"  is  only 
hope  or  expectation,  and  no  sophistry  can  make  of  it 
anything  else.  But  the  belief  in  the  ability  of  the 
father  to  devise  is  of  quite  a  different  order.  That  is 
the  real  article. 

In  the  one  case  "faith"  was  only  the  substance  of 
hope  ;  in  the  other  it  was  evidence. 


LORD  PALMERSTON'S  BOROUGH. 

An  Incident  of  the  Chartist  Movement,  with  Reminiscences  of  Mr.  George 
Julian  Harney. 


BY  THOMAS  J.   m'cORMACK. 

A  HiGHiA'  unique  book  has  recently  come  under 
our  notice  relating  to  the  history  of  a  man  and  move- 
ment which  have  both  a  high  title  to  fame  in  English 
annals.  It  is  entitled  Palmerstoii' s  Borough,  A  Budget 
of  Electioneering  Anecdotes,  Jokes,  Squibs,  and  Speeches,^ 
illustrative  of  the  methods  and  spirit  of  the  English 
elections  of  the  middle  part  of  this  century,  and  is  re- 
plete with   accounts  of  rare  and  laughable  incidents, 

1  By  F.  J.  Snell.  London  :    H.  Marshall  &  Son,  125  Fleet  St.,  E.  C,  1S94. 


political  retorts  courteous,  the  tricks  of  partisan  con- 
troversy, and  biographical  reminiscences  which  have 
far  more  than  a  mere  local  value,  and  throw  a  strong 
but  not  unpleasing  light  on  the  personality  and  char- 
acter of  one  of  England's  greatest  statesmen.  Despite 
the  German  couplet, 

"  Hat  der  Teufel  einen  Sohn, 
So  ist  er  sicher  Palmerston," 

the  traits  of  the  sturdy  prime-minister  as  here  reflected 
give  a  quite  different  impression  of  him. 

But  our  object  in  referring  to  this  book  here  is  not 
to  emphasise  the  character  of  Palmerston  so  much  as 
to  notice  the  historical  movement  known  as  Chartism, 
with  which  was  connected  at  this  time  Mr.  George 
Julian  Harney,  an  old  and  esteemed  friend  of  The 
Open  Court,  and  now  well  known,  apart  from  his 
political  and  other  work,  as  the  contributor  of  grace- 
ful and  vigorous  sketches  to  the  Newcastle  Weekly 
Chronicle,  one  of  the  foremost  and  most  influential 
journals  of  England.  Mr.  Harney  was  the  candidate 
opposed  to  Lord  Palmerston  in  the  ancient  borough 
of  Tiverton  in  184.7.  Let  us  hear  Mr.  Snell's  own  re- 
lation of  the  matter,  and  afterwards  Mr.  Harney's 
account  of  the  Chartist  Movement  proper,  about 
which  little  is  known  in  this  country.  Certainly  no 
one  can  fail  to  be  interested  in  this  historical  episode 
of  the  old  and  beautiful  borough  of  Tiverton.  The 
following  matter  in  small  print  is  from  Mr.  Snell's 
book. 

p.^lmerston's  .antagonist. 

Lord  Palmerston's  connexion  with  the  borough  of  Tiverton 
brought  him  into  frequent  conflict  with  a  Mr.  William  Rowcliffe, 
who  was  by  trade  a  butcher,  and  in  politics  a  Chartist.  At  the 
electiotis  of  1S41  and  1846  Mr.  Rowcliffe  put  himself  in  evidence, 
by  plying  Lord  Palmerston  with  questions  as  to  various  points  in 
the  Chartist  creed  ;  but  his  first  notable  speech  on  the  hustings 
was  at  the  general  election  of  1S47.  Mr.  Heathcoat  and  Lord 
Palmerston  presented  themselves,  as  usual,  to  the  burgesses  of 
Tiverton  ;  and  no  one,  save  Mr.  Rowcliffe,  was  bold  enough  to 
dispute  their  claim.  Through  Rowcliffe's  instrumentality  Mr. 
George  Julian  Harney,  editor  of  the  Northern  Star,  and  a  col- 
league of  Feargus  O'Connor,  came  to  Tiverton  for  the  e.xpress  pur- 
pose of  inveighing  against  Palmerston  before  his  own  constitu- 
ency. The  contest  was  regarded  as  of  national  importance,  and 
the  Lcndon  newspapers  sent  special  reporters  to  the  scene  of  the 
fray.  The  excitement  as  the  day  of  nomination  drew  near  was 
great  indeed. 

MR.  Harney's  drawn  sword. 

Respecting  this  memorable  episode  Mr.  Sharland  writes : — 
"Mr.  Harney's  headquarters  were  at  the  house  of  one  of  his 
friends  in  Fore  street,  from  a  window  of  which  he  nightly  ha- 
rangued an  immense  crowd.  Some  amusement  was  caused  by  one 
of  his  supporters  marching  to  and  fro  in  front  of  the  house  with  a 
drawn  sword,  ostensibly  to  protect  Mr.  Harney  from  imaginary 
foes  during  his  campaign.  On  the  night  before  the  nomination 
Mr.  Harney  delivered  one  of  his  most  telling  speeches  in  defence 
of  the  'Five  Points,'  and  finishing  with  an  attack  on  the  policy  of 
the  Government  in  general,  and  Lord  Palmerston's  conduct  as 
foreign  minister  in  particular.    In  a  vigorous  peroration  Mr.  Har- 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4605 


ney  said,  'And  now,  gentlemen,  when  I  next  address  you.  it  will 
be  from  the  hustings  to-morrow  when  I  will  prove  him  to  be  de- 
void of  true  patriotism,  a  breaker  of  pledges,  and  a  foe  to  the  lib- 
erties of  the  people,  whose  dearest  rights  he  would  trample  in  the 
dust.  Yes,  gentlemen,  to-morrow  I  will  confront  him,  and  while 
I  shall  ask  for  your  hands  to  be  uplifted  in  my  favor — (alas  !  my 
friends  are  chiefly  among  the  down-trodden  non  electors)  be  assured 
I  will  dress  him  down  ! '  Tremendous  cheering  followed  this  out- 
burst of  eloquence,  and  it  is  more  than  probable  that  Lord  Pal- 
merston  heard  its  echoes  in  his  apartments  at  the  Three  Tuns  a 
few  yards  off." 

THE  NOMINATION  OK  '47. 

It  was  on  a  bright  morning  in  August,  1S47,  that  Lord  Pal- 
merston,  Mr.  Heathcoat,  Julian  Harney,  and  William  Rowcliffe 
found  themselves  face  to  face  on  the  historic  hustings  in  front  of 
Tiverton  parish  church.  Wr.  Sharland,  an  eye-witness  of  the 
fcene,  describes  it  as  follows: — "Lord  Palmerston,  preceded  by 
the  town  band,  and  accompanied  by  his  proposer  and  seconder, 
looked  jubilant  as  usual — as  if  going  to  a  pleasant  picnic  rather 
than  to  a  passage  of  arms  with  a  political  antagonist.  The  usual 
formalities  having  been  gone  through,  the  noble  Lord  was  duly 
proposed  and  seconded,  as  was  also  his  colleague,  Mr.  Heathcoat. 
Then  came  Mr.  Rowcliffe  to  introduce  as  '  a  fit  and  proper  person  ' 
George  Julian  Harney,  '  the  friend  of  the  people  and  champion  of 
popular  rights.' " 

ROWCLIFFE  ON  THE  SEPARATION  1IF  THE  SEXES. 

Rowcliffes  speech,  in  proposing  Mr.  Harney,  was  a  vigorous 
onslaught  on  Palmerston,  whom  he  denounced  as  a  Tory  in  dis- 
guise. He  said  his  (Rowcliffe's)  object  was  economy  and  retrench- 
ment, and  he  contended  that  the  people  at  large  had  got  nothing 
from  those  who  called  themselves  Liberals,  Reformers,  or  Whigs 
since  the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill,  for  which,  he  added,  they 
were  none  the  better.  Turning  to  Mr.  Anstey  (Lord  Palmerston's 
seconder),  he  asked  him,  whether,  if  an  old  servant  had  robbed 
them,  they  were  to  let  him  do  it  again.  Then  he  drew  a  highly 
imaginative  picture  of  a  great  Bastille  which,  he  said,  the  Whigs 
had  built,  "big  enough  to  hold  the  whole  country,"  where  even 
aged  couples  were  separated,  the  husband  from  the  wife.  "What 
would  the  noble  lord  say,  if  he  and  Lady  Palmerston  were  treated 
so?"  (laughter,  in  which  the  noble  Lord  joined  heartily).  Mr. 
Rowcliffe  commented  on  the  fact  that  the  noble  lord  had  given 
only  £^0  for  the  relief  of  the  local  poor,  whereas  Mr.  Heathcoat 
had  come  down  with  ;^ioo  ;  and  he  concluded  by  proposing  Mr. 
Harney — a  nomination  which  was  seconded  by  Mr.  Burgess,  shoe- 
maker. 

HARNEV'S  INDICTJIENT  OF  PALMERSTON. 

Mr.  Heathcoat  having  addressed  the  assen-ibly,  a  discussion 
took  place  on  the  question  who  should  speak  next.  Ordinarily,  as 
he  was  one  of  the  sitting  members,  it  would  have  been  Lord  Pal- 
merston's turn  ;  but,  as  it  was  understood  that  Mr.  Harney  was 
about  to  deliver  a  grand  attack  on  his  policy,  the  noble  lord  ex- 
pressed his  willingness,  and  indeed  his  desire,  to  waive  his  privi- 
lege, so  that  he  might  be  able  to  reply  after  hearing  what  Harney 
had  to  say  against  him.  The  Chartists  having  agreed  to  this 
course,  Mr.  Harney  addressed  the  meeting  for  more  than  two 
hours.  His  mode  of  speaking  was  very  voluble,  and  he  occasion- 
ally refreshed  himself  by  copious  draughts  from  a  blue  jug.  About 
three  thousand  persons  were  present,  and  with  at  least  two-thirds 
of  that  number  Harney  appeared  to  be  in  great  favor.  Lord 
Palmerston's  courteous  request  of  a  fair  hearing  for  his  opponent 
was,  therefore,  unnecessary.  Harney  began  with  >ios,i:uy  nh  min- 
ds innuendo.  He  referred  by  name  to  various  well-known  states- 
men with  whom  Palmerston  had  been  associated,  and  stuck  them 
all  over  with  epithets.     Perceval  was  a  constitutional  tyrant,  and 


no  man  who  had  anything  to  do  with  his  measures  could  ever  be 
forgiven.  Canning  was  "a  clever  jester,  a  talented  buffoon,  the 
able  and  brilliant  flunkey  of  the  aristocracy."  The  name  of  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  was  "allied  to  despotism."  Censure  and  de- 
rision, unqualified  bv  the  slightest  tincture  of  remorse  or  pity,  was 
poured  out  on  Lord  Melbourne  and  "the  profligate  Whig  Govern- 
ment," the  only  person  he  was  willing  to  make  exception  of  being 
Lord  Morpeth,  to  whom  he  begged  Lord  Palmerston  to  present 
his  compliments  when  he  met  him  in  town.  [The  noble  lord  here 
bowed  in  polite  acknowledgment  of  the  commission.]  Mr.  Harney 
then  entered  into  a  minute  criticism  of  the  policy  of  the  Whig 
profligates,  in  Spain  and  Portugal,  in  Canada  and  China,  in  Af- 
ghanistan, Syria,  and  Cracow;  winding  up  with  a  piece  of  pas- 
sionate declamation  against  the  metropolitan  bakers  whose  frauds, 
he  said.  Lord  Palmerston  had  been  base  enough  to  assist  by  dex- 
terous manipulation  of  the  Parliamentary  machine. — 'I'his  was 
hitting  below  the  bell,  and  it  roused  Lord  Palmerston's  wrath. 
H-ence  he  set  himself  to  the  task  of  reply  with  unwonted  vigor, 
speaking  for  upwards  of  an  hour  on  the  foreign  and  domestic  pol- 
icy of  the  Government,  and  winding  up  with  an  attack  on  the 
Charter  in  all  its  "points." 

sur.siDisixt;  local  charities. 

In  the  course  of  his  speech  Lord  Palmerston  said; 

".\llusion  has  further  been  made  to  those  small  sums,  that  is 
small  though  proportioned  to  my  means,  which  from  time  to  time 
I  have  offered  to  the  charities  of  the  borough.  The  mover  of  the 
nomination  of  Mr.  Harney  objected  to  the  amount  of  those  con- 
tributions, and  he  also  furnished  an  argument  which,  if  you  ac- 
cept as  just,  is  much  more  in  favor  of  your  electing  me  than 
Mr.  Harney — (cheers  and  laughter).  He  said,  'Lord  Palmerston 
holds  a  valuable  office,  and  is  bound  whenever  there  is  a  subscrip- 
tion at  Tiverton  to  send  down  a  quarter's  salary.'  I  cannot  admit 
that  obligation,  and  therefore,  gentlemen,  if  any  man  here  pur- 
poses to  vote  for  me  on  the  understanding  suggested  by  Mr.  Row- 
cliffe that  I  am  to  give  a  quarter's  salary  to  any  subscription  going 
on  at  Tiverton,  I  beg  that  he  will  reconsider  the  grounds  of  his 
support" — (cheers  and  laughter). 

Finally  the  evergreen  Viscount  disposed  of  his  antagonist  by 
complimenting  Mr.  Rowcliffe,  "his  old  friend,"  on  his  vigor  and 
health,  and  hoping  that  he  (Rowcliffe)  would  live  to  alter  his  po- 
litical opinions.  In  the  course  of  his  speech  he  was  frequently  in- 
terrupted by  ejaculations  from  the  cro%vd,  but  so  far  from  being 
disconcerted  by  these  ebullitions  of  feeling,  he  folded  his  arms 
and  smilingly  enjoyed  the  fun. 

THE   RESULT. 

The  show  of  hands  being  decidedly  in  favor  of  Mr.  Heathcoat 
and  Julinn  Harney,  Lord  Palmerston  repeatedly  pressed  the 
Chartist  candidate  to  "try  his  strength  and  test  his  principles," 
by  going  to  the  poll.  Mr.  Harney  declined  the  invitation,  protest- 
ing that  he  had  been  duly  elected,  and  refusing  to  take  part  in 
any  further  proceedings.   The  result  of  the  polling  was  as  follows : 

Mr.  Heathcoat 147 

Lord  Palmerston 117 

Julian   Harnev o 

As  the  practice  referred  to  in  the  last  paragraph 
is  probably  unfamiliar  to  our  readers,  we  may  quote 
the  following  from  a  letter  from  Mr.  Harney  e.xplain- 
ing  it; 

' '  There  was  a  custom  originating  probably  in  the  most  remote 
times  of  noininatiiig  candidates  in  open  meeting  and  generally  in 
the  open  air.  That  was  the  case  in  London  when  I  was  a  boy. 
Covent  Garden  was  a  famous  nomination  place  for  Westminster. 
In  counties  the  nomination  took  place  in  great  open  spaces.     The 


'V  4606 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


riotous  proceedings  at  these  meetings  was  the  nominal  pretext  to 
curtaihng  the  county  franchise  in  the  days  of  Henry  VI.  Still 
the  nominations  were  so  continued.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  at  least 
some  voteless  men  could  and  would  attend  the  nominations.  And 
when  the  High  Sheriff  (county),  or  Returning  Officer,  usually  the 
Mayor  (bcrough),  took  the  show  of  hands,  there  was  nothing  to 
hinder  voteless  Hodge  or  Jack  from  holding  up  his  hand  (some- 
times two).  But  the  defeated  candidates  (least  show  of  bands) 
would  say  :  'We  dispute — we  demand  a  poll' (pole).  That  origin- 
ally meant  counting  the  polls  (heads — head-tax,  poll-tax — Wat 
Tyler)  of  all  present  ;  but  with  the  restriction  of  the  county  suf- 
frage another  meaning  arose — to  count  only  the  qualified  electors 
But  as  the  qualified  electors  might  not  all  be  in  attendance,  places 
were  provided  for  the  recasting  of  'their  votes  The  same  system 
was  pursued  in  cities  and  boroughs— save  where  the  corporation 
made  an  election — but  wherever  there  was  an  extension  of  voting 
outside  the  corporation,  the  nominations  were  followed  by  demand 
for  a  poll  (or  polling),  and  with  the  frequent  result  of  the  popular 
candidates  finding  themselves  at  'the  bottom  of  the  poll;'  the 
'candidate,'  or  'candidates'  with  the  fewest  hands  being  elected 
by  a  majority  of  the  qualified  electors. 

"Tiverton  had  shaken  off  the  corporation  yoke,  and  when  I 
went  there,  was  a  borough  returning  two  members  on  the  Reform 
Bill  ;^io  qualification  of  electors.  I  knew  I  had  not  the  ghost  of 
a  chance.  Nearly  all  those  who  had  held  up  their  hands  for  me 
had  tio  votes  at  'Cae  polling  hoollis.  My  show  of  hands  considerably 
exceeded  that  of  Heathcoat,  the  local  capitalist  and  employer  of 
some  hundreds  of  work-people  (lace-mills  and  other  works),  and 
was  greatly  in  excess  of  the  show  for  Pam.  But  Pam  demanded 
'a  poll.'  I  protested  and  handed  a  written  protest,  prepared  be- 
forehand, to  the  Returning  Officer,  the  Mayor.  In  vain.  The 
polling  took  place  next  day.  The  merest  farce,  bec-iuse  there  was 
no  opposition.  I  had  withdrawn.  And  after  that  withdrawal  the 
'election'  of  Heathcoat  nnd  Palmcrston  would  have  been  (]uile 
legal  without  any  polling,  because  there  was  no  opposition." 

In  a  subsequent  article  we  shall  give  M.r.  Harney's 
own  reminiscences  of  this  election  with  his  brief  his- 
tory of  the  Chartist  movement. 


PEACE. 

BY  PROF.    E.    EMERSON. 

Come  !  gentle  peace  !   dwell  with  me  evermcre  ! 

Too  long  I've  wandered  up  and  down  the  world  ; 
And  known  iis  Icsses,  felt  its  trials  sore  ; 

From  blissful  heights  been  deep  to  anguish  hurled.  ■ 
But,  since  I  use  philosophy  to  cure, 

I  see  how  vain  are  all  our  petty  throes. 
Where  things  must  ebb  and  flow  sublimely  sure  ; 

Now  bringing  joy,  and  now  unsealing  woes. 
For  what  is  man  amid  this  wond'rous  scene. 

Where  countless  suns  and  planets  hang  in  space  ? 
How  measure  his  brief  life  which  in  between 

Two  dread  eternities  completes  its  race  ? 
Now  the  calm  gnddess,  peace,  reigns  in  my  soul  ; 
For  I  perceive  I'm  part  of  one  great  whole. 


BOOK  NOTICES. 

The  American  Book  Company  have  been  recently  issuing  a 
useful  series  of  Xnlional  Cfographic  MonografJis  on  the  physical 
features  of  the  earth's  surface,  to  be  used  as  aids  in  teaching  geo 
graphy.  The  monographs  appear  monthly  at  twenty  cents  each, 
and  at  an  annual  cost  of  $1.50.  All  are  by  eminent  scientists. 
The  first  three,  which  we  have  in  our  hands,  are  by  Major  J.  W. 
Powell,  late  Director  of  the  United  States  Geological  Survey,  and 


treat  of  (i)  Physiographic  Processes  ;  (2)  Physiographic  Features; 
and  (3)  Physiographic  Regions  of  the  United  Stales.  In  the  first, 
Major  Powell  discusses  the  three  great  moving  envelopes  of  the 
earth, — air,  water,  and  rock, — and  studies  the  three  sequent  pro- 
cesses by  which  the  earth's  surface  has  been  moulded  into  its 
present  form.  The  second  sketches  the  physiographic  features  of 
the  earth,  showing  how  fire,  earthquake,  and  flood  have  been  in- 
volved in  fashioning  the  land  and  sea.  These  monographs  form 
excellent  introductions  into  the  study  of  general  geology  and  are 
written  in  a  style  well  adap(ed  lo  popular  apprehension.  Illustra- 
tions and  maps  accompany  the  monographs. 


In  a  pamphlet  entitled  Tlie  Re/atioiis  Existing  Between  Authors 
and  Puhlishers  of  Scientific  and  Technical  Books-,  Mr.  C.  A.  Stete- 
fald,  of  Oakland,  Cal.,  makes  an  appeal  to  "scientists  and  engin- 
eers, who  are  or  contemplate  becoming  authors"  to  throw  off  the 
unbearable  yoke  imposed  upon  them  by  rapacious  publishers." 
He  asks  them  to  unite  and  form  an  "Authors'  Publishing  Com- 
pany." In  Mr.  Stetefeld's  case,  who  tried  the  experiment  with  a 
book  of  his  own,  the  difference  in  the  receipts  was  4  to  i  in  his 
favor.  Only  in  rare  cases,  however,  is  the  whole  of  an  edition  of 
a  scientific  book  sold,  so  that  usually  the  publisher  must  regain 
his  entire  outlay  on  a  sale  of  three  or  four  hundred  copies.  This 
consideration  should  also  be  borne  in  mind  in  the  organisation  of 
an  authors'  publishing  company.  Undoubtedly,  for  individuals 
who  are  willing  to  run  the  risk  the  idea  is  an  excellent  one;  while 
its  corrective  influence  in  summarily  limiting  the  production  of 
bad  or  mediocre  books  cannot  be  overrated. 

Charles  H.  Kerr  &  Company,  of  Chicago,  issue  a  little  tract 
of  thirty- six  pages  on  Religion  as  a  Factor  in  Hitman  Evolution,  by 
Mr.  E.  P.  Powell,  author  of  Our  [fercdily  from  God.  The  paper 
which  was  read  before  the  Brooklyn  Ethical  Asscciation,  deals 
with  the  question  historically  and  analytically,  and  is  full  of  in- 
structive matter. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE   MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 


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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  416. 

EZRA  AND  NEHEMIAH,      Prof    C.  H.  Cornill 4599 

OTHER  WORLDS  THAN  OURS.     Part  I.     Hudor  Ge- 

NONE " 4601 

LORD  PALMERSTON  S  BOROUGH.  An  Incident  of 
the  Chartist  Movement,  with  Reminiscences  of  Mr. 
George  Julian  Harney.      Thomas  J.  McCormack 4604 

POETRY. 

Peace.     Prof.  E    Emerson 4606 

BOOK  NOTICES 4606 


/ 


The  Open  Court. 


A   "WTEEKLTT  JOUKNAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  417,     (Vol.  IX.— 34.) 


CHICAGO,   AUGUST  22,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
I  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.— Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


IN  MEMORIAM.— ROBERT  LEWINS,  M.  D. 


Born  28th  August,  1817.    Died  22nd  July,  1895. 

A  SOMEWHAT  striking  figure  in  London  literarj' 
circles  has  passed  away  in  the  person  of  the  above. 

Dr.  Lewins  was  known  to  the  readers  of  Tke  Mo- 
nist  and  Tlie  Open  Court  as  an  occasional  contributor. 
In  the  thought-world  generally,  he  was  known  as  the 
excogitator,  and  unwearied  advocate, of  the  philosophic 
faith  commonly  called  Hylo-Idealisrn  ;  as  the  accom- 
plished friend  and  mentor  of  the  late  Miss  Constance 
Naden,  and  also  as  the  writer  in  1873  of  a  recently  re- 
published essay,  entitled  Life  and  Mind  on  the  Basis  of 
Modern  Medicine.  When  it  is  added  that  Dr.  Lewins 
was  a  retired  Surgeon  Lieutenant-Colonel,  that  he 
had  served  in  the  Crimea,  the  Indian  Mutiny  and  in 
several  other  campaigns  ;  that  he  was  mentioned  in 
the  famous  "Letters,"  by  the  irate  Carlyle,  as  "an 
army-surgeon  who  writes  me  incessantly  from  all  quar- 
ters of  the  globe  "  (upon  philosophic  matters,  presum- 
ably), almost  all  has  been  told  that  is  specially  notable 
about  this  now-ended  life.  He  was  not  given  to  push 
himself  into  prominence.  The  man  himself  was  too 
much  overshadowed  by  the  doctrine  which  he  ex- 
pounded, in  and  out  of  season.  But  those  who  have 
once  met  this  philosophic  and  scientific  thinker  are 
not  likely  to  forget  him  ! 

Wisdom  is  justified  of  her  children,  and  Robert 
Lewins  was  exceeding  wise.  He  was  a  fine  example 
of  what  culture,  world-wide  travel,  and  intercourse 
with  men  and  things  will  accomplish,  even  when  con- 
spicuous genius  is  lacking.  This  man  had,  apparently, 
been  almost  everywhere  on  the  surface  of  our  planet, 
seemed  to  know  everybody  worth  knowing,  to  have 
seen  nearly  all  that  it  is  possible  to  see,  and  to  have 
inwardly  digested  all  available  intellectual  nourish- 
ment. If  on  this  account  alone,  he  was  a  most  fasci- 
nating companion.  His  was  a  most  amiable  nature — 
strong,  steadfast,  self-sacrificing  to  a  fault,  ever  gener- 
ous and  noble. 

I  do  not  know  of  any  purely  intellectual  friendship 
more  touchingly  beautiful  than  that  which  existed  be- 
tween him  and  that  rare  latter-day  personality  Miss 
Constance  Naden.     He  was  interested  in  her  from  her 


early  years,  discerned  instinctively  her  surpassing  ge- 
nius, watched  her  career,  directed  her  studies,  ar- 
ranged for  her  foreign  travel, — cherished  this  opening 
flower  which  promised  so  highly,  until  her  blossoming 
life  became  so  much  bound  up  with  his  own,  that  her 
untimely  death  affected  him  as  deeply  as  if  she  had 
been  his  only  daughter.  I  shall  never  forget  his  let- 
ters at  that  sad  time.  If  ever  there  was  a  purely  in- 
tellectual passion  without  baser  alloy,  it  was  that  which 
existed  between  these  two.  He  wrote  to  me  after  her 
death  :  "This  world  for  me,  now,  has  its  Gethsemane, 
and  its  Golgotlia  !  "  And  what  does  she  say  to  him, 
in  that  pathetic  last  letter  of  hers?  "The  thought 
that  my  illness  gives  V('«  pain,  is  almost  more  than  I 
can  bear. "  There  were  unfathomed  depths  in  these 
two  master-minds.  Now,  both  are  not.  Lovely  and 
pleasant  in  their  lives,  in  death  they  were  not  long  di- 
vided. 

During  the  last  ten  years,  I  have  probably  corre- 
sponded with  Dr.  Lewins  more  frequently  than  any 
other  person.  How  full  of  wisdom  these,  often  barely 
decipherable,  letters  of  his  are — marvels  of  compressed 
and  microscopic  handwriting  !  They  range  in  tone 
from  grave  to  gay,  from  lively  to  severe — for,  like  his 
fellow  countryman  Carlyle,  he  could,  upon  occasion, 
blight  and  blast  with  an  epithet.  Always  circling 
round  in  the  end  however,  to  his  pet  theory  of  solip- 
sism. ^^  See  all  in  Self  and  but  for  Self  he  born"  was 
his  refrain.  Naturally,  he  was  misunderstood.  No 
man  has  been  less  perfectly  understood.  Rigid  defini- 
tions he  abhorred.  And  there  was  a  certain  amount 
of  tautology  in  his  exposition  which  repelled  many. 

But  I,  for  one — I,  who  in  every  way  have  gained 
so  much  from  him,  am  persuaded  that  this  man's  feet 
were  resting  on  the  true  "  Rock  of  Ages" — the  rock 
of  truth,  and  that  the  world,  in  time,  will  come  to  see 
itself  as  he  saw  it.  This  is  not  a  proper  occasion  for 
discussing  his  world-scheme.  I  try  to  think,  now,  in 
this  life  which,  without  him,  and  without  that  other 
fair  spirit  who  companied  with  us  both  for  a  time,  to 
me  is  so  lonely, — I  try  to  think  how  patient  he  was  in 
this  respect,  and  how,  if  any  one  spoke  to  him  of  lack 
of  appreciation  for  his  teaching — of  the  difficulty  of 
persuading  the  Philistinism  of  his  day,  he  would  smil- 
ingly say:    "  Wait .'"     Everything  comes  to  him  who 


46o8 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


can  wait,  and  a  faith  which  is  true  can  afford  to  wait 
— endlessly.' 

With  faltering  hand,  I  lay  this  poor  wreath  upon 
the  coffin-lid  of  my  lost  friend. 

George  M.  McCrie. 


THE  LATER  PROPHETS. 

BY  PROF.   C.    H.    CORNILL. 

The  narrow  Judaising  tendency  of  Ezra  and  Ne- 
hemiah  must  have  exercised  a  fatal  influence  on 
prophecy,  as  the  issue  soon  proved.  The  next  pro- 
phetic book  is  that  of  Joel,  which  some  people  in  con- 
sequence of  an  almost  inconceivable  confusion  of  ideas 
still  declare  to  be  the  oldest  of  all.  Few  results  of  Old 
Testament  research  are  as  surely  determined  and  as 
firmly  established  as  that  the  Book  of  Joel  dates  from 
the  century  between  Ezra  and  Alexander  the  Great. 

In  Joel  for  the  first  time  that  distinctive  note  is 
wanting  which  in  all  the  older  prophetic  writings  with- 
out exception,  from  Amos  to  Malachi,  was  the  chief 
concern  of  the  prophets,  namely,  censure,  constant 
reference  to  the  sins  of  Israel.  Joel  describes  Israel 
as  devout  and  pleasing  in  the  sight  of  God  ;  all  is  as  it 
should  be.  In  the  regularly  and  conscientiously  con- 
ducted ritual  of  the  Temple,  Israel  has  the  guarantee 
of  the  grace  of  God  ;  the  most  beauteous  promises  are 
held  out  to  it,  while  the  heathen  will  be  destroyed  by 
God  and  his  angels  as  the  harvest  is  cut  down  by  the 
sickle  and  grapes  trampled  in  the  press  ;  and  more- 
over, the  Jews  shall  turn  their  "ploughshares  into 
swords  and  their  pruning-hooks  into  spears."  The 
celebrated  pouring-out  of  the  spirit  will  only  affect 
Jewish  flesh  ;  the  Gentiles  will  no  longer  be  consid- 
ered. 

The  small  Book  of  Obadiah,  written  probably  at  an 
earlier  date,  has  the  same  aims;  it  is  the  revision  of 
an  older  prophecy  concerning  Edom  already  known 
to  Jeremiah.  To  this  book  are  appended  the  hopes 
and  expectations  of  the  time. 

The  next  great  universal  catastrophe,  however, 
was  to  find  a  more  joyful  echo,  even  in  prophecy:  the 
destruction  of  the  Persian  empire  through  Alexander 
the  Great.  The  extremely  remarkable  coherent  frag- 
ment, which  we  now  read  as  Chapters  24  to  27  of  the 
Book  of  Isaiah,  dates,  according  to  sure  indications, 
from  this  time.  We  again  find  in  this  a  reflexion  of 
the  old  prophetic  spirit.  The  dissolution  of  the  whole 
earth  and  the  judgment  passed  over  its  inhabitants  is 
the  chief  theme.  But  this  dissolution  is  thoroughly 
justified  through  the  sinfulness  of  the  world,  and  there, 
as  in  Kaulbach's  Hunnenschlacht  (the  battle  of  the 
Huns),  the  decisive  struggle  takes  place,  not  on  earth, 
but  on  high.  God  conquers  the  host  of  the  high  ones  ; 
takes  them  prisoners,  and  shuts  them  up  for  many  days 
in  the  prison.    Israel  itself  takes  no  part  in  the  struggle  ; 


it  merely  waits  on  God  as  a  psalm-singing  community, 
and  receives  this  command  : 

"Come,  my  people,  enter  thou  into  thy  chambers, 
and  shut  thy  doors  about  thee  ;  hide  thyself  for  a  little 
moment,  until  the  indignation  be  overpast.  For  be- 
hold, the  Lord  cometh  forth  out  of  his  place  to  punish 
the  inhabitants  of  the  earth  for  their  iniquity." 

The  final  object  of  this  judgment  is  the  conversion 
of  the  earth.  Even  the  imprisoned  spirits  will  be  par- 
doned, when  they  have  lived  out  the  time  of  their 
punishment. 

"With  my  soul  have  I  desired  thee  in  the  night ; 
yea,  with  my  spirit  within  me  will  I  seek  thee  early  : 
for  when  thy  judgments  are  in  the  earth,  the  inhabit- 
ants of  the  world  learn  righteousness.  Let  favor  be 
shewed  to  the  wicked,  yet  will  he  not  learn  righteous- 
ness :  in  the  land  of  uprightness  will  he  deal  wrong- 
fully, and  will  not  behold  the  majesty  of  the  Lord." 

Then  will  God  prepare  on  Mount  Zion  a  great 
feast  for  all  these  converted  nations  and  will  destroy 
the  face  of  the  covering  that  is  cast  over  all  people 
and  the  veil  that  is  spread  over  all  nations,  and  the 
kingdom  of  peace  shall  begin,  whose  walls  and  bul- 
wark are  salvation.  Only  Moab  will  be  excluded  from 
this  general  salvation,  and  its  destruction  is  described 
in  revolting  imagery — and  thus  we  find  again  in  this 
usually  pure  blood  a  drop  of  poison. 

The  most  remarkable  of  all  in  this  fragment  is,  that 
the  resurrection  of  the  dead  appears  for  the  first  time 
as  a  postulate  of  faith,  though  indeed  only  that  of  the 
pious  Israelites.  Now,  this  postulate,  too,  takes  its 
origin  in  the  Messianic  hypotheses.  Among  those  de- 
vout dead  will  be  many  a  martyr  who  has  suffered 
death  for  his  God  and  his  faith.  Are  these,  who  de- 
serve it  before  all  others,  to  be  excluded  from  the  glory 
of  the  kingdom  of  the  Messiah?  The  justice  of  God 
demands  that  they  shall  rise  again  from  the  dead. 
Moreover,  the  living  Jews  are  far  too  few  to  become 
in  reality  the  sovereign  and  dominant  people  in  the 
Messianic  kingdom  ;  to  fill  up  this  want,  all  the  devout 
Jews  who  have  previously  departed  must  live  again. 
An  enlivening  dew  sent  by  God  shall  drop  upon  these 
mouldering  bones,  the  dead  arise  again,  and  the  earth 
give  back  the  departed  spirits.  • 

We  find  in  single  sentences  of  these  four  chapters 
much  that  is  beautiful  and  deep.  They  show  upon  the 
whole  a  magnificent  picture,  which  shines  all  the  more 
brightly,  when  compared  with  the  production  which 
follows  next  in  point  of  time. 

This  is  the  fragment  which  we  now  read  as  Chap- 
ters 9  to  14  of  the  Book  of  Zechariah.  It  dates  from 
the  beginning  of  the  third  century,  from  the  time  of 
the  struggles  of  the  Diadochi,  when  it  certainly  seemed 
as  if  the  dominion  of  the  Greeks  established  by  Alexan- 
der the  Great  would  fall  to  pieces.   This  fragment  marks 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4609 


the  lowest  degradation  of  the  prophetic  literature  of 
Israel.  The  fantasy  of  the  writer  positively  wades  in 
the  blood  of  the  Gentiles  ;  their  flesh  shall  consume 
away  while  they  stand  upon  their  feet,  their  eyes  shall 
consume  away  in  their  sockets,  and  their  tongues  in 
their  mouths,  while  the  sons  of  Zion,  whom  God  has 
aroused  against  the  Greeks,  will  drink  their  blood  like 
wine  and  be  filled  with  it  like  bowls  at  the  corners  of 
the  altar.  Jerusalem  alone  shall  remain  grand  and 
sublime,  and  even  the  bells  of  the  horses  and  every  pot 
shall  be  holy  unto  the  Lord.  The  remaining  heathen 
will  indeed  turn  to  God,  but  how  will  this  conversion 
show  itself?  By  eating  kosher  (i.  e.  after  the  manner 
of  the  Jews)  and  by  going  up  every  year  to  Jerusalem 
to  keep  the  feast  of  tabernacles. 

It  is  impossible  to  turn  the  mind  of  an  Amos  or  a 
Hosea,  of  an  Isaiah  or  a  Jeremiah,  into  a  worse  carica- 
ture than  is  done  here.  The  unknown  author  of  this 
fragment  in  the  Book  of  Zechariah  will  not  even  be  a 
prophet :  we  find  a  very  remarkable  passage  in  this 
fragment,  which  shows  that  men  distinctly  felt  that 
prophecy  was  at  an  end,  and  that  the  prophetic  in- 
spiration in  Israel  was  dying  out. 

"And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day,  said  the 
Lord  Zebaoth,  that  I  will  cut  off  the  names  of  the 
idols  out  of  the  land,  and  they  shall  no  more  be  re- 
membered :  and  also  I  will  cause  the  prophets  and  the 
unclean  spirits  to  come  out  of  the  land.  And  it  shall 
come  to  pass,  that  when  any  shall  yet  prophesy,  then 
his  father  and  his  mother  that  begat  him  shall  say  unto 
him  :  Thou  shalt  not  live,  for  thou  speakest  lies  in  the 
name  of  the  Lord  :  and  his  father  and  his  mother  that 
begat  him  shall  thrust  him  through  when  he  prophe- 
sieth.  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day,  that  the 
prophets  shall  be  ashamed  every  one  of  his  vision, 
when  he  hath  prophesied  ;  neither  shall  they  wear  a 
hairy  mantle  to  deceive  :  but  he  shall  say,  I  am  no 
prophet,  I  am  an  husbandman  ;  the  field  is  my  posses- 
sion and  my  trade  from  my  youth  up.  And  if  one  shall 
say  unto  him,  What  are  these  wounds  thou  bearest? 
he  shall  answer,  ...  I  was  wounded  in  the  house  of 
my  friends." 

The  prophets  deceivers  of  the  people,  who  must  be 
put  to  death,  prophetic  inspiration  an  unclean  spirit, 
put  on  the  same  level  with  idols — what  a  change,  what 
a  transition!  Here  we  have  the  whole  difference  be- 
tween Israel  and  Judaism. 

Nevertheless  the  prophetic  genius  of  Israel  had 
not  yet  utterly  died  out ;  it  had  still  sufficient  health 
and  strength  to  enter  a  strong  protest  against  this 
caricature  of  itself,  and  to  pronounce  upon  it  the  sen- 
tence of  its  condemnation.  This  is  the  special  and 
lasting  significance  of  the  little  book,  which  we  must 
look  upon  as  the  last  of  prophetic  literature,  the  Book 
of  Jonah. 


LORD  PALMERSTON'S  BOROUGH. 

Mr.  Harney's  Reminiscences. 

The  Tiverton  election  described  in  the  last  number 
of  The  Open  Court  took  place  in  1847.  Mr.  Snell  in 
the  book  we  are  noticing  publishes  the  following  com- 
munication from  Mr.  George  Julian  Harney,  written 
in  1894 — forty-seven  years  after  the  event: 

WHO  WERE  THE  CHARTISTS? 

Having  been  courteously  invited  to  narrate  my  recollections 
of  the  stirring  episode  of  47  years  ago,  I  comply  with  the  request, 
understanding  that  my  statement  must  be  brief,  and  (I  will  add) 
fair,  and,  as  far  as  may  be,  impartial.  It  may  first  be  well  to 
answer  the  question  :  ' '  Who  and  what  were  the  Chartists  ' "  They 
were  the  direct  political  descendants  of  the  men  who,  dissatisfied 
with  the  merely  mob-ebullitions  of  those  who  shouted  themselves 
hoarse  with  cries  for  "Wilkes  and  Liberty,"  began  to  band  them- 
selves together  soon  after  the  commencement  (and  more  especially 
after  the  termination)  of  the  American  war,  to  obtain  a  Reform 
of  Parliament.  Subsequently  arose  the  "Society  of  the  Friends 
of  the  People,"  and  other  patriotic  associations,  led  by  such  men 
as  the  then  Duke  of  Richmond,  Earl  Stanhope,  and  several  Par- 
liamentary celebrities,  with  such  efficient  auxiliaries  as  Major 
Cartwright,  Home  Tooke,  Thelwall,  and  other  "men  of  light  and 
leading"  who  subsequently,  and  after  the  commencement  of  the 
excesses  of  the  French  Revolution,  were  stigmatised  as  English 
Jacobins.  A  reign  of  terror,  the  opposite  to  that  in  France,  con- 
signed the  Scottish  llartyrs — Muir,  Palmer,  Gerald,  Margarot, 
and  Skirving — to  penal  transportation  ;  and  in  England  wholesale 
arrests,  severe  punishments  for  political  "libels,"  sentences  of 
imprisonment  for  sedition,  and  on  the  other  hand  a  signal  triumph 
in  the  acquittal  of  Hardy  and  other  members  of  the  "Correspond- 
ing Society,"  marked  the  varying  fortunes  of  the  Reform  move- 
ment in  its  first  stage. 

THE   FIRST  RADICALS. 

A  lull  ensued.  But  the  first  decade  of  the  Nineteenth  Century 
was  hardly  over  when  new  actors  appeared  on  the  stage.  The 
people  were  tired  of  the  long  war,  and  again  the  cry  for  Parlia 
mentary  Reform  was  heard  in  the  land.  In  Parliament  the  mod- 
erate Reformers  were  led  by  Grey,  Brougham,  Russell,  Mackin- 
tosh, Romilly,  Whitbread,  and  others,  including  Burdett,  who, 
however,  may  be  also  classed  with  the  outside  leaders.  Of  such 
leaders  the  most  marked  were  Cobbett,  Hunt,  Hone,  Wooler,  and 
many  more.  The  poetry  of  Byron  and  Shelley  largely  contributed 
to  fan  the  flame  of  reforming  enthusiasm.  It  was  about  the  time 
of  Waterloo  that  these  Reformers  began  to  have  applied  to  them 
the  nickname  of  "Radicals,"  or  men  who  proposed  to  make  a 
root  and  branch  reform,  and  tear  up  the  abuses  of  the  representa- 
tive system  by  the  roots.  The  repressive  measures  of  the  Castle- 
reagh-Sidmouth  Administration,  including  the  tyrannical  "Six 
Acts,"  the  "Manchester  Massacre,"  the  executions  in  Glasgow, 
Derby  and  London ;  the  nefarious  acts  of  spies  spreading  distrust 
and  terror  ;  these  and  other  causes  again  brought  collapse  and 
apathy  ;  and  so  ended  the  second  stage  of  reform. 

"THE  BILL,  THE  WHOLE  BILL,  AND  NOTHING  BUT  THE  BILL." 

The  French  Revolution  of  1830  awakened  public  spirit  from 
its  torpor,  and  contemporaneously  with  the  Belgian  Revolution, 
the  popular  movements  in  Germany  and  Italy,  and  the  sanguinary 
and  heroic,  but  unfortunate  struggle  in  Poland,  the  third  stage  of 
Reform  commenced.  Soon  the  cry  of  "The  Bill,  the  whole  Bill, 
and  Nothing  but  the   Bill"   reverberated   through  the  land,  and 


4610 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


England  seemed  to  be  in  the  very  throes  o£  Revolution.  This 
time,  despite  lamentable  scenes  at  Nottingham  and  other  places, 
and  the  ever-to-be-deplored,  disgraceful,  and  disgusting  anarchy 
of  which  Bristol  was  the  theatre,  the  cause  of  Reform  triumphed. 
The  middle  classes  were  practically  unanimous.  They  were  aided 
by  the  Liberal  section  of  the  aristocracy,  and  had  at  their  back 
the  support  of  the  working  classes.  The  movement  was  as  spon- 
taneous as  national.  There  were  Unions  of  various  names,  the 
most  famous  of  which  was  the  Birmingham  Political  Union  ;  but 
the  immense  gatherings  of  the  people  were  not  got  together  by 
any  caucus-like  machinery.  Reform  was  in  the  air.  The  vast 
majority  of  the  people  obeyed  the  inspiration.  The  opponents  of 
Reform  saw  that  further  opposition  was  useless,  and  the  Reform 
Bill  became  the  Reform  Act  on  the  7th  June,  1832. 

THE  people's  charter. 

But  soon  the  voice  of  disappointment  was  heard.  There  had 
been  all  along  an  "extreme  Left"  among  the  Reformers,  who, 
with  Henry  Hunt,  demanded  Universal  Suffrage.  That  section 
was  represented  by  a  small  but  active  and  organised  body.  Dur- 
ing the  stress  and  storm  of  the  agitation,  1831-32,  there  had  been 
in  London  two  popular  organisations  : — "  The  Political  Union," 
mainly  representative  of  the  middle  classes,  and  "The  National 
Union  of  the  Working  Classes."  On  the  passing  of  the  Reform 
Bill  the  Political  Union  was  dissolved,  or  died  away.  The  Union 
of  the  Working  Classes  struggled  on.  But  the  general  enthusiasm 
had  evaporated.  The  National  Union  of  the  Working  Classes  had 
ceased  to  be  heard  of,  when  in  1836  William  Lovett,  a  native  of 
Newlyn,  Cornwall,  and  by  trade  a  cabinet  maker,  conceived  the 
idea  of  establishing  what  he  called  Working  Men's  Associations  to 
accomplish  a  Radical  Reform  of  Parliament,  and  for  other  legal, 
constitutional,  and  praiseworthy  purposes.  The  movement  spread. 
Working  Men's  Associations  were  formed  in  various  parts  of  the 
country  ;  other  associated  bodies  also  came  to  the  front,  including 
the  revived  Birmingham  Political  Union,  and  the  Northern  Politi- 
cal Union,  the  headquarters  of  which  were  at  Newcastle-on-Tyne. 
It  was  determined  by  Lovett  and  his  associates  to  formulate  their 
demands  in  the  shape  of  a  Bill  to  be  enacted  by  Parliament. 

The  leading  principles  of  that  measure  were : 

1.  Universal  Suffrage. 

2.  Equal  Electoral  Districts. 

3.  Vote  by  Ballot. 

4.  Annual  Parliaments. 

5.  No  Property  Qualification. 

6.  Payment  of  Members. 

There  was  nothing  novel  in  these  demands  ;  they  had  been 
those  of  ultra-reformers  for  over  fifty  years.  In  the  main  they 
had  been  endorsed  by  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  Earl  Stanhope, 
Cartwright,  Burdett,  and  other  past  leaders.  The  only  novelty 
was  their  embodiment  in  a  Bill  which  quickly  received  the  name 
of  "The  People's  Charter."  Its  author  was  William  Lovett, 
though  Mr.  Roebuck  supplied  the  preamble;  and  that  gentleman 
with  one  or  two  more  assisted  to  lick  the  Bill  into  the  rigmarole 
shape,  which  seems  to  be  indispensable  in  manufacturing  Acts  of 
Parliament.  In  my  humble  room  a  sheet  copy  framed  and  glazed 
bangs  by  the  side  of  Magna  Charta. 

"THE  NORTHERN  STAR." 

Toward  the  end  of  1837  Feargus  O'Connor  founded  The 
Northern  Star  at  Leeds,  It  quickly  obtained  a  large  circulation. 
Subsequently  other  Chartist  newspapers  appeared,  but  none  of 
them  achieved  the  success  commanded  for  some  years  by  the 
A'orthern  Star.  Published  at  four-pence-halfpenny  a  copy,  a  the 
height  of  the  agitation  it  had  a  circulation  of  over  40,000  a  week. 
It  probably  bad  half  a  million  of  readers. 


THE  NATIONAL    CONVENTION. 

In  the  course  of  1838  great  meetings  were  held  in  all  the  prin- 
cipal cities  and  towns  at  which  the  Charter  and  a  National  Peti- 
tion were  adopted,  and  delegates  were  elected  to  what  was  com- 
monly termed  the  "  National  Convention" — the  actual  name  be- 
ing "The  General  Convention  of  the  Industrious  Classes."  One 
of  the  three  delegates  elected  at  Newcastle-on-Tyne  was  G.  ]. 
Harney,  destined  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  the  people  of  Tiver- 
ton nine  years  later.  He  was  the  youngest  member  of  the  Con- 
vention, being  not  quite  22  when  the  delegates  held  their  first 
meeting  on  the  4th  of  February,  1839. 

It  is  impossible  to  give  in  this  place  even  the  briefest  sketch 
of  the  proceedings  of  the  Convention — its  lofty  aspirations,  mis- 
takes, and  failure ;  nor  can  more  than  mention  be  made  of  the 
unhappy  affair  of  Frost  at  Newport,  the  wholesale  arrest  and  im- 
prisonment of  Chartist  leaders  and  speakers.  Suffice  it  to  say 
that  in  spite  of  manifold  errors,  and  the  repressive  effects  of  po- 
litical persecution,  Chartism  was  still  a  power  in  the  land  when 
the  writs  were  issued  for  the  General  Election  in  1847. 

CHARTIST  INTERVENTION  IN  ELECTIONS. 

The  intervention  of  the  Chartists  in  Elections  was  quite  legit- 
itimate,  and  politic  on  their  part.  When  their  candidates  were 
nominated,  they  had  the  opportunity  to  address  audiences  not  ob- 
tainable at  any  other  time  ;  and  lords,  esquires,  manufacturers, 
farmers,  and  shopkeepers  had  to  listen  to  expositions  of  the  "Six 
Points"  and  other  matters,  to  which  at  other  times  they  would 
have  turned  a  deaf  ear.  Chartist  candidates  had  appeared  r.t  some 
of  the  most  important  elections  in  1841  ;  and  a  greater  number 
came  forward  in  1847.  Mr.  Harney  had  shared  in  the  West  Rid- 
ing nominations  in  1841,  when  the  candidates  were  Lords  Morpeih 
and  Milton,  and  Sir  John  Stuart  Wortley  and  Mr.  Becket  Denni- 
son.  Harney  was  now  Editor  of  the  A'ort/iern  Star,  which  four 
years  previously  he  had  joined  as  sub  editor.  More  than  any 
Chartist  leader  he  had  given  attention  to  foreign  politics,  and  so 
it  came  to  pass  that  he  elected  (and  was  selected  by  the  Tiverton 
Chartists)  to  oppose  Lord  Palmerston.  Of  all  the  Chartist  can- 
didates in  1847  only  Feargus  O'Connor  was  elected  at  Nottingham 
as  the  colleague  of  Mr.  Walter  of  the  Times. 

"GETTING  at"  LORD  PALMERSTON. 

Mr.  Harney  knew  that  the  election  of  a  Chartist  at  Tiverton 
was  impossible;  but  that  was  not  his  object.  His  purpose  was  to 
"get  at"  Lord  Palmerston  ;  and  in  that  he  was  not  disappointed. 
Mr.  Harney  arrived  from  London  at  Tiverton,  July  27th,  1847, 
and  was  met  at  the  entrance  to  the  town  by  a  large  concourse  of 
his  friends  and  conducted  to  Fore  street ;  where  from  a  window 
of  the  house  of  Mr.  Norman,  draper,  he  delivered  his  introductory 
speech,  taking  for  his  text  Lord  Palmerston's  Address  to  the  Elec- 
tors. His  comments  elicited  much  enthusiasm.  On  the  evening 
of  July  28tb  Mr.  Harney  again  addressed  his  friends  at  the  same 
place,  speaking  on  the  topics  of  the  day  ;  and  with  much  accept- 
ance as  far  as  the  Chartist  element  in  the  town  was  concerned. 
A  third  meeting,  also  in  Fore  street,  followed  on  the  evening  of 
the  29th,  when  Mr.  Harney  was  supported  by  Mr.  Wilkinson,  an 
ex-Mayor  of  Exeter.  The  town  was  now  in  a  very  lively  state  ; 
some  thousands  were  at  the  meeting,  and  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
Chartists  rose  to  the  highest  pitch  when  Mr.  Harney  concluded  a 
lengthy  and  impassioned  appeal  with  the  somewhat  grandiloquent 
sentence — "To-night  we  sleep  upon  our  arms;  to-morrow  we 
march  to  battle  and  to  victory  !  " 

THE  COMBATANTS. 

Mr.  Harney  was  then  30  years  of  age,  and  though  he  had  ex- 
perienced some  warnings  of  the  loss  of  voice  which  ultimately, 
and  not  long  afterwards,  befel  him,  he  was  at  the  time  in  good 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


461 1 


"fettle"  for  the  fray — indeed  better  than  if  he  had  been  five  or 
ten  years  younger.  Lord  Palmerston  was  much  older,  being  his 
opponent's  senior  by  33  years.  All  the  advantages  were  with  his 
lordship  :  a  collegiate  training,  great  natural  talents  perfected  and 
adorned  by  culture,  early  entrance  into  public  life,  a  parliamen- 
tary experience  of  40  years,  and  an  official  experience  of  38  years. 
A  fluent,  if  not  an  eloquent,  speaker,  dowered  with  the  gifts  of 
witty  repartee  and  keen,  but  never  ill-natured,  sarcasm;  Palmer- 
ston's  varied  attainments  were  completed  by  an  air  of  easy  non- 
chalance and  winning  bonhomie'.  Mr.  Harney's  equipment  com- 
prised little  more  than  his  comparative  youth,  and  an  earnest,  if 
ill-regulated,  enthusiasm  ;  but  when  was  genuine  enthusiasm  ever 
well-regulated  ? 

THE   NOMINATION. 

Friday,  July  30th,  was  the  day  appointed  for  the  nomination. 
The  candidates  and  their  leading  supporters  assembled  at  the 
Guildhall,  where  the  Mayor,  Mr,  T.  W.  T.Tucker,  and  the  Town 
Clerk  went  through  some  preliminary  performances,  warning  all 
concerned  to  avoid  "bribery  and  corruption."  Then  the  proceed- 
ings were  adjourned  to  the  hustings  in  front  of  St.  Peter's  Church 
— an  edifice  for  its  size  and  beauty  almost  worthy  of  being  counted 
with  the  cathedrals.  The  two  former  members  took  their  stanc 
on  the  right  of  the  Mayor,  and  the  Chartist  on  the  left.  (A  joker 
might  have  said  "  the  extreme  left.")  After  a  short  address  from 
the  Mayor,  Mr.  Heathcoat  was  first  put  in  nomination  by  Dr. 
Kettle,  seconded  by  Mr.  Gemlen.  Lord  Palmerston  was  nomin- 
ated by  Mr.  Hole,  seconded  by  Mr.  W.  Anstey.  In  a  character- 
istic speech  Mr.  Rowcliffe  nominated  Mr.  George  Julian  Harney, 
seconded  by  Mr.  Burgess. 

Mr.  Heathcoat,  who  was  cordially  received,  delivered  a  brief 
address,  defending  Parliament  as  then  constituted  from  the  charge 
of  class-legislation,  and  enumerating  measures  of  reform  and 
amelioration  adopted  by  the  late  Parliament.  He  looked  to  the 
diffusion  of  education  as  the  best  means  of  paving  the  way  for  an 
extension  of  the  suffrage.  A  little  by-play  then  ensued.  Accord- 
ing to  wont  and  usage  Lord  Palmerston  should  then  have  spoken, 
but  his  lordship  said  as  he  understood  he  was  to  be  attacked  he 
would  waive  his  right  to  speak  now.  He  would  first  hear  the  at- 
tack and  then  make  his  speech  in  reply. 

Many  of  the  Chartist  candidate's  friends  urged  him  not  to 
forego  his  right  of  speaking  last,  he  having  been  proposed  last. 
But  Mr.  Harney,  addressing  the  Mayor,  said  he  wanted  only  fair 
play  ;  he  would  therefore  speak  first ;  his  lordship  might  then 
make  his  reply,  and  he  (Mr.  Harney)  would  then  make  a  second 
speech  restricted  to  the  topics  of  the  Charter  and  other  necessary 
reforms.  After  some  debate,  principally  engaged  in  by  a  few  of 
Lord  Palmerston's  supporters,  who  evidently  were  disinclined  to 
show  much  fairness  to  the  Chartist  candidate,  the  arrangement 
proposed,  as  above,  was  agreed  to. 

Harney's  speech  against  palmerston. 

Mr.  Julian  Harney,  who  was  received  with  loud  and  pro- 
longed cheering,  commenced  his  speech.  Now  comes  an  insur- 
mountable difficulty.  It  would  not  be  more  difficult  to  pour  the 
full  contents  of  a  gallon-jar  into  a  pint-pot,  than  it  would  be  to 
give  a  fair  idea  of  a  speech  of  two  hour's  duration  within  the  com- 
pass of  a  paragraph,  or  even  a  page  or  two.  It  must  suffice  to  say 
that  the  speaker — after  some  compliments  to  Mr.  Heathcoat  on 
his  speech,  and  complimentary  reference  to  one  Whig  philan- 
thropist, "the  late  Joseph  Strutt  of  Derby," — began  at  the  begin- 
ning with  Lord  Palmerston,  to-wit  the  noble  lord's  entrance  upon 
public  life  under  the  Perceval  administration.  Remarking  that 
in  the  course  of  his  political  career  Lord  Palmerston  had  been, 
like  St.  Paul,  "all  things  to  all  men,"  Mr.  Harney  proceeded  to 
stigmatise  the  Tory  chiefs — from  Perceval  to  Canning,  under 
whom  Lord  Palmerston  had  served,  describing  Canning  as  "a 


clever  jester,  or  brilliant  buffoon,  a  tax-eater  almost  the  whole  of 
his  life,  and  the  determined  enemy  of  all  reform."  He  then  pro- 
ceeded to  pay  his  respects  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  Lord  Mel- 
bourne, and  others — all  under  the  Chartist  ban.  Proceeding,  he 
commented  on  the  prosecution  suffered  by  the  Unstamped  Press, 
on  the  New  Poor  Law,  Ireland  and  the  Irish  famine,  &c.  In  the 
course  of  his  onslaught  on  the  then  Whig  administration  of  which 
Lord  Palmerston  was  a  member,  Mr.  Harney  referred  to  Lord 
Morpeth  as  "the  best  of  the  lot."  "I  remember,"  said  he,  "that 
six  years  ago  I  had  the  pleasure  of  opposing  the  noble  lord  at  the 
West  Riding  election,  and  I  remember  the  unaffected  courtesy  of 
that  nobleman's  manner  throughout  the  contest.  I  am  about  to 
ask  Lord  Palmerston  a  favor,  most  likely  the  only  favor  I  shall 
ever  ask  of  him.  It  is  this,  that  on  his  return  to  town  he  will  be 
good  enough  to  give  my  compliments  to  Lord  Morpeth."  Here 
Lord  Palmerston  took  off  his  hat  and  bowed  in  token  of  his  accep- 
tance of  the  mission  confided  to  him ;  the  people  meanwhile 
laughing  and  cheering.  After  comments  on  some  more  domestic 
matters,  Mr.  Harney  proceeded  to  tackle  the  foreign  policy  of  the 
Whigs  and  Lord  Palmerston's  conduct  as  Secretary  of  State  for 
foreign  affairs,  taking  a  wide  range  over  Holland  and  Belgium, 
Spain  and  Portugal,  China,  India,  and  Afghanistan.  He  was  es- 
pecially vehement  in  denunciation  of  the  policy  which,  he  alleged, 
was  responsible  for  the  utter  destruction  of  the  unfortunate  Brit- 
ish troops  in  their  terrible  and  memorable  retreat  from  Cabul. 
Strongly  condemning  the  conduct  of  the  British  Government  in 
India  and  Afghanistan,  he  yet  took  care  to  disassociate  himself 
from  the  Manchester  School  of  "Little  Englanders"  of  that  day 
(1847),  protesting  against  any  separation,  but  urging  that  colonies 
and  dependencies  should  be  held  to  the  mother  country  by  links 
of  justice,  and  then  the  world  might  see  the  whole  "floating  down 
the  stream  of  Time,  one  happy,  one  free,  one  triumphant  British 
nation."  Immense  cheering  greeted  the  sentiment.  Mr.  Harney 
then  turned  to  Turkey,  Egypt,  Poland,  and  the  recently  absorbed 
Republic  of  Cracow.  Other  topics  commented  on  cannot  be  re- 
peated here.  Mr.  Harney's  speech  occupied  over  two  hours  in 
the  delivery,  and  was  favorably,  indeed  enthusiastically,  received 
by  over  two-thirds  of  the  large  assemblage. 

THE  REPLY  AND  THE  RESULT. 

Lord  Palmerston  in  reply  spoke  for  upwards  of  an  hour. 
Some,  though  necessarily  a  very  imperfect,  idea  of  his  address  has 
been  furnished  in  the  preceding  article.  Mr.  Harney  then  de- 
livered a  second  speech  mainly  in  vindication  of  the  points  of  the 
People's  Charter.  The  show  of  hands  was  then  taken,  with  the 
result  announced  by  the  Mayor: — "I  declare  that  the  show  of 
hands  is  in  favor  of  John  Heathcoat,  Esq  ,  and  Julian  Harney, 
Esq  "  A  tumult  of  cheering  broke  from  the  great  majority  of  the 
crowd.  On  its  subsidence  Lord  Palmerston  demanded  a  poll. 
Mr,  Harney  then  read  a  written  protest  against  any  poll  being 
taken,  affirming  that  Mr.  Heathcoat  and  himself  had  been  right- 
fully elected  in  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the  constitution  and 
the  ancient  usage  of  this  country.  Mr.  Harney  then  moved  a  vote 
of  thanks  to  the  Mayor,  which  was  seconded  by  Lord  Palmerston, 
and  adopted  by  acclamation.  The  Mayor  acknowledged  the  com- 
pliment, and  the  proceedings,  which  had  continued  seven  hours, 
terminated.  The  polling  took  place  next  day  with  the  result  which 
has  been  stated.  The  chairing  of  the  members  followed,  and 
Lord  Palmerston  returned  to  London  on  the  Saturday  evening. 
Mr.  Harney  remained  two  days  longer,  and  on  Monday  evening 
addressed  a  large  meeting  on  the  ground  at  the  back  of  the  White 
Ball  Inn.  On  Tuesday,  August  2nd,  1847,  he  left  Tiverton  for 
London, 

MR.  Harney's  present  views. 

Mr,  Harney  has  requested  publication  of  the  following  over 
his  signature : — 


4612 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


After  47  years  I  cannot  regret  the  part  I  played  on  that  30th 
of  Jnly.  On  the  contrary  that  is  one  remembered  incident  of  my 
Chartist  career  on  which  I  can  look  back  with  unalloyed  satisfac- 
tion. Of  course  my  speech — from  beginning  to  end— was  not  all 
words  of  wisdom  ;  but  in  that  respect  certainly  no  worse  than 
other  election  speeches.  My  views  on  most  of  the  foreign  topics 
discussed  are  much  now  as  they  were  then.  Called  upon  (were 
that  possible,  but  it  is  not)  to  undertake  a  like  part  again,  some 
phrases  and  forms  of  expression  used  47  years  ago,  I  would  not 
care  to  repeat  now.  I  cannot  find  any  fault  with  Lord  Palmer- 
ston's  bearing  on  that  July  day.  With  all  his  natural  tendency  to 
caustic  criticism,  he  was  courteous  and  fair;  and  so,  with  but  a 
few  exceptions,  were  his  supporters  on  the  hustings.  Mr.  Heath- 
coat's  bearing  was  not  less  gentlemanly.  The  Mayor  presided 
with  perfect  impartiality.  The  conduct  of  the  crowd  of  Electors 
and  Non-electors  was  admirable.  No  rowdyism,  no  brutalities  of 
Nottingham  "lambs,"  or  Westminster  "roughs."  Every  speaker 
was  accorded  a  fair  hearing.  For  my  part  I  regret  the  suppres- 
sion of  the  old-time  constitutional  procedure  of  open  nominations. 
Now  a  Parliamentary  Election  is  less  interesting  than  that  of  a 
Parish  Beadle.  Lord  Palmerston  was  an  aristocrat ;  no  doubt  about 
that.  But  he  was  genial,  frank,  and  generous.  Moreover  he  ab- 
horred cant  in  every  form.  I  had  never  seen  Lord  Palmerston 
before  I  went  to  Tiverton,  having  never  been  in  the  gallery  of 
"the  House,"  for  which  I  had  but  little  respect  and  have  still  less 
to-day.  In  the  Tiverton  Guildhall  I  sat  next  to,  without  knowing, 
his  lordship,  and  he  engaged  me  in  a  momentary  conversation,  I 
only  finding  out  who  had  been  my  interlocutor  when  we  reached 
the  hustings.  After  the  Election  I  never  met  or  saw  Lord  Palmer- 
ston again.  In  1863  I  went  to  the  States.  Coming  over  to  Eng- 
land in  1878,  I  was  told  the  following  incident  of  Lord  Palmer- 
ston, then  dead  some  13  years.  It  happened  that  some  of  the 
working  class  Radicals  of  the  time  were  in  the  lobby  of  "the 
House"  with  the  view  of  soliciting  subscriptions  from  Liberal 
members  for  some  unfortunate  of  the  "advanced"  corps,  stricken 
down  by  disease,  and  suffering  from  that  other  and  too  common 
ill — impecuniosity  ;  when  the  Premier  was  seen  approaching.  Said 
one  of  the  party — "Here  comes  Pam,  let  us  try  him."  The  idea 
was  pooh-pooh'd,  but  it  was  carried  out  by  the  suggestor.  Lord 
Palmerston  patiently  listened  to  the  story  and  responded  with  his 
usual  kindly  liberality,  accompanying  the  gift  by  some  pleasantry 
as  was  his  wont.  He  had  faced  toward  the  chamber  of  the  Com- 
mons, when  suddenly  turning  back,  he  enquired,  "Can  you  tell 
me  what  has  become  of  an  old  Chartist  acquaintance  of  mine, 
Mr.  George  Julian  Harney  ?"  The  person  addressed  could  not 
tell,  but  an  older  man  of  the  group  said  he  believed  Julian  Harney 
was  in  America.  Lord  Palmerston  rejoined,  "Well,  I  wish  him 
good  fortune  :  he  gave  me  a  dressing  down  at  Tiverton  some  years 
ago,  and  I  have  not  heard  of  him  since;  but  I  hope  he  is  doing 
well." 

I  tell  the  tale  as  it  was  told  to  me.  That  must  have  been 
within  a  year  or  two  of  Lord  Palmerston's  death,  and  though  a 
trifling  incident,  attests  the  geniality  of  his  character. 

George  Julian  Harney. 

Richmond-on-Thames,  1894. 


CORRESPONDENCE. 

"HEREDITY  AND  THE  A  PRIORI. " 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Open  Court  : 

In  regard  to  your  comments  upon  my  "Evolution  and  Ideal- 
ism" article  of  the  20th  of  June,  I  have  no  wish  to  attempt  a  reply 
within  the  limits  of  a  letter.  But  perhaps  you  will  permit  me  to  say 
a  few  words  upon  the  relationship  of  the  views  you  have  expressed 


to  those  of  a  better  philosopher  than  I  can  ever  hope  to  be, — 
George  Henry  Lewes,  to-wit. 

You  write  (in  the  note  to  your  "Heredity  and  the  A  Priori  " 
column)  that  such  purely  formal  ideas  ^s  units  of  counting  and 
geometrical  space,  "far  from  being  latent  in  the  mind  and  prior 
to  experience,  have  been  derived  from  experience  and  abstrac- 
tion." Well,  this  is  what  Lewes,  in  the  same  connexion,  says: 
"  The  objects  of  mathematical  study  are  reals,  .  .  .  although  they 
are  abstractions.  .  .  .  They  are  intelligibles  of  sensibles :  abstrac- 
tions which  have  their  concretes  in  real  objects." 

And  again:  "Our  purpose  will  be  to  reverse  Kant's  proce- 
dure, and  to  show  that  the  mathematical  judgments  are  absolutely 
and  entirely  dependent  on  experience,  and  are  limited  to  the  range 
of  experience,  sensible  and  extra-sensible." 

I  am  pleased  to  be  able  to  point  out  an  agreement  between 
Lewes  and  yourself,  where  you  are  inclined  to  insist  upon  a  dif- 
ference. 

The  knowledge  of  Lewes's  works  which  enables  me  to  do  this 
may  possibly  serve  to  suggest  that  you  do  me  somewhat  less  than 
justice  in  imagining  that  I  am  ignorant  of  Kant's  confined,  not  to 
say  confused,  use  of  the  term  "experience."  Probably  no  one 
has  pointed  out  more  clearly  and  cogently  than  Lewes,  how  be- 
wildered and  bewildering  Kant's  usage  of  "  experience"  is.  It  is 
indeed  because  of  Kant's  avoidable  blundering  in  terminology,  as 
well  as  because  of  his  unavoidable  ignorance  of  the  doctrine  of 
organic  evolution,  that  so  many  thinkers  of  to-day  find  Spencer 
and  Lewes,  in  certain  respects,  more  surefooted  and  consistent  as 
philosophic  guides  than  even  the  sage  of  Konigsberg  himself. 

Ellis  Thurtell. 


RETRIBUTION. 


BY  VIROE, 

Across  their  lives  men  heedless  go, 
Like  thieves  o'er  freshly  fallen  snow. 
Who  think, — if  e'er  they  think  at  all, — 
That  through  the  night  much  more  will  fall 
To  cover  up  their  footprints  ;  so 
With  booty  laden  home  they  go. 

But  far  away  from  sound  or  sight 
The  Power  to  whom  the  dark  is  light 
Bids  Nature  send  detectives  forth, — 
The  swift,  cold  bloodhounds  of  the  North, 
To  freeze  their  footprints  in  the  snow 
And  tell  the  world  which  way  they  go. 


BOOK  REVIEWS. 

La  Recherche  de  l'Unite.  Deuxieme  edition.  By  E.  de  Roherty. 
"  Bibliotheque  de  Philosophie  contemporaine. "  Paris: 
Felix  Alcan,  editeur.      1894. 

AuGUSTE  CoMTE  ET  HERBERT  SPENCER  ;  Contribution   a  I'histoire 
des  id^es  philosophiques  au  XIX.  siecle.    Deuxieme  edition. 
By  E.  de  Roberty.      "  Bibliotheque  de  Philosophie  contem- 
poraine."    Paris:  F^lix  Alcan,  Editeur.      1895. 
M.  de  Roberty  is  a  philosophical  writer  of  no  mean  standing. 
He  has  previously  published  quite  a  series  of  similar  contributions 
on   sociology,  ancient  and   modern   philosophy,  the  unknowable, 
agnosticism,  etc.,  which  indicate  the  range  of  his   philosophical 
powers.    In  the  first  of  these  two  later  works  he  treats  of  negative 
concepts  in  monistic  theories,  the  unity  of  science,  Spencer's  uni- 
versal postulate  or  test  of  truth,  the  inconceivability  of   the  nega- 
tion, the  concepts  of  quantity,  relativity,  motion,  transcendental- 
ism, etc.     He  is   a   thorough-going   monist,    or  at   least,  believes 
himself  to  be  such,  and  lays  down  the  three  following  definitions  : 


THE    OF»EISr    COURT. 


4613 


1 .  Rational  unity  is  the  product  of  logical  thought  aided  and 
controlled  by  direct  observation  or  experience,  i.  e.  by  "intuition,"  or 
"subjective  research." 

2.  Scientific  unity  is  the  product  of  logical  thought  aided  and 
controlled  by  indirect  observation  or  experience  (objective  research). 

3.  Transcendental  unity  is  the  product  of  logical  thought  not 
controlled,  or  insufficiently  controlled,  by  observation  and  experi- 
ence, either  direct  or  indirect. 

He  pronounces  himself  in  the  main  in  favor  of  the  second  of 
these,  or  scientific  monism,  and  considers  the  relations  of  body 
and  mind,  or  mind  and  matter.  He  roundly,  and,  as  we  think, 
justly  rebukes  the  tendency  of  so  many  writers  and  thinkers  of 
eminence  to  insist  that  after  we  have  learned  all  that  is  known  or 
ever  can  be  known  of  these  relations  the  two  fields  are  still  as  far 
apart  as  ever.  This  form  of  dualism  which  goes  beyond  the  4'«<'- 
ramtts  and  postulates  the  ignorabimus  is  unworthy  of  the  name  of 
philosophy.  His  own  position  is  summed  up  in  the  following 
words  : 

"  We  could  fill  pages  and  pages  in  explaining  what  we  under- 
stand by  true  monism.  We  shall  do  this  in  a  few  words.  All 
general  distinction  between  mind  and  matter  strikes  us  as  pure 
logical  nonsense." 

The  later  and  slightly  smaller  work  on  Comte  and  Spencer 
was,  says  M.  de  Roberty,  originally  intended  to  be  embodied  in 
the  other,  but  was  finally  made  a  separate  contribution.  It  deals 
entirely  with  what  he  calls  their  monism.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
the  word  monism  (perhaps  first  used  by  Wolff,  but  long  lost  sight 
of  till  revived  by  Haeckel  and  Hartmann)  occurs  once  in  the  writ- 
ings of  either  of  those  authors.  I  remember  recently  reading  a 
book  on  Hegel  in  which  occurred  the  statement  that  he  strongly 
condemned  agnosticism  !  a  word  of  Huxleyan  mintage.  Of  this 
Roberty 's  treatise  on  the  monism  of  Comte  and  Spencer  naturally 
reminded  me.  Of  course  it  may  be  said  that  the  principles  of  ag- 
nosticism and  monism  existed  long  before  their  names,  yet  this 
use  of  a  modern  terminology  in  discussing  older  writers  and  phi- 
losophies in  which  a  different  terminology  is  employed  verges  too 
close  upon  anachronism  to  be  approved. 

Roberty,  like  too  many  other  monists,  makes  monism  a  sort 
of  creed,  and  speaks  of  dualism,  or  anything  that  is  opposed  to 
monism  as  essentially  heterodox  and  unsound.  That  is,  he  makes 
his  monism,  instead  of  truth  the  norm,  and  seems  to  think  the 
falsity  of  a  doctrine  sufficiently  shown  if  it  is  proved  to  stand  op- 
posed to  monism.  In  view  of  the  fact  that  those  who  call  them- 
selves monists  do  not  all  agree  as  to  what  monism  is,  and  have 
generally  failed  to  give  the  rest  of  the  world  a  definite  idea  of  it, 
it  would  seem  to  be  too  early  to  set  it  up  as  the  embodiment  of  all 
truth. 

Barring  this  slight  tendency  to  monistic  partisanship,  these 
little  books  of  M.  Roberty  are  very  pleasant  reading.  The  au- 
thor's style  is  spicy  and  tends  to  be  flowery,  perhaps  a  little  too 
much  so  for  the  character  of  his  topics,  but  on  the  other  hand  it 
prevents  them  from  becoming  heavy  and  uninteresting.  In  his 
treatment  of  Comte  he  has  proved  one  of  the  few  Frenchmen  who 
adequately  appreciate  the  labors  of  their  great  countryman.  He 
classes  him  with  Socrates,  Aristotle,  Bacon,  Descartes,  Locke, 
Hume,  and  Kant,  thinkers  whose  monism  is  accompanied  by  a 
mild  form  of  agnosticism,  in  which  latter  doctrine  he  always  scents 
some  trace  of  the  dreadful  dualism.  He  calls  him  "the  least 
sceptical,  the  least  delicate,  the  least  refined,  but  also  the  least 
calculating,  the  most  sincere,  the  most  naive  of  philosophers." 
There  certainly  ought  to  be  a  common  bond  between  positivism 
and  monism.  If  the  latter  is  nothing  but  the  unintelligible  dogma 
that  mind  and  matter  are  the  same  thing,  of  course  Comte  has 
nothing  to  say  about  it.  but  if  it  means  the  great  principle  of  the 
uniformity  and  invariability  of  nature's  laws,  this  is  the  corner- 
stone itself  of  the  positive  philosophy,  as  it  is  of  all  science.  True 


monism  ought  to  be  simply  the  highest  generalisation  of  known 
facts  and  phenomena.  It  ought  to  mean  the  great  law  which  em- 
braces all  other  laws.  Now  while  Comte  discarded  as  metaphys- 
ical, and  therefore  sterile,  the  vain  search  after  causes  he  made  the 
most  thorough  and  successful  search  for  laws  that  has  been  un- 
dertaken. On  page  495  of  Vol.  I.  of  the  third  edition  (1869)  of 
the  Philosophie  Positive  may  be  found  an  equation  which,  he  says, 
may  be  regarded  as  embracing  all  the  equations  necessary  for  the 
complete  determination  of  the  various  circumstances  relative  to 
the  movement  of  any  system  of  bodies  acted  upon  by  any  forces 
whatever.  It  was  in  the  same  spirit  that  he  attacked  every  other 
science,  and  although  he  admitted  that  the  applicability  of  mathe- 
matics to  the  several  sciences  of  the  hierarchy  diminishes  as  their 
complexity  increases,  still  it  was  his  aim  in  each  case  to  reach  an 
expression  of  the  highest  law  that  could  be  formulated.  M.  de 
Roberty  has  not  wholly  ignored  this  great  service  which  Comte 
has  rendeied  to  science,  and  he  justly  gives  him  credit  for  having 
established  a  new  science,  that  of  sociology,  upon  the  broad  prin- 
ciples of  historical  development  and  human  motive.  He  also  rec- 
ognises the  importance  of  his  law  of  the  three  stages  of  thought, 
of  his  classification  of  the  sciences,  and  of  his  determination  of  the 
principal  methods  of  reasoning  in  general. 

To  Herbert  Spencer's  monism  he  gives  less  space,  and  ap- 
parently somewhat  less  countenance.  He  classes  Spencer  along 
with  Democritus,  Bruno,  Spinoza,  Leibnitz,  Fichte,  Hegel,  and 
Schopenhauer,  "  spirits  bold  enough  to  undertake  the  task  of  cor 
reefing  agnosticism  by  monism,  an  excess  of  prudence  by  an  ex- 
cess of  temerity."  It  is  hard  to  say  which  would  be  the  more  in- 
dignant, Schopenhauer  at  being  thus  classed  with  Hegel,  or  Spen- 
cer at  being  called  Comte's  " siiccesseur  en  ligne  directe."  Yet,  as 
a  matter  of  fact  the  X-AiKex  faux  pas  is  not  as  wide  of  the  mark  as 
Mr.  Spencer's  repeated  and  vehement  disclaimers  might  lead  some 
to  suppose.  The  most  that  can  be  said  is  that  their  two  systems, 
beginning  and  ending  at  the  same  points  and  passing  through  the 
same  intermediate  phases  in  the  same  order,  were  doubtless  in  the 
main  elaborated  independently  of  each  other,  although  Comte's 
was  completed  and  published  (1842)  at  least  ten  years  before 
Spencer's  was  begun. 

Spencer's  great  sin  is  his  "  agnosticism."  which  somehow  in 
our  author's  eyes  constitutes  a  form  of  dualism,  difficult  as  it  may 
seem  to  others  that  no  belief  at  all  can  be  converted  into  two  be- 
liefs. Like  most  other  attempts  to  analyse  the  synthetic  philoso- 
phy, this  one  gets  entangled  in  the  meshes  of  the  unknowable  and 
scarcely  gets  beyond  the  first  third  of  the  first  volume  of  the  ten 
which  make  up  this  vast  system.  The  most  that  lies  outside  of 
this  relates  to  his  Principles  of  Psychology,  which,  as  has  often  been 
pointed  out,  was  written  out  of  its  natural  order,  before  the  Biol- 
ogy, and  therefore  neither  properly  affiliated  upon  that  nor  made 
the  basis  of  Sociology,  though  placed  between  these  two  in  the 
system.     It  is  the  most  metaphysical  of  Mr.  Spencer's  works. 

In  discussing  the  monism  of  Spencer  M.  de  Roberty  considers 
the  following  five  essential  points  :  (i)  An  ultimate  criterion  of  all 
experimental  truth.  (2)  Classification  of  the  facts  of  consciousness 
subjectively  (internal  states),  and  objectively  (external  states.)  (3) 
Hypothesis  of  a  reality  outside  of  consciousness.  (4)  The  two  hy- 
potheses derived  from  the  postulate  of  the  unknowable  or  "trans- 
conscient."  (5)  Classification  of  the  facts  of  consciousness  as  in 
time  and  space.  This  discussion  is  highly  metaphysical  and  needs 
to  be  closely  followed  to  be  understood. 

Less  space  is  given  to  the  great  unitary  law  of  evolution  with 
which  Mr.  Spencer's  name  is  more  closely  connected  than  that  of 
any  other  philosopher.  He  asks  the  question  :  "Is  the  unity  real- 
ised by  mechanics  and  physics  of  the  same  nature  as  logical  unity  ?  " 
and  answers  it  by  saying  that  "  the  unity  of  the  inorganic  world 
presents  itself  in  its  turn  (in  the  form  of  knou'ledge)  as  an  aspect  of 
logical  unity."     Our  author  deserves  special  credit  for  perceiving 


0} 


4614 


THE     OPEN     COURX. 


and  pointing  out  that  Spencer's  evolution  consists  in  fact  of  two 
different  processes,  one  for  the  inorganic  and  another  for  the  or- 
ganic world.  I  called  attention  to  this  eighteen  years  ago, ^  but, 
so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  learn,  no  other  author  before  Roberty 
has  treated  it .  Instead  of  dismissing  it  as  a  "  dualism  "  I  attempted 
to  reconcile  it  with  the  law  of  unity,  and,  as  I  still  think,  success- 
fully, although  it  certainly  does  require  that  all  evolution  be  ex- 
plained as  the  result  of  the  interaction  of  the  two  decidedly  dualis- 
tic  principles  of  gravitation  and  radiation. 

Enough  has  perhaps  been  said  to  indicate  the  general  scope 
of  these  works  as  well  as  the  character  of  M.  Roberty 's  writings 
as  a  whole.  One  cannot  too  strongly  commend  the  manner  in 
which  this  and  other  publishing  houses  in  Paris,  and  to  a  less  ex' 
tent  in  other  cities  of  the  Continent,  bring  out  works  of  this  class 
It  is  inexpensive  and  highly  satisfactory  both  to  authors  and  read 
ers.  We  Americans  might  well  imitate  it  and  thus  make  it  possi 
ble  to  issue  a  great  many  excellent  books  that  are  never  even  writ, 
ten.  The  brochure  style  is  good  enough  for  this  class  of  solid 
reading,  and  there  is  no  excuse  for  the  wretched  fine  type  and 
thin  sleazy  smeared  paper  that  are  used  in  this  country  for  the  so. 
called  "cheap  editions"  of  our  books.  Lester  F.  Ward. 


An  interesting  collection  of  politico-economical  debates  has 
recently  come  to  us  from  England  in  the  shape  of  the  second  vol- 
ume of  Traiisaflions  of  the  lYatioiuil  Liberal  Club,  Political  Econ- 
omy Circle,  edited  by  J.  H.  Levy  (London:  P.  S.  King  &  Son). 
The  discussions  cover  a  vast  variety  of  topics,  such  as  the  eco- 
nomic effects  of  an  eight-hour  day  for  coal  miners,  pensions  for 
the  aged,  agricultural  distress  and  its  remedies,  the  land  question, 
the  monetary  situation,  etc.  The  debates  have  all  the  zest  and 
spirit  of  free  parliamentary  discussion,  and  in  most  cases  are  the 
utterances  of  prominently  known  men.  The  lack  of  a  table  of 
contents  and  index  is  partly  made  up  by  bold-faced  marginal  titles. 
The  same  publishers  and  editor  also  issue  A  Symposium  on  Value, 
a  little  brochure  of  fifty-eight  pages,  consisting  of  papers  by  Mr. 
Ernest  Belfort  Bax  and  others  on  the  conception  of  economic 
value.  '"     ■'^■'^  '  '^''" '"  ." 

The  Freidenker  Publishing  Co.  of  Milwaukee  have  just  pub- 
lished a  little  German  pamphlet  by  Dr.  Adolf  Brodbeck,  Die  Exi- 
stenz  Gottes,  being  a  commentary  upon  an  address  delivered  by 
the  Very  Rev.  Augustin  F.  Hewitt  at  the  Chicago  World's  Fair  on 
the  "Being  of  God."  The  Rev.  Mr.  Hewitt's  address  was  a  dem- 
onstration of  the  existence  of  God  from  the  Roman  Catholic  point 
of  view.  Dr.  Brodbeck  gives  a  synopsis  of  the  speaker's  argu- 
ments, and  answers  each  critically.  The  author  would  not  reject 
the  term  "  God,"  because  of  the  deep  and  just  problems  which  it 
contains.  His  sole  effort  is  to  clarify  the  idea.  The  pamphlet  is 
a  good  one  and  the  argument  well  conducted. 


Fully  as  significant  as  the  new  reaction  against  the  scientific 
method  are  the  able  replies  which  that  movement  has  called  forth. 
No  doubt  the  attack  will  have  little  other  effect  than  the  salutary 
repair  of  the  defences  of  science.  Two  noteworthy  rejoinders  to 
M.  Brunetitre's  Bankruptcy  of  Science  reach  us  from  distant  lands: 
one  from  Prof.  Enrico  Morselli  of  Italy,  entitled  La  preteso  'Banca- 
rotta  delta  scienza '  (Palermo  :  Remo  Sandro) ;  and  one  from  Hun- 
gary by  Sigmund  Bodnar,  translated  into  German  under  the  title 
Ueber  den  Bankerott  der  Wissenschaften.  Offener  Brief  an  Eerdi 
nand  Brimcticre  (Budapest :  Eggenberger). 


The  Nachrichten  von  der  I\'oniglichen   Gesellscliafi  der  Wissen- 
schaften  zu    Gottingen,    Philologico-historical    Department,    1895, 

1 '■  Cosmic  and  Organic  Evolution."  Popular  Science  Monthly,  Vol.  XI., 
New  York,  October,  1877,  pp.  672-682-  See  also.  Dynamic  Sociology.  New  York, 
1883,  Vol.  I.,  p.  247  at  seqq. 


No.  2,  contains  an  article  of  considerable  interest  to  biblical  schol- 
ars, on  The  A'eturn  of  the  j/e-ws  from  the  Babylonian  Exile,  by  J. 
Wellhausen. 


NOTES. 

It  is  with  deep  regret  and  sorrow  that  we  receive  the  sad  news 
of  Dr.  Robert  Lewins's  decease.  He  was  an  unusually  deep  thinker, 
thoroughly  versed  in  all  schools  of  philosophy,  and  representing  a 
school  of  his  own  which  he  called  hylo-idealism,  or  solipsism.  He 
was  radical  in  his  opinions,  even  to  extremes,  and  seemed  to  take 
delight  in  the  denunciation  of  theism  in  any  form.  He  was  a  se- 
vere adversary  of  religion  and  repudiated  its  very  name.  Never- 
theless, in  his  personal  friendship,  as  well  as  in  his  philosophical 
convictions  there  was  a  deeply  religious  love  of  truth,  and  the  reli- 
gious influences  of  his  early  youth  could  easily  be  traced  in  his  emo- 
tional life.  He  was  by  birth  and  blood  a  Scotchman,  by  education 
a  German,  and  a  pupil  of  the  Moravian  Brotherhood  at  Neuwied 
on  the  Rhine.  He  loved  to  speak  German,  and  introduced  more 
German,  Greek,  and  other  foreign  expressions  into  his  articles  than 
any  other  English  author.  He  studied  at  the  Universities  of 
Heidelberg,  Vienna,  Paris,  and  Edinburgh.  In  his  philosophy  he 
appears  to  have  been  mainly  influenced  by  Schopenhauer,  and 
perhaps  also  by  Fichte.  He  found  enthusiastic  admirers  and  ex- 
pounders of  his  theory  in  Miss  Naden  and  Mr.  McCrie.  Articles 
and  letters  from  Dr  Robert  Lewins's  pen  appeared  from  time  to 
time  in  both  The  Ahuiist  and  T/ie  Open  Court.  In  spite  of  a  strong 
agreement  as  to  the  monistic  principle  in  philosophy,  we  could 
not  accept  his  identification  of  the  universe  with  self,  and  have  on 
various  occasions  presented  the  reasons  for  our  disagreement. 
Perhaps  the  tersest  explanation  of  his  theory  is  contained  in  his 
article  "The  Unity  of  Thought  and  Thing"  (Vol.  IV.,  No.  2,  of 
The  Monist).  We  shall  publish  a  few  posthumous  papers  of  his 
in  subsequent  numbers. — p.  c. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET, 

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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  417. 

IN   MEMORIAM.— ROBERT   LEWINS,  M.  D.      George 

M.  McCrie 4607 

THE  LATER  PROPHETS.     Prof    C.   H.  Cornill 4608 

LORD    PALMERSTONS    BOROUGH.       Mr.     Harney's 

Reminiscences 4609 

CORRESPONDENCE. 

"  Heredity  and  the  A  Priori."     Ellis  Thurtell 4612 

POETRY. 

Retribution.     Viroe 4612 

BOOK  REVIEWS 4612 

NOTES 4614 


^1 
The  Open  Court. 


A.  "ViTEEKLY  JOUENAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  418.     (Vol.  IX.— 35.) 


CHICAGO,   AUGUST  29,  1895. 


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IN  MEMORIAM.-H.  R.  H.  CHOW  FA  MAHA  VAJI  = 
RUNHIS,  CROWN  PRINCE  OF  SIAM. 

His  Majest}-,  the  King  of  Siam,  the  same  noble 
monarch  who  shows  so  much  zeal  for  the  religion  of 
Buddha  that  he  presented  to  several  of  our  best  known 
university  libraries  an  edition  de  luxe  of  the  stately 
collection  of  the  sacred  books  of  Buddhism,  and  who, 
at  the  same  time,  gave  a  large  donation  to  Prof.  Max 
Miiller  for  the  continuation  and  completion  of  the 
Sacred  Bcyoks  of  the  East,  has  been  visited  of  late  by  a 
grievous  bereavement.  A  few  months  ago  he  lost  his 
eldest  son  and  heir  to  the  throne,  H.  R.  H.  Chow  Fa 
Maha  Vajirunhis.  We  find  in  the  Joinual  of  the  Maha- 
Bodhi  Society  the  report  of  the  memorial  service  held 
in  honor  of  the  departed  prince,  a  young  man  distin- 
guished by  rare  talents  and  a  sterling  character. 

We  here  reproduce  in  an  English  translation  the 
brief  sermon  which  was  delivered  by  the  Buddhist 
highpriest  of  the  kingdom  in  the  throne-room  of  the 
Tusita  Maha  Prasad,  on  Friday,  the  igth  of  April, 
1895:1 

"Blessings  on  the  august  pure  and  just  person  of 
His  Majesty  the  King  !  May  the  realm  increase  in 
prosperity,  may  His  Person  enjoy  happiness  ! 

"  I  approach  Your  Majesty's  person  on  this  solemn 
da}'  to  offer  in  accordance  with  our  sacred  creed  con- 
solation in  remembrance  of  the  death  of  His  Royal 
Highness  Chow  Fa  Maha  Vajirunhis,  the  late  Crown 
Prince  of  Siam.  May  what  I  state  redound  to  the 
glory  and  be  in  commemoration  of  the  august  Prince, 
now  departed  ;  may  I  bring  consolation  to  the  person 
of  the  King  in  this  assembly  of  the  Royal  House,  of 
the  Representatives  of  Foreign  Nations,  of  Nobles 
and  Officials. 

"A  great  grief  has  befallen  us  all :  His  Royal  High- 
ness Chow  Fa  Maha  Vajirunhis,  Crown  Prince  of 
Siam,  has  departed  this  life.  His  illness  would  not 
yield  to  the  efforts  of  physicians  ;  before  we  could 
grasp  the  fact,  he  was  taken  from  us.  Truly  a  real 
cause  for  grief  for  all  of  us.  From  the  time  the  sacred 
water  rite  was  performed  on  His  Hoyal  Highness, 
when  almost  a  child,  to  confirm  him  in  the  exalted  po- 
sition which  he  should  occupy,  the  Prince  showed  as- 
siduity in   acquiring  such  wisdom  and  knowledge  as 

1  Ct.  the  Journal  of  the  Malta-Bodhi  Society,  Vol.  VI.,  No.  2  (June  1S95). 


was  becoming  to  the  position  which  his  august  father, 
His  Majesty  the  King,  had  prepared  for  him.  Spiritual 
and  temporal  matters  he  made  his  own  ;  he  became 
acquainted  with  the  tenets  of  our  sacred  religion  ;  he 
acquired  knowledge  in  Government  work  ;  he  studied 
the  science  of  his  own  and  foreign  countries,  orna- 
ments worthy  of  an  e.xalted  personage  !  He  showed 
modesty  towards  those  of  His  Royal  family  who  were 
his  elders,  he  showed  condescension  to  his  spiritual 
teachers,  and  whilst  himself  firmly  established  in  and 
propagating  the  faith  of  the  Buddha,  he  had  due  rev- 
erence for  those  who  held  different  tenets. 

"  And  now,  the  victim  of  a  treacherous  illness,  he 
is  taken  from  us  in  the  flower  of  his  youth,  and  well 
may  we  recall  the  word  of  our  Great  Teacher,  when 
He  expounded  the  law  of  separation  ;  for  changes  and 
misfortune  have  come  to  us  at  this  time.  And  thus  He 
spoke  the  '  stanzas  on  death  '  so  that  our  sorrow  might 
be  alleviated,  and  this  truth  will  last  unto  the  end  of 
time. 

' '  In  the  life  of  sentient  beings  there  is  no  certainty. 
We  know  not  when  or  how  life  will  be  extinguished  ; 
no  one  is  able  to  guarantee  existence  ;  short  is  our  life 
and  swiftly  are  we  extinguished,  and  our  sorrow  never 
ceases.  As  the  potter's  work  will  be  broken,  so  our 
life  will  come  to  an  end,  and  whether  children,  young 
or  old,  whether  foolish  or  wise,  all  fall  under  the  sway 
of  death.  We  may  speak  of  days,  months,  and  years  ; 
but  we  cannot  say  when  our  existence  will  come  to  an 
end.  No  one  is  spared,  whether  of  kingly  origin  or  a 
Brahmana,  whether  a  Vaisya  or  a  Sudra,  whether  of 
the  highest  caste  or  a  slave  ;  all  fall  under  the  sway 
of  death.  When  we  depart  from  one  existence  to  an- 
other, the  parents  cannot  protect  their  child,  nor  will 
the  love  of  the  kinsman  avail  aught  to  his  kin  ;  the 
lamentations  and  grief  over  the  departed  do  not  benefit 
us,  nor  him.  Death  is  the  natural  consequence  of  ex- 
istence, and  our  life  is  like  that  of  the  cow  which  the 
Brahmana  leads  to  the  altar  for  sacrifice.  Knowing 
this,  what  will  lamenting  over  the  departed  avail  us. 
The  dead  are  not  benefited  by  our  grief.  The  dead 
have  no  consciousness  of  our  acts,  and  they  have  pre- 
pared their  destiny  by  their  own  deeds.  Ever}'thing 
is  subject  to  change,  although  we  may  think  it  perma- 
nent ;  this  is  the  law  of  the  Universe. 


4616 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


"Thus  having  listened  to  the  words  of  the  Fully 
Enlightened  One,  we  know  that  the  dead  cannot  come 
to  life  again  ;  therefore  let  us  cease  lamenting  and 
turn  our  attention  to  the  living,  so  that  the  country 
may  prosper  ;  work  for  the  living  !  For  such  is  the 
work  of  the  living,  when  death  has  not  yet  reached 
them. 

' '  We  are  born  and  die,  this  is  the  way  of  the  world  ; 
but  the  good  works  we  do  in  this  world,  they  will  bear 
fruit  in  future,  they  will  last ! 

"And  now  brethren  recite  ye  the  stanzas  on  death 
which  our  Blessed  Lord  has  spoken  ;  may  they  bring 
consolation  to  the  King's  Majesty,  may  those  assem- 
bled here  find  comfort  in  them. 

"Thus  let  it  be." 


JONAH. 

BY  PROF.    C.   H.  CORNILL. 

An  involuntary  smile  passes  over  one's  features  at 
the  mention  of  the  name  of  Jonah.  For  the  popular 
conception  sees  nothing  in  this  Book  but  a  silly  tale, 
exciting  us  to  derision.  When  shallow  humor  prompts 
people  to  hold  the  Old  Testament  up  to  ridicule  Ba- 
laam's ass  and  Jonah's  whale  infallibly  take  prece- 
dence. 

I  have  read  the  Book  of  Jonah  at  least  a  hundred 
times,  and  I  will  publicly  avow,  for  I  am  not  ashamed 
of  my  weakness,  that  I  cannot  even  now  take  up  this 
marvellous  book,  nay,  nor  even  speak  of  it,  without  the 
tears  rising  to  my  eyes,  and  my  heart  beating  higher. 
This  apparently  trivial  book  is  one  of  the  deepest  and 
grandest  that  was  ever  written,  and  I  should  like  to 
say  to  every  one  who  approaches  it,  "Take  off  thy 
shoes,  for  the  place  whereon  thou  standest  is  holy 
ground."  In  this  book  Israelitish  prophecy  quits  the 
scene  of  battle  as  victor,  and  as  victor  in  its  severest 
struggle — that  against  self.  In  it  the  prophecy  of  Is- 
rael succeeded,  as  Jeremiah  expresses  it  in  a  remark- 
able and  well-known  passage,  in  freeing  the  precious 
from  the  vile  and  in  finding  its  better  self  again. 

The  Jonah  of  this  book  is  a  prophet,  and  a  genuine 
representative  of  the  prophecy  of  the  time,  a  man  like 
unto  that  second  Zechariah,  drunk  with  the  blood  of 
the  heathen,  and  who  could  hardly  await  the  time 
when  God  should  destroy  the  whole  of  the  Gentile 
world.  He  receives  from  God  the  command  to  go  to 
Nineveh  to  proclaim  the  judgment,  but  he  rose  to  flee 
from  the  presence  of  the  Lord  by  ship  unto  Tartessus 
(Tarshish)  in  the  far  west.  From  the  verj'  beginning 
of  the  narrative  the  genuine  and  lo3'al  devotion  of  the 
heathen  seamen  is  placed  in  intentional  and  exceed- 
ingly powerful  contrast  to  the  behavior  of  the  prophet; 
they  are  the  sincere  believers  ;  he  is  the  onlj'  heathen 
on  board.  After  that  Jonah  has  been  saved  from  storm 
and  sea  by  the  fish,  he  again  receives  the  command  to 


go  to  Nineveh.  He  obeys,  and  wonderful  to  relate, 
scarcely  has  the  strange  preacher  traversed  the  third 
part  of  the  city  crying  out  his  warning  than  the  whole 
of  Nineveh  proclaimed  a  fast  and  put  on  sackcloth  ;  the 
people  of  Nineveh  believed  the  words  of  the  preacher 
and  humiliated  themselves  before  God.  Therefore,  the 
ground  and  motive  of  the  divine  judgment  ceasing  to 
exist,  God  repented  of  the  evil  that  He  thought  to  do 
them,  and  He  did  it  not.  Now  comes  the  fourth  chap- 
ter, on  account  of  which  the  whole  book  has  been  writ- 
ten, and  which  I  cannot  refrain  from  repeating  word 
„for  word,  as  its  simple  and  ingenuous  mode  of  narra- 
tion belongs  essentially  to  the  attainment  of  that  mood 
which  is  so  stirring  to  the  heart,  and  cannot  be  re- 
placed by  paraphrase. 

"  Now  this  (God's  determining  not  to  destroy  Nine- 
veh because  of  its  sincere  repentance)  displeased  Jonah 
exceedingly  and  he  was  very  angry.  And  he  prayed 
unto  the  Lord  and  said,  I  pray  thee,  O  Lord,  was  not 
this  my  saying,  when  I  was  yet  in  m)'  country?  There- 
fore I  hasted  to  flee  unto  Tarshish  :  for  I  knew  that 
thou  art  a  gracious  God,  and  full  of  compassion,  slow 
to  anger,  and  plenteous  in  mercy,  and  repentest  thee 
of  the  evil.  Therefore,  now,  O  Lord,  take,  I  beseech 
thee,  my  life  from  me  ;  for  it  is  better  for  me  to  die 
than  to  live.  Then  said  the  Lord,  Doest  thou  well  to 
be  angry  ?  Then  Jonah  went  out  of  the  cit}',  and  sat 
on  the  east  side  of  the  city,  and  there  made  him  a 
booth,  and  sat  under  it  in  the  shadow,  till  he  might 
see  what  would  become  of  the  cit)'.  And  the  Lord 
God  prepared  a  gourd  and  made  it  to  come  up  over 
Jonah,  that  it  might  be  a  shadow  over  his  head.  And 
Jonah  was  exceedingly  glad  of  the  gourd.  But  God 
prepared  a  worm  when  the  morning  sun  rose  the  next 
day, and  it  smote  the  gourd  that  it  withered.  And  it 
came  to  pass,  when  the  sun  did  arise,  that  God  pre- 
pared a  sultr}'  east  wind  ;  and  the  sun  beat  upon  the 
head  of  Jonah  that  he  grew  faint,  and  requested  for 
himself  that  he  might  die,  and  said.  It  is  better  for  me 
to  die  than  to  live.  And  God  said  to  Jonah,  Doest  thou 
well  to  be  angry  for  the  gourd?  And  he  said,  I  do 
well  to  be  angrj'  even  unto  death.  Then  said  the  Lord, 
Thou  hast  had  pit}'  on  the  gourd,  for  the  which  thou 
hast  not  labored,  neither  madest  it  grow;  which  came 
up  in  a  night  and  perished  in  a  night.  And  should 
not  I  have  pity  on  Nineveh,  that  great  city,  wherein 
are  more  than  six  score  thousand  persons  that  cannot 
discern  between  their  right  hand  and  their  left  hand  ; 
and  also  much  cattle?  '' 

With  this  question  closes  the  last  book  of  the  pro- 
phetic literature  of  Israel.  More  simply,  as  something 
quite  self-evident,  and  therefore  more  sublimely  and 
touchingly,  the  truth  was  never  spoken  in  the  Old 
Testament,  that  God,  as  Creator  of  the  whole  earth, 
must  also  be  the  God  and  father  of  the  entire  world, 


THE    OF»EN    COURT. 


4617 


in  whose  loving,  kind,  and  fatherly  heart  all  men  are 
equal,  for  whom  there  is  no  difference  of  nation  and 
confession,  but  only  men,  whom  He  has  created  in  his 
own  image.  Here  Hosea  and  Jeremiah  live  anew. 
The  unknown  author  of  the  Book  of  Jonah  stretches 
forth  his  hand  to  these  master  hearts  and  intellects. 
In  the  celestial  harmon}'  of  the  infinite  Godly  love  and 
of  the  infinite  Godlj'  pit}',  the  Israelitic  prophecy  rings 
out  as  the  most  costly  bequest  of  Israel  to  the  whole 
world. 

I  have  spoken  as  if  with  the  Book  of  Jonah  the 
prophetic  literature  of  Israel  had  come  to  an  end,  and 
thereb}'  created  no  doubt  considerable  surprise.  For 
up  to  the  present  no  mention  has  been  made  of  a 
book  which  ranks  among  the  best  known,  or,  to  speak 
more  accurately,  among  those  of  whose  e.xistence  we 
know  something — namely,  the  Book  of  Daniel.  Daniel 
in  the  den  of  the  lions,  the  three  men  in  the  fiery  fur- 
nace, the  feast  of  Belshazzar  with  the  Mene  Tekel,  the 
colossus  with  the  feet  of  clay,  are  all  well  known,  and 
have  become,  so  to  speak,  household  words.  Surely,  the 
reception  of  such  a  book  into  the  prophetic  literature 
cannot  be  disputed.  Yet  I  must  remark  that  accord- 
ing to  the  Jewish  canon  this  book  is  never  reckoned 
among  the  prophetic  writings.  This  was  first  done 
by  the  Greek  Bible,  and  thus  it  became  the  custom 
throughout  the  whole  Christian  Church  to  designate 
Daniel  together  with  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  Ezekiel  as 
the  four  great  prophets,  in  contradistinction  to  the  so- 
called  twelve  minor  prophets. 

It  would  take  me  too  long  to  explain  the  reasons 
which  induced  the  Synagogue  to  enter  upon  this  at 
first  sight  strange  proceeding.  However,  I  cannot 
withdraw  from  my  plain  duty  of  including  the  Book  of 
Daniel  in  my  comments  upon  the  Israelitic  prophecies. 
And  it  well  deserves  consideration  ;  for  it  is  one  of  the 
most  important  and  momentous  that  was  ever  written. 
We  still  work  with  conceptions  and  employ  expressions 
which  are  derived  immediately  from  the  Book  of  Daniel. 
The  entire  hierarchy  of  heaven,  with  the  four  arch- 
angels, the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  the  dead, 
the  idea  of  a  kingdom  of  heaven,  the  designation  of 
the  Messianic  ruler  in  this  kingdom  as  the  Son  of  Man, 
are  found  mentioned  for  the  first  time  in  the  Book  of 
Daniel.  The  Book  of  Daniel  dates  from  the  last  great 
crisis  in  the  history  of  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  the  most  important  and  difficult  of  all — its 
life-and-death  struggle  with  Hellenism. 

In  the  year  333  B.  C,  through  the  great  victory  at 
Issus,  the  whole  of  Asia  Minor  had  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  Alexander  the  Great,  who  thereupon  imme- 
diately turned  his  attention  to  the  conquest  of  Syria, 
Phoenicia,  and  Palestine.  Thus  Judaea  came  under 
the  Grecian  sway.  When,  in  the  year  323,  Alexander 
died,  at  the  age  of  thirty-four,  the  long  struggles  and 


strife  of  the  Diadochi  ensued,  who  fought  for  the  in- 
heritance of  the  dead  hero.  The  battle  of  Ipsus, 
301,  put  an  end  to  these  dissensions.  Out  of  the 
great  universal  empire  founded  by  Alexander  four  Hel- 
lenistic kingdoms  arose  :  Macedonia,  the  parent  coun- 
try, which  was  lost  to  the  house  of  Alexander  after 
unspeakable  atrocities,  the  Pergamenian  kingdom  of 
the  Attalida',  the  Sj'rian  kingdom  of  the  Seleucidas, 
and  the  Egyptian  of  the  Ptolemies. 

Judaea  and  Coelesyria  were  annexed  to  the  kingdom 
of  the  Ptolemies,  and  remained  an  Egyptian  province 
for  over  a  hundred  years.  And  the  first  half  of  this 
period,  outwardly  viewed,  was  the  happiest  that  Juda-a 
had  experienced  since  the  loss  of  its  independence. 
The  three  first  Ptolemies  were  powerful  and  talented 
rulers,  who  were  extremely  prepossessed  in  favor  of 
the  Jews  and  supported  and  encouraged  them  in  every 
wa}',  because,  as  Josephus  tells  us,  the  Jews  were  the 
only  people  on  whose  oath  the^'  could  implicitly  rely; 
what  a  Jew  had  once  sworn  he  abided  by  without  de- 
viation. 

Soon,  however,  the  complications  of  war  arose.  The 
Seleucida;  stretched  out  their  hands  covetously  towards 
the  province  of  Egj'pt,  and  after  varying  conflicts  it 
was  finally  incorporated  in  the  year  193  in  the  king- 
dom of  Syria.  At  first  the  Jews  seemed  to  have  hailed 
the  new  government  with  delight,  but  the  Syrian  domi- 
nation was  soon  to  show  itself  in  all  its  terribleness. 
Antiochus  IV.,  Epiphanes,  a  man  of  violent  temper 
and  limited  ideas,  was  anxious  to  accelerate  by  violence 
the  process  of  Hellenising,  which  was  already  going  on 
satisfactorily,  and  set  himself  the  task  of  totally  eradi- 
cating, by  the  police  power  of  the  State,  the  Jewish 
nationality  and  the  Jewish  religion.  Then  began  that 
terrible  persecution  of  the  orthodox  Jews,  which  the 
Book  of  Maccabees  describes  on  the  whole  correctly, 
though  with  some  exaggerations.  Antiochus,  how- 
ever, only  aided  thereby  the  holy  cause  against  which 
he  fought  ;  he  shook  the  righteous  from  their  slum- 
bers, forced  the  wavering  to  decision,  and  thus  gave 
to  Judaism  the  last  blow  of  the  hammer  which  was  to 
weld  that  which  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  perhaps  had  not 
sufficiently  forged. 

From  this  date  Judaism  appears  to  us  as  Pharisa- 
ism. Who  knows  whether  without  this  violent  inter- 
ference matters  would  not  have  taken  another  course? 
We  know  by  undeniable  evidence  that  Hellenism  had 
already  made  vast  strides,  that  especially  the  cultured 
and  aristocratic  circles,  and  even  the  priesthood,  were 
completely  under  its  influence. 

But  this  brutal  attack  aroused  the  opposition  of 
despair.  The  Jewish  people  carried  on  the  struggle 
thus  forced  upon  them  with  almost  superhuman  efforts. 
The  mightiest  Greek  armies  fled  in  dismay  before  the 
frenzied  courage  of  these  men  battling  for  what  was 


4618 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


most  sacred  to  them ;  and  thus  they  finally  succeeded 
in  shaking  off  the  heathen  rule,  and  in  once  again 
founding  a  national  Jewish  State  under  the  house  of 
the  Maccabees. 

In  the  fiercest  moments  of  this  contest,  in  January, 
164,  we  know  the  very  day  almost,  the  Book  of  Daniel 
was  written,  in  which  the  clear  flame  of  the  first  holy 
inspiration  still  burned.  When  we  picture  to  ourselves 
the  unspeakable  sufferings  of  the  Jewish  nation,  we 
can  only  wonder  with  reverent  admiration  at  the  un- 
known author  of  the  Book  of  Daniel,  who  knew  how 
to  keep  himself  clean  from  all  the  baser  human  national 
passions,  and  only  to  give  enthusiastic  expression  to 
the  final  victory  of  the  cause  of  God.  There  is  the  dif- 
ference of  day  and  night  between  the  Book  of  Daniel 
and  that  of  Esther,  written  but  a  generation  later.  As 
in  Jonah,  so  in  Daniel  Israelitic  prophecy  flared  up- 
wards like  a  bright  flame  for  the  last  time,  to  die  in  a 
manner  worthy  of  its  grand  and  magnificent  past. 


We  have  now  reached  the  end  of  our  task.  We 
have  followed  the  prophecies  of  Israel  from  their  be- 
ginning to  their  conclusion,  and  I  should  be  glad  if  I 
have  succeeded  in  producing  upon  my  readers  the  im- 
pression that  we  have  been  treating  here  of  the  organic 
development  of  one  of  the  greatest  spiritual  forces 
which  the  history  of  man  has  ever  witnessed,  and  of 
the  most  important  and  most  magnificent  section  of 
the  history  of  religion  previously  to  Christ.  If  Israel 
became  in  the  matter  of  religion  the  chosen  people  of 
whole  world,  it  owes  this  to  prophecy,  which  first 
clearly  conceived  the  idea  of  a  universal  religion,  and 
established  it  in  all  its  foundations.  Prophecy  lived 
again  in  John  the  Baptist.  And  Jesus  of  Nazareth  in 
contrast  to  the  pharisaical  Judaism  of  his  time  pur- 
posely links  his  own  activity  to  the  prophecy  of  ancient 
Israel,  himself  its  purest  blossom  and  noblest  fruit. 
Jewish  prophecy  is  Mary,  the  mother  of  Christianity, 
and  the  Christian  church  has  known  no  better  desig- 
nation for  the  earthl}'  pilgrimage  of  its  founder  than 
to  speak  of  him  in  his  office  of  prophet.  As  far  as  the 
influence  of  Christianity  extends,  so  far  also  the  effects 
of  the  Israelitic  prophecy  reach,  and  when  the  oldest 
of  the  literary  prophets,  Amos,  speaks  of  prophecy  as 
the  noblest  gift  of  grace,  which  God  gave  to  Israel  and 
only  to  Israel,  a  history  of  two  thousand  five  hundred 
years  has  but  justified  his  assertion. 

The  whole  history  of  humanitj'  has  produced  noth- 
ing which  can  be  compared  in  the  remotest  degree  to 
the  prophecy  of  Israel.  Through  prophecy  Israel  has 
become  the  prophet  of  mankind.  Let  this  never  be 
overlooked  nor  forgotten :  the  costliest  and  noblest 
treasure  that  man  possesses  he  owes  to  Israel  and  to 
Israelitic  prophecy. 


THE  RELATION  OF  MATTER  AND  SPIRIT. 

BY  THE  REV.    RODNEY  F.  JOHONNOT. 

According  to  the  Biblical  idea,  man  is  composed 
of  two  elements  :  the  body,  made  from  the  dust,  and 
a  soul,  breathed  into  this  dust,  whereby  it  becomes  a 
living  personality.  At  death  the  body  returns  to  the 
dust  as  it  was,  and  the  spirit  unto  God  who  gave  it. 
(See  Gen.  II.,  7,  and  Eccles.  XII.,  7.) 

This  is  perhaps  the  common  idea  today  ;  but  the 
objections  to  it  are  many  and  weighty. 

It  is  difficult  to  think  of  spirit  or  mind  as  coming 
to  man  in  this  way.  We  know  spirit  only  in  connexion 
with  matter,  with  a  physical  body.  While  this  is  no 
proof  that  it  cannot  exist  independent  of  matter,  we 
have  no  right,  without  some  evidence,  to  assume  this  ; 
no  right  to  assume  it  exists  in  space  somewhere  and 
is  injected  into  man's  body.  We  can  scarcely  conceive 
how  a  Universal  Spirit  can  separate  some  bit  of  itself 
and  make  it  an  individual  human  soul  ;  nor  can  we 
think  of  God  as  creating  a  spirit  outright,  ab  niliilo, 
and  passing  it  into  the  body;  nor  have  we  any  right 
to  affirm  the  pre- existence  of  souls,  which  in  some 
sphere  await  the  birth  of  a  human  body,  so  as  to  en- 
ter into  it,  as  do  some  of  the  theosophists.  Yet  only 
in  one  of  these  three  ways  can  a  spirit,  distinct  from  the 
body  in  origin,  be  accounted  for. 

Besides  these  a  priori  difficulties,  the  knowledge 
of  the  development  of  the  individual  in  the  ontogenic 
series  does  not  admit  of  fixing  upon  any  point  of  the 
development  for  the  introduction  of  soul.  Man  be- 
gins as  a  single  cell,  which  cannot  be  distinguished 
from  the  cell  which  develops  into  a  fish  or  a  bird. 
There  is  a  steady  evolution  from  this  cell  to  the  ma- 
tured individual.  Where  in  this  development  does 
the  soul  enter  ?  Some  theosophists  say  at  two  years 
after  birth.  But  this  is  pure  assumption.  Birth  may 
be  selected  as  the  most  probable  moment.  But  birth 
effects  only  a  change  in  nutrition  and  respiration. 
What  right  have  we  to  assume  a  miracle  at  this  point? 
Is  it  not  far  more  likely  that  mind  existed  in  connex- 
ion with  the  body  before  birth,  though  dormant,  mak- 
ing ready  for  future  manifestations,  than  to  assume  it 
was  introduced  from  the  outside  at  birth?  Does  not 
all  knowledge  of  gradual  development  point  to  the 
former  conclusion? 

The  same  difficulty  in  assuming  the  introduction 
of  mind  from  the  outside  meets  us  if  we  study  the 
phylogenic  series  of  life,  the  history  of  life  on  the 
globe.  It  may  be  accepted  as  established  that  species 
originate  by  descent  or  filiation,  and  not  by  direct 
creation.  From  protista  to  man  is  a  complete  chain 
of  life,  though  some  of  the  links  may  still  be  missing 
in  evidence.  Now,  where  in  this  series  does  mind  or 
spirit  come  in?  Not  with  man.  Great  as  is  his  supe- 
riority to  the  other  animals,  the  difference  is  one  of 


XHE    OPEN     COURT. 


4619 


degree,  and  not  of  kind.  Sa3'S  Darwin  in  his  Descent 
of  Man:  "The  senses  and  intuitions,  the  various  emo- 
tions and  faculties,  such  as  love,  memory,  attention, 
curiosity,  imitations,  reason,  etc.,  of  which  man 
boasts,  ma)'  be  found  in  an  incipient  state,  or  some- 
times in  a  well-developed  condition,  in  the  lower  ani- 
mals." Romanes  agrees  with  this  in  his  work  on 
Animal  Intelligence.  Below  the  advent  of  man  in  the 
series  there  is  no  point  where  we  can  find  the  least 
reason  for  saying,  Here  mind  comes  in,  and  below  it 
there  exists  no  mind.  In  the  phylogenic  as  in  the  on- 
togenic  series,  mind  develops  gradually,  and  its  origin 
is  not  to  be  found. 

It  seems  evident,  therefore,  that  there  is  no  dis- 
tinct, individual  soul,  ready  formed,  introduced  into 
man's  body  at  birth,  or  at  any  other  point  of  time. 
Neither  can  we  find  ground  for  believing  that  mind  as 
an  element  distinct  from  matter  is  introduced  at  any 
point  in  the  ascending  scale  of  life.  If  it  is  in  any 
way  breathed  into  matter,  it  must  be  done  gradually 
or  constantly  in  an  increasing  degree  as  life  advances 
in  complexity  of  organisation.  Whether  held  to  be 
done  gradually,  or  all  at  once,  this  idea  that  mind  or 
spirit  is  introduced  into  physical  bodies  from  without 
rests  upon  no  foundation  except  pure  assumption. 
Mind,  so  far  as  we  know  it,  is  always  associated  with 
a  physical  body,  and  does  not  exist  freely  without 
body. 

It  might  seem  that  this  reasoning  would  force  us 
to  hold  that  spirit  is  a  product  of  matter,  and  hence 
when  the  human  body  dies  the  soul  perishes  with  it. 
This  would  be  pure  materialism.  But  this  crass  ma- 
terialism is  no  more  scientific  than  is  the  crude  spir- 
itualism which  forms  the  faith  of  most  people.  Nei- 
ther are  we  logicall}'  driven  to  any  such  conclusion. 

That  spirit  is  not  a  product  of  matter  may  be 
proved  in  many  ways  ;  but  I  restrict  myself  to  a  single 
argument.  Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  some- 
thing cannot  be  evolved  out  of  nothing.  If  mind  is 
here  as  the  result  of  evolution,  it  must  either  have 
been  supernaturally  bestowed  upon  matter,  or  else  it 
must  have  been  potentially  present  from  the  begin- 
ning. We  have  seen  reasons  for  rejecting  the  former 
alternative  and  hence  are  forced  to  conclude,  not  that 
matter  has  produced  mind,  but  that  mind  has  in  some 
wa}'  been  bound  up  with  matter  from  the  first. 

It  is  vain  to  inquire  for  ultimate  origins,  but  a  syn- 
thesis more  comprehensive  than  that  which  is  ordina- 
rily made,  may  help  to  clear  this  point  and  to  give 
hint  of  the  origin  of  both  mind  and  matter.  The 
course  of  modern  science  has  brought  us  to  the 
thought  of  the  unity  of  all  things.  Different  species 
are  now  traced  back  to  a  common  ancestor.  Verte- 
brate and  invertebrate  have  a  single  ancestral  source. 
The  animal  kingdom  does  not  spring  out  of  the  vege- 


table, but,  as  Haeckel  tells  us,  both  arise  from  a  form 
of  life  which  is  neither  animal  nor  vegetal;  both  are 
branches  from  a  common  trunk  or  root.  In  the 
sphere  of  physics,  heat,  light,  electricity,  magnetism 
are  but  modes  of  molecular  motion,  more  or  less  inter- 
convertible. Without  going  into  fuller  detail,  the 
deeper  syntheses  of  physics,  chemistry,  and  biology 
all  point  to  the  conclusion  that  matter  and  mind  are 
abstracts  from  the  same  realit}'.  Mind  is  not  a  pro- 
duct of  matter,  nor  is  matter  a  product  of  mind,  but 
both  arise  out  of  a  common  ground-work  which  em- 
braces them  both  and  manifests  itself  in  both  and  has 
in  itself  all  the  powers,  qualities,  and  possibilities 
which  belong  to  both.  Here  is  ultimate  resting- 
ground  for  human  thought,  and  here  the  the  starting- 
point  for  all  sound  philosophy  and  theology. 

Whoever  will  start  with  this  thought  and  work 
consistently  with  it  will  find  much  light  on  matters 
otherwise  dark  and  mysterious.  Nor  will  the  world 
and  human  life  grow  less  divine,  but  more  so. 


IS  THERE  A  QOD? 

BY   E.    P.    POWELL. 

I  CAMF.  to  talk  with  you  about  theology.  I  don't 
see  as  I  can  believe  even  in  God  and  immortality. 
You  say  those  are  fundamental  notions  of  religion. 

And  you  do  not  believe  in  a  God.  Do  you  suppose 
the  universe  to  be  matter  and  force  ? 

Yes,  I  can't  see  anything  in  life  but  mechanics. 

Yet  you  are  yourself  intelligent — and  there  is  all 
about  you  the  intelligible  ? 

Yes,  I  don't  deny  mind  of  course,  and  will,  and 
purpose — but  only  as  phenomena. 

So  we,  intelligently  examining  all  things,  find  in- 
telligibility universal  ;  and  intelligently  decide  that  in- 
telligence is  not  intelligent  in  origin.  Do  you  hold  to 
the  creation  of  matter  ab  niliihi? 

Certainly  not.  Science  has  put  that  notion  thor- 
oughly to  flight.      Nothing  can  come  from  nothing. 

Yet  to  me  it  seems  quite  as  difficult  to  create  in- 
telligence all  nihilo  as  to  create  matter  ab  niliilo.  The 
latter  you  assume  ;   the  former  you  deny. 

I  had  hardly  put  it  that  way.  I  was  looking  at 
material  things  as  the  only  real  existences  ;  but  you 
speak  of  mental  facts  as  quite  as  real  as  material. 

It  makes  no  difference  whether  you  allow  mind  to 
be  a  secretion  of  matter  or  not;  all  we  need  to  see  is 
that  intelligence  is,  and  that  its  applicability  is  uni- 
versal. What  if  it  is  a  consequence  of  brain  life,  or 
protoplasm,  still  it  is  ; — and  it  is  not  ab  niliilo;  and  that 
which  it  is  must  be  eternal.  If  you  allow  life  to  be  of 
without  origin,  or  beginning,  intelligence  is  a  mani- 
festation without  origin.  But  3'ou  must  add  one  more 
point ;  there  is  nothing  of  matter  but  is  formed;  form 


4620 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


means  no  more  nor  less  than  an  idea  in  shape.  A 
snovvflake  is  a  form  which  exhibits  purposiveness. 

You  mean  that,  after  all,  the  primal  idea  of  the 
universe  is  spiritual,  and  not  material? 

Yes,  I  don't  care  about  words  ;  and  if  you  choose 
I  will  drop  the  word  God  ;  but  I  think  science  defends 
the  monistic  conception  of  Paul ;  "  There  is  one  God 
overall;  interpenetrating  all." 

Is  not  that  practically  pantheism  ? 

It  is  a  sort  of  Christian  or  Biblical  pantheism,  pos- 
sibly ;  but  it  is  science  also.  Science  as  psychology 
you  know  has  been  lately  bringing  us  to  a  monistic 
conception  of  ourselves.  It  no  longer  speaks  of  a  hu- 
man being  as  soul  and  body  ;  but  as  a  single  idea,  a 
unit.  Theology,  according  itself  to  science,  is  speak- 
ing of  the  universe  in  the  same  terms.  "God  and  the 
universe  "  are  now  ' '  The  Living  Universe.  "  God  ( he 
infinite  subject  is  revealed  eternally  in  an  infinite  ob- 
ject. The  one  great  fact  about  us  is  not  stuff,  but 
stuff  used — put  to  use. 

Yet  we  never  see  God  ? 

Why  can  you  and  I  never  get  over  the  demand  to 
see  God,  as  we  see  a  stick?  We  do  not  see  the  Amer- 
ican Constitution  that  operates  the  United  States  as 
a  unit  ;  yet  that  Constitution  permeates  (interpene- 
trates) the  whole  forty  States,  and  is  operative  in- 
visibly from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific.  The  most 
vital  certainty  in  America  to-day  is  this  same  Consti- 
tution. Do  you  demand  to  see  me  at  this  moment  ? 
You  see  the  organism — the  body— but  you  do  not  see 
the  impalpable  me.  Yet  you  do  not  deny  my  person- 
ality, my  at  least  present  reality.  Cut  open  my  flesh, 
and  you  cannot  find  me.  Yet  you  love  me ;  you  honor 
me  ;  you  believe  in  me. 

Do  you  mean  that  we  see  a  God  as  we  see  a  man? 

Can  it  be  otherwise?  Cut  open  a  tree,  split  a  stone; 
you  see  no  more  than  if  you  cut  open  a  skull.  The 
personality  eludes  your  physical  senses — but  not  your 
intelligence.  You  are  as  sure  of  its  existence  as  of 
your  own  identity  ;  yet  your  physical  senses  see  only 
the  physical  results  of  personality.  So  the  infinite 
universal  intelligence;  the  sum  of  the  purposing  is 
discernible  in  the  whole  as  you  yourself  in  the  part. 
As  you  are  to  your  body,  so  is  God  to  the  universe. 
Frederick  Robertson  in  his  most  brilliant  sermon  says : 
"The  universe  is  the  body  of  God."  It  seems  to  me 
that  the  grandeur  of  a  true  soul  is  a  growing  capacity 
to  see  the  soul  of  things — the  interfused  will — and  so 
by  degrees  to  find  itself  to  be  a  child  of  infinite  pur- 
pose. 

Then  as  you  have  come  to  see  we  really  live  in 
a  spiritual  universe  ;  and  material  form  is  but  an  ex- 
pression of  operation  of  mind  ? 

Yes,  in  Him,  the  Eternal  and  Infinite,  we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being.      Each  flower,  each  tree  is 


like  a  pen  stroke  of  a  friend.  The  Persian  was  right 
in  kissing  his  hand  to  a  star.  We  need  not  say  of  the 
world  "It  is  beautiful,"  but  "  He  is  beautiful."  Each 
velvet  knoll  is  where  one  may  lie  on  the  bosom  of 
God. 

But  this  is  poetr)'  surely — merely  a  poetical  waj'  of 
saying  what  only  a  few  can  conceive. 

My  friend,  all  truth  is  a  poem.  When  at  last  you 
get  past  the  jangling  of  logic,  you  come  to  rhythm  and 
music.  Before  men  argued  they  felt;  before  they  talked 
they  sung.  All  early  religious  and  political  life  was  ex- 
pressed in  song.  Not  till  data  accumulated  enormously 
was  it  necessary  to  invent  prose.  When  now  we  have 
worked  through  the  period  of  categories,  we  come  once 
more  to  the  poem.  Life  and  living,  sociology,  poli- 
tics, theology,  are  not  always  to  be  mere  argument  ; 
they  end  in  poetry  as  they  end  in  love. 

I  will  think  of  these  things.  1  had  not  thought 
that  all  ideals  were  possibles.  But  surely  if  there  is 
God  then  most  important  to  us  is  it  that  there  be  god- 
liness. 

That  is  it,  my  brother.  Wrong  thinking  and  wrong 
believing  do  not  concern  us  except  as  involving  us  in 
wrong  living.   Our  creeds  should  be  only  guide  books. 

But  is  this  vision  of  the  God  body  all  that  we  can 
get?  Is  there  no  way  of  seeing,  soul  to  soul?  I  feel 
a  longing  to  know  as  I  am  known.  I  could  not  rest 
content  to  be  loved  as  a  mechanism.  You  have  your 
boy's  arm  around  you  now — does  he  not  think  of  you 
as  being  spirit — something  above  muscles,  tendons, 
and  organism  ? 

Indeed  but  this  is  the  beautiful  charm  of  human 
life  ;  that  it  lives  so  largely,  or  may  live  so  largely  in 
this  upper  consciousness.  The  lowest  animal  life  has 
only  sensation.  It  receives  impressions  and  makes 
responses.  As  these  sensations  multiply  in  character 
they  are  compared  one  with  another  and  so  arises  con- 
sensation  or  comparison  of  sensations.  These  bundles 
ever  increase  as  animal  life  rises  ;  and  become  what 
we  call  consciousness.  One  bundle  becomes  conscious- 
ness of  self,  or  self-consciousness.  But  there  is  an- 
other bundle  that  constitutes  consciousness  of  that 
which  is  not  ourselves,  but  is  like  ourselves.  No  hu- 
man being  ever  was  able  to  escape  some  idea  of  self  ; 
nor  was  any  one  not  an  idiot  unconscious  of  Him  in 
whom  we  have  our  being.  Consciousness,  bearing  on 
our  relation  to  duty,  is  conscience  ;  and  we  have  also 
conscience  toward  others,  and  toward  the  supreme 
other.  So  we  do  face  not  only  toward  ideas  of  brother- 
hood, motherhood,  fatherhood  in  ourselves  and  others 
— but  toward  a  larger  fatherhood,  which  we  cannot 
conceive  to  be  limited  in  space  or  time.  Drojiping  all 
the  philosophy  of  the  case,  we  learn  to  say,  "Our 
Father  who  art  in  the  heavens  " — and  then  we  add  to 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4621 


the  Golden  Rule  that  we  ought  to  love  God  with  all 
our  hearts. 

At  least  I  will  ponder  these  things,  for  a  merely 
material  life  is  intolerable. 

Is  it  not  intolerable  simplj'  because  30U  are  not 
merely  material  ? 

But  we  have  said  nothing  of  immortality. 

Let  us  defer  it  to  another  time  when  we  can  talk 
of  it  more  freely. 


FORM  AND  FUNCTION. 

KY   S.   V.   CLEVENGER.    M.   D. 

From  many  Alpine  peaks  stream  out,  thousands  of 
feet  in  length,  what  are  known  as  cloud-banners.  The}- 
seem  to  be  perfectl}'  stead)',  even  though  a  strong 
wind  may  be  blowing  over  the  mountain-tops. 

"Why  is  the  cloud  not  blown  awa)'?"  asks  Tyn- 
dall.  "  It  w  blown  away,"  he  answers;  "its  perma- 
nence is  only  apparent.  At  one  end  it  is  incessantly 
dissolved,  at  the  other  end  it  is  incessantly  renewed  : 
supply  and  consumption  being  thus  equalised,  the 
cloud  appears  as  changeless  as  the  mountain  to  which 
it  seems  to  cling.  When  the  red  sun  of  the  evening 
shines  upon  these  cloud-streams,  they  resemble  vast 
torches  with  their  flames  blown  through  the  air." 

Every  one  who  profited  by  the  writings  of  Gustav 
Freytag  felt  a  sense  of  personal  loss  in  his  death.  But 
his  influence  remains  with  us  and  future  generations, 
in  verification  of  his  claim  that  "a  noble  human  life 
does  not  end  on  earth  with  death.  It  continues  in  the 
minds  and  the  deeds  of  friends,  as  well  as  in  the 
thoughts  and  the  activity  of  the  nation." 

In  man}-  instances  Freytag  may  but  have  given  ex- 
pression to  what  was  already  in  the  hearts  of  his  read- 
ers, have  formulated  in  beautiful  language  what  they 
felt  ;  probably  they  did  not  realise  their  ownership  of 
such  sentiments  till  they  saw  them  thus  poetically 
worded.  So  much  of  their  lives  and  souls  he  found 
already  prepared  to  be  put  in  shape.  More  than  this, 
in  his  adding  to  the  world's  stock  of  noble  promptings 
he  gave  new  material  to  his  readers,  and  by  moulding 
what  he  found  in  them  with  what  he  brought  to  them 
they  were  truly  great  debtors  for  the  betterment  ex- 
perienced in  Freytag's  having  lived  and  written. 
"Again,  what  he  has  produced,  has  in  some  sort 
formed  other  men,  and  thus  his  soul  has  passed  to 
later  times." 

Individuals  in  myriads,  of  all  nations,  will  be  born, 
live,  and  die.  Most  will  not  know  of  what  work  has 
been  done  to  make  them  better,  but  an  ever-increas- 
ing number  will  do  so,  and  "those  who  have  long  ago 
ceased  to  live  in  the  body  daily  revive  and  continue  to 
live  in  thousands  of  others." 

The  cloud-banner  is  formed  of  frozen  vapor.  In- 
finitesimal  drops   floated   invisibly   toward   the  peak 


that  condensed,  congealed,  and  presented  to  sight 
grand  streaming  cloud-forms  ;  each  drop  is  swept  on- 
ward by  the  same  gale  that  brought  it,  till  the  air  be- 
yond the  influence  of  the  peak's  temperature  claims 
and  apparently  extinguishes  it  and  its  numberless  as- 
sociates that  constituted  the  cirrus  of  the  moment  be- 
fore ;  but  the  cloud  is  still  there,  new  vapor  is  con- 
densed, whitened,  and  swept  onward,  as  the  social 
swarms  persist  even  after  the  death  of  members,  and 
as  they  existed  before  such  members  were  born.  It  is 
the  aggregation  of  atoms  in  certain  ways  that  make 
the  molecule  ;  and  the  peculiar  combinations  of  mole- 
cules in  other  shapes  that  make  inorganic  substances. 
All  that  exists,  living  or  inert,  depends  for  what  it  can 
do  upon  what  it  is  made  of,  and  how  it  is  put  together. 
Function  is  not  possible  without  structure  ;  the  plough 
cannot  do  the  work  of  the  locomotive,  even  though 
placed  upon  the  track.  Given  the  structure  and  the 
environment,  which  is  structure  again,  and  function 
will  take  care  of  itself. 

From  the  chemical  and  physical  standpoints,  noth- 
ing can' be  truer  and  stronger  than  Mr.  Hegeler's  me- 
chanical conception  of  mental  action  and  the  universe. 
The  drops  that  form  the  cloud-banner,  as  well  as  other 
meteorological  appearances,  pass  on,  and  new  drops 
come,  but  the  original  form  is  there  so  long  as  the 
environment,  the  influences,  are  unchanged  that  called 
the  form  into  being.  We  die,  but  our  places  are  filled 
by  others,  who  act  as  we  did,  think  as  we  did,  be- 
cause they  resemble  us,  and  the  closer  the  resemblance 
the  greater  is  the  probability  of  identical  action.  Twins 
often  think  alike,  act  the  same,  and  are  subject  to  the 
same  ailments,  particularly  if  subjected  to  the  same 
conditions.  It  is  but  a  superficial  objection  that  this 
is  not  true  in  all  instances,  for  where  the  rule  appar- 
ently fails  it  is  because  there  are  unknown  failures  in 
resemblance,  internal  perhaps,  but  none  the  less  po- 
tent in  causing  like  forms  to  have  like  functions,  un- 
like to  have  diverse  workings. 

A  convincing  proof  that  physical  resemblances  en- 
tail similarity  of  character  is  observable  in  Dr.  Ernst 
Schmidt,  of  Chicago,  and  his  sons.  He  made  his 
presence  felt  in  both  Germany  and  America,  as  a  sol- 
dier of  freedom,  and  his  individual  benefactions  are 
numberless.  His  boys  are  veritable  "chips  of  the  old 
block,"  and  were  the  turbulent  times  in  which  the 
father  lived  to  recur,  the  sons  would  be  heard  from  as 
fearless  advocates  of  right  and  justice,  for  it  is  in  them 
through  being  paternal  copies. 

The  mere  matter  of  descent  does  not  necessarily 
involve  inheritance  of  feature  or  disposition  of  the  im- 
mediately preceding  generation  ;  reversion  sometimes 
takes  place  to  remote  and  unknown  ancestry  likeness, 
but  wherever  resemblance  extends  to  minute  details 
of  brain,  heart,  blood-vessel,   and  other  structure,  the 


^ 


2  2 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


two  who  are  thus  made  alike  will  act  alike,  and  that 
they  do  so  is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge. 

And  so  it  is  in  all  things  concrete  and  abstract: 
"Like  causes  produce  like  effects."  Freytag  was  a 
character  builder,  and  those  he  influenced  revive  his 
work  and  cause  him  to  live  again  to  perpetuate  his 
sentiments  to  peoples  and  nations  not  yet  born  ;  exert- 
ing the  same  good,  in  the  same  way  upon  similar  in- 
dividuals. 

The  cloud-banher  of  the  Alps  has  endured  for  ages 
and  will  be  seen  as  long  as  present  conditions  exist 
upon  earth,  but  the  material  which  go  to  make  up  its 
form  momentarily  change,  as  good  men  die,  but  leave 
conditions,  coherent  systems,  in  which  they  figured 
for  others'  benefit ;  or,  without  risk  of  mixing  or  in- 
volving the  metaphor,  we  may  claim  that  in  many 
senses  Freytag  was  comparable  to  the  mountain-peak 
that  called  the  cloud-banner  into  being. 


A  CHINESE  FABLE. 


About  two  years  ago  a  New  York  newspaper  re- 
corded a  curious  incident  that  happened  in  New  York 
Bay  on  the  oyster  beds.  Some  fishermen  suddenly  saw 
a  wild  duck  swooping  down  and  splashing  the  water  in 
great  excitement.  When  they  approached  the  spot 
they  found  the  duck  dead,  her  head  being  tightly  held 
in  the  closed  shells  of  an  oyster.  The  duck  apparently 
had  seen  the  oyster  and  was  tempted  to  swallow  the 
fat  morsel,  but  the  oyster  closed  so  suddenly  that  the 
duck  could  not  withdraw  her  head.  The  fishermen 
took  up  the  oyster  and  the  duck  and  showed  them  to 
their  friends  and  to  the  newspaper  reporter  as  a  curi- 
osity. 

Similar  occurrences  may  be  rare,  but  they  must 
happen  again  and  again,  and  it  is  curious  that  we  find 
a  proverb  in  China  which  relates  to  a  similar  incident. 
The  Chinese  say:  "When  the  bittern  and  the  mussel 
fall  out,  the  fisherman  gains  a  prize."  This  proverb, 
as  we  read  in  Mayer's  Chinese  Reader's  Manual,  refers 
to  a  fable  which  is  ascribed  in  the  narrative  of  the 
Contending  States  to  Su  Tai,  who  counselled  a  peace- 
ful policy  to  two  rival  powers,  and  illustrated  his  argu- 
ment by  the  following  tale,  which  is  probably  the 
oldest  specimen  of  a  complete  fable  on  record  in  Chi- 
nese literature.  The  fable  is  as  follows  :  "A  mussel 
was  sunning  itself  by  the  river-bank  when  a  bittern 
came  by  and  pecked  at  it.  The  mussel  closed  its  shell 
and  nipped  the  bird's  beak.  Hereupon  the  bittern 
said  :  '  If  you  don't  let  me  go  to-da)',  if  you  don't  let 
me  go  to-morrow,  there  will  be  a  dead  mussel.'  The 
shell-fish  answered  :  'If  I  don't  come  out  to-day,  if  I 
don't  come  out  tomorrow,  there  will  surely  be  a  dead 
bittern.'  Just  then  a  fisherman  came  b}'  and  seized 
the  pair  of  them."  p.  c. 


BOOK  NOTICES. 

We  have  on  our  table  two  able  papers  by  Mr.  Lester  F. 
Ward  :  one  on  Static  and  Dynamic  Socioloi^y  and  one  on  The  Rela- 
tion of  Sociology  to  Anthropology.  Both  are  reprints  from  periodi- 
cals. In  the  first.  Mr.  Ward  insists  upon  the  distinction  of  sociol- 
ogy into  static  and  dynamic.  Static  actions  leave  matters  where 
they  were  before  ;  dynamic  actions  create  new  states.  The  rou- 
tine work  of  the  housewife  is  static,  the  invention  and  organisation 
of  new  methods  of  housekeeping  is  dynamic.  The  author  shows 
what  light  this  distinction,  which  was  originally  due  to  Comte, 
throws  on  the  mechanism  and  significance  of  social  progress.  As 
to  the  second  subject,  Mr.  Ward  finds  that  anthropology  is  essen- 
tially a  concrete  science,  that  is,  a  descriptive  science  dealing  with 
a  particular  species  of  animal,  while  sociology  is  essentially  an 
abstract  science,  being  concerned  chiefly  with  the  laws  and  prin- 
ciples of  association,  which  is  not  a  material  thing  but  a  condition. 


To  judge  from  a  recent  pamphlet  entitled  A  Few  Facts  A/iotit 
'J'lirkcv  Under  the  Sultan  Ahdul  I/amid  II.  by  an  American  Ob- 
server (New  York  :  J.  J.  Little  &  Co.,  1895),  there  would  seem  to 
be  another  side  to  the  Armenian  question.  This  pamphlet  is  a 
recountal  of  the  reforms  and  progress  of  Turkey  under  its  present 
Sultan,  which  seem  indeed  to  be  remarkable,  considering  the  tre- 
mendous difficulties  that  had  to  be  overcome.  The  author  states 
facts  which,  if  not  overdrawn,  disprove  the  assertion  that  the 
Turkish  government  wishes  to  exterminate  the  Armenian  race  and 
religion,  and  show  that  it  is  solely  the  revolutionary  intrigues  of 
the  Armenians,  oftentimes  encouraged  by  the  foreign  mission- 
aries, that  have  caused  the  troubles.  The  pamphlet  presents  the 
reverse  side  of  the  picture  which  we  have  been  seeing  in  the  dis- 
patches from  Armenia  and  in  the  public  meetings  called  in  Amer- 
ica and  England  for  interference  in  the  administrative  affairs  of 
the  Turkish  government. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUl,  CARUS,  Editor. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAI,  UNION; 

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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  418. 

IN   MEMORIAM  — H.   R.   H.   CHOW   FA  MAHA  VAJI- 

RUNHIS,   CROWN   PRINCE  OF  SIAM 4G15 

JONAH.     Prof    C.  H.  Cornill 4616 

THE    RELATION    OF  MATTER  AND  SPIRIT.     Rfv. 

Rodney  F.  Johonnot 4618 

IS  THERE  A  GOD  ?     E.  P.  Powell 4619 

FORM   AND  FUNCTION.     S.  V.  Clevenger,  M.  D 4621 

A  CHINESE  FABLE.     Editor 4622 

BOOK  NOTICES 4622 


The  Open  Court. 


A   WEEKLY   JOUKNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  419.     (Vol.  IX.— 36 


CHICAGO,    SEPTEMBER  5,    1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
(  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.— Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


FRANCES  WRIGHT. 

BY   F.    M.    HOLLAND. 

Whatever  else  the  next  centiir}-  ma}'  do,  it  is  not 
likely  to  begin  as  badly  as  this  one  did.  Our  country 
was  much  the  happiest  on  earth,  but  was  cursed  by 
slavery  and  darkened  by  the  ignorance,  superstition, 
and  vice  which  reigned  elsewhere.  Europe  suffered  un- 
der the  burden  of  continual  war  and  universal  despot- 
ism. Great  Britain  felt  these  evils  less  than  her  neigh 
bors,  but  she  was  governed  by  an  oligarchy  of  noble- 
men, millionaires,  and  bishops,  whose  purpose  was  to 
keep  themselves  rich  and  the  people  poor.  Pauper- 
ism, illiteracy,  and  crime  were  terribly  common  ;  re- 
formers were  treated  as  public  enemies  ;  and  many 
leading  champions  of  libert)'  had  abandoned  her  cause 
in  despair. 

Such  was  the  world  when  a  girl  of  seventeen  made 
up  her  mind  to  separate  from  what  she  calls  "the 
rich  and  haughty  aristocracy  "  in  which  she  had  been 
brought  up.  Frances  Wright  was  born  at  Dundee,  on 
September  6,  1795,  of  parents  with  liberal  views  ;  but 
she  became  an  orphan  in  earl}'  infancy,  and  was  re- 
moved by  her  grandparents  to  England.  There,  while 
still  in  her  teens  she  made,  as  she  says  herself,  -'a 
vow  to  wear  ever  in  her  heart  the  cause  of  the  poor 
and  helpless." 

About  this  time  she  happened  to  read  a  history  of 
the  United  States,  and  could  scarcely  believe  that 
there  really  existed  any  country  which  was  so  free, 
happy,  and  enlightened.  She  looked  for  it  in  an  at- 
las, but  found  nothing  there  for  North  America  but 
British  colonies.  Was  it  all  a  dream  of  an  impossible 
Utopia?  Looking  again  at  the  atlas,  she  noticed  that 
the  date  was  earlier  than  the  revolutionary  war.  After 
much  search  she  found  maps  which  proved  that  there 
really  was  a  land  of  liberty  and  light.  She  came  here 
in  September,  1818,  and  travelled  during  the  next 
eighteen  months  over  the  country  lying  between  Ni 
agara  Falls,  Lake  Champlain,  and  the  Potomac. 
Her  impressions  were  generally  satisfactory  ;  but  she 
blamed  the  American  ladies  for  dressing  with  more 
regard  to  elegance  than  to  health  in  cold  and  wet 
weather.  She  was  especially  pleased  with  the  deter- 
mination of  the  people  to  enforce  the  laws  they  had 
made  ;  and  among  many  interesting  anecdotes  in  the 


Views  of  America,  published  in  1821,  is  an  account  of 
the  suppression  of  a  revolt  of  the  felons  in  the  Phil- 
adelphia jail  by  the  citizens  in  the  neighborhood,  who 
promptly  mounted  the  walls,  musket  in  hand.  An- 
other interesting  particular  is  that  the  Democrats  con- 
stantly spoke  of  Franklin,  as  one  of  their  founders, 
while  he  was  less  praised  by  their  opponents.  Elec- 
tions were  conducted  quietly.  Women  had  more  lib- 
erty than  even  in  England,  as  well  as  much  better 
education.  Religion  was  already  growing  more  lib- 
eral, especially  as  regarded  Sabbatarianism.  She  was 
shocked  at  the  vice  and  wretchedness  of  the  free 
blacks  in  Maryland,  and  Virginia,  but  ascribed  it  to 
their  inability  to  get  high  wages,  where  slaves  could 
be  hired  cheaply.  She  says  the  \'irginian  planters 
were  too  easily  satisfied  with  gilding  the  chain  ;  but 
she  consoled  herself  with  this  assurance  by  President 
Monroe  :  "The  day  is  not  very  far  distant  when  not 
a  slave  is  to  be  found  in  America."  Thus  closed  a 
book  which  was  widely  circulated  in  many  languages, 
and  did  much  to  correct  false  accounts  published  by 
less  friendly  travellers. 

Her  ablest  book,  published  in  1822  and  entitled  A 
Fc7v  Days  in  Atltens,  is  a  complete  vindication  of  the 
life  and  teachings  of  Epicurus  against  slanders  not  yet 
extinct.  She  shows  how  plainly  he  distinguished  be- 
tween pleasure  and  vice;  her  style  is  that  of  a  novel- 
ist ;  and  she  draws  a  charming  portrait  of  herself  as 
one  of  the  disciples  of  a  philosopher  who  has  been 
sadly  misunderstood. 

When  this  sprightly  book  appeared  she  was  at 
Paris,  where  she  and  her  friend  La  Fayette  were 
keenly  interested  in  the  unsuccessful  rebellions  in 
Spain  and  Italy.  When  these  struggles  for  liberty  had 
failed,  she  returned  to  our  country,  in  1824,  and  gave 
her  main  attention  to  studying  the  laws  which  upheld 
slavery,  and  observing  the  character  of  the  negroes. 
For  the  latter  purpose  she  bought  several  families  of 
slaves,  as  well  as  a  great  tract  of  land,  on  which  now 
stands  the  city  of  Memphis.  She  hoped  to  show  how 
easily  the  blacks  might  be  prepared  by  education  for 
freedom.  Unfortunately  her  health  broke  down  so 
completely,  and  her  white  assistants  were  so  false  to 
their  trust,  that  she  was  finally  obliged  to  send  the 
negroes  to   Hayti  and   sell   the  land.      She  had   now 


4624 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


made  up  her  mind  that  "  slavery  is  but  one  form  of 
the  same  evils  which  pervade  the  whole  frame  of  hu- 
man society";  that  the  source  of  all  these  errors  is 
ignorance;  and  that  the  only  remedy  is  '-the  spread 
and  increase  of  knowledge."  What  was  then  called 
education  took  little  heed  of  the  conditions  of  social 
progress,  and  it  was  scarcely  accessible  to  girls  except 
in  its  rudiments.  Both  these  defects  were  vigorously 
attacked  by  the  Free  Enquirer,  which  Miss  Wright 
began  to  edit  in  1828  in  company  with  Robert  Dale 
Owen.  The  latter  had  previously  carried  on  the  pa- 
per under  another  name  in  his  socialistic  community 
at  New  Harmony,  Indiana.  The  little  weekly  was 
published  thenceforth  at  New  York  ;  but  he  continued 
to  be  the  most  active  editor. 

His  colleague  was  busy  in  a  field  where  few  women 
had  yet  trod.  In  the  summer  of  1828  a  revival  was 
carried  so  far  in  Cincinnati  as  to  destroy  many  a  wo- 
man's reason  or  life.  The  news  brought  Frances 
Wright  to  the  city,  and  there  she  delivered  that 
autumn  the  first  course  of  public  lectures  ever  given 
by  a  woman  in  America.  The  court-house  was  crowded 
with  gentlemen  and  ladies,  and  one  of  the  latter  has 
said  that  she  had  never  seen  anything  so  striking  as 
the  orator's  "tall  and  majestic  figure,  the  deep  and 
almost  solemn  expression  of  her  eyes,  her  garment  of 
plain  white  muslin,  which  hung  around  her  in  folds 
that  recalled  the  drapery  of  a  Grecian  statue."  Her 
dark  brown  hair  was  worn  in  ringlets,  though  the 
fashionable  style  was  much  more  artificial.  She  was 
then  thirty-three,  and  her  cheeks  were  still  rosy;  but 
her  forehead  was  already  furrowed  with  deep  lines  of 
thought.  She  reminded  those  who  denied  the  right 
of  a  woman  to  speak  in  public  that  truth  has  no  sex. 
Her  main  theme  was  the  duty  of  stud3'ing  the  world 
in  which  we  live.  Her  tone  was  always  ladylike  ;  but 
she  ascribed  the  origin  of  all  knowledge  to  sensation  ; 
and  in  subsequent  lectures  she  admitted  her  inability 
to  discover  any  but  earthly  duties  and  interests.  She 
held  that  education  was  too  much  under  clerical  con- 
trol, that  the  children  ought  to  have  "schools  of  in- 
dustry," where  useful  trades  could  be  taught,  as  was 
done  at  New  Harmony,  and  finally  that  there  should 
be  public  halls  of  science  with  libraries  and  museums. 
This  part  of  her  plan  was  attempted  during  her  life- 
time, at  New  York,  though  with  only  temporary  suc- 
cess. In  conclusion  she  presented  a  plan  for  having 
all  children  of  two  years  old  and  upwards  brought  up 
by  the  State. 

These  lectures  were  delivered  that  winter  in  Balti- 
more and  Philadelphia,  then  in  New  York,  in  Boston 
next  August,  and  often  afterwards.  They  attracted 
much  attention;  and  printed  copies  may  be  found  in 
large  libraries.  What  seems  most  remarkable  is  the 
hatred   which   was   called   out.      Her   second   course. 


which  began  at  Cincinnati  in  May,  1836,  contained  a 
lecture  on  "Chartered  Monopolies  "  and  another  on 
"Southern  Slavery."  She  said  she  had  spent  the 
best  years  of  her  life  and  half  her  fortune  in  studying 
the  condition  of  the  bondmen,  but  that  their  own 
welfare  required  that  they  should  be  educated  before 
they  were  emancipated,  and  that  they  should  be  col- 
onised in  the  level  districts  of  what  were  then  the 
slave  states.  Her  attempt  to  deliver  this  lecture  at 
Philadelphia,  on  July  14,  caused  the  mayor  to  forbid 
her  to  speak  there  again  on  this  or  any  other  subject; 
but  he  finally  gave  way. 

It  was  between  the  delivery  of  these  two  courses 
that  she  married  a  Frenchman  whose  acquaintance 
she  had  made  at  New  Harmony,  and  whose  name  she 
wrote  thus — Darusmont.  Her  married  life  is  said  to 
have  been  unhappy;  but  she  complains  that  her  bio- 
graphers seldom  gave  the  facts.  Her  busy  life  ended 
on  December  14,  1852.  Her  success  as  lecturer,  jour- 
nalist and  author  was  more  brilliant  than  permanent, 
though  the  novelette  about  Epicurus  is  still  worth 
reading.  Her  most  complete  failure  was  as  a  poet. 
Her  influence  in  destroying  intolerance  and  slavery, 
as  well  as  in  reforming  education,  was  very  great, 
and  we  can  feel  sure  of  the  fulfilment  of  her  generous 
wish,  published  in  the  Free  Enquirer,  on  August  12, 
1829:  "Let  death  conquer  my  memory,  and  let  the 
world  preserve  those  principles  which  it  is  the  object 
of  my  life  to  establish." 


CHRISTENING  IN  CYPRUS. 

BY  MONCURE  D.   CONWAY. 

The  subjoined  letter  was  written  to  a  friend  of 
mine  (Mrs.  Seamur)  in  London  by  Mrs.  Catharine 
Grigsby,  wife  of  a  judge  residing  at  Papho,  Cyprus, 
where  the  letter  was  written.  It  possesses  a  good 
deal  of  interest  for  those  interested  in  the  history  of 
religious  ideas  and  symbolism.  Without  going  in  any 
detail  into  the  large  subject  of  baptism,  1  will  merely 
indicate  some  conclusions  to  which  my  own  studies 
have  led  me.  Nothing  corresponding  to  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  Christian  rite  of  baptism  existed  among 
the  ancient  Jews,  but  in  the  Oriental  world  there  was 
some  such  significance,  especially  in  baptisms  in  the 
Ganges  and  in  the  Jumna.  When  John  the  Baptist  in- 
stituted his  baptism,  there  was  enough  importance  in 
the  usage  of  washing  and  cleansing  proselytes  to  en- 
able the  populace  to  comprehend  the  process  ;  but 
proselytes  had  never  been  initiated  in  this  way  into 
the  Jewish  covenant.  There  is  some  ground  for  sup- 
posing that  John  the  Baptist  may  have  got  his  rite 
from  some  Oriental  source,  if  indeed  he  was  not  him- 
self an  Oriental  dervish.  In  the  "Gospel  According 
to  the  Hebrews"  it  is  said  :  "Behold  the  mother  of 
the  Lord  and  his  brothers  said  to  him,  'John  the  Bap- 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4625 


tist  baptiseth  for  remission  of  sins  :  let  us  go  and  be 
baptised  by  him.'  But  he  said  to  them,  'Wherein 
have  I  sinned  that  I  should  go  and  be  baptised  by 
him?  except  perchance  this  very  thing  that  I  have 
said  is  ignorance.'  When  the  people  had  been  bap- 
tised, Jesus  also  came  and  was  baptised  by  John.  And 
as  he  went  up  the  heavens  were  opened,  and  he  saw 
the  Holy  Spirit  descending  and  entering  into  him. 
And  a  voice  out  of  the  heaven,  saying,  'Thou  art  my 
beloved  Son,  in  thee  I  am  well  pleased';  and  again,  'I 
have  this  day  begotten  thee.'  And  straightway  a  great 
light  shone  around  the  place." 

This  day  begotten.  The  Holy  Spirit  (j-iiaeli)  is  here 
feminine,  and  in  this  fragment  we  probably  have  the 
origin  of  the  myth  of  immaculate  conception  and  the 
star.  There  is  further  ground  for  believing  that  this 
fragment  influenced  Paul,  for  there  was  a  book  known 
in  the  second  century  called  the  Preaching  of  Paul, 
concerning  which  a  tract  printed  among  Cyprian's 
■  works  says :  "This  counterfeit  and  actually  interne- 
cine baptism  has  been  promulgated  in  particular  by  a 
book  forged  by  the  same  heretics  in  order  to  spread 
the  same  error :  this  book  is  entitled  the  Preaching  of 
Paul,  and  in  it,  in  opposition  to  all  the  Scriptures,  you 
will  find  Christ,  the  only  man  who  was  altogether 
without  fault,  both  making  confession  respecting  his 
own  sin,  and  that  he  was  driven  by  his  mother  Mary 
almost  against  his  own  will  to  receive  the  baptism  of 
John."  Paul's  idea  seems  to  be  that  of  a  "new  crea- 
tion" of  the  child  of  Adam,  rather  than  of  second 
birth;  the  new  creature  was  to  breathe  a  new  spir- 
ritual  atmosphere,  and  consecrated  food.  The  tone 
of  severance  ascribed  to  Jesus  when  speaking  of  or  to 
his  mother — "  Mistress,  what  have  I  to  do  with  thee?" 
— may  be  an  indication  of  the  development  of  the 
idea  represented  in  the  Aramaic  fragment  above  cited, 
"This  day  have  I  begotten  thee";  followed  by  the 
descent  and  entrance  of  the  (feminine)  Holy  Spirit.  It 
will  be  noted  that  in  the  rite  described  in  the  subjoined 
letter  the  child's  natural  mother  is  excluded  from  the 
room. 

"You  ask  me  to  tell  you  about  the  Greek  christen- 
ing to  which  I  went  a  short  time  ago.  It  is  a  truly 
elaborate  ceremony,  too  much  so  from  the  poor  in- 
fant's point  of  view,  I  should  think.  The  hour  at 
which  we  were  invited  was  five  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon, the  temperature  85°  to  90  ;  When  we  arrived 
we  were  met  by  the  host  and  hostess  with  all  due  cer- 
emony, and  ushered  into  the  drawing-room,  where  a 
large  party  of  friends  were  already  assembled.  In  the 
middle  of  the  room  was  a  small  square  table,  upon 
which  was  placed  a  white  pillow,  and  upon  that  was 
laid  a  large  metal-bound  copy  of  the  Gospels,  and  a 
large  silver-plated  cross.  By  the  table  was  a  chair 
with  two  candlesticks   on  it,  with  native  wax  tapers; 


these  were  lighted  when  the  service  commenced,  and 
were  much  trouble,  for  being  somewhat  thin  and  at- 
tenuated (not  quite  so  thin  as  one's  little  finger)  they 
were  constantly  bowing  themselves  down  with  the 
heat  and  having  to  be  propped  up  again.  The  pro- 
ceedings commenced  by  the  old  priest  reading  a  hom- 
ily to  the  unconscious  infant  at  a  galloping  pace,  out 
of  a  dirty  tattered  brown  prayer-book,  to  which  no- 
body paid  any  particular  attention — that  being  the 
baby's  business  !  Before  long  the  baby  grew  restless, 
and  the  godfather,  who  held  it  in  his  arms,  "sitting 
up  straight  and  tall,"  (it  was  nearly  three  months  old) 
promptly  seized  the  cross  and  held  it  for  the  baby  to 
play  with,  who  clasped  it  with  its  little  fat  hands  and 
conveyed  one  corner  of  it  to  its  mouth,  sucking  it  with 
much  satisfaction  ;  and  so  peace  reigned  as  far  as 
baby  was  concerned.  This  finished,  the  baby  was 
handed  back  to  its  nurse,  who  took  it  from  the  room. 
Then  followed  a  lengthy  exhortation  to  the  godfather, 
and  while  this  was  going  on  the  assembled  company 
chattered  and  gossiped  in  undertones  one  to  another, 
it  being  nobody's  business  apparently  but  that  of  the 
godfather  to  listen  to  the  priest.  A  round  copper, 
which  served  as  a  font,  stood  on  a  chair  next  to  the 
one  with  the  candles.  Into  this  warm  water  was 
poured,  and  blessed  by  the  priest ;  then  more  prayers 
were  read,  and  oil  was  brought  in  and  added  to  the 
water,  which  was  again  blessed.  By  this  time  the  infant 
reappeared  on  the  scene,  wrapped  in  a  new  towel  and 
entirely  divested  of  clothing,  and  was  again  handed 
over  to  the  godfather.  Then  the  priest  handed  the 
cross  to  the  godfather  to  kiss,  and  then  placed  it  across 
the  baby's  face.  More  prayers  were  galloped  through, 
then  lighted  tapers  were  given  to  each  member  of  the 
assembled  company  to  hold,  which  did  not  add  to 
one's  comfort,  as  the  temperature  was  considerably 
raised  thereby.  With  my  fan  I  extinguished  mine 
(accidentally  for  the  purpose),  hoping  it  would  pass 
unnoticed,  but  it  was  promptly  lighted  again  with  the 
greatest  politeness  by  the  gentleman  next  to  me.  The 
tapers  being  lighted,  was  the  signal  for  business.  Now 
the  priest  took  the  infant,  and,  holding  it  up  aloft  for 
a  second,  naked  and  terrified,  plunged  it  three  times 
into  the  hot  oil  and  water,  in  the  name  of  the  Father, 
Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  forcing  it  deep  down  into  the 
water,  and  smearing  its  poor  head  and  face,  in  no  wise 
disconcerted  by  its  piercing  shrieks.  This  done,  it 
was  handed  back  to  the  godfather,  who  rolled  it  up  in 
the  towel  and  did  the  best  he  could  with  the  wailing, 
greasy  bundle,  while  more  prayers  were  read  by  the 
priest.  The  next  part  of  the  programme  was  cutting 
off  three  locks  of  the  baby's  hair  with  a  little  bright 
pair  of  scissors,  new  for  the  occasion  ;  each  lock  was 
severed  in  the  name  of  the  Trinity,  and  the  hair 
thrown  into  the  font.      This  baby  had  splendid   thick 


4626 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


dark  hair  (I  presume  this  part  of  the  ceremony  would 
have  to  be  dispensed  with  in  case  of  a  bald  baby!). 
This  done,  a  little  gold  cross  on  a  piece  of  blue  ribbon 
was  blessed  by  the  priest  and  put  over  its  head  ;  then 
its  new  clothes  were  all  consecrated  one  by  one  and 
piled  on  the  '  bundle,'  which  wailed  unceasingly.  This 
finished,  they  walked  three  times  round  the  room, 
chanting  and  burning  incense.  The  godmother  at  this 
point  in  the  proceedings  relieved  the  victimised  god- 
father of  his  burden  and  dressed  tlie  infant  in  the 
presence  of  the  assembled  company  in  its  new  clothes, 
oily  as  it  was,  not  attempting  to  dry  it  in  the  least, 
and  custom  demands  that  these  clothes  should  not  be 
changed  for  three  days  !  While  the  child  was  being 
dressed,  the  priest  continued  reading,  the  folks  talked, 
and  the  victim  screamed  its  loudest.  When  dressed, 
it  was  handed  back  to  its  godfather  once  more,  and, 
the  priest  leading  the  way,  still  reading  and  chanting, 
they  went  into  the  adjoining  room  to  hand  the  baby 
over  to  its  mother,  and  this  concluded  the  lengthy  cer- 
emony. The  mother  is  never  allowed  to  be  present 
at  the  baptismal  service,  for  the  child  is  supposed  to 
be  born  in  sin,  in  which  she  is  a  participator,  and  by 
virtue  of  its  baptism  it  is  given  to  her  regenerated — a 
new  creature.  Light  refreshments,  jam,  cake,  wine, 
etc.,  were  then  served,  after  which  we  took  our  leave, 
after  being  much  thanked  for  coming  !  All  I  hope  is, 
that  the  next  baptism  I  am  required  to  attend  will 
take  place  in  the  loiiitey  time  !  I  ought  to  say  that  the 
water  in  which  the  infant  is  baptised  is  taken  to  the 
church  and  poured  upon  a  consecrated  spot,  over 
which  the  foot  of  mortal  may  never  tread.  A  wedding 
and  a  funeral  are  equally  elaborate  ceremonies,  the 
former  painfully  so — lasting  for  lliree  days." 

THE  ETERNAL  RELIGION. 

BY  GEORGE   M.    MC  CRIE. 

Familiar  to  most  of  us  is  the  story  of  the  mortal 
who  yearned  to  explore  the  vastness  of  the  universe. 
How  he  dreamed  that,  in  the  company  of  an  angel, 
he  was  permitted  to  soar,  for  what  seemed  to  be  count- 
less ages,  through  star-system  after  star-system  of  the 
heavens,  through  galaxies  of  suns  and  worlds  innumer- 
able, until  the  burden  of  infinitude  weighed  upon  his 
very  soul.  "There  is  no  ending,"  he  exclaimed,  in 
utter  weariness,  "  no  endinif  of  this  universe  of  God  !  " 
Then  the  angel  threw  up  his  glorious  hands  to  the 
heaven  of  heavens,  and  cried  aloud,  "Even  so.  Lo, 
also  there  is  no  heginnitig  !  " 

As  the  march  of  the  universe  is  eternal,  so  is  its 
choric  song — a  theme  without  beginning  or  ending,  a 
rhythm  dateless  and  everlasting.  Such  is  the  concep- 
tion which  science  gives  us  of  the  eternal  religion  of 
the  universe. 

fs  it  not  a  sublime  conception  ?     Some  are  accus- 


tomed to  boast  of  the  antiquity  and  universality  of 
their  own  particular  system  of  religious  faith,  how  its 
foundations  were  laid  in  the  remote  past,  how  it  has 
had  its  prophets,  apostles,  saints,  and  noble  army  of 
martyrs,  its  traditions,  sacraments  and  ceremonies 
hallowed  by  the  use  of  ages.  Christianity  is  such  an 
ancient  organisation,  consecrated  by  centuries  of  tra- 
dition, by  prayers  and  tears  unnumbered,  by  the  tes- 
timonies of  its  confessors,  the  blood  of  its  martyrs — the 
oblations  of  the  faithful.  Yet,  after  all,  it  is  but  a  part 
of  a  greater  whole,  an  anthem  only  in  an  endless  choral 
service,  an  epoch  simply  in  the  history  of  religion  uni- 
versal and  eternal.  Christianity,  and  all  other  so  called 
religions,  are  but  phases  of  the  one  eternal  faith,  which 
embraces  them  all,  as  the  greater  includes  the  less. 
The  phase  will  pass  away — will  some  day  have  its  end- 
ing, even  as  it  had  its  commencement,  but  the  cosmic 
process,  of  which  it  forms  a  stage,  is  unending,  even 
as  it  had  no  beginning. 

This  is  not  a  heated  dream.  It  is  plain,  sober, 
matter-of-fact  reality.  That  we  cannot  do  more  than 
approximately  define  the  eternal  religion,  goes  without 
saying,  for  to  define  anything  exactly  is  to  point  out 
its  limits,  and  of  limits  the  religion  of  eternity  knows 
nothing.  We  may  view  it,  however,  in  one  light,  as 
the  purposive  march  of  evolution,  not  only  the  evolu- 
tion of  life  on  our  little  planet, — a  mere  sand  grain  in 
the  vast, — but  the  evolution  of  worlds,  and  systems  of 
worlds  and  suns,  in  a  word,  the  story  of  the  universe. 

This  view  is,  distinctively,  the  birthright  of  modern 
science.  Thinkers  of  old  may  have  dreamed  of  it, 
but,  to  them,  it  was  little  more  than  a  dream.  They 
could  not  see,  as  we,  nowadays,  are  able  to  see, — 
thanks  to  that  light  of  science,  now  enlightening  every 
man  that  cometh  into  the  world, — that  the  veriest  mote 
dancing  in  the  sunbeam,  the  infinitesimal  atom  itself, 
is  bound  with  links  that  cannot  be  broken,  not  only  to 
every  other  particle  in  the  present  universe  of  time, 
but  also  to  everything  else  that  has  been,  or  will  be, 
in  a  word,  to  the  past  and  to  the  future,  as  well  as  to 
the  present.'  We  who  live  and  move  and  have  our 
being  here  and  now,  are  the  direct  offspring,  the  in- 
carnate representatives  of  everything  preceding  us  in 
the  long  procession  of  the  past,  even  as  we  are  the 
precursors  of  everything  ahead  of  us  in  the  dim  files 
of  the  future.  As  we  are,  literally,  one  with  the  es- 
sence of  the  boundless  universe,  we  are  infinite  and 
eternal  as  itself.  No  apocalyptic  seer  was  ever  vouch- 
safed such  a  transcendent  vision  as  this.  Eye  hath 
not  seen,  nor  ear  heard,  anything  more  divine. 

The  petty  religious  faiths  of  the  past— for  petty  they 
are  compared  with  that  grander  system  which  enshrines 

1  We  see  the  applicability  of  the  term  Religion  to  this  all  inclusive  bond, 
if  the  word  be  derived,  as  it  presumably  is,  from  the  verb  religarc—Ko  bind 
together. 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4627 


them — have  mostly  their  dark  side.  They  have  their 
ideas  of  retribution  as  well  as  of  recompense,  of  pun- 
ishment, as  well  as  of  pardon  and  peace;  of  hell,  as 
well  as  of  heaven  ;  of  lost,  as  well  as  of  ransomed  souls. 
These  dreams  pass  away.  Fitted,  it  may  be  for  the 
times  which  gave  birth  to  them,  they  are  current  reali- 
ties no  longer.  For  cosmic  evolution  cannot  suffer  the 
veriest  atom  to  perish,  or  to  become  "a  castaway." 
Everything  is  wanted,  notliing  can  be  spared,  in  order 
that  the  account  of  the  eternal  jewels  may  be  made  up. 
None  of  us  can  barter  his  immortal  birthright  if  he 
would.  None  of  us  can  "  fall  away  "  from  that  scheme 
of  literal  redemption,  which  summons  our  very  ashes 
from  the  grave,  in  that  continuous  resurrection  of  the 
material  which  goes  on  every  moment.  "  I  believe 
in  the  resurrection  of  the  flesh,  and  the  life  everlast- 
ing "  is  a  part  of  the  scientific,  as  well  as  of  the  Chris- 
tian, symbol. 

And  our  thoughts — what  of  them?  Are  they  also 
deathless,  like  the  component  parts  of  our  organism, 
like  our  deeds  done  in  the  body?  Yea,  verily  !  The 
old  idea  of  a  book,  wherein  all  human  deeds,  words, 
and  thoughts  were  inscribed,  waiting  the  last  assize, 
has  a  foreshadowing  of  the  truth  in  it.  The  dynamic 
of  thought  may  indeed  be  incalculable  by  the  most 
delicate  instruments.  Scales  may  not  weigh  it,  but 
the  most  fleeting  thought,  no  less  than  the  spoken 
word,  is  imperishable,  leaves  its  indelible  trace  within 
what  Shakespeare,  with  prophetic  insight,  calls  "the 
book  and  volume  of  the  brain,"  and  hence  also  in  that 
greater  book  of  life — chronicles  these  which  the  tears 
of  no  recording  angel  may  blot  or  erase  ;  seeing  that 
in  the  eternal  religion  there  is  "no  remission."  Our 
deeds,  words,  and  thoughts  live  for  ever  and  ever. 
Mortality,  truly,  is  thus  swallowed  up  of  life. 

It  is  a  deeply  impressive  reflexion  that,  even  now, 
we  stand  at  what  is  manifestly  a  turning-point,  a  tran- 
sition stage,  in  tlie  history  of  the  eternal  religion. 
Eternity  stretches  behind  and  before  us.  To  this  cru- 
cial stage,  everything  in  and  of  the  past  has  insensibly, 
yet  unmistakably,  led.  By  this  stage,  everything  in 
the  future  will  be,  more  or  less,  influenced.  For  the 
moment,  we  are  protagonists  on  the  arena  of  being. 
That  old  motto  of  the  Bruce  was  a  proud  one — "Fi/i- 
iiiiis  " — we  have  been  !  Ours  is  a  still  nobler  one,  for 
we  both  have  been  and  shall  be  evermore.  Our  feeblest 
efforts  help  to  shape  the  future;  even  as  they,  in  turn, 
have  been  moulded  by  the  past. 

Unalterably,  irrevocably,  we  are  helping  t!i)w  to 
build  the  universe  temple,  that  imperishable  fabric 
which  rises,  day  by  day,  though  without  sound  of  axe 
or  hammer.  Perhaps  we  are  wont  to  plume  ourselves 
unduly  on  the  perfection  of  our  own  share  of  the 
endless  task.  Every  new  and  enlightened  view  which 
we  now  hold   is  an   unquestionable  advance  on  what 


obtained  before,  for  it  contains  its  predecessor,  and 
something  more,  added  by  experience,  by  sober  judg- 
ment, in  conformity  with  the  eternal  principle  of 
growth.  But,  just  in  the  same  way,  will  the  view  of 
the  future  which  we  are  now  helping  to  fashion  be 
better  every  way  and  nobler  than  the  creed  of  to-day. 

Thus,  for  us,  there  remains  the  now-time  alone, 
the  working  day,  wherein  it  behooves  us  to  labor  dili- 
gently as  fellow  workers  for  eternity.  The  far-off  sum- 
mers that  we  shall  not  see  will  doubtless  behold,  liter- 
ally, new  heavens  and  a  new  earth,  wherein  righteous- 
ness will  dwell.  It  is  not  optimism,  this  view,  even 
as  it  is  not  pessimism.  Let  us  rather  call  it  Meliorism 
— the  conviction  that  the  unhasting,  unresting  march 
of  evolution  leads  ever  onward  and  upward,  as  the 
shining  light  which  shineth  more  and  more  "unto  the 
perfect  day. "  Ever  onward  it  stretches,  this  prospect, 
and  yet  the  goal  is  never  reached,  for  perfection  would 
involve  a  limit,  and  of  limits  there  are  none. 

Some  latter-day  philosophers  flout  this  assurance 
of  ours,  pointing,  with  warning  finger,  to  the  possible 
disappearance  of  life  from  this  planet,  in  consequence 
of  the  dwindling  of  the  sun's  light  and  heat.  A  few 
million  years  more  or  less,  they  tell  us,  will  see  the  end 
of  man's  existence  here,  with  all  his  hopes  and  dreams. 
Eternal  snows  will  lap  the  last  expiring  effort  of  ani- 
mal life  on  this  globe,  and  solemn  silence  mock  the 
busy  turmoil  of  the  past.  The  very  delusion  of  delu- 
sions is  this  short-sighted  view!  For  would  the  uni- 
verse cease  because  life  chanced  to  expire  on  the  sur- 
face of  one  of  its  atoms?  Assuredly  not.  Such  an  idea 
is  really  based  upon  that  old  and  narrow  belief  that 
this  earth  was  the  sole  theatre  of  man's  being,  and  that 
the  myriad  orbs  that  roll  in  space  were  merely  specks 
of  tinsel  fixed  to  light  its  midnight  darkness.  Science 
has  changed  all  that.  The  unnumbered  worlds  of 
space  are  doubtless  tenanted  by  intelligences,  different 
it  may  be  from  our  own,  but  akin  to  them  nevertheless, 
perhaps  our  superiors  in  knowledge  and  acquirements. 
But  even  if  every  vestige  of  human  life  were  to  be  de- 
leted from  the  universal  plan,  the  potentialities  of  life 
would  yet  remain,  and  after  countless  ages,  it  may  be, 
a  new  race  of  beings  would  spring  into  existence,  just 
as,  far  back  in  the  history  of  the  universe,  they  once 
did  before.  For  nothing  is  ever  lost,  but  everything, 
through  continual  metamorphosis,  evermore  perdures. 

Some  speak  of  the  existence  of  sin  and  suffering  as 
tending  to  make  them  despair  of  a  coming  "better 
day."  Doubtless  these  evils  are  to  be  faced,  not  dis- 
counted, as  if  they  were  trifles.  Owing  to  sin  and  suf- 
fering this  fair  world  has,  for  many  of  us,  its  Geth- 
semane,  even  its  Golgotha.  "  The  heart  knoweth  his 
own  bitterness,"  and  there  are  woes  and  pangs,  men- 
tal and  bodily,  which  are  immedicable,  save  by  the 
healing  sleep  of  the  grave.      Suffering,  however,  in  our 


4628 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


midst  is  mainly  due  to  error,  to  ignorance,  to  mistaken 
ideals.  These  will  right  themselves  in  time  ;  the  suf- 
fering from  disease,  again,  is  being  slowly,  but  surely, 
lessened.  Ultimately,  as  we  believe,  death  will  only 
result  from  accident,  or  old  age ;  all  forms  of  disease 
being  eliminated.  Sin  is  a  different  matter,  but  it  is 
not  incurable.  It  will  not  be  remedied  by  penal  laws, 
or  by  threats  of  everlasting  burnings.  In  the  Christian 
faith  sin  is  described  as  "  any  want  of  conformity  unto, 
or  transgression  of  the  law  of  God."  Sin,  in  the  uni- 
versal religion,  is  a  similar  want  of  conformity  unto, 
or-transgression  of,  the  great  evolutionary  law,  which 
makes  for  righteousness,  including  defects  of  will, 
sloth,  perversity,  anything  which  hinders,  or  attempts 
to  hinder  the  onward  march  sublime.  This,  too,  will 
eliminate  itself  in  time,  naturally  and  completely. 

Our  manifest  and  bounden  duty,  then,  is  to  be 
workers,  rather  than  preachers,  of  righteousness — to 
be  doers  not  hearers  only  of  the  veritable  Word  of 
Life.  Building  as  we  are  for  eternity,  a  great  respon- 
sibility lies  upon  us.  The  builders  of  the  glorious 
cathedrals  of  old  were  careful  to  finish  their  work,  not 
with  eye-service,  but  in  singleness  of  heart.  Even 
the  hidden  recesses  of  their  edifices  were  carved  and 
enriched  with  the  same  art  as  those  which  were  most 
conspicuous,  for  they  said  to  themselves  :  "  God's  eyes 
see  everywhere."  Let  us  see  to  it  that,  in  our  build- 
ing of  the  fane  which  is  to  be  imperishable,  we  use  the 
same  jealous  care  ! 


FABLES  FROM  THE  NEW  /ESOP. 

BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 


The  Wise  Widower. 

A  CERTAIN  widower  had  a  small  family  of  young 
children,  to  whose  education  and  improvement  in 
health  and  learning  and  goodness  he  devoted  all  his 
energies.  How  it  would  have  fared  with  his  methods 
had  he  not  been  a  widower  none  can  tell.  Some  wives, 
with  the  best  of  motives  at  their  command,  thwart  the 
efforts  of  the  noblest  men. 

A  visitor  came  to  the  house  one  day,  and  to  enter- 
tain him  the  host  prepared  a  drive  into  the  country. 

' '  You  will  not  object  to  the  children  ?  "  he  inquired. 
"  On  the  contrary,  I  should  be  glad  of  their  company," 
replied  the  guest,  "and  I  confess  to  being  much 
pleased  at  your  thoughtfulness  for  them, — poor  moth- 
erless things." 

Soon  the  horses  and  carriage  were  at  the  door,  and 
the  two  men  took  their  seats,  as  also  three  of  the  four 
children.      But  the  fourth  was  tardy. 

"Drive  on,"  said  the  father,  and  although  his 
friend  remonstrated  and  desired  him  to  wait  for  the 
delinquent  child,  he  would  not. 

While  they  were  in  the  country  they  all  descended 


and  strolled  about  in  the  shadow  of  the  woods  and 
among  the  fields.  While  thus  enjoying  themselves 
one  of  the  boys  came  running  to  the  father.  He  had 
a  bright-colored  berry  in  his  hand.  "  May  I  eat  this, 
father  ?  ' '  said  the  lad,  and  when  his  father  (after  look- 
ing at  the  berry  carefully)  answered  "Yes,"  he  ate  it; 
but  in  a  few  moments  was  taken  violently  ill. 

When  the  friend  anxiously  inquired  the  cause  of 
this  sudden  malady,  the  father  replied  coolly,  "Oh  1 
it  is  nothing  ;  he  will  soon  recover." 

Again,  for  amusement,  they  built  a  fire  of  fagots 
and  roasted  some  nuts  they  had  gathered.  These, 
when  thoroughly  roasted,  were  spread  out  to  cool,  and 
while  still  very  hot,  the  youngest  child  came  up  and 
was  about  to  take  one  in  his  hand. 

"  Do  not  let  the  child  touch  the  hot  nuts,"  said  the 
guest;   "he  will  burn  himself." 

"And  why  should  he  not  burn  himself?  "  asked  the 
father,  unconcerned. 

So  the  child  took  a  nut  in  his  hand,  but  dropped  it 
with  a  great  outcry  of  pain. 

The  father  said  nothing  till  the  child  came  to  him 
for  help,  when  he  wetted  the  little  fingers  with  glyce- 
rine and  wrapped  a  rag  about  them,  saying  that  the 
hurt  would  soon  heal,  which  proved  to  be  the  case. 

On  the  way  home  the  two  friends  fell  to  convers- 
ing upon  education  and  kindred  themes. 

"  My  method,"  said  the  father,  "is  that  of  nature. 
My  eldest  child  was  not  prepared  to  go  with  us  on  our 
drive,  so  she  was  left  at  home.  Nature,  I  have  ob- 
served, never  waits." 

"  But  was  it  not  cruel  to  let  another  child  suffer 
because  of  eating  the  berry?  "  asked  the  friend  ;  "and 
even  as  much  so  to  permit  the  youngest  to  burn  him- 
self ?  " 

"  No,"  replied  the  father,  "  it  was  far  from  cruel, 
but  the  greatest  kindness.  I  knew  the  berry  was  the 
nux  vomica  and  not  deadly,  and  the  hot  nut  was  a 
salutary  experience.  In  the  latter  case  the  child 
prayed  for  relief,  and  I  provided  it. 

"So  it  is  ever  with  nature.  She  leaves  bright- 
colored  berries  and  hot  nuts,  and,  let  me  tell  you,  also 
leaves  antidotes  and  reliefs.  Nature  not  onl)'  tempts 
our  foolishness  and  rashness,  but  answers  our  reason- 
able prayers." 


The  Big  Beast  and  the  Little  Worm. 

A  TRAVELLER  in  a  strange  country,  finding  himself 
alone  and  belated,  was  plodding  on  towards  the  lights 
of  a  distant  settlement,  when  suddenly  he  heard  a 
great  howling,  and  in  a  moment  perceived  in  the 
gloom  of  the  coppice  two  great,  glistening  eyes,  and, 
advancing  stealthily  toward  him,  a  big  beast. 

By  a  species  of  instinct  the  traveller  knew  at  once 
that  this  was  the  ravenous  monster  of  which  he  had 


XHK    OPEN     COURT. 


4629 


heard  tales  told  as  like  to  be  encountered   in  his  jour- 
ney. 

It  was  the  beast  Incapacit3\  What  to  do  at  first 
he  knew  not,  but,  half  palsied  with  fright,  he  sought 
a  tree,  up  which  he  climbed  and  clung  to  the  branches, 
whilst  the  beast  watched  below. 

All  night  by  moonshine,  all  day  by  sun-glow,  still 
the  beast  kept  watch.  Fortunately  he  had  provender 
and  a  flask  of  wine,  and  the  second  night,  having  man- 
aged to  get  some  sleep,  next  day  found  him  refreshed. 
To  solace  himself,  our  traveller  pulled  out  a  book  he 
had  by  him, — a  little  book  on  science  which  a  learned 
bonze  had  given  him  not  long  before. 

This  he  read  and  read,  and  grew  so  entertained 
that  half  the  day  slipped  b}',  and  then,  chancing  to 
look  down,  he  was  amazed  to  notice  that  the  big  beast 
had  grown  small  and  pun}',  and  his  tusks  had  disap- 
peared and  his  sharp  claws. 

Then  for  the  first  time  he  noticed  that  the  title  of 
his  little  book  was  Knowh'Ji^c-.  iJie  Destroxer  of  the 
Beast  Incapacity. 

Courage  regained  and  not  now  one  whit  affrighted 
he  leaped  down  out  of  the  tree,  ready  to  grapple  with 
the  beast,  which,  however,  not  waiting  for  him,  slunk 
off  into  the  forest,  and  left  the  traveller  to  pursue  his 
way  unmolested. 

Not  long  after  in  his  journeyings  he  met  his  friend, 
the  bonze,  and  thanked  him  fervently  for  the  book, 
explaining  what  great  service  it  had  done  him. 

"There  is  a  worse  beast  than  that,"  said  the 
bonze,  "and  him  you'll  meet  sooner  or  later.  Safety 
from  him  you'll  not  get  from  a  book,  nor  will  you  know 
him  by  name,  nor  even  see  him,  so  tiny  is  he  ;  a  very 
worm  for  size,  but  more  than  a  beast  for  strength." 

"And  what,"  said  the  traveller,  "shall  I  do  to 
master  him  ?  Piave  you  no  other  book  to  give  me  ?" 

"No,"  replied  the  bonze,  "in  his  case  books  are 
of  no  avail.  For  mastery  of  that  kind  of  monster  all 
you  can  do  is  to  pray." 

Now  the  traveller  had  begun  his  journey  with  gods 
of  his  own  country,  but  the  more  he  journeyed  the 
more  kinds  of  gods  he  found,  and  all  equally  false  and 
futile.  So  he  had  given  over  praying,  and,  —  although 
he  had  found  the  bonze  trustworthy  once, — now  con- 
cluded he  was  a  bigot,  and  went  his  way. 

A  year  after  he  returned  to  that  locality,  and  the 
good  bonze  entertained  him.  Our  traveller  had  much 
to  relate  of  the  perils  he  had  encountered.  He  was 
afraid,  he  said,  of  this  district  infested  by  robbers,  but 
he  plucked  up  a  spirit,  armed  himself,  and  got  through 
safely.  And  of  that  mountain  pass  he  spoke  as  un- 
willing to  venture  over,  because  of  the  avalanches, 
but  finally  he  concluded  that  caution  and  care  might 
avail,  and  so  it  did,  and  he  passed  through  unscathed. 
In  a  certain  city  noted  for  its  beautiful  and  giddy  wo- 


men he  doubted  if  his  virtue  could  withstand  such 
allurements,  but  he  bethought  him  that  his  mission 
was  to  journey  not  for  dallying  or  sloth  or  luxury,  but 
for  the  discoveries  to  be  made.  So  he  passed  through 
that  city  untempted. 

"And  never  once,"  said  he,  gayly,  "did  I  encoun- 
ter that  little  worm  of  which  you  warned  me  ;  so  I  had 
no  need  of  prayers,  which,  indeed,  to  be  candid  with 
3'ou,  I  do  not  believe  in." 

••Ah,  indeed!"  replied  the  bonze,  "  no  little  worm. 
I  doubt  not  you  n-.et  him  a  score  of  times,  but  I  can 
name  three  out  of  your  own  mouth  ;  there  was  your 
fear  of  robbers,  and  again  of  avalanches,  and  then  of 
the  sirens  in  the  city.  As  for  prayers,  for  one  you 
prayed  to  the  god  of  courage,  for  another  to  the  god 
of  prudence,  and  for  the  last  to  the  god  of  chastity. 
And  now,  I  beseech  you,  pray  to  the  greatest  of  all 
the  gods,  him  of  duty,  and  give  him  due  meed  of 
gratitude  for  all  your  escapes  and  conquests,  especially 
your  escape  from  your  own  self  and  your  conquest  over 
self." 

"Then  it  seems,"  stammered  the  traveller,  "that 
I  ought  to  be  grateful,  not  to  any  god,  but  to — my- 
self." 

"Just  be  grateful,"  replied  the  bonze,  "for  to  feel 
gratitude  is  to  be  grateful  to  God." 


Casting  the  Golden  Ball. 

A  SAGE  happened  to  be  present  at  some  games.  A 
score  of  youths  standing  in  line,  the  first  threw  a  ball 
to  his  next  neighbor,  and  he  to  his,  and  so  till  the  last 
one  in  the  line  had  caught  the  ball.  The  young  men 
were  expert  at  this  amusement,  and  caught  with  ease 
and  cast  with  celerity  and  accuracy. 

"How  would  it  be,  I  wonder,"  said  the  sage  to  one 
of  his  disciples,  who  was  with  him,  "if  the  ball,  in- 
stead of  being  made  of  leather,  were  of  gold?  I  will 
try  them,"  he  said,  ••and  thus  make  an  experiment  in 
humanity. " 

So  he  gave  to  the  first  player  a  golden  ball,  and  to 
all  the  players  he  said:  "  Try  and  catch  the  golden 
ball,  and  if  you  all  catch  it,  you  may  share  it  equally, 
but  if  one  shall  fail  to  do  so,  he  shall  pay  to  me  a  fine 
equal  in  value  to  the  ball." 

They  all  agreed,  for  they  said  among  themselves, 
"Surely  this  must  be  a  simple  fellow  and  a  spend- 
thrift, for  as  we  found  no  difficulty  in  catching  the 
leathern  ball  neither  shall  we  the  golden." 

But,  one  by  one,  each  dropped  the  golden  ball,  for 
— whether  they  were  overanxious,  or  greed}-,  or  the 
ball  being  of  gold  slipped  easily  out  of  their  hands,  I 
know  not,  but  they  could  neither  cast  it  safely,  nor 
hold  it  certainh'. 

At  the  end  of  the  game  the  sage  held  coins  to  the 


%«^ 


4630 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


value  of  twenty  golden  balls,  and  the  ball  itself  was 
restored  to  him. 

Then  he  called  the  youths  about  him  and  said  : 
"Young  men,  learn  a  lesson  from  this  game;  that  it 
is  easy  to  play  at  life  if  you  concern  yourselves  with 
common  things  to  which  you  are  used,  but  with  nobler 
thing*  much  thought  and  careful  practice  is  needful, 
lest  the  treasure  slip  that  might  else  have  been  readily 
held.  And  also  learn  that  ye  who  cast  the  ball  are 
like  men  who  cast  their  lives.  That  which  was  tossed 
to  them  by  their  forefathers  they  take  and  hold,  or 
miss,  fortune,  character,  all  merit  ;  and  when  in  their 
turn  they  are  required  to  throw,  the  cast  is  feeble  and 
ineffectual,  and  their  children,  to  whom  a  goodly  in- 
heritance should  have  gone,  are  left  beggars. 

"This  is  what  the  gods  would  have  us  understand 
as  the  meaning  of  Elysium  and  Tartarus, — success  or 
failure,  happiness  or  misery,  hope  or  despair,  good  or 
evil."  

Two  Sorts  of  Murder. 

Argone  was  passing  by  the  house  of  a  young  man 
who  had  recently  married  and  overheard  him  uttering 
an  unkind  word  to  her  whose  sincere  love  he  had  won. 
Argone  reproved  the  young  man,  who,  excusing  him- 
self, said  it  was  but  once. 

A  kid  happening  to  be  tethered  hard  by,  Argone 
drew  his  long  knife  and  plunged  it  into  the  kid's  heart. 

"Alas  !"  cried  the  young  man,  "you  have  killed 
my  wife's  pet  kid.      How  cruel." 

"  It  is  but  once,"  said  Argone,  and  while  the  young 
man  looked  at  him  in  amazement,  he  continued,  "why 
do  you  appear  so  confounded,  for  which  is  the  worse, 
to  slay  a  pet  kid  with  a  long  knife,  or  a  loving  wife 
with  an  unkind  word  ?  Which  is  the  more  cruel,  to 
kill  an  animal  or  to  kill  love?" 

Another  time  Argone  passed  by  the  young  man's 
house  and  his  wife  was  singing  merrily.  "  I  perceive," 
said  he,  "that  you  must  be  a  happy  woman."  "Why 
not,"  replied  the  young  matron,  "for  my  husband 
loves  me  and  never  is  angry  with  me  unjustly.  Why 
should  I  not  be  happy  ?  " 


Fittest,  Not  Best. 

Macron  was  blessed  with  a  large  family,  both  boys 
and  girls  ;  the  maids  were  all  virtuous,  and  of  the  lads 
all  were  bold  and  lusty  but  one,  who  was  a  coward 
and  puny. 

In  due  course  the  daughters  were  married,  but  one 
after  another  died  in  child  bed.  Macron's  sons,  too, 
one  by  one,  came  to  an  untimely  end.  One,  so  kind 
of  heart  that  all  distress  moved  him  greatly,  when  a 
neighbor  fell  ill  of  a  malignant  fever,  went  and  nursed 
him,  but  was  taken  by  the  infection  and  died.  Another, 
when  the  king  wanted  soldiers,  took  pike  and  buckler 
and  went  out  to  battle  for  his  country  and  was  slain. 


A  third,  in  time  of  famine,  to  provide  food  for  the 
household,  foraged  the  forest  and  fetched  daily  of  game 
a  larder  full,  till  at  last,  encountering  a  wild  boar,  was 
pierced  by  its  tusk  and  died. 

But  all  this  time  the  weakling  and  coward  stopped 
at  liome  and  throve  and  grew  fat.  Not  being  a  woman 
he  could  not  die  in  child-bed.  Not  being  kindly  dis- 
posed towards  his  neighbors  when  the  fever  ravaged 
the  land  he  kept  his  carcass  at  a  safe  distance  from 
infection.  Having  no  stomach  for  war,  no  king's  sol- 
dier was  he,  and  while  his  brother  hunted  that  he 
might  eat  he  was  quite  content  to  let  him.  So  he  sur- 
vived, and  his  sisters  and  brothers,  one  by  one,  in  the 
way  of  duty,  died. 

"I  cannot  help  thinking,"  said  the  wise  man, 
"that  the  rest,  although  what  men  call  dead,  were 
more  truly  alive  than  he,  and  that  mere  survival  can 
hardly  be  called  life. 

Two  Brothers. 

They  were  born  twins  ;  but  as  soon  as  they  could 
walk  and  talk  they  went  divers  ways  ;  one  played  and 
romped  as  a  child  ;  as  a  youth  he  frequented  the  inns 
and  disported  with  all  the  maids  till  he  found  the  one 
of  the  world  for  him  and  her  he  married,  and  she  bore 
him  children.  He  worked  seldom,  only  enough  to 
provide  a  bare  subsistence,  and  he  and  she  and  their 
children  loved  one  another  and  passed  their  lives  in 
gay  living. 

The  other  brother  despised  play,  and  instead  of 
disporting  at  the  inns  or  merry- making,  kept  by  him- 
self, toiled  by  day,  and  burned  oil  by  night  to  get 
learning.  He  was  frugal  and  saved  his  pence,  and 
having  no  liking  for  women  did  not  marry.  When 
he  was  old  he  had  gotten  a  great  fortune,  and  when 
his  time  came  to  die  knew  not  how  to  dispose  of  it. 
Two  brothers,  neither  over  wise. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

•■THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,   Editor. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  419. 

FRANCES  WRIGHT.      F.  M.  Holland 4623 

CHRISTENING  IN  CYPRUS.     Moncure  D  Conway.  .  .   4624 

THE  ETERNAL  RELIGION.     George  M.  McCrie....   4626 

FABLES  FROM  THE  NEW  -ESOP.     A  Wise  Widower. 

The  Big  Beast  and  the  Little  Worm.    Casting  the  Golden 

Ball      Two  Sorts  of  Murder.      Fittest,  Not  Best.     Two 

Brothers.     Hudor  Genone 4628 


The  Open  Court. 


A   WEKKLY   JOUENAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  420.    (Vol.  1X.-37.)  CHICAGO,    SEPTEMBER   12,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
/  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Oper  Court  Publishing  Co.— Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


IMMORTALITY  DISCUSSED. 

BY  E.    P.    POWELL. 

Some  time  ago  we  agreed  to  discuss  tlie  question 
of  immortality.  Is  this  hope  of  man  anything  more 
than  a  wish  or  a  desire  ?  It  has,  so  far  as  I  know,  never 
been  demonstrated. 

To  demonstrate  immortality  is  to  make  it  certainty 
to  rational  minds — not  to  prove  it  by  the  senses. 

Certainly;  but  what  has  a  beginning  can  have  an 
end  ;  and  we  know  that  our  lives  do  have  a  point  of 
beginning. 

They  most  assuredly  do  not.  They  have  a  point 
of  beginning  to  operate  the  organism  called  the  body — 
a  mere  flux  of  atoms.  But  the  life  in  which  we  share 
is  without  beginning.  We  do  not  need  to  repeat  our 
argument  that  nothing  can  originate  al/  nihilo. 

But  that  proves  only  that  our  egos  are  of  the  Eter- 
nal Mind,  and  may  either  go  back  into  the  Infinite,  or 
go  forward  in  an  infinite  chain  of  causations. 

Have  you  ever  thought  what  your  own  life  is — ex 
cept  as  a  chain  of  causations?  You  are  not  what  you 
were  twenty  years  ago.  You  barely  remember  a  few 
scraps  of  your  life  of  that  date — most  of  it  is  forever 
lost  to  your  power  to  recall.  If  it  were  obliterated 
your  happiness  would  hardly  be  affected. 

But  do  you  not  mean  to  say  immortality  is  at  best 
only  eternal  sequences;  and  we  live  at  only  one  of 
these  at  a  time — and  that  to  be  immortal  only  means 
I  am  constantly  being  blotted  out  for  another  1  ?  And 
what  I  now  am  is  really  nol  to  live  on  ? 

Clearly  j'ou  have  a  power  to  beget  a  successor  self 
— and  he  another — and  so  on  ad  infinituin.  It  is  the 
indestructibility  of  the  power  to  beget  that  we  contend 
for. 

This  seems  to  me  to  rob  immortality  of  all  its  glory 
and  value.  Will  our  friendships  inevitably  fade  ?  and 
our  loves  ? 

Except  as  they  hourly  beget  new  love  they  most 
assuredly  do  fade.  That  is  the  fate,  as  you  well  know, 
of  most  friendships — lacking  power  to  relive  in  new 
purpose  and  conception. 

But  immortality  as  generally  taught  is  something 
quite  different,  I  am  sure.  It  is  essentially  to  live  for- 
ever in  a  second  life  ;  not   a   continuity  of  lives.      To 


believe  in  such  a  great  future  far  ahead  of  this  world- 
life  is  held  to  be  all-important. 

It  is  doubtful  if  such  a  belief  has  been  of  any  value 
whatever  to  men  either  morally  or  intellectually.  Ac- 
cepted not  as  a  first  choice,  its  value  has  invariably 
been  associated  either  with  extravagant  and  unwhole- 
some joys  or  with  terrible  fears.  This  has  enablea 
the  priest  to  take  as  his  favorite  stand  the  threshold 
of  undying  existence,  and  by  pictures  of  bliss  and  pic- 
tures of  misery  to  buy  the  services  of  his  hearers  or 
terrify  them  into  submission. 

You  hold  then  that  the  essential  immortality  is  the 
power — indeed  the  necessity  of  change.  ]\\-  die  that 
another  we  may  live.  But  why  may  not  this  genera- 
tion of  selfs  cease?  Even  allowing  that  evolution  is 
eternal,  is  it  provable  that  man  holds  any  more  cer- 
tain place  than  that  missing  link,  which  for  ages  ex- 
isted, and  then  was  so  absolutely  obliterated  that  we 
cannot  find  its  record  even  among  the  fossils? 

For  thousands  of  years  evolution  has  proceeded  hy 
means  of  man,  and  there  are  no  signs  of  an)'  higher 
organism  ahead.  With  man  began  a  reign  of  moral 
purpose.  The  secret  of  eternal  life  lies  in  our  ethical 
being.  He  that  wills  ethically  becomes  one  with  the 
eternal  Ethical  Purpose.  The  question  is,  whether 
our  spirits  do  by  free  choice  enter  into  the  immortal 
life  of  truth  and  love  which  is  indestructible.  The 
true  conception  of  immortality  is  that  of  a  survival  of 
the  fittest.  While  we  are  the  fittest  by  our  own  re- 
solve, there  is  no  power  in  nature  to  undo  us.  There 
is  every  reason  to  believe  that  man  is  the  object 
reached  after  by  organic  evolution.  Henceforth  the 
end  will  be  ignorance  surmounted  by  man,  weakness 
mastered  by  man,  ideals  touched — "God  in  man." 

I  have  been  accustomed  to  read  Tennyson  with 
considerable  pleasure,  but  of  late  with  less  satisfac- 
tion. It  is  a  puzzle  to  me  that  religious  people  seem  to 
believe  that  the  ver)'  best  hope  and  faith  they  can  get 
is  found  in  such  passages  of  In  Memoriam  as 

"  I  stretch  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  grope, 
And  gather  dust  and  chaff,  and  call 
To  what  I  feel  is  Lord  of  all  ; 
And  faintly  trust  the  larger  liope." 

This  is  not  faith  ;  it  is  not  knowledge  ;  it  is  hardl)' 
hope.  Is  this  all  that  we  have  reached  in  our  reason- 
ing and  soul-reachings?    The  whole  thing  is  in  a  nut- 


4632 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


shell.  I  am  a  child  of  God.  God  is  my  Father.  We 
have  love  one  for  another.  He  will  not  fail  me  ;  I 
will  not  fail  Him.  I  stand  as  firm  as  God,  because  I 
stand  with  God.  My  friend,  no  one  yet  has  ever  got 
beyond  the  sublime  truth,  "I  and  my  Father  are 
One."  Only  we  need  to  see  that  this  is  true  of  every 
up-looker  on  earth.  But  if  one  will  take  in  all  of  In 
Memoriam  from  first  to  last  he  will  find  the  real  im- 
mortality in  such  a  passage  as  this  : 

"  So  many  worlds,  so  much  to  do  ! 
So  little  done,  such  things  to  be  ! 
How  know  I  what  had  need  of  thee, 
For  thou  wert  strong  as  thou  wert  true  ? 

But  there  is  more  than  I  can  see ; 
And  what  I  see  I  leave  unsaid, 
Nor  speak  it.  knowing  Death  has  made 

His  darkness  beautiful  with  thee." 

But  let  me  go  back  to  your  valuation  of  immortal- 
ity as  a  theoretical  power.  I  am  surprised  that  you 
consider  it  of  no  great  value  as  a  belief  in  affecting  an 
amelioration  of  human  character.  I  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  think  with  those  who  consider  the  value  of 
a  belief  in  another  life  as  among  the  highest  motives 
to  virtue. 

Agnosticism  is  a  mental  flatulence  that  I  do  not  in- 
tend to  encourage  in  myself  or  others  ;  but  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  neglecting  more  important  knowledge 
for  less  important.  It  has  been  the  history  of  man- 
kind that  to  undertake  to  live  for  anotlier  life  has  been 
largely  at  a  sacrifice  of  good  wholesome  living  of  this 
life.  It  has  led  to  contemptuous  creeds  concerning 
this  world,  the  body,  and  our  duties  here  and  now. 
To  save  the  soul  in  a  next  existence  has  involved  a 
furious  struggle,  and  rituals  abhorrent  to  humanity. 
The  inquisition  was  born  of  this  doctrine.  It  abolished 
humanity;  and  the  French  Revolution,  reacting,  abol- 
ished Divinity. 

A  good  This-worldliness  is  then  what  you  advocate 
in  place  of  other-worldliness. 

Yes,  a  person  may  live  accursedly  for  this  life,  or 
he  may  live  accursedly  for  the  next  life.  The  all-im- 
portant idea  seems  to  be  to  live  nobly  and  honorably 
the  days  that  are  ours;  and  to  comprehend  that  these 
days  are  seeds  determining  the  days  to  come. 


CENTRALISATION  AND  DECENTRALISATION  IN 
FRANCE. 

BY    THEODORE  STANTON. 

Since  the  days  of  the  Gauls,  France  has  been 
swinging  like  a  pendulum  between  the  two  extremes 
of  centralisation  and  decentralisation.  During  the 
past  century  the  complaint  has  been  frequently  heard 
that  there  existed  "apoplexy  at  the  centre  and  paral- 
ysis at  the  extremities."  This  niol  was  so  taking  that 
it  has  often   been   repeated,  although  the  nation's  le- 


gal representatives  under  three  different  regimes — the 
July  Monarchy,  the  Second  Empire,  and  the  Third 
Republic — have,  since  1830,  newly  organised  and 
more  broadly  developed  local  self  government  in 
France.  Of  course,  much  still  remains  to  be  done, 
especially  when  the  subject  is  viewed  from  an  Ameri- 
can standpoint.  But  as  the  pendulum  is  just  now 
oscillating  in  the  direction  of  decentralisation,  there 
is  fresh  liope  for  still  greater  progress. 

In  fact,  decentralisation  is  rapidly  becoming  a 
"live  question"  in  this  country.  The  reviews  and 
newspapers  are  full  of  it,  it  is  agitated  in  the  Cham- 
bers, it  is  the  subject  of  lectures  in  various  parts  of 
France.  Mme.  Adam's  Nciivelle  Revue  has  made  it 
one  of  the  "features"  of  the  renovation  which  that 
periodical  underwent  last  winter,  and  the  "Chronique 
de  la  Dt^'centralisation "  and  "  Les  Provinces"  are 
now  regular  departments  in  this  progressive  semi- 
monthly. M.  Marcel  Fournier's  new  monthly,  the 
excellent  Rcvin-  Politique  et  Pailementaire,  fairly  teems 
with  the  pros  and  eons — especially  the  former — of  de- 
centralisation. "Theoretically  decentralisation  is  a 
question  that  is  more  than  ripe,"  said  the  Temps  a 
short  time  ago  in  a  leader  favoring  the  reform  ;  "fur- 
ther discussion  and  more  articles  and  reports  threaten- 
ing to  add  only  waste  paper  to  the  already  overwhelm- 
ing mass  of  materials  on  this  subject." 

But  perhaps  the  most  significant  of  these  many 
fresh  manifestations  of  this  anti-centralising  order  is 
the  foundation  at  Paris  of  the  National  Republican 
Decentralisation  League.  Senator  de  Marctre,  the 
veteran  statesman  who  played  an  important  part  in 
French  public  life  during  the  critical  days  of  Mac- 
Mahon's  presidency  and  who  then  showed  himself  as 
Minister  of  the  Interior  a  pronounced  and  practical 
advocate  of  administrative  decentralisation,  is  presi- 
dent of  the  organisation,  while  its  membership  in- 
cludes such  men  as  M.  Leon  Say,  the  political  econ- 
omist; Senator  Bardoux,  the  ex-Minister  and  Member 
of  the  Institute  ;  M.  Leon  Bourgeois,  ex-Minister  and 
Deputy;  M.  Flourens,  Deputy  and  formerly  Minister 
of  Foreign  Affairs  ;  M.  de  Vogii6,  Deputy  and  Member 
of  the  French  Academ}- ;  Senator  Adrien  H6brard, 
editor-in  cliief  of  the  influential  and  quasi-official 
Temps;  and  M.  Ren6  Goblet,  Deput}'  and  ex  Prime 
Minister,  who  says  in  a  recent  note:  "I  am  a  rather 
early  partisan  of  decentralisation,  for,  when  Minister 
of  the  Interior  in  1882,  I  introduced  two  bills  on  this 
subject,  one  of  which  would  have  developed  the  or- 
ganisation of  the  canton,  and  the  other  would  have 
handed  over  to  the  Councils  General  the  authority 
over  the  communes  now  exercised  by  the  Central 
Government;  nor  have  I  changed  my  mind  on  these 
questions." 

Just  what  are  the  reforms  these  men  would  accom- 


XHK     OPEN     COURT. 


4633 


plish?     In   an    "Address  to  our  Fellow  Citizens,"   is 
sued  liy  tlie  League,  we  read  : 

"On  account  of  tlie  abuse  of  functionaryism, 
which  is  causing  the  ruin  of  our  finances,  and  on  ac- 
count of  the  lack  of  local  liberties  which  weakens  the 
force  of  the  parliamentary  regime,  France  is  on  the 
point  of  succumbing  to  a  fatal  disease, — anemia,  in 
the  provinces,  and  hj'pertrophN ,  at  Paris.  But  the 
growth  of  the  evil  has  called  attention  to  the  pressing 
need  of  reform,  which,  as  it  will  save  France  and  con- 
solidate the  Republic,  ought  to  be  demanded  energeti- 
cally by  the  country  at  large." 

The  principal  remedy  which  these  doctors  in  poli- 
tics offer  for  the  trouble  is  "administrative  decentral- 
isation," which  strikes  one  as  rather  a  mild  dose  for 
such  a  deadly  disease. 

We  are  further  told  in  this  same  Address  that  the 
aim  of  the  League  is  "to  give  life  to  the  provinces 
and  to  favor  the  blossoming  forth  of  all  the  artistic, 
literary,  industrial,  commercial,  scientific,  financial 
and  political  forces  which  lie  hidden  in  the  provinces 
and  exhaust  themselves  by  the  enervation  of  inaction  ;" 
while  the  second  article  of  the  Statutes  of  the  League 
is  more  explicit  in  the  statement  of  its  purposes,  which 
are  "to  organise  throughout  the  country  a  system  of 
decentralising  propaganda,  whose  aim  shall  be  a  dim- 
inution of  the  powers  of  the  Central  Government, 
without,  however,  threatening  national  unity,  but 
rather  strengthening  it,  and  the  increment  of  the 
authority  of  the  communes,  the  department  and  other 
territorial  divisions  ;  thus  to  contribute  in  the  interest 
of  the  French  patric,  to  the  awakening  of  local  life  in 
all  its  forms,  and  to  the  development  of  public  liber- 
ties;  and  to  bring  about,  for  this  purpose,  a  reform 
of  the  various  administrative  services." 

But  this  extract  from  a  letter  of  the  secretary  of 
the  League,  M.  Alfred  Guignard,  Editor-in-chief  of 
the  Etcndard,  gives  the  best  account  of  the  scope  of 
the  work  of  the  new  society  : 

"We  have  not  drawn  up  a  definite  programme, 
lest  it  might  awaken  discussion  and,  consequently, 
division  among  our  members,  each  of  whom  is  now 
at  liberty  to  propose  and  discuss,  on  his  own  respon- 
sibility, any  views  which  he  may  chance  to  hold  on 
this  question,  ranging  from  the  most  moderate  kind 
of  decentralisation  up  to  federalism,  which,  according 
to  my  mind,  is  the  true  sort  of  decentralisation  and, 
at  the  same  time,  the  true  form  for  a  republican  gov- 
ernment. 

"The  aim  of  the  League  is  to  awaken  a  pulilic  sen- 
timent .favorable  to  local  liberties.  This  is  to  be  ac- 
complished b)'  the  formation  of  branch  societies  in  all 
the  departments,  arrondissements,  and  cantons,  even  ; 
by  means  of  lectures,  books  and  pamphlets  devoted 
to    the    principles    of    self-government    of    which    we 


French  know  so  little.  When  a  free  expression  of 
opinion  shall  have  lieen  secured  and  these  views  shall 
have  been  carefully  examined;  when  a  network  of 
branch  societies  shall  have  been  spread  over  the  whole 
surface  of  France,  then  we  shall  convene  a  congress 
and  promulgate  a  platform  whose  acceptance  we  shall 
try  to  secure  from  every  candidate  for  an  elective 
office." 

But  it  must  not  be  concluded  from  the  foregoing 
accounts  of  this  energetic  revival  of  a  decentralisation 
crusade,  that  that  rather  sentimental  dream  and  oft- 
expressed  hope  of  some  French  publicists,  the  restor- 
ation of  the  old  historic  provinces,  whose  names  still 
live  in  popular  speech  and  print  though  their  boun- 
dar\-lines  were  oliliterated  over  a  himdred  years  ago, 
will  soon,  if  ever,  be  realised.  "We  do  not  think," 
writes  M.  Guignard  in  the  letter  from  which  an  extract 
has  just  been  given,  "that  France,  so  backward  in 
the  practice  of  liberty,  and  bowed  for  a  century  under 
the  disgraceful  and  humiliating  yoke  of  bureaucracy, 
is  prepared  for  federalism." 

It  occurred  to  me  that  it  would  be  interesting  and 
instructive,  if  some  of  the  leaders  in  this  movement 
were  to  state  brittly  in  writing  their  views  on  this 
subject,  —  which  several  have  been  kind  enough  to  do. 
The  divergencies  of  opinion  revealed  in  these  com- 
munications— tot  Juimiius,  ijuot  scntcntiic  —  prove  the 
wisdom  of  the  League  in  leaving  perfect  freedom  to 
its  members  in  the  initiatory  period  of  the  organisa- 
tion. I  give  two  of  them,  and  they  are  the  most  uni- 
sonous of  the  budget. 

One  of  the  Vice-Presidents  of  the  League,  M. 
Charles  Beauquier,  Deputy  of  the  Doubs,  writes: 

"I  understand  b)-  decentralisation  the  develop- 
ment of  local  liberties  and  the  extension  of  the  powers 
of  the  various  elective  bodies  at  the  expense  of  those 
monopolised  by  the  Central  Government.  Thus,  I 
should  have  at  the  base  a  commune  with  a  budget  of 
its  own,  a  municipal  council  managing  all  municipal 
affairs,  and  an  executive  committee,  as  in  Switzerland, 
sharing  with  it  the  various  powers  now  exercised  ex- 
clusively by  the  mayor. 

"After  having  suppressed  the  Council  of  Arron- 
dissement  and  the  Departmental  Council,  or  General 
Council,  I  should  place  between  the  commune  and 
the  Central  Government  a  Region,  formed  by  several 
of  our  present  Departments  and  provided  with  a  grand 
Regional  Council.  A  committee,  chosen  by  this  coun- 
cil, would  exercise  about  the  same  powers  as  those 
enjoyed  to-day  b\-  the  Prefect.  The  sole  dutj-  of  the 
representative  of  the  government  at  the  capital  of  the 
Region  would  be  seeing  that  the  laws  were  duly  re- 
spected. He  might  even  be  given  a  veto  on  the  de- 
cisions of  the  council,  if  it  should  infringe  upon  the 
reserved  rights  of  the  Central  Government. 


4634 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


"The  Central  Government  would  have  to  care 
only  for  general  interests.  Everything  relating  to  local 
matters  would  be  managed  by  the  municipal  councils, 
while  Departmental  and  Regional  affairs  would  be 
treated  by  the  Regional  Councils.  In  this  way  the 
State  would  realise  a  considerable  saving  of  money, 
for,  instead  of  having  a  representative  and  all  his  sub- 
ordinates at  the  capital  of  each  Department,  as  is  the 
case  to-day,  there  would  be  but  one  such  establish- 
ment in  each  Region,  or  group  of  Departments.  If 
this  plan  were  adopted,  it  would  be  much  the  same 
thing  as  restoring  the  old  provinces." 

After  thus  offering  his  panacea,  M.  Beauquier  takes 
this  rather  pessimistic  view  of  the  situation  : 

"To  be  exact,  I  ought  to  add  that  there  is  no 
chance  of  decentralisation  being  realised  at  present. 
The  plan  sketched  above  is  a  dream  of  the  future, 
although  this  sort  of  decentralisation  exists  in  Italy 
and  Belgium.  The  question  is  not  yet  ripe  enough 
in  France.  During  the  last  legislature  I  introduced 
a  bill  whose  purpose  was  to  reduce  notably  the  num- 
ber of  Departments;  but  it  never  got  before  the 
House.  All  we  can  now  hope  for  is  to  slightly  cut 
down  the  army  of  office-holders,  to  simplify  adminis- 
trative routine,  and  to  augment  in  modest  proportions 
the  powers  of  the  Municipal  and  General,  or  Depart- 
mental, Councils,  at  the  expense  of  the  authority  of 
the  Prefects.  That  would  be  something.  But  we 
cannot  count  on  more,  considering  the  state  of  the 
public  mind  and  the  drift  of  the  Government.  For 
my  own  part,  however,  I  do  not  consider  a  republic 
solidly  established  unless  it  enjoys  decentralisation. 
Centralisation  is  of  monarchical  essence." 

Here  are  the  views  of  M.  Henry  Maret,  a  leading 
Deputy  of  the  Extreme  Left  and  Editor-in-chief  of 
the  Radical: 

"Being  an  impenitent  liberal,  I  am  a  partisan  of 
the  greatest  possible  decentralisation.  Where  exists 
centralisation,  I  believe  there  can  be  neither  liberty 
nor  a  true  republic.  I  consider  that  we  could  create 
Regional  Assemblies,  invested  with  powers  now  exer- 
cised by  the  Prefects,  without  endangering  national 
unity.  As  it  would  be  difficult,  with  over  36,000  com- 
munes, to  realise  communal  autonomy,  I  would  sub- 
stitute for  it  cantonal  autonomy.  In  other  words,  the 
canton  and  not  the  commune  would  be  the  unit.  To 
my  mind,  parliament  would  gain  in  force  and  author- 
ity if  its  attention  were  confined  solely  to  grand  na- 
tional questions  and  if  it  left  to  the  Regions  and  Can- 
tons the  care  of  their  own  administration.  I  should 
even  go  so  far  as  to  let  them  decide  how  they  should 
raise  their  taxes.  The  republican  regime  will  be  in- 
destructible only  when  political  life  circulates  every- 
where. Until  then,  we  will  always  be  at  the  mercy  of 
a  coitp  dc  force.  " 


In  a  word,  the  present  advocates  of  decentralisa- 
tion in  France  declare  that  they  desire  in  no  wise  to 
lift  the  hand  against  national  unity  secured  after  so 
much  effort  and  waiting,  nor  to  deprive  the  Central 
Government  of  any  of  the  authority  necessary  for  the 
defence  of  the  country  against  foreign  enemies  and 
for  the  preservation  of  order  at  home.  They  admit 
that  the  laws  should  be  uniform  throughout  the  na- 
tion, and  that  they  should  be  uniformly  enforced  ;  and 
that  the  treasury  and  the  army  should  be  in  the  un- 
trammeled  control  of  the  central  power.  Their  attack 
is  directed  only  against  the  excesses  of  centralisation. 

In  France  this  theme  is  almost  as  old  as  the  hills, 
as  M.  Leon  Aucoc,  of  the  Institute,  one  of  the  most 
learned  of  French  authorities  on  administrative  ques- 
tions, has  just  shown  in  an  instructive  pamphlet  (^Lcs 
Coiitroverscs  sur  la  Decentralisation  Adiiiinistratiite: 
Etude  liisforiqtie)  called  forth  by  this  revival  of  the 
subject  under  discussion. 

He  describes  how  the  Gallic  cities  possessed  con- 
siderable independence  under  the  Romans  prior  to 
the  reign  of  Trojan  ;  how,  after  the  anarchy  out  of 
which  the  feudal  system  arose,  there  was  a  tendency 
towards  the  reconstitution  of  central  authority  and 
local  liberties,  at  one  and  the  same  time  ;  how  the 
royal  power  finally  destroyed  these  liberties  and  the 
feudal  system,  till  the  king  could  truly  say,  L'Etat 
c'est  moi\  how,  on  the  very  eve  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, there  was  a  return  towards  decentralisation ; 
how  the  Constituent  Assembly  of  1789,  while  continu- 
ing the  political  centralisation  of  the  old  regime,  in- 
augurated so  decentralising  a  policj'  in  administrative 
affairs  as  to  produce  utter  confusion,  which  the  con- 
vention checked  and  then  went  to  the  opposite  ex- 
treme;  how  the  first  Empire  carried  still  further  the 
centralising  system  ;  how  it  was  not  till  Louis  Phi- 
lippe's reign  that  the  pendulum  began  to  swing  in  the 
other  direction  ;  how  the  work  of  the  Second  Empire 
in  this  field  was  "  deconcentration,"  as  M.  Aucoc  pre- 
fers to  call  it,  rather  than  decentralisation,  and  how 
under  the  third  Republic,  within  the  last  quarter  of  a 
century,  we  have  had  examples  of  both  excessive  cen- 
tralisation and  excessive  decentralisation. 

A  study  of  this  past  would  seem  to  indicate  that 
France  is,  in  fact,  about  to  enter  upon  a  decentralis- 
ing period;  for,  though  Taine  unquestionably  expres- 
ses the  sentiment  of  a  large  bod}'  of  Frenchmen  when 
he  sa3's,  "Authoritative  centralisation  has  this  that  is 
good  about  it, — it  still  preserves  us  from  democratic 
autonomy,"  the  " nouvelles  couches,"  whose  coming 
Gambetta  announced,  are  slowly  gaining  the  upper 
hand  and  democratic  autonomy  is  likely  to  be  attained 
along  with  that  federative  form  of  government  which 
advanced  French  republicans  dream  of,  and  of  which 
Proudhon  wrote;     "  Wlio  says  liberty  and  does  not 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4635 


say  federation,  says  nothing;  who  says  repubHc  and 
does  not  say  federation,  says  nothing  ;  who  says  so- 
ciaUsm  and  does  not  say  federation,  still  sa)s  nothing. " 


SOME  DEFINITIONS  OF  INSTINCT.' 

BY  PROF.    C.  LLOYD    MORGAN. 

The  phenomena  of  instinct  are  of  interest  both  to  biologists 
and  to  psychologists;  who  respectively  approach  them,  however, 
from  different  standpoints.  Whether  the  divergences  of  opinion 
concerning  these  phenomena,  and  the  diversities  of  definition  of 
the  terms  "instinct"  and  "instinctive,"  are  mainly  due  to  this 
cause,  it  is  perhaps  difficult  to  decide.  That  marlitd  differences 
do  exist  is  only  too  obvious. 

I.  Kelation  of  luslinct  to  Conscioiistiess.  —  "  Instinct,"  says  Pro- 
fessor Claus,-  "  may  be  rightly  defined  as  a  mechanism  which 
works  unconsciously,  and  is  inherited  with  the  organisation,  and 
which,  when  set  in  motion  by  external  or  internal  stimuli,  leads  to 
the  performance  of  appropriate  actions,  which  apparently  are  di- 
rected by  conscious  purpose."  Here,  then,  we  ha\-e  instinct  de- 
fined as  essentially  unconscious.  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  ■"•  regards 
instinct  in  its  higher  forms  as  probably  accompanied  by  a  rudi- 
mentary consciousness;  but  he  does  not  consider  the  presence  cf 
consciousness  essential.  Professor  Baldwin  speaks''  of  a  "low 
form  of  consciousness  which  has  not  character  enough  to  be  im- 
pulsive"; while  Professor  Calderwood'^  holds  that  instinctive  ac- 
tivities cannot  be  attributed  to  mental  power.  "  The  entire  chap- 
ter on  Instinct  in  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species  must,"  he  says,  "  be 
read  in  an  altered  form,  consequent  on  the  deletion  of  the  ref- 
erences to  '  mental  faculties  '  " 

On  the  other  hand,  Romanes  commences  his  definition  of  in- 
stinct with  these  words":  "Instinct  is  reflex  action  into  which 
there  is  imported  the  element  of  consciousness. "  ' '  The  term  com- 
prises," he  says,  "  all  those  faculties  of  mind  which  are  concerned 
with  conscious  and  adaptive  action,  antecedent  to  individual  ex- 
perience." "The  stimulus,"  he  adds,  "  which  evokes  an  instinc- 
tive action  is  a  perception."  Professor  Wundt  also  emphasises 
the  conscious  accompaniments  of  instinctive  activities,  which,  he 
says,"^  "differ  from  the  reflexes  proper  in  this,  that  they  are  ac- 
companied by  emotions  in  the  mind,  and  that  their  performance 
is  regulated  by  these  emotions." 

Thus,  even  if  we  exclude  the  extreme  views  of  those  who  hold 
that  instinctive  activity  is  due  to  connate  ideas,  and  inherited 
knowledge,'*  there  is  a  wide  range  of  opinion  on  this  head. 

2  Kclalion  of  Insliiut  to  Iiiiptihi. — Prof.  Wm.  James  speaks'-' 
of  "instinctive  or  impulsive  performances."  "Every  instinct," 
he  says,  "  is  an  impulse,"  and  he  implies  that  every  impulse  is  in- 
stinctive. Professor  Wundt"' and  Herr  Schneider"  also  regard 
instinctive  activities  as  prompted  by  impulse  ;  the  last-named  au- 
thor distinguishing  between  sensation-impulses,  perception-im- 
pulses, and  idea-impulses.     But  other  writers  use  the  term  in  a 

1  Reprinted  from  Naturat  Science,  of  London,  with  subsequent  corrections 
of  the  author's. 

2  Text-book  0/ Zoology,     Eng.  trans.,  \o\.  I.,  p.  94. 
?. Principles  0/ Psychology,  Ch.  XII. 

\Text-booli  of  Psychology,  Feelings  and  Wilt,  p.  30a.  He  also  speaks  of 
instincts  as  "inherited  motor  intuitions,"  p.  311. 

',i  Evolution,  and  Man" s  Place  in  Nature,  p.  igo. 

*3  Mental  Evolution  in  Animals,  p.  159. 

"t  Lectures  on  Human  and  Animal  Psycliology,  Eng.  Trans.,  p.  401. 

^Instinct  and  Acquisition.  Nature,  Vol.  XII,,  p.  507.  Oct.  7,  1875.  The 
passage  is  quoted  infra,  p.  4636,  §  6. 

'y Principles  of  Psychology,  Vol.  II-.  p.  3S2.  See  also  the  passage  quoted 
infra,  p.  4636,  ^  G. 

1(1  Op.  cit. 

11  Der  thierische  U'ille. 


more  restricted  sense  Professor  Hi''flding,  though  he  holds'  that 
"  instinct  is  distinguished  from  mere  reflex  movement  by  the  fact 
that  it  includes  an  obscure  impulse  of  feeling,"  also  tells  us-  that 
"impulse  [here  used  in  the  narrower  sense]  involves  a  contrast 
between  the  actual  and  a  possible  or  future.  This,"  he  adds,  "  is 
what  distinguishes  it  from  reflex-movement  and  instinct,  where 
the  excitation  may  perhaps  cause  a  sensation,  tut  where  no  idea 
asserts  itself  of  what  must  follow."  Professor  Baldwin  distin- 
guishes'' between  those  stimuli  and  the  reactive  consciousness 
which,  as  originating  mainly  from  withirt,  may  be  called  in  gen- 
eral inipithii'ii,  and  those  which,  as  originating  mainly  from  with- 
out, may  be  termed  instiuitivc ;  but  he  admits  that  the  distinction 
is  inexact. 

In  introducing  therefore  into  a  desci  iption  of  instinctive  ac- 
tivities any  reference  to  impulse,  the  exact  sense  in  which  this 
word  is  employed  itself  needs  definition. 

3.  Relation  of  Insliiut  to  IntelligcniC  and  J'o/ition.  —  Mr.  H. 
Spencer  describes  ^  instinct  as  compound  reflex-action.  Although 
he  states  clearly-"'  that  "  the  actions  we  call  rational  are,  by  long- 
continued  repetition,  rendered  automatic  and  instinctive";  yet  his 
main  thesis  is"  that  instincts  are  developed  on  the  path  of  upward 
development  from  reflex-action  toward  volitional  activity.  Others, 
who  are  not  prepared  to  follow  Mr.  Spencer  in  his  main  conten- 
tion, still  regard  instinctive  actions  as  essentially  involuntary. 
Such  views  may  be  contrasted  with  the  opinions  of  G  H.  Lewes' 
and  Herr  Schneider,'*  who  regard  instinct  as  due  to  lapsed  intelli- 
gence ;  habits  formed  under  intelligent  guidance  being  inherited 
in  the  form  of  instincts.  Professor  Wundt  seems  to  go  yet  further 
when  he  says:"  "Instinctive  action  is  impulsive,  ihat  is  voluntary 
action  ;  and,  however  far  back  we  may  go,  we  shall  never  find 
anything  to  derive  it  from  except  similar,  if  simpler,  acts  of  will. 
The  development  of  any  sort  of  animal  instinct,  that  is  to  say,  is 
altogether  impossible  unless  there  exists  from  the  first  that  inter- 
action of  external  stimulus  with  affective  and  voluntary  response 
which  constitutes  the  real  nature  of  instinct  at  all  .-^  tages  of  or- 
ganic evolution."  Thus,  v  hile  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  regards  in- 
stinct as  primarily  not  yet  voluntary;  and  while  many  writers 
regard  it  as  no  longer  voluntary  ;  Professor  Wundt  asserts  that  it 
is  at  no  time  involuntary. 

4.  Relation  of  Instinct  to  llalnl. — The  word  "habit,"  like  so 
many  others  in  this  connexion,  is  used  in  different  senses.  Many 
writers  describe  all  the  activities  of  animals  as  their  habits.  In 
this  sense  we  speak  of  habit  as  correlated  with  structure  But  the 
term  is  generally  used  in  psychology  in  a  more  restricted  sense, 
and  is  applied  to  those  activities  which  have  become  stereotyped 
under  the  guidance  of  individual  control.  A  habit  is,  in  this  ac- 
ceptation of  the  terra,  an  acquired  activity,  the  constancy  of  which 
is  due  to  frequent  repetition  by  the  individual,  in  adaptation  to 
special  circumstances  ;  and  a  distinction  is  drawn  between  such 
habits,  as  individually  acquired,  and  instincts  as  connate.'"  Those 
who  accept  the  Lamarckian  hypothesis  of  the  origin  of  instincts 
through  "  lapsed  intelligence  "  regard  them  as  the  connate  effects 
of  the  inheritance  of  acquired  habit.     Darwin"  and  f-tomanes'-  be- 

i  Outlines  of  Psycltology,  p.  91. 

2  Op.  cit.,  p.  32::.     Cf.  also  H.  R.  Marshall's  Pain,  Pleasure,  and  .Kstltctics. 
pp.  275-277. 

^Feelings  and  Will,  p.  304. 

^Principles  of  Psychology,  Ch.  XII.,  §  194. 

5  Op,  cit  ,  §  204. 

6  0A  "■'..  §  211. 

"  Problems  of  Life  and  Mind,     "  Instinct." 

^ Der  thierisclte  Wille, 

'i Lectures  on  Human  and  Animal  Psycltology,  p.  409 

10  See,  for  example.  Professor  Sully,  The  Human  Mind,  Vol.  II.,  p.  184. 

11  Origin  of  Species,  p.  206;  Descent  of  Man,  \o\,  I.,  p,  102,  quoted  in  Mental 
Ez'olution  in  Animals,  p.  264. 

Vi  Mental  Evolution  in  Animals,  p.  200. 


4636 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


lieved  that  instincts  were  in  part  due  to  this  mode  of  origin.  Pro- 
fessor Wundt,  however,  gives  to  the  term  a  wider  meaning,  and 
so  defines  instinct  as  to  include  acquired  habit.  "Movements," 
he  says,'  "which  originally  followed  upon  simple  or  compound 
voluntary  acts,  but  which  have  become  wholly  or  partly  mechan- 
ised in  the  course  of  individual  life,  or  of  generic  evolution,  we 
term  ins/inf/h'e  a.ctions."  In  accordance  with  this  definition,  in- 
stincts fall  into  two  groups.  Those,  "which,  so  far  as  we  can 
tell,  have  been  developed  during  the  life  of  the  individual,  and  in 
the  absence  of  definite  individual  influences  might  have  remained 
wholly  undeveloped,  may  be  called  niqiiired  instincts."-  They 
have  become  instinctive  through  repetition.  "  To  be  distinguished 
from  these  acquired  human  instincts  are  others,  which  are  con- 
nate."" "  The  laws  of  practice  suffice  for  the  explanation  of  the 
acquired  instincts.  The  occurrence  of  connate  instincts  renders  a 
subsidiary  hypothesis  necessary.  We  must  suppose  that  the  phys 
ical  changes  which  the  nervous  elements  undergo  can  be  trans- 
mitted from  father  to  son.  .  .  .  The  assumption  of  the  inheritance 
of  acquired  dispositions  or  tendencies  is  inevitable  if  there  is  to  be 
anv  continuity  of  evolution  at  all.  We  may  be  in  doubt  as  to  the 
extent  of  this  inheritance:  we  cannot  question  the  fact  itself."'' 
"  Darwin's  explanation  of  the  development  of  instinct  as  being 
mainly  the  result  of  passive  adaptation  seems,"  says  Professor 
Wundt,'' "  to  contradict  the  facts."  Now  the  majority  of  writers 
on  instinct  distinguish  it,  as  we  have  seen,  from  individually- 
acquired  habit.  And  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  state  that  Professor 
Wundt's  explanation  of  the  origin  of  connate  instincts  on  La- 
marckian  principles,  is  not  accepted  by  Professor  Weismann  and 
his  school.  ' '  I  believe, "  says  Professor  Weismann,''  ' '  that  this  is 
an  entirely  erroneous  view,  and  I  hold  that  all  instinct  is  entirely 
due  to  the  operation  of  natural  selection,  and  has  its  foundation, 
not  upon  inherited  experiences,  but  upon  variation  of  the  germ." 
In  view  of  the  biological  controversy  as  to  the  inheritance  of  ac- 
quired characters,  it  would  seem  advisable  so  to  define  instinct  as 
not  in  any  way  to  prejudge  the  question  of  origin. 

5.  The  Instincts  of  Man.  —  "  The  fewness  and  the  comparative 
simplicity  of  the  instincts  of  the  higher  animals, "  said  Darwin,' 
"are  remarkable  in  contrast  with  those  of  the  lower  animals." 
Romanes'*  held  that  "instinct  plays  a  larger  part  in  the  psychol- 
ogy of  many  animals  than  it  does  in  the  psychology  of  man." 
"Recent  research,"  says  Professor  Sully,"  "goes  to  show  that 
though  instinctive  movement  plays  a  smaller  part  in  the  life  of  the 
child  than  in  that  of  the  young  animal,  it  is  larger  than  has  been 
generally  supposed."  Professor  Preyer'"  tells  us  that  "the  in- 
stinctive movements  of  human  beings  are  not  numerous,  and  are 
difficult  to  recognise  (with  the  exception  of  the  sexual  ones)  when 
once  the  earliest  youth  is  past." 

On  the  oiher  hand.  Professor  \Vundt"  regards  human  life  as 
"permeated  through  and  through  with  instinctive  action,  deter- 
mined in  part,  however,  by  intelligence  and  volition."  And  Pro- 
fessor James  tells  us'-  that  "man  possesses  all  the  impulses  that 
they  (the  lower  creatures)  have,  and  a  great  many  more  besides." 
The  higher  animals  have  a  number  of   impulses,  such  as  greedi- 

1  Lectures  on  Human  and  Annual  Psycliology,  p.  388. 

2  Op.  cit.,  p.  397. 
"Op.cit.,-f.VjH. 
•I  Op.  cit.,  p.  405. 
•>  Op.  cit.,  p.  409. 
itEssays  (1889),  p.  gi. 
'Descent  of  Man,  Vol.  I.,  p.  loi. 

H  Mtntal  Evolution  in  Man,  p.  8. 

'J  The  Human  Mind,  Vol.  II.,  p.  1S6. 

\r>  Tlie  Mind  of  the  Child :  "  The  Senses  and  the  Will,"  p.  235. 

11  Lectures  on  Hnvtan  and  Animal  Psychology,  p.  397. 

\'i  Principles  0/ Psychology,  Vol.  II.,  pp.  392,  3.     Italics  the  author's. 


ness  and  suspicion,  curiosity  and  timidity,  all  of  them  "  congenital, 
blind  at  first,  and  productive  of  motor  reactions  of  a  rigorously 
determinate  sort.  Each  of  them,  then,  is  an  instinct,  as  instincts 
are  commonly  defined.  But  they  contradict  each  other — 'experi- 
ence' in  each  particular  opportunity  of  application  usually  decid- 
ing the  issue.  The  animal  that  exliibits  them  loses  the  '  instinctive  ' 
demeanour,  and  appears  to  lead  a  life  of  hesitation  and  choice,  an 
intellectual  life  ;  not,  ho7oei'er,  because  he  has  no  instinct — rather 
because  he  has  so  man}'  that  they  block  each  other'' s  path.''  This  is  in 
tolerably  marked  contrast  with  the  statement  of  Darwin's  which 
stands  at  the  head  of  this  section  ! 

6.  The  Plasticity  and  Variability  of  Instinct.  —  "Though  the 
instincts  of  animals,"  said  Douglas  Spalding,'  "  appear  and  disap- 
pear in  such  seasonable  correspondence  with  their  own  wants  and 
the  wants  of  their  offspring  as  to  be  a  standing  subject  of  wonder, 
they  have  by  no  means  the  fixed  and  unalterable  character  by 
which  some  would  distinguish  them  from  the  higher  faculties  of 
the  human  race.  They  vary  in  the  individuals  as  does  their  phys- 
ical structure.  Animals  can  learn  what  they  did  not  know  by  in- 
stinct, and  forget  the  instinctive  knowledge  which  they  never 
learned,  while  their  instincts  will  often  accommodate  themselves 
to  considerable  changes  in  the  order  of  external  events."  It  will 
be  noticed  that  there  are  here  two  groups  of  facts  :  (i)  Variations, 
analogous  to  variations  in  physical  structure  ;  and  (2)  accommo- 
dations to  changes  in  the  external  order  of  events.  Professor 
James-  says,  "the  mystical  view  of  an  instinct  would  make  it  in- 
variable"; and  he  formulates  two  principles  of  non-uniformity  of 
instincts,  (i)  that  of  the  inhibition  of  instinct  by  habits  ;  and  (2) 
that  of  the  transitoriness  of  instincts.  The  variation  analogous 
to  that  of  physical  structure  is  not  here  explicitly  recognised.  Ro 
manes,  who  defines''  instinct  as  a  generic  term  comprising  "all 
those  faculties  of  mind  which  are  concerned  with  conscious  and 
adaptive  action,  antecedent  to  individual  experience  .  .  .  and  sim- 
ilarly performed  under  similar  and  frequently  recurring  circum- 
stances by  all  the  individuals  of  the  same  species,"  appears  to  lay 
stress  on  their  invariability;  but  his  subsequent  treatment^  shows 
that  he  fully  recognised  the  connate  variability  of  instinct.  Un- 
der the  head  of  "  plasticity  "  he  also''' insisted  on  "  the  modifia- 
bility  of  instinct  under  the  influence  of  intelligence  "  He  quotes, 
with  approval,  Huber's  exclamation  :  ' '  How  ductile  is  the  instinct 
of  bees,  and  how  readily  it  adapts  itself  to  the  place,  the  circum- 
stances, and  the  needs  of  the  community."  There  seems,  how- 
ever, some  want  of  logical  consistency  in  first  defining  instinct  as 
connate  and  antecedent  to  individual  experience,  and  then  imply- 
ing that,  as  modified  under  the  influence  of  experience,  it  still  re- 
mains instinct.  For  example,  Romanes  says'':  "There  is  evi- 
dence to  show  that  the  knowledge  which  animals  display  of  poi- 
sonous herbs  is  of  the  nature  of  a  mixed  instinct,  due  to  intelligent 
observation,  imitation,  natural  selection,  and  transmission."  Other 
writers  render  the  term  "instinct"  indefinite  by  including  the  ef- 
fects of  individual  experience.  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace,  for  example, 
says' :  "  Much  of  the  mystery  of  instinct  arises  from  the  persis- 
tent refusal  to  recognise  the  agency  of  imitation,  memory,  obser- 
vation, and  reason  as  often  forming  part  of  it.  Yet  there  is  ample 
evidence  that  such  agency  must  be  taken  into  account."  But 
would  it  not  be  well,  one  may  ask,  so  to  define  instinct  as  to  dis- 
tinguish it  from  these  agencies,  and   to  say  that  the  habits  or  ac- 

lE.  g.,  Douglas  Spalding.     "Instinct   and   Acquisition."    Nature,   Vol. 
XII.p.  507. 

^ Principles  0/ Psychology,  Vol.  II..  pp.  391-394. 

^Mental Evolution  in  .Aniritals,  p.  159. 

<0p.  cit.,  p.  190.     C/.  Darwin,  in  the  same  work,  pp.  372  and  383. 

^  Op.  cit.,  p.  203. 

GOp.  cit.,  p.  227. 

1  DarwiMism,  p.  442. 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4637 


tivities  of  animals  are  of  mixed  origin,  the  term  instinct  being  re- 
served for  particular  types  of  connate  activity? 

7.  The  Pt-riodicity  and  Serial  Xalure  of  Instinct. — Little  need 
be  said  on  this  head,  since  most  writers  recognise  the  facts  as,  at 
any  rate  in  many  cases,  characteristic  of  instinct.  The  sexual  in- 
stincts, nidification,  incubation,  and  migration,  exemplify  the  pe- 
riodic nature  of  instinct  ;  and  the  fact  that  this  periodicity  involves 
internal  as  well  as  external  determination  suggests  the  rejection  of 
Professor  Baldwin's  distinction  between  impulsive  and  instinctive, 
not  because  it  is  logically  incorrect,  but  because  there  is  so  much 
overlap,  many  instincts  involving  an  impulsive  factor.  That  in- 
stincts are  very  often  serial  in  their  nature  and  involve  a  chain  of 
activities  is  also  commonly  admitted,  and  is  well  brought  out  by 
Herr  Schneider.' 

8.  Suggested  Stheme  of  Terminology.  —  From  what  has  gone 
before,  it  will  be  seen  that  there  is  a  good  deal  of  diversity  of 
opinion  and  of  definition  in  the  matter  of  instinct.  Let  us  sum- 
marise some  of  these  diversities. 

Instinctive  activities  are  unconscious  (Claus),  non  mental 
(Calderwood),  incipiently  conscious  (Spencer),  distinguished  by 
the  presence  of  consciousness  (Romanes),  accompanied  by  emo- 
tions in  the  mind  (Wundt),  involve  connate  ideas  and  inherited 
knowledge  (Spalding) ;  synonymous  with  impulsive  activities 
(James),  to  be  distinguished  from  those  involving  impulse  proper 
(Hofiding,  Marshall);  not  yet  voluntary  (Spencer),  no  longer  vol- 
untary (Lewes),  never  involuntary  (Wundt);  due  to  natural  selec- 
tion only  (Weismann),  to  lapsed  intelligence  (Lewes,  Schneider, 
Wundt),  to  both  (Darwin,  Romanes);  to  be  distinguished  from  in- 
dividually acquired  habits  (Darwin,  Romanes,  Sully,  and  others), 
inclusive  thereof  (Wundt);  at  a  minimum  in  man  (Darwin,  Ro- 
manes), at  a  maximum  in  man  (James);  essentially  congenital  (Ro- 
manes), inclusive  of  individually-acquired  modifications  through 
intelligence  (Darwin,  Romanes,  Wallace). 

It  is  scarcely  probable  that  in  the  face  of  such  divergence  of 
opinion  unanimity  is  yet  within  the  bounds  of  reasonable  expecta- 
tion, and  the  following  scheme  must  be  regarded  as  provisional 
and  suggestive.  Certain  points  must  be  borne  in  mind  in  endeav- 
oring to  frame  satisfactory  and  acceptable  definitions  of  the  terms 
"  instinctive  "  and  "instinct."  Since  the  phenomena  are  in  part 
biological  and  in  part  psychological,  any  definition  should  be  such 
as  to  be  of  biological  value  and  yet  such  as  to  be  acceptable  to 
psychologists.  Since  the  question  of  origin  is  still  sub  judice,  the 
definition  should  be  purely  descriptive,  so  as  not  to  prejudge  this 
question.  And  since  the  phenomena  of  instinct  can  only  be 
rightly  understood  in  their  relation  to' automatism,  congenital  and 
acquired,  to  impulse,  to  imitation,  and  to  intelligence,  our  defini- 
tion of  instinctive  activities  should  find  a  place  in  a  scheme  of 
terminology.     Such  a  scheme  is  here  set  forth. 

It  may  be  premised  : 

1.  That  the  terms  "congenital"  and  "acquired"  are  to  be 
regarded  as  mutually  exclusive.  What  is  congenital  in  its  defi- 
niteness  is,  as  prior  to  individual  experience,  not  acquired.  The 
definiteness  that  is  acquired  is,  as  the  result  of  individual  expe- 
rience, not  congenital. 

2.  That  these  terms  apply  to  the  individual.  Whether  what 
is  acquired  by  one  individual  may  become  congenital  through  in- 
heritance in  another  individual  is  a  question  of  fact  which  is  not 
to  be  settled  by  implications  of  terminology. 

3.  That  the  term  "acquired"  does  not  exclude  an  inherited 
potentiality  of  acquisition  under  the  appropriate  conditions.  Such 
inherited  potentiality  may  be  termed  "innate."  What  is  acquired 
is  a  definite  specialisation  of  an  indefinite  innate  potentiality. 

4.  That  what  is  congenital  and  innate  is  inherent  in  the  germ- 
plasm  of  the  fertilised  ovum. 

1  Der  tliieris.he  M'illc,  e.  g.,  p.  20S. 


Our  suggested  terminology  then  is  as  follows  : 

Congenital  fnovenients  and  aetivities :  those,  the  definite  per- 
formance of  which  is  antecedent  to  individual  experience.  They 
may  be  performed  either  (a)  at  or  very  shortly  after  birth  (connate), 
or  (/')  when  the  organism  has  undergone  further  development  (tle- 
f erred). 

Congenital  .'lutonuilisiii :  the  congenital  phy.';iological  basis  of 
those  activities  the  definite  performance  of  which  is  antecedent  to 
individual  experience. 

Pliysiologitol  rhyt/iiiis :  congenital  rhythmic  movements  essen- 
tial to  the  continuance  of  organic  life. 

A'ejlex  movements:  congenital,  adaptive,  and  co-ordinated  re- 
sponses of  limbs  or  parts  of  the  body;  evoked  by  stimuli. 

Pandom  movements:  congenital,  more  or  less  definite,  but  not 
specially  adaptive  movements  of  limbs  or  pans  of  the  body:  either 
centrally  initiated  or  evoked  by  stimuli. 

Instinctive  activities:  congenital,  adaptive,  and  co-ordinated 
activities  of  relative  complexity  and  involving  the  welfare  of  the 
organism  as  a  whole  ;  specific  in  character,  but  subject  to  varia- 
tion analogous  to  that  found  in  organic  structures;  similarly  per- 
formed by  all  the  like  members  of  the  same  more  or  less  re- 
stricted group,  in  adaptation  to  special  circumstances  frequently 
recurring  or  essential  to  the  continuance  of  the  race  ;  often  peri- 
odic in  development  and  serial  in  character. 

Imitative  movements  and  activities :  due  to  individual  imitation 
or  similar  movements  or  activities  performed  by  others. 

Impjilse  ( 'Trieli):  the  affective  or  emotional  condition,  congen- 
ital or  acquired,  under  the  influence  of  which  a  conscious  organ- 
ism is  prompted  to  movement  or  activity,  without  reference  to  a 
conceived  end  or  ideal. 

Instinct :  the  congenital  psychological  impulse  concerned  in 
instinctive  activities. 

Control:  the  conscious  inhibition  or  augmentation  of  move- 
ment or  activity.  While  the  power  of  control  is  innate,  its  special 
mode  of  application  is  the  result  of  experience  and  therefore 
acquired. 

Intelligent  activities:  those  due  to  individual  control  or  guid- 
ance in  the  light  of  experience  through  association  (voluntary). 

Motive:  the  affective  or  emotional  condition  under  the  in- 
fluence of  which  a  rational  being  is  guided  in  the  performance  of 
deliberate  acts. 

Deliberate  acts:  those  performed  in  distinct  reference  to  a 
conceived  end  or  ideal  (volitional). 

Acijuired  movements,  activities,  or  acts:  those,  the  definite  per- 
formance of  which  is  the  result  of  individual  experience.  Any 
modifications  of  congenital  activities  which  result  from  experience 
are,  so  far,  acquired. 

Acquired  automatism:  the  individually  modified  physiological 
basis  of  the  performance  of  those  acquired  movements  or  activities 
which  have  been  stereotyped  by  repetition. 

There  is  certainly  some  overlap  in  the  definitions,  and  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  such  overlap  is  to  be  avoided.  The  physio- 
logical rhythms— such  as  the  heart-beat,  respiratory  movements, 
and  peristaltic  action — are  in  part  automatic,  in  the  physiological 
sense  of  orginating  within  the  organ  which  manifests  the  rhythm  ; 
but  they  are  also  in  part  reflex.  The  line  between  reflex  move- 
ments and  instinctive  activities  cannot  be  a  very  rigid  one  ;  in- 
stinctive activities  are  indeed  in  large  degree  organised  trains  or 
sequences  of  co-ordinated  reflex  movements. 

Although  the  psychological  aspect  of  instinctive  activities 
falls  under  the  general  head  of  impulse,  yet  impulse  is  broader 
than  instinct — that  is,  if  we  adopt  the  definitions  above  suggested. 
On  the  one  hand,  some  reflex  movements  are  probably  accompa- 
nied by  impulse.  On  the  other  hand,  when  intelligent  activities 
pass  into  habits  through  repetition,  the  performance  of  these  hab- 
its is  prompted  by  impulse.      Impulse  may,  in  fact,  be  either  con- 


463B 


THB    OPEN    COURT. 


genital  or  acquired,  and  may  be  associated  both  with  automatism 
and  with  control.  Instinct  is  a  form  of  congenital  impulse.  As 
such  it  may  be  counteracted  or  modified  by  an  acquired  impulse 
due  to  pleasurable  or  painful  experience.  A  chick,  for  example, 
which  has  run  after  and  seized  a  cinnabar  caterpillar,  acquires 
through  experience  a  counteracting  impulse  due  to  the  disagree- 
able effect.  The  congenital  impulses,  termed  instincts,  may  thus 
be  modified  by  acquired  impulses  which  result  from  experience; 
but  there  is  seldom  or  never  a  conflict  of  instincts,  as  these  are 
above  defined. 

Whether  the  objective  activities  termed  instinctive  are  nl'vnys 
accompanied  by  the  subjective  congenital  impulse  termed  instinct 
is  a  question  which  is  open  to  discussion. 

A  wider  definition  of  instinct  by  which  it  would  be  synony- 
mous with  congenital  impulse  may  be  suggested  as  an  alternative 
to  that  above  given.  This  would,  perhaps,  be  more  in  accord  with 
the  popular  use  of  the  word  "  instinctive,"  but  it  appears  to  be 
less  saiisfactory  as  a  definition  of  the  technical  term. 

It  is  well  to  distinguish  motives,  as  the  determinants  of  delib- 
erate acts,  from  the  acquired  impulses  which  are  the  determinants 
of  intelligent  activities  as  above  defined.  As  the  intelligent  ac- 
tivity is  often  the  outcome  of  a  conflict  of  impulses,  so  is  the  de- 
liberate act  the  outcome  of  a  conflict  of  motives. 

Imitative  activities  are  due  to  an  imitative  impulse.  Some  of 
them  are  probably  involuntary  and  due  to  congenital  impulse  ; 
but  others  are  certainly  due  to  intelligent  imitation.  They  form 
a  group  sufficiently  well-defined  to  warrant  the  distinct  place  as- 
signed to  them  in  the  suggested  scheme. 

The  habits  of  animals  are  in  very  many  cases  of  complex  ori- 
gin. It  is  claimed  that  such  a  scheme  of  terminology  as  is  above 
suggested  may  serve  to  aid  us  in  discriminating  between  the  sev- 
eral factors,  instinctive,  imitative,  and  intelligent.  The  fact  that 
many  instinctive  activities  are  subject  to  modification  through 
imitation  and  experience  clearly  indicates  that  they  at  least  are 
accompanied  by  consciou.sness.  But  it  is  submitted  that,  when 
thus  modified,  they  cease  to  be  instinctive,  that  is,  if  congL-nitalis 
to  take  its  place  as  an  integral  part  of  the  definition  of  instinct. 
They  should  be  termed  habits. 

The  distinction  between  congenital,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
acquired,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  definite  one.  Objectively  con- 
sidered, those  activities,  the  performance  of  which  is,  so  far  as 
they  are  concerned,  antecedent  to  and  irrespective  of  individual 
experience  and  guidance,  are  congenital,  no  matter  at  what  stage 
of  life  they  are  performed  ;  while  those  activities,  or  modifications 
of  activity,  which  are  performed  as  the  result  of  individual  ex- 
perience, are  acquired — any  modification  of  congenital  organic 
structure  correlated  therewith  being  an  acquired  character.  Sub- 
jectively viewed,  those  impulses  which  are  nowise  dependent  on  an- 
tecedent experience  of  pleasure  or  pain  are  congenital ;  while  those 
which  are  due  to  individual  experience  are  acquired.  In  any  given 
case  of  animal  habit  it  may  be  difficult  to  determine  how  far  it  is 
due  to  congenital  activity,  and  how  far  there  is  acquired  modifica- 
tion. But  this  difficulty  is  more  likely  to  be  overcome  by  obser- 
vation and  experiment,  if  the  exact  terms  of  the  problem  are  kept 
clearly  in  view. 

NOTES. 

We  are  in  receipt  of  a  beautiful  Buddha  statue  which  was 
sent  by  the  Rev  Shaku  Soyen,  of  Kamakura,  Japan.  The  statue 
is  a  piece  of  exquisite  art,  made  by  an  unknown  artist  of  the  last 
century.  It  is  carved  wood,  delicately  emblazoned  with  gold,  and 
stands  in  a  lacquered  shrine  about  one  foot  high.  The  calm  and 
noble  attitude  of  Buddha  gives  evidence  of  both  the  artistic  taste 
and  the  religious  devotion  of  the  Japanese  artist.  We  here  ex- 
press publicly  our  heartiest  thanks  to  the  distinguished  Buddhist 
priest  for  his  kind  remembrance  and  beautiful  gift. 


Dr.  Eduard  Reich  is  a  prolific  writer  who  discusses  the  prac- 
tical sides  of  social,  religious,  and  philosophical  questions  in  simple 
and  straightforward  language  and  with  considerable  scientific 
knowledge.  His  latest  production  is  now  in  our  hands  under  the 
title  of  rhilosopJiif,  Scflc-,  Dnsein  iiiu/  Eleiul  (Amsterdam  and  Leip- 
sic  :  August  Dieckman),  constituting  Vol.  II  of  his  PJiilnsopliiial 
Reflexions  ami  Sltidifs  in  Ilygienie  Soiioloi^y.  Dr.  Reich's  distinc- 
tive point  of  view  is  the  hygienic.  The  close  connexion  of  spir- 
itual with  bodily  and  social  health  is  his  main  theme,  which  is  de- 
veloped in  all  its  multitudinous  aspects.  Dr.  Reich  stands  aloof 
from  the  accredited  scientific  circle  of  Germany,  but  his  books  are 
full  of  suggestive  if  not  striking  ideas,  simply  presented. 


A  new  monthly  magazine  devoted  to  university  interests  and 
general  literature,  under  the  title  of  Bachelor  of  Arts,  published 
its  first  number  in  May  last.  Mr.  Walter  Camp  will  edit  the  ath- 
letic department,  Mr.  W.  D.  Howells  will  write  literary  critiques, 
Mr.  Albert  Stickney  will  contribute  articles  on  political  and  eco- 
nomical questions,  and  others  equally  well  known  are  expected  to 
contribute.  The  Baclielor  of  Arts  gives  every  indication  of  attain- 
ing a  high  standard  of  excellence,  and  should  be  widely  patronised 
by  college  men.     (15  Wall  St.,  New  York.) 


SWINBURNE. 

BY  CHARLES  ALVA  LANE. 

Incarnate  Son  of  Song,  'mid  battles  born 

Of  Freedom's  womb  !  whose  bosom  menward  yearns 
From  crystal  heights  where  manhood's  lordship  spurns 

The  shackling  shams  of  grievous  dogmas  worn 

From  erring  eld  !  who,  voiced  as  with  the  morn. 
Before  the  portal  of  the  morrow  turns, 
Singeth,  Apollo-like,  a  song  that  burns 

With  sovereign  Soulhood  round  a  faith  forlorn  ! 

We  hail  thee  o'er  the  sea,  where  Liberty, 

Like  Memnon  touched,  gives  echo  to  thy  song. 

And  Art,  with  palms  prest,  pants  in  ecstasy 

Amid  thy  wafted  wealth  of  melody. 

Whereof  hath  prescient  music  dreamed  for  long. 
With  sense  that  hearkened  toward  the  sphery  throng. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE   MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,   Editor 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX- MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  420. 

IMMORTALITY  DISCUSSED.     E.  P.  Powell 4631 

CENTRALISATION    AND    DECENTRALISATION    IN 

FRANCE.     Theodore  Stanton 4632 

SOME  DEFINITIONS  OF  INSTINCT.     Prof.  C.  Lloyd 

Morgan 4635 

NOTES 463S 

POETRY. 

Swinburne.     Charles  Alva  Lane 4638 


The  Open  Court. 


A   "WTEKKLY   JOUENAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  421.     (Vol.  IX.— 38  ) 


CHICAGO,    SEPTEMBER   19,    1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
I  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  Riving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


THE  BEAUTY  OF  DEATH. 

BY    WOODS     HUTCHINSON,    A.M.,    M.D. 

Humanity  has  a  faculty  for  ignoring  and  abusing 
its  benefactors  which  amounts  almost  to  a  genius. 
Scarcely  an  age  can  be  mentioned  which  has  not 
starved  its  Homer,  poisoned  its  Socrates,  banished  its 
Aristides,  stoned  its  Stephen,  burned  its  Savonarola, 
or  imprisoned  its  Galileo.  Nor  is  the  strange  perver- 
sion of  sentiment  confined  to  our  fellow  mortals.  The 
great,  calm,  stern,  yet  loving  forces  of  nature  have 
constantly  fallen  under  the  unjust  stigma,  and  though 
we  have  outlived  many  earthly  misconceptions  or  mis- 
representations of  most  of  these,  a  ghastly,  repulsive, 
lying  mask  is  still  permitted  to  conceal  the  kindly, 
though  stern  features  of  Pallida  Mors  albeit  both  reli- 
gion and  science  are  striving  hard  to  tear  it  away.  Let 
us  endeavor  to  lift  up  a  tiny  corner  long  enough  to 
catch  a  glimpse  of  what  lies  behind  it. 

I  regard  the  prevailing  conception  of  death  as  false 
in  three  important  particulars  :  First,  that  it  is  in  some 
way  an  enemy  of,  or  opposed  to,  life  ;  second,  that 
it  is  a  process  of  dissipation  or  degeneration  involving 
and  associated  with  a  fearful  waste  of  energy,  time, 
and  material ;  third,  that  it  is  a  harsh,  painful  ordeal, 
from  whicli  every  fibre  of  organic  being  shrinks  in 
terror. 

I  am  aware  that  my  first  contention  will  seem  like 
a  flat  contradiction  in  terms,  but  a  few  illustrations 
will  probably  make  my  meaning  plainer.  Let  us  take 
those  earliest  and  lowest  results  of  formative  tenden- 
cies in  matter,  the  crystals,  "the  flowers  of  the  rocks," 
as  Ruskin  beautifully  calls  them.  Here  we  have  in- 
dividual units  which  for  beauty,  variety,  and  definite- 
ness  of  form,  brilliancy  of  color,  and  purity  of  sub- 
stance, stand  absolutely  unrivalled  in  all  the  higher 
walks  of  life.  Watch  them  forming,  and  see  with  what 
certainty  atom  seeks  atom,  here  a  diamond,  there  a 
cube,  again  a  prism  or  rosette,  each  substance  having 
its  own  definite,  peculiar  shape,  with  an  utter  disre- 
gard of  all  alien  materials  in  the  mass.  Mark  how 
crystal  seeks  crystal  and  proceeds  to  weave  its  own 
warp  and  woof,  in  column,  in  truncated  cone,  in  spire, 
in  lace-like  web  of  slender  needles,  each  according  to 
its  kind.  See  how  the  advance  columns  of  the  various 
ingredients  of  the  mass,    cut  through,    ride  over,   or 


yield  to  one  another,  in  regular  social  order  of  rank, 
dependent  not  upon  bulk  or  hardness,  but  upon  purity 
of  substance  and  organising  power,  upon  crystal  vital- 
ity in  fact,  and  suppress  if  you  can  the  conviction  that 
these  organisms  are  alive.  The  only  thing  they  lack 
is  the  inherent  faculty  of  dying.  Drown  and  dissolve 
them  by  fluid,  fuse  into  shapeless  masses  by  volcanic 
heat,  and  on  the  very  earliest  opportunity  they  will 
promptly  and  surely  resume  their  former  shape  and 
beauty.  Gentler  influences  they  defy.  So  long  as 
they  exist  they  are  indestructible,  and  their  lifetime  is 
that  of  the  everlasting  hills.  Here,  if  anywhere  in  the 
universe,  is  eternal  life,  in  the  popular  sense  of  the 
term,  but  it  were  better  named  eternal  death. 

Crystal  life  is  a  bar  of  adamant  to  progress.  Beau- 
tiful in  itself,  it  is  utterly  barren,  inhospitable,  hope- 
less as  regards  future  growth.  It  can  neither  grow 
itself,  nor  assist  anything  else  to  grow,  save  in  one 
way,  by  dying. 

The  old  earth  shrinks  a  little  in  cooling,  and  our 
mass  of  crystals  is  suddenly  elevated  from  cavernous 
depths  to  the  top  or  side  of  one  of  those  long  wrinkles 
we  call  mountain  ranges;  the  sun  heats  it,  and  the 
rains  pour  upon  it,  the  frosts  gnaw  at  its  edges,  until 
at  length  its  vitality  becomes  impaired,  and  it  suc- 
cumbs to  the  elements.  The  whole  structure  crumbles 
into  a  shapeless  mass  of  dull,  damp,  colorless,  lifeless 
clay.  Here,  indeed,  to  all  appearances  is  the  desola- 
tion of  death  in  all  its  hopeless  repulsiveness.  But 
wait  a  moment ;  here  comes  a  tiny  descendant  of  some 
crystal  which  has  stumbled  upon  the  faculty  of  dying 
and  improved  thereon  unto  the  fifty-thousaftdth  gene- 
ration, a  lichen  spore,  drifting  along  the  surface  of  the 
rock.  It  glances  forlornly  off  from  the  flinty  faces  of 
the  living  crystals,  but  finds  a  home  and  a  welcome  at 
once  upon  the  moist  surface  of  the  clay.  Filmy  root- 
lets run  downward,  tiny  buds  shoot  upward,  the  new 
life  has  begun.  It  ensnares  the  sunlight  in  its  emerald 
mesh,  entangles  the  life-vapors  of  the  air  in  its  web, 
and  grows  and  spreads  until  the  valley  of  crystal  death 
l^ecomes  transformed  into  a  cushion  of  living  green  in 
the  lap  of  the  gaunt,  grey  granite. 

But  what  as  to  further  progress?  The  lichen  is 
green  and  beautiful,  but  as  an  individual  it  can  never 
develop  into  anything  higher.      Here  again  progress 


4640 


XHE     OPEN     COURT. 


is  absolutely  barred  by  life,  and  must  call  death  to  its 
aid.  The  lichen  dies,  and  its  dust  returns  to  the 
earth,  carrying  with  it  the  spoils  of  the  sunlight,  the 
air,  and  the  dew,  to  enrich  the  seed-bed.  A  hundred 
generations  follow,  each  one  leaving  a  legacy  of  fer- 
tility, until  the  soil  becomes  capable  of  sustaining  a 
richer,  stronger,  higher  order  of  plant-life,  whose  root- 
lets push  into  every  crevice  and  rend  the  solid  rock  ; 
the  living  carpet  spreads  ;  grass,  flower,  and  shrub 
succeed  one  another  in  steady  succession,  until  the 
cold  grey  rock-trough  is  transformed  into  the  lovely 
mountain  glen  with  its  myriad  life.  As  the  poet  sings, 
the  crystals  have  risen  "on  stepping  stones  of  their 
dead  selves  to  nobler  things,"  and  of  any  link  in  the 
chain  the  inspired  dictum  would  be  equally  true  that 
"except  to  die,  it  abideth  alone." 

But,  says  some  one,  this  is  all  very  true  as  to  the 
surface  of  Mother  Earth  ;  but  how  about  the  deeper 
structures,  her  ribs  and  body  bulk  ? 

Every  layer  of  the  earth  was  part  of  the  surface  at 
one  time,  and  the  more  intimately  death  has  entered 
into  their  composition,  the  more  highly  organised  the 
corpses  of  which  they  are  composed,  and  the  more 
useful  and  important  they  are. 

Come  back  with  me  a  few  hundred  years  to  the 
great  tree-fern  period,  and  gaze  upon  the  matted  jun- 
gle of  frond  and  stem,  thirty  to  sixty  feet  in  height, 
which  covers  mile  after  mile  of  swamp.  Here,  indeed, 
is  life  in  all  its  glory,  yet  it  is  a  living  shroud.  No 
lium  is  there  of  insect-life  or  twitter  of  birds  that  build 
their  nests  in  the  branches  ;  for  there  is  neither  flower, 
berry,  nor  seed  to  support  the  tiniest  life.  No  animal 
can  live  on  its  stringy,  indigestible  fodder.  The  rank 
growth  crushes  out  any  possibility  of  nobler,  more 
generous  plant-life.  The  old  earth  gives  a  tired  sigh, 
her  bosom  heaves  and  sinks,  and  the  waters  rush  in 
and  cover  the  jungle,  drown  it,  crush  it,  bury  it  with 
silt,  compress  and  mummify  it,  and  it  is  numbered 
with  the  "has-beens,"  until  one  day  man  stumbles 
upon  a  fragment  of  its  remains  in  the  face  of  some  sea- 
cliff,  and  coal,  the  food  of  the  steam-engine,  the  mo- 
tive power  of  latter  day  commerce  and  civilisation,  is 
discovered.  Alive,  it  was  a  worthless  weed;  dead,  it 
becomes  "black  diamonds." 

There  is  another  illustration  very  much  in  point, 
indeed,  but  so  familiar  through  the  medium  of  Sunda}'- 
school  literature,  and  so  nearly  worn  threadbare  as  a 
text  for  sermons,  that  I  hesitate  to  allude  to  it.  I  refer 
to  that  exemplary  being,  the  coral  insect.  This  sturdy 
little  polyp  anchors  himself  to  the  surface  of  the  sunken 
reef,  and  with  an  industry  and  devotion  that  would  do 
him  infinite  credit,  if  we  could  for  a  moment  imagine 
that  he  was  actuated  by  any  other  motive  than  that  of 
filling  his  own  greedy  little  stomach,  he  swallows  and 
deposits   in   his   tissues  the  lime-salts   until   his   whole 


substance  becomes  literally  petrified  and  forms  a  step- 
ping-stone of  adamant  for  the  succeeding  generation. 
This  process  is  repeated  a  few  million  times,  and  the 
lovely  coral  island,  with  its  lofty  palms,  emerald  ver- 
dure, silver  sands,  and  glittering  bird  and  insect  life, 
breaks  the  surface  of  the  howling  waste  of  waters. 
Alive,  he  is  a  flabby,  shapeless  atom  of  greyish  jelly; 
dead,  he  is  a  rainbow-hued  crystal  of  loveliest  outline 
— a  thing  of  beauty  in  himself  and  the  rock-ribbed 
support  of  countless  other  forms  of  life  and  beauty 
above  the  surface.  Alive,  he  is  an  insignificant,  slim}' 
little  salt-water  slug  ;  dead,  he  is  a  part  of  the  frame- 
work of  the  universe,  and  a  saintly  creature,  whose 
value  as  a  moral  example  can  hardly  be  overesti- 
mated. 

When  we  turn  to  the  higher  forms  of  being,  the 
dependence  of  life  upon  precedent  death  is  so  self- 
evident  as  to-  have  been  formulated  into  a  truism. 
That  the  grass  must  die  that  sheep  may  live,  and  that 
sheep  must  die  that  man  may  live,  are  facts  as  familiar 
as  the  multiplication-table.  If  the  command,  "Thou 
shalt  not  kill,"  were  to  be  interpreted  to  extend  to  our 
animal  cousins  and  our  vegetable  ancestors,  it  might 
as  well  read  at  once,  "Thou  shalt  starve." 

In  this  sense  death  is  as  important  and  essential  a 
vital  function  as  birth,  and  the  highest  aim  of  many  an 
organism  is  attained,  not  by  its  birth,  but  by  its  death. 
Literally:  "He  that  loveth  his  life  shall  save  it,"  in 
the  world  to  come.  Without  this  power  of  the  lower 
life  to  forward  the  higher  life  by  dying,  progress  of 
any  sort  would  be  absolutel}'  impossible.  There  be 
forms  which  when  they  are  devoured  refuse  to  die,  but 
we  call  them  parasites,  and  should  hardly  choose  the 
tape-worm  as  a  symbol  of  progress. 

Even  when  we  reach  the  human  stage  where  no 
such  direct  digestive  transformation  into  higher  forms 
is  possible,  the  same  necessity  is  still  apparent. 

To  permit  progress  in  the  social,  political,  or  moral 
worlds  it  becomes  ultimately  just  as  sternly  essential, 
cruel  as  the  fact  may  seem  at  first  sight,  that  the  old 
generation  should  die,  as  that  the  new  should  be  born. 

Now  let  us  look  for  a  few  moments  at  the  second 
prevailing  misconception  of  death  as  a  destroyer  and 
waster.  This  is  apparently  supported  by  a  vast  array 
of  facts,  ranging  from  the  tremendous  loss  of  life 
among  the  eggs  or  young  of  the  lower  forms  to  the 
sudden  cutting  short  of  existences  in  which  meet  the 
labor  and  preparation  of  generations  of  the  past  and 
the  hopes  of  the  future.  What  is  the  use  of  being  born 
only  to  die,  of  laboriously  building  up  an  organism  or 
character  only  to  have  it  destroyed,  annihilated,  scat- 
tered like  smoke  ? 

To  the  first  part  of  the  question  the  answer  almost 
suggests  itself,  viz.,  that  this  destruction  is  only  ap- 
parent.    Nothing  is  really  lost  at  all.    Merely  the  form 


TMli     OPJEN     OOCJRT. 


4641 


is  changed,  and  as  it  is  necessary  that  hfe  should  be 
produced  in  great  abundance  in  order  to  give  nature, 
figuratively  speaking,  a  wide  field  for  selection,  some 
method  becomes  absolutely  indispensable  by  which 
the  elements  of  the  unfit,  incompetent,  non  elect  forms 
can  be  promptly  returned  to  the  great  crucible  of  na- 
ture, there  to  be  available  for  use  in  new  and  improved 
patterns.  So  far  from  being  a  waster,  death  is  the 
great  economist  of  nature,  enabling  her  to  conduct 
her  most  extensive  experiments  with  a  mere  handful 
of  material. 

But,  you  will  repl)',  this  accounts  on!}',  so  to  speak, 
for  the  materials  used.  Are  not  the  vantage  grounds 
so  hardly  won,  the  wonderful  organising  power,  the 
long  years  expended,  utterly  lost  and  hopelessly 
wasted  ?  I  answer,  no  ;  but  rather  secured  thereby. 
They  become  an  immutable  part  of  the  history  of  the 
race.  The  upward  growth  of  the  race  is  not  an  even, 
continuous  line,  but  a  series  of  ever-ascending  tiny 
curves,  each  the  life  of  an  individual,  and  the  tiny 
shoot  of  the  curve  of  the  life  that  is  to  follow  is  given 
off  from  near  our  highest  point. 

Death  is  the  great  embalmer,  the  casket  into  which 
our  loved  ones  are  received  in  the  very  flower  of  their 
beauty  and  the  glory  of  their  strength.  A  sheaf  of 
corn  fully  ripe  is  a  beautiful,  dignified,  inspiring  sight 
and  memory,  but  it  must  be  rca/>i-d  to  make  it  so,  and 
not  left  on  the  stem  to  rot  and  freeze. 

And  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  so  long  as  life 
lasts,  not  only  is  growth  possible,  but  degeneration 
also  ;  and  that  the  further  the  zenith  of  power  is 
passed,  the  more  probable  does  the  latter  become. 
Nothing  can  imperil  the  good  that  a  man  has  done  save 
his  own  later  weakness,  treason,  or  folly;  and  when 
the  mortal  dart  pierces  him  it  transfixes  him  where  lie 
stands  and  secures  the  vantage-ground  he  has  won. 
Death's  function  here  is,  as  it  were,  a  ratchet  upon  the 
notched  wheel  of  human  progress,  to  secure  every  inch 
gained  as  a  starting  point  for  the  life  to  come. 

But  the  crowning  beauty  and  noblest  impulse  of 
the  process  is  that  it  is  intrinsically  a  burying  of  the 
old  life  to  enrich  the  new.  The  parent  form  falls  with 
all  the  scars,  the  weariness  and  grime  of  the  conflict, 
into  the  gentle  lap  of  Mother  Earth,  in  order  that  the 
new  life  may  rise,  fresh,  pure,  triumphant.  Old  errors 
are  buried,  old  failures  forgotten.  The  good  of  all  the 
past  is  inherited,  the  evil  falls  by  its  own  weight.  The 
race  takes  a  fresh  start  every  generation.  We  are  all 
but  drops  in  the  grand  stream  of  life,  which  flows  with 
ever-widening  sweep  through  all  the  ages. 

We  are  immortal,  if  we  but  form  a  true,  sturdy 
link  in  the  great  chain  of  life.  It  is  this  unbroken  con- 
tinuity of  life,  ever  rising  to  nobler  levels  from  the 
ashes  of  apparent  death  that  is  so  beautifully  typified 
by  the    Phcenix   and   similar  traditions.      We   should 


cheerfully  pay  the  debt  of  nature,  proudly  confident 
that  she  will  be  able  to  invest  the  capital  to  better  ad- 
vantage next  time,  from  the  interest  we  have  labor- 
iously added  to  it. 

There  need  be  no  shrinking  dread  of  the  "pangs 
of  dissolution,"  the  "final  agony,"  for  such  things 
have  no  existence  save  in  disordered  imaginations. 
Ask  any  phjsician  whose  head  is  silvered  over  with 
gre}',  and  he  will  tell  you  that  while  disease  is  often 
painful,  death  itself  is  gentle,  painless,  natural,  like 
the  fading  of  a  flower  or  the  falling  of  a  leaf.  It  is 
literally  true  that  there  is  a  time  to  die  as  well  as  to 
live,  and  when  that  time  comes  the  event  becomes  not 
only  tolerable,  but,  like  all  other  natural  processes, 
desirable  ;  every  fibre  of  our  tired,  worn  out  being  de- 
mands it. 

The  overwhelming  majority  of  such  records  of 
authentic  "  last  words  "  as  we  possess,  re-echo  the  say- 
ing of  Charles  II.  on  his  death-bed  :  "If  this  be  dying, 
nothing  could  be  easier." 

Even  in  such  an  extreme  case  as  death  under  the 
fangs  of  wild  beasts,  all  those  who  have  gone  very 
near  the  \'alley  of  the  Shadow  from  this  cause  unite 
in  testifying,  incredible  as  it  may  seem,  that  after  the 
first  shock  of  the  attack  there  is  absolutely  no  sensa- 
tion of  pain. 

For  instance,  Livingstone,  upon  one  occasion,  was 
pounced  upon  by  a  lion,  which  felled  him  to  the 
ground,  and,  making  his  teeth  meet  in  his  shoulder, 
dragged  him  a  considerable  distance  into  the  jungle 
before  his  followers  could  come  to  his  assistance. 
Livingstone  asserts  most  positively  that  he  was  per- 
fectly conscious  of  what  was  happening  when  he  was 
being  carried,  could  hear  the  cries  of  his  friends,  and 
wondered  how  long  it  would  take  them  to  reach  him, 
but  that  he  felt  no  pain  or  fear  whatever,  nothing 
but  a  strange,  drows}',  dreamy  sensation.  And  yet  his 
shoulder  was  so  severely  injured  that  he  never  fully 
recovered  the  use  of  it,  and  his  body  was  identified 
after  death  by  the  scars. 

Sir  Samuel  Baker  reports  a  similar  experience  with 
a  bear  which  he  had  wounded.  The  great  brute  felled 
him  by  a  stunning  blow  from  its  paw,  and  he  was 
aroused  to  consciousness  by  its  crunching  the  bones 
of  his  hand  ;  it  continued  the  process  up  his  arm,  and 
had  almost  reached  the  shoulder  before  the  rescuing 
party  could  reach  him,  and  yet  Sir  Samuel  declares 
that  he  felt  no  pain  whatever,  and  that  his  only  sensa- 
tion was  one  of  intense  resentment  against  the  beast 
for  seeming  to  enjoy  the  taste  of  him  so  much.  Nor 
are  these  by  any  means  exceptional  instances,  as  many 
other  such  reports  could  be  collected,  and  it  is  almost 
an  axiom  with  surgeons  that  the  severer  the  injury  the 
less  the  pain.      Many  a   man  has  received  his  death- 


4642 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


wound  and  never  known  it  until  his  strength  began  to 

fail. 

But  nature  is  even  more  merciful  than  this.  Con- 
trary to  popular  impression  and  pulpit  pyrotechnics, 
the  fear  of  death,  which  is  so  vivid  in  life  and  health, 
absolutely  disappears  as  soon  as  his  hand  is  laid  upon 
us.  Every  physician  knows  from  experience  that  not 
one  person  in  fifty  is  afraid  or  even  unwilling  to  die 
when  the  time  actually  comes,  and  in  the  vast  major- 
ity of  instances  our  patients  drift  into  a  state  of  dreamy 
indifference  to  the  result  as  soon  as  they  become  se- 
riously ill.  So  universally  is  this  true  that  we  seldom 
feel  any  uneasiness  as  to  the  result  of  a  case  in  which 
a  lively  fear  of  death  is  exhibited.  The  highest  sensi- 
bilities are  the  first  to  die  ;  so  that  both  pain  and  fear 
are  usually  abolished,  literally  rendered  impossible, 
hours,  days,  or  even  weeks,  before  the  end  comes. 
Our  dear  ones  drift  gently  out  into  the  sea  of  rest,  on 
the  ebbing  tide  of  life,  with  a  smile  upon  their  sleeping 
faces. 

For  every  minor  injury  nature  provides  a  remedy; 
for  every  hopeless  one,  a  narcotic. 

In  not  a  few  instances  this  indifference  becomes 
changed  into  positive  longing  for  death.  Days  of  suf- 
fering and  nights  of  sleepless  weariness  quickly  bring 
men  to  stretch  out  their  arms  to  the  great  Rest-bringer. 
Fever  parched  and  pain  weary  men  and  women  long 
for  death  as  tired  children  long  for  sleep.  Ask  your 
own  family  physician  and  he  will  tell  you  tliat  as  a 
matter  of  fact  he  has  heard  five  prayers  for  death  to 
one  for  life,  when  fate  is  trembling  in  the  balance. 

Because  the  thought  of  Death  in  the  noon  tide  of 
life  sends  a  chill  through  them,  people  never  stop  to 
think  that  their  feelings  may  entirely  change  with  the 
circumstances,  and  will  not  understand,  as  the  good 
old  Methodist  elder  shrewdly  expressed  it,  that  they 
"can't  expect  to  get  dying  grace  to  live  by." 

*  * 

The  ghastly /// <7///V/i'/(^  mortis,  or  "death-struggle," 
of  which  we  hear  so  much  in  dramatic  literature,  reli- 
gious or  otherwise,  does  not  occur  in  one  case  in  ten, 
and  then  usually  long  after  consciousness  has  ceased. 
When  death  comes  near  enough  so  that  we  can  see 
the  eyes  behind  the  mask,  his  face  becomes  as  welcome 
as  that  of  his  twin  brother,  sleep. 


THE  OLD  SHOEMAKER. 

BY  VOLTAIRINE  DE  CLEYRE. 

He  had  lived  a  long  time  there  in  the  house  at  the 
end  of  the  alley,  and  no  one  had  ever  known  that  he 
was  a  great  man.  He  was  lean  and  palsied  and  had  a 
crooked  back  ;  his  beard  was  grey  and  ragged,  and 
his  eyebrows  came  too  far  forward  ;  there  were  seams 
and  flaps  in  the  empty,  yellow  old  skin,  and  he  gasped 
horribly  when   he   breathed,  taking  hold  of  the  lintel 


of  the  door  to  steady  himself  when  he  stepped  out  on 
the  broken  bricks  of  the  alley.  He  lived  with  a  fright- 
ful old  woman  who  scrubbed  the  floors  of  the  rag- 
shop,  and  drank  beer,  and  growled  at  the  children 
who  poked  fun  at  her.  He  had  lived  with  her  eigh- 
teen years,  she  said,  stroking  the  furry  little  kitten 
that  curled  up  in  her  neck  as  if  she  had  been  beauti- 
ful. 

Eighteen  years  they  had  been  drinking  and  quar- 
relling together — and  suffering.  She  had  seen  the 
flesh  sucking  away  from  the  bones,  and  the  skin  fall- 
ing in  upon  them,  and  the  long,  lean  fingers  growing 
more  lean  and  trembling,  as  they  crooked  round  his 
shoemaking  tools.  It  was  very  strange  she  had  not 
grown  thin  ; — the  beer  had  bloated  her,  and  rolls  of 
weak,  shaking  flesh  lapped  over  the  ridges  of  her  un- 
couth figure.  Her  pale,  lack-lustre  blue  eyes  wan- 
dered aimlessly  about  as  she  talked  :  No, — he  had 
never  told  her,  not  even  in  their  quarrels,  not  even 
when  they  were  drunken  together,  of  the  great  Visitor 
who  had  come  up  the  little  alley  yesterday,  walking 
so  stately  over  the  sun-beaten  bricks,  taking  no  note 
of  the  others,  and  coming  in  at  the  door  without  ask- 
ing. She  had  not  expected  such  an  One;  how  could 
she? 

But  the  old  shoemaker  had  shown  no  surprise  at 
the  Mighty  One.  He  smiled  and  set  down  the  tea- 
cup he  was  holding,  and  entered  into  communion  with 
the  Stranger.  He  noticed  no  others,  but  continued 
to  smile,  without  speaking,  into  the  dark,  fathomless 
Face.  He  was  smiling  still,  and  the  infinite  dignity 
of  the  Unknown  fell  upon  him  and  covered  the  wasted 
old  limbs  and  the  hard,  wizen  face,  so  that  all  we  who 
entered  bowed  and  went  out  and  did  not  speak.  But 
we  understood,  for  the  Mighty  One  gave  understand- 
ing, without  words.  We  had  been  in  the  presence  of 
Freedom  !  We  had  stood  at  the  foot  of  Tabor  and 
seen  this  worn  old  world  soiled  soul  lose  all  its  dross 
and  commonplace  and  pass  upward,  smiling,  to  the 
Transfiguration.  In  the  hands  of  the  Mighty  One  the 
crust  had  crumbled  and  dropped  away  into  impalpable 
powder.  Souls  should  be  mixed  of  it  no  more.  Only 
that  which  passed  upward,  the  fine  white  playing 
flame,  the  heart  of  the  long,  ///Q-  long  watches  of  pa- 
tience, should  rekindle  there  in  the  perennial  ascen- 
sion of  the  great  Soul  of  Man. 


GOOD  AND  EVIL  AS  RELIGIOUS  IDEAS. 

This  world  of  ours  is  a  world  of  opposites.  There 
is  light  and  shade,  there  is  heat  and  cold,  there  is  good 
and  evil,  there  is  God  and  the  Devil. 

The  dualistic  conception  of  nature  has,  it  appears 
to  us,  been  a  necessary  phase  in  the  evolution  of  hu- 
man thought.  We  find  the  same  views  of  good  and 
evil   spirits   prevailing  among   all   the  peoples  of  the 


rh±i£    OPEN     COURT. 


4643 


earth  at  the  very  beginning  of  that  stage  of  their  de- 
velopment which,  in  the  phraseology  of  Tyler,  is  com- 
monly called  Animism.  But  the  principle  of  unity 
dominates  the  development  of  thought.  Man  tries  to 
unify  his  conceptions  in  a  consistent  and  harmonious 
monism.  Accordingly,  while  the  belief  in  good  spirits 
tended  towards  the  formation  of  the  doctrine  of  Mono- 
theism, the  belief  in  evil  spirits  led  naturally  to  the 
acceptance  of  one  supreme  evil  deit}',  conceived  to  em- 
body all  that  is  bad,  destructive,  and  immoral. 

Monotheism  and  Monodiabolism,  brought  into  be- 
ing the  one  by  the  side  of  the  other  through  the  monis- 
tic tendencies  of  man's  mental  evolution,  are  not,  how- 
ever, the  terminus  of  human  mental  development.  As 
soon  as  the  thinkers  of  mankind  at  this  stage  become 
aware  of  the  dualism  which  is  implied  in  the  recogni- 
tion of  both  these  ideas,  the  tendency  is  again  mani- 
fested towards  a  higher  conception  which  is  a  purely 
monistic  view. 

Mankind  as  a  whole  is  at  present  in  the  stage  of 
monotheism,  and  has  almost  outgrown  the  dualism 
implied  in  monodiabolism.  A  truly  monistic  view  is 
now  dawning  on  the  mental  horizon. 

Dualism  is  generally  regarded  by  dualists  as  the 
cornerstone  of  religion  and  the  basis  of  ethics.  The 
break-down  of  dualism  will,  in  their  opinion,  usher  in 
an  era  of  brutal  immorality  ;  and  many  of  those  who 
call  themselves  monists  because  they  reject  dualism 
on  account  of  several  of  its  most  palpable  errors  seem 
to  justify  this  prejudice  among  dualists,  for  monism  is 
often  directly  identified  with  irreligion  and  religion 
with  dualism. 

Those  who  do  not  appreciate  the  mission  of  dual- 
ism in  the  evolution  of  human  thought,  and  only  know 
its  doctrines  to  be  untenable,  naturally  expect  that 
the  future  of  mankind  will  be  irreligious,  and  free- 
thinkers declare  that  atheism  will  supersede  all  the 
different  conceptions  of  God.  But  this  is  neither  de- 
sirable nor  probable.  The  monistic  tendencies  of  the 
age  will  not  destroy,  but  purify  and  elevate  religion. 
The  animism  of  the  savage  is  a  necessary  stage  of 
mental  evolution  :  it  appears  as  an  error  to  the  higher 
developed  man  of  a  half  civilised  period  ;  but  the  error 
contains  a  truth  ;  it  is  the  seed  from  which  the  more 
perfect  conception  of  the  surrounding  world  grows. 
Similarly,  the  religious  ideas  of  the  present  time  are 
symbols.  Taken  in  their  literal  meaning,  they  are 
nonsensical  errors,  but  understood  in  their  symbolical 
nature,  they  are  seeds  from  which  a  purer  conception 
of  the  truth  will  have  to  grow.  The  tendencies  of 
philosophic  thought  prevailing  to-day  lead  to  a  posi- 
tive conception  of  the  world  which  replaces  symbols 
by  actual  facts,  implying  not  a  denial  of  religious  alle- 
gories but  their  deeper  and  more  correct  conception. 

A  state  of  irreligion  in  which  mankmd  would  adopt 


and  publicly  teach  a  doctrine  of  atheism  is  an  impos- 
sibility. Atheism  is  a  negation,  and  negations  cannot 
stand.  Yet  our  present  anthropomorphic  view  of  God, 
briefly  called  Anthropotheism,  which  as  a  rule  con- 
ceives him  as  an  infinitely  big  individual  being,  will 
have  to  yield  to  a  higher  view  in  which  we  shall  under- 
stand that  the  idea  of  a  personal  God  is  a  mere  simile. 
God  is  much  more  than  a  person.  When  we  speak  of 
God  as  a  person,  we  ought  to  be  conscious  of  the  fact 
that  we  use  an  allegory  which,  if  it  were  taken  literally, 
can  only  belittle  him.  The  God  of  the  future  will  not 
be  personal,  but  superpersonal. 

But  how  shall  we  reach  this  knowledge  of  the  su- 
perpersonal God?  Our  answer  is,  with  the  help  of 
science.  Let  us  pursue  in  religion  the  same  path  that 
science  travels,  and  the  narrowness  of  sectarianism 
will  develop  into  a  broad  cosmical  religion  which  shall 
be  as  wide  and  truly  catholic  as  is  science. 

Symbols  are  not  lies  ;  symbols  contain  truth.  Alle- 
gories and  parables  are  not  falsehoods  ;  they  convey 
information  :  moreover,  they  can  be  understood  by 
those  who  are  not  as  yet  prepared  to  receive  the  plain 
truth.  Thus,  when  in  the  progress  of  science  religious 
symbols  are  recognised  and  known  in  their  symbolical 
nature,  this  knowledge  will  not  destroy  religion  but 
will  purif}'  it,  and  will  cleanse  it  from  mythology. 

* 
*  * 

From  a  surveyal  of  the  accounts  gleaned  from 
Waitz,  Lubbock,  and  Tylor  on  the  primitive  state  of 
religion,  the  conviction  impresses  itself  upon  the  stu- 
dent of  demonology  that  Devil-worship  almost  always 
precedes  the  worship  of  a  benign  and  morally  good 
Deity.  There  are  at  least  many  instances  in  which  we 
can  observe  a  transition  from  the  lower  stage  of  Devil- 
worship  to  the  higher  stage  of  God-worship,  and  it 
seems  to  be  natural  that  fear  should  be  the  first  incen- 
tive to  religious  worship.  This  is  the  reason  why  the 
dark  figure  of  the  Devil,  that  is  to  saj',  of  a  powerful 
evil  deity,  looms  up  as  the  most  important  personage 
in  the  remotest  past  of  almost  every  faith.  Demonola- 
try  or  Devil-worship  is  the  first  stage  in  the  evolution 
of  religious  worship,  for  we  fear  the  bad,  not  the  good. 

Mr,  Herbert  Spencer  bases  religion  on  the  Un- 
known, declaring  that  the  savage  worships  those  pow- 
ers which  he  does  not  understand.  In  order  to  give 
to  religion  a  foundation  which  even  the  scientist  does 
not  dare  to  touch,  he  asserts  the  existence  of  an  abso- 
lute Unknowable,  and  recommends  it  as  the  basis  of 
the  religion  of  the  future.  But  facts  do  not  agree  with 
Mr.  Spencer's  proposition.     The  proverb  says  : 

"  What  I  don't  wot 
Makes  me  not  hot." 

What  is  absolutely  unknowable  does  not  concern 
us,  and  the  savage  does  not  worship  the  thunder  he- 


4644 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


cause  he  docs  not  know  what  it  is,  but  because  he  does 
know  what  it  is.  He  worships  the  thunder  because  he 
is  afraid  of  it,  because  of  the  known  and  obvious  dan- 
gers connected  with  it,  which  he  feels  unable  to  control. 
Let  us  hear  the  men  who  have  carefully  collected 
and  sifted  the  facts.  Waitz,  in  speaking  in  his  An- 
thropologic (Vol.  III.,  pp.  182,  330,  335,  345)  of  the 
Indians  who  were  not  as  yet  semi-Christianised,  states 
that  the  Florida  tribes  are  said  to  have  solemnly  wor- 
shipped the  Bad  Spirit,  Toia,  who  plagued  them  with 
visions,  and  to  have  had  small  regard  for  the  Good 
Spirit,  who  troubled  himself  little  about  mankind. 
And  Martius  makes  this  characteristic  remark  of  the 
rude  tribes  of  Brazil ; 

"All  Indians  have  a  lively  conviction  o£  the  power  of  an  evil 
principle  over  them  ;  in  many  there  dawns  also  a  glimpse  o£  the 
good  ;  but  they  revere  the  one  less  than  they  fear  the  other.  It 
must  be  thought  that  they  hold  the  Good  Being  weaker  in  relation 
to  the  fate  of  man  than  the  Evil."  1 

Capt.  John  Smith,  the  hero  of  the  colonisation  of 
Virginia,  in  1607,  describes  the  worship  of  Oki  (a  word 
which  apparently  means  that  which  is  above  our  con- 
trol) as  follows : 

' '  There  is  yet  m  Virginia  no  place  discovered  to  be  so  Savage 
in  which  they  haue  not  a  Religion,  Deer,  and  Bow  and  Arrowes. 
All  things  that  are  able  to  doe  them  hurt  beyond  their  prevention, 
they  adore  with  their  kinde  of  divine  worship ;  as  the  fire,  water, 
lightning,  thunder,  our  Ordnance  peeces,  horses,  &c.  But  their 
chiefe  god  they  worship  is  the  Devill.  Him  they  call  Okee,  and 
serue  him  more  of  feare  than  loue.  They  say  they  haue  confer- 
ence with  him,  and  fashion  themselves  as  neare  to  his  shape  as 
they  can  imagine.  In  their  Temple  they  haue  his  image  evill 
favouredly  carved,  and  then  painted  and  adorned  with  chaines  of 
copper,  and  beads,  and  covered  with  a  skin  in  such  manner  as  the 
deformities  may  well  suit  with  such  a  God."- 

Religion  always  begins  with  fear.  The  religion  of 
savages  may  directly  be  defined  as  "the  fear  of  evil  and 
the  various  efforts  made  to  escape  evil."  Though  the 
fear  of  evil  in  the  religions  of  civilised  nations  plays 
no  longer  so  prominent  a  part,  we  yet  learn  through 
historical  investigations  that  at  an  earlier  age  of  their 
development  almost  all  worship  was  paid  to  the  pow- 
ers of  evil,  who  were  regarded  with  special  awe  and 
reverence. 

Actual  Devil  worship  continues  until  the  positive 
power  of  good  is  recognised  and  man  finds  out  by  ex- 
perience, that  the  good,  although  its  progress  may  be 
ever  so  slow,  is  always  victorious  in  the  end.  It  is 
natural  that  the  power  that  makes  for  righteousness  is 
by  and  by  recognised  as  the  supreme  ruler  of  all  pow- 
ers, and  then  the  power  of  evil  ceases  to  be  an  object 
of  awe  ;  it  is  no  longer  worshipped  and  not  even  pro- 
pitiated, but  struggled  against,  and  the  confidence 
prevails  of  a  final  victory  of   justice,  right,   and  truth. 

I',    c. 
1  Quoted  from  Tylor.  Priiiiith'f  Culture.  IL,  p.  325. 
2Tylor,  ib,,  p,  342. 


LIFE  AND  DEATH. 


BY  CHAS.   A.    LANE. 


The  heart  of  Life  is  sweet,  O,  questioning  soul ! 

It  findeth  honey  in  the  senses'  play, 

And  Beauty  smiles  to  all  the  wandering  thought. 

The  sheen  of  pleasure  down  the  memory. 

To  doubtful  glimmer  tempers  sorrow's  gloom  ; 

And  e'en  when  thought  strains  backward  thro'  the  life. 

And  merges  off  in  silences  beyond. 

Forgotten  ecstasies  seem  lingering  there, 

That  fan  the  soul  thro'  gaps  of  ancient  deaths. 

A  voiceless  promise  haunts  eternity; 

And  when  our  longings  pierce  the  yawning  years, 

Hope  guides  their  wildered  wings  to  halcyon  calms 

Where  beaded  eons  meet  snd  weld  the  soul 

To  truth  and  beauty  and  the  good  for  aye. 

When  childhood's  throbbing  thought  outgrows  the  toy. 

Fond  Nature  meets  th'  advancing  soul,  and  charms 

The  hope  with  dreams  of  rainbow-tinted  lives  ; 

And  when  the  crowding  world  doth  close  us  round 

With  mid-life's  toil,  ambition  fires  the  will, 

And  drugs  the  weariness  of  Labor's  brain; 

While  inner  sense  pours  meed  of  noble  deeds 

In  richer  draughts  than  Ganymede  dispensed 

From  da;dal  cups  to  laughing  gods  in  times 

Of  old  ;  and  evermore  the  evening  lures 

With  sunset  glories  and  the  rest  of  peace. 

So  Nature  guardeth  Life  from  stage  to  stage. 

Adjusting  pleasures  to  his  shifting  modes  : 

At  evenlimei,  to  hide  the  outworn  world 

She  draws  the  robe  of  memory  'round  the  heart, 

And  throneth  Hope  upon  the  tomb  to  harp 

Alluring  lays,  and  tempt  the  thought  beyond 

The  ken. 

In  beat  of  blood  and  pulse  of  breath 
And  sway  of  living  limb — in  stress  of  will 
And  thrill  of  dream  and  sense  of  very  deed 
A  subtle  ecstasy  applaudeth  life. 
E'en  thro'  the  mjriad  hordes  of  under-lives. 
Whose  reach  of  thought  the  narrow  vision  rims. 
Some  joy  of  being  is  that  vigil  keeps 
Against  encroachments  of  insidious  death  : 
The  charge  of  Nature's  bliss  escapes  the  bird 
In  noonday  songs,  or  trickles  from  his  throat 
In  muffled  notes,  which  wakeful  impulse  breeds. 
When  thro'  the  sleep  a  sunny  vision  breaks 
Of  flowers  that  listen  to  a  streamlet's  song. 
The  butterfly  gives  back  the  floral  sweets 
In  tinted  glories  flashing  to  the  sun 
From  iris  wings  a-twinkle  in  the  meads  : 
Yea,  e'en  the  subtle  souls  of  flowers  have  sense 
Of  pleasure  in  their  lives  :  Doth  not  the  vine. 
In  soft,  alchemic  wooings  of  the  light. 
Seek  lengths  to  move  it  from  the  shrouding  glooms 
Where  Death  sits,  working  out  his  fateful  will  ? 
And  Grief,  can  she  not  reach  adown  the  life. 
And  win  the  consolation  hid  in  tears  ? 
Aye!  even  Sorrow  hath  a  lu.xury; 
For  Joy,  who  thrills  as  with  the  lightning's  pulse, 
And  Grief,  who  breathes  the  moans  of  midnight  winds. 
Alike  find  fullest  language  in  a  tear. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4645 


Who  calls  thee  cruel,  Death  ?  Thou  dwellest  not 

With  evil  things  that  wage  against  the  life 

Inexorable  war  !   Thou  art  not  kin 

To  fell  disease,  nor  friend  to  ruthless  pain. 

What  though  the  grave  gloom  broodeth  in  thine  eye, 

And  at  thy  touch  the  frozen  winter  chill  ? 

What  though  the  doom  that  smiteth  in  thy  deeds 

Seem  crueler  than  evil's  utmost  curse  ? 

What  though  thou  dwellest  in  the  ebon  halls 

Where  darkness  guards  his  brood  of  mysteries  ? 

Thou  yet,  O  Death,  art  Life's  most  gracious  friend  ; 

And  vigilant  as  waiting  love  thou  art : 

On  blood  and  brain  thou  keepest  watch  and  ward 

Thro'  all  the  throbbing  world,  with  tender  ken  ; 

And  when  disease  her  poison-viol  pours 

Of  mad'ning  fevers  and  the  permeant  plagues  ; 

Or  when  the  maniac  demon,  Pain,  with  throes 

Unmitigable  scourges  quivering  flesh  ; — 

When  (ire  or  flood  or  dire  Olympic  bolt 

Drives  nature  to  the  bourn  of  agony; 

When  age  sits  waiting  mid  the  wintry  winds 

With  suppliant  hands  beside  a  sepulcher, 

Imploring  rest  for  senses  weary  grown. 

And  blood  that  feels  the  burden  of  its  tide — 

Thou  comest,  kindly  Death  !  and  at  thy  call 

Life  leapeth,  welcoming  thy  folding  arms. 

But  sorrow  weepeth  in  the  empty  place 

With  eyes  that  backward  turn  across  thi  world, 

Recking  the  grave  as  rottenness  and  feast 

Of  carrion  worms. 

Thou  breakest  but  to  mend 
O  Death,  with  wider  life  or  ancient  rest ! 
But  Faith  looks  not  from  out  the  eyes  of  Grief, 
And  Hope  builds  not  her  promise-bow  across 
The  storm  of  tears.     Yet  ever,  evermore. 
From  out  the  utmost  reaches  of  the  heart, 
Where  life  holds  rapport  with  the  Mystery, 
Are  waftings  felt  that  touch  the  doubts  of  grief. 
And  wooings  heard  that  lure  the  eager  thought. 

Yea,  questioning  soul,  the  heart  of  Life  is  sweet ! 

Tears  of  the  Christ  and  sighing  of  the  Buddha 

Cure  not  the  outer  evils  of  the  world  : 

While  bodies  hold  and  nature  hath  her  sway. 

Some  sorrows  will  there  be— some  pains  to  rack — 

Some  seeming  evils  in  the  elements. 

But  deeper  than  the  passion's  plummet  sounds 

A  tossing  waste  of  rare  and  radiant  dreams 

Is  hungering  upward  ever  toward  the  life  ; 

While  calling,  calling  thro'  the  old  disease 

Whose  virus  is  the  passion  of  the  lives 

Wherethro'  the  blood  hath  coursed  that  serveth  man 

A  voice  is  heard,  that,  underneath  the  thought, 

Beside  the  fountain  of  the  soul  hath  dwelt 

And  learned  the  sweetness  of  the  Mystic  Spring. 


that  even  among  those  churchmen  who  emphasise  the  importance 
of  dogma  there  is  a  demand  for  catholicity  such  as  was  never  felt 
before.  While  the  intention  had  been  to  limit  the  Congress  to  the 
religions  represented  in  America,  which  are  the  various  Christian 
denominations  and  Jews,  the  committee  had  arranged  a  special 
meeting  in  the  St.  James  Square  Church  for  the  Religious  Parlia- 
ment Extension,  and  we  are  happy  to  say  that,  although  there 
was  a  lack  of  foreign  delegates,  the  speeches  made  on  this  occa- 
sion were  not  only  very  interesting,  but  also  elevating  and  satis- 
factory. Of  non-Christian  religions  Buddhism  alone  was  repre- 
sented by  Professor  Choyo,  a  native  of  Japan  and  at  present  a 
resident  of  Chicago.  We  hope  to  be  able  to  present  a  report  of 
this  meeting  by  one  of  the  delegates  who  was  present. 


NOTES. 

The  Pan-American  Congress  of  Religion  and  Education  which 
met  at  Toronto,  Canada,  was  not  as  well  attended  as  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Religions  which  convened  during  the  year  of  the  World's 
Fair  at  Chicago,  but  it  was  nevertheless  a  great  success  and  carried 
along  with  it  the  enthusiasm  for  a  broader  comprehension  and  a 
deeper  sympathy.   It  proves  that  the  religious  spirit  is  still  alive  and 


The  most  important  action  taken  by  the  Pan-American  Con- 
gress of  Religion  and  Education  was  the  resolution  that  was 
passed  at  the  last  session.     It  reads  as  follows  : 

/iVf<i/rri/,  That  we  recognise  a  vast  movement,  both  human 
and  divine,  in  such  gatherings  as  the  Parliament  of  Religions  in 
Chicago  and  the  Pan-American  Congress  at  Toronto. 

J\esolz\'il,  That  we  recognise  the  importance  of  continued  or- 
ganisation and  agitation  in  behalf  of  religious  fraternity  and  a 
human  brotherhood  in  iruth  and  love,  and  to  further  this  end  we 
appoint  the  following  gentlemen  as  an  executive  committee  to  de- 
termine time,  plaqe,  and  methods  of  future  meetings: 

Rev.  David  J  Burrell,  D.  D.,  President  ;  Hon.  C.  C.  Bonney, 
Rev  John  Henry  Barrows,  D.D  ,  Rev.  M.  U.  Gilbert,  D.D.,  Rev. 
Samuel  J.  Smith,  D.D..  'Very  Rev.  W.  R.  Harris,  Rabbi  Isaac 
Wise,  Rabbi  J  Gottheil,  Rev.  F.  M.  Bristol,  D  D.,  Rev.  Lyman 
Abbott,  D.D.,  Rev  F.  W  Gunsaulus,  D.D,  Prof.  William  Clarke, 
D.C.L.,  Rev.  George  Dana  Boardman,  D.D.,  Rev.  Henry  K.  Car- 
roll, D.D  ,  Rev.  Everett  Hale,  D.D.,  and  Dr.  Paul  Carus. 


Bishop  Samuel  Fallows,  President  of  the  newly  founded  Peo- 
ple's Institute  of  Chicago,  has  started  a  movement  which  proposes 
to  extend  the  spirit  of  the  Religious  Parliament  through  the  estali- 
lishment  of  local  centres.  He  called  it  at  first  the  University  As 
sociation,  but  he  has  now  changed  the  name  into  the  World's 
Congresses  Extension.  The  success  which  crowns  his  enterprise  is 
beyond  all  expectation.  There  is  a  hunger  in  the  country  for 
spiritual  food  and  a  desire  to  grow  and  to  broaden. 

The  movement  of  broadening  our  religion  is  not  limited  lo 
America.  We  are  just  informed  that  in  Ajmere,  an  important 
railroad  station  and  a  central  city  for  the  people  of  the  Panjab, 
Bombay,  and  the  Northwestern  provinces  of  India,  a  congress  is 
to  be  held  on  the  26th,  27th,  and  2Sth  of  September,  under  the 
name  of  Dharma-mahotsava,  which  is  similar  to  the  World's  Re- 
ligious Parliament  of  Chicago.  The  most  important  passage  of 
the  statement  runs  as  follows  ; 

"The  main  objects  of  this  religious  movement  are  threefold  : 

"I.   To  promote  the  true  religious  spirit  among  all  faiths. 

"2.  To  afford  a  common  platform  for  the  advocates  of  differ- 
ent religions,  where  each  can  show  to  the  best  advantage  the  vital 
principles  of  his  faith,  without  in  the  least  entering  into  contro- 
versy with  or  hostility  to  any  other  faith. 

"3.  To  place  within  easy  reach  of  enlightened  and  educated 
men,  trustworthy  information  about  every  form  of  religion,  and 
leave  them  to  judge  of  the  merits  of  the  same." 

The  committee  request  through  their  circular  every  one  to  see 
to  it  that  the  best  advocate  of  his  religion  be  sent  as  a  representa- 
tive, and  they  hope  that  the  movement  will  tend  to  promote  union 
among  people  of  different  faiths.     The  subjects  announced  are: 

(i)  God,  (2)  Soul,  (3)  Sin,  (4)  Transmigration,  (5)  Bodily 
Health,  (6)  Family  Life,  (7)  Social  Life,  (S)  Revelation,  (9)  Media- 
tor,  and  (10)  Salvation.     The  circular  is  signed  by  the  President, 


o'& 


4646 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


Salig  Ram  Shastri,  Professor  of  Sanskrit,  Ajmere  Govt.  College, 
and  the  Secretaries  Fateh  Cband  Mehta,  B  A.,  L.L.B.  (Cam- 
bridge),  Barrister-atlaw,  etc.,  and  Bithal  Nath  Misra. 

The  authoress  of  the  article,  ' '  The  Old  Shoemaker, "  does  not 
offer  us  a  piece  of  sentimental  imagination,  but  a  description  of  a 
real  event  of  her  life.  In  an  accompanying  letter  she  writes  as 
follows ; 

"A  man  is  just  dead, — a  nobody, — a  poor,  old,  miserable  shoe- 
maker,— not  a  good  man  nor  a  bad  man  ;  only  seventy-five  )eais 
of  hard  old  suffering  clay,  with  but  one  virtue,  uncomplaining 
patience,  and  with  all  the  vices  of  the  squalid  poor.  I  did  not 
know  him,  only  he  was  my  neighbor.  But  his  death  is  the  most 
pathetic  thing — the  hard,  old,  silent  death — with  no  one  in  the 
room. 

' '  I  have  written  some  lines,  out  of  the  gladness  and  the  pathos 
in  me  ;  it  is  a  sermon  for  us,  for  us  only,  who  believe  that  cut  of 
the  body  of  pain  the  painless  life  welcomes  the  immortal  good, 
and  the  rest — passes  to  soul-ashes.  I  have  written  though  I  know 
you  are  crowded  with  work.  It  seems  to  me  you  will  care  to  read 
what  I  have  written,  though  it  is  of  the  lives  I  know  you  do  not 
kaov/ — lives  out  of  your  sphere,  out  of  your  sight  altogether.  Yet 
these  are  they  to  whom  the  new  gospel  of  immortality  best  ap- 
plies, for  what  hope  is  there  in  the  c/,/  for  these  sad  ironies  of  ex- 
istence, within  whom  there  dwells  so  liitle  of  the  divine  spirit— so 
much  of  that  which  nuts/  dit-  utterly—  for  the  race-hope  !  " 


George  F.  Day,  of  Lansing,  Mich  ,  a  lawyer  who  enjoyed  the 
confidence  of  his  fellow  citizens,  died  suddenly  in  the  bloom  of 
life.  Judge  M.  D.  Chatterton,  a  friend  of  bis,  in  an  address  to  the 
court  expressed  his  sorrow,  and  after  a  brief  outline  of  Mr.  Day's 
life,  he  said  : 

"  From  the  known  qualities  of  our  deceased  brother,  no  other 
but  a  pure,  honorable  and  upright  character  could  have  been  ex- 
pected. During  his  life  he  selected  only  those  desirable  qualities 
which  develop  into  noble  manhood.  His  life  was  the  natural  out 
growth  of  the  combination  formed  by  the  union  of  such  princi- 
ples. 

"It  has  been  said  of  George  Washington  that  '  he  couldn't  tell 
a  lie.'  Why  not  ?  The  answer  is  plain.  His  selections  for  the 
guide  of  his  conduct  had  been  from  the  manly  side  of  life  ;  he  had 
none  of  the  qualities  which  produce  falsifiers  or  a  dishonorable 
character. 

"I  can  compare  this  life  of  ours  to  nothing  which  seems  to 
me  more  appropriate  than  a  kaleidoscope.  If  we  place  in  this  re- 
flexion only  the  purest  of  gems,  no  matter  which  way  it  is  turned, 
the  picture  is  beautiful  ;  but  if  we  put  in  only  spiders,  snakes  and 
scorpions  every  turn  of  it  exhibits  the  hideous  and  the  vile,  noth- 
ing else  can  be  produced.  If  we  put  in  both  good  and  bad  it  is 
uncertain  what  the  picture  will  be. 

"  What  was  it  about  Mr.  Day  we  so  much  admired  ?  It  was 
not  his  manly  form.  It  was  not  the  evidence  of  animal  life  he  ex- 
hibited. It  was  the  I.  the  ego,  the  man  which  manifested  itself 
through  his  body.  We  read  and  admire  Blackstone  and  Shake- 
speare. It  is  not  for  the  printer's  ink,  the  paper  and  binding  that 
we  have  this  high  opinion,  but  for  the  immortal  truths  they  con- 
tain. 

"  Several  jears  ago  I  had  the  pleasure  of  passing  through  the 
King  s  palace  of  Italy.  We  went  through  the  banqueting  hall  and 
through  his  bed-chamber.  The  silken  sheets  of  his  bed  were 
turned  down,  so  we  could  see  where  the  King  slept  ;  but  the  King 
was  not  there.  So  we  might  take  the  surgeon's  knife  and  search 
the  body,  or  the  apothecary's  scales  and  weigh  the  gray  matter  of 
the  brain,  and  not  be  able  to  find  the  man.  Socrates,  Seneca,  and 
Epictetus  spent  their  lives  searching  for  the  human  soul. 

"The  unseen  is  more  potent  than  the  seen.     The  principles 


which  lie  behind  the  action  are  of  more  consequence  than  the  act 
itself.  The  existence  of  the  elements  of  love,  hate,  revenge,  hon- 
esty and  dishonesty,  are  as  surely  known  as  the  existence  of  the 
mountains. 

"The  great  and  absorbing  question  which  has  agitated  the 
human  race  for  centuries  is,  "Is  man  iiiimor/n!  '"  Does  our  de- 
ceased brother  continue  to  exist  ?  To  be  immortal  is  to  be  ever- 
lasting. Whatever  has  a  beginning,  will  end.  Principles  alone 
are  immortal.  The  great  moral  and  educational  truths  always  ex- 
isted. Before  the  laying  of  the  corner  stones  of  the  pyramids  was 
thought  of,  geometrical  truth  existed.  Man  searches  out  and  ap- 
propriates to  himself  these  eternal  truths.  The  individual  collec- 
tion constitutes  the  I,  the  ego,  the  man,  by  which  he  is  and  will 
be  known,  and  either  be  admired  or  condemned. 

"Will  we  continue  to  retain  collectively  this  selection  of  im- 
mortalities, and  thus  preserve  our  personal  identity  ?  Or  will  this 
combination  dissolve  and  go  back  to  the  ocean  of  truths  from 
whence  they  came  ?  Are  we  only  waves  dashing  against  an  unin- 
habitable shore  ?  I  think  not.  We  transmit  to  our  posteriiy  the 
general  elements  of  our  characters,  we  impart  to  our  associatts 
the  substance  of  our  mental  accumulations.  Our  ego  continues  to 
live  in  the  persons  by  whom  we  are  surrounded,  and  with  whom 
we  are  associated.  The  immortal  principles  of  which  we  are  com- 
posed existed  separate  and  apart  from  our  bo:!ies  before  they  were 
known  to  us.  .  .  .  From  these  facts  and  many  more  we  miglit  point 
out,  we  draw  the  satisfactory  conclusion  that  our  departed  brother 
still  lives. 

Well  may  the  engineers  of  this  country  be  proud  of  their  com- 
rade George  Peppet.  who  ran  the  passenger  train  on  the  Michigan 
Central  which  w;.s  wrecked  on  Friday  last  about  one  mile  east  of 
Marshall,  Mich.  While  running  at  usual  speed,  the  engine  jumped 
the  track  with  its  front  wheels,  probably  caused  by  the  blowing 
out  of  a  piston  head.  The  fireman,  naturally  enough,  jumped  off 
the  train,  but  the  engineer  remained  on  the  engine,  which  ran  for 
about  two  train  lengths  on  the  ties  and  then  turned  over  com- 
pletely, burying  the  brave  man  alive  in  the  cab.  where  he  was 
jammed  against  the  door  of  the  boiler.  The  mail  car  was  com- 
pletely wrecked,  but  no  lives  were  lost.  The  fireman  at  once  poured 
buckets  of  water  through  the  grates  and  extinguished  the  fire, 
thus  rendering  the  engineer's  position  less  dangerous.  After  an 
hour  and  forty  minutes'  work  the  latter  was  brought  to  light  again, 
and  it  was  found  that  his  hip  was  badly  broken.  The  first  word 
he  spoke  was  a  question  whether  any  one  on  the  train  had  been 
killed  or  injured,  and  when  assured  that  all  but  himself  were  safe, 
he  was  satisfied.  What  would  have  been  the  result  if  he  had  left 
his  post  to  save  his  life  in  a  moment  of  imminent  danger? 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 

E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher.  DR.  PAUL  CARUS.   Euitok. 

TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION; 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  421. 

THE  BEAUTY  OF  DEATH.   Woods  Hutchinson,  A.M., 

M  D 4639 

THE  OLD  SHOEMAKER.     Voltairine  De  Clevrk 4642 

GOOD  AND  EVIL  AS  RELIGIOUS  IDEAS.     Editor  .    4642 

POETRY. 

Life  and  Death.     Charles  Alva  Lane.  .  .~. .  : 4644 

NOTES 4645 


The  Open  Court. 


A   ■W.^EEKI.Y   JOUENAL 


OEyUTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  422.     (Vol.  IX.-39: 


CHICAGO,    SEPTEMBER  26,   1895. 


j  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
I  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


RELIEF  BY  WORK.' 

BY  CAPT.  CORNELIUS  G.\RDENER. 

"Relief  by  work"  is  the  name  given  to  a  practical 
philanthropic  movement  which  has  for  its  object  the 
assisting  of  the  poor  and  unemployed,  by  permitting 
and  encouraging  them  to  cultivate  idle  lands  in  and 
adjacent  to  cities. 

The  city  of  Detroit  last  summer  was  the  first  to 
try  the  experiment  which  has  since  been  copied  and 
is  now  in  operation  in  a  number  of  cities  in  the  United 
States.  To  the  Mayor  of  Detroit,  the  Honorable 
Hazen  S.  Pingree,  belongs  the  honor  of  having  con- 
ceived of  this  plan,  and  by  his  encouragement  and 
assistance  it  was  successfully  carried  out  in  Detroit 
last  year,  and  again  this  year  is  in  active  operation. 
In  view  of  the  fact  that  it  is  now  being  tried  in  many 
cities,  and  that  it  differs  so  radically  from  the  usual 
forms  of  charity  in  this  country,  it  may  be  of  interest 
to  review  this  experiment  in  Detroit  from  its  incip- 
iency.  It  was  about  the  loth  of  June  last  year  that  it 
occurred  to  Mr.  Pingree  while  driving  along  the  Boule- 
vard in  Detroit,  that  could  but  the  poor  and  unem- 
ployed get  a  chance  to  cultivate  some  of  the  vacant 
and  idle  lands  there,  it  would  give  them  something  to 
do,  and  what  they  would  raise,  would  be  that  much 
saved  to  taxpayers,  who,  as  it  was,  would  be  called 
upon  to  help,  besides  the  regular  poor,  many  families 
of  the  unemployed,  through  the  winter..  There  are 
in  Detroit  some  ten  thousand  Polish  and  German 
laborers  who  have  generallj'  large  families  and  whose 
average  rate  of  pay  does  not  exceed  one  dollar  per 
day  when  working.  Due  to  the  financial  crisis  and 
to  other  causes,  nearly  all  the  manufacturing  estab- 
lishments were  at  a  standstill,  and  but  few  public  im- 
provements were  being  prosecuted.  Being  principally 
employed  at  day  labor  by  these  establishments  and 
by  the  City  in  its  public  improvements,  and  having 
been  for  a  long  period  thrown  out  of  work,  it  became 
a  serious  question  how  to  assist  these  people  so  that 
they  could  pull  through  the  winter.  With  a  view  to 
bringing  the  people  and  the  land  together,  the  Mayor 
appointed  a  committee  of  which  I  had  the  honor  to 
be  named  chairman.      As  active  manager  in  the  sum- 

1  Address  delivered  before  the  Pan-.\merican  Congress  of  Religion  and 
Education.     Toronto.  Ontario,  July  22,  1S95. 


mer  of  1894,  and  again  as  honorary  member  of  a  sim- 
ilar committee  this  year,  I  became  thoroughly  con- 
versant with  all  the  details  of  the  plan  of  "Relief  by 
work,"  which  bids  fair  to  take  the  place  to  a  great 
extent  of  the  existing  methods  of  charitable  relief.  I 
make  mention  of  my  connexion  with  this  experiment 
in  order  to  explain  why  i:  was  that  I  was  requested 
by  the  President  of  the  Congress  to  address  you  upon 
the  subject  of  "Relief  by  work,"  sometimes  known  as 
the  "  Detroit  Plan,"  and  by  newspapers  which  are 
fond  of  alliteration  spoken  of  as  "Pingree  Potatoe 
Patches." 

METHOD  OF  PROCEDURE. 

After  the  committee  had  been  duly  organised, 
about  the  middle  of  June,  1894,  it  advertised  in  the 
newspapers  for  contribution  of  money  and  seeds, 
and  asked  for  the  use  of  land  for  purposes  of  cultiva- 
tion. Quite  a  sum  was  subscribed  by  charitable  people 
which  was  added  to  by  voluntary  contributions  from 
the  Mayor  and  from  city  employes  and  by  other  meth- 
ods, sufficient  to  defray  the  cost  of  the  experiment. 

Land  was  offered  in  more  than  sufficient  quantities 
by  owners  and  real  estate  agents,  in  parcels  from  the 
size  of  a  single  lot  to  a  hundred  acres  in  a  piece. 

Detroit  is  a  city  more  compactly  built  than  is  the 
case  with  many  other  cities  in  the  United  States,  yet 
within  its  limits  there  lie  idle  and  unused  and  held  for 
purposes  of  speculation  or  for  other  reasons,  over 
eight  thousand  acres  of  land.  A  tract  of  land  known 
as  the  Brush  Farm,  lying  transversely  through  the  most 
populous  part  of  the  city,  still  contains  over  a  hundred 
acres  of  land  which  have  never  been  occupied.  The 
committee  accepted  of  the  lands  offered  such  as  were 
nearest  those  portions  of  the  city  where  the  majority 
of  the  unemployed  lived,  and  in  blocks  ranging  from 
one  to  sixty  acres.  A  great  portion  of  the  land  ac- 
cepted consisted  of  subdivisions  laid  out  into  lots. 
The  soil  was  generally  poor,  having  been  formerly 
used  for  truck  gardens  and  abandoned.  It  being  so 
late  in  the  season  before  work  was  begun,  to-wit :  the 
middle  of  June,  the  only  crop  that  could  still  be  raised 
and  mature,  was  late  potatoes  and  perhaps  beans  and 
turnips,  and  the  plowing,  harrowing  and  preparing  of 
the  ground  was,  owing  to  the  extreme  drought,  attended 
with  more  than  the  usual  difficulties  and  expense. 


4648 


THE     OPEN     COURlT. 


The  committee  opened  an  office,  and  it  was  an- 
nounced in  the  daily  papers  that  applications  for  land 
would  be  received,  and  that  seed  potatoes  and  other 
seeds  would  be  furnished  by  the  committee,  and  that 
persons  not  availing  themselves  of  this  offer,  would 
be  denied  assistance  from  the  Poor  Commission  dur- 
ing the  remainder  of  the  year. 

The  land  was  plowed,  harrowed,  and  staked  off 
into  parcels  of  from  one  third  to  one-forth  of  an  acre 
by  the  committee's  foreman,  and  these  lots  were  as- 
signed to  applicants  living  in  the  vicinity.  About 
three-fourths  of  the  applicants  were  such  as  had  pre- 
viously received  aid  from  the  regular  organised  City 
Poor  Commission,  and  by  whom  they  were  referred 
to  our  committee.  The  remainder  were  people  who 
had  never  received  such  aid,  but  being  out  of  work, 
were  in  want  and  anxious  to  avail  themselves  of  this 
opportunity  to  raise  food. 

Some  three  thousand  applications  were  received, 
but  for  want  of  sufficient  funds  and  time,  the  commit- 
tee was  able  to  provide  land  for  but  nine  hundred  and 
forty-five.  These  were  all  people  with  families,  many 
of  whom  had  not  had  work  for  months,  and  even  did 
they  have  continuous  employment,  had  a  hard  strug- 
gle to  get  along;  among  the  number  being  thirty  wid- 
ows with  half-grown  bo}'s.  As  fast  as  pieces  of  land 
were  ready  for  planting,  assignments  were  made  to  it, 
and  the  potatoes  and  other  seeds  were  planted  by  the 
people  under  direction  of  a  foreman,  the  potatoes  and 
seeds  being  delivered  on  the  ground  and  immediately 
planted.  Some  persons  spaded  the  lots  assigned  them, 
whenever  the  tract  was  too  small  to  profitably  plow, 
and  furnished  their  own  seeds  and  plants,  while  large 
numbers  bouglit  seeds  additional  to  those  furnished. 
Following  the  example  of  the  City,  quite  a  number  of 
persons  gave  pieces  of  land  upon  private  application 
to  poor  people,  or  to  their  own  employee's,  for  purposes 
of  cultivation.  With  the  exception  of  such  persons 
as  were  employed  b}'  the  committee,  the  entire  man- 
agement was  gratuitous,  and  the  cost  of  the  experi- 
ment was  about  three  thousand  six  hundred  dollars, 
or,  deducting  cost  of  plows,  harrows,  etc.  purchased, 
three  dollars  and  forty-five  cents  per  lot.  Each  oc- 
cupant planted  at  least  two-thirds  of  his  piece  in  po- 
tatoes and  the  remainder  with  such  seeds  as  were  pre- 
ferred. Nearly  all  kinds  of  garden  truck  were  raised 
and  consumed  during  the  summer  months  and  many 
families  from  dire  want  were  oliliged  to  dig  up  for 
consumption  portions  of  their  potatoes  before  they  had 
attained  any  size.  Nearly  all  the  land  was  unfenced 
and  at  first  there  was  some  trespassing,  but,  after  the 
police,  who  materially  assisted  us,  had  made  a  few  ar- 
rests, this  annoyance  stopped. 

The   summer   of    1894   was   a   season    of    unusual 
drought,  lasting  in   Michigan   for  about  nine   weeks, 


which  caused  some  of  our  people  to  become  discour- 
aged, yet  in  spite  of  this  fact,  about  nine-tenths  of  the 
plots  were  well  taken  care  of.  Such  as  failed  to  pro- 
perly care  for  their  plots,  were  notified  to  do  so  at 
once  or  their  plots  would  be  assigned  to  others.  When 
the  rains  came  in  September,  the  crops  began  to  do 
well  and  prospects  became  bright  for  a  fair  return  for 
our  investment.  It  was  understood  from  the  begin- 
ning that  each  person  would  be  permitted  to  harvest 
what  he  had  planted,  and  none  were  in  any  manner 
interfered  with  who  took  proper  care  of  their  crops. 
The  work  was  done  upon  the  land  at  any  and  all 
times,  most  often  in  the  early  morning  before  working 
hours,  by  such  as  had  subsequently  obtained  employ- 
ment, and  in  many  cases  by  women  and  children  who 
would  bring  their  babies  and  their  lunch  to  spend  the 
day  upon  the  plots. 

In  all  cases  it  was  not  practicable  to  assign  plots 
near  to  where  applicants  lived  and  many  lived  three 
or  four  miles  from  their  plots.  This,  however,  did 
not  seem  to  make  any  difference  as  to  the  care  which 
was  taken  of  the  crops. 

From  what  has  been  stated  it  will  be  seen  that  to 
have  kept  an  exact  account  of  what  was  raised,  was 
impracticable  ;  what  was  being  raised  was  daily  to  a 
great  extent  being  consumed  and  only  an  approximate 
idea  of  the  final  amount  of  potatoes  harvested  was 
possible.  The  average  of  these  for  all  the  pieces  was 
about  fifteen  and  one-half  bushels  per  family,  some 
harvesting  as  many  as  thirty-five  bushels  while  others 
on  poorer  soil,  obtained  only  eight  or  ten  bushels. 
Large  quantities  of  white  beans,  squash,  turnips,  etc., 
were  also  raised.  It  is  fair  to  say  that  the  venture 
netted  to  the  cultivators  food  to  the  value  of  fourteen 
thousand  dollars,  at  a  cost  to  the  committee  of  three 
thousand  and  six  hundred  dollars.  Considering  that 
the  land  used  was  in  many  cases  an  abandoned  truck 
garden  or  very  poor  soil  ;  that  there  was  an  unusual 
drought  during  the  greater  portion  of  the  summer  ; 
that  in  every  case  the  land  was  covered  with  a  thick 
sod  or  with  weeds,  Vi^hen  plowed  in  the  month  of  June, 
and  that  no  organisation  existed  to  carry  the  plan  into 
effect  until  the  second  week  in  June,  it  can  be  said 
that  the  experiment  was  attended  with  much  success. 
Although  this  experiment  partook  somewhat  of  the 
nature  of  a  charity,  yet  each  person  obtained  the  fruits 
of  his  own  labor,  and  it  is  certain  that  the  expendi- 
ture of  a  like  amount  of  money  in  anj'  other  way  for  the 
benefit  of  the  recipients,  would  not  have  accomplished 
as  good  results.  A  large  proportion  of  the  cultivators 
had  already  some  experience  in  raising  vegetables, 
yet  a  great  many  learned  something  about  gardening 
and  truck-raising.  Such  as  worked  at  day  labor,  for 
which,  because  of  the  hard  times,  they  were  paid  only 
from  eighty  cents  to  one  dollar  a  day,  were  materially 


THE     OPEN     COLTRX 


4649 


benefited  during  the  summer,  and  in  most  instances 
enough  potatoes  were  harvested  to  last  them  through 
the  winter. 

The  committee  found  from  experience  that  about 
one-third  of  an  acre  is  sufficient  land  for  a  family  to 
raise  enough  potatoes  on  to  last  them  through  the 
winter  and  furnish  vegetables  through  tlie  summer. 
Those  familiar  with  gardening  appreciate  how  much 
food  can  be  raised  on  a  small  piece  of  ground.  There 
seemed  to  be  many  cases  where  the  applicants,  al- 
though in  need,  dreaded  to  go  to  the  Poor  Commis- 
sion for  help,  who,  by  being  aided  on  this  plan,  did 
not  lose  their  self-respect,  and  would  be  able  together 
with  what  they  could  earn  to  provide  for  themselves, 
and  thereby  be  prevented  from  becoming  permanent 
objects  of  charit}'. 

This  year,  in  Detroit,  we  have  gone  at  it  more  sys- 
tematically, a  committee  of  citizens  of  which  Mayor 
Pingree  is  chairman  and  Mr.  John  McGregor  is  secre- 
tary and  actual  manager  has  the  matter  in  charge, 
and  have  begun  earlier  in  the  season.  We  have  four 
hundred  and  fifty-five  acres,  as  surveyed  b^'  the  city 
surveyor,  under  cultivation,  nearly  all  of  this  lies 
within  the  city  limits,  and  which  land  is  divided  up 
into  parcels  some  of  one-third  and  some  of  one-fourth 
acre,  making  a  total  of  one  thousand  five  hundred  and 
forty-six  allotments  to  heads  of  families  ;  of  this  num- 
ber one  thousand  two  hundred  and  eighteen  had  been 
on  the  books  of  the  City  Board  of  Poor  Commissioners 
either  this  year  or  the  year  before.  Of  the  remainder 
one  hundred  and  one  paid  fifty  cents  each  for  the  use 
of  their  lots.  The  cases  of  those  not  recommended 
by  the  Poor  Commissioners  were  investigated  arid 
found  to  be  worthy  of  assistance.  The  allotments  are 
well  taken  care  of,  and  are  as  free  from  weeds  as 
market  gardens.  The  people  exhibit  a  degree  of  thank- 
fulness for  the  opportunity  afforded,  whicli  can  only 
be  appreciated  by  those  who  come  into  contact  with 
them.  The  city  appropriated  for  the  work  this  year 
five  thousand  dollars,  of  which  probably  about  four 
thousand  and  five  hundred  dollars  will  be  expended, 
which  will  make  each  allotment  cost  two  dollars  and 
ninety  cents.  All  kinds  of  vegetables  are  being  raised 
and  daily  consumed.  The  principal  crops,  however, 
are  potatoes  and  beans.  The  yield  of  the  former  prom- 
ises to  be  very  large  and  will  average  over  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  bushels  per  acre.  In  conversation  with 
the  cultivators  it  appears  to  be  their  intention  to  trade 
any  surplus  potatoes  they  may  have,  with  their  grocer 
for  groceries  and  other  necessaries. 

The  experiment  in  Detroit  has  demonstrated  the 
following  facts  :  since  the  largest  item  in  the  cultiva- 
tion of  vegetables  is  labor,  furnished  by  the  people 
themselves,  that  much  good  may  by  this  plan  be  ac- 


complished with  small  expense  to  charitable  people  or 
the  taxpayers. 

That  any  wholesale  robbery  and  trespassing  pre- 
dicted, even  upon  the  land  unfenced,  did  not  take 
place. 

That  it  is  best  to  get  tracts  of  as  many  acres  in  a 
piece  as  possible,  and  if  the  same  be  poor  land,  to 
collect  in  central  localities,  during  the  winter,  the 
sweepings  of  the  streets  to  be  put  upon  the  land  in 
the  spring,  or  carry  it  upon  the  land  to  be  cultivated 
from  time  to  time,  as  collected,  in  order  to  enrich  the 
soil  of  those  poor  lands.  That  the  poor  are  glad  to 
get  land  for  cultivation  even  where  it  lies  three  and 
four  miles  from  their  homes. 

That  many  poor  and  unemployed  persons  in  cities 
are  glad  to  avail  themselves  of  an  opportunity  to  raise 
potatoes  and  other  vegetables  for  their  own  subsis- 
tence, provided,  the  land  be  furnished  and  they  are 
assured  that  the  results  of  their  labor  will  accrue  to 
them. 

That  especially  to  day-laborers  with  large  families, 
the  opportunity  to  cultivate  a  small  piece  of  land  is  a 
God-send,  as  it  enables  them,  together  with  what  they 
can  earn,  to  get  along  without  other  assistance  and 
that  to  the  class  who  are  constant  recipients  of  charity 
and  are  practically  continuously  so  supported,  the  cul- 
tivating of  the  soil  and  obtaining  food  other  than  by 
gift,  is  a  valuable  lesson  which  tends  to  wean  them 
from  pauperism  and  restore  instincts  of  self-depend- 
ence and  manhood. 

In  beginning  this  experiment,  in  order  to  encour- 
age the  people  and  because  of  their  great  poverty,  the 
committee  thought  it  best  to  plow  the  land  and  furnish 
part  of  the  seed,  but  I  am  convinced  that  should  this 
method  be  permanently  adopted  it  would  not  be  neces- 
sary to  do  so,  except  in  cases  of  great  destitution.  It 
is,  however,  of  great  importance  that  foremen  be  em- 
ployed to  teach  those  not  familiar  with  it,  the  first 
rudiments  of  truck  gardening,  and  to  superintend  the 
proper  care  of  the  crops  until  harvested,  and  that  the 
active  manager  be  a  person  who  will  give  the  plan  his 
constant  attention  during  the  entire  season. 

The  results  of  last  year's  work  in  Detroit  has  been 
that  a  large  number  of  families,  as  testified  to  by  one 
of  the  members  of  the  Board  of  Poor  Commissioners, 
have  gone  out  in  the  country  and  are  working  small 
abandoned  or  unfilled  farms  on  shares  for  the  purpose 
of  raising  potatoes,  beans,  and  other  crops. 

It  has  further  resulted  that  a  large  number  ob- 
tained the  use  of  land  within  the  city  limits  from  the 
owners  and  are  cultivating  ^he  same  this  year. 

As  regards  the  merits  of  this  Detroit  plan.  Were 
we  not  so  wediled  to  existing  conditions  and  methods, 
we  would  at  once  see  the  incongruity  of  the  situation, 
which   makes  it  possible  for  thousands  of  people  in 


+650 


XHE     OPEN     COURT. 


large  cities  to  live  in  a  state  of  semi-starvation  in  times 
when  thrown  out  of  employment,  and  of  a  smaller 
number  living  constantly  so,  and  at  the  same  time 
often  thousands  of  acres  lying  idle  close  by,  for  no 
other  purpose  than  those  of  speculation. 

As  all  means  of  subsistence  must  in  the  first  in- 
stance come  from  the  soil  of  the  earth,  by  the  exertion 
of  man's  labor,  it  would  seem  just  and  according  to 
natural  laws  that  no  man  who  is  in  need  and  willing  to 
labor,  should  be  denied  the  opportunity  of  raising  food 
from  land  not  in  use  for  this  purpose.  Were  it  legal 
for  him  at  any  time  to  do  this  without  depriving  his 
neighbor  of  anything  rightfully  his,  it  would  seem  that 
his  being  permitted  to  cultivate  idle  land  would  go  far 
towards  solving  the  question  of  wages,  which  political 
economists  say,  tend  constantly  towards  the  lowest 
limit  of  subsistence.  The  squeezing  could  only  go  so 
far  and  no  further,  and  the  employe  would  go  to 
truck  raising  or  farming.  But  aside  from  this  line  of 
argument  the  method  of  "relief  by  work"  teaches 
men  to  rely  upon  the  results  of  their  own  labor  for 
whatever  they  obtain  and  instead  of  being  a  charity, 
in  reality  is  but  an  opportunity  offered. 

I  am  convinced  from  my  observations  of  the  effect 
of  our  work  in  Detroit  and  from  conversation  with  the 
people  who  were  benefited  by  this  plan  there,  that  re- 
lief by  work  is  a  practical  charity  of  far  greater  value 
than  support  without  work,  and  that  if  carried  on  in 
the  way  now  begun,  it  will  do  much  to  relieve  distress 
in  workingmen's  families  and  help  along  those  who 
with  large  families  and  low  wages  can  now  but  barely 
get  along,  and  that  as  regards  the  permanent  poor 
and  those  supported  entirely  by  the  community,  it 
will  wean  them  and  their  children  from  relying  upon 
this  method  of  obtaining  a  living  and  instead  teach 
them  habits  of  industry  and  thrift.  Direct  charity 
creates  paupers.  Relief  by  work  tends  constantly  to 
reduce  their  number. 


ALBERT  HERMANN  POST.— OBITUARY. 

Wii  ARE  in  receipt  of  the  sad  news  that  Albert  Her- 
mann Post,  a  well-known  justice  of  the  courts  of  Bre- 
men and  the  founder  of  ethnological  jurisprudence, 
died  on  August  25th  of  this  year.  Having  become 
dissatisfied  in  his  younger  years  with  the  prevalent 
philosophy  of  law,  which  was  mainly  built  upon  He- 
gelianism,  he  gradually  reached  the  conviction  that 
the  philosophy  of  law  ought  to  be  based  upon  the  facts 
of  life.  Man's  ideals  of  right  and  justice  should  be 
established  upon  a  comparative  description  of  the 
jural  usages  of  all  the  nations  of  the  world.  Instead 
of  /'egiiining  with  the  idea  of  right,  which  is  a  mere 
logical  abstraction.  Judge  Post  urged  that  man's  con- 
science and  legal  sentiments  were  just  the  thing  to  be 
explained  in  the  philosophy  of  law,  and  not  its  founda- 


tion. Thus,  he  found  it  necessary  to  combine  the 
philosophy  of  law  with  ethnology  and  modern  psy- 
chology. Judge  Post  was  one  of  our  contributors.  He 
outlined  his  system  of  the  philosophy  of  law  in  an  ar- 
ticle entitled  "Ethnological  Jurisprudence,",  which 
was  published  in  Tlie  Monist,  Vol.  H.,  No.  i.  This 
article  contains  in  terse  outlines  the  gist  of  his  life's 
work. 

Dr.  Theodor  Achelis,  himself  an  author  of  repute 
in  a  related  province,^  recapitulates  and  characterises 
the  life-work  of  his  departed  friend  in  the  latter's  own 
words,  as  follows  : 

"My  aim  is  (thus  Judge  Post  was  wont  to  defend  himself 
against  the  violent  attacks  of  his  advers?ries)  to  build  up  a  uni- 
versal science  of  law  on  the  inductive  method,  and  accordingly 
the  whole  manner  of  my  scientific  procedure  is  different  from  the 
traditional  one.  I  do  not  start  with  the  assumption  that  there  is 
an  absolute  Good  or  Right  inborn  in  man,  or  that  my  individual 
moral  and  jural  consciousne.ss  is  an  infallible  measure  of  good  and 
bad  or  of  right  and  wrong  ;  but  it  is  my  object  to  ascertain  from 
the  varying  forms  of  the  ethical  and  jural  consciousness  of  hu- 
manity in  the  customs  of  all  nations  of  the  earth,  what  the  good 
and  the  right  really  are,  and  to  establish  in  this  circuitous  man- 
ner what  the  real  upshot  is  of  my  own  moral  and  jural  conscious- 
ness. In  the  place  of  the  individual  psychology,  therefore,  on 
which  the  jural  philosophy  of  the  present  is  almost  exclusively 
based,  it  is  my  purpose  to  substitute  an  ethnical  psychology,  I 
take  as  the  starting-point  of  my  jural  inquiries  the  legal  customs 
of  all  the  peoples  of  the  earth,  viewed  as  the  living  precipitates  of 
the  living  jural  consciousness  of  humanity,  and  upon  this  broad 
basis  pose  the  question.  What  right  is.  If  I  succeed  in  this  manner 
in  ultimately  reaching  the  abstract  concept  or  idea  of  right,  the 
whole  structure  which  I  have  erected  will  be  composed  from 
foundation  to  roof  of  flesh  and  blood  ;  whilst  the  philosophy  of 
the  law  which  proceeds  deductively  from  an  abstract  concept  or 
idea  of  the  right  arrives  necessarily  at  a  system  of  ideas  which 
can  frequently  be  brought  into  only  very  arbitrary  connexion  with 
the  living  law  as  that  operates  socially  in  the  individual  man,  and 
as  it  is  precipitated  in  the  legal  customs  of  mankind.  Such  an 
edifice  of  sheer  theories  invariably  produces  the  impression  of 
emptiness  and  bombast,  and  the  small  amount  of  vital  substance 
with  which  these  shadowy  ideas  are  filled  out  is  not  calculated  to 
obliterate  this  impression." 

Dr.  Achelis  adds  : 

"  Ethnology  and  modern  experimental  psychology  teach  us 
that  our  conscious  ego  represents  only  a  very  meagre  chapter  of 
our  entire  mental  existence,  and  that,  as  Post  writes,  it  is  not  -i'e 
that  think,  but  il  that  thinks  in  us.  If  this  proposition  be  cor- 
rect, we  are  not  able  to  explain  the  world  from  our  ego,  but  must 
seek  for  the  causes  of  our  ego  in  the  world.  Our  world  is  there- 
fore our  soul,  mirrored  out  into  the  sphere  of  sense.  Carried  over 
into  the  philosophy  of  law,  the  laws  of  all  the  peoples  of  t!ie  earth 
thus  appear  as  the  precipitate,  thrown  down  by  the  national  mind, 
of  the  universal  human  consciousness  of  law.  p'or  our  world  is  a 
reflexion  of  the  mind  which  lives  and  works  in  man,  and  from 
this  reflexion  or  image  it  will  one  day  be  possible  to  arrive  at  cer- 
titude regarding  our  own  nature.  In  the  place  of  pious  pan-psy- 
chislic  immersion  in  the  depths  of  our  individual  souls,  we  shall 
then  be  able  to  look  cut  into  the  broad  myriad  formed  All,  and 
shall  see  from  every  point  of   it  our  deepest  and  innermost  spirit 

1  We  have  published  articles  of  his  in  The  Open  Court  on  the  aims  and 
results  of  ethnological  research,  Vol.  IV.,  Nos.  145,  146,  147  (i8go). 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4651 


advancing  to  meet  us.  Then  will  that  have  become  a  demonstrable 
truth  which  a  pious  child  s  tale  always  dreamt  of.  The  highest 
conceptions  .of  the  nature  of  man  that  the  heroes  of  thought  of  the 
human  race  have  ever  surmised  or  expressed  as  hopes,  will  then 
no  longer  be' believed  by  us,  but  known,  and  we  shall  begin  to 
understand  our  place  in  the  great  universe,  over  which  hitherto  a 
veil  of  the  deepest  mystery  has  been  spread."  p.  c. 


ACCAD  AND  THE  EARLY  SEMITES. 

About  the  }  ear  3000  B.  C,  long  before  the  rise  of 
the  Semitic  nations,  among  whom  the  Bab\lonians, 
Assyrians,  Israelites,  and  later  the  Arabians,  were  most 
prominent,  there  lived  in  Mesopotamia  a  nation  of  great 
power  and  importance,  which  is  known  b\-  the  name  of 
Accad.  And  strange  to  sa)',  the  Accadians  were  not  a 
white,  but  a  dark  race.  The}'  are  spoken  of  as  "black- 
heads "or  "  blackfaces  '";  3'et  we  need  not  for  that  rea- 
son assume  that  they  were  actualh-  as  black  as  the 
Ethiopians,  for  the  bilingual  tablets  found  in  the 
mounds  of  Babylonia  speak  also  of  them  as  Adaniatii'^ 
or  red-skins,  which  makes  it  probable  that  thev  were 
reddish  dark  or  brown.  How  much  the  Semites  owe 
to  the  Accadians,  whose  dominion  ceased  about  1500 
B.  C,  and  whose  language  began  to  die  out  under  the 
reign  of  the  Assyrian  king  Sargon  (722-705).  we  may 
infer  from  the  fact  that  many  religious  institutions, 
legends,  and  customs  were  of  Accadian  origin. 

Thus  we  know  for  certain  that  in  their  mode  of  de- 
termining the  time  the}'  alread}'  possessed  the  institu- 
tion of  a  week  of  seven  days,  and  that  the  Sabbath  was 
their  holy  da}-  of  rest.  The  literal  meaning  of  the  orig- 
inal Accadian  word  is  explained  as  "a  day  on  which 
work  is  unlawful,  and  the  Assyrian  translation  Sabatlu 
signifies  "a  day  of  rest  for  the  heart."  Further,  the 
legends  of  the  creation,  of  the  tree  of  life,  and  of  the 
deluge,  mentioned  in  Genesis  and  also  in  Assyrian 
records,  were  well  known  to  the  Accadians.  and  from 
the  conventional  form  of  the  tree  of  life,  which  in  the 
most  ancient  pictures  bears  fir-cones,  we  may  infer 
that  the  idea  is  an  old  tradition  which  the  Accadians 
brought  with  them  from  their  former  and  colder 
home  in  the  fir-covered  mountains  of  Media.  In  ad- 
dition we  have  reminiscences  of  Accadian  traditions  in 
many  Hebrew  names,  which  prove  beyond  the  shadow 
of  a  doubt  the  long-lasting  influence  of  the  ancient 
civilisation  of  Accad.  The  rivers  of  paradise,  men- 
tioned in  Genesis,  are  Babylonian  names.  Thus,  the 
Euphrates,  or  Purat,  is  the  curving  water  ;  Tigris  is 
Tiggiir,  the  current  ;  Hid-Dekhel  "the  river  with  the 
high  bank,"  is  another  name  for  Tigris  which  in  in- 
scriptions is  called  Idikia  or  hiikiia;  Gihon  has  been 
identified  by  some  Assyriologists  with  Arakhtu 
(Araxes),  and  by  Sir  H.  Rawlinson  with  Jukha  ;  and 

lA  popular  etymology  connected  this  word  Aiiam^ttu  with  Adamu  or 
Admu,  "man,"  which  latter,  as  Rawlinson  pointed  out,  reappears  in  the 
Bible  as  the  name  of  the  first  man.  See  The  Chaldean  Account  of  Genesis, 
by  George  Smith  p.  S3. 


King  Sargon  calls  Elam  "the  country  of  the  four  riv- 
ers." 

The  names  of  the  rivers  of  Eden  indicate  that  the 
people  with  whom  the  legend  of  paradise  originated 
must  have  lived  on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates  and 
Tigris,  lender  these  circumstances  we  are  surprised 
to  find  that  the  cultivated  portion  of  the  desert  lands 
west  of  the  Euphrates  was  called  Edinna,^  a  name  that 
sounds  ver\-  much  like  Eden. 

About  the  time  of  Alexander  the  Great,  a  Babylon- 
ian priest  h\  the  name  of  Berosus  wrote  an  interesting 
book  on  the  histor}-  and  religion  of  Babylon.  It  is 
now  lost,  but  as  various  Greek  authors,  Alexander 
Polyhistor,  Apollodorus,  Abydenus,  Damascius,-  and 
Eusebius  have  largely  quoted  from  his  reports,  we  know 
quite  a  good  deal  about  the  information  he  gave  to  the 
world  concerning  his  country. 

All  this  was  very  interesting,  but  there  was  no 
evidence  of  the  reliability  of  Berosus's  records.  The 
Babylonian  legends  might  have  been  derived  from 
the  Old  Testament.  However,  since  the  successful 
excavations  of  Assyrian  stone- libraries  we  have  the 
most  positive  evidences  as  to  the  source  and  the  great 
age  of  these  traditions.  A  great  part  of  them  came 
down  to  us  from  the  old  Accadians. 

We  know  that  the  Babylonians  possessed  several 
legends  which  have  been  received  into  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, the  most  striking  ones  being  the  legend  of  the 
deluge,  of  the  tower  of  Babel,  of  the  destruction  of  cor- 
rupt cities  b\-  a  rain  of  fire  1  reminding  us  of  Sodom 
and  Gomorrah),  of  the  bab}hood  adventure  of  King 
Sargon  I.  (reminding  us  of  Moses),  and  of  the  creation 
of  the  world.  The  name  of  Babel,  which  is  in  Ass}Tian 
bah-ilaiii,  or  bah-ilu,  i.  e.  the  Gate  of  God,  is  a  Semitic 
translation  of  the  Accadian  Ka-dingirra-ki,  with  the 
same  meaning;  literal]}':  "Gate-f-  of  God  -f  the  place." 
The  etymology  of  the  name'  Babel  from  balbel,  "to 
confound,"  which  is  suggested  in  the  same  way  in  the 
.•\ssyrian  account  of  the  story  as  in  Genesis,  is  one  of 
those  popular  etymologic  errors  which  are  frequently 
found  in  ancient  authors. 

In  the  legend  of  the  destruction  of  the  cities  there 
occur  several  names  which  indicate  an  Accadian 
source.  The  legend  of  the  deluge  is  the  eleventh  part 
of  a  larger  epic  celebrating  Izdubar,^  a  sun-hero,  who 
goes  through  the  twelve  signs  of  the  Zodiac,  the  elev- 
enth being  Aquarius,  corresponding  to  the  eleventh 
month  of  the  Accadians,  called  "the  rain}-."  Sargon 
I,  king  of  Agade  (who  according  to  a  tablet  of  king 
Nabonidus  lived  3754  B.  C.  j,  built  a  temple  to  Samas, 

1  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson  believes  that  Gfin  Eden  or  the  Garden  of  Eden  is 
Gan-Duniyas  (also  called  Gan-Duni),  meaning  "enclosure,"  which  is  a  name 
of  Babylonia  in  Assyrian  inscriptions. 

2  See  Cory's  Ancient  Fragments,  pp.  51-56- 

;J This  is  the  commonly  adopted  form  of  the  name,  the  proper  transcription 
is  still  doubtful.     He  is  also  called  "  Gistubar." 


4652 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


had  an  experience  in  his  childhood  which  reminds  us  of 
the  story  of  Moses's  being  exposed  in  the  Nile.  Mr. 
E.  A.  Wallis  Budge  says  in  his  Ba/'v/i'/n'a/i  Life  and 
History,  p.  40  : 

"A  curious  legend  is  e.\tant  respecting  this  king,  to  the  effect 
that  he  was  born  in  a  city  on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates,  that 
his  mother  conceived  him  in  secret  and  brought  him  forth  in  a 
humble  place  ;  that  she  placed  him  in  an  ark  of  rushes  and  closed 
it  with  pitch  ;  that  she  ca,-t  him  upon  the  river  in  the  water-tight 
ark;  that  the  river  carried  him  along;  that  he  was  rescued  by  a 
man  called  Akki  who  brought  him  up  to  his  own  trade  ;  and  that 
from  this  position  the  goddess  of  Istar  made  him  king," 

While  these  four  legends  must  be  regarded  as  Ac- 
cadian  in  their  origin,  the  fourth  one,  the  most  in- 
teresting of  all,  the  story  of  the  creation,  is,  according 
to  Professor  Sayce,  probably  of  Semitic  origin.  As- 
syriologists  commonly  hold  that  at  least  in  its  present 
form  it  is  not  older  than  the  seventh  century  B.  C. 

The  story  of  the  creation,  which  reminds  us  strongly 
of  the  Mosaic  report  in  Genesis,  is  only  one  among 
several  creation  stories,  and  we  are  in  possession  of 
another  Assyrian  account  of  the  creation  which  is 
widely  different  from  the  heptameron.  The  former, 
however,  is  of  special  interest  to  us,  not  only  on  ac- 
count of  its  being  the  main  source  of  the  first  chapter 
of  the  Old  Testament,  but  also  because  we  possess  in  it 
one  of  the  oldest,  if  not  the  very  oldest,  document, 
in  which  the  existence  of  the  Evil  One  is  mentioned. 
Nay,  more  than  that !  We  are  even  in  possession  of 
his  picture.  He  is  called  in  Assyrian  Tiamaiu,  i.  e.  the 
deep,  and  is  represented  as  the  serpent  that  beats  the 
sea,  the  serpent  of  the  night,  the  serpent  of  darkness, 
the  wicked  serpent,  and  the  mighty  and  strong  serpent. 

The  derivation  of  the  Biblical  account  of  creation 
and  of  other  legends  from  an  Assyrian  source  cannot 
be  doubted,  not  only  because  of  their  agreement  in 
several  important  features,  not  less  than  in  many  un- 
important details,  but  also  because  sometimes  the  very 
words  used  in  Genesis  are  the  same  as  in  the  Assyrian 
inscriptions.  We  find  in  both  records  such  coinci- 
dences as  the  creation  of  woman  from  the  rib  of  man 
and  the  sending  out  of  birds  from  the  ark,  in  order 
to  try  whether  the  waters  had  subsided.  First  they 
returned  at  once,  then  they  returned,  according  to  the 
cuneiform  tablet- inscriptions  of  the  Assyrians,  with 
their  feet  covered  with  mud  ;  at  last  they  returned  no 
more.  Further,  the  Hebrew  Mehiinidli,  confusion, 
chaos,  is  the  Assyrian  Miimmu,  while  the  Hebrew 
iehom,  the  deep,  and  toltit,  desolate,  correspond  to  the 
Assyrian  tiam/u  {--=Tiamat),  which  means  "chaos." 

Our  excavators  have  not  as  yet  found  a  report  of 
the  fall  of  man  and  of  the  serpent  that  seduced  Adam 
and  Eve  to  taste  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  life.  There 
is,  however,  a  great  probability  that  some  similar  le- 
gend   existed,   as    we    are    in    possession   of   pictures 


which  represent  two  persons  seated  under  ?.  1  !^  and 
a  serpent  near  by. 

There  is,  however,  this  very  important  difference, 
that  while  the  Assyrian  tablets  are  polytheirtic  and 
m3-thological,  the  Hebrew  text  is  monotheistic.  The 
mythological  ornaments  of  the  original  story  hav^  been 
chastened  and  simplified.  Without  being  blind  to  the 
poetic  beauties  of  the  original,  which  in  its  way  is  not 
less  venerable  than  the  younger  Hebrew  version,  we 
must  say  that  the  latter  is  a  decided  improvement.  Its 
greater  simplicity  and  freedom  from  fantastic  details 
gives  it  a  peculiar  soberness  and  grandeur  which  is 
absolutely  lacking  in  the  Assyrian  myth  of  the  crea- 
tion. 

While  unequivocally  recognising  the  superiority  of 
the  Hebrew  account,  we  must,  however,  mention  in 
justice  to  the  Assyrian  and  Babylonian  civilisation 
that  monotheism  was  by  no  means  an  exclusively 
Jewish  belief.  There  were  monotheistic  hymns  of 
great  strength  and  religious  beauty  both  in  Egypt  and 
in  Babylon  long  before  the  existence  of  the  people  of 
Israel,  and  it  is  not  impossible  that  "the  monotheistic 


J 
i   ,/>? 


"T'^r-iJ  jVyT"'''"" 


Sacred  Tree  and  Serpent. 
From  an  ancient  Babylonian  cylinder.    After  Smith. 

party  "  ^  of  Babylon  or  their  brethren  in  Egypt  were  the 
founders  of  Jewish  monotheism.  It  is  certain  that 
they  were  not  without  influence  upon  the  development 
of  the  Israelitic  religion. 

Egyptian  and  Babylonian  monotheists  apparently 
suffered  the  popular  mythology  as  a  symbolical  expres- 
sion of  religious  truth,  while  in  later  periods  the  reli- 
gious leaders  of  the  Jews  had  no  patience  with  idola- 
tors,  and,  becoming  intolerant  of  polytheism,  suc- 
ceeded in  blotting  out  from  their  sacred  literature  the 
popular  superstitions  of  their  times  ;  some  vestiges 
only  were  left  which  are  now  valuable  hints  indicating 
the  nature  of  the  text  before  it  was  changed  by  the 
hands  of  the  variotis  redactors. 

Tiamat  is  the  original  watery  chaos  from  which 
heaven  and  earth  were  generated.  Babylonian  philos- 
ophers see  in  it  the  mother  of  the  world  and  the  source 
of  all  things,  while  in  mythology  it  appears  as  the  rep- 
resentative of  disorder  and  the  mother  of  the  monsters 
of  the  deep. 

After  a  long  struggle  Tiamat  was  conquered,  as  we 
read  in   the  fourth  tablet  of  the  creation-story  by  the 

1  Tliis  is  an  expression  used  by  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson. 


XMK     OPEN     COURT. 


465: 


n-gt^i',  Belus  or  Bel-Merodach.     The  struggle,  liow- 

er,  is  not  finished  ;  for  the   demon  of  evil  is  living 

11  andJBel  has  to   fight  the  seven  wicked  storm  de- 

ons  w'.lb  darken  the  moon.      He  kills  dragons  and 

vil  spirits,  and  the  reappearance  of  divine  intelligence 

i.    rati-^nal  creatures  is  sj-mbolised  in  the  myth  that 

'V^.l  commanded  one  of  the  gods  to  cut  off  his,  i.  e. 

il's,  head  in  order  to  mix  the  blood  with  the  earth 

for'i.he  procreation  of  animals  which  should  be  able  to 

bear  the  light. 

We  here  reproduce  a  brief  statement  of  the  Baby- 
lonian story  of  creation,  which  is  made  by  Professor 
Sayce  (Records  of  the  Past,  New  Series,  ^^ol.  I,  pp. 
128-13 1): 

"A  good  deal  of  the  poem  consists  of  the  words  put  into  the 
mouth  of  the  god  Merodach,  deris-ed  possibly  from  older  lays.  The 
first  tablet  or  book,  however,  expresses  the  cosmological  doctrines 
of  the  author's  own  day.  It  opens  before  the  beginning  of  time, 
the  expression  'at  that  time'  answering  to  the  expression  'in 
the  beginning'  of  Gene- 
sis. The  heavens  and  l;vf 
earth  had  not  yet  been 
created,  and  since  the 
name  was  supposed  to  be 
the  same  as  the  thing 
named,  their  names  had 
not  as  yet  been  pro- 
nounced. A  watery  chaos 
alone  existed,  Mummu 
Tiamat,  '  the  chaos  of  the 
deep.'  Out  of  the  bosom 
of  this  chaos  proceeded 
the  gods  as  well  as  the 
created  world.  First  came 
the  prim.Tval  divinities 
Lakhmu  and  Lakhamu, 
words  of  unknown  mean- 
ing, and  then  An-sar  and 
Ki-sar,  'the  upper'  and 
'  lower  firmament.'  Last 
of  all  were  born  the  three 
supreme  gods  of  the  Bab- 
ylonian faith,  Anu  the  .=ky-god,  Bel  or  Illil  the  lord  of  the  ghost- 
world,  and  Ea  the  god  of  the  river  and  sea. 

"But  before  the  younger  gods  could  find  a  suitable  habitation 
for  themselves  and  their  creation,  it  was  necessary  to  destroy 
'the  dragon'  of  chaos  with  all  her  monstrous  offspring.  The  task 
was  undertaken  by  the  Babylonian  sun  god  Merodach,  the  son  of 
Ea,  An-sar  promising  him  victory,  and  the  other  gods  providing 
for  him  his  arms.  The  second  tablet  was  occupied  with  an  ac- 
count of  the  preparations  made  to  ensure  the  victory  of  light 
over  darkness,  and  order  over  anarchy. 

"The  third  tablet  described  the  success  of  the  god  of  light 
over  the  allies  of  Tiamat.  Light  was  introduced  into  the  world, 
and  it  only  remained  to  destroy  Tiamat  herself.  The  combat  is 
described  in  the  fourth  tablet,  which  takes  the  form  of  a  poem  in 
honor  of  Merodach,  and  is  probably  an  earlier  poem  incorporated 
into  his  text  by  the  author  of  the  epic.  Tiamat  was  slain  and  her 
allies  put  in  bondage,  while  the  books  of  destiny  which  had 
hitherto  been  possessed  by  the  older  race  of  gods  were  now  trans- 
ferred to  the  younger  deities  of  the  new  world.  The  visible 
heaven  was  formed  out  of  the  skin  of  Tiamat,  and  became  the 
outward  symbol  of  An-sar  and  the  habitation  of  Anu,  Bel,  and 


Fight  Between  Bel-Merodach  and  Tiamat. 
From  an  ancient  Assyrian  bas-relief,  now  in  the  British  Museum. 


Ea.  while  the  chaotic  waters  of  the  dragon  became  the  law-bound 
sea  ruled  over  by  Ka. 

"The  heavens  having  been  thus  made,  the  fifth  tablet  tells  us 
how  they  were  furnished  with  mansions  for  the  sun,  and  moon, 
and  stars,  and  how  the  heavenly  bodies  were  bound  down  by  fixed 
laws  that  they  might  regulate  the  calendar  and  determine  the 
year.  The  sixth  tablet  probably  described  the  creation  of  the 
earth,  as  well  as  of  vegetables,  birds,  and  fish.  In  the  seventh 
tablet  the  creation  of  animals  and  reptiles  was  narrated,  and  doubt- 
less also  that  of  mankind. 

"It  will  be  seen  from  this  that  in  its  main  outlines  the  .\ssyr- 
ian  epic  of  the  creation  bears  a  striking  resemblance  to  the  ac- 
count of  it  given  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis.  In  each  case  the 
history  of  the  creation  is  divided  into  seven  successive  acts  ;  in 
each  case  the  present  world  has  been  preceded  by  a  watery  chaos. 
In  fact  the  self-same  word  is  used  of  this  chaos  in  both  the  Bibli- 
cal and  Assyrian  accounts — /t-/iam,  Tiamat — the  only  difference 
being  that  in  the  Assyrian  story  'the  deep'  has  become  a  mytho- 
logical personage,  the  mofher  of  a  chaotic  brood.  The  order  of 
the  creation,  moreover,  agrees  in  the  two  accounts;  first  the 
light,  then  the  creation  of  the  firmament  of  heaven,  subsequently 
the  appointment  of  the  celestial  bodies  'for  signs  and  for  seasons 

and  for  days  and  years,' 
and  next,  the  creation 
of  beasts  and  'creeping 
things.'  But  the  two  ac- 
counts also  differ  in  some 
important  particulars.  In 
the  Assyrian  epic  the 
earth  seems  not  to  have 
been  made  until  after  the 
appointment  of  the  heav- 
enly bodies,  instead  of 
before  it  as  in  Genesis, 
and  the  seventh  day  is  a 
day  of  work  instead  of 
rest,  while  there  is  noth- 
ing corresponding  to  the 
statement  of  Genesis  that 
'  the  spirit  of  God  moved 
upon  the  face  of  the  wa- 
ters.' But  the  most  im- 
portant difference  con- 
sists in  the  interpolation 
of  the  struggle  between 
Merodach  and  the  powers  of  evil,  as  a  consequence  of  which 
light  was  introduced  into  the  universe,  and  the  firmament  of  the 
heavens  was  formed. 

"It  has  long  since  been  noted  that  the  conception  of  this 
struggle  stands  in  curious  parallelism  to  the  verses  of  the  Apoca- 
lypse (Rev.  xii,  7-9):  'And  there  was  war  in  heaven:  Michael 
and  his  angels  fought  against  the  dragon  ;  and  the  dragon  fought 
and  his  angels,  and  pievailed  not;  neither  was  their  place  found 
any  more  in  heaven.  And  the  great  dragon  was  cast  out,  that  old 
serpent,  called  the  Devil,  and  Satan,  which  deceiveth  the  whole 
world.'  We  are  also  reminded  of  the  words  of  Isaiah,  xxiv.  21, 
22  .  'The  Lord  shall  visit  the  host  of  the  high  ones  that  are  on 
high,  and  the  kings  of  the  earth  upon  the  earth.  And  they  shall 
be  gathered  together,  as  prisoners  are  gathered  in  the  pit,  and 
shall  be  shut  up  in  prison.'  " 

The  Babylonians  worshipped  many  deities,  but 
their  most  favorite  god  was  Bel,  who  is  frequently 
identified  with  Merodach.  He  is  one  of  the  great  trin- 
ity of  Anu,  Ea,  and  Bel.      Merodach   is   spoken  of  as 


.\fter  Budge. 


^  4654 


>^ 


THE     OPEN     CC:)ITRT. 


the  son  of  the  god  Ea,  the  personification  of  all  knowl- 
edge and  learning  ;   and  we  read  that  : 

"  The  omnipresent  and  omnipotent  Marduk  (Merodach)  was 
tj3  god  '  who  went  before  Ea '  and  was  the  healer  and  mediator 
for  mankind.  He  revealed  to  mankind  the  knowledge  of  Ea;  in 
all  incantations  he  is  invoked  as  the  god  '  mighty  to  save'  against 
evil  and  ill." ' 

The  struggle  between  Bel-Merodach  and  Tiamat 
was  a  favorite  subject  with  Assyrian  artists.  In  one 
of  them,  which  is  now  preserved  in  the  British  Mu- 
seum, the  Evil  One  is  represented  as  a  monster  with 
claws  and  horns,  with  a  tail  and  wings,  and  covered 
with  scales. 

Of  the  Evil  One  and  of  hell  Mr.  Budge  says  that 
"their  Hades  was  not  so  very  far  different  from  Sheol, 
or  the  'pit'  of  the  Bible,  nor  the  Devil  so  much  to  be 
distinguished  from  the  Satan  we  read  of. "  He  con- 
tinues : 

"The  Babylonian  conception  of  hell  is  made  known  to  us  by 
a  tablet  which  relates  the  descent  of  Istar  thither  in  search  of  her 
lovely  young  husband,  Tammuz.  It  has  been  stated  that  the 
same  words  for  Hades,  i.  e.  Sheol,  as  that  used  in  the  Hebrew 
ScripUires,  has  been  found  in  Babylonian  texts  ;  but  this  assertion 
has  been  made  while  the  means  for  definitely  proving  it  do  not  at 
present  exist.  The  lady  of  the  Babylonian  Hades  was  called  Nin- 
ki-gal,  and  the  place  itself  had  a  river  running  through  it,  over 
which  spirits  had  to  cross.  Thtre  was  also  'a  porter  of  the 
waters'  (which  reminds  us  of  the  Charon  of  the  Greeks),  and  it 
had  seven  gates.  The  tablet  mentioned  above  tells  us  that — 
J.  To  the  land  of  no  return,  to  the  afar  oft,  to  regions  of  ccrruption, 

2.  Istar,  the  daughter  of  the  Moon-god,  her  attention  firmly 

3.  fixed,  the  daughter  of  the  Moon-god,  her  attention  fixed 

4.  the  house  of  corruption,  the  dwelling  of  the  deity  Irkalla  (to  go) 

5.  to  the  house  whose  entrance  is  without  exit 

6.  to  the  road  whose  way  is  without  return 

7.  to  the  house  whose  entrance  is  bereft  of  light 

8.  a  place  where  much  dust  is  their  food,  their  meat  mud, 
g.  where  light  is  never  seen,  where  they  dwell  in  darkness 

10.  ghosts  (?)  like  birds  whirl  round  and  round  the  vaults 

11.  over  the  doors  and  wainscoting  there  is  thick  dust. 

"The  outer  gate  of  this  'land  of  no  return'  was  strongly 
guarded  and  bolted,  for  the  porter  having  refused  to  grant  Istar 
admission,  the  goddess  says — 

'  Open  thy  gate  and  let  me  enter  in ; 
If  thou  openest  not  the  gate,  and  I  come  not  in, 
I  force  the  gate,  the  bolt  I  shatter, 
I  strike  the  threshold,  and  I  cross  the  doors, 
I  raise  the  dead,  devourers  of  the  living, 
(for)  the  dead  exceed  the  living." 

"There  is  another  name  for  Hades,  the  signs  which  form  it 
meaning  'the  house  of  the  land  of  the  dead.'  A  gloss  gives  its 
pronunciation  as  Arali.  Such,  then,  is  the  Babylonian  hell.  It 
is  difficult  to  say  where  they  imagined  their  Hades  to  be,  but  it 
has  been  conjectured  by  some  that  they  thought  it  to  be  iti  the 
west."  

A  BUDDHIST  CATECHISM. 

The  fact  that  Subhadra  Bhikshu's  IiUiodtictioti  to  the  Teach- 
ing's of  the  Budilha  Gclamo  (G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  New  York)  has 
gone  through  four  German  editions  shows  an  increasing  interest  in 
the  subject  and  speaks  well  for  the  way  in  which  it  is  treated. 
We  may  mention  here  that  the  work  has  also  appeared  in  French, 
Dutch,  Swedish,  Russian,  Japanese,   Bohemian,   and  Hungarian. 

The  preface  tells  us  that  "the  little  book  presented  here  is  a 

1  Budge.      Bat'ytoniau  Life  and  History,  p.  127. 


concise  representation  of  Buddhism,  according  to  the  oldest  an . 
most  authentic  sources,  the  Ceylonese  Pali  manuscripts  of  tl  , 
Tipitakam.  It  contains  the  fundamental  outlines  of  the  Buddha' 
true  and  s'raple  doctrine,  omitting  all  the  legendary,  mystic,  o 
occult  accessories,  with  which  his  teachings  have  been  adornec 
and  encumbered  in  the  course  of  centuries,  by  superstition,  ex- 
travagant imagination,  and  ignorance." 

The  subject  is  treated,  as  the  title  indicates,  in  the  form  of 
questions  and  answers,  and,  where  necessary,  footnotes  explain 
the  answers  more  fully.  It  is  divided  into  an  "Introduction"; 
"The  Buddha,"  giving  a  short  history  of  his  life;  "  The  Doc- 
trine," which  interests  us  most  and  explains  the  fundamental 
teachings  of  Buddhism  ;  and  "The  Sangha,"  containing  informa- 
tion on  the  order  of  Buddhist  mendicants. 

We  can  best  explain  the  manner  in  which  the  subject  is 
treated  by  a  few  quotations.  To  the  question,  "What  is  Nir- 
vana ?"  we  get  the  answer,  "A  condition  of  the  mind  and  spirit 
when  all  will  to  live,  all  striving  for  existence  and  enjoyment,  has 
become  extinct,  and  with  it  every  passion,  every  desire,  all  covet- 
ousness,  every  fear,  all  ill-will,  and  every  pain.  It  is  a  condition 
of  perfect  inner  peace,  accompanied  by  unswerving  cerlainty  of 
salvalion  gained,  a  condition  words  cannot  describe,  and  which 
the  imagination  of  a  worldly-minded  person  would  strive  in  vain 
to  paint.  Only  one  who  has  himself  experienced  it,  knows  what 
Nirvana  is" 

We  see  that  Nirvana  is  a  condiiion  of  the  mind,  not  \  s  is  com- 
monly supposed,  a  place  like  heaven,  or  else  annihilation.  "What 
is  Karma  ?  "  is  answered  as  follows  :  "  Karma  is  our  actions,  our 
merit,  and  our  faults,  in  a  moral  sense  ;  "  in  other  words,  the  law 
of  cause  and  effect  on  the  moral  plane. 

Most  people  not  thoroughly  versed  in  Buddhist  psychology 
think  that  Buddhism  teaches  the  continued  rebirth  of  a  soul- 
monad  in  different  bodies,  the  so-called  transmigration  of  the  soul 
or  metempsychosis,  thus  confounding  Brahmanism  (Hinduism) 
with  Buddhism.  We  are  told  that  what  is  reborn,  or  rather  what 
continues  lo  live,  is  our  moral  character,  our  individuality,  and 
that  "  the  belief  in  an  immortal  soul,  that  is,  an  undivided,  eter- 
nal, and  indestructible  essence,  which  has  only  taken  its  a'oode 
temporarily  in  the  body.  Buddhism  considers  an  error";  thus 
agreeing  with  the  latest  investigations  of  Western  science. 

We  may  also  mention  that  this  work  denies  the  claims  of  the 
so  called  Esoteric  Buddhism,  or  Theosophy,  to  be  real  Buddhism, 
or  that  Buddha  taught  any  esoteric  doctrine.  Altogether  we  can 
recommend  this  volume  to  all  interested  in  this  and  kindred  sub- 
jects, and  by  treating  the  subject  in  a  different  manner,  but  withal 
arriving  at  the  same  conclusions,  it  forms  a  fitting  companion 
treatise  to  The  Gospel  of  Buddha,  by  Dr.  Carus.  c.  T.  s. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET, 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION  i 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  422. 

RELIEF  BY  WORK.  Capt.  Cornelius  Gardener 4647 

ALBERT   HERMANN   POST.— OBITUARY 4650 

ACCAD  AND  THE  EARLY  SEMITES.     Editor 4651 

A  BUDDHIST  CATECHISM,     C,  T,  S 4C54 


The  Open  Court. 


A   WEEKLY   JOURNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  423.     (Vol.  IX.— 40.: 


CHICAGO,   OCTOBER  3,   1895. 


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OTHER  WORLDS  THAN  OURS. 

BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 

PART  n. 

The  circumstances  of  life  in  the  planet  Azzo, 
third  of  Arcturus.  will  not  perhaps  tax  your  credulity 
so  greatly.  Some  little  acquaintance  with  the  facts  of 
physical  astronomy  will  suffice  to  show  you  how  dis- 
proportionate are  the  sizes  of  the  various  planets  and 
stars.  In  that  view  the  earth,  to  our  unenlightened 
senses  so  bulky  in  comparison  with  her  surroundings, 
dwindles  to  a  petty  ball  compared  to  the  outermost 
members  of  the  system  and  to  a  mere  speck  of  re- 
volving dust  in  comparison  to  the  vast  and  fiery  sun. 

But  even  that  same  sun  of  ours,  apparently  so 
enormous,  sinks  into  complete  insignificance  when 
we  contemplate  Arcturus,  a  globe  so  gigantic  that  its 
photosphere  could  engulf  a  thousand  such  stars  as 
our  own,  and  yet  barely  disturb  the  serenity  or  equi- 
poise of  forces  of  her  stupendous  system  of  attendant 
worlds. 

As  I  have  stated,  the  planet  Azzo  is  the  third  in 
this  S3'Stem  of  Arcturus.  The  so  called  nebular  hy- 
pothesis, with  which  you  are  doubtless  familiar,  finds 
verification  in  the  circumstances  of  motion  of  this 
body  ;  but  because  of  the  great  size  of  its  primary, 
its  own  dimensions  and  distance,  the  day  in  Azzo, 
that  is  the  period  of  time  required  to  make  one  revo- 
lution on  its  axis,  is  equivalent  to  upwards  of  one 
hundred  3'ears  of  actual  time, — to  be  exact,  one  hun- 
dred and  four  years,  eight  days  and  six  hours. 

As  the  Azzotic  day  exceeds  our  own,  so  in  a  dif- 
ferent proportion  does  the  year,  the  time  required  for 
Azzo  to  make  a  complete  revolution  around  its  pri- 
mary being  not  less  than  a  thousand  of  our  own  years. 

Day  and  night  succeed  each  other  as  with  us,  and 
the  seasons  follow  in  due  and  orderly  succession,  but 
upon  a  scale  of  duration  so  immensely  more  length- 
ened. 

Humanity  as  we  know  it  exists  upon  Azzo.  The 
orderly  course  of  nature,  so  extraordinary  in  the  fore- 
going particulars,  proceeding  along  lines  practicallj' 
identical  with  our  own,  has  evolved  a  race  of  beings 
in  most  respects  like  ourselves.  Yet  their  advances 
in  practical  science  have  not  in  some  ways  equalled 
ours.    They  are  unacquainted  with  the  uses  of  steam  ; 


in  consequence  railroads  are  unknown,  travel  is  greatly 
restricted  and  like  the  ancient  Peruvians,  although 
possessing  a  high  degree  of  civilisation,  the  inhabit- 
ants of  the  district  that  I  visited  were  entirely  isolated 
from  all  the  rest  of  their  world. 

This  district,  which  they  call  Thanatos,  is  limited 
in  extent  and  sparsely  peopled;  but  the  race  I  found 
peculiar  in  their  physical  beauty  and  a  strength  of 
mind  and  power  of  abstract  thought  altogether  un- 
equalled. 

Travellers  like  myself,  cosmopolitan  in  the  largest 
possible  sense,  learn  to  adapt  themselves  easily  to  the 
strangest  conditions  and  to  ingratiate  themselves 
quickly  with  those  around  them.  It  was  not  long, 
therefore,  before  I  became  well  acquainted  with  a 
number  of  very  interesting  people.  With  one,  a  young 
girl,  daughter  of  the  elderly  couple  in  whos'j  house- 
hold I  was  invited  to  dwell,  a  strong  friendship  was 
soon  formed. 

Stella  (for  so  she  was  named)  seemed  from  the 
first  strongly  attracted  towards  me,  which  was  the 
more  singular  as  she  was  in  the  very  bloom  of  beauty, 
and  furthermore  was  the  evident  object  of  affection 
of  a  young  man  not  far  from  her  own  age.  This 
youth,  called  Ardent,  was  all  one  would  have  thought 
desirable  in  a  lover,  and  yet,  far  from  encouraging 
his  devotion,  Stella  treated  him  with  the  utmost  cold- 
ness, and  rather  than  linger  in  his  company  seemed 
invariably  to  prefer  my  own. 

One  favorite  spot  we  used  to  seek  together ;  she 
eager  to  learn  from  my  experience,  and  I  continually 
imbibing  fresh  ardor  and  delight  from  the  contempla- 
tion of  her  purity  and  innocence.  This  spot  was  the 
crest  of  a  hill  facing  the  glowing  west,  where  on  the 
soft  turf  we  reclined,  drank  in  the  balmy  breath  of 
the  parting  day  and  revelled  in  that  communion  of 
spirit  so  sweet  to  mortals,  and  yet  so  rarely  found  un- 
contaminated  with  the  alloy  of  passion. 

On  one  of  these  occasions  I  said,  "Why  is  it, 
Stella,  that  you  so  persistently  avoid  Ardent?  Is  he 
not  agreeable  to  you?  You  are  at  an  age  when  love 
ought  to  prevail ;  why,  then,  is  it  that  seemingly  you 
cannot  love  him?" 

Stella  turned  her  large  violet  eyes  full  upon  me. 
"My   friend,"   she  said  gently,    "I   can  hardly  think 


4656 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


you  understand  what  you  ask.  But  I  will  answer 
frankly  as  you  have  spoken.  I  do  love  Ardent,  or 
perhaps,"  she  added  with  a  rosy  blush,  "I  ought  to 
say  more  truthfully  I  could  have  loved  him,  if—" 

She  paused.  I  waited  in  silence.  In  a  moment 
her  eyes  still  .fixed  upon  me  filled  with  tremulous 
tears,  her  pretty  white  hands  clasped  nervously,  her 
lips  and  voice  trembled  as  she  continued  slowly  and 
sadly, — "if  only  we  were  living  in  a  more  fitting  time  ; 
but  alas  !  my  friend,  for  both  Ardent  and  me,  \^e  were 
born  into  the  world  too  late,  ah  me, — too  late." 

She  sobbed  pitifully.  Poor  child,  I  thought.  I 
could  comfort  you,  but  you  would  not  understand. 
No,  centuries  yet  must  come  and  pass  away,  each 
learning  a  little,  each  gathering  a  trifle  of  knowledge 
till  knowledge,  broadening  precedent  by  precedent, 
shall  estabhsh  that  wisdom  which  is  the  sole  progeny 
of  the  ages.  Truly,  indeed,  had  Stella  spoken,  all 
unfit  for  love  was  that  time  in  the  star  of  Azzo. 

Recovering  herself  at  last,  Stella  arose  quietly  and 
stood  on  the  sward  of  the  hill  below  me,  her  soft  eyes 
on  a  level  with  mine. 

"You  have  invoked  the  spirit,"  she  said  mourn- 
fully, "the  spirit  of  truth,  of  all  things  most  sad. 
You  have  asked  the  question,  and  the  answer  that  I 
could  not  restrain  gushed  forth.  Listen  now  while  I 
tell  you  the  reason, — the  cold,  cruel,  implacable  rea- 
son for  my  denial  of  my  love.  Long,  long  ago,  my 
grandparents,  born  in  the  early  morning  of  this 
beauteous  autumn  day,  lived  and  loved  and  bore  chil- 
dren into  the  world.  In  the  day's  full  noon  my  father 
and  mother  were  wed.  I  am,  as  you  know,  their  only 
child.  The  only  one,  and  it  is  well.  Thankful  am  I 
that  no  brother  lives  to  woo  a  maiden;  that  no  sister 
was  born  to  share  with  me  the  temptation  of  love  and 
the  desolation  of  life. 

Is  not  this  indeed  desolation?  This,  perhaps  the 
last  of  the  balmy  hours  invites  us  here.  But  soon, 
too  soon,  the  chilly  breath  of  the  northwind  will  in- 
vade the  loveliness  around  us;  the  gold  and  scarlet 
foliage  will  turn  dusky  and  sere  ;  the  fields  yet  green 
with  pasturage;  the  last  shocks  of  corn  taken  away 
upon  the  wains  to  yonder  vast  graneries ;  it  will  be 
the  end  of  the  autumn  day  ;  the  beginning  of  the  cold 
night  of  winter. 

"See  yonder  sun;  see  between  dark  lids  of  cloud, 
banked  along  the  horizon  with  one  blank,  blazing  eye, 
how  it  mocks  at  love  and  derides  the  misery  itself  has 
made.  Only  a  few,  a  very  few  hours  more  ('twas 
thus  she  spoke  of  years),  and  for  most  that  live,  his 
beams  will  sink  down  forever.  Yes,  he  will  rise  again, 
but  long,  long  hence,  and  then  I  and  Ardent  will  be 
old,  if  indeed  we  live.  We  have  seen  the  star  of  day; 
we  have  tasted  if  but  a  portion  of  the  delayed  fruits 
of  summer;  but  now  the  night  comes.      There  will  be 


other  days,  but  on  the  next,  when  this  one  cruel  night 
is  ended,  that  sun  will  rise  upon  an  icy  world. 

"Could  I,  dare  I  love  and  live  to  wed,  and  live  to 
bear  children  into  the  night  and  the  winter?  Ah  no, 
my  friend  ;  Ardent  and  I  were  born  too  late." 

It  was  some  time  before  I  found  words  to  reply. 
Stella's  sombre  mood  was  upon  me.  I  also  felt  the 
cold  clasp  of  icy  desolation,  the  utter  hopelessness  of 
the  future  as  she  had  pictured  it. 

"And  does  Ardent  feel  as  you  do,  Stella?"  I 
asked. 

She  laughed,  not  a  happy  laugh  of  joy,  but  one  of 
ironical,  cynical  mirth. 

"  Oh  no  !  "  she  replied,  "Ardent  of  course  believes 
as  I  do,  but  he  feels  differently.  Between  feeling, 
you  know,"  she  added  coyly,  "and  believing  is  an 
impassable  chasm.  Ardent  is  a  poet.  He  would  love 
and  live  for  love,  reckless  of  consequences,  inhuman 
in  his  poetical  humanity.  He  sent  me  a  poem  a  while 
ago.  The  burden  of  it  was  just  that — to  love  for  love's 
sake,  and  to  live  for  the  sake  of  life.  I  cannot  recall 
the  entire  poem,  but  he  called  it  "The  sable  sea," 
and  two  of  the  stanzas  I  remember: 

"  From  all  the  dreams  behind  us, 

And  all  the  fears  before  ; 
From  gleams  of  light  that  blind  us 

The  darkness  shall  restore. 
From  sullen  sound  and  silence, 
From  cruel  calm  or  vi'Ience, 
We'll  seek  the  sable  islands 

Where  thought  shall  vex  no  more. 

"  Free  from  the  glint  and  glowing. 

To  fret  or  fear  no  more  ; 
Before  the  death  blast  blowing 

We  II  seek  the  sable  shore  ; 
Beyond  the  murk  and  splendor. 
The  pageants  cold  or  tender. 
The  wan  white  flags  surrender, 

And  thought  shall  vex  no  more." 

The  poem,  even  the  fragment  as  it  was  recited  by 
Stella,  affected  me  strangely, — it  was  a  poem  of  des- 
pair. In  my  own  world  I  had  never  met  one,  atheist 
or  agnostic,  unbeliever  or  doubter,  who  held  not 
somewhere,  deeply  hidden  though  it  might  have  been, 
some  glimmering  of  immortality.  In  the  night  of 
death  hope  had  always  seen  a  star.  While  I  was  pon- 
dering how  best  I  might  convey  to  this  sweet  girl  the 
assurance  that  was  all  hope  and  yet  far  better  and 
more  glorious,  a  step  was  heard  upon  the  sward,  and 
Ardent  stood  beside  us.  His  face  was  aglow  with 
health  and  vigor,  and  now  also  with  happiness  in  the 
presence  of  the  woman  he  loved.  A  sudden  blush 
rose  upon  Stella's  cheek,  but  for  a  brief  instant  only, 
and  then  the  wan,  white  flag  surrendered,  and  thought 
vexed  once  more. 

"We  were  talking  of  the  end.  Ardent,"  she  said 
gravely,  "and  I  have  repeated  what  I  could  remem- 
ber of  "The  sable  sea." 

"And  does  our  friend  like  it?"  said  Ardent. 


XMK     OPEN     COURT. 


4657 


"The  poem  is  beautiful,"  I  answered,  "but  it  is 
not  true." 

Ardent  made  no  response,  but  Stella  said  instantly, 
"Not  true,  my  friend?  It  is  the  truth  of  it  that  makes 
it  beautiful.  Without  that  it  would  be  hideous.  Ar- 
dent and  I  believe  alike." 

"  Impossible,"  I  said  resolutely,  "  forgive  my  plain 
speaking,  but  it  is  impossible  that  you  can  believe 
alike,  because  you  do  not  feel  alike.  You  have  told 
me,  Stella,  that  between  feeling  and  believing  was  an 
impassable  chasm.  That  is  not  true,  for  that  is  not 
belief,  which  is  less  than  knowledge,  and  true  feeling 
and  knowing  are  the  same. 

"Truth  may  be  hideous,  and  beaut)'  may  be  false. 
It  is  only  that  which  combines  both,  truth  and  beauty, 
that  is  really  true  or  can  be  really  beautiful.  The 
spirit  of  truth  is  trust.  It  is  always  beautiful.  It  is 
never  sad." 

"And  yet,"  said  Stella  sorrowfully,  "what  could 
be  sadder  than  the  end?" 

"Nothing,"  I  answered,  "if  it  were  an  end.  Lis- 
ten. I  have  as  yet  told  you  nothing  of  myself.  I  came 
to  you  a  stranger,  and  you  received  me — " 

"Yes.  my  friend,  and  trusted  you." 

So  speaking,  Stella  smiled  into  my  face  and  laid 
her  little  hand  caressingly  in  mine. 

"And  yet,"  she  continued,  "all  we  behold  proves 
to  us  the  end.  Can  there  be  a  sadder  thought?  Is  it 
possible  that  among  all  the  countless  worlds  of  space 
there  is  a  sadder  world  than  ours?" 

"Yes,"  I  answered,  "my  own  is  sadder." 

Then,  in  as  few  words  as  possible,  I  told  them  of 
that  world  whence  I  came.  Wonderful  as  the  story 
was  of  my  long  journeying,  they  both  believed  me, 
for  in  the  star  of  Azzo  there  is  a  thrill  to  the  sound  of 
truth  that  never  fails. 

I  told  them  of  the  doubt  worse  than  despair  that 
overhangs  the  earth  ;  of  the  sublime  revelation  of 
eternal  life  that  came  to  be  crucified  by  his  own  age, 
and  worse  than  crucified — misunderstood  by  all  other 
ages;  of  immortality  in  life,  eternity  in  time,  God  in 
man. 

I  told  them  too  of  how  unconsciously  we  lived  in 
the  midst  of  so  great  an  uncertainty  ;  of  tlie  vast  and 
varied  religious  systems  naturally  evolved  from  those 
very  uncertainties;  of  the  worship  of  the  myth  cre- 
dulit)-,  and  of  how  effectual  it  was,  and  yet  effectual 
only  through  ignorance. 

Then  I  portrayed  the  sunny  side  of  mortal  life  ; 
of  those  lives  that  were  lived  earnestly,  hopefully, 
helpfully,  naturally;  of  happy  married  love,  and  of 
children  born  to  bear  the  burdens  we  had  borne;  to 
continue  the  good  that  we  had  wrought,  and  to  carry 
on,  and  expand,  and  elevate  in  the  way  designed  by 
nature  the  good  of  the  universe. 


Ardent  listened,  at  first  with  profound  amazement 
and  then  with  most  intense  joy.  But  to  Stella  my 
narrative  brought  little  of  surprise. 

"I  can  understand,  my  friend,"  she  said  quietly, 
"how  in  your  world  the  gleams  of  light  that,  as  you 
have  told  us,  shine  so  often  may  be  enough  for  happi- 
ness, but  to  be  as  it  will  be,  as  it  must  be  to  those 
who  shall  follow  us,  all  night,  all  cold,  where  is  the 
possibility  of  happiness,  where  is  the  hope?" 

"But,"  I  said,  "they  too  can  find,  if  they  will,  a 
balmier  climate.  When  the  night  begins  to  fall,  and 
the  cold  to  deepen,  they  can  leave  this  valley." 

"  Leave  the  valley  !  Leave  Thanatos  !  "  both  ex- 
claimed. 

"Ah  friend,"  said  Ardent  gloomily,  "we  leave  it 
but  to  die. " 

"Not  so,"  I  answered,  and  then,  as  a  patient 
teacher  might  to  little  children,  I  explained,  telling 
of  the  rotundity  of  the  planet  Azzo,  and  of  those  mar- 
vellous facts  of  science  of  which  they,  great  minds  as 
they  were,  were  entirely  unacquainted. 

It  was  not  so  strange,  for  a  few  centuries  ago  our 
forefathers  were  equally  ignorant. 

They  listened  with  the  most  intense  interest  while, 
pointing  to  the  fiery  sun  in  the  scarlet  west,  I  told 
them  how  life  and  day  and  summer  might  be  found 
following  him. 

Ardent  leaped  to  his  feet. 

"And  so  we  have  lived  all  these  years,  and  our 
forefathers  before  us,  and  never  knew  this.  Stella, 
this  is  life  indeed. 

"  From  dark  that  seems  to  blind  us 

The  gleams  of  light  restore  ; 
We'll  leave  the  gloom  behind  us, 

And  hope  and  trust  for  more. 
Then  speed  to  the  life  wind  blowing. 
To  the  silver  waters  flowing, 
To  all  souls  gladly  going 

To  seek  some  fairer  shore." 

Gravely  I  rose  to  m)'  feet,  and  releasing  Stella's 
hand,  laid  it  in  Ardent's,  and  without  a  word  left 
them  alone  together  with  the  happiness  mj'  truth  had 
given. 


AN  EGOLESS  MAN. 


The  Deutsche  Rundschau  (No.  1 1  of  the  present 
year)  contains,  under  the  title  "  Ein  Riithsel,"  a  psy- 
chological sketch  by  Isolde  Kurz.  The  article  is  not 
only  peculiar,  but  very  suggestive,  and  we  deem  it 
worthy  of  a  brief  recapitulation. 

The  authoress  tells  us  that  she  found  in  a  marble 
quarry  of  Italy  a  diary  in  reversed  handwriting,  which, 
however,  could  easily  be  deciphered  with  the  help  of  a 
mirror.  The  writer  of  the  diary  suffers  from  a  loss  of 
the  memory  of  his  ego  conception.  He  has  forgotten 
his  name  ;  and  all  his  personal   recollections  of   the 


4658 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


past  are  wiped  out ;  but  his  consciousness  is  left,  his 
habits,  and  his  command  of  language. 

Thus  the  diary  contains  the  description  of  a  strange 
pathological  case  written  by  the  patient  himself.  His 
disease  is  a  problem,  and  indeed  an  important  one, 
for  its  solution  will  throw  light  upon  all  the  main  prob- 
lems of  psychology,  ethics,  and  religion. 

The  patient  is  apparently  young,  for  he  feels  full 
of  strength.  Only  his  soul  is  still  beclouded  by  dim 
notions,  and  his  limbs  feel  stiff,  as  if  he  had  slept  long 
and  deeply. 

"What  a  mysterious  condition,"  the  unknown 
author  of  the  diary  writes  ;  "  I  know  not  who  I  am." 
He  continues  :  "There  is  no  doubt  about  it  tliat  I  am, 
but  who  am  I  ?  Through  my  name  I  am  distinguished 
from  other  creatures.  Where  was  I  before?  What  do 
I  want  here?"  In  this  mood  he  enters  a  baptistery 
which  stands  open.  He  approaches  the  door  of  the 
Campo  Santo,  the  burial-ground,  and  rings  the  bell. 
The  custos  appears  and  opens  the  door.  But  the  man 
at  the  door  continues  to  ring,  "for,"  says  our  patient 
to  himself,  "the  ring  of  the  bell  gives  me  pleasure;  I 
take  it  as  an  evidence  of  my  existence."  The  custos 
is  apparently  startled  by  the  stranger's  odd  behavior  ; 
he  says  :  "Signore,  signore,  the  door  is  open."  "All 
right,"  the  patient  replies  ;   "let  us  enter." 

Theintruderwalks  through  the  Campo  Santo,  stares 
at  the  inscriptions  on  the  tombstones  full  of  envy  at  the 
sight  that  every  one  of  the  poor  fellows  that  lie  buried 
here  have  left  a  name  which  continues  to  lead  an  empty 
existence  upon  these  stones;  he  himself  alone  has  no 
name.  He  can  walk,  sing,  dance,  can  react  upon  his 
surroundings,  but  does  not  know  his  name.  He 
searches  his  pockets  for  a  visiting  card  or  a  passport. 
There  is  nothing  except  a  purse  full  of  money  and  an 
empty  notebook,  which  does  not  even  bear  an  initial. 

While  thus  musing  on  himself,  the  nameless  man 
observes  a  stranger,  who  apparently  watches  him,  and 
converses  with  the  custos.  Our  patient  approaches 
the  stranger  and  asks  why  he  stares  at  him,  but  the 
stranger  excuses  himself  saying  that  he  thought  he 
recognised  in  him  an  old  acquaintance.  "  Why  should 
I  not  be  that  acquaintance  of  yours?"  says  the  ego- 
less man,  and  a  dim  hope  of  finding  out  something 
about  himself  flashes  up  in  his  mind.  But  the  stranger 
evades  a  conversation  and  assures  him  that  his  ac- 
quaintance had  died  a  long  time  ago.  "  In  that  case 
it  is  scarcely  probable  that  it  is  I,"  replied  the  egoless 
man,  meditatively,  and  leaves  the  Campo  Santo.  No- 
ticing the  key,  he  locks  the  door  from  the  outside  and 
walks  away,  with  a  secret  joy  that  he  had  imprisoned 
the  inquisitive  stranger. 

Finding  a  railroad  station,  our  patient  boards  a 
train,  but  comes  in  conflict  with  the  conductor  be- 
cause  he   has  no  ticket.      He  leaves  the  train  at  the 


next  station  and  enters  a  hotel.  There  he  dines  in  the 
dining-room  and  takes  up  a  paper,  where  he  finds  a 
notice  of  a  strange  pathological  case  which  resembles 
his.  In  Hamburg  a  man  was  found  who  had  no  knowl- 
edge of  his  antecedents  ;  he  apparently  belonged  to 
the  better  classes,  but  no  clue  to  his  personality  could 
be  found.  "  What  a  terrible  condition  !  "  said  the  ego- 
less man  to  himself.  "  If  they  find  me  out  they  will 
send  me  to  an  asylum  and  put  me  in  a  strait-jacket. 
I  must  be  on  my  guard."  Observing  that  some  of  the 
guests  were  slyly  looking  at  him  he  withdrew  to  his 
room. 

The  waiter  came  and  smilingly  laid  before  him  the 
register,  for  him  to  sign  his  name.  The  egoless  man 
was  horrorstruck.  He  suspected  that  people  had 
found  him  out,  and  at  once  threw  the  book  angrily  at 
the  frightened  waiter,  shutting  the  door  after  him. 

Full  of  satisfaction  at  liis  victory,  the  egoless  man 
lit  two  candles  and  stepped  with  them  to  the  mirror. 
He  proposed  to  see  with  his  own  eyes  that  he  exists, 
but  what  a  terrible  appearance  has  he  !  His  eye-balls 
bulging  out  and  burning  like  fire,  cheeks  sunken,  hair 
bristling,  beard  not  shaved  for  some  time.  "And  that 
is  I  ;  that  is  the  ego  from  which  I  cannot  escape?" 
With  this  idea  he  struck  the  glass  with  his  fist  and 
shattered  it  into  a  thousand  pieces. 

After  some  time  there  was  a  knock  at  the  door, 
and  two  gentlemen  stepped  in.  They  asked  him  po- 
litely to  join  them  and  to  accompany  them  to  the 
quaestor,  where  they  expected  him  to  identify  himself. 
He  followed  without  remonstrance. 

When  the  quaestor  asked  his  name,  the  question 
appeared  to  the  egoless  man  immensely  ridiculous, 
but  he  remained  quiet.  As  no  answer  was  made,  the 
quaestor  said  :  "  There  are  reasons  which  make  it  de- 
sirable to  know  your  name.  You  are  suspected  of 
being  the  same  person  who  murdered  a  woman  yes- 
terday morning  in  San  Rossore.  You  have  been  seen 
at  the  baptistery  in  Pisa,  where  your  strange  behavior 
attracted  attention.  You  left  on  the  train  without  a 
ticket,  in  order  to  escape  the  private  detective,  who 
was  on  your  track.  Unless  you  can  prove  an  alibi  we 
will  have  to  detain  you." 

As  the  egoless  man  could  make  no  reply  he  was 
locked  up.  Whether  or  not  he  was  the  murderer, 
appeared  to  him  quite  indifferent.  What  had  that  to 
do  with  his  present  condition  ?  He  said  to  himself  : 
"Probably  I  committed  the  murder,  for  I  am  impli- 
cated in  everything  that  happens.  And  if  I  am  found 
guilty  and  have  to  die  for  it,  what  does  it  matter?  It 
does  not  concern  man  in  abstraclo. 

The  scene  changes  again.  The  diary  speaks  of 
three  visitors  that  come  into  the  cell,  who  assert  that 
the  authorities  have  incarcerated  an  innocent  man. 
They  are  extremely  polite  and  regret  what  has  hap- 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4659 


pened.  Mentioning  his  hotel,  they  promise  to  bring 
him  to  a  better  residence.  Among  his  visitors  is  one 
who  is  called  "Doctor,"  a  pleasant  little  man,  whose 
company  appeared  to  him  most  desirable.  They  or- 
dered a  hack  and  when  the  Doctor  and  the  patient 
were  seated,  he  heard  one  of  his  remaining  visitors  in- 
struct the  driver  to  drive  to  San  Salvi.  "  O  }'e  galley- 
slaves  of  the  ego,"  said  the  egoless  man  to  himself, 
"can  you  offer  to  one  who  has  become  emancipated 
nothing  better  than  an  insane  asylum  ?" 

Pondering  on  his  fate,  the  patient  entertained  his 
companion,  the  Doctor,  so  well  that  he  liecame  confi- 
dent, and  while  the}'  were  passing  through  a  lonely 
place,  he  suddenly  seized  him,  gagged  his  mouth  with 
a  handkerchief,  and  tied  his  hands.  This  accomplished 
he  jumped  quietly  out  of  the  carriage  and  walked  into 
the  mountains. 

The  diary  concludes  as  follows  :  "  It  is  quite  nat- 
ural that  a  man  who  has  lost  his  ego  has  no  place  in 
this  police-regulated  society.  Neither  do  I  care  for 
it.  I  wander  about  and  think  the  unthinkable.  I  live 
in  all  ages  from  the  origin  of  being  up  to  this  day.  I 
see  the  coils  of  the  gold  green  serpent  of  eternit}- 
twining  round  the  tree  of  knowledge.  Standing  on 
the  precipice  I  think  the  highest  and  the  last  thoughts. 
The  crickets  chirp,  the  frogs  croak,  the  night  is  soft, 
and  full  of  yearning.  The  stars  make  their  appear- 
ance, but  they  are  without  radiance  and  look  maud- 
lin, for  the  moon  is  full  and  swallows  their  light.  I 
am  full  of  an.xiety  and  long  for  the  dear  unknown  ones 
whom  I  have  forgotten.  Also  the  murdered  woman 
of  Pisa  is  near  and  stares  at  me  as  though  she  wanted 
to  ask  me  something,  but  I  do  not  know  her.  I  suffer 
from  a  relapse,  a  homesickness,  such  as  the  sailor  must 
have  on  the  ocean,  but  I  do  not  want  to  go  back  to 
the  shore.  What  have  I  to  do  with  these  strange  peo- 
ple? I  have  broken  through  the  ego,  and  I  wish  to 
penetrate  deeper  still  into  being,  deeper  and  deeper." 

Thus,  the  authoress  informs  us,  the  manuscript 
ends,  and  adds  that  all  inquiries  as  to  who  might  have 
written  it  were  in  vain. 

A  pathological  case  like  this,  in  which  a  man  loses 
the  conscious  recollection  of  his  antecedents,  is  quite 
possible,  nor  is  it  more  enigmatic  than  any  other  case 
of  loss  of  memory.  There  are  instances  in  which  one  or 
another  recollection  is  lost  without  any  apparent  hope 
of  recover}'.  Some  patients  cannot  pronounce  certain 
letters,  others  cannot  think  of  certain  words,  still  others 
lose  the  memory  of  their  nearest  and  dearest  relations. 
Why  may  it  not  happen  that  an  inflammation  of  the 
brain  should  wipe  out  all  those  recollections  which 
constitute  the  antecedents  of  a  person's  life  including 
the  knowledge  of  his  home,  the  faces  of  his  famil}-, 
and  the  very  sound  of  his  name  ?    The  disease  of  los- 


ing one's  ego  is  neither  impossible  nor  inexplicable  ; 
and  indeed  there  are  many  cases  which  are  quite  anal- 
ogous in  which  the  patient  can  be  told  who  he  is  and 
where  he  would  find  his  home,  yet  he  only  smiles  in- 
differently, for  the  memory  structures  that  naturally 
would  respond  to  these  dear  names  are  obliterated. 

One  point  in  Isolde  Kurz's  story  is  open  to  criti- 
cism ;  and  it  is  exactly  that  point  upon  which  the  whole 
plot  hinges. 

Any  person  who  by  a  loss  of  the  memory  of  his 
personal  reminiscences  has  lost  the  consciousness  of 
his  personality,  would,  naturally,  by  asking  himself 
"Who  am  I?"  establish  at  once  a  new  chain  of  recol- 
lections which  would  develop  a  new  personalit}'-con- 
sciousness.  Asking  himself,  or  being  asked,  who  he 
is,  the  patient  would  soon  begin  to  call  himself  by 
some  name,  either  "the  nameless  one,"  or  "  the  un- 
known one,"  or  "the  egoless  one,"  or  "he  who  is 
here,"  or  "  the  eternal  one,"  or  perhaps  "the  Creator 
of  all  things,"  "the  great  centre  of  Being,"  or  even 
"God  the  good  Lord."  Instructive  instances  may 
probably  be  found  in  almost  any  great  as}lum.  From 
the  moment  the  patient  calls  himself  by  a  name  he 
ceases  to  be  the  egoless,  or  the  nameless,  and  the  new 
chain  of  memories  attached  to  his  name  would  consti- 
tute his  new  personalit}-.  The  fact  that  a  patient 
keeps  a  diary,  proves  that  his  case  is  not  a  loss 
of  personalit}-,  but  of  a  secondary  personality.  The 
activity  of  his  brain  being  unimpaired,  a  new  growth 
of  his  personality  appears  ;  for  personality  naturally 
develops  from  the  intercourse  of  the  ideas  which  in- 
habit an  individual  brain.  Personality  finds  expres- 
sion in  self-consciousness,  which  is  the  consciousness 
of  one's  own  identity;  and  the  peculiar  nature  of  self- 
consciousness  is  that  it  is  a  re  representation  of  the 
whole  mental  community  of  representations,  constitut- 
ing that  system  of  ideas  which  we  call  "self."  The 
man  who  asks  himself  "Who  am  I?"  is  possessed  of 
the  consciousness  of  his  personality,  and  if  he  lost  it, 
he  recovers  it  b}'  this  very  question.  No  patient  who 
is  without  the  consciousness  of  his  own  identity,  who 
has  lost  his  ego,  or  the  notion  of  his  personality,  can 
keep  a  diary. 

Let  that  be  as  it  may,  the  story  is  suggestive,  and 
the  leading  idea,  which  I  take  to  be  the  loss  of  the 
personality-consciousness,  is  a  disease  that  can,  and 
sometimes  does,  occur,  even  though  the  patient  could 
not  present  us  with  a  self-diagnosis. 

What  is  the  moral  of  the  story  ? 

The  importance  of  that  memory-structure  which 
says  "I,"  cannot  be  overrated  ;  but  former  psycholo- 
gists have  misinterpreted  its  meaning.  To  the  neglect 
of  the  ideas  and  impulses  that  are  the  actual  constitu- 
ents of  man's  mental  existence  they  have  taken  the  ego 
of  a  man,  which  is  a  mere  centre  of  centralisation,  as 


4660 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


his  very  soul.  They  imagined  the  ego  in  possession 
of  thoughts  and  regarded  it  as  a  metaphysical  entity 
that  was  doing  all  the  actions  of  a  man.  Thus  the 
immortality  of  the  soul  was  identified  with  the  pre- 
servation of  this  suppositional  ego.  We  now  know 
that  the  word  "I"  is  one  idea  among  many  other 
ideas,  and  is,  just  as  they  are,  embodied  in  a  definite 
cerebral  structure.  The  "I  "  idea  is  a  very  important 
idea,  for  it  forms  the  natural  centre  round  which  all 
the  other  ideas  are  grouped,  but  in  itself  it  is  as  empty 
of  soul-contents  as  the  centre  of  a  circle  is  void  of 
space.  The  centre  of  a  circle  is  a  mere  point,  which, 
in  spite  of  its  importance  for  purposes  of  reference, 
possesses  no  extension. 

Only  when  we  comprehend  that  our  soul  is  not  the 
empty  and  indefinite  word  "  I  "  which  is  indifferently 
applied  by  millions  of  people,  but  that  it  is  a  system 
of  quite  definite  and  individual  motor-ideas,  we  are 
prepared  to  answer  the  question.  Who  are  we? 
Whence  do  we  come  ?  and  Whither  do  we  go  ?  The 
ego-philosophy  of  the  old  school  confines  our  concep- 
tion of  self  to  our  present  individuality  and  prevents 
us  from  looking  beyond  its  barriers.  But  now  we  can 
trace  the  history  of  the  ingredients  of  our  soul.  We 
can  see  how  our  existence  was  shaped  and  can  trace 
our  life  back  to  the  remote  past  of  mere  amceboid  ex- 
istence. We  did  not  rise  into  being  from  nothing. 
Before  Abraham  was,  we  were.  And,  in  the  same 
way,  when  this  body  dies  that  bears  at  present  those 
impressions  which  we  call  our  soul,  we  shall  continue 
to  exist  in  the  measure  that  our  soul  is  impressed  upon 
the  generations  to  come. 

The  old  ego- philosophers  loudly  clamor  for  a  proof 
of  the  immortality  of  the  ego  soul  and  are  greatly  dis- 
tressed at  not  being  able  to  find  it.  But,  in  fact,  it  is 
the  very  ego-conception  which  renders  them  blind  to 
the  recognition  of  the  immortality  of  our  soul  that  ac- 
tually exists. 

Man  naturally  yearns  for  immortality;  and  his  hope 
is  not  disappointed  ;  for  indeed  he  possesses  what  he 
desires.  It  is  a  wrong  psychological  theory  only  that 
shows  his  soul  to  him  in  the  distorted  image  of  an  ego- 
entity,  which,  being  an  illusion,  makes  his  immortality, 
too,  appear  illusory  ;  but  as  soon  as  the  illusion  is  re- 
moved, the  grand  vista  of  immortality  opens  before  our 
mental  eyes.  p.  c. 

THE  PARLIAMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  AT  PARIS  IN  1900. 

A  Parisian  paper,  L' Erlair,  of  Monday,  September  g,  1895, 
descants  on  the  possibility  of  a  Congress  of  Religions  in  Paris 
during  the  next  World's  Exposition  of  igoo.  As  it  is  a  question  of 
unusual  interest  to  Americanr,,  for  the  idea  of  a  Parliament  of  Re- 
ligions was  conceived  and  realised  in  this  country,  we  present  be- 
low a  translation  of  the  article  : 

"The  religious  world,  at  present,  is  bestowing  its  attention 
upon  a  vast  project  which  for  believers,  philosophers,  and-scholars 


of  all  stripes  is  fraught  with  considerable  interest.  The  question 
is  the  organisation  of  a  Universal  Congress  of  Religions  at  Paris 
in  the  year  igoo,  after  the  precedent  of  the  Parliament  of  Reli- 
gions held  in  Chicago  in  1893. 

"The  principles  underlying  this  conception  were  set  forth  a 
few  days  ago  in  the  Revue  de  Paris  in  an  article  which  is  attract- 
ing much  notice  in  the  press.  The  project  has  given  rise  to  numer- 
ous discussions  and  has  been  the  cause  of  unfortunate  misunder- 
standings. We  have  thought  a  precise  statement  of  the  situation 
would  be  desirable. 

"A  group  of  young  French  clergymen,  in  whom  profound 
study  and  literary  and  scientific  courses  at  the  Sorbonne,  pursued 
simultaneously  with  their  attendance  at  the  Catholic  Institute, 
have  infused  a  spirit  of  large  tolerance,  were  the  first  to  take  de- 
cisive steps  towards  the  realisation  of  this  Universal  Congress  of 
Religions  in  Paris.  The  clergymen  in  question  are  the  Abbe  Felix 
Klein,  professor  in  the  Catholic  Institute,  the  well-known  author 
of  Tendances  noiivelles  en  religion  et  en  littcratiire,  the  Abbe  Join- 
niot,  Vicar  General  at  Meaux,  the  Abbe  Pierre  Vignot,  Instructor 
in  the  Fenelon  School,  and  the  Abbe  Charbonnel,  the  same  who 
recently  gave  us  the  beautiful  description  of  this  project,  of  which 
he  is  one  of  the  most  ardent  promoters." 

THE  promoter's  views. 

The  Abbe  Charbonnel,  whom  we  asked  for  a  precise  statement 
of  the  aims  of  the  Universal  Congress  of  Religions,  said  : 

"  The  idea  is  simple.  Tnere  are  a  few  of  us  here  who  are  de- 
sirous of  resuming  the  evangelical  and  democratic  tradition,  who 
are  desirous  of  going  out  to  meet  the  people,  who  believe  that  for 
the  people  religion  ought  to  be  above  all  things  a  moral  stay.  But 
to  attain  that  end  religion  must  not  be  imposed,  it  must  be/;<'- 
/('.ri>(/ simply,  dignifiedly,  and  in  all  sincerity,  that  the  people  may 
accept  of  it  what  is  good  and  useful.  Note,  however,  that  in  tak- 
ing this  view,  no  one  for  a  moment  thinks  of  questioning  the  right 
of  truth  to  its  eventual  establishment,  but  we  simply  hold  that  in 
the  present  state  of  matters  and  practically  it  behooves  us  above 
all  things  to  respect  liberty  of  conscience  and  to  offer  only  the 
moral  lessons  of  religion. 

"We  shall  not  examine — for  this  we  firmly  believe — whether 
the  Catholic  religion  has  a  moral  worth  which  will  ultimately 
crown  its  efforts  with  victory  ;  nor  shall  we  examine,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  possibility  of  a  new  era  different  from  the  present,  in 
which  the  data  of  socialism  will  furnish  their  solutions.  In  prac- 
tice, and  without  need  of  further  search,  we  have  already  religious 
education.  This  is  already  here  and  awaiting  our  use  and  has  the 
advantage  of  centuries  of  experience,  and  of  a  hereditary  imprint 
on  the  masses." 

THE  AI.M  OF  THE  CONGRESS. 

But  how  is  this  endeavor  to  be  evidenced  ?  How  are  the  pro- 
moters of  the  project  going  to  make  people  understand  that  they 
are  not  sectarians,  who  are  seeking  to  impose  upon  them  a  reli- 
gion with  all  its  dogmas,  but  wish  to  plant  the  seed  of  a  wide 
moral  influence  ?     To  this  the  Abbe  makes  the  following  reply  : 

"We  have  thought  that  a  Parliament,  to  which  all  religions 
were  honestly  invited,  in  which  the  ministers  of  those  religions 
should  have  every  facility  for  expounding  their  doctrines,  and  of 
explaining  them  to  all  hearers,  would  be  the  best  means  of  prov- 
ing to  the  people  our  sincerity  when  we  propose  to  them  a  religion. 

"You  see  what  our  motive  has  been  and  what  we  aim  to  ac- 
complish in  convening  a  Universal  Congress  of  Religions  after  the 
model  of  that  held  in  Chicago.  But  observe,  this  does  not  pre- 
clude others  from  coming  here  with  different  ideas  and  different 
intentions. 

"  We  held  an  interview  on  the  subject  of  the  meeting  of  this 
Congress  over  a  year  ago  with  M.  Bonet-Maury,  delegate  of  the 
Reformed  Churches  of  Europe  to  the  Chicago  Parliament.     The 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4661 


idea  was  also  submitted   to  Cardinal  Gibbons,  who  showed  him- 
self an  ardent  partisan  of  it." 

A  memoir  on  the  meeting  of  the  Congress  in  France,  setting 
forth  the  support  which  it  had  already  received  from  various 
quarters,  was  addressed  to  Leo  XIII.  The  Pope  gave  to  the  pro- 
ject his  absolute  approbation,  but  in  order  to  insure  ita  complete 
success,  did  not  think  it  wise  to  give  to  it  his  direct  patronage  ;  lest 
the  Parliament  of  Religions,  which  should  be  independent  and 
open  to  all,  might  give  the  impression  of  being  a  "Congress  of 
the  Pope." 

THE  AUSPICES. 

The  Abbe  continues  :  ' '  To  tell  the  truth,  the  news  that  a  meet- 
ing of  this  character  was  to  be  held  in  France,  has  produced  some 
surprise  in  the  Catholic  world,  which,  generally  speaking,  has  hith- 
erto been  somewhat  reserved  in  its  attitude.  We  have,  unhappily, 
preserved  in  this  old  world  of  ours  the  antipathies  which  the  old 
religious  quarrels  created.  The  representatives  of  the  various  reli- 
gions are  not  in  the  habit  here  of  visiting  each  other  and  exchanging 
their  ideas.     They  avoid,  as  much  as  possible,  all  contact. 

"In  America,  matters  are  altogether  different.  The  repre- 
sentatives of  the  opposed  religions  are,  on  certain  points,  always 
willing  to  enter  upon  concerted  action.  Cardinal  Gibbons  and  a 
Protestant  clergyman  have  both  addressed  a  public  outdoor  meet- 
ing from  the  same  platform,  and  according  to  his  maxim  we  should 
have  separation  in  dogma,  but  union  in  moral  action." 

In  this  spirit,  we  are  told,  the  Congress  of  Religions  is  to  be 
held.  The  project  is  not  to  be  confounded,  as  has  several  times 
been  done,  with  that  of  a  "  universal  and  international  exposition 
of  the  history  of  Christianity  during  the  last  nineteen  centuries," 
where  panoramas,  dioramas,  reproductions  of  all  sorts,  costumed 
figures,  etc.,  occupy  the  largest  share  of  attention.  It  is  no  Street 
of  Cairo,  like  that  of  the  last  Paris  and  Chicago  Expositions, 
which  "  we  desire  to  imitate  in  the  matter  of  religion,  but  we  pro- 
pose to  hold  a  strictly  scientific  Congress." 

The  project  will  meet  with  earnest  support  abroad,  particu- 
larly in  India. 

The  Congress  will  guarantee  to  the  different  confessions  all 
parliamentary  rights  and  privileges,  that  is,  the  liberty  to  each  of 
setting  forth  its  views  and  propagating  its  doctrines  by  all  the 
means  of  persuasion  in  its  power. 

The  meeting  of  the  Congress  will  comprise  two  sections  :  in 
the  first  section,  each  religion  will  severally  ventilate  the  theses  of 
public  discourses.  In  the  second  section  each  religion  will,  by  its 
orators,  justify  its  claims  before  the  people. 

The  Congress  will  be  held  in  the  amphitheatre  of  the  new 
Sorbonne.  There,  beneath  the  frescoes  of  Puvis  de  Chavannes, 
in  that  edifice  of  science  which  has  replaced  the  haunts  of  fruitless 
theological  quarrels,  the  Parliament  will  be  held  which  shall  seek 
to  unite  all  religions  together  for  common  moral  action. 

Well  !  There  is  a  long  time  between  this  Parliament  and  St. 
Bartholomew's. 

THE  USURPER'S  ASSASSIN. 

BY  VIROE. 

Yes,  it  was  true  ;   I  died  and  found  it  true, 
There  was  a  God,  imperial  one  of  all. 
Before  his  throne  I  stood,  by  demons  led. 
And  manacled  with  gyves  of  sophistry. 
And  heard  him  ask  in  awful  thunder  tones 
Had  I  believed  in  Jesus  upon  earth. 

And  when  I  answered,  Nay  I  never  did  ; — 

Not  as  my  God,  but  as  a  man  like  me, — 

A  man  who  lived  and  loved,  suffered  and  died 

For  truth,  God's  face  grew  grave.    Go  hence,  he  said, 

And  tarry  where  departed  spirits  stay. 

Worthy  and  worthless  till  the  arch-angel's  trump. 


I  bowed  my  head.     'Tis  futile  to  resist 

Resistless  Power.      And  yet,  O  God,  I  said, 

Thou,  knowing  all  things  know'st  I  lo\ed  the  true  ; — 

So  loved  I  Jesus.     Post  thou  dare  to  damn 

Thit  sort  of  lover  '     If  thou  dost  I  go 

Following  Jesus,— crucified  for  truth. 

But  God  said  nothing,  and  around  the  throne 
The  choired  seraphs  chanted  forth  his  praise. 
Heard  I  their  music  as  I  sped  away. 
Dragged  forth  from  Paradise  whilst  devils  grinned. 
And  leered,  and  mocked,  and  whispered  in  my  ear. 
Too  late,  too  late,  earth  was  the  home  of  fate. 

Far  from  God's  court  in  Alcyone's  halls  I  dwelt 
A  myriad  years.      How  can  I  tell  to  flesh 
Of  fleshless  things,  of  spirits  disenthralled  ? 
I  dwelt,  and  toiled,  and  learned  of  spirit  things. 
Oh  !   I  was  patient,  waiting,  hoping  still. 
And  ever  frugal,  saving  thought  for  use. 

The  cycles  sped  ;  but  every  day  and  hour 

Fresh  denizens  came  in.      From  every  star 

.\nd  planet  of  th'unmeasurable  void. 

And  from  my  home — the  earth— came  mournful  in. 

All  manacled  with  thought,  in  di.^-e  despair. 

They  dropped  their  chains  ;   I  saved  them  every  one. 

And  whilst  the  crowd  in  helpless,  hopeless  shape 
Dallied  with  Destiny  and  scowled  at  chance. 
In  the  recesses  of  my  hopeful  soul 
I  lit  the  fires  of  reason,  built  a  forge. 
.\nd,  after  ages  of  the  weariest  work, 
Fashioned  a  dagger  made  from  thoughts  of  men. 

When  it  was  done  I  hid  it  underneath 

The  mantle  of  my  soul,  and  waited  still. 

Waited  and  watched  for  freedom, — that  grand  right 

Of  free-born  souls  that  not  e'en  death. 

Nor  demons,  fires  of  hell,  nor  Gcd 

Himself,  dare  trifle  with  nor  take. 

Then  the  time  came  (for  howsoever  watched 
And  guarded,  bolts,  nor  bars,  nor  any  power 
Can  stay  the  righteous  spirit  in  its  flight,) 
Forth  through  the  ab\ss  of  space  I  flew, 
Axmed  with  my  dagger,  on  and  on  and  on. 
Till,  in  the  heart  of  Paradise,  i  stood 
Once  more  before  the  throne  of  Deity, 

God  sat  unconscious,  dealing  out  their  doom 

To  countless  new  immortals, — maids  and  men  ; 

To  all  he  asked  that  question,  full  of  fate. 

Had  they  loved  Jesus  ?  Oh  !  the  wails  that  mixed 

With  the  angelic  chorus  would  have  moved 

A  rock  ;   they  did  far  more  ;  they  moved  a  soul. 

Tha:  soul  was  mine.     Oh  God,  I  cried,  relent; 

Forego  thy  wrath,  and  let  thy  children  live. 

And  when  God  would  not,  all  at  once  leaped  up 

The  dagger  I  had  forged,  and  of  itself 

Sprang  from  my  grasp  and  hurtled  'gainst  God's  heart, 

And  smote  him  on  his  throne,  and  there  he  died. 

The  wailing  music  ceased,  and  for  a  space 
A  mighty  silence.     In  the  holy  hush, — 
So  vast  I  heard  a  child  that  prayed  for  light 
In  the  far  earthland, — rose  a  sweet,  fond  voice, 


4662 


THE     OPEN    OOtTRT. 


Saying,  my  brother,  welcome,  welcome  here  ; 
Brother  Redeemer,  thou  canst  love  me  now. 

For  he  who  sat  upon  my  father's  ihrone 
Was  an  usurper  crowned  by  rebel  thought ; — 
Satan  his  name,  not  God,  for  in  my  heart 
He  reigns,  in  thine,  and  in  the  hearts  of  all 
Who  trust  and  love  and  serve  and  follow  truth. 
For  faith  in  truth  was  ever  faith  in  God. 

Then  seraphs  came  and  angels  bright  and  pure, — 
All  the  innumerable  host  of  heaven — 
Brought  forth  the  royal  diadem,  and  crowned 
Jesus  the  God-man,  to  his  throne  restored. 
So  Power  fulfilled  what  love  of  truth  began. 
And  universal  mercy  reigned  and  peace. 

A  JAPANESE    BUDDHIST   PRIEST   ON  CHRISTIANITY. 

William  E.Curtis  of  Chicago  is  at  present  travelling  injafian 
and  letters  from  him  are  being  published  in  The  Chicago  Record. 
In  one  of  these  letters  he  presents  us  with  an  interesting  interview 
with  Renjo  Akamatzu,  a  Buddhist  priest,  attached  to  the  Nishi 
Honganji  temple  of  Kyoto,  which  belongs  to  the  Shiu-Shin-Monto 
sect.     Mr.  Akamatzu  said  ; 

"We  recognise  Christianity  as  a  permanent  institution.  I 
think,  judging  from  observation  alone,  that  the  Christian  church 
here  can  get  along  without  aid  from  abroad.  Formerly  there  was 
a  great  deal  of  friction  and  distrust.  The  Buddhist  did  not  know 
what  Christianity  is,  and  very  few  Christians  now  understand  what 
Buddhism  is.  They  came  here  with  violent  prejudices,  which  have 
been  exaggerated  by  contact  with  indiscreet  and  unreasonable  per- 
sons, but  many  of  the  ablest  of  the  Christian  teachers  and  many 
of  the  ablest  of  the  Buddhist  priests  recognise  that  there  is  merit 
in  both  religions,  and  that  both  are  capable  of  doing  good.  There 
is  no  reason  why  Buddhism  and  Christianity  cannot  exist  in  Japan 
without  friction,  because  both  appeal  to  the  hearts  and  minds  of 
men  and  there  are  those  who  would  be  better  satisfied  with  one 
than  with  the  other.  The  Christians  have  gathered  in  a  great 
many  Japanese  who  had  left  the  Buddhist  church  and  were  with- 
out a  religion. 

"The  Christian  religion  has  attracted  many  men  who  left  our 
church  and  were  drifting  into  materialism.  They  have  adopted 
Christianity  and  amended  their  lives.  Christianity  has  also  been 
influential  in  the  introduction  of  modern  methods  and  the  sciences 
of  civilisation,  but  it  has  not  been  necessary  to  accept  the  Chris- 
tian religion  to  enjoy  those  advantages.  The  Buddhist  colleges 
now  teach  modern  science.  We  encourage  the  study  of  all  mod- 
ern methods  and  are  glad  to  have  foreign  teachers.  The  more  a 
man  learns  the  more  liberal  he  will  be  in  matters  of  religion,  just 
as  he  will  be  more  useful  as  a  citizen.  It  was  not  necessary,  bow- 
ever,  to  import  a  new  religion  into  Japan,  as  Buddhism  was  suffi- 
cient for  the  spiritual  wants  and  moral  education  of  the  people. 
Nevertheless,  Christianity  has  benefited  the  country  and  I  am  glad 
the  missionaries  came. 

"  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  the  Christian  and  Buddhist  clergy  do 
not  associate  with  each  other.  I  hope  that  by  and  by,  after  the  new 
treaties  go  into  effect,  that  the  clergy  of  both  religions  will  inter- 
mingle in  a  friendly  manner,  just  as  the  representatives  of  the 
different  denominations  do  in  America.  Let  each  preacher  preach 
his  own  doctrine  and  let  the  people  choose  that  which  is  best. 

"  Religion  should  make  men  friendly  and  charitable,  as  they 
were  taught  both  by  Christ  and  Buddha.  It  is  incomprehensible 
to  me  when  I  hear  of  violence  used  in  propagating  or  defending 
religious  doctrines.  True  religion  as  Christ  taught  it  is  peace  and 
love,  yet  his  followers  have  been  fighting  each  other  for  eighteen 
centuries.     The  followers  of  Buddha  have  not  done  that.     We 


have  had  bad  men  in  our  church  and  there  has  been  much  fighting 
among  Buddhists,  but  it  was  only  about  worldly  matters,  and  not 
concerning  doctrines.  Our  church  is  divided  into  several  sects 
also,  representing  different  shades  of  belief,  but  they  have  never 
used  violence  against  each  other. 

"  I  encourage  all  of  my  students  and  friends  to  study  Chris- 
tianity and  other  religions,  because  it  makes  them  broad-minded. 
It  can  do  no  harm  to  any  intelligent  man  to  investigate  other  reli- 
gions than  his  own.  I  would  never  ask  a  Christian  to  become  a 
Buddhist,  but  if  he  should  come  to  me  and  ask  me  to  explain  the 
creed  and  the  principles  of  my  religion  I  should  take  great  pleas- 
ure in  doing  so.  I  believe,  too,  that  it  is  fair  and  proper  for  the 
different  churches  to  send  out  missionaries  capable  of  teaching 
the  principles  upon  which  they  are  based,  but  I  do  not  think  it  is 
right  for  a  Buddhist  or  a  Christian  missionary  to  try  and  coax 
people  to  leave  one  religion  and  accept  another.  I  should  simply 
encourage  all  men  to  study  all  religions  and  adopt  that  which  is 
most  suitable  to  their  tastes,  just  as  travel  develops  a  man  and 
enables  him  to  choose  the  most  agreeable  country  to  live  in.  I 
have  travelled  in  the  United  States  and  Europe,  but  I  returned  to 
Japan  satisfied  with  my  own  country.      A  little  couplet  says: 

"  '  Go  east  or  west, 
liiit  home  is  best.' 

"In  the  same  way  I  have  studied  all  religions  and  have  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  I  will  remain  a  Buddhist." 

NOTES. 

M.  F.  de  Gissac's  artistic  eye  has  found  a  strange  mistake  in 
the  old  Assyrian  bas-relief  representing  Bel-Merodach's  fight  with 
Tiamat.  He  writes  :  "  The  hands  of  Merodach  are  transposed; 
the  right  is  in  the  place  of  the  left,  and  vice  versa.  Why  is  it  so  ? 
Such  is  not  the  case  with  Tiamat.  The  high  artistic  value  of  the 
bas-relief  scarcely  permits  us  to  suppose  that  this  anomaly  is  the 
result  of  some  unconscious  mistake,  either  of  the  engraver  or  of 
the  old  Assyrian  sculptor  ;  it  appears  intentional,  and  must  in  that 
case  have  some  import  or  mythical  significance.  Can  it  be  ex- 
plained ? "  The  picture  referred  to,  in  The  Open  Court,  No.  422, 
on  page  4653,  is  an  exact  reproduction  of  a  cut  that  appears  in 
George  Smith's  Chaldean  .iccounl  of  Genesis,  edited  by  Prof.  A.  H. 
Sayce,  and  also  in  Babylonian  Life  and  Hislory,  by  E.  A.  Wallis 
Budge,  one  of  the  curators  of  the  British  Museum.  Mr.  Budge 
stated  in  a  letter  that  a  photograph  of  the  original  slab,  which  is 
in  the  British  Museum,  can  be  had  from  Messrs.  Mansell,  271  Ox- 
ford Street,  London,  but  we  have  not  been  able  to  procure  it  or 
find  it  in  their  catalogue. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN    STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 

E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher.  DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 

TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  423. 

OTHER  WORLDS  THAN  OURS.     Hudor  Genone 4655 

AN  EGOLESS  MAN.     Editor 4657 

THE  PARLIAMENT    OF  RELIGIONS  AT   PARIS  IN 

igOO 4660 

POETRY. 

The  Usurper's  Assassin.     Viroe 4661 

A  JAPANESE  BUDDHIST  PRIEST  ON  CHRISTIAN- 
ITY    4662 

NOTES 4662 


The  Open  Court. 


A    WEEKLTT    JOURNAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  424.     (Vol.  IX— 41  ) 


CHICAGO,   OCTOBER   10,   1895. 


j  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
/  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  bv  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


A  HIQH=PRIEST  OF  NATURE. 

BY  DR.    FELI.X   L.    OSW.\I,D. 

When  the  electric  message  from  across  the  Atlan- 
tic announced  the  death  of  Louis  Pasteur,  an  Amer- 
ican critic,  with  a  propensit}'  for  side-hits  at  free- 
thought,  remarked  that  the  dicoverer  of  marvellous 
remedies  deserved  a  higher  place  in  the  halls  of  fame 
than  those  "who  left  behind  them  onh'  disturbing 
words  and  theories." 

It  would  be  more  correct  to  sa}-  that  men  like  Pas- 
teur supplemented  the  life-work  of  the  great  encyclo- 
paedists. While  to  \'oltaire  and  Diderot  belongs  the 
immortal  honor  of  having  exposed  the  shams  which 
for  ages  masqueraded  in  the  guise  of  religion,  Frank- 
lin, Davy,  and  Pasteur  accomplished  the  equal!}'  im- 
portant, though  less  risky,  task  of  compensating  the 
wreck  of  exploded  dogmas  b\'  contributions  to  the 
true  religion  of  the  future.  The  author  of  the  Philo- 
sflpliical  Dictionary  proved  that  the  time  and  treasures 
wasted  on  the  mummeries  of  Jesuitism  are  worse  than 
wasted.  The  discoverer  of  disease-conquering  spe- 
cifics showed  what  sort  of  prayers  nature  can  he  relied 
upon  to  answer. 

Louis  Jerome  Pasteur  was  the  son  of  a  \  ieux  de 
r  Empire,  an  old  scar- covered  sergeant  who  had  fol- 
lowed the  Corsican  Caesar  in  all  but  the  last  of  his  des- 
perate campaigns,  and  who  in  i8ig  settled  in  the  little 
country  town  of  Dole.  Here  Louis  was  born  in  the  win- 
ter of  1822,  and  received  the  rudiments  of  education 
at  the  town  school  of  Arbois,  where  his  father  had 
purchased  a  small  tanner)'.  His  thirst  for  miscellane- 
ous knowledge  soon  attracted  the  attention  of  his  teach- 
ers, at  whose  advice  the  book-worshipping  youngster 
was  sent  to  the  college  of  Besancon  and  three  years 
after  to  the  Ecole  Normale  at  Paris. 

In  the  library  of  a  curate  of  Arbois  the  young  stu- 
dent had  come  across  a  book  which  henceforth  be- 
came the  loadstar  of  his  intellectual  life.  It  was  a 
life  of  Benjamin  Franklin  whom  the  Parisians  of  the 
eighteenth  century  lionised  both  as  a  chief  of  sceptics 
and  a  chief  adversary  of  their  British  enemies,  but  in 
whose  career  the  son  of  the  old  soldier  saw  the  reali- 
sation of  very  different  ideals.  Here  was  a  champion 
of  freedom  whose  campaigns   had   led   to  abiding  re- 


sults, and  a  philosopher  who  had  eclipsed  the  cathe- 
drals of  faith  with  a  temple  of  science. 

For  a  time  the  young  hero-worshipper  was  haunted 
b}'  da3--dreams  of  the  possibility  to  rival  the  construc- 
tor of  lightning  rods  on  his  own  field.  He  thought  of 
collision-proof  railway  engines  and  unsinkable  ships, 
but  the  cholera  epidemic  of  1841  reminded  him  that 
diseases  claim  a  hundred  victims  for  one  sacrificed  to 
the  fury  of  the  elements,  and  from  the  moment  of  his 
admission  to  the  Normal  College  he  devoted  himself 
passionatel}'  to  the  study  of  organic  cheniistr}*. 

The  superintendent  of  the  chemical  laboratory  re- 
nounced a  part  of  his  own  salary  to  secure  the  services 
of  the  Besanron  enthusiast  as  a  permanent  assistant, 
but  at  the  death  of  his  friend,  Pasteur  went  to  Strass- 
burg,  and  in  the  course  of  the  next  twenty  years  turned 
out  chemical  specifics  as  Edison  evolves  electrotech- 
nic  contrivances,  and  derived  an  income  from  patents 
that  would  have  secured  his  financial  independence  if 
he  had  not  expended  thousands  on  costh' experiments, 
before  the  value  of  his  researches  was  generally  recog- 
nised. Still,  he  had  already  become  an  honorary  mem- 
ber of  half  a  dozen  academies  when  in  1865  the  gov- 
ernment recalled  him  to  Paris  to  superintend  the  la- 
bors of  a  committee  for  the  investigation  and  possi- 
ble abatement  of  the  silkworm  plague  which  was  then 
ruining  the  silk  industr}'  of  southern  Europe  at  the 
rate  of  half  a  billion  francs  of  loss  per  3'ear. 

Pasteur  began  by  investigating  the  cause  of  the 
epidemic,  and  after  tracing  it  to  the  action  of  micro- 
scopic parasites,  devoted  eight  months  to  the  study 
of  the  habits  of  the  ruinous  microbes.  He  then  an- 
nounced the  discovery  of  a  method  for  their  extirpa- 
tion. The  details  of  his  plan  at  first  provoked  the 
ridicule  of  his  brother  savants,  but  a  practical  test 
soon  established  its  efficacy  and  within  three  years  the 
plague  was  practically  stamped  out. 

He  then  turned  his  attention  to  the  study  of  an- 
thrax, a  cattle-plague  marked  b}'  the  appearance  of 
malignant  boils,  and  the  gangrene  of  the  cellular  tis- 
sue. "  He  took  up  the  question  with  his  accustomed 
vigor,"  says  a  reviewer  of  his  scientific  labors,  "and 
established  the  fact  that  the  small  filiform  corpuscles 
found  in  the  blood  of  animals  killed  by  anthrax  were 
a  terrible  parasite,  capable,  in  spite  of  their  infinitely 


4664 


THE    OPEN     CXDtTRT. 


small  dimensions,  of  killitig  sheep,  cattle,  and  men. 
Finally  he  took  the  closing  step  in  the  matter  by  ex- 
amining the  question  why  anthrax  is  perpetuated  in 
certain  countries.  The  germs  of  anthrax,  buried  at  a 
depth  of  fifty  centimetres,  or  a  metre,  with  the  body 
of  their  victim,  become  mixed  with  the  earth  and  live 
for  years  in  the  state  of  spores.  But  how  do  they 
come  back  to  the  face  of  the  soil  and  spread  the  dis- 
ease? It  is  the  earthworms  that  are  the  mediators  of 
the  mischief.  From  the  depths  of  the  soil  they  bring 
to  the  surface  particles  of  earth  mingled  with  the 
germs  of  the  malady  and  these  germs,  or  spores  are 
thus  scattered  over  the  fields,  and  become  a  constant 
source  of  contagion  for  grazing  cattle.  Hence  the  de- 
duction that  it  is  necessary  to  set  aside  for  the  burial 
of  animals  killed  by  anthrax  a  space  enclosed  with 
care,  into  which  healthy  animals  shall  never  pene- 
trate, and  to  choose,  as  far  as  possible,  dry  and  cal- 
careous ground,  in  which  earthworms  will  have  diffi- 
culty in  living." 

With  equal  ingenuity  Pasteur  solved  the  phylloxera 
problem,  and  freed  the  vineyards  of  France  from  par- 
asites that  had  threatened  their  destruction  through- 
out a  region  of  fifteen  thousand  square  miles.  No 
greater  benefactor  of  mankind  had  appeared  since  the 
invention  of  gunpowder  secured  the  supremacy  of 
civilised  man  over  savages  and  wild  beasts,  and  the 
countrymen  of  the  great  scientist  recognised  his  ser- 
vices by  voting  him  a  life-annuity  of  twelve  thousand 
francs,  which  the  following  year  was  increased  to 
eighteen  thousand.  He  was  also  made  Grand  Officer 
of  the  Legion  of  Honor,  and  the  seventieth  anniver- 
sary of  his  birth  was  celebrated  by  an  unanimous  vote 
of  the  French  Academy. 

But,  incidentally,  his  labors  led  to  far  more  im- 
portant results.  It  has  been  said  that  the  victories  of 
Frederick  the  Great  were  more  effective  than  his  sar- 
casms in  undermining  the  strongholds  of  orthodoxy. 
The  trust  in  the  practical  assistance  of  heaven  had 
reconciled  the  nations  of  Europe  to  the  infinite  burden 
of  the  established  prayer-syndicates,  and  that  trust  was 
fatallv  shaken  by  the  career  of  a  scoffer,  who  by  purely 
secular  methods  of  self-help  contrived  to  beat  his  or- 
thodox adversaries  in  four  out  of  five  battles,  even  after 
the  champion  of  the  hostile  alliance  had  been  formally 
consecrated  by  the  supreme  pontiff  of  his  creed.  They 
might  interdict  his  books  and  persecute  his  converts, 
but  there  was  no  resisting  such  arguments  as  the  vic- 
tories of  Rossbach  and  Leuthen.  Marie  Antoinette 
was  perhaps  right  in  deploring  his  successes  as  those 
of  a  man  who  with  or  without  the  avowed  intention  of 
such  results  had  "done  irreparable  damage  to  the 
cause  of  faith.'"  "Say  'Orthodoxy,'"  comments 
Thomas  Carlyle,  and  it  is  equally  certain  that  the  life- 
work  of  Pasteur  has  in  no  way  injured  the  interests  of 


true   religion,    though   superstition   rarely  received  a 
more  deadly  blow. 

For  centuries — almost  ever  since  the  introduction 
of  viticulture  in  Southern  France — the  French  peas- 
ants had  invoked  the  aid  of  the  Church  against  the 
enemies  of  their  vineyards.  They  had  sprinkled  their 
vines  with  consecrated  water;  they  had  wasted  days 
and  weeks  on  processions  and  pilgrimages  to  the 
shrines  of  plant  protecting  saints.  They  had  prayed 
and  fasted  ;  they  had  paid  their  tithes  at  the  risk  of 
having  to  starve  their  children.  The  frequent  failures 
of  those  presciptions  were  ascribed  to  their  theologi- 
cal shortcomings.  They  had  failed  to  treat  their  priests 
with  sufficient  reverence.  Some  of  their  neighbors 
had  intermarried  with  heretics  without  being  os- 
tracised. Many  owners  of  withered  vineyards  had 
failed  to  join  in  lengthy  pilgrimages.  Their  donations 
had  not  been  liberal  enough,  nor  their  conversation 
strictly  orthodox.  Others  were  told  that  they  were 
bearing  the  burden  of  their  neighbors'  sins.  The 
grape-blight  must  have  started  in  the  vineyard  of  a 
misbeliever. 

Centuries  of  stultification  could  not  prevent  the 
converts  of  such  dogmas  from  exulting  in  the  discov- 
ery of  the  secular  specialist.  At  a  quite  nominal  ex- 
pense the  microbe  remedy  achieved  results  be3'ond 
the  reach  of  the  most  influential  saints.  Its  benefits 
were  prompt,  complete,  and  permanent  to  a  degree 
never  attained  by  the  mystagogues  of  Jesuitism  under 
the  most  favorable  auspices  of  submissive  faith.  And 
moreover,  those  blessings  were  vouchsafed  alike  to 
heretics  and  true  believers.  Science  had  evidently 
contrived  to  conquer  an  evil,  which  theology  had 
failed  even  to  abate.  The  French  writers  who  dis- 
cussed the  omens  of  a  new  era  did  not  always  risk  to 
emphasise  its  significance  from  that  point  of  view  ; 
but  French  peasants  are  no  fools  and  could  be  trusted 
to  draw  their  own  conclusions. 

During  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life,  Professor  Pas- 
teur busied  himself  with  experiments  in  quest  of  an 
antidote  of  hydrophobia  virus,  and  the  means  em- 
ployed for  that  purpose  exposed  him  to  the  severe 
criticisms  of  moralists,  who  had  tried  in  vain  to  im- 
peach him  on  other  charges — such  as  the  absurd  ob- 
jection to  remedies  that  tended  to  counteract  provi- 
dential visitations,  and  thus,  as  it  were,  wrest  the 
means  of  punishment  out  of  the  hands  of  an  irate 
Deity.  Protests  of  that  sort  were  actually  heard  in 
1866,  and  again  five  years  later,  though  fainter,  and 
with  specious  modifications;  but  the  charge  of  ex- 
treme cruelty  to  animals  could  be  urged  from  a  more 
tenable  moral  standpoint.  The  results  of  the  inocula- 
tion-plan, it  was  pointed  out,  left  its  prophylactic 
value  rather  doubtful.  The  percentage  of  those  who 
survived  under  the  influence  of  the  antidote  was  only 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4665 


slightl}'  larger  than  that  of  spontaneous  recoveries, 
and  that  trifling  difference  could  possibly  be  ascribed 
to  the  tendency  of  an  expectant  state  of  mind — in 
other  words,  to  faith-cure  impressions.  And  for  the 
sake  of  that  dubious  advantage  in  the  treatment  of  an 
at  all  events  rare  disorder,  hundreds,  nay,  thousands 
of  innocent  animals  had  died  in  agonies,  while  the 
author  of  their  sufferings  tabulated  their  symptoms 
like  the  variations  of  an  inanimate  instrument,  unpity- 
ing  and  unrelenting.  To  such  critics  Pasteur  could 
only  reply  in  the  phrase  of  Mirabeau,  that  revolution, 
whether  in  the  field  of  politics  or  of  science,  cannot 
be  achieved  with  eau  dc  /avinidi'.  For  mere  curiosity, 
he  said  he  would  never  torture  a  single  rabliit,  but  in 
the  service  of  science  and  the  interest  of  mankind  he 
was  relentless,  indeed.  The  principle  of  avoiding  the 
infliction  of  stiffering  under  all  circumstances  would 
not  only  preclude  the  most  righteous  wars,  but  toil- 
some journeys  of  exploration  and  coercive  measures 
in  the  reformation  of  criminals.  But,  granted  that 
evil  ma}'  sometimes  be  done  for  the  prevention  of 
other  evils,  the  question  might  be  reduced  10  a  calcu- 
lation of  preponderance,  and  even  the  risk  of  indi- 
vidual human  lives  in  the  interest  of  the  human  spe- 
cies might  assume  a  strong  semblance  of  duty.  Super- 
intendent Schomberg,  of  the  Melbourne  Zoo,  tried  a 
variety  of  dietetic  experiments  both  with  monke3's  and 
their  Australian  keepers,  feeding  them  exclusively  on 
vegetables  for  a  while,  and  then  on  flesh  food,  or 
watching  the  effects  of  a  mixed  diet.  "You  have  no 
right  to  trifle  thus  with  the  comfort  of  your  fellow- 
creatures,"  said  a  captious  moralist.  "Look  here, 
my  pious  friend,"  said  the  Professor,  "do  you  know 
anything  about  the  object  of  my  inquiries?  Suppose 
they  should  establish  the  fact  that  an  animal-diet  is 
ill  adapted  to  the  digestive  organs  of  apes  and  all 
their  relatives,  including  candidates  of  theology,  don't 
you  think  it  would  be  worth  while  to  endure  gastric 
discomforts  for  a  little  while,  in  order  to  save  millions 
of  our  fellow-creatures  from  the  knife  of  the  butcher  ?" 

Moreover,  Pasteur  could  demonstrate  from  the  very 
evidences  of  his  dissection-room  that  the  organism  of 
the  lower  animals  is  far  less  sensitive  than  that  of  a 
human  being,  and  that,  weighing  suffering  against 
suffering,  it  is  perhaps  more  merciful  to  kill  a  hundred 
guinea-pigs,  than  risk  the  martyrdom  of  a  single  hu- 
man hydrophobia-victim. 

In  1870  Pasteur  availed  himself  of  a  memorable 
opportunity  to  refute  the  charge  of  truculence.  "  You 
have  celebrated  the  butchery  of  your  neighbors  as  a 
holida}',"  he  wrote  to  the  dean  of  the  imi versify  of 
Bonn,  when  the  Germans  bombarded  Paris,  "and  I 
must  ask  _\'0u  to  erase  my  name  from  the  list  of  your 
honorary  doctors.  I  feel  impelled  to  demand  this  as 
ii  mark  of  the  indignation  felt  by  a  French  savant  for 


the  barbarism  and  hypocrisy  which,  to  satisfy  crim- 
inal pride,  persists  in  the  massacre  of  two  great  na- 
tions"— a  protest  which  recalls  the  scorn  of  the  com- 
poser Beethoven,  who  renounced  the  patronage  of  an 
Austrian  prince  rather  than  degrade  his  art  in  the 
service  of  his  country's  enemies. 

Two  years  before  his  death  the  utility  of  Pasteur's 
hydrophobia  specific  readied  a  phase  of  demonstra- 
tion that  silenced  adverse  critics,  and  it  became  then 
evident  that  the  great  physiologist  had  from  the  be- 
ginning pursued  his  inquiries  in  a  direction  which 
ultimately  led  to  the  desired  solution  of  the  problem. 
He  had,  in  fact,  developed  the  same  "instinct  for 
anticipating  truth,"  which  enabled  the  mathematician 
Euler  to  divine  at  a  glance  the  best  modes  of  simpli- 
fying the  conventional  methods  of  calculation.  Nature, 
as  it  were,  finds  means  to  "meet  intense  desire  half- 
ways,"  and  it  is  a  strange  reflexion  to  what  heights 
the  triumphs  of  science  could  have  been  raised  if 
knowledge  instead  of  theological  conformity  had  been 
the  object  of  the  convent-dwellers  who  in  the  course 
of  the  Middle  Ages  used  up  several  million  tons  of 
parchment,  and  by  the  intensity  of  volition  forced 
their  organism  into  the  semi-miracle  of  stigmatisation. 

Pasteur's  address  before  the  French  Academy  sug- 
gests reflexions  of  that  sort,  and  still  plainer  hints  of 
his  private  doxj'  were  revealed  in  his  comments  on 
the  unfair  treatment  of  the  dissenter  Reclus.  "I 
have  always  held,"  he  says,  "that  a  very  fair  substi- 
tute for  the  established  system  of  ethics  could  be  con- 
strued from  the  data  of  positive  science,  i.  e.  from 
propositions  as  demonstrable  as  the  theorems  of 
Euclid,  but  under  the  circumstances  of  the  present 
transition-period  we  ought  to  be  very  careful  how  we 
curtail  the  right  of  denial."  "And  would  it  not  be 
more  discreet,"  he  adds,  "to  inquire  in  how  far  the 
heresies  of  this  man  transcend  those  of  other  cham- 
pions of  science?  "  "In  the  interest  of  scientific  clear- 
ness," he  quotes  from  Huxlej',  "  I  object  to  say  that 
I  have  a  soul,  when  I  mean  all  the  while  that  my  or- 
ganism has  certain  mental  faculties,  which,  like  the 
rest,  are  dependent  upon  its  chemical  composition, 
and  come  to  an  end  when  I  die;  and  I  object  stdl 
more  to  affirm  that  I  look  to  a  future  life,  when  ajl 
that  I  mean  is  that  the  influence  of  my  sayings  and 
doings  will  be  more  or  less  felt  by  a  number  of  people 
after  the  physical  components  of  my  organism  are 
scattered  to  the  four  winds." 

The  chief  lesson  demonstrated  b}'  the  life  work  of 
the  great  inquirer  is  the  superiority  of  science  to  de- 
votion and  a  purely  mj-stic  moral  enthusiasm — a  su- 
periority as  great,  from  a  utilitarian  point  of  view,  as 
that  of  light  to  the  sweetest  incense. 

Jeremy  Bentham's  formula  has,  however,  not  solved 


4666 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


all  the  problems  of  regeneration,  and  none  of  its  veri- 
fications preclude  the  possibility  that  sweetness  and 
light  will  be  united  in  the  altar-fires  of  the  future. 

THE   CONCEPTIONS   OF   DEATH    AND    IMMORTALITY 
IN  ANCIENT  EQYPT. 

Ski-  or  Seth,  whom  the  Greeks  called  Typhon,  the 
nefarious  demon  of  death -and  evil  in  Egyptian  myth- 
ology, is  characterised  as  "a  strong  god  (a-pahuti), 
whose  anger  is  to  be  feared."  The  inscriptions  call 
him  ••  the  powerful  one  of  Thebes,"  and  '■  Ruler  of  the 
South."  He  is  conceived  as  the  sun 
that  kills  with  the  arrows  of  heat  ; 
he  is  the  slayer,  and  iron  is  called 
the  bones  of  Typhon.  The  hunted 
animals  are  consecrated  to  him  ;  and 
his  symbols  are  the  griffin  ( akhekh ), 
the  hippopotamus,  the  crocodile, 
the  swine,  the  tortoise,  and,  above 
all,  the  serpent  apapi  (in  Greek 
■'apophis").  who  was  thought  to 
await  the  dving  man  in  the  domain 
of  the  god  Atmu  (also  called  Tmu 
or  Tum),  who  represents  the  sun 
below  the  western  horizon. 

Set's  pictures  are  easily  recog- 
nised by  his  long,  erect,  and  square-tipped  ears  and 
his  proboscis-like  snout,  which  are  said  to  indicate  the 
head  of  a  fabulous  animal  called  Orj'x. 


Set. 
(.\ftcr  Brussch.' 


Al'APl      Al'OPHI 


The  consort  and  feminine  counterpart  of  Set  is 
called  Taour  or  Taourt.  She  appears  commonlj'  as 
a  hippopotamus  in  erect  posture,  her  back  covered 
with  the  skin  and  tail  of  a  crocodile. 

Set  is  often  contrasted  with  Osiris.  Set  was  the 
deity  of  the  desert,  of  drought  and  feverish  thirst,  and 
of  the  sterile  ocean  ;  Osiris  represents  moisture,  the 
Nile,  the  fertilising  powers  and  life.      Plutarch  says  ■ 

"The  moon  (representing  Osiris)  is,  with  his  fertilising  and  fe- 
cundative  light,  favorable  to  the  produce  of  animals  and  growth  of 
plants;  the  sun,  however  (representing  Typhon),  is  determined, 
with  its  unmitigated  fire,  to  overheat  and  parch  animals  ;  it  renders 
by  its  blaze  a  great  part  of  the  earth  uninhabitable  and  conquers 
frequently  even  the  moon  (viz.  Osiris)." 

As  an  enemy  to  life  Set  is  identified  with  all  de- 
struction of  forms.     He  is  the  waning  of  the  moon,  the 


decrease  of  the  waters  of  the  Nile,  and  the  setting  of 
the  sun.  Thus  he  was  called  the  left  or  black  eye  of 
the  decreasing  sun,  governing  the  year  from  the  sum- 
mer solstice  to  the  winter  solstice,  which  is  contrasted 
to  the  right  or  bright  eye  of  Hor,  the  increasing  sun, 
which  symbolises  the  growth  of  life  and  the  spread  of 
light  from  the  winter  solstice  to  the  summer  solstice. 

Set  was  not  always  nor  to  all  Egyptians  alike  a 
Satanic  deity.  He  was  officially  worshipped  in  an 
imimportant  province  west  of  the  Nile,  but  here  was 
the  natural  starting-point  of  the  road  to  the  northern 
oasis.  The  inhabitants,  who  were  mostly  guides  to 
desert  caravans,  had  good  reasons  to  remain  on  good 
terms  with  Set,  the  Lord  of  the  desert. 

Further,  we  know  that  a  great  temple  was  devoted 
to  Set,  as  the  god  of  war,  in  Tanis,  near  the  swamps 


Forms  oy  Taoi  kt.     (-^ft(r  Rawliiison.  I 

between  the  eastern  branches  of  the  delta,  an  impor- 
tant town  of  the  frontier,  and  during  the  time  of  inva- 
sion the  probable  residence  of  the  foreign  rule  of  the 
Hyksos  and  the  Hittites,  who  identified  their  own  god 
Sutech  with  the  Egyptian  Set.  But  even  among  the 
Hyksos,  Set  was  revered  as  the  awful  God  of  irresist- 
ible power,  of  brute  force,  of  war,  and  of  destruction. 

There  is  an  old  wall-picture  of  Karnak  belonging 
to  the  era  of  the  eighteenth  dynasty  in  which  the  god 
Set  appears  as  an  instructor  of  King  Thothmes  HI.  in 
the  craft  of  archery.^ 

Set)'  I.,  the  second  king  of  the  nineteenth  dynasty, 
the  shepherd  kings,  derives  his  name  from  the  god 
Set — a  sign  of  the  high  honor  in  which  he  was  held 
among  the  shepherd  kings  :  and  indeed  we  are  in- 
formed that  the}'  regarded  Set,  or  Sutech,  as  the  onlj' 
true  God,  the  sole  deit}',  who  alone  was  worthy  to  re- 
ceive divine  honors. 

If  the  time  of  the  shepherd  kings  is  to  be  identified 
with  the  settlement  of  Jacob's  sons  in  Egypt,  and  if 
the  monotheism  of  the  Hyksos  is  the  root  of  Moses's 
religion,  what  food  for  thought  lies  in  the  fact  that  the 
same  awe  of  a  fearful  power  that  confronts  us   in  life 

1  See  Lepsius,  DtuhuifiUr.  \'oI.  V..  p.  36.  The  picture  is  repioduceii  in 
outline  hv  .Ado|f"  Hrinnn  in  I'is  l-i/c  in  Ancient  Ei^y/'t.  Enf;]-  tinns,,  p.  2.S2. 


XMB    OPEN     COURT. 


4667 


XJ^ 


1  'i'^^ 


:ftrillMlAlslMMilllMlM 


TMiBW!ll!lillll!i;:iilii:,i!i!Bilii 


Thk  WhiGHiNti  OF  THK  Hkaki  IN  I  UK  Hall  uf  TkiTH.     (After  Lcp^iubS  rcpiuihuniuii  ul  the  Turin  papyrus 


The  Abodk  of  Hliss.     (After  Lepsius's  repruduction  uf  the  Turin  papyrus.) 


4668 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


changes  among  the  Egyptians  into  the  demonology  of 
Set  and  among  the  IsraeHtes  into  the  cult  of  Yahveh  ! 

In  spite  of  the  terror  which  he  inspired,  Set  was 
originally  one  of  the  great  deities,  and  he  was  the  most^ 
important  god,  who  had  to  be  feared  and  propitiated. 

Says  Heinrich  Brugsch  (R,-h'gioii  iiiul  Mytho/oi;ic-  dcr 
allfti  Acgyptt-r,  p.  706): 

■■The  Book  of  the  Dead  of  the  ancient  Egyptians  and  the 
numerous  inscriptions  of  the  recently  opened  pyramids  are.  in- 
deed, nothing  but  talismans  against  the  imagined  Seth  and  his  asso- 
ciates. Such  is  also.  I  am  sorry  to  say,  the  greater  part  of  the  an- 
cient literature  that  has  come  down  to  us." 

When  a  man  dies,  he  passes  the  western  horizon 
and  descends  through  Atmu's  abode  into  Amenti,  the 
Nether  World.  The  salvation  of  his  personality  de- 
pends, according  to  Egyptian  belief,  upon  the  preser- 
vation of  his  "double,"  or  his  "other  self,"  which,  re- 
maining in  the  tomb,  resides  in  the  mummy  or  in  any 
statue  of  his  body. 

The  double,  just  as  if  it  were  alive,  is  supposed  to 
be  in  need  of  food  and  drink,  which  is  provided  for  by 
incantations.  Magic  formulas  satisfy  the  hunger  and 
thirst  of  the  double  in  the  tomb,  and  frustrate,  through 
invocations  of  the  good  deities,  all  the  evil  intentions 
of  Set  and  his  host.  We  read  in  an  inscription  of  Edfu 
(Brugsch,  Religion  iind  Myihologic  dcr  alien  Aegypter, 
p.  707)  : 

■■  Hail  Ra,  thou  art  high  in  thy  height ; 

While  Apophis  is  deep  in  its  depth  ! 

Hail  Ra,  thou  art  radiant  in  thy  radiance. 

While  there  is  darkness  in  the  eyes  of  Apophis  ! 

Hail  Ra,  good  is  thy  goodness. 

While  Apophis  is  bad  in  its  badness ! 

The  dread  of  hunger,  thirst,  and  other  ills,  or  even 
of  destruction  which  their  double  might  suffer  in  the 
tomb,  was  a  perpetual  source  of  fearful  anticipations  to 
every  pious  Egyptian.  The  anxiety  to  escape  the  tor- 
tures of  their  future  state  led  to  the  embalming  of  the 
dead  and  to  the  building  of  the  pyramids.  Yet,  in 
spite  of  all  superstitions  and  the  ridiculous  pomp  be- 
stowed upon  the  burial  of  the  body  we  find  passages 
in  the  inscriptions  which  give  evidence  that  in  the 
opinion  of  many  a  thoughtful  man  the  best  and  indeed 
the  sole  means  of  protection  against  the  typhonic  in- 
fluences after  death  was  a  life  of  righteousness.  This 
is  forcibl}'  expressed  in  the  illustration  of  Chapter 
CXX\'.  of  the  Book  of  the  Dead,  which  is  here  repro- 
duced according  to  Lepsius's  edition  of  the  Turin 
papyrus.  (Republished  b\'  Putnam,  Book  of  ilie  Dead.  ) 

Ma,Mhe  goddess  of  truth  and  '•  the  directress  of 
the  gods,"  decorated  with  an  erect  feather,  which  is 
her  emblem,  ushers  the  departed  one  into  the  Hall  of 
Truth.  Kneeling,  the  departed  one  invokes  the  forty- 
two  assessors  by  name  and  disclaims  having  committed 


l.\lbO  called    Mafi'l,  01,  ■'llif    luu   uuUls," 

ucllier  worldb. 


I    ul'    lllU    upper     itiul    Ul    lllf 


any  one  of  the  forty-two  sins  of  the  Egyptian  moral 
code.  Omitting  the  names  of  the  assessors,  we  quote 
here  an  extract  of  the  confession.  The  departed  one 
saj's  : 

■'  I  did  not  do  evil, — I  did  not  commit  violence. — I  did  not  tor- 
ment any  heart. — I  did  not  steal. — I  did  not  cause  any  one  to  be 
treacherously  killed. — I  did  not  lessen  the  offerings. — I  did  not  do 
any  harm. — I  did  not  utter  a  lie.  —  I  did  not  make  any  one  weep.  —  I 
did  not  commit  acts  of  self  pollution. — I  did  not  fornicate. — I  did 
not  trespass. — I  did  not  commit  any  perfidy. — I  did  no  damage  to 
cultivated  land. — I  was  no  accuser. — I  was  never  angry  without 
sufficient  reason. — I  did  not  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  words  of  truth. — 
I  did  not  commit  witchcraft. — I  did  not  blaspheme. — I  did  not  cause 
a  slave  to  be  maltreated  by  his  master. — I  did  not  despise  God  in 
my  heart." 

Then  the  departed  one  places  his  heart  on  the  bal- 
ance of  truth,  where  it  is  weighed  by  the  hawk-headed 
Hor  and  the  jackal-headed  Anubis,  "the  director  of 
the  weight,"  the  weight  being  shaped  in  the  figure  of 
the  goddess  of  truth.  Thoth,  the  ibis-headed  scribe 
of  the  gods,  reads  Hor's  report  to  Osiris,  and  if  it  an- 
nounces that  the  weight  of  the  heart  is  equal  to  truth, 
Thoth  orders  it  to  be  placed  back  into  the  breast  of  the 
departed  one,  which  act  indicates  his  return  to  life. 
If  the  departed  one  escapes  all  the  dangers  that  await 
him  in  his  descent  to  Amenti,  and  if  the  weight  of  his 
heart  is  not  found  wanting,  he  is  allowed  to  enter  into 
"the  boat  of  the  sun,"  in  which  he  is  conducted  to  the 
Elysian  fields  of  the  blessed. 

Should  the  evil  deeds  of  the  departed  one  outweigh 
his  good  deeds,  he  was  sentenced  to  be  devoured  by 
Amemit  (i.  e.  the  devourer),  which  is  also  called  "  the 
beast  of  Amenti,"  or  was  sent  back  to  the  upper  world 
in  the  shape  of  a  pig. 

The  picture  of  the  Hall  of  Truth  as  preserved  in 
the  Turin  papyrus  shows  Osiris  with  the  atef- crown  on 
his  head  and  the  crook  and  whip  in  his  hands.  Above 
the  beast  of  Amenti  we  see  the  two  genii  Shai  and 
Ranen,  which  represent  Misery  and  Happiness.  The 
four  funeral  genii,  called  Amset,  Hapi,  Tuamutef,  and 
Kebhsnauf,  hover  over  an  altar  richly  laden  with  offer- 
ings. The  frieze  shows  twelve  groups  of  ursus  snakes, 
flames  and  feathers  of  truth  ;  on  both  sides  scales  are 
poised  by  a  baboon  who  is  the  sacred  animal  of  Thoth, 
and  in  the  middle  Atmu,  stretches  out  his  hands  over 
the  right  and  left  eye,  symbolising  sunset  and  sunrise, 
death  and  resivrrection. 

While  the  double  stays  in  the  tomb,  the  soul,  repre- 
sented as  a  bird  with  a  human  head,  soars  to  heaven 
where  it  becomes  one  with  all  the  great  gods.  The 
liberated   soul   exclaims   (Erman,  //'.,  p.  343  et  seq.); 

'■I  am  the  god  Atum,  I  who  was  alone, 

I  am  the  god  Ra  at  his  first  appearing, 

I  am  the  great  god  who  created  himself,  and  created  his  name, 
■'  Lord  of  the  gods,  who  has  not  his  equal," 

I  was  yesterday  anil  I  know  llie  tu-morrow.  The  battlefield  of 
the  gods  was  made  when  1  spoko,  ,  ,  . 


thp:   open   court. 


4669 


1  come  into  my  home.  I  comt-  intu  my  n.itivf  (:il\  , 

1  commune  daily  with  my  father  Alum. 

My  impurities  are  driven  out,  and  the  sin  that  \va;s  in  me  is 
conquered.  .  .  . 

Ye  gods  above,  reach  out  your  hands,  I  am  lil^e  you.  I  have 
become  one  of  you. 

I  commune  daily  with  my  father  .Vtum  " 

Having  become  one  with  the  gods,  the  departed 
soul  suffers  the  same  fate  as  Osiris.  Like  him,  it  is 
slain  b}'  Set,  and  Hke  Osiris,  it  is  reborn  in  Hor  who 
revenges  the  death  of  his  father.  At  the  same  time 
the  soul  is  supposed  frequently  to  visit  the  double  of 
the  departed  man  in  the  tomb,  as  depicted  in  the  tomb 
of  the  scribe  Ani. 


:*'jCa-^^  ginijLaiw™w»?'wi»iwrwuiilii_;  1  ■« 


li.i  V,  vw*-.^  .".'y 


Thf.  Soul  \'isiting  the  Mvmmv  in  thk  Tomi;.     (Froin  the  .\ni  Papyrus,  t 

The  Abode  of  Bliss  (in  Egyptian  Sfi/t/a/  aauni  \ 
also  written  aa/ilii),  as  depicted  in  the  Turin  papyrus  of 
the  Book  of  the  Dead,  shows  us  the  departed  one  with 
his  famil}',  and  Thoth,  the  scribe  of  the  gods,  behind 
them,  in  the  act  of  sacrificing  to  three  gods,  the  latter 
being  decorated  with  the  feather  of  truth.  He  then 
crosses  the  water.  On  the  other  side,  he  offers  a  per- 
fuming pan  to  his  soul,  which  appears  in  the  shape  of 
a  man-headed  bird.  There  are  also  the  three  mummy- 
form  gods  of  the  horizon,  with  an  altar  of  offerings  be- 
fore the  hawk,  sy'mbolising  Ra,  "the  master  of  heaven.  " 
In  the  middle  part  of  the  picture  the  departed  one 
ploughs,  sows,  reaps,  threshes,  stores  up  the  harvest, 
and  celebrates  a  thanksgiving  with  offerings  to  the 
Nile.  The  lower  part  shows  two  barks,  one  for  Ra 
Harmakhis,  the  other  one  for  Unefru  ;  and  the  three 
islands  :  the  first  is  inhabited  by  Ra,  the  second  is 
called  the  regenerating  place  of  the  gods,  the  third  is 
the  residence  of  Shu,  Tefnut,  and  Seb. 

A  verj'  instructive  illustration  of  Eg3-ptian  belief  is 
afforded  us  in  the  well  preserved  tomb  of   Rekhmara, 

1  Botti  pictures,  "The  Weighing  of  tlie  Heart  in  the  Hall  nt  Truth,"  and 
"The  Abode  of  Truth,"  are  frequently  represented  in  tombs  and  papyri. 
There  is  a  beautiful  reproduction  in  color  in  the  Book  of  the  Dead.  Fac  simile 
of  tiif  Papyrus  of  Afii  ifi  t/it-  Britisit  Mitst'iiiti,  London,  1S94.  See  vignettes  3 
and  4:  and  also  35.  The  illustration  on  this  page,  "Ani's  Soul  Visiting  the 
Mummy  in  the  Tomb."  is  reproduced  from  \'ignette  35  of  this  same  book. 


the  prefect  of  Thebes  under  Tliothmes  111.  of  the 
eighteenth  dynasty,  the  inscriptions  of  which  have 
been  translated  into  I'rench  b\'  Ph.  \'ire\'  and  pub- 
lished in  i88g  b)'  the  Mission  Aiiiicolo^fiijiic  Fraiieaisc. 
The  visitor  to  tlie  tomb  enters  through  a  tioor  on  the 
eastern  end  :  when  proceeding  westward  we  see  Rekh- 
mara on  the  left  wall  pass  from  life  to  death.  Here 
he  attends  to  the  aflairs  of  government,  there  he  re- 
ceives in  the  name  of  Pharao  the  homage  of  foreign 
prince's  ;  further  on  he  organises  the  work  of  building 
magazines  at  Thebes.  He  superintends  the  artists  en- 
gaged at  the  Temple  of  Amnion  and  is  then  buried  in 
pomp.  At  last  he  assumes  the  appearance  of  the 
Osiris  of  the  West  and  receives  sacrifices  in  his  capa- 
city as  a  god.  We  are  now  confronted  with  a  blind 
door  through  which  Rekhmara- Osiris  descends  into 
the  W'est  and  returns  to  life  toward  the  East  as  the 
Osiris  of  the  East.  Through  funeral  sacrifices  and  in- 
cantations his  double  is  again  invested  with  the  use  of 
the  various  senses  ;  he  is  honored  at  a  festival  and 
graciously  received  by  Pharao  ;  in  a  word,  he  acts  as 
he  did  in  life.  When  we  return  to  the  entrance  where 
we  started,  Rekhmara  receives  the  offerings  of  his 
famil)'  and  inspects  the  progress  of  the  works  to  which 
he  attended  in  life. 

In  the  tomb  of  Rekhmara,  Set  receives  offerings 
like  other  great  gods.  The  departed  one  is  called  the 
inheritor  of  Set  (Suti),  and  is  purified  by  both  Hor  and 
Set.  As  an  impersonation  of  Osiris,  the  departed  one 
is  approached  and  slain  hj-  Set,  wlio  then  is  vanquished 
in  the  shape  of  sacrificial  animals  which  are  slaugh- 
tered. But  when  the  departed  one  is  restored  to  the 
use  of  his  senses  and  mental  powers.  Set  again  plays 
an  important  part,  and  appears  throughout  as  one  of 
the  four  points  of  the  compass,  which  are  "  Hor,  Set, 
Thoth,  and  Seb."  ' 

According  to  the  original  legend.  Set  represented 
the  death  of  the  sun,  and  as  a  personalit}'  he  is  de- 
scribed as  the  murderer  of  Osiris,  who  was  finall}-  recon- 
ciled with  Hor.  He  remained,  however,  a  powerful 
god,  and  had  important  functions  to  perform  for  the 
souls  of  the  dead.  Above  all,  he  must  bind  and  con- 
quer the  serpent  Apophis  (Apap),  as  we  read  in  the 
Book  of  the  Dead  (io8,  4  and  5): 

"  They  use  Set  to  circumvent  it  [the  serpent]  ;  they  use  him 
to  throw  an  iron  chain  around  its  neck,  to  make  it  vomit  all  that  it 
swallowed." 

In  the  measure  that  the  allegorical  meaning  of  the 
Osiris  legend  is  obliterated,  and  that  Osiris  is  conceived 
as  a  real  person  who  as  the  representative  of  moral 
goodness,  succumbs  in  his  struggle  with  evil  and  dies, 
but  is  resurrected  in  his  son  Hor,  Set  is  more  and 
more  deprived  of  his  divinitv  and  begins  to  be  re- 
garded as  an  evil  demon. 

1  Lc  Tomhcau  lie  Rckhviarn,  bv  Ph.  \'irev.     Paris  :  Le  Roui.     i88g. 


4670 


XHE    OPEN     COURT. 


The  reign  of  Men-Kau-Ka,  the  builder  of  tlie  third 
pyramid  of  Gizeh(3633  B.C., according  to  Brugsch,and 
4100  B.  C,  according  to  Marietta),  must  have  changed 
the  character  of  the  old  Egyptian  religion.  "The 
prayer  to  Osiris  on  his  coffin  lid,"  says  RawHnson  (Vol. 
II.,  p.  67).  "marks  a  new  religious  development  in 
the  annals  of  Egypt.  The  absorption  of  the  justified 
soul  in  Osiris,  the  cardinal  doctrine  of  the  Ritual  of 
the  Dead,  makes  its  appearance  here  for  the  first  time.  "* 

According  to  the  older  canon  Set  is  alwa3's  men- 
tioned among  the  great  deities,  but  later  on  he  is  no 
longer  recognised  as  a  god  and  his  name  is  replaced  bj' 
that  of  some  other  god.  The  Egyptians  of  the  twenty- 
second  dynasty  went  so  far  as  to  erase  Set's  name  in 
many  of  the  older  inscriptions  and  even  change  the 
names  of  former  kings  that  were  compounds  of  Set, 
such  as  Set-nekht  and  others.  The  crocodile-headed 
Ceb  (also  called  Seb  or  Keb)  and  similar  deities,  in  so 
far  as  their  nature  was  suggestive  of  Set,  suffered  a  sim- 
ilar degradation  ;  and  this,  we  must  assume,  was  the 
natural  consequence  of  an  increased  confidence  in  the 
final  victory  of  the  influence  of  the  gods  of  goodness 
and  virtue. 

Plutarch,  speaking  of  his  own  days,  says  (  0?i  fsis 
and  Osiris,  Chapter  XXX.)  that: 

"The  power  of  Typhon,  although  dimmed  and  crushed,  is 
still  in  its  last  agonies  and  convulsions.  The  Egyptians  occasion- 
ally humiliate  and  insult  him  at  certain  fe'.5tivals.  They  neverthe- 
less propitiate  and  soothe  him  by  means  of  certain  sacrifices," 

Set,  the  great  and  strong  god  of  prehistoric  times, 
was  converted  into  Satan  with  the  rise  of  the  worship 
of  Osiris.  Set  was  strong  enough  to  slay  Osiris,  as 
night  overcomes  the  light  of  the  sun  ;  but  the  sun  is 
born  again  in  the  child-god  Hor,  who  conquers  Set 
and  forces  him  to  make  the  old  serpent  of  death  sur- 
render its  spoil.  As  the  sun  sets,  to  rise  again,  so  man 
dies  to  be  reborn.  The  evil  power  is  full  of  awe,  but 
a  righteous  cause  cannot  be  crushed,  and,  in  spite  of 
death,  life  is  immortal.  i'.  c. 


NOTES. 

There  is  a  humorous  controversy  going  on  now  in  Chicago 
concerning  the  fatherhood  of  God.  Dr.  .-Alfred  J,  Canfield,  as 
would  be  natural  for  a  Universalist  ministe.-,  has  insisted  en  the 
belief  that  we  are  all  children  of  the  .\lmighty,  and  Dr.  Henstn, 
the  well-known  and  eloquent  Baptist  minister,  whose  church 
is  in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  Dr.  Canfield's.  insists  that 
the  mass  of  mankind  are  the  children  of  the  Devil,  in  so  far  as  the 
Devil  and  not  God  inspires  their  thoughts,  and  Dr.  Hensen  defies 
the  whole  world  to  prove  that  there  is  any  passage  in  the  Bible  that 
guarantees  the  Universalistic  belief.  Almost  all  the  clergyman 
have  taken  up  the  subject,  and  Dr.  Barrows  actually  proposes 
Bible  passages  which  are  a  clear  evidence  that  according  to  Chris- 
tians notions  God  is  to  be  considered  as  the  tathi  r  of  all,  and  not 
the  Devil.  An  irreverent  reporter  of  one  of  the  Chicago  papers 
suggests  that  if  the  mass  of  mankind  are  really  children  of  the 
Devil,  it  would  be  their  moral  duty  to  give  themselves  up  to  devil- 
1  R.^\vlinson  quotes  from  Birch,  A'irirvt  F^yf-t.  p    41. 


tries,  for  it  is  written  in  the  Bible,  "  Children  obey  your  parents  " 
It  goes  without  saying  that  we  sympathise  with  the  clergymen 
who  insist  on  the  fatherhood  of  God,  but  at  the  same  time  we  can- 
not help  admiring  the  ready  wit  and  humor,  sometimes  involun- 
tary, with  which  Dr.  Hensen  defends  the  idea  of  the  fatherhood 
of  the  Devil. 

We  think  we  are  very  much  advanced  beyond  the  Dark  Ages, 
and  yet  we  have  not  only  in  the  Far  West  all  kinds  of  lynching 
and  all  kinds  of  crime  that  naturally  creep  out  in  half  civilised 
communities,  but  the  proposition  to  introduce:  a  whipping-post  for 
wi'"e-beating,  chicken-stealing,  and  other  petty  crimes  has  been  of 
late  seriously  made  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  the  seat  of  our 
Government.  The  idea  is  the  invention  of  a  grand  jury,  and  Judge 
Bradley,  when  informing  them  that  it  was  not  their  business  to 
make  such  propositions,  indorsed  it  at  the  same  time  and  recom- 
mended that  it  be  proposed  to  Congress,  adding  that,  in  his  opinion, 
it  would  be  the  most  effective  means  of  stopping  a  number  of  petty 
crimes,  with  which  under  present  circumstances  the  courts  of . 
Washington  are  unable  to  deal.  The  institution  exists  in  Dela- 
ware, but  as  the  crimes  for  which  it  was  intended  have  rapidly 
disappeared,  it  fas  fallen  into  disuse. 

There  is  at  present  an  e.sposition  of  the  drawings  of  the  chil- 
dren of  the  Chicago  public  schools  in  the  Art  Palace,  which  it  will 
be  worth  while  for  every  citizen  of  Chicago  to  inspect.  While 
visiting  the  World's  Fair  in  Paris  in  i88g  I  had  occasion  to  notice 
a  greater  freedom  and  better  artistic  taste  in  drawing  and  painting 
in  the  French  schools  than  in  either  the  German  or  English 
schools.  In  travelling  through  France  I  happened  to  inspect 
school  exhibitions  made  in  the  City  Hall  at  Nancy,  which  con- 
vinced me  that  the  specimens  of  the  school  exhibition  in  Paris 
were  genuine  The  disadvantage  of  the  German  and  English 
schools  lies  in. their  strict  application  of  the  method  of  outline 
drawing,  which  imparts  to  the  picture  a  rigidity  tbat  reminds  us 
of  the  categorical  imperative  of  Kant.  It  gives  the  impression  of 
obedience  to  prescribed  duty  but  is  not  a  reproduction  of  the  soft 
transitions  such  as  are  actually  before  us  in  nature  There  is 
something  of  the  stiffness  of  the  corpora!  on  parade,  and  the  nat- 
ural nonchalance  of  reality  is  wanting  In  a  word,  precision  is 
exaggerated,  and  method  has  become  pure  technique-  The  schools 
of  Chicago  have  of  late  adopted  the  French  method,  and  have  suc- 
cessfully amplified  and  improved  its  application.  Drawing-lessons 
are  no  longer  a  mere  exercise  of  the  hand.  They  have  become  a 
training  of  the  whole  mind  of  the  child.  It  is  taught  in  connexion 
with  both  natural  science  and  lessons  in  imagination.  The  chil- 
dren are  told  a  story  and  they  illustrate  it.  Beginners  are  apt  to 
make  illustrations  in  Indian  fashion  but  further  progress  is  rapid. 
They  learn  in  natural  history  the  transformations  of  the  cater- 
pillar and  they  draw  the  chrysalis  and  the  butterfly.  A  few  toy 
blocks  in  definite  positions  are  presented  to  them  and  they  draw 
what  they  imagine  them  to  be,  rocks,  or  houses,  or  churches,  or 
barns,  giving  them  such  additional  decoration  as  they  see  fit. 

THE    OPEN    COURT. 

"  THE   MONON,"   .^2t   DEARF.ORN   ST.. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS.  POST  OFFICE  DRAWER  F. 

E.  C.   HEGELER,   Publisher  DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor , 

TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION 


SI. DO  PER  YEAR. 


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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  424. 

A  HIGH  PRIEST  OF  NATURE.      Dr    Felix  L.  Oswald.   4663 
THE  CONCEPTIONS  OF  DEATH  AND  IMMORTAL- 
ITY IN   ANCIENT  EGYPT.      Editor 4666 

NOTES 4670 


47 


The  Open  Court. 


A  "SSTEEKLY  JOXJENAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  425.     (Vol.  IX.— 42  ) 


CHICAGO,    OCTOBER   17,   1895. 


I  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
I  Single  Copies,  5  Cents, 


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THE  SONG  OF  SONGS. 

BV  THE   REV.    T.    .\,    GOODWIN,    13.  D. 
I.     HISTORY    OF    THE    HOOK. 

To  THE  common  reader  of  the  Bible,  and  little  less 
to  the  careful  Bible  student,  the  book  known  as  the 
Song  of  Solomon  is  a  perpetual  enigma.  Not  seem- 
ing to  meet  any  of  the  supposed  purposes  for  which 
the  Bible  was  written,  many  good  men,  including 
many  whose  business  it  is  to  teach  Bible  truth,  seldom 
if  ever  read  it  as  they  read  other  Scriptures,  and  not  a 
few  hold  that  its  incorporation  into  the  sacred  canon 
is  somebody's  blunder.  It  is  not  difficult  to  account 
for  this,  when  we  call  to  mind  the  once  prevailing 
opinion  of  what  the  Bible  is  and  what  it  is  for.  Being 
found  in  that  collection  of  histories  and  prophecies 
and  songs,  which  by  the  way  of  pre-eminence  we  call 
the  Bible,  and  which  is  held  sacred  b\'  devout  and 
learned  Christians  and  Hebrews  as  the  repository  of 
correct  doctrine  and  of  safe  rules  of  conduct  ;  and 
seeming  to  contain  nothing  that  may  be  regarded  as 
either  doctrinal  or  didactic,  Bible  students  as  well  as 
the  common  Bible  reader  have  been  put  to  their  wits' 
end  to  find  a  place  for  it. 

During  the  Middle  Ages  the  dogma  of  the  plenary 
inspiration  of  the  Scriptures  was  promulgated  with 
such  pertinacity,  that  long  after  the  Bible  became  the 
property  of  the  common  people  this  figment  held  a 
place  in  their  thoughts.  Even  as  late  as  the  days  of 
King  James  this  was  the  case  to  such  an  extent  that  the 
translators  whom  he  had  chosen  to  prepare  an  author- 
ised version  so  rendered  Paul's  language  to  Timothy 
as  to  read,  "All  Scripture  is  given  by  inspiration  of 
God."  This  practically  settled  the  question  with  the 
common  reader,  so  that  the  Song  of  Solomon  and  the 
Book  of  Ruth  were  placed  on  a  level  with  the  proph- 
ecies of  Isaiah  and  Daniel  and  the  writings  of  Moses 
and  of  David,  as  being  designed  to  teacli  doctrine  or  to 
administer  reproof,  or  to  instruct  in  right  living. 

All  down  the  ages  following,  individual  scholars 
protested  against  this  rendering,  but  their  protests 
went  unheeded,  as  unworthy  of  acceptance  in  the  face 
of  the  opinion  of  the  learned  commission  of  the  king, 
who,  in  the  popular  thought,  were  little  if  any  less  in- 
spired than  the  sacred  writers  themselves.  This  com- 
pelled  Bible  .scholars   to   adapt  the    "Song"   to    the 


general  purpose  of  inspired  Scripture,  so  that  it  might 
be  profitable  in  some  way  "for  doctrine,  for  reproof, 
for  correction,  and   for  instruction   in  righteousness." 

One  can  hardly  review  with  complacency  the  many 
schemes  of  Bible  teachers  to  bring  this  book  into  line 
with  Isaiah  and  Daniel  and  the  Psalms,  so  that  with 
them  and  other  inspired  books  it  may  refer  to  the  Mes- 
siah, and  may  instruct  the  Church  in  things  spiritual. 
By  some  it  has  been  regarded  as  an  allegory,  by  oth- 
ers a  parable,  whose  hidden  meaning  might  be  guessed 
at,  if  not  comprehended.  In  keeping  with  this  thought 
almost  from  the  first  edition  of  the  authorised  version, 
the  editors  of  the  several  editions  have  seemed  to  vie 
with  each  other  in  ingenious  suggestions  as  to  the  sig- 
nification of  this  or  that  sentence  or  paragraph  ;  and 
preachers,  from  the  unlearned  rustic,  in  ministering  to 
his  uneducated  and  emotional  flock,  to  the  profound 
doctor  of  divinity  in  his  city  pulpit,  preaching  to  men 
of  culture,  have  found  spiritual  "instruction"  in  such 
passages  as  "  I  have  put  off  my  coat,  how  can  I  put  it 
on?"  "  Thy  teeth  are  like  a  flock  of  sheep."  "The 
head  upon  thee  is  like  Carmel."  "We  have  a  little 
sister  and  she  hath  no  breasts." 

The  sermons  may  all  have  been  good  enough  and 
may  have  conveyed  important  lessons  to  the  hearers, 
but  they  might  have  been  "  founded "  as  well  upon 
some  passage  in  Milton  or  Shakespeare  or  Dante  as 
upon  these.  Not  the  least  objectionable  use  of  this 
Song,  or  parts  of  it,  is  that  made  by  hymn-writers. 
Who  can  enumerate  the  hymns  that  find  their  chief 
attraction  in  poetic  changes  upon  the  rose  of  Sharon, 
the  lily  of  the  valley,  the  turtle  dove,  the  one  alto- 
gether lovely,  or  some  other  similar  phrase  in  this 
book?  If  all  the  hymns  which  are  inspired  by  some 
passage  from  the  Song  of  Solomon  were  expurgated 
from  some  collections  of  hymns  there  would  be  little 
left  worth  singing.  Many  of  them  are  beautiful,  but 
their  beauty  does  not  consist  in  the  thought  of  the  text 
as  it  stands  in  its  proper  meaning. 

It  is  positively  ludicrous,  if  the  following  exposi- 
tion of  the  Song  be  the  correct  one,  to  read  the  head- 
ings of  the  chapters  and  the  running  titles  in  our  com- 
mon family  Bibles,  which  are  intended  to  give  a  clue 
to  the  meaning  of  the  text.  They  run  thus  :  "The 
Church's   love  for  Christ,"  "She  confesseth   her  de- 


4672 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


forniit}-,"  "Christ  directs  her  to  the  Shepherd's  tent, 
and  showeth  His  love  to  her,"  "Having  a  taste  of 
Christ's  love,  is  sick  of  love,"  and  so  on,  calling  the 
lover's  passionate  description  of  his  affianced,  "Christ 
showing  the  graces  of  the  Church,  and  His  love  towards 
her,''  though  elsewhere  they  have  the  Church  confes- 
sing her  deformity. 

It  is  plain  that  any  intelligent  exposition  of  this 
book,  or,  for  that  matter,  of  any  part  of  the  sacred 
Scriptures,  must  be  along  the  line  which  repudiates 
the  .figment  of  Plenary  Inspiration,  at  whose  doors 
most,  if  not  all,  the  obscurit)'  which  envelops  this 
Song  of  Solomon  lies,  as  well  as  do  many  indefensi- 
ble dogmas,  which  have  the  same  paternity.  Not  only 
does  the  Bible  nowhere  make  such  a  claim  for  itself, 
but  the  structure  of  the  book  as  a  whole,  and  of  its 
contents  taken  separately,  are  evidences  against  the 
assumption. 

The  advent  of  the  revised  version,  the  product  of 
a  ripe  scholarship  that  cannot  be  gainsaid,  has  greatly 
aided  in  the  proper  understanding  of  this  Song,  as  well 
as  of  many  other  parts  of  our  sacred  Scriptures.  There 
is  a  far-reaching  difference  between  "All  Scripture  is 
given  by  inspiration  of  God,"  as  the  authorised  ver- 
sion has  it,  and  "Every  Scripture,  inspired  of  God," 
as  it  appears  in  the  revised  version.  The  scope  of 
this  treatise  does  not  require  the  elaboration  of  this 
difference.  It  is  sufficient  for  its  purpose  to  state  that 
the  plain  inference  is  that  Paul  and  the  Jews  of  his 
period,  and  of  course  the  Christians  also,  held  that 
some  portions  of  the  sacred  writings,  as  they  then  pos- 
sessed them,  were  not  so  inspired  as  to  be  special!)' 
profitable  for  doctrine  or  for  reproof,  or  for  instruction 
in  righteousness. 

The  assumption  that  Solomon  was  himself  the 
author  of  the  Song  has  very  little  to  sustain  it.  That 
it  is  called  the  Song  of  Solomon,  or  the  Song  of  Songs, 
which  is  Solomon's,  proves  nothing.  He  could  not 
have  written  it,  unless  the  remorse  which  possessed 
him  towards  the  close  of  his  misspent  life,  and  which 
led  him  to  pronounce  that  life  a  failure,  implied  more 
than  remorse  usually  does.  The  author  was  not  even 
a  friend  of  Solomon's.  The  whole  poem  is  a  scathing 
rebuke  to  all  his  social  and  domestic  methods.  It  is 
quite  as  likely  to  be  the  product  of  some  man  or  wo- 
man a  hundred  years  or  more  later  than  Solomon's 
time,  and  more  likely  to  be  that  of  a  woman  than  of  a 
man,  judging  from  the  tender  pathos  of  many  portions 
of  the  poem  which  very  few  men  could  exhibit.  The 
author,  whether  male  or  female,  whether  living  near 
Solomon's  time  or  much  later,  gave  birth  to  this  un- 
dying poem  and  then  died  leaving  nothing  else  worth 
preserving,  not  even  a  name. 

It  was  probably  founded  upon  some  fact  in  the  life 
of   that   lecherous  king,  which   had  been   transmitted 


through  generations  by  authentic  history  or  by  tradi- 
tion or  both,  out  of  which  the  gifted  poet  built  this 
most  admirable  production  as  Longfellow  built  his 
Miles  Standish  out  of  the  traditions  and  history  of  the 
early  pilgrim  fathers.  Its  being  called  the  Song  of 
Solomon  no  more  proves  or  even  suggests  that  Solo- 
mon was  its  author  than  will  the  Sa/ig  of  Hiawatha 
prove  or  suggest  three  thousand  years  hence  that  Hia- 
watha was  the  author  of  the  poem  which  this  genera- 
tion knows  was  written  by  another. 

Neither  is  it  difficult  to  accotmt  for  its  place  in  the 
sacred  canon.  Books  in  those  days  were  few  and  only 
those  that  struck  the  popular  heart  had  the  distinc- 
tion of  a  reproduction  through  the  expensive  process 
of  being  copied  by  hand  ;  hence  few  ever  reached  the 
second  edition,  much  less  a  general  circulation  through 
multiplied  copies,  so  as  to  be  preserved  through  suc- 
ceeding ages. 

When  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  returned  to  Jerusalem 
after  the  long  captivity  in  Babylon  their  first  duty  was 
of  course  to  provide  for  immediate  physical  wants  ; 
hence  they  addressed  themselves  heroically  to  the  re- 
building of  the  temple  and  the  reconstruction  of  the 
walls  of  Jerusalem.  When  this  had  been  done  they 
found  another  work  of  not  less  piety  and  patriotism, 
though  sffl  much  less  ostentatious  as  hardly  to  find 
mention  in  the  annals  of  the  Hebrew  people.  When 
they  and  those  who  followed  them  looked  around  they 
found  that  most  of  the  literature  of  their  nation  had 
been  "  lost  by  reason  of  the  war."  To  recover  this  as 
much  as  possible  seems  to  have  been  a  chief  aim  of 
Nehemiah,  hence  he  set  about  "founding  a  library, 
gathering  together  the  acts  of  the  kings  and  the  writ- 
ings of  the  prophets,  and  of  David  and  the  epistles  of 
the  kings"  (2  Mace,  2,  13). 

It  needed  not  to  be  specifically  mentioned  by  the 
historian  of  that  period  that  this  lover  of  the  litera- 
ture of  the  fathers  included  other  songs  than  the  songs 
of  David,  for  others  are  included  in  the  collection  of 
pious  songs  called  the  Psalms.  In  their  quest  they 
found  among  other  books  this  poem,  and  it,  too,  was 
incorporated  into  the  national  library,  and  thus  it  was 
preserved  through  the  succeeding  ages,  and  thus  it 
has  come  down  to  us. 

It  had  then  been  preserved  through  probably  not 
less  than  four  hundred  years  in  manuscript  alone,  and 
had  probably  been  recited  during  all  those  years  of 
tribulation,  in  which,  according  to  the  prophet,  the 
nation  had  been  "scattered  and  peeled  and  meeted 
out  and  trodden  down."  From  the  Assyrian  captivity 
ten  of  the  tribes  never  returned  sufficiently  organised 
to  retain  their  tribeship.  Finding  this  book  thus  pre- 
served thej"  gave  it  a  place  in  their  collection  and  thus 
it  became  a  part  of  the  Sacred  Writings.  And  no  won- 
der.   It  had  vindicated  its  right  to  immortalitv.   When 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4673 


read  or  recited  as  the  Hebrew  people  read  and  recited 
it,  before  it  had  been  allegorised  out  of  all  significance, 
it  could  not  fail  to  interest  every  true  heart.  It  de- 
lineates the  triumph  of  true  love  over  all  the  allure- 
ments of  wealth  and  lust  in  such  a  manner  as  to  strike 
all  pure  men  and  women  as  above  praise. 

It  was  never  claimed  by  those  compilers  or  for 
them  by  others  until  long  after  the  coming  of  Christ 
that  all  these  books  were  inspired  in  the  sense  inspira- 
tion is  used  in  modern  theological  discourse.  It  was 
only  a  collection  of  history  and  prophecy  and  song.  It 
was  the  beginning  of  a  public  library  which  was  by  no 
means  completed  during  the  lives  of  its  founders,  but 
was  continued  through  succeeding  generations  by  the 
Great  Synagogue.  At  no  time  was  it  claimed  for  this 
collection  as  a  whole  that  it  had  such  divine  sanction 
that  whatever  it  contained  should  have  the  authority 
of  a  "Thus  saith  the  Lord." 

In  the  time  of  the  Maccabees  this  library  was  to  be 
"read  with  favor  and  attention  "  (Prologue  to  Eccle- 
siasticus),  and  we  have  no  record  that  as  a  whole  at 
any  time  down  to  and  including  the  times  of  Christ  it 
had  any  other  sacredness  than  that  veneration  which 
is  due  to  an}'  collection  of  ancient  writings.  Hence 
the  significance  of  Paul's  distinction  in  his  letter  to 
Timothy,  between  the  Scriptures  which  were  given  b}' 
inspiration  and  those  that  make  no  claim  to  that  origin, 
when  speaking  of  what  is  profitable  for  doctrines  and 
reproof  and  instruction  which  is  in  righteousness. 

It  matters  nothing  one  way  or  the  other  that  neither 
Christ  nor  any  of  his  disciples  ever  quoted  from  this 
book,  so'  far  as  the  meagre  record  of  their  sayings 
show;  for  many  other  books  of  Ezra's  canon  are  in  the 
same  category  and  some  of  these  books  are  of  much 
historic  importance.  It  is  much  more  significant  as 
relating  to  the  question  of  inspiration  that  they  quoted 
from  books  then  in  common  use,  no  copy  of  which  has 
come  down  to  us,  among  our  Sacred  Writings.  No  book 
is  extant  which  details  the  contention  between  Moses 
and  Jannes  and  Jambres,  nor  have  we  any  part  of  the 
Prophecy  of  Enoch  from  which  Jude  quoted  as  some- 
thing with  which  the  people  of  his  time  were  familiar. 
It  is  even  more  significant  in  relation  to  the  plenary 
inspiration  of  the  sacred  writings  of  apostolic  times 
that  when  Christ  opened  the  understanding  of  his  two 
disciples  who  met  him  on  their  way  to  Emmaus,  that 
they  might  understand  the  Scriptures  that  he  quoted 
only  from  "the  law  of  Moses  and  the  Prophets  and 
the  Psalms."' 

That  such  a  book  should  be  placed  in  the  "  Library" 
of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  and  be  preserved  in  it  through 
succeeding  centuries  is  no  wonder.  Neither  is  it  any 
wonder  that  centuries  later,  when  the  Christian  fathers 
were  compiling  their  collection  "  to  set  forth  in  order 
the  things  which  we  believe,"  this  thrilling  book  should 


be  retained,  thougli  not  conspicuously  adapted  to  doc- 
trine, or  reproof,  or  instruction.  The  Bible  as  a  light 
to  human  feet  along  every  pathway  of  life  would  be 
incomplete  without  it.  We  have  the  personification 
of  faith  in  the  storj-  of  Abraham  ;  of  patience,  in  the 
story  of  Job  ;  of  filial  love,  in  the  story  of  Ruth  ;  of  en- 
durance, in  the  stor}-  of  Moses  ;  and  here  we  have  a 
photograph  of  ardent  conjugal  love,  the  most  holy 
sentiment  of  humanity,  in  the  stor)'  of  a  humble  shep- 
herdess and  her  equally  humble  and  faithful  lover  ;  a 
constant  rebuke  to  that  pietism  which  teaches  that 
ardent  conjugal  love  is  only  a  sensual  passion  which 
must  be  foresworn  or  tethered  if  one  would  attain  tlie 
highest  tj'pe  of  moral  character — a  most  detestable 
heresy. 

THE  END  OF  EDUCATION. 

BY  THOMAS  ELMER  WILL. 

When  I  was  a  boy  on  the  farm,  my  father,  as  I  re- 
member, was  famous  for  the  straightness  of  his  corn- 
rows ;  they  ran  across  a  forty-acre  field  like  the  ruled 
lines  across  a  sheet  of  writing-paper.  This  fact  was 
to  him  a  matter  of  great  pride,  and  he  used  to  tell  me 
how  he  did  the  work.  To  run  a  straight  corn-row,  he 
declared  it  was  necessary  that  one  should  free  his 
mind  from  all  distracting  influences,  look  neither  back- 
ward upon  the  work  already  done,  nor  to  the  right 
hand,  nor  to  the  left  ;  nor  yet  to  the  nearest  stake  in 
front ;  but,  fixing  one's  eyes  upon  the  stake  at  the 
farthest  limit  of  the  field,  and  holding  a  firm  and 
steady  rein,  one  must  drive  resolutely  toward  that 
goal.  If  this  were  done,  the  rows  would  be  found  to 
have  taken  care  of  themselves. 

The  ambitious  and  conscientious  teacher  desires  to 
make  a  straight  track  toward  the  educational  goal ; 
but  the  name  of  his  distractions  is  legion.  There  is 
order  to  be  preserved  ;  there  are  lessons  to  be  as- 
signed and  taught  and  heard  ;  there  are  school-room 
tasks  innumerable  that  must  receive  attention.  Ex- 
amination papers  must  be  read  and  their  value  esti- 
mated ;  percentages  must  be  computed,  and  promo- 
tions made  or  withheld.  The  teacher's  personal 
studies,  too,  must  not  be  neglected;  professional  lit- 
erature must  be  kept  track  of;  county  superintend- 
ent's tests  must  be  prepared  for  and  met ;  positions 
must  be  won  and  held;  and  in  the  midst  of  these 
multitudinous  cares  and  distractions,  the  teacher,  of 
all  persons,  is  most  liable  to  forget  the  prime  object 
of  his  strivings.  It  is  therefore  well  that  he  pause  at 
times  and  heed  the  wise  old  maxim  of  the  Greeks, 
"Consider  the  end." 

What  is  the  end  of  education  ?  If  the  question 
were  put  to  the  whole  body  of  the  patrons  of  our  edu- 
cational system,  doubtless  the  reply  from  a  large  per- 


4674 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


centage  would  be,  "To  fit   the  boy  or  girl  to  make  a 
living." 

That  livings  must  be  made,  and  that  education 
should  contribute  to  this  end,  I  would  be  the  last  to 
question.    The  lines  of  Schiller  are  only  too  true,  that 

"  Until  philosophy  sustains  the  structure  ot  the  world, 
Her  workings  will  be  carried  on  by  hunger  and  by  love." 

Human  history  shows  with  startling  distinctness 
how  large  a  part  the  struggle  for  life  has  played  in 
motiving  human  activity.  Primitive  man,  born  into 
the  midst  of  a  world  unknown  and  inexplicable  to 
himself  and  to  his  fellows,  scorched  by  the  heat, 
pinched  by  the  frost,  chilled  by  the  blast,  hounded  by 
fierce  beasts  and  fiercer  men,  must  have  felt  that,  to 
keep  his  slippery  footing  on  the  planet,  to  avoid  be- 
ing killed  and  eaten,  and  to  find  somewhat  to  eat, 
would  keep  him  fairly  busy;  while  the  education  that 
best  fitted  him  to  find  food  and  to  save  himself  and 
those  near  him  from  becoming  food,  was  the  educa- 
tion for  him. 

Times  change,  but  fundamental  human  require- 
ments remain  constant.  To-day,  as  in  the  days  when 
man  strove  for  the  mastery  with  the  anthropoid  ape, 
he  who  would  live  must  eat,  wear  clothes,  and  find 
shelter;  and  education  seeks  to  help  him  find  the 
wherewithal.  Machine  industry  calls  into  being  the 
technical  school  ;  that  mines  may  be  economically 
exploited,  schools  of  mines  are  established.  Lest  the 
country  fall  behind  in  the  race  with  the  city,  the  agri- 
cultural college  is  founded.  Teaching  must  be  scien- 
tifically done  ;  hence,  normal  schools  are  established  ; 
at  the  same  time,  the  more  ancient  professions  of 
pleading  and  judging  and  preaching  and  healing  must 
enlarge  their  facilities  for  instruction  ;  and  all,  to  a 
great — too  great  an — extent,  that  the  Almighty  Dollar 
may  be  won,  and  the  individual  student  may  be  en- 
abled to  keep  his  head  above  the  daisies. 

I  realise,  I  say,  that  livings  must  be  made.  I  real- 
ise that,  however  high  the  oak  would  rear  its  head 
toward  heaven,  it  must  still  strike  down  its  roots  into 
Mother  Earth;  and  the  higher  it  would  tower,  the 
deeper  and  stronger  must  be  its  grasp  upon  terra  firma. 
But,  if  the  physical  existence  be  all,  is  the  life-struggle 
worthwhile?  Why  should  one  toil  and  strive  and 
mourn,  and  bear  the  slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous 
fortune,  merely  to  exist  and  to  call  into  existence  others 
to  repeat  the  same  dreary  round  ?  If  the  mere  ma- 
terial existence  be  all — the  keeping  together  and  in 
running  order  of  the  human  machine — I  can  readily 
understand  how  one,  battered  by  the  storm,  wounded 
in  the  strife,  and  mortified  by  failure,  should  elect  the 
swift  plunge  into  eternal  sleep  by  way  of  the  bare 
bodkin  or  the  pistol ;  and  I  am  not  surprised  that  one 
who  sees  no  more  in  life  should  appear  in  periodical 
literature  as  a  defender  of  suicide.      Why  not  ? 


But  man  is  more  than  this,  as  we  shall  see  ; 
hence  life  and  education  mean  more. 

Man  is  organic.  As  root,  stem,  branches,  leaves, 
flower,  and  fruit  of  the  majestic  tree  are  enfolded  in 
the  tiny  seed,  so  powers  and  faculties,  physical,  in- 
tellectual, aesthetic,  social,  moral,  and  religious,  are 
enfolded  in  the  little  child  ;  and  to  child,  as  to  tree, 
nature  issues  her  fiat :   Develop,  expand,  unfold. 

Education  means  physical  development.  The 
hand,  the  eye,  the  whole  body,  must  be  made  the 
ready  and  responsive  servant  of  the  mind.  We  are 
gradually  recognising  this  truth  ;  wood-pile  and  buck- 
saw practice  ma}'  send  the  blood  coursing  through  its 
channels  ;  it  may  harden  the  muscles,  and  steady  the 
nerves,  and  tone  up  the  digestive  system;  but  for  all 
that  a  skilful  and  efficient  wood-sawyer,  if  he  be  no 
more  than  a  wood- sawyer,  may  appear  at  times  at  an 
exceedingly  great  disadvantage,  whether  in  the  draw- 
ing-room,on  the  floor  of  Congress, or  wherever  else  men 
congregate;  and,  in  the  sharp  competition  of  modern 
life,  he  may  find  that  he  could  well  afford  to  exchange 
a  modicum  of  the  brawn  born  at  the  wood-pile  for 
some  of  the  easy  grace  of  the  stripling  whom  he  could 
readily  throw  over  the  fence.  Physical  culture,  then, 
is  a  normal  and  healthy  product  of  nineteenth-century 
development. 

But,  oblivious  as  some  college  men  seem  to  be  to 
this  fact,  man  is  more  than  body.  Man,  we  are  taught, 
has  a  mind,  a  soul.  I  amend  by  declaring  that  man 
is  mind  ;  he  is  soul  ;  the  thing  he  has  is  his  body. 

The  intellect  demands  unfoldment.  It  must  be 
taught  to  perceive,  to  discriminate,  to  weigh.  It  must 
be  taught  to  read.  Carlyle  declared  that  the  most  any 
college  or  highest  fitting  school  can  do  for  us  is  to 
teach  us  to  read.  The  mind  must  be  taught  to  read 
with  understanding  and  appreciation  the  records  that 
are  found  in  books.  "Books  are  the  treasure-houses 
of  the  ages.  They  are  the  vehicles  which  gather  and 
bring  the  accumulated  knowledge  of  the  past  to  our 
doors.  By  distributing  knowledge  they  become  the 
handmaids  of  progress.  They  are  the  fountains  from 
which  all  must  drink  who  would  be  of  the  elect."  They 
"are  the  legacies  which  genius  leaves  to  mankind." 
How  much  of  all  that  is  good  and  great,  instructive 
and  ennobling  and  inspiring  that  has  descended  to  us 
from  the  past  is  hidden  away  in  musty  and  dusty  tomes 
piled,  tier  above  tier,  upon  the  shelves  of  libraries  ! 
Yet  to  the  illiterate  these  treasures  are  as  blocks  of 
wood  ;  they  are  as  an  art-gallery  to  the  blind,  or  as  a 
symphony  to  the  deaf.  They  are  as  the  Eternal  City 
to  Vandal  and  Hun. 

But  to  read  printed  books  and  manuscripts  is  not 
all.  One  may  be  able  to  do  this,  and  yet  be  but  a 
book-worm.  We  must  learn  to  read  the  book  of  na- 
ture.   How  majestic  are  the  records  the  Infinite,  as  with 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4675 


iron  pen  and  lead,  has  written  in  the  rocks  forever  ! 
Yet,  though  men  have  trodden  upon  and  wrestled  with 
these  rocks  since  the  beginning,  geology  is  a  new  sci- 
ence. Astronomy  is  called  the  oldest  of  the  sciences. 
Chaldean  shepherds,  watching  their  flocks  b}-  night, 
observed  the  courses  of  the  stars  ;  they  called  these 
mystic  specks  by  name  ;  and,  handing  down  from 
father  to  son  their  scraps  of  knowledge,  they  laid  the 
foundations  of  the  noblegt  of  the  inorganic  sciences. 
The  seer  and  bard  of  ancient  Israel  could  exclaim  : 
"The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God,  and  the  firma- 
nent  showeth  his  handiwork.  When  I  consider  thy 
heavens,  the  work  of  thy  fingers  ;  the  moon  and  stars 
that  thou  hast  ordained,  what  is  man  !  "  Yet  only  yes- 
terday we  believed  the  earth  to  be  the  centre  of  our 
system,  while  round  it,  stuck  on  transparent,  concen- 
tric spheres,  coursed  sun  and  moon  and  stars  !  Or  we 
believed  it  rested  on  an  elephant,  which,  in  turn,  stood 
on  the  backs  of  turtles,  who  went  "clear  down." 
\'erily,  man  has  halted  and  stammered  in  his  attempts 
to  read  the  book  of  nature. 

But  man  should  learn  to  read,  also,  the  book  of 
humanit}',  whose  records  persist  in  stones  and  ruins 
and  tombs  ;  in  myths  and  traditions  and  writings  ; 
and  in  the  daily  deeds  of  nations,  of  organisations,  and 
of  individual  men.  Who  of  us  knows  what  history  is? 
Young  people  learn  the  story  of  Romulus  and  Remus; 
of  King  Alfred  burning  the  cakes  ;  of  Pocahontas  res- 
cuing Captain  John  Smith  ;  they  wrestle  with  chrono- 
logical tables ;  tell  of  royal  scandals  and  court  in- 
trigues, and  give  the  statistics  of  killed  and  wounded 
in  battle  ;  and  we  say  they  are  studying  history  !  The 
so-called  "statesman  "  snatches  here  and  there  a  leaf 
from  the  book  of  history  ;  uses  it  as  a  missile  with 
which  to  pelt  an  adversary  or  as  an  agency  wherewith 
he  may  legislate  money  out  of  the  pockets  of  the  peo- 
ple into  the  coffers  of  some  corporation  ;  and  flat- 
ters himself,  forsooth,  that  he  is  using  the  "historic 
method." 

What  is  history  ?  It  is  the  record  of  the  life  of  the 
race  upon  the  planet ;  of  men's  attempts  to  live  ;  to 
live  together  ;  to  live  like  men  rather  than  like  beasts. 
History  pictures  the  development  of  human  institu- 
tions, political,  social,  military,  ecclesiastical,  indus- 
trial. It  records  man's  experiments,  his  successes, 
his  failures.  It  is  therefore  filled  with  lessons  of  vital 
moment  to  those  men  and  nations  competent  to  learn. 
Would  that  we  could  read  the  history  of  Rome  1  that 
we  might  see,  for  example,  how  the  people,  in  their 
ignorance,  sought  to  govern  an  imperial  domain  by 
means  of  the  machinery  adapted  to  the  wants  of  the 
village  by  the  Tiber  ;  how  this  machinery  naturall)' 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  residents  of  Rome  and  vicin- 
ity— nay,  rather,  into  the  hands  of  a  trifling  minority 
consisting  of  those  who  had   the  wit   and   the  will  to 


seize  the  machinery  which  they  now  turned  into  an 
engine  for  their  own  aggrandisement,  thus  running 
the  ship  of  State  upon  the  rocks  ! 

Lessons,  too,  that  are  invaluable  for  our  own  time 
and  country,  might  be  learned  from  the  history  of  old 
France.  Institutions  there,  once  socially  serviceable, 
had  outlived  their  usefulness.  Classes,  armed  with  a 
power  that  was  once  coupled  with  some  measure  of 
responsibility,  possessed  of  privileges  that  had  once 
been  matched,  in  some  slight  degree,  at  least,  by  du- 
ties, now  played  the  part  of  parasites  and  drones. 
From  those  whom  they  should  have  served,  they  ex- 
torted unrequited  service  ;  and,  when  the  thunders 
of  revolt  began  to  mutter  in  the  distance,  they  hugged 
still  closer  their  privileges  and  used  still  more  despot- 
ically their  power — till  the  flood  came  and  swept  them 
all  away.  Could  we  but  read  the  records  of  history, 
we  might  steer  more  surely  our  own  ship  of  State 
through  the  breakers  that  now  rumble  and  wash  about 
her  keel. 

Finer  than  his  intellect,  man  possesses  faculties 
that  respond  in  the  presence  of  beaut}'  and  harmony. 
How  many  of  us  inherit  the  old  Puritan  contempt  for 
the  beautiful,  and  regard  the  aesthetic  sense  a  mark 
of  effeminacy  ?  Yet  man  possesses  by  nature  an  aes- 
thetic sense  as  truly  as  he  possesses  powers  of  phys- 
ical perception  or  intellectual  insight.  And  all  without 
him  lie  in  nature  the  objects  upon  which  this  sense 
may  exercise  itself.  What  Raphael  or  Michael  Angelo 
can  paint  a  sunset,  or  a  mountain  glen  ;  or  an  Arctic 
night,  illumined  by  the  Aurora  ?  What  human  art  can 
rival  the  heavens  with  their  ceaseless  panorama  of 
cloud  and  sunshine  and  stars?  Yet  we  pass  unmoved 
amidst  these  scenes  like  owls  at  midday  through  a 
flower  garden  :   and  we  call  ourselves  "  educated  "  ! 

Man's  social  nature,  too,  demands  development. 
How  many  of  us  from  social  converse,  can  give  and 
get,  in  even  small  degree,  the  good  commensurable 
with  the  possibilities  of  the  case  ?  How  many  of  us 
appreciate,  even  in  faint  measure,  the  enormous  gains 
accruing  to  each  and  all  from  such  association  and 
co-operation  in  industry  as  we  have  now  attained  ? 
How  many  appreciate  how  absolutely  dependent  upon 
his  fellows  is  the  civilised  man  ;  and  how  utterly,  ab- 
jectly helpless  would  he  be  if  cast  adrift  in  a  wilder- 
ness ?  Yet  our  national  creed,  our  real,  work-a-day 
"  orthodoxy  "  is  ,  "  Each  for  himself.  Look  out  for 
Number  One.  Get  all  you  can,  by  whatever  means 
you  can,  taking  care  only  to  keep  clear  of  prison  walls  ; 
and  keep  all  you  get.  The  only  debt  owed  by  social 
classes  to  each  other  is  civility  and  the  prompt  meet- 
ing of  bills  when  due.  Cash  payment  is  the  sole  nexus 
between  man  and  man.  Charity  begins  at  home — and 
ends  there.  The  chief  end  of  man  is  to  mind  his  own 
business."    In  so  far  as  we  deviate  from  these  articles 


4676 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


of  faith,  we  show  ourselves  to  be  well  meaning,  per- 
haps, and  pious,  but  "sentimental"  and  "imprac- 
tical." And  so  slightly  as  yet  is  our  sense  of  social 
solidarity  developed,  that  we  imagine  we  can  individ- 
ually flourish  in  the  midst  of  adversity ;  and  be  happy 
while  our  fellow-men,  all  about  us,  are  wretched.  One 
of  the  prime  needs  of  the  time  is  social  education. 

But  social  relations,  if  they  are  to  endure,  must  be 
ethical  relations.  They  depend  on  an  equilibrium  be- 
tween rights  and  duties.  What  are  human  rights? 
Shall  we  say  with  Pope,  that  whatever  is,  is  right  ? 
Then  every  abuse,  however  hoary,  and  however  rank, 
though  it  smell  to  heaven,  must  stand  unchallenged. 
Ruthless  Might  may  have  enthroned  itself  in  legisla- 
tive halls,  and  seated  itself  on  the  judge's  bench,  and 
elbowed  itself  into  the  executive  chair.  It  may  have 
possessed  itself  of  the  means  of  communication,  of  the 
organs  and  agencies  for  the  diffusion  of  intelligence; 
and,  like  the  abomination  that  maketh  desolate,  it  may 
even  stand  in  the  holy  place.  Yet,  backed  by  man- 
made  laws  and  by  armies,  it  may  trample  in  the  dust 
helpless  innocence,  devour  widows'  houses,  despoil 
the  laborer  of  his  earnings,  and  then,  drunk  with 
power,  declare  that  "there  is  nothing  to  arbitrate," 
and  demand  of  an  outraged  people  "what  they  are 
going  to  do  about  it?  "  And  the  answer  must  be  "noth- 
ing"; these  things  exist;  they  are  backed  by  law; 
they  are  therefore  right.  Since  the  law  was  against 
him,  the  slave  had  no  rights. 

And  are  human  duties,  too,  simply  such  as  are 
marked  out  for  us  by  statute,  supplemented  by  a  con- 
ventional local  code?  Or  is  it  true  that  man  is  in  duty 
bound  to  know  what  his  real  rights  are;  and,  like  a 
Hampden  or  an  Otis,  maintain  them,  if  not  for  his 
own  sake,  then  for  that  of  his  children  ?  Is  it  his  duty 
to  defend  the  rights  of  the  helpless?  Is  man  indeed 
his  brother's  keeper?  Have  we  civic  as  well  as  indi- 
vidual duties  ?  Is  the  respectable  citizen  morally 
blameless  when  he  attends  so  diligently  to  his  own  busi- 
ness that  he  cannot  find  time  on  election-day  to  vote 
for  clean  and  honorable  men  ;  and  so  by  his  neglect 
permits  his  city,  like  the  traveller  on  the  Jericho  road, 
to  fall  into  the  hands  of  thieves?  Is  patriotism  a  vir- 
tue exclusively  military?  In  time  of  peace,  is  the 
citizen  justifiable  in  maintaining  a  sleepy  indifference 
toward  public  affairs,  while  the  nation  is  being  plucked 
and  bled  by  men  who  seek  public  office  for  revenue 
only?  Nay,  rather,  does  patriotism  in  time  of  peace  in 
fact  consist,  as  a  great  New  York  daily  recently  de- 
clared in  its  editorial  columns,  in  standing  up  for 
what  it  was  pleased  to  call  one's  "rights";  in  taking 
advantage  of  the  necessities  of  an  embarrassed  govern- 
ment, and  aiding  in  the  work  of  looting  the  national 
treasury?  One  might  suppose,  to  read  certain  news- 
papers,  that   unless   education    in   rights   and   duties 


is  speedily  begun,  even  in  high  places,  and  vigorously 
pushed,  we  may  have  cause  to  rue  our  neglect. 

True  education  must  not  simply  train  us  to  answer 
categorically  questions  in  formal,  conventional  ethics  ; 
it  must  cause  us  to  know  the  basis  upon  which  rights 
and  duties  actually  rest ;  it  must  implant  in  us  con- 
victions;  it  must  give  us  the  courage  of  these  convic- 
tions, and  must  make  of  us  men  of  action  as  well  as 
of  thought. 

But  above  the  body;  above  the  intellect;  above 
the  aesthetic,  the  social,  and  even  the  ethical  sense,  is 
the  religious  nature.  Man  is  born  religious.  Among 
the  lowest  types  we  see  him  standing  in  awe  of  the 
Infinite  and  worshipping  His  crude  manifestations,  if 
perchance  he  may  find  Him.  Trace  him  a  little  fur- 
ther, and  we  discover  him  seeking  that  unity  with  the 
Infinite,  that  harmony  with  the  Universal  Order,  and 
the  Universal  Mind  and  Spirit,  in  finding  which  man 
realises  himself  and  fulfils  his  destiny.  But  how, 
through  ignorance  and  priestcraft  and  blind  leader- 
ship, has  he  stumbled  and  groped  in  the  thick  dark- 
ness !  Yet  man's  religious  nature  m-ust  be  unfolded 
before  he  can  in  any  true  sense  be  called  a  man. 
What  then  shall  we  say  of  systems  of  public  "educa- 
tion" in  which  the  religious  nature  is  ignored  and  the 
vast  field  of  religious  truth  is  left  uncanvassed  ?  The 
State  in  many  countries,  and  rightly,  assumes  to  edu- 
cate her  youth.  She  provides  for  them  kindergartens, 
manual  training  schools,  primary,  secondary,  high 
schools,  technical,  military,  and  naval  schools;  and 
she  provides  a  university,  which,  by  its  very  name, 
professes  to  investigate  the  whole  field  of  knowable 
truth ;  and  she  maintains  professional  schools,  in 
which,  in  theory,  one  may  fit  himself  scientifically  for 
the  learned  professions.  Yet  the  State  leaves  un- 
touched that  department  of  the  field  of  universal  truth 
in  the  light  of  which  only  all  other  isolated  truths  may 
be  correlated.  And  the  student  who  has  swept  the 
gamut  of  our  public  educational  system  from  the  kin- 
dergarten to  the  doctorate,  and  who  from  the  day  of 
his  toddling  entrance  to  the  taking  of  his  final  degree 
has,  nominally,  at  least,  been  instructed  and  trained 
by  scientific  methods,  must  now,  if  he  would  supply 
his  lamentable  deficiencies  and  study  religious  truth, 
turn  from  State  institutions  to  institutions  provided  by 
ecclesiastical  bodies,  or  by  private  voluntary  associa- 
tions ;  institutions,  moreover,  that  in  most  cases  do 
not  even  profess  to  be  scientific,  but  do  profess  to  be 
sectarian  ;  and  do,  in  many  cases,  look  upon  science 
and  scientific  methods  with  undisguised  hostility. 
Who  dare  affirm,  in  the  face  of  such  facts,  that  our 
"system  "  of  public  education  is  complete  and  sym- 
metrical ! 

I  know  full  well  the  meaning  of  the  separation  of 
Church  and   State  in  America.     I  have  not  read  in 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4677 


vain  the  history  of  the  Huguenots  in  France  ;  of  the 
career  of  the  Duke  of  Alva  in  the  Netherlands;  of  the 
Thirty  Years'  War  in  Germany;  nor  of  the  Protestant 
Reformation  in  England,  and  the  reign  of  Thorough  ; 
and  none  would  resent  more  quickly  nor  more  strenu- 
ously than  I  the  reinstatement  of  ecclesiastical  des- 
potism backed  by  and  working  through  the  strong  arm 
of  the  State.  Yet  I  lay  it  down  as  philosophical  truth, 
and  I  challenge  contradiction  :  first,  that  man  is  by 
nature  religious ;  second,  that  his  religious  nature, 
like  his  intellectual  or  his  aesthetic  nature,  is  capable 
of  development  ;  third,  that  nature  demands  that  every 
normal  faculty  and  power  of  man  be  developed,  and 
developed  harmoniousl)'  and  sj'mmetrically  with  ever}' 
other  facultv  and  power  ;  fourth,  that  one  function  of 
education  is  thus  to  develop  the  man  ;  and  last,  that 
therefore  any  educational  scheme  that  ignores  a  nor- 
mal part  of  man,  and  makes  no  provision  for  its  de- 
velopment, must  stand  in  the  light  of  philosophy  as 
partial  and  incomplete.  If  this  be  treason,  make  the 
most  of  it  ! 

That,  to  the  failure  of  society  at  large  thus  to  pro- 
vide for  genuine  religious  education,  is  due  much  of 
the  childish  and  humiliating  "warfare  between  reli- 
gion and  science";  and  the  often-assumed  irrecon- 
cilability of  these  two  fields  of  truth,  I  have  no  doubt. 

But  it  is  not  enough  that  man's  powers  shall  be 
developed  ;  they  must  be  at  his  command.  His  edu- 
cation must  be  "liberal";  that  is,  it  must  liberate. 
His  body  must  be  not  only  sound  and  strong  and  sup- 
ple, it  must  be  prompt  to  respond  to  the  dictates  of 
his  will.  His  mind,  too,  must  be  freed  from  the  thrall- 
dom  of  tradition  and  conventional  prejudice  and  in- 
fallible authority.  It  must  be  ready  to  stand  alone, 
and  to  hew  its  way  through  the  wilderness  of  current 
notions  and  dogmas  ;  though  the  world  rise  in  arms, 
or  bread  and  butter  be  threatened.  The  soul  must  be 
freed  from  the  black  winding  sheet  of  superstition  : 
and,  like  that  of  a  Luther,  must  step  out  into  God's 
sunlight,  and  issue  its  declaration  of  independence. 
AH  this  must  be  before  the  man  may  profess  to  be 
educated. 

Authority,  it  is  true,  has  a  place  in  human  devel- 
opment. History  is  sown  knee-deep  with  the  records 
of  its  acts  ;  authority  of  the  State,  authority  of  the 
Church,  authority  in  the  army,  in  the  world  of  fashion, 
in  industry,  in  science,  in  education,  and  in  art.  A 
king,  ruling  by  divine  right,  able  to  do  no  wrong,  him- 
self the  State,  summons  "  his  "  people  on  pain  of  death 
to  slaughter  their  neighbors  across  the  line,  and  them- 
selves risk  slaughter.  A  Csesar  Augustus  issues  his 
decree  that  all  the  world  must  be  taxed  ;  and  thereby, 
without  hint  of  popular  assent,  drafts  into  his  coffers 
the  wealth  of  the  producing  millions.  A  church-council 
informs  the  faithful  that  tweedle-dum  and  not  tweedle- 


dee  is  the  one  true  faith,  which  all  must  accept  on  pain 
of  eternal  fires.  An  Aristotelian  may  rival  a  Calvinistic 
orthodoxy  in  inflexibility.  A  blundering  official  orders 
a  charge  at  Balaklava.  An  unknown  potentate  at 
Paris  informs  the  race  that  boot-toes  must  be  broad  or 
pointed,  as  the  case  may  be  ;  that  hats  must  or  must 
not  be  bell-crowned  ;  that  "the  trousers  must  be  ex- 
ceedingly tight  across  the  hips  "  and  very  tight,  or  very 
loose,  at  the  knee  ;  and  that  "it  is  permitted  to  man- 
kind, under  certain  restrictions,  to  wear  white  waist- 
coats. " ' 

And  authority  has  not  only  a  place,  but  a  rightful 
place.  Before  men  have  become  fitted  for  self-govern- 
ment, the  fittest,  slight  though  his  fitness  be,  must 
govern  them.  Until  we  have  learned  to  think  for  our- 
selves, whether  in  ordinary  affairs,  in  science,  in  poli- 
tics, or  in  religion,  some  one  must  do  our  thinking  for 
us  ;  and,  if  need  be,  force  upon  us  the  results  of  his 
thinking.  Until  men  learn  freely  to  co-operate,  and 
equitably  to  distribute  their  products,  the  Industrial 
Captain  must  occupy  the  field,  and  discipline  them  by 
force  into  fitness  for  a  higher  social  state.  That  au- 
thorities are  often  tyrannical,  follows  from  the  fact 
that  they  are  human  and  fallible. 

But,  with  the  progress  of  the  race,  the  time  comes 
when  the  people  slowly  emerge  from  the  darkness  and 
damps  of  ignorance  ;  grown  up  children  slowly  assume 
the  estate  of  men.  Authority  now,  in  corresponding 
ratio,  loses  its  reason  for  existence.  Monarchs,  as  in 
England,  are  gradually  shorn  of  a  political  power  that 
the  people  assume  for  themselves.  With  the  progress 
of  science  comes  the  "theological  thaw";  and,  de- 
spite the  thunderings  and  maledictions  of  clerics  of  a 
certain  type  and  temper,  the  husk  of  error  is  stripped 
from  the  kernel  of  religious  truth  and  the  old  truth  is 
brought  into  harmonious  relations  with  the  new.  In 
science  Aristotle  falls  before  Bacon,  and  Bacon  before 
Darwin  and  Spencer  ;  and  each  new  "authority"  lives 
but  his  brief  da)',  to  wither  and  fade  before  the  spirit 
of  free  inquiry.  Even  in  industry  the  reign  of  the 
autocrat,  in  advanced  nations,  is  doomed  ;  and  time 
and  light  alone  are  needed  to  place  him  along  with 
kings  and  prelates  in  the  category  of  social  functiona- 
ries who  have  outlived  their  usefulness. 

But  individual  progress  runs  parallel  with  rac" 
progress.  With  individual  as  with  race,  law  must  be 
the  schoolmaster  to  bring  us  to  freedom.  The  teach- 
er's function  with  respect  to  the  individual  student  is 
"to  make  himself  useless";  to  wipe  out,  like  the 
king,  the  reason  for  his  existence  ;  in  short,  to  prepare 
the  student  for  liberty. 

Lessons,  exercises,  tasks  of  whatever  kind  as- 
signed by  the  teacher,  stand,  let  it  be  remembered, 
for   a   vanishing   categor}'  ;  while   plays,  independent 

1  Carlyle  in  Sartor  Rcsartus. 


4678 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


reading,  society  work,  spontaneous,  voluntary  activ- 
ities of  the  student,  of  whatever  character,  so  that  they 
be  constructive  rather  than  destructive,  represent  the 
permanent  category,  if  the  student  is  to  be  educated 
for  the  highest  type  of  manhood.  These  activities, 
then,  instead  of  being  eyed  askance,  or  reprobated, 
should  be  regarded  by  the  teacher  as  the  most  hopeful 
aspects  of  the  student's  life  ;  the  genuine,  man-making 
portions  of  his  work. 

But  the  end  of  education  is  not  yet.  To  develop 
and  liberate  powers  and  then  stop  there  may  be  to 
give  the  rein  to  the  spirited  horse  ;  or  to  pull  open  the 
throttle  of  the  steamed-up  locomotive,  and  leave  it  to 
its  own  sweet  will.  Education  does  not  end  in  an- 
archy. 

The  exercise  of  human  faculties  and  powers  must 
be  under  restraint  ;  yet  the  controlling  force  must  be 
something  deeper  and  higher  than  mere  social  con- 
vention or  individual  caprice.      What  must  it  be  ? 

The  development  of  science  everywhere  brings  us 
uniformly  and  infallibly  to  one  goal :  it  brings  us  to 
law.  Not  so  frail  and  fickle  a  thing  as  legislation, 
which  the  first  breath  of  popular  disfavor  may  change 
or  nullify;  not  the  thing  the  purse  of  the  millionaire 
may  buy  as  it  would  buy  a  residence  or  a  railroad  ; 
not  the  product  of  the  log-rolling  of  politicians  ;  nor 
of  the  coercion  and  bribes  of  an  executive  ;  nor  of  the 
decision  of  a  venal  or  prejudiced  judge  ;  not  these, 
but  the  divine,  unchangeable  thing  that  pervades  the 
universe. 

Look  where  we  will,  we  may  find  it ;  in  the  rocks, 
the  skies,  the  winds,  the  waves  ;  in  vegetal  and  ani- 
mal life  ;  in  human  society;  in  the  workings  of  the 
human  mind,  and  even  of  the  soul.  It  is  the  thought 
of  the  Infinite  ;  it  is  God's  way  of  working.  The  cos- 
mic process  is  the  bringing  of  all  things,  animate  and 
inanimate,  under  the  domain  of  law.  Man,  it  is  true, 
by  vif,  ■  relative  freedom  of  will,  may  be  in  some 
degr  ,  liberty,  he  may  read  licence.      But  if 

he  must  pay  the  price.      He  cannot  play 

W''i'  i  not  be  burned  ;  he  cannot  defy  gravity 

an'i  n.ot  '  crushed.  Human  power  must  submit  to 
A  law  ;  human  liberty  must  be  liberty  under 
till  this  great  lesson  is  learned,  learned  not 
but  in  very  truth;  burned,  as  it  were,  into  his 
it  consciousness,  is  man  in  the  fullest  sense  a 
Let  him  stop  one  step  short  of  this  and  he  may 
!';  in  Aaron  Burr,  sweeping  almost  without  effort  the 
;nors  of  his  college,  and  then  going  forth  to  prey 
jpon  society,  and   perhaps  to  betray  his  country. 

But  let  one  be  thus  educated,  prepared  honestly 
to  earn  his  bread,  and  perform  some  needful  social 
function,  whether  ploughing  corn  or  driving  a  loco- 
motive, or  enacting  legislation,  or  proclaiming  divine 
truth  ;  developed   in   body,  in  intellect ;   in  ar-sthetic. 


social,  ethical,  and  religious  nature;  let  his  powers 
be  freed  to  obey  instantly  and  perfectly  his  will ;  then 
let  that  will  be  inspired  with  loyalty  to  the  Infinite 
Will,  and  consecrated  to  the  task  of  helping  on  in  any 
way  and  in  every  way  the  process  whereby  the  Mind 
of  the  Divine  is  realising  itself  in  the  individual,  in 
societ}',  and  in  the  universe;  and  the  man  thus  edu- 
cated may  face  without  fear  this  world  and  all  others, 
and  feel  that  he  is  indeed,  though  it  be  in  small  de- 
gree, a  worker  together  with  God. 


BOOK  NOTICES. 

Why  I  am  a  Vegetarian.  An  address  delivered  before  the  Chi- 
cago Vegetarian  Society,  Great  Northern  Hotel,  March  3, 
1895.  V.y  J.  HoxL'ard  Mooic.  Chicago:  The  Ward  Waugh 
Publishing  Co. 
This  pamphlet  denounces  animal  food  in  most  vigorous  terms 
on  purely  ethical  grounds.  We  read  on  page  32  :  "All  the  highest 
mammals  of  the  earth  preach  kindness  and  reciprocity  with  a 
noise  and  enthusiasm  that  are  well-nigh  vindictive,  but  in  practice 
deny  them  to  all  e.\cept  to  their  pets.  They  make  the  Golden  Rule 
the  cardinal  measuring-rod  of  all  morality,  and  then  freckle  the 
globe  with  huge  murder-houses  for  the  expeditious  destruction  of 
their  associates.  If  the  sub-human  myriads  had  no  nerves  and 
were  not  fond  of  existence  and  had  no  choice  of  emotions  and 
were  totally  without  destiny,  they  could  with  difficulty  be  treated 
more  completely  as  personal  nonentities.  Millions  are  hourly  mas 
sacred  by  pitiless  and  professional  assassins,  and  their  corpses 
hacked  and  flayed  and  haggled,  and  then  hurried  away  to  be  un- 
gracefully interred  in  (he  stomachic  sepulchres  of  men  and  woman 
who  have  the  pedagogical  temerity  to  teach  each  other  that  they 
are  not  terrific." 

Miss  Flora  J.  Cooke  of  the  Cook  County  Normal  School  of 
Chicago  has  published  a  little  volume  of  about  one  hundred  pages, 
entitled  Xadtre  MylJis  und  Slories  for  Little  Childrt^n,  All  "kinds 
of  legends  and  fables,  Greek,  Indian,  and  Teutonic,  are  here  so 
popularised  that  kindergarten  teachers  can  use  them  for  children 
of  about  six  years  of  age.  The  book  is  the  product  of  practical 
experience,  for  these  stories  are  the  same  tales  which  she  tells  the 
little  ones  entrusted  to  her  care,  and  they  will  prove  valuable  for 
any  one  who,  like  the  author,  understands  how  to  hold  the  atten- 
tion of  children.  She  has  added  sketches  of  drawings  that  can 
without  great  difficulty  be  imitated  by  a  child,  and  will  thus  be  a 
great  assistance  in  instruction.  p.  c. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

■•THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION  : 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 


CONTENTS  OF  NO.  425. 

THE  SONG  OF  SONGS.    The  Rev.  T.  A.Goodwin,  D.D.  4671 

THE  END  OF  EDUCATION.     Prof.  T.  Elmer  Will..  4673 

BOOK  NOTICES 4678 


The  Open  Court. 


A   VSTEEKLY   JOUSNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  426.     (Vol.  IX.-43.) 


CHICAGO,   OCTOBER  24,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
I  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


A  UNIVERSAL  CONGRESS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  1900. 


BY  ABBE  VICTOR  CHARBONNEL. 


(Translated  from  La  RfZ'ue  de  Paris  by  Callie  Bonney  Marble.) 


"  I  SEE  already  in  thought  the  next  Parliament  of 
Religions,  more  glorious  and  full  of  promise  than  the 
first.  I  propose  that  we  should  hold  it  at  Benares, 
in  the  first  year  of  the  twentieth  century." 

It  was  in  these  words  that  the  Rev.  Jenkin  Lloyd 
Jones  closed,  two  years  ago,  the  Parliament  of  Reli- 
gions at  Chicago. 

Everybody  knows  that  it  was  a  grand  event  of 
philosophic  as  well  as  religious  importance.  During 
seventeen  days,  in  special  conference  and  in  public 
assemblies,  in  the  immense  Hall  of  Columbus,  repre- 
sentatives of  all  the  religions  of  the  world  peaceably 
presented  their  doctrines,  embracing  "the  religious 
harmonies  and  unities  of  humanity,  as  moral  and  spir- 
itual factors  of  human  progress." 

The  Parliament  of  Religions  dispelled  the  tradi- 
tions of  those  conferences  and  councils,  where  of  old 
the  theologians  engaged  in  controversies  which  ended 
in  anathemas,  revolts,  and  wars.  It  was  truly  a  con- 
gress. The  delegates  of  the  various  faiths  had  not  to 
defend  their  creeds  from  ferocious  attacks  or  against 
crafty  critics.  But  by  a  loyal  tolerance,  without  con- 
tradiction or  conflict,  all,  on  different  days,  had  an 
opportunity  of  expounding  what  light  their  particular 
form  of  belief  offered  to  man's  intellect,  which  the 
problems  of  his  destiny  are  disquieting,  what  support 
to  his  will,  which  unstable  philosophies  abandon  to 
hesitation  and  incertitude,  and  lastly  what  exaltation 
for  his  heart,  which  mundane  life  does  not  satisfy,  and 
which  pushed  hope  beyond  the  visible  horizon  of  the 
world. 

It  was  the  grandest  event  of  religious  peace  and 
conciliation  of  minds  that  any  century  has  seen.  Old 
Europe  comprehended  it  in  the  first  news  which  ar- 
rived of  the  solemn  opening  of  the  Parliament  of  Re- 
ligions. Cardinal  Gibbons,  before  an  assembly  of 
eight  thousand  persons,  with  his  gentle  presence,  rose 
in  the  purple  of  the  cardinal,  amid  the  varied  costumes 
of  a  hundred  and  seventy  representatives  of  the  prin- 
cipal religious  bodies,  his  eyes  radiant  with  celestial 
joy,  and  in   the   silence   of  the  sanctuary  recited  the 


words  of   "Our  Father,  who  art  in  heaven,"  and  all 
joining  recognised  this  as  the  "universal  prayer." 

Was  it  possible  for  such  an  event  to  be  repeated  ? 
Could  there  not  be  held  in  the  same  spirit  of  tolerance 
and  liberty,  but  more  complete,  a  new  Congress  of 
Religions,  which  would  be  truly  universal?  TJiis  wish 
was  upon  all  lips  when  the  delegates  sepatated.  Re- 
gret would  live  in  their  hearts  if  they  X^ere  forced  to 
say  that  on  one  day  only  men  had  met  in  a  bond  of 
fraternity  with  God,  and  that,  dispersing,  the  old  "de- 
nominational walls,"  to  quote  the  words  of  a  well- 
known  prelate,  would  again  be  reared  to  the  skies. 
Some  men  of  noble  wish  have  sought  to  renew  the 
work  of  religious  unity  and  intellectual  fraternity  of 
the  Parliament  of  Religions.  Catholics,  Protestants, 
representatives  of  various  Christian  faiths,  of  Israelite 
worship,  and  even  of  Oriental  worship,  are  endeavor- 
ing to  gain  the  support  of  all  adherents  of  tolerant 
creeds  and  of  all  freethinkers  for  the  idea  of  a  universal 
Congress  of  Religions  to  be  held  in  Paris  in  1900,  dur- 
ing the  next  universal  exposition. 


A  Universal  Congress  of  Religions  at  Paris  in  1900! 
Already  I  see  the  light  race  of  humorists  imagining  to 
themselves  all  sorts  of  consecrated  parades,  variegated 
shows  of  costumes  and  tinsel,  theatrical  representa- 
tions of  rites,  a  pontificial  tournament  of  Protestants 
and  priests.  They  deceive  themselves.  The  neo- 
Buddhists  will  not  experience  there  the  mysterious 
emotions  which  were  excited  in  them  at  the  Esplanade 
des  Invalides,  by  the  ceremonies  of  the  Temple  of 
Buddha.  The  frequenters  of  the  Musee  Guimet  will 
be  disappointed.  No  iviprcsario  will  show  lamas  or  .fa- 
kirs. They  will  not  have  there  the  invocation  of  the 
lotus,  or  offering  to  the  "Trois  Joyaux." 

Some  journals  have  tried  to  launch  the  project  of 
"a  universal  and  international  history  of  Christianity 
during  the  last  nineteen  centuries."  The  temple  at 
Jerusalem  would  be  reconstructed.  A  panorama  would 
represent  the  various  evangelical  countries.  Some- 
thing like  a  tableau  of  Gerome  would  depict  the  Coli- 
seum with  Nero,  the  beasts,  and  the  martyrs.  Then 
the  crusades,  then  Lepanto,  and  even  a  council,  or  a 
pontifical  office  in  Saint  Peter's.  And  in  this  comedians 
would  play  the  "mysteries"  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and 


468o 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


the  peasants  of  Oberammergau  "The  Passion."  All 
of  which  would  well  be  worthy  the  famous  "Street  in 
Cairo."  But  is  it  necessary  to  say  a  religious  congress 
would  have  nothing  to  do  with  such  a  scheme  of  pano- 
rama and  opera  comique? 

A  Congress  of  Religions  should  not  even  be  a  con- 
gress of  scholars,  who  would  expose  the  history  of 
dead  religions,  the  religious  life  of  the  past,  the  evo- 
lution of  beliefs,  or  the  actual  religious  idea  among 
the  barbarous  countries.  These  might  interest  the 
savants  and  psychologists.  They  scarcely  touch  the 
minds  of  the  people  who  reflect  principally  upon  the 
conditions  of  moral  and  social  life  for  present  humanity. 

* 

The  Universal  Congress  of  Religions  should  be  a 
congress  for  accurately  expounding  the  religious  idea, 
a  congress  largely  apologetic  in  its  nature. 

"We  believe,"  wrote  the  Rev.  Dr.  Barrows,  in  a 
letter  in  which  he  submitted  to  the  various  religious 
bodies  the  project  of  a  Parliament  of  Religions,  "that 
God  exists,  and  that  nowhere  is  he  without  testimony. 
We  believe  that  the  influence  of  religion  tends  to  ad- 
vance the  general  welfare,  and  that  it  is  the  first  factor 
in  social  organisation.  .  .  .  We  propose  to  examine  the 
foundations  of  religious  faith,  to  review  the  triumphs 
of  religion  in  all  ages,  its  position  with  all  the  different 
nations,  and  its  influence  on  literature,  the  fine  arts, 
commerce,  government,  and  family  life;  to  show  the 
power  of  religion  in  promoting  temperance,  social  pur- 
ity, and  its  harmony  with  true  science  ;  the  importance 
of  a  day  of  rest — in  a  word,  to  contribute  to  those 
forces  which  will  bring  about  the  unity  of  the  race  in 
the  worship  of  God  and  the  service  to  man." 

During  the  Parliament  of  Religions,  this  programme 
was  carried  out,  and  it  was  in  this  spirit  that  the  ora- 
tors of  the  various  faiths  treated  the  following  grand 
subjects:  "God,  his  existence  and  attributes;  uni- 
versality of  the  belief  in  God  ;  Man,  his  origin,  na- 
ture, sonl,  and  destiny  ;  Religion,  the  relation  between 
God  ati''  -  n  ;  the  needs  of  humanity  satisfied  by  re- 
ligion ,  t'  .r  systems  of  religion,  or  comparative  study 
of  religion;; ;  the  chief  religions  of  humanity;  the  sacred 
bo';ks  of  the  world  ; — finally,  the  relations  of  religion 
t:0  morils,  to  the  family,  to  civil  society,  to  social  prob- 
lems, to  the  love  of  humanity,  to  the  arts  and  sciences. " 

"  hese  are  the  questions  of  all  time,  and  the  Con- 
,.;  "ss  of  Paris  also  will  take  them  up. 

We  need  not  lay  down  in  advance  a  rigorous  plan 
lor  this  Congress,  which  cannot  be  realised  save  by 
the  co-operation  of  all.  One  thing  only  is  of  impor- 
tance to  state;  viz.  in  what, spirit  of  friendliness  and 
religious  union  our  savants  and  thinkers  will  have  to 
assemble.  Their  duty  will  be  to  extricate  from  the 
numerous  forms  which  the  religious  idea  has  assumed 
among  the  peoples  of  the  world,  and  from  the  dogmatic 


symbols  in  which  they  are  expressed,  what  is  perma- 
nent and  universal  in  this  idea. 

The  majority  of  men  meet  in  a  belief  in  the  Divine, 
in  a  faith  in  God,  which  they  affirm  by  their  devotions. 
This  God  they  regard  as  the  Father  and  Judge  of 
mankind.  And  if  this  notion  was  for  a  long  time  con- 
fused among  the  Orientals,  it  has  day  by  day  been 
more  and  more  clarified  by  Christianity.  Professor 
Bonet-Maury,  in  a  remarkable  article  on  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Religions  at  Chicago,  has  shown  that  the 
Oriental  religions  are  making  rapid  evolution  toward 
the  Christian  ideal.  Monotheism  is  the  faith  of  the 
world.  And  it  seems  as  if  all  humanity  would  some 
day  be  united  in  a  supreme  religion,  the  religion  of 
the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  /he  Fellowship  of  Ma?:. 

From  this  religion  a  moral  law  is  deduced  which 
places  e/i  i-apport  God  and  man,  and  men  with  each 
other.  Whatever  may  be  the  differences  of  applica- 
tion in  practical  cases,  the  existence  and  consciousness 
of  this  law  are  a  universal  fact.  And  always,  with  all 
people,  a  necessary  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  of 
principle  and  consequence,  is  established  between  the 
religious  sentiment  and  the  moral  sentiment,  between 
the  faith  and  the  rule  of  life. 

It  is  on  such  unanimity,  which  recognises  God  as 
father,  and  all  men  as  brothers,  and  on  that  duty  which 
springs  from  the  fatherhood  of  God  and  the  fraternity 
of  man,  that  a  religious  congress  should  set  its  solemn 
seal ;  and  not  on  diversities  of  doctrines,  or  formalities 
of  sectarian  creeds.  Now,  the  religion  of  the  father- 
hood of  God  and  the  fraternity  of  man  is  only  the  re- 
ligion of  the  Gospel.  At  Chicago,  Brahmans  and  rab- 
bis proclaimed  Jesus  Christ  "the  true  Saviour  of  hu- 
manity," and  his  Word  "the  foundation  of  all  the 
religions  of  the  world.  "  Bishop  Keane  said  :  "All  the 
means  which  serve  the  All- High  to  unite  man  culmi- 
nate in  Jesus  Christ.  The  great  religious  leaders  of 
the  world  were  only  the  forerunners  of  the  aurora 
which  should  be  the  light  of  the  world.  Christ  will 
be  the  centre  of  religion  forever." 

But  how  shall  Christianity  draw  to  itself  in  unity 
the  diverse  creeds  of  the  world,  if  she  herself  is  di- 
vided ?  Christ  has  said  :  "  There  shall  be  one  fold  and 
one  shepherd."  Christians  have  broken  this  unity. 
Little  by  little,  and  from  various  motives,  deep  sep- 
arations have  been  caused.  The  dividing  of  the  Chris- 
tian family  is  the  greatest  crime  against  the  Gospel. 
The  Congress  of  Religions,  where  mainly  representa- 
tives of  Christianity  will  stand,  should  seek  to  recover 
that  unity  of  Christ.  As  Canon  Freemantle  of  Baliol 
College,  Oxford,  has  said:  "It  is  unit}'  of  spirit, 
that  is,  sympathy  on  certain  subjects,  which  will  lead 
to  cooperation.  Faith  in  its  true  form  is  less  the  ad- 
herence of  the  intellect  to  certain  dogmas  than  a  moral 
and  sympathetic  faculty.     We  should  apply  this  fac- 


THK    OPEN     COURT. 


4681 


ulty,  not  to  dogmatic  symbols  which  we  devise,  but  to 
those  objects  of  religion  on  which  we  are  unanimous — 
God,  Christ,  and  Eternal  Life." 

The  last  two  days  of  the  Parliament  at  Chicago 
were  consecrated  to  the  study  of  grave  problems — 
first,  religious  union  of  all  the  human  family;  and, 
secondly,  religious  union  of  Christianity.  It  was  a 
noble  sign  of  the  times,  that  such  subjects,  the  mere 
statement  of  which  indicates  a  remarkabl}-  generous 
impulse  of  the  human  mind,  should  be  presented  to  an 
assembh'  of  believers.  The  universal  congress  will 
regard  it  as  its  highest  aim  to  revert  to  these  subjects, 
and  affirm  a  new  spirit,  truly  evangelical,  of  charity 
and  union. 

But  union  is  not  fusion.  Not  one  sacrifice  of  faith 
will  be  asked,  no  tacit  abandonment  of  convictions, 
nor  vague  compromise  with  conscience.  "We  ask  no 
one  to  renounce  his  beliefs,"  said  Mr.  Charles  Bonney, 
President  of  the  general  assembly,  in  his  greeting  of 
welcome  to  the  members  of  the  Parliament  at  Chicago  ; 
"here  the  word  'religion'  signifies  love  and  worship 
of  God,  love  and  service  of  man.  We  would  wish  to 
unite  all  religions  against  irreligion,  and  all  meet  in 
fraternity  for  the  public  good  to  advance  charity  and 
mutual  respect." 

At  the  next  Congress,  the  representatives  of  each 
religion  will  be  free,  in  the  special  congresses,  to  set 
forth  their  creeds  and  the  doctrinal  interpretation 
which  they  have  given  them.  And  at  the  same  time 
a  scientific  section  will  be  established,  where,  in  the 
ordinary  manner  of  learned  congresses,  the  statements 
of  each  religion  on  points  of  dogma,  critical  exegesis, 
history  of  beliefs,  of  morals  and  social  justice,  will  be 
presented  in  essays,  discourses,  and  discussions.  But 
in  the  solemn  sessions  which  will  properly  constitute 
the  Congress  no  controversy  will  be  permitted.  By 
successive  representatives  the  different  churches  or 
societies  of  believers  will  declare  their  solutions  of  the 
problems  of  man's  final  destiny,  and  of  the  moral  and 
social  life,  which  are  now  chiefly  agitating  humanit}'. 

The  first  result  to  be  expected  of  a  religious  con- 
gress is  the  restoration  of  the  religious  idea.  Why  is 
the  intellectual  and  social  movement  of  the  world  being 
effected  outside  the  Church?  It  is  because,  in  the 
words  of  Bishop  Ireland,  "the  ministers  of  Christ 
have  withdrawn  into  the  winter  quarters  of  their  own 
sanctuaries  and  sacristies."  It  would  seem  as  if  reli- 
gion had  no  longer  anything  to  say  to  the  world,  and 
as  if  it  were  fleeing,  in  a  sort  of  confession  of  weak- 
ness, from  the  disagreeable  test  of  opposition.  But  if 
religion  will  come  out  of  this  somnolence  of  its  cata- 
combs, if  it  will  appear  before  the  people,  and  offer  to 
them  the  doctrine  without  the  unpopular  paraphernalia 
of  an  authority  which  would   seek  merely  to  impose. 


it  would  be  astonishing  if  souls  remained  hostile  to  its 
instruction  while  there  are  so  man)'  needs,  so  many 
anxieties  calling  for  divine  comfort. 

No  other  moment  will  human  thought  find  more 
favorable  for  the  restoration  of  the  religious  idea.  All 
minds  now  are  occupied  with  social  problems.  As 
these  problems  touch  all  the  conditions  of  life,  they 
appeal  to  the  simple  and  the  profound.  New  times  are 
announced  by  philosophies,  b)'  statesmen,  and  poets 
of  evolution.  The  old  societ}'  crumbles,  we  say.  A 
new  society  is  forming  in  the  aspirations  of  men,  and 
the  hour  approaches  when  it  will  mount  upon  the  ruins 
of  the  past.  But  what  will  that  society  be  if  life  is 
regulated  only  by  confused  dreams  of  social  revolution 
or  anarchy?  Criticism  may  contest  the  religious  sen- 
timent, and  revolt  against  its  oppressive  dictations. 
It  remains  none  the  less  true  that  religion  has  formed 
the  soul  of  humanity  in  the  past,  that  that  humanity 
has  thought  and  lived  religiously,  that  thus  a  general 
fashion  of  education  has  become  prevalent,  and  that 
a  hereditary  stock  of  ideas  has  thus  been  formed,  of 
which  it  is  imperative  to  take  account  in  all  dreams  of 
social  reorganisation. 

From  this  it  appears  that  the  social  question  is 
pre-eminently  a  moral  question,  and  that  necessarily 
involves  the  religious  question.  The  present  condi- 
tions, then,  are  peculiarly  favorable  to  what  may  be 
called  the  moral  and  social  test  of  religion. 

Christianity,  and  especially  the  Catholic  Church, 
is  in  the  act  of  making  this  test;  "Religion,"  said 
Carlyle,  "is  a  living  thing  and  therefore  moving." 
Religion  must  adapt  itself  to  the  needs  that  each  day 
awakens.  Though  doctrines  are  immutable  in  their 
essence,  there  is  nevertheless  a  development,  and,  in 
a  certain  sense,  even  an  evolution  of  doctrines,  in  vir- 
tue of  the  interpretation  which  applies  them  to  chang- 
ing circumstances.  At  the  present  hour,  then,  Chris- 
tianity has  set  for  its  work  and  apologetics  a  social 
aim;  it  is  proclaiming  among  modern  peoples  the 
democratic  spirit  of  the  Gospel ;  it  is  reviving  the  ob- 
ligations of  charity,  justice,  and  piety.  By  the  exam- 
ple of  its  great  Pope,  the  Catholic  Church  is  a  veritable 
leader  in  social  movements.  Its  theologians  and  orators 
are  seeking  practical  means  of  bringing  about  a  more 
just  social  order. 

Social  reformers  lay  down  for  the  solutior?  of  the 
social  problem,  scientific  rules,  which,  being  tT.stab- 
lished  upon  the  analogies  of  natural  history,  only  reach 
the  animal  nature  of  man.  Socialists  lose  themselves 
in  a  Utopia  of  universal  happiness  by  the  absorption 
of  the  individual  in  the  State.  Anarchists  aim  at  in- 
dividual development,  whose  unrestrained  liberty  de- 
stroys all  society.      Both  propositions  are  chimerical. 

Christianity  recognises  the  partly  just  aspirations 


4682 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


which  are  blended  in  these  chimeras.  But,  to  cure 
the  imagination  of  man  of  preposterous  illusion,  it 
widens  the  range  of  our  earthly  vision  and  turns  our 
minds  to  the  mysteries  of  eternal  hope. 

When,  then,  the  Christians  of  the  Congress  of  Re- 
ligions shall  say  what  they  accept  of  the  social  move- 
ment, what  curb  shall  be  put  upon  its  excesses,  no 
mind  can  deny  the  importance  of  such  a  declaration. 
And  it  is  believed  that  the  teachings  of  Christ,  loy- 
ally presented  in  all  their  democratic  sincerit}',  will 
touch  the  hearts  of  all  who  seek  a  religion  of  "  human 
solidarity."  But  especially  the  humble  will  feel  the 
divine  pity  of  Christ,  alive  in  all  his  true  believers, 
when  a  great  assembly  of  Christians  shall  repeat  on 
high  the  misereor  super  turbam. 

"  At  Benares,  in  the  first  year  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury," said  the  Rev.  Jenkin  Lloyd  Jones. 

That  name  of  Benares,  of  the  holj'  city  of  the  Brah- 
mans,  of  the  city  of  gold,  resting  upon  the  trident  of 
Siva,  might  come  to  the  thought  of  a  clergyman, 
moved  by  the  farewell  speeches  of  the  last  session  of 
the   Parliament  of   Religions.      But  it  was  sentiment. 

After  the  United  States,  it  is  France,  that  other 
land  of  tolerance  and  liberty,  where  we  look  to  see 
produced  the  most  magnificent  tribute  which  has  ever 
been  rendered  to  the  liberty  of  conscience.  It  is  in 
the  centre  of  a  learned  civilisation,  in  the  face  of  acad- 
emies which  will  subject  them  to  the  most  rigorous 
criticisms,  that  the  religious  bodies  should  form  their 
holy  line,  and  proclaim,  against  all  positivistic  or  ma- 
terialistic negations,  the  indestructible  law  of  the  mys- 
tical phenomena.  And,  finally,  it  is  in  this  most  an- 
cient and  glorious  branch  of  Christianity  that  the 
grandest  religious  conclave  of  all  the  centuries  should 
assemble.  After  the  Parliament  of  Religions  at  Chi- 
cago, the   Universal  Congress  of   Religions  at  Paris  ! 

The  date  chosen  will  be  that  of  the  Universal  Ex- 
position, where  will  be  glorified  the  marvels  that  the 
energy,  art,  and  genius  '  man  have  produced.  Here 
the  religious  idea  wi'  .esented  and  expounded  by 

an  assembly  of  be''  ''■  not  plain  that  religion 

accepts  as  bea'  .uable  all  the  victories  of 

science,  only  .mst  scientific  positivism  or 

materialisr  ideas  of   the  soul,  of  a  moral 

ideal  of  ' 

* 

1'  .'-.ow  iii<i  i,.evitable  objection  from  the  timid  and 
sert.i/jaii.  •',•',  Congress  of  Religions  for  all  the  world," 
"^t  limid  will  say,  "is  good  for  America,  a  new  country 
^><thout    iistory,  but  not  for  Europe."     It  is  true  that 

■^id  r  .rope  has  had  in  the  past  religious  troubles,  the 
renembrance  of  which   is  guarded  by  prejudice  and 

jctarian  bonds.  Spiritual  power,  by  long  tradition, 
has  acquired  the  habit  of  domination  and  of  exclusion. 


Will  all  be  forgotten  in  an  outburst  of  reconciliation  ? 
What  was  possible  in  the  country  of  Channing — will  it 
be  so  in  the  land  of  Calvin  ?  and  will  Catholics,  Prot- 
estants, and  Jews  not  find  themselves  embarrassed  by 
a  meeting  which  follows  so  closely  on  the  dissensions 
of  yesterday  ? 

We  reply,  It  would  be  doubting  the  efficacy  of  the 
Gospel  of  peace  and  love  to  believe  that  approach  be- 
tween Christians  is  impossible.  Irreligion  is  at  our 
doors.  We  have  more  important  things  to  accomplish 
than  to  quarrel.  And,  when  irreligion  seeks  to  destroy 
the  Christian  heritage,  we  must  save  the  least  fragment, 
wherever  it  be,  must  gather  as  a  necessary  reserve  the 
least  crumb  falling  from  the  table  where  are  seated  the 
disciples  of  the  Christ. 

The  sectarians,  and  1  mean  thereby  the  sectarians 
of  faith,  have  an  objection  even  more  grave.  They 
contest  the  principle  even  of  a  Congress  of  Religions. 
Recognition  to  all  forms  of  religion,  according  to  dog- 
matic tradition,  would  be  a  slight  to  "the  only  truth 
in  the  one  Church,"  and  might  imply  the  heretical 
idea  "that  all  religions  are  good  and  of  equal  value." 

A  Congress  of  Religions  is  a  reunion  of  men  of 
various  beliefs,  where  each  has  the  right  to  present 
his  faith,  where  all  admit  the  value  of  incomplete  truth, 
and  where  they  credit  even  error  with  good  faith  and 
sincerity. 

A  Congress  of  Religions  is  a  congress  of  religious 
men.  Neither  the  deficiencies  of  one  belief  nor  the 
superiority  of  another  are  denied.  Nothing  is  affirmed 
by  the  fact  of  a  congress  as  to  the  absolute  value  of 
the  credos.  Our  purpose  is  less  to  compare  their  abso- 
lute or  objective  value,  than  to  recognise  their  relative 
and  subjective  value.  The  religions  will  be  considered 
from  a  human  standpoint.  They  will  be  considered 
less  as  abstract  doctrines  than  as  an  element  of  moral 
personality,  and  the  issue  will  be  not  so  much  creeds 
and  truths  as  the  sincerity  of  the  believers. 

The  Catholic  Church  should  make  to  this  grand 
idea  of  a  universal  congress  the  most  generous  conces- 
sions. 

In  the  Parliament  at  Chicago,  in  a  Protestant  coun- 
try, the  first  place  and  role  was  given  to  the  Catholics. 
"In  all  the  assemblies,"  said  Bishop  Keane,  "the 
originators  of  the  Congress  expressed,  by  a  unanimous 
voice,  not  only  the  desire  to  receive  the  counsels  of 
the  Church,  but  to  be  guided  by  them.  They  asked 
our  opinion  on  the  choice  of  subjects  to  treat,  and  in- 
troduced into  their  programmes  modifications  which 
we  suggested  to  them.  In  order  to  study  religion 
under  all  its  aspects  and  in  all  its  relations  to  human 
life,  it  was  decided  that  the  Congress  should  con- 
vene seventeen  days,  each  day  devoted  to  a  subject  of 
general  interest.      The   commission   decreed    that    at 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4683 


least  one  Catholic  delegate  should  be  heard  each  day. 
It  was  arranged  in  the  beginning  that  a  series  of  con- 
ferences should  be  held  simultaneously  with  the  regu- 
lar congresses,  where  each  religion  should  have  a  day 
to  expound  its  doctrines,  and  the  Catholic  Church 
held  in  these  the  first  place.  Lastly,  Cardinal  Gibbons 
was  asked  to  open  the  Congress  by  a  prayer  and  a 
discourse. 

This  full  and  respectful  deference  permitted  him 
to  appear  in  this  memorable  assembly  without  any 
sacrifice  of  his  dignity  or  divine  rights.  And  the  great 
prelate  rendered  as  follows  his  judgment  upon  the 
work  at  Chicago:  "Thus  for  seventeen  days  the 
Church  held  its  place  in  the  midst  of  this  singular  as- 
sembl)',  as  did  St.  Paul  of  old  in  the  midst  of  those 
who  questioned  him  in  the  Areopagus.  They  listened 
with  respect,  often  with  enthusiasm  and  applause, 
which  formed  a  consoling  contrast  to  the  distrust  and 
sectarian  rancor  of  the  past  centuries.  What  will  be 
the  result?  Who  can  sa}',  except  the  God  of  goodness, 
who  gives  all  blessing  !  Amiable  critics,  who  find  noth- 
ing good  save  in  the  stereotyped  dogmas  of  the  old  re- 
ginw,  will  undoubtedly  expect  only  evil  from  the  new 
step.  They  believe  that  the  Church  lowers  itself  in  hav- 
ing appeared  in  the  midst,  not  onl)'  of  the  faithful,  but 
of  the  unbelievers.  As  to  the  beloved  Master,  who  has 
said  that  his  Church  should  produce  in  the  great  day 
"new  treasures  as  well  as  old,"  and  who  made  her, 
according  to  St.  Paul,  the  debtor  of  all  those  who 
were  wandering  afar  from  her  in  search  of  the  truth, 
he  will  not  fail  to  judge  all  aright.  It  is  for  him  alone 
that  the  work  has  been  undertaken  and  performed." 

To  the  Protestant  Church  belongs  the  honor  of 
having  taken  the  initiative  in  the  Congress  at  Chicago; 
but  it  can  be  said  that  its  success  depended  very 
largel}'  upon  the  adhesion  of  the  Catholics.  Among 
the  Catholics  it  needed  the  powerful  authority  of  Car- 
dinal Gibbons  and  Archbishop  Ireland  to  win  over  the 
timid  ones. 

"The  Congress  at  Chicago  is  the  most  beautiful 
and  happy  event  in  the  whole  histor)'  of  our  young 
Church  in  America,"  said  Cardinal  Gibbons.  The 
Church  of  France  can  do  what  the  Church  of  America 
has  done,  and  be  sure  of  the  same  advantages;  and, 
since  it  is  an  act  of  generosity,  or,  if  you  will,  of  cour- 
tesy, she  should  bestow  on  the  enterprise  the  good 
graces  of  her  full  co-operation. 

The  idea  of  a  Universal  Congress  is  already  more 
than  a  hypothetical  project.  It  has  been  submitted 
to  the  criticisms  of  the  great  prelates  of  the  Cath- 
olic world.  Cardinals,  bishops,  theologians,  editors 
of  journals,  savants,  and  writers  have  given  their 
opinions.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  a  universal  congress 
of  unity  has  the  approbation  and  effective  support  of 


two  French  cardinals.  M.  Bonet-Maury,  professor 
of  a  Protestant  theological  faculty,  and  delegate  from 
Protestant  Europe  to  the  Parliament  at  Chicago,  has 
secured  the  co-operation  of  the  reformed  churches  of 
France.  The  Grand  Rabbi  Zadoc  Kahn  has  communi- 
cated by  official  letter  his  support  and  that  of  the  Is- 
raelite consistory. 

When  the  union  of  the  three  great  cults  of  France 
was  thus  effected,  a  testimonial  was  sent  to  the  Pope 
in  the  name  of  a  number  of  Catholics,  with  this  title  : 
"  Memoir  on  the  Project  of  a  Universal  Congress  of 
Religions  at  Paris  in  1900."  Cardinal  Gibbons,  going 
to  Rome,  consented  to  present  this  memoir. 

When  the  Parliament  of  Religions  was  opened  at 
Chicago,  by  the  prayer  that  Cardinal  Gibbons  offered, 
much  astonishment  was  felt  in  France  and  Rome,  and 
even  indignation  ;  all  expected  an  official  act  of  disap- 
proval and  condemnation.  The  condemnation  did  not 
come.  The  Pope  gave  his  sanction.  Ever  afterwards 
whenever  visitors  recalled  to  Leo  XIII.  the  remem- 
brance of  the  Parliament  of  Religions,  his  deep,  clear 
eyes  beamed  with  joy.  He  had  seen  a  little  of  his 
dream  realised — the  Pope  of  the  people,  the  reconcilia- 
tion of  society-  through  evangelical  justice  ;  the  union 
of  the  churches  in  the  universal  peace  among  men. 

A  few  days  ago  we  asked  Cardinal  Gibbons,  on  his 
return  from  Rome,  what  his  impressions  were  in  the 
matter.  They  were  as  follows  :  The  Pope  will  not 
convoke  officiall}"  a  Congress  of  Religions.  He  wishes 
to  leave  free  the  initiative  to  Catholics,  and  in  this 
manner  leave  this  grand  idea  to  their  patronage. 
Above  all,  he  does  not  wish  to  engage  in  the  organisa- 
tion of  a  congress  which  should  bring  together  all  re- 
ligious faiths,  the  prestige  of  his  person  and  author- 
ity as  head  of  the  Church.  But  to  us  the  Cardinal 
declared  : 

"Write,  act,  do  not  be  timid  in  France.  Interest 
in  your  project  those  who  think,  those  who  believe. 
Create  a  strong  movement  of  public  opinion.  The 
Pope  will  be  with  30U.      Of  that  I  am  sure." 


PERSIAN  DUALISM. 

Relighix  in  its  origin  is  based  upon  the  fear  of 
evil,  and  by  evil  the  primitive  man  understanJ.s  that 
which  hurts  him,  or  that  which  is  unpleasant.  Says 
Tylor  {Primitive  Culture,  \q\.  II.,  p.  318): 

"This  narrow  and  rudimentary  distinction  between  good  an "^ 
evil  was  not  unfairly  stated  by  the  savage  who  explained  that  it 
anybody  took  away  his  wife,  that  would  be  bad,  but  if  he  him- 
self took  someone's  else,  that  would  be  good." 

Whenever  man,  in  the  course  of  his  moral  evolu- 
tion, begins  to  discover  that  that  which  gives  him 
pleasure,  or  appears  to  him  good,  is  not  as  yet  tlie 
good,  that  tlie  good,  viz.,  the  morally  good,  is  much 
higher  and  greater  than  the  pleasurable,  that  it  is  a 


\ 


^ 


4684 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


power  in  the  world  which  to  struggle  for  is  his  main 
duty  in  life,  he  becomes  civilised.  And  among  the 
nations  of  antiquity,  the  Persians  seem  to  have  taken 
this  step  with  conscious  deliberation,  for  they  most 
earnestly  insisted  upon  the  contrast  that  obtains  be- 
tween good  and  evil,  so  much  so  that  their  religion  is 
even  to-day  regarded  as  the  most  consistent  form  of 
dualism. 

The  founder  of  Persian  dualism  was  Zarathustra, 
or,  as  the  Greeks  called  him,  "Zoroaster." 

Zarathustra,  it  is  rightly  assumed,  was  not  so  much 
the  founder  of  a  new  era,  as  the  concluding  link  in  a 
long  chain  of  aspiring  prophets  before  him.  The  field 
was  ripe  for  the  harvest  when  he  appeared,  and  others 
must  have  prepared  the  way  for  his  movement. 

Zarathustra  is  in  all  later  writings  represented  as 
ademi-God,  a  fact  which  suggested  to  Prof.  Darme- 
steter  the  idea  that  he  was  a  mythical  figure.  Never- 
theless, and  although  we  know  little  of  Zarathustra's 
life,  we  have  the  documentary  evidence  in  the  "Ga- 
thas"  that  he  was  a  real  historical  personality. 

The  Gathas  are  hymns  written  by  Zarathustra  ; 
in  which  he  appears  as  a  struggling  and  suffering  man, 
sometimes  elated  by  the  grandeur  of  his  aspirations, 
firmly  convinced  of  his  prophetic  mission,  and  then 
again  dejected  and  full  of  doubt  as  to  the  final  success 
of  the  movement  to  which  he  devoted  all  his  energies. 
Says  Prof.  L.  H.  Mill,  the  translator  of  the  Gathas. 

"  Their  doctrines  and  exhortations  concern  an  actual  religious 
movement  taking  place  contemporaneously  with  their  composi- 
tion ;  and  that  movement  was  exceptionally  pure  and  most  earnest. 

"That  any  forgery  is  present  in  the  Gathas,  any  desire  to 
palm  off  doctrines  upon  the  sacred  community  in  the  name  of  the 
great  prophet,  as  in  the  Vendidad  and  later  Yasna,  is  quite  out  of 
the  question.     The  Gathas  are  genuine  in  their  mass." 

There  were  two  religioi. ^  parties  in  the  days  of 
Zarathustra:  the  worshipp.  rr  ^f  the  daevas  or  na- 
ture-gods, and  the  '  •.rshippeis  o^  Ahura,  the  Lord. 
Zarathustra  appe^i-  in  Uie  Gafha^  uS  a  priest  of  the 
highest  rank  w'o  became  the  leader  ■)[  the  Ahura 
party.  Zarathustra  not  ciily  de^fad^.  the  old  na- 
ture gods,  till-  daevai8,-iflt'o  deinons,  b'..t  also  regarded 
them  as  iei_\teienlatives  of  a  fiendish  power  which  he 
called  -'■'■i/,  i.  e.  falsehood,  and  .Angro  Mainyiish,  or 
Ahr        vfwhich  means  "  \^--     /il  spirit." 

>'  ithu'^tra  taught  that  iihriman  was   not  created 
.t  possessed  of  an  independent  existence. 

Ke  .J . .  jpirit,  to  be  sure,  was  not  equal  in  dignity  to 
/iv&  Lord,  nor  even  in  power  ;  nevertheless,  both  were 
creative  and  both  were  original  in  being  themselves 

.created.  They  were  the  representatives  of  contra- 
dictory principles.  And  this  doctrine  constitutes  the 
dualism  of  the  Persian  religion  which  is  most  unmis- 
takably expressed  in  the  words  of  the  thirtieth  Yasna.' 

1  See  Sacred  Boobs  of  the  East ,  X.KXI.,  p.  29. 


' '  Well  known  are  the  two  primeval  spirits  correlated  but  inde- 
pendent ;  one  is  the  better  and  the  other  is  the  worse  as  to  thought, 
as  to  word,  as  to  deed,  and  between  these  two  let  the  wise  choose 
aright." 

Says  James  Darmesteter,  the  translator  of  the  Zend- 
Avesta. 

"  There  were  two  general  ideas  at  the  bottom  of  the  Indo- 
Iranian  religion  ;  first,  that  there  is  a  law  in  nature,  and  secondly, 
that  there  is  a  war  in  nztuTei-Snired  Books  of  the  East,  IV.,  p.  Ivii). 

The  law  in  nature  proves  the  wisdom  of  Ahura, 
who  is  therefore  called  Mazda  the  Wise.  The  war  in 
nature  is  due  to  the  intrusion  of  Ahriman  into  the 
creation  of  Ahura. 

After  death,  according  to  the  Zoroastrian  doctrine, 
the  soul  must  pass  over  cinvato  peretiisli,  i.  e.  the  "ac- 
countant's bridge,"  where  its  future  fate  is  decided. 
Evil  doers  fall  into  the  power  of  Ahriman  and  are 
doomed  to  hell ;  the  good  enter  garo  dcmdna,  the  life 
of  bliss  ;  while  those  in  whom  good  and  evil  are  equal, 
remain  in  an  intermediate  state,  the  Hamcstakdiis  of 
the  Pahlavi  books,  until  the  great  judgment-day  (called 
dka). 

To  characterise  the  noble  spirit  of  the  religion  of 
Zarathustra,  we  quote  the  following  formula  which 
was  in  common  use  among  the  Persians  and  served  as 
an  introduction  to  every  liturgic  worship  : ' 

"  May  Ahura  be  rejoiced  !  May  Angro  be  destroyed  by  those 
who  do  truly  what  is  God's  all-important  will. 

"I  praise  well-considered  thoughts,  well-spoken  words,  and 
well-done  deeds.  I  embrace  all  good  thoughts,  good  words,  and 
good  deeds  ;   I  reject  all  evil   thoughts,  evil  words,  and  evil  deeds. 

"I  give  sacrifice  and  prayer  unto  you,  O  Amesha-Spenta  !- 
even  with  the  fulness  of  my  thoughts,  of  my  words,  of  my  deeds, 
and  of  my  heart :   I  give  unto  you  even  my  own  life. 

"  I  recite  the  '  Praise  of  Holiness,'  the  Asheni  J'o/iii.^ 

"  'Holiness  is  the  best  of  all  good.  Well  is  it  for  it,  well  is 
it  for  that  holiness  which  is  perfection  of  holiness  ! ' 

"  I  confess  myself  a  worshipper  of  Mazda,  a  follower  of  Zara- 
thustra, one  who  hates  the  devils  (datvas)  and  obeys  the  laws  of 
Ahura." 

We  have  little  information  concerning  the  origin 
of  Zarathustra's  dualism,  but  we  can  nevertheless  re- 
construct it,  at  least  in  rough  outlines.  For  there  are 
witnesses  left,  even  to-day,  of   the  historical   past  of 

1  Cf.  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  Vol.  XXIII.,  p  22. 

2  The  six  AmeshO  SpentCt  {the  undying  and  well-doing  ones)  are  what 
Christians  might  call  archangels.  Originally  they  had  been  seven,  but  the 
first  and  greatest  among  them,  Ahura  Mazda,  came  to  overshadow  the  divin- 
ity of  the  other  si.\.  They  remained  powerful  gods,  but  he  was  regarded  as 
their  father  and  creator.  We  read  in  I'-iJ/,  XIX,  16,  that  they  have  one  and 
the  same  thinking,  one  and  the  same  speaking,  one  and  the  same  doing,  one 
and  the  same  father  and  lord,  who  is  Ahura  Mazda. 

At  first  the  Anieshfi  Spenta  were  mere  personilications  of  virtues,  but  later 
on  they  were  entrusted  with  the  government  of  the  various  domains  of  the 
imiverse.  tJaurvatCit  and  Anieretattit  (health  and  immortality)  had  charge  of 
waters  and  trees.  Khshathriit  Vairim  (perfect  sovereignty),  whose  emblem 
as  the  fire  of  lighting  was  molten  brass,  was  the  master  of  metals.  Aska  Va- 
hita  (excellent  holiness),  the  moral  world  order  as  symbolised  by  sacrifice  and 
burnt-offering,  ruled  over  the  fire  Spenta  Arffiai'ti [divine  piety)  was  the  god- 
dess of  the  earth,  according  to  old  traditions,  since  the  Indo-Iranian  era  ;  and 
Fo/in  Manu  (good  thought)  superintended  the  creation  of  animated  life. 

'■^  Says  Darmesteter  :  "  The  '  Ashem  Vohu  '  is  one  of  the  holiest  and  most 
frequently  recited  prayers." 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4685 


the  old  Persian  religion.  A  sect  called  the  Izedis,  are 
the  fossil  representatives  of  the  Devil-worship  that 
precedeci  the  purer  notions  of  the  Zoroastrian  worship 
prevailing  in  the  Zend-Avesta.  Following  the  author- 
it}-  of  a  German  traveller,  Tylor  says  {Primitive  Cul- 
ture, \o\.  II.,  p.  329): 

"The  Izedis  or  Yezidis,  the  so-called  Devil-worshippers,  still 
remain  a  numerous  though  oppressed  people  in  Mesopotamia  and 
adjacent  countries.  Their  adoration  of  the  sun  and  horror  of  de- 
filing fire  accord  with  the  idea  of  a  Persian  origin  of  their  religion 
(Persian  "/:<■</"  =  God),  an  origin  underlying  more  superficial  ad- 
mixture of  Christian  and  Moslem  elements.  This  remarkable  sect 
is  distinguished  by  a  special  form  of  dualism.  While  recognising 
the  e.xistence  of  a  Supreme  Being,  their  peculiar  reverence  is  given 
to  Satan,  chief  of  the  angelic  host,  who  now  has  the  means  of 
doing  evil  to  mankind,  and  in  his  restoration  will  have  the  power 
of  rewarding  them.  '  Will  not  Satan  then  reward  the  poor  Izedis, 
who  alone  have  never  spoken  ill  of  him,  and  have  suffered  so  much 
for  him  ?'  Martyrdom  for  the  rights  of  Satan  !  exclaims  the  Ger- 
man traveller,  to  whom  an  old  white-bearded  Devil-worshipper 
thus  set  forth  the  hopes  of  his  religion." 

This  peculiar  creed  of  the  Izedis  is  in  so  far  simi- 
lar to  the  religion  of  Devil-worshipping  savages  as  the 
recognition  of  the  good  powers  is  not  entirely  lacking, 
but  it  is,  as  it  were,  a  merely  negative  element ;  the 
positive  importance  of  goodness  is  not  jet  recognised. 

It  is  probalile  that  the  Persians  in  prehistoric  times 
were  as  much  Devil-worshippers  as  are  the  Izedis. 
The  daevas,  the  deities  of  the  irresistible  forces  of  na- 
ture, were  pacified  with  sacrifices.  A  recognition  of 
the  power  of  moral  endeavor  as  represented  in  the 
personified  virtues  was  the  product  of  a  slow  develop- 
ment. Thus  in  Persia  the  Devil-worship  of  the  daevas 
3'ielded  to  the  higher  religion  of  God- worship  ;  and 
this  change  marks  a  step  of  progriiss  wTiich  brought  it 
about  that  soon  afterwards  the  Persians  became  one 
of  the  leading  nations  of  the  world. 


THE  OCTOBER  MONIST. 


The  late  Prof.  George  J.  Romanes,  "  upon  whose  shoulders," 
Max  Miiller  says,  "  the  mantle  of  Darwin  fell,"  considers,  in  the 
leading  article,  called  TIu'  Darwinism  of  Darwin,  and  of  the  Post- 
Darwinian  Sft/oots,  the  question  whether  natural  selection  has 
been  the  sote  or  /nii  llie  i/iief  caase  of  the  progressive  modification 
of  living  forms.  It  will  be  remembered  that  Cope  and  the  Neo- 
Lamarckians  emphasise  almost  exclusively  the  influences  of  the 
environment  in  evolution,  while  Wallace  and  Weismann  lay  sole 
stress  upon  the  principle  of  natural  selection.  Romanes  thinks 
that  Darwin's  view,  which  admitted  alt  factors,  but  laid  chief 
stress  on  natural  selection,  will  eventually  prove  the  most  accurate 
of  all. 

Dr.  Paul  Topinard,  the  distinguished  French  anthropologist, 
in  the  article  Man  as  an  Animat,  being  Part  I,  of  a  series  on  .SV/. 
«((-£■  and  Faitti,  attempts  to  determine  man's  place  in  animate  Na- 
ture. His  conclusion  is  that  man  is  not  a  creature  apart  in  the 
world,  but  is  primarily  an  animal  like  all  the  others,  the  only  dif- 
ference being  that  he  is  adapted  and  perfected  to  intellectual  life. 
The  statement  in  this  article  that  Professor  Cope  adopts  the  hy- 
pothesis that  man  is  descended  directly  from  the  Lemurs  without 


the  intervention  of  the  Anthropoid  Apes,  is  not  correct  in  the  light 
of  Professor  Cope's  actual  discussions  of  the  subject.  (See  his 
article  on  "  The  Genealogy  of  Man"  in  Tlie  American  Xaturatisl 
for  April,  1893.)  Professor  Cope  had  simply  stated  the  probabil- 
ity that  the  Anthropoid  Lemurs  of  the  family  Anaptomorphida? 
are  the  ancestors  of  the  Anthropoid  Apes  and  man.  Dr.  Topinard 
was  probably  led  to  misunderstand  his  views  on  the  subject  by  the 
fact  that  the  group  which  includes  the  two  latter  families  is  termed 
the  Anthropomorpha.  For  Professor  Cope's  exact  and  final  views 
on  the  phylogeny  of  man,  the  reader  may  be  referred  to  his  forth- 
coming book  on   Tlif  Primary  Factors  of  Organic  Evolution. 

Readers  interested  in  pedagogy  will  find  in  the  same  number 
an  important  article  by  the  renowned  Italian  criminologist.  Prof. 
C.  Lombroso,  on  Some  Appti^ations  of  Criminal  Anttiropotogv 
lo  Practical  Fducaliou,  where  Professor  Lombroso  gives  unmis- 
takable and  suggestive  hints  as  to  the  method  of  discovering  the 
criminal  type  in  children  and  points  out  the  measures  which  should 
be  taken  for  the  care  of  such  patients.  He  also  wisely  draws  at- 
tention to  the  practical  limitations  of  his  doctrine. 

Students  of  natural  logic  will  be  especially  interested  in  G. 
Ferrero's  article  on  Arres/ed  Mentation.  By  "arrested  menta- 
tion" Ferrero  understands  that  ingrained  tendency  of  natural 
thought  which  leads  us  in  our  search  for  causes  to  stop  short  at 
phenomena  falling  under  the  notice  of  the  senses,  and  not  to  go 
beyond  the  striking  features  of  events  for  their  real  invisible  causes. 
He  gives  a  host  of  historical  illustrations  in  support  of  his  view, 
which  is  practically  tantamount  to  a  law  of  least  effort  for  the 
mind. 

An  able  defence  of  science,  as  opposed  to  the  recent  animad- 
versions of  Mr.  Balfour,  is  made  in  the  article  Xatiiralism,  by 
Prof.  C,  Lloyd  Morgan  of  Bristol,  England,  who  was  said  by  an 
eminent  naturalist  to  be  "the  shrewdest  as  well  as  the  most  logi- 
cal critic  in  the  field  of  Darwinian  speculation."  Professor  Mor- 
gan claims  that  Mr.  Balfour  has  totally  misconceived  the  moral 
and  religious  upshot  of  the  naturalistic  tenets,  asserting  that  any 
naturalistic  interpretation  of  man's  ethical  and  aesthetical  ideals 
which  tends  in  any  measure  to  rob  them  of  their  worth  and  dignity 
is  false  in  the  highest  degree.  "  I  for  one,"  he  says,  "should  be 
sorry  to  believe  that  the  noble  deed,  the  unselfish  action,  the  lofty 
ideal  have  no  intrinsic  worth  and  dignity,  but  shine  only  with  a 
borrowed  lustre,  no  matter  what  the  source  of  that  lustre."  Yet 
"if  it  be  asserted  that  the  naturalist's  conceptions  of  the  worth  of 
human  endeavor  are  the  spurious  heritage  of  a  creed  that  is  not 
his,  the  counter-assertion  may  be  made  with  at  least  equal  plausi- 
bility, that  the  dignity  of  their  supposed  extrinsic  source  is  but 
the  reflected  and  hypostatised  glory  of  their  own  inherent  nobility." 

The  editor  of  Tlie  .Monitl,  in  the  article  Ttie  Xew  Ortlio- 
do.xy  (which  is  an  address  delivered  before  the  Pan-American 
Congress  of  Religion  and  Education),  criticises  the  fashionable 
philosophy  of  the  times  as  producing  religious  indifference  and 
contributing  to  the  spread  of  the  agnostic  doctrine  of  the  vanity  of 
all  faith,  scientific  or  religious,  and  formulates  the  demands  of  an 
orthodoxy  which  must  be  based  on  objective  facts,  sifted  with 
critical  judgment,  and  reached  by  objective  criteria  of  truth.  He 
sums  up,  "What  we  need  most  dearly  is  orthodoxy,  but  let  our 
orthodoxy  be  genuine." 

In  a  fervid  and  brilliant  article  on  The  Fifth  Gospel,  Dr. 
Woods  Hutchinson,  a  rising  author  of  Des  Moines.  Iowa,  pro- 
claims a  new  evangel — the  Gospel  according  to  Darwin.  Instead 
of  destroying  the  religious  spirit,  this  Gospel,  Dr.  Hutchinson 
maintains,  reanimates  it  and  places  it  upon  stronger  foundations 
than  ever  before.  The  author's  interpretations  of  the  ethical  out- 
come of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  are  aglow  with  genuine  religious 
enthusiasm. 

More  than  fifty-four  books  on  philosophy,  science,  psychology, 
ethics,  the  history  of  religion,  etc.,  are  reviewed  in  the  October 


4686 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


Moiiisl-,  not  to  mention  i  <'-stiiiu's  of  the  contents  of  all  the  most 
prominent  philosophical  periodicals.  (Chicago  :  The  Open  Court 
Publishing  Co.     Single  copies,  50  cents;  per  annum,  $2.00.) 

NOTES. 

The  present  number  contains  an  article  by  the  Abbe  Char- 
bonnel  on  the  proposed  repetition  of  the  Chicago  Parliament  of 
Religions  at  Paris  in  the  year  1900.  We  need  scarcely  add  that 
we  sympathise  with  the  plan,  and  hope  that  the  brotherly  spirit 
in  igoo  will  be  the  same  as  it  was  in  1893  ;  while  with  the  expe- 
riences of  the  first  Parliament,  and  having  several  years  of  prep- 
aration, the  WW  c«  stcne  can  be  considerably  improved. 

The  first  Parliament  was  a  success  mainly  on  account  of  the 
tact  with  which  the  Hon.  C.  C.  Bonney  managed  its  affairs.  He 
possesses  a  peculiar  talent  for  bringing  together  the  most  hetero- 
geneous opinions  on  one  platform  and  keeping  them  there  in 
brotherly  harmony.  In  the  place  of  acrimonious  debate,  which 
reverberated  through  the  centuries  of  the  past,  we  had  in  those 
noted  assemblages  a  friendly  exchange  of  thought,  and  every  one 
in  presenting  his  views  was  confident  that  the  truth  should  and 
would  prevail  in  the  end.  We  had  glowing  tributes  to  the  gran- 
deur of  the  Vddas  by  a  Hindu  monk.  The  Roman  Catholic 
Church  set  forth  all  the  attractions  of  her  uninterrupted  traditions 
and  the  glorious  beauties  of  her  institutions.  The  most  radical 
free  thought  that  yearned  for  religious  utterance  was  freely  ad- 
mitted. Buddhists  of  Ceylon  and  Japan  in  unpretentious  modesty 
preached  the  nobility  of  compassion  for  all  suffering  beings,  in- 
cluding the  lowest  grades  of  animal  life.  A  representative  of  the 
0  Presbyterians,  that  church  which  is  noted  for  its  earnestness  of 
conviction  and  the  sternness  of  its  dogmatology,  and  is  imposing 
as  a  consistent  system  of  rigid  and  clean-cut  thought,  stood  at  the 
helm  and  executed  with  remarkable  ability  the  plan  of  the  Con- 
gress. The  Jews  showed  no  animosity  towards  Christianity,  but 
reminded  the  Christians  that  their  Saviour  had  sprung  from  the 
Jewish  race,  and  one  of  the  most  prominent  rabbis  of  America 
concluded  the  Parliament  with  the  Lord's  Prayer. 

-X- 

*  * 

Many  of  the  daily  papers  construe  the  Pope's  letter  to  Mgr. 
Satolli  on  religious  conventions  as  hostile  to  religious  parliaments. 
If  that  were  so,  how  could  he  have  spoken  to  Cardinal  Gibbons 
as  he  did,  and  how  would  the  Parisian  clergy  venture  to  propose 
a  second  Religious  Parliament  in  1900?  Considering  the  popular 
misconception  of  the  very  idea  of  a  religious  parliament,  which  is 
often  supposed  to  imply  that  all  faiths  are  equally  good,  it  is  but 
natural  that  the  Pope  is  anxious  lest  his  flock  be  carried  away  with 
a  mania  for  fraternising  with  those  of  other  forms  of  belief.  But 
remember,  first,  that  the  Pope  speaks  of  Roman  Catholic  conven- 
tions only,  not  of  religious  parliaments,  and  secondly,  that  his 
advice  is  to  admit  dissenters  even  there,  and  to  reply  to  their  ques- 
tions. Archbishop  Ireland  said,  in  an  interview  with  a  represen- 
tative of  the  Associated  Press :  ' '  The  words  of  the  Pope  are  in  no 
manner  a  condemnation  of  parliaments  of  religions."  As  to  the 
religious  parliament  to  be  held  at  Paris  in  1900,  he  added  :  "It 
will  no  doubt  lead  to  a  great  success.  Catholics  may  well  take 
part  in  it.  Indeed,  the  Pope's  letter  has  cleared  the  way  for  it  by 
marking  out  the  conditions  under  which  it  may  be  held  even  in 
punctilious  Europe." 

-X- 

*  * 

When  some  nine  years  ago  'J'/u-  Open  Com/  was  first  brought 
out,  its  founder  planned  nothing  else  than  a  Parliament  of  Re- 
ligions in  the  shape  of  a  periodical.  The  new  periodical  was  in- 
tended to  be  an  open  court  for  the  ventilation  of  religious  prob- 
lems, especially  of  the  central  problem, — the  nature  of  man's  soul 
and  the  ethical  import  of  its  proper  comprehension.  The  founder 
of  The  Open  Court  is  confident  that  if  the  several  solutions  are 
presented  side  by  side,  the  truth  will  unfailingly  come  out  in  the 


end.  The  nature  of  a  scientific  solution  of  any  problem  is  to  le 
every  possible  conception  be  represented  and  investigated,  to  let 
them  be  tried  in  the  furnace  of  criticism  and  tested  by  experi- 
ence. That  solution  which  covers  the  whole  field  and  leaves  no 
surd,  which  satisfies  all  the  demands  of  theoretical  considerations, 
and  is  at  the  same  time  serviceable  in  its  practical  application, 
will  ultimately  be  victorious.  In  a  word,  the  methods  that  are  ap- 
plied in  science  should  be  applied  also  to  the  solution  of  religious 
problems,  and  in  this  sense  the  religious  tenet  of  The  Open  Court 
is  called   The  /\e/igion  of  Seienee. 

(JUST  PUBLISHED.) 


Post=Darwinian  Questions: 

HEREDITY    AND     UTILITY. 

Being  Part  II.  of  DARWIN,  AND  AFTER  DARWIN. 

i:V  THE  LATE 

GEORGE  JOHN   ROMANES, 

LL.D..  f.H.S..  HONOR.\RY  FELLOW  OF    GON\'ILLE    .^ND    CAIUS    COLLEGE,  CAMBRIDGE. 

Edited  by  Prof.   C    Lloyd  Morgan, 

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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  426. 

A    UNIVERSAL    CONGRESS    OF    RELIGIONS.     The 

Abbe  Victor  Charbonnel 4679 

PERSIAN   DUALISM.     Editor 4683 

THE  OCTOBER   MONIST 4685 

NOTES 4686 


The  Open  Court. 


A   "HTEEKLY   JOURNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  427.     (Vol.  IX.— 44.) 


CHICAGO,   OCTOBER  31,   1895. 


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THE  PARISIAN  BUDDHA. 

BY  MONCURE  D.    CONWAY. 

In  the  course  of  one  year  two  theatres  in  Pans 
have  drawn  vast  crowds  by  representations  appealing 
to  the  half-awake  interest  of  Europe  in  Buddha.  One 
of  these  was  "  Izeyl,"  a  drama  in  four  acts,  by  Messrs. 
Armand  Silvestre  and  Eugene  Morand  ;  the  other  "  La 
Princesse  Idaea,"  a  ballet  in  two  tableaux.  After  see- 
ing both  of  these,  I  have  remembered  an  unfulfilled 
desire  of  Renan,  namel}',  to  compose  a  philosophical 
ballet  on  the  legend  of  Krishna's  appearance  with  his 
flute  among  the  rustic  cow-maidens.  The  god,  as  a 
handsome  young  herdsman,  set  them  all  dancing  to 
his  music,  and  each  maiden  believed  she  had  him  for 
a  partner.  Renan  found  in  this  the  secret  of  every 
divine  figure,  the  infinite  self-multiplication  by  which 
the  god  or  teacher  becomes  to  each  that  personally 
beloved  one  for  which  each  individual  spirit  longs. 
But  they  respond  to  the  several  genii  of  each  people 
also.  The  English  conception  of  Buddha  is  now  so 
Christianised  that  it  is  doubtful  whether  either  of 
these  French  dramas  would  be  favorably  received  in 
London,  whereas  in  Paris  the  great  Oriental  teacher 
has  been  adapted  to  the  emotional  and  passionate  sen- 
timent which  has  not  yet  been  permitted  to  take  Jesus 
for  a  partner,  —  or  not  by  name.  The  authors  of 
"Izeyl"  have,  however,  availed  themselves  of  the 
story  of  Ambapali  (told  in  Dr.  Carus's  Gospel  of 
Buddha,  p.  201)  and  the  parable  of  Vasavadatta  (//'. 
p.  179),  to  give  an  Oriental  disguise  to  a  tender  ro- 
mance between  Jesus  and  Mar}'  Magdalen.  It  is  an 
indication  of  the  extreme  antiquity  of  the  story  of  Am- 
bapali, probably  true,  that  in  his  discourse  in  the 
mansion  of  this  courtesan  Buddha  spoke  no  word  that 
could  be  construed  into  a  reproof  of  her  way  of  life  ; 
nor  is  there  any  intimation  that,  after  presenting  her 
mansion  and  park  to  the  teacher  and  his  friends,  she 
forsook  her  previous  occupation.  In  a  region  and 
time  when  polyandry,  polygamy,  and  infant  marriages 
were  familiar  and  respectable,  the  courtesan's  occu- 
pation could  hardly  have  been  one  calling  for  the  ex- 
hortations given  in  another  age  to  Vasavadatta,  and 
to  the  two  courtesans  of  the  New  Testament,  whose 
sins  have  been  laid  by  legend  on   Mary  Magdalen.^ 

^  There  is  not  a  whisper  in  any  test  against  the  character  of  Mary  Magda- 


In  the  drama  of  "Izeyl,"  the  heroine,  powerfully  im- 
personated by  Sarah  Bernhardt,  seeks  to  fascinate  the 
Master  (Scyndya,  a  Christ-like  make-up),  is  herself 
converted,  and  bestows  all  her  wealth  on  the  poor. 
In  defending  her  recovered  virtue  from  a  prince,  she 
slays  him  in  a  desperate  encounter,  and  is  condemned 
to  living  burial.  The  Master  (Scyndya)  is  really  in 
love  with  her  ;  he  manages  to  enter  the  vault  where 
she  is  slowly  perishing  ;  there,  torn  by  grief,  he  turns 
with  rage  on  his  "mission,"  which  has  brought  them 
desolation ;  he  entreats  Izeyl  to  live,  they  will  be 
happy  together,  and  the  world  maj'  find  another  apos- 
tle. Izeyl  restores  his  spiritual  strength,  and  he  talks 
with  rapture  of  the  radiant  future  opening  before  man- 
kind, and  the  azure  realm  of  repose  above  ;  but  in  the 
intervals  of  his  utterance  she  says:  "Master,  place 
thy  dear  hand  on  my  heart ;  bend  thy  beloved  head  on 
me;  ah,  give  me  thy  lips!  It  is  in  time  that  I  am 
dying?  " 

So  dies  Izeyl  in  the  arms  of  her  beloved,  under  the 
kiss  of  a  human  love.  For  she  is  n&t-iiying  in  that 
radiant  future  of  the  race — not^in  any  azure  vault : — 
she  is  a  woman,  dying  in  tifne,  needing  love  arid  a 
heart  to  lean  on.  The  scerie  recalls  the  wonderful 
picture  in  Florence  of  "  The  Passfit^  jaj  Klary  Magda- 
len," where  the  infant  Jesus  ^appears  in  her  cavern, 
and  extends  a  crucifix  to  receive  her  expiring  kiss.' 

If  you  can  imagine  Sakya-Jj^lmi  so  taught  by  this 
tragedy  that  he  reaches  the  beliefs  that_,l^irvani  is  a 
happy  marriage  with  the  beloved  man  or  maid,  to  have 
found  Izeyl  resuscitated  and  melancholy  in  her  love- 
less solitude,  and  wedded  her,  you  have  the  motif  of 
the  magnificent  ballet,  "La  Princesse  Ida;a,"atthe 
Folies-Bergere.  Idaea,  the  beautiful  and  only  daugh- 
ter of  the  Maharajah,  is  first  seen  reclining  on  her 
sofa,  surrounded  by  her  slaves,  who  vainly  seek  to 
dispel  her  profound  melancholy,  bringing  beautiful 
stuffs,  jewels,  and  birds.  The  Maharajah,  as  a  last 
effort  to  cure  his  daughter's  prolonged  depression,  or- 
ders grand  feies  in  the  palace  gardens.  These,  of 
course,  are  characterised  by  Parisian  splendor,  and 
Idaea,  to  please  her  father,   joins  in  the  dance;  but 

len,  but  her  legend,  however  started,  has  survived  by  its  pathetic  sentiment, 
and  has  been  forever  lixed  on  her  by  the  uncritical  mention  of  her  name,  in 
the  heading  to  Luke  vii.,  in  the  old  English  version. 


4688 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


presently  she  sinks  in  the  arms  of  the  bayaderes.  At 
this  moment,  when  the  king  is  desperate  at  his  faihire 
to  make  her  smile,  a  Buddhist  hermit,  coarsely  clad, 
appears,  kneels  at  his  feet,  and  implores  permission  to 
attend  the  princess.  Receiving  a  disdainful  permis- 
sion, the  hermit,  on  a  lyre  made  of  an  antelope's  skull, 
executes  a  plaintive  melody.  At  this  the  princess  half 
rises,  and  listens.  Then  heavenly  voices,  as  if  sum- 
moned by  the  hermit's  incantation,  are  heard  singing 
of  Sakya  Muni,  in  Nirvana's  sublime  repose,  unruffled 
by  any  breath,  his  soul  sleeping  in  the  infinite.  "  Let 
the  virtue  of  his  sacred  word  chase  from  thee  every 
impure  doubt,  that  thy  spirit  may  ascend  and  soar, 
and  find  rest  in  the  azure  !  "  The  princess,  under  the 
hermit's  spell,  approaches  him,  and  the  mysterious 
voices,  with  accents  somewhat  less  celestial,  sing : 
"O  marvellous  prodigy!  lender  the  shining  heaven 
what  is  there  that  can  thus  control  this  fainting  heart, 
changing  its  deep  night  to  radiant  day?  It  is  the  Mas- 
ter of  the  World — victorious  Love  !  " 

After  a  struggle  to  free  herself  from  the  spell  of 
the  hermit,  the  princess  falls  in  his  arms.  Indignant 
at  this,  the  Maharajah  orders  his  officers  to  seize  the 
hermit  and  put  him  to  death.  But  in  the  moment 
when  the  guards  touch  the  hermit,  he  throws  off  his 
religious  vestment,  and  stands  revealed  as  a  young 
and  powerful  prince,  who  had  long  loved  Idaea  and 
took  this  means  of  reaching  her.  The  gloom  of  the 
princess  is  dispelled  ;  Sakya  Muni,  taken  to  her  heart, 
becomes  her  partner  for  life  ;  and  the  spectator  is  left 
to  his  own  speculations  as  to  whether  the  celestial 
voices  are  to  be  ascribed  to  a  lover's  ingenuity  or  to 
some  fresh  interest  these  inhabitants  of  the  '-Azure" 
are  taking  in  the  warm  and  tender  affairs  of  earth. 

This,  then,  is  the  form  under  which  the  Buddha  is 
approaching  Paris.  He  is  to  become  what  Jesus,  from 
having  been  too  long  deified,  too  long  ecclesiasticised, 
can  never  become  in  France;  but  he  (Buddha)  can  be- 
come this  only  in  combination  with  Jesus. 

It  is  indeed  doubtful  whether,  to  any  but  a  few 
philosophical  minds,  any  great  religious  teacher  of  an- 
other race  can  ever  find  approach,  e.xcept  in  this  same 
way  :  that  is,  by  leaving  at  home  his  local  and  official 
investiture,  and  bringing  his  real  and  beautiful  human 
character  into  alliance  with  the  like  humanity  of  the 
similarly  invested  and  hidden  being  in  the  country  to 
which  he  comes. 

When  travelling  in  Ceylon,  I  found  the  Buddhists 
personally  lovable  and  thoughtful,  but  their  Buddha 
appeared  to  me  too  distant,  too  perfunctory,  too  much 
like  the  Christ  of  many  Europeans,  and  I  had  a  feeling 
that  those  whose  "Messiah"  was  a  human  Jesus  can 
see  deeper  into  Buddha  than  the  majority  of  Bud- 
dhists can. 

Meantime  there  is  a  largely  ignored  Jesus  in  Eu- 


rope, a  great-hearted  man  veiled  by  traditions,  forbid- 
den to  the  genuine  treatment  of  literature  and  art, 
which  can  only  approach  him  by  clothing  him  with 
alien  name  and  costume.  Is  Buddha  coming  to  reveal 
Jesus  and  Mary  Magdalen  and  the  rest  to  us?  And  are 
we  ever  to  have  a  humanised  Jesus  able  to  journey 
abroad,  and  put  the  Parsee  and  the  Buddhist  in  fuller 
possession  of  their  own  great  teachers? 

The  two  plays  which  I  have  briefly  described,  how- 
ever unsatisfactory,  appear  to  me  noticeable  as  a  ges- 
ture or  sign  of  our  time. 

They  are  also  occasionally  mounting  the  Passion 
Play  in  Paris  :  it  may  be  that  the  art  which  has  gained 
freedom  to  raise  a  Christ  on  the  Cross  will  presently 
be  free  enough  to  manage  his  Descent,  and  give  him, 
like  the  legendary  Krishna,  to  human  hearts  to  become 
to  each  its  near  friend  and  partner. 


THE  SONG  OF  SONQS. 

BV  THE  REV.   T.    A.    GOODWIN,    D.  D. 
n.     THE   LH.^RACTER  OF  THE   POEM. 

The  true  place  in  literature  for  this  Song  of  Songs 
is  that  of  a  Love  Story  in  verse.  To  call  it  a  drama  is 
hardly  to  classify  it  intelligibly  to  popular  thought, 
yet  it  partakes  of  most  of  the  elements  of  a  drama,  and 
is  more  of  a  drama  than  anything  else.  It  certainly 
belongs  to  the  drama  family.  If  it  were  allowable  to 
build  a  word  out  of  recognised  material  at  hand,  I 
would  call  it  a  drama-et.  While  it  lacks  the  scenic 
touches  which  are  necessary  to  adapt  it  to  the  stage, 
yet  when  read  or  rendered  even  in  the  less  pretentious 
form  of  a  dialogue  it  is  necessary  to  change  time  and 
place  and  the  dramatis  persona,  in  order  to  catch  its 
significance. 

In  the  following  rendering  I  have  followed  in  the 
main  the  text  of  the  revised  version  as  bringing  out 
more  nearly  the  meaning  of  the  original,  and  because 
the  metrical  arrangement  is  more  suggestive  of  poetry. 
But  in  comparing  even  this  with  the  original  the  Bible 
student  feels  at  every  step,  as  he  feels  a  thousand 
times  elsewhere  in  such  a  comparison,  that  the  revi- 
sers were  too  much  handicapped  by  a  well-meant 
agreement  at  the  start,  to  retain  the  phraseology  of 
the  authorised  version  wherever  possible  without  too 
much  injury  to  the  sense  of  the  original.  Here  as  else- 
where they  have  confessedly  often  failed  to  give  the 
best  possible  rendering,  perpetuating  thereby  not  a 
few  incorrect  notions  if  not  also  in  some  cases  some 
doubtful  doctrines. 

While  therefore  scholars  readily  recognise  many 
changes  for  the  better  in  the  rendering  of  this  Song  by 
the  revisers,  they  also  detect  not  a  few  instances  where 
the  meaning  might  have  been  greatly  improved  by  a 
departure  from  the  old  phraseology.  Take,  for  ex- 
ample.  Chapter  7,  verse  2,  in  the  Song.     It  is  not  a 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4689 


matter  of  delicacj^  merely  which  induces  me  to  substi- 
tute the  word  waist  for  the  word  navel,  and  the  word 
body  for  the  word  belly.  There  is  nothing  in  the  navel 
alone  to  suggest  a  round  goblet  full  of  wine,  while,  by 
the  aid  of  a  little  poetic  fancy,  the  waist  may  suggest 
it.  Neither  is  there  anything  in  the  belly  alone,  as 
that  word  is  now  used  by  all  English  speaking  peo- 
ples, to  suggest  a  heap  of  wheat  encircled  with  lilies, 
while  a  well-formed  body,  as  that  word  is  now  used  to 
include  the  central  and  principal  parts  of  the  human 
frame,  may  easily  suggest  the  figure  used.  These 
several  words  in  the  original  mean  what  the  transla- 
tors have  given  as  their  English  equivalents,  but  they 
mean  also  ivaist  and  boily  respectively.  I  am  sure  that 
the  reader  will  appreciate  the  change. 

Again,  the  Hebrew  text  can  never  be  translated 
into  our  language  literally  so  as  to  be  intelligible.  For 
that  matter  no  dead  language  can,  and  very  few  living 
languages,  hence  in  all  translations  explanatory  words 
are  frequentlj'  used, of  necessity.  In  the  following 
rendering  I  have  availed  myself  of  this  necessary  pre- 
rogative, supplying  adverbs  and  prepositions  and  other 
words  that  seem  necessary  to  bring  out  the  meaning 
of  the  original  by  making  the  text  correspond  with  the 
idiom  of  the  English  language.  For  example  at  Chap- 
ter 2,  verse  6,  the  heroine  is  made  to  sa}'  both  in  the 
old  and  in  the  new  versions:  "  His  left  hand  is  under 
my  head  and  his  right  hand  da/li  embrace  me. "  There 
is  no  verb  in  the  original  from  which  our  is  can  be  ob- 
tained and  the  tense  of  the  verb  to  be  supplied  can  as 
well  be  in  the  future  as  in  the  present ;  besides,  it  avoids 
a  false  statement  not  justifiable  even  by  poetic  licence, 
for  as  a  matter  of  fact  no  left  hand  was  under  her  head 
nor  was  any  right  hand  embracing  her.  But  even  this 
change  of  tense  still  leaves  the  meaning  obscure,  or 
rather  leaves  the  sentence  meaningless.  The  shep- 
herdess is  protesting  against  the  caresses  of  the  lecher 
ous  Solomon  and  saying  of  her  shepherd  lover:  "Only 
his  left  hand  shall  sustain  my  head  and  only  his  right 
hand  shall  embrace  me  ;"  meaning  that  none  but  her 
virtuous  Shulammite  shepherd  shall  be  allowed  the 
liberties  of  a  lover  ;  hence,  in  addition  to  changing 
the  tense  I  have  supplied  the  necessary  adverb. 

In  all  cases  I  have  omitted  such  distinctive  marks 
as  italics  and  quotations.  The  curious  reader  may 
easily  compare  the  text  here  given  with  the  text  of  the 
revised  version  if  he  wishes  to  see  how  far  and  wherein 
I  have  departed  from  it  ;  while  the  scholarly  reader 
may  compare  it  with  the  original  Hebrew  if  he  wishes 
to  see  what  liberties  I  have  taken  in  order  to  bring  out 
the  meaning  of  the  poem.  I  have  also  wholly  ignored 
the  artificial  chaptering  and  versing  of  the  text.  In 
no  other  way  can  the  connexion  be  preserved  which 
is  necessary  to  a  right  understanding  of  the  book. 


It  will  be  observed  that  I  have  not  followed  the 
suggestions  of  those  who  would  dignify  the  poem  by 
making  it  a  drama  and  introducing  acts  and  scenes  ac- 
cordingly. To  so  construe  it  involves  too  many  diffi- 
culties. One  of  these  is  so  great  that  no  two  of  those 
who  have  attempted  to  divide  it  into  acts  have  ever 
agreed  where  one  act  ends  and  another  begins,  neither 
can  they  agree  as  to  the  ilraniatis  peisome.  I  have  sim- 
ply sought  to  restore  it  to  its  original  form  as  nearly  as 
that  can  be  ascertained  after  the  lapse  of  so  man}'  cen- 
tiiries,  as  it  was  read  or  recited  by  the  common  people, 
three  thousand  years  ago,  whether  they  were  captives 
by  the  rivers  of  Babylon  or  of  Assyria,  or  were  slaves 
on  the  banks  of  their  own  Jordan,  with  only  such 
equipments  as  might  be  improvised  for  the  occasion, 
by  slaves  and  captives.  Classif3'ing  it  with  the  unpre- 
tentious dialogue  places  it  within  the  reach  of  the  com- 
mon people,  who  could  read  or  recite  it  without  the 
expensive  paraphernalia  of  the  theatre. 

The  scene  opens  in  the  gorgeous  countr}'  seat  of 
the  wealth}'  and  dissipated  King  Solomon,  where  were 
houses  and  vinej'ards  and  orchards  and  gardens,  with 
much  silver  and  gold  and  cattle  and  men  servants  and 
women  servants  and  all  the  peculiar  wealth  of  kings, 
including  man}'  women  and  much  wine.  It  was  early 
in  the  reign  of  that  famous  monarch.  His  harem  at 
that  time  had  only  sixty  women  who  posed  as  wives, 
and  only  eighty  who  were  classed  as  concubines,  what- 
ever the  difference  between  them  may  have  been.  La- 
ter these  were  increased  to  seven  hundred  wives  and 
three  hundred  concubines.  It  was  in  the  process  of 
multiplying  these  wives  that  the  incidents  of  the  story 
belong. 

The  heroine  of  the  story  is  a  beautiful  sun-burnt 
maiden,  who  had  been  brought  from  her  country-home 
in  Northern  Palestine  to  this  accumulation  of  splendors. 
To  assume,  as  some  do,  that  she  had  been  captured 
by  a  band  of  brigands  and  taken  by  force  to  the  king's 
harem,  is  to  do  violence  to  every  known  law  of  human 
nature.  Unwilling  captives  would  soon  transform  a 
harem  into  a  hell  from  which  the  would-be  lord  would 
flee  for  dear  life.  Not  one  of  the  possible  pleasures 
of  such  an  accumulation  of  the  means  of  sensual  en- 
joyments could  be  found  there.  Solomon  was  too 
wise  even  in  his  most  abandoned  moods  to  do  such 
violence  to  every  law  of  lust.  The  harem  was  not  a 
prison  for  unwilling  captives,  to  be  obtained  or  re- 
tained by  force,  but  a  place  with  such  attractions  as 
to  make  it  a  desirable  home  as  compared  with  the  or- 
dinary home-life  of  the  women  of  Palestine  at  that 
time.  We  must  not  form  our  estimate  of  the  lot  of  a 
second  or  a  second-hundredth  wife  of  that  period  by 
our  views  of  polygamy  to-day.  Frequent  and  devas- 
tating wars  made  the  disparity  in  numbers  between 
males  and  females  very  great,  and  the  honor  of  moth- 


4690 


THE    OPKTST    COURT. 


erhood  removed  from  a  multiplicity  of  wives'most  of 
what  now  makes  polygamy  abhorrent. 

The  harem  was  replenished  through  the  agency  of 
procurers,  whose  business  it  was  to  travel  through  the 
country  and  induce  handsome  women  to  become  in- 
mates. Human  nature  is  not  so  changed  in  these 
three  thousand  years  that  we  need  suppose  that  the 
methods  of  these  procurers  were  essentially  different 
from  the  methods  of  men  and  women  of  their  class  to- 
day. Possibly  in  no  case  was  their  purpose  fully  dis- 
closed at  the  first.  The  hard  lot  of  women,  especially 
in  the  rural  districts,  made  it  easy  then,  as  it  is  too 
easy  now,  for  a  plausible  man  or  woman  to  persuade 
young  women  to  exchange  their  countr)'  surroundings 
and  hard  work  for  the  easier  lot  of  an  inmate  of  a 
king's  palace.  Once  there,  under  whatever  induce- 
ment, the}'  were  put  into  the  hands  of  governesses, 
whose  duty  it  was  to  gain  their  consent  to  yield  to  the 
lust  of  the  king,  either  as  a  wife  or  concubine.  Light 
domestic  duties  and  luxurious  living  were  combined 
until  the  consent  was  obtained  ;  the  king  himself  tak- 
ing no  prominent  part  in  these  preparatory  proceed- 
ings, probably  knowing  nothing  of  the  novitiate  until 
her  consent  had  been  obtained  to  become  his  wife. 

Our  heroine  was  a  rustic  girl  whose  hard  life  was 
not  most  agreeable.  In  her  earlier  girlhood  she  had 
been  detailed  to  the  duty  of  guarding  the  family  flock. 
This  had  brought  her  into  the  company  of  neighboring 
shepherds,  among  whom  was  a  handsome  young  man, 
between  whom  and  her  there  had  grown  a  strong  mu- 
tual attachment.  She  had  two  half-brothers  who  were 
displeased  with  this  love-affair.  Nothing  else  proving 
effectual,  in  order  to  break  it  off,  the}'  transferred  their 
sister  from  the  flocks  to  the  vineyard,  subjecting  her 
to  exposure  to  the  hot  sun  and  to  the  harder  work  of 
dressing  the  vines.  While  in  rebellion  against  this 
oppression,  she  was  visited  by  one  or  more  of  the  pro- 
curers for  Solomon's  harem.  It  was  not  difficult,  un- 
der the  circumstances,  to  persuade  her  that  in  the 
palace  of  the  king  she  would  find  better  treatment  and 
more  satisfactory  remuneration  than  she  was  receiving 
as  a  vinedresser.  How  long  she  had  been  in  her  new 
home  when  the  story  begins,  need  not  matter  ;  it  had 
been  long  enough  for  those  who  had  her  in  charge  to 
venture  to  unfold  to  her  the  ultimate  purpose  for 
which  she  had  been  brought  into  the  king's  family. 

The  next  most  important  person,  the  hero  of  the 
story,  is  the  Shularnmite  shepherd,  the  devoted  lover 
of  the  brave  young  woman,  who  so  persistently  re- 
fused to  abandon  him,  and  to  exchange  his  love  for 
what  was  proposed  to  her  as  a  wife  of  the  lecherous 
king. 

The  next  most  important  characters  is  a  trio  of 
middle-aged  women,  from  among  the  wives  of  the 
king,  the   governesses  to  whose  charge  she  had  been 


committed,  who  are  called  in  the  poem  "Daughters  of 
Jerusalem,"  or  "Daughters  of  Zion."  This  young 
shepherdess  was  from  the  tribe  of  Issachar.  Her  home 
was  far  away.  The  country  of  her  birth  was  fertile, 
and  abounded  in  vineyards  and  flocks,  but  her  people 
were  humble,  though  thrifty;  hence  the  splendor  of 
the  city-life,  and  especially  of  the  king's  palace,  could 
but  have  a  charm  for  them,  which  made  them  regard 
the  woman  who  wore  a  part  of  these  splendors  as 
entitled  to  such  distinction  as  is  implied  in  those 
titles. 

We  may  readily  suppose  that  in  ordinary  cases  the 
task  of  these  women  was  not  a  difficult  one.  There 
was  so  little  in  the  humdrum  of  domestic  life  in  the 
country  to  satisfy  the  laudable  aspirations  of  a  spirited 
woman  and  so  many  attractions  in  the  surroundings  of 
the  court  that  it  must  have  been  an  easy  task  usually, 
under  the  loose  notions  of  that  period  concerning  the 
sacredness  of  marriage,  to  gain  the  consent  of  the  new- 
comer to  the  conditions  of  her  remaining  ;  hence  the 
stubborn  and  persistent  resistance  of  this  Shulammite 
shepherdess  was  a  surprise  to  them. 

This  is  all  beautifully  set  forth  in  the  poem  as  well 
as  is  the  honorable  womanly  course  of  the  trio  towards 
her  when  they  comprehend  her  situation. 

The  progress  of  inauguration  into  this  new  life  was 
a  simple  one.  The  new  victim,  who  had  been  allured 
to  the  palace  under  the  impression  that  she  was  to 
have  some  honorable  and  remunerative  employment 
about  the  extensive  establishment,  was  clothed  in  bet- 
ter raiment,  and  fed  on  better  food,  and  regaled  on 
more  and  better  wine  than  she  had  been  accustomed 
to,  until  her  governesses  had  gained  her  consent  to 
forever  abandon  her  country  home  and  the  associa- 
tions and  lover  of  her  childhood,  for  the  pomp  and 
splendors  of  a  queen.  The  luxuriant  appointments  of 
the  palace ;  its  baths,  its  tables,  and  its  wardrobes 
usually  did  the  work  ;  hence  it  is  untenable  to  assume, 
as  some  do,  that  Solomon  himself  at  any  time  ad- 
dresses the  maiden  in  words  of  adulation  or  entreaty, 
or  addresses  her  at  all. 

Solomon  himself  plays  but  a  passive  and  merely  a 
coincidental  part  in  the  poem.  He  is  made  to  be  per- 
sonally unconscious  of  what  is  going  on  in  his  own  be- 
half in  the  palace.  He  appears  in  the  distance  in  a 
royal  pageant,  but  not  in  any  sense  for  the  purpose  of 
settling  the  question  under  discussion  by  the  women 
and  the  maiden,  though  the  women  readily  seize  upon 
the  event  to  supplement  their  own  argum.ents.  He 
was  carried  in  his  splendid  car  of  state,  accompanied 
by  one  of  his  queens,  and  was  greeted  with  loud  plaud- 
its. What  effect  this  had  upon  the  shepherdess  ap- 
pears in  the  poem. 

The  half-brothers  of  the  shepherdess  play  a  sorry 
part  in  the  affair,  both  at  the  beginning  and  at  the  end- 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4691 


ing,  and  the  neighbors  appear  to  congratulate  the 
lovers  on  the  successful  issue  of  the  struggle  when 
they  return  to  the  scenes  of  their  earlier  courtship. 


FABLES  FROM  THE  NEW  /ESOP. 


BV  HUDOR  GENONE. 


Sports  of  the  Gods. 

A  HUSB.\NDMAN,  having  pressed  the  juices  out  of  a 
quintal  of  cherries,  for  the  purpose  of  making  cherry 
brandy,  a  liquor  of  great  medicinal  virtue  and  much 
esteemed  in  those  parts,  threw  the  refuse,  the  skins 
and  pulp  from  which  the  juices  had  been  extracted, 
and  the  pits,  upon  a  heap  of  compost,  which  in  the 
autumn,  having  been  spread  over  the  land  to  enrich 
it,  the  cherry  seeds,  almost  countless  in  number,  were 
scattered  over  the  whole  extent  of  a  vast  field. 

The  following  spring  the  owner  of  the  field  came 
and  ploughed,  and  turned  the  rich  earth,  and  har- 
rowed it,  and  prepared  it  for  a  crop  of  grain. 

Now  it  happened  that  this  season,  owing  perhaps 
to  a  too  plentiful  rainfall,  was  not  propitious  to  the 
growth  of  the  corn,  much  of  which  rotted  in  the 
ground  and  caused  the  balance  which  chanced  to  grow 
to  spring  up  lank  and  fibrous,  and  going  more  to  stalk 
than  ear. 

The  farmer,  much  chagrined,  was  about  to  mow 
down  the  sparse  grain  to  feed  green  to  the  cattle,  but 
when  he  came,  he  and  his  laborers  with  their  sickles, 
to  the  field,  he  perceived  here  and  there,  scattered  in 
all  directions,  stout  strong  sprouts  of  green  leafing 
out  at  their  tops  and  giving  signs  of  the  most  lusty 
life. 

The  husbandman,  who  was  of  a  strictly  pious  turn, 
held  this  to  be  a  sign  of  the  favor  with  which  he  was 
regarded  by  Zeus,  and  therefore  directed  his  laborers 
to  leave  the  field.  The  young  cherry  sprouts  from 
that  time  on  had  it  all  to  themselves. 

The  following  year  the  husbandman  came  again  to 
his  field  to  see  how  the  gifts  of  Zeus  prospered,  when, 
because  of  the  growth  the  year  had  given,  he  recog- 
nised in  the  mysterious  sprouts  only  the  common 
cherry*  Then  he  became  very  angr}',  not,  (as  he 
ought, )  at  his  own  want  of  judgment  and  knowledge, 
but  at  Zeus,  who,  he  swore,  had  only  mocked  him. 

So  angry  was  he  that  he  would  have  cut  down  the 
saplings,  but  found  that  they  had  grown  too  well  for 
that  to  be  done  easil}-.  He  therefore  went  away  in 
his  rage,  vowing  to  pay  no  more  oblations  at  the  shrine 
of  any  god. 

The  years  went  on,  and  the  sprouts,  which  had  be- 
come saplings  grew  to  trees.  It  might  have  been  that 
twenty  or  so  had  passed  when  the  husbandman,  now 
an  old  man,  came  again  to  the  field,  which  had  be- 
come almost  a  forest.      From   tree  to  tree  he  went, 


tasting  the  fruit,  but  so  nauseous  and  bitter  was  the 
taste  of  each  that,  making  a  wry  face,  he  exclaimed  : 
"O,  unlucky  man  that  I  am  !  what  have  I  done  to  be 
so  persecuted  by  Fate?  The  gods,  not  content  with 
their  first  malice,  must  needs  wait  twenty  years  for 
another." 

While  he  thus  mused  aloud  and  bewailed  his  mis- 
fortunes, in  the  midst  of  the  foliage  he  heard  the  sound 
of  mocking  laughter,  and,  whilst  his  anger  kindled,  a 
voice,  (which  was  the  voice  of  the  great  Pan,  although 
he  knew  it  not,)  saying:  "Whom  the  gods  will  help 
they  first  chasten  and  then  puzzle.  Keep  on  tasting 
the  fruit." 

Now  the  husbandman,  although  he  had  given  up 
offerings  to  the  gods,  was  yet  superstitious,  and  obej-ed 
the  voice, — because  it  was  a  mystery, — and  went  on 
tasting  the  fruit,  and  yet  for  a  long  time  finding  all 
bitter,  till  at  last,  coming  to  a  tree  remote  from  its 
mates,  he  perceived  instantly  how  fine  was  its  fruit, 
how  black  and  big  and  glistening.  This  also  tasting, 
he  found  so  exceeding  luscious  that  he  at  once  cried 
out  for  joy  and   as  though  he  had  found  a  rich  jewel. 

When  he  was  about  to  return  to  his  house  with 
some  of  the  fruit,  the  voice  was  again  heard. 

"So,"  it  said  (seemingly  coming  forth  from  the 
very  bole  of  tlie  tree  itself),  "so  you  think  you  have 
solved  the  riddle." 

"Surely,"  replied  the  husbandman  valorously,  for 
nothing  maketh  one  bolder  than  a  successful  achieve- 
ment, "surely,  what  more  could  be  asked  in  way  of 
answer?   I  sought,  and  I  have  found." 

"  Stop,"  said  the  voice  sternly,  "stop  and  listen, 
for  I  have  something  to  tell  thee  perchance  for  thy 
profit.  Answer  me  this:  Which  is  the  more  impor- 
tant, earthly  things  or  heavenly?" 

••  Heavenl}-  things,  surely,"  answered  the  man. 

"And  yet,"  continued  the  voice,  "you  are  content 
to  have  solved  the  riddle  though  the  solution  gives 
you  only  a  fine  cherry.  Is  a  cherry  then  in  your  eyes 
better  than  wisdom?  And  tell  me,  O  vacillating  and 
inconstant  one  that  you  are,  why,  many  years  ago, 
you  deemed  the  cherry  sprouts  gifts  of  the  gods?  And 
why  again  the  next  year  did  you  rail  at  the  heavenly 
powers  because  you  found  the  sprouts  only  young 
cherry  trees?  And  why  did  you  then  forego  all  further 
worship  and  swear  that  Zeus  had  mocked  you  ?  And 
why,  only  now,  did  you  curse  your  unlucky  fortune 
and  revile  heaven  and  the  gods,  and  say  that,  not  con- 
tent with  their  first  malice,  they  waited  twenty  years 
for  another?  Tell  me,  why  are  you  so  frightened  at 
one  mystery,  so  enamored  of  another  ;  so  superstitious 
at  one  time  without  reason,  so  bold  in  self-conceit  at 
another  without  cause?  Tell  me,  O  mortal,  if  you  can, 
why  are  you  mortal?" 

But  the  man  remained  dumb.      And  the  voice  con- 


4692 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


tinued  :  "Know,  O  mortal,  that  thou  art  most  highly 
favored  to  have  gotten  from  the  gods  a  rare  fruit,  but 
yet  more  highly  that  for  thee  now  I  will  solve  the  rid- 
dle. As  this  tree,  which  was  but  one  of  many,  pro- 
duces a  fruit  which  for  size  and  flavor  surpasses  all 
others  of  its  kind,  so  is  it  with  man;  for  the  race  is 
bitter  and  little,  and  if  perchance  by  dint  of  much 
care  the  wild  man  is  bettered  if  he  be  left  by  himself 
for  a  season  he  returns  forthwith  to  his  savage  nature. 
But  the  gods  have  willed  that  as  now  and  then  among 
trees  a  more  excellent  appears,  so  among  mankind 
come  great  men  as  samples  of  the  future  race.  Of 
this  sort  was  Kungfutzu  of  Cathay,  the  Buddha  of 
India,  the  Christos  of  whom  thou  hast  heard  much  of 
late,  and  even  thine  own  Socrates.  Go  home  now 
and  remember  what  things  have  been  here  revealed. 
Rail  no  longer  at  Fate,  for  the  accidents  of  fortune 
are  the  deep  designs  of  destiny,  and  high  caprices  of 
birth  the  sports  of  the  gods." 


AZAZEL  AND  SATAN. 


The  primitive  stages  of  the  Hebrew  civilisation  are 
not  sufficiently  known  to  describe  the  changes  and 
phases  which  the  Israelitic  idea  of  the  Godhead  had  to 
undergo  before  it  reached  the  purity  of  the  Yahveh 
conception.  Yet  the  Israelites  also  must  have  had  a 
demon  not  unlike  the  Egyptian  Typhon.  The  custom 
of  sacrificing  a  goat  to  Azazel,  the  demon  of  the  des- 
ert, suggests  that  the  Israelites  had  just  emerged  out 
of  a  dualism  in  which  both  principles  were  regarded 
as  equal. 

We  read  in  Leviticus,  xvi. : 

"And  Aaron  shall  cast  lots  upon  the  two  goats;  one  for  the 
Lord,  and  the  other  for  .\zazel.  And  Aaron  shall  bring  the  goat 
upon  which  the  Lord's  lot  fell,  and  offer  him  for  a  sin-offering. 
But  the  goat  on  which  the  lot  fell  for  Azazel,  shall  be  presented 
alive  before  the  Lord,  to  make  atonement  with  him  and  to  let  him 
go  to  Azazel  in  the  desert." 

The  name  Azazel  is  derived  from  aziz,  which  means 
strength  ;  the  god  of  war  at  Edessa  is  called  Asisos 
( "AZiZo^'),  the  strong  one.  Bal-aziz  was  the  strong 
god,  and  Rosli-aziz,  the  head  of  the  strong  one,  is  the 
name  of  a  promontory  on  the  Phoenician  coast.  Azazel, 
accordingly,  means  the  Strength  of  God. 

The  mention  of  Azazel  must  be  regarded  as  a  last 
remnant  of  a  prior  dualism.  Azazel,  the  god  of  the 
desert,  ceased  to  be  the  strong  god;  he  has  become  a 
mere  shadow  of  his  former  power,  for  the  scapegoat 
is  no  longer  a  sacrifice.  Yahveh's  goat  alone  is  offered 
for  a  sin-offering.  The  scapegoat  is  only  sent  as  a  mes- 
senger to  carry  out  into  the  desert  the  curse  that  rests 
on  sin  and  to  give  information  to  Azazel  that  the  sins 
of  the  people  have  been  atoned  for. 

These  sacrificial  ceremonies,  which,  on  account  of 
their  being  parts  of  religious  performances,  could  only 


reluctantly  be  discarded,  are  vestiges  of  an  older  dual- 
ism still  left  in  Hebrew  literature. 

* 
*  * 

It  is  evident  from  various  passages  that  the  Israel- 
ites believed  in  evil  spirits  dwelling  in  darkness  and 
waste  places.  (See  Lev.,  xvii.,  7  ;  Deut.  xxx.,  17;  ib. 
xxxii.,  17;  Isaiah,  xiii.,  21;  //'.  xxxiv.,  14;  Jer.,1.,39; 
Psalms,  cvi.,  37. )  Their  names  are  Se'iriin  (chimeras 
or  goat-spirits),  Lilith  (the  nightly  one),  Shediin  (de- 
mons). But  it  is  difficult  to  say  whether  they  are  to 
be  regarded  as  the  residuum  of  a  lower  religious  stage 
preceding  the  period  of  the  monotheistic  Yahveh  cult, 
or  as  witnesses  to  the  existence  of  superstitions  which 
certainly  haunted  the  imagination  of  the  uncultured 
not  less  in  those  days  than  they  do  now  in  this  age  of 
advanced  civilisation. 

Satan,  the  fiend  (in  the  sense  of  Devil),  is  rarely 
mentioned  in  the  Old  Testament.  The  word  Satan, 
which  means  "enemy"  or  "fiend,"  is  freely  used,  but, 
as  a  proper  name,  signifying  the  Devil,  appears  only 
five  times.  And  it  is  noteworthy  that  the  same  act  is, 
in  two  parallel  passages,  attributed,  in  the  older  one  to 
Yahveh,  and  in  the  younger  one,  to  Satan. 

We  read  in  2  Samuel,  xxiv.,  1  : 

"  The  anger  of  the  Lord  was  kindled  against  Israel,  and  he 
moved  David  against  them  to  say.  Go,  number  Israel  and  Judah." 

The  same  fact  is  mentioned  in  i  Chron.,  xxi.,    i  : 

"  Satan  stood  up  against  Israel  and  provoked  David  to  number 
Israel." 

In  all  the  older  books  of  Hebrew  literature,  espe- 
cially in  the  Pentateuch,  Satan  is  not  mentioned  at  all. 
All  acts  of  punishment,  revenge,  and  temptation  are 
performed  by  Yahveh  himself,  or  by  his  angel  at  his 
direct  command.  So  the  temptation  of  Abraham,  the 
slaughter  of  the  first-born  in  Egypt,  the  brimstone  and 
fire  rain  upon  Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  the  evil  spirit 
which  came  upon  Saul,  the  pestilence  to  punish  Da- 
vid— all  these  things  are  expressly  said  to  have  come 
from  God.  Even  the  perverse  spirit  which  made  the 
Egyptians  err  (Isaiah,  xix.,  14),  the  lying  spirit  which 
was  in  the  mouths  of  the  prophets  of  Ahab  (i  Kings, 
xxii.,  21  ;  see  also  2  Chron.,  xviii.,  20-22),  ignorance 
(Isaiah,  xxix.,  10),  jealousy  and  adultery  (Nun-rfaers  v., 
14),  are  directly  attributed  to  acts  of  God. 

The  prophet  Zechariah  speaks  of  Satan  as  an  an- 
gel whose  office  is  to  accuse  and  to  demand  the  punish- 
ment of  the  wicked.  In  the  Book  of  Job,  where  the  most 
poetical  and  grandest  picture  of  the  Evil  One  is  found, 
Satan  appears  as  a  malicious  servant  of  God,  who  en- 
joys performing  the  functions  of  a  tempter,  torturer, 
and  avenger.  He  accuses  unjustly,  like  a  State's  at- 
torney who  prosecutes  from  a  mere  habit  of  prosecu- 
tion, and  delights  in  convicting  even  the  innocent, 
while  God's  justice  and  goodness  are  not  called  in 
question. 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4693 


It  is  noteworthy  that  Satan,  in  the  canonical  books 
of  tlie  Old  Testament,  is  an  adversary  of  man,  but  not 
of  God  ;  he  is  a  subject  of  God  and  his  faithful  ser- 
vant. 

The  Jewish  idea  of  Satan  received  some  additional 
features  from  the  attributes  of  the  gods  of  surround- 
ing nations.  Nothing  is  more  common  in  history  than 
the  change  of  the  deities  of  hostile  nations  into  de- 
mons of  evil.  In  this  way  Beelzebub,  the  Phoenician 
god,  became  another  name  for  Satan  ;  and  Hinnom 
(i.  e.  Gehenna),  the  place  where  Moloch  had  been  wor- 
shipped, in  the  valley  of  Tophet,  became  the  Hebrew 
word  for  hell. 

Moloch  (always  used  with  the  definite  article  in 
the  form  Hanwioloch)  means  "  the  king."  The  idol  of 
Moloch  was  made  of  brass,  and  its  stomach  was  a  fur- 
nace. According  to  the  denunciations  of  the  proph- 
ets (Isaiah  Ivii.,  5;  Ezekiel  xvi.,  20;  Jeremiah  xix., 
5),  children  were  placed  in  the  monster's  arms  to  be 
consumed  by  the  heat  of  the  idol.  The  cries  of  the 
victims  were  drowned  by  drums,  from  which  ("  toph," 
meaning  drum)  the  place  was  called  "Tophet."  Even 
the  king,  Manasseh,  long  after  David,  made  liis  son 
pass  through  the  fire  of  Moloch  (2  Kings,  xxi.,  6|. 

There  is  no  reason  to  dnubt  the  Biblical  reports 
concerning  Moloch,  for  Diodorus  (20,  14)  describes 
the  cult  of  the  national  god  at  Carthage,  whom  he 
identifies  with  the  Greek  "Kronos,"  in  the  same  way, 
so  that  in  consideration  of  the  fact  that  Carthage  is  a 
Phoenician  colony,  we  have  good  reasons  to  believe 
this  Kronos  to  be  the  same  deity  as  the  Ammonite 
Moloch,  who  was  satiated  by  the  same  horrible  sacri- 
fices. 

Josiah,  waging  a  war  against  alien  superstitions, 
defiled  Tophet,  which  is  the  valley  of  the  children 
of  Hinnom  (2  Kings,  xxxiii.,  10),  that  no  man  might 
make  his  son  or  daughter  pass  through  the  fire  of 
Moloch. 

Thus  the  very  name  of  this  foreign  deit}'  naturally 
and  justly  became  among  the  Israelites  the  symbol  of 
abomination  and  fiendish  superstition. 

Zarathustra  still  regards  the  contending  powers  of 
good  and  evil,  in  a  certain  sense,  as  equal ;  they  are  to 
him  like  two  hostile  empires  of  opposed  tendencies. 
Accordingly,  in  comparison  to  Zarathustra's  idea  of 
Ahriman,  the  Jewish  conception  of  Satan  is  more 
mythological,  but  less  dualistic  ;  less  philosophical, 
but  more  monistic. 

After  the  Babylonian  captivity,  Jewish  thought 
naturally  became  tainted  with  and  was  strongly  influ- 
enced by  the  civilisation  of  both  their  conquerors  and 
liberators  ;  and  it  has  been  maintained  that  the  Bib- 
lical Satan  is  a  Persian  importation.  But  this  is  not 
correct,  for  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  the  conception 
of  a  demon  of  evil  among  the  Jews  would,  in  all  proba- 


bility, have  developed  in  a  similar  way  to  what  it  did, 
even  without  Persian  influence.  There  are  sufficient 
indications  of  a  latent  belief  in  evil  beings  among  the 
Israelites,  and  of  tendencies  to  personify  the  dark  as- 
pects of  life  :  and  considering  the  pristine  worship  of 
Azazel,  we  cannot  say  that  the  idea  of  a  supreme 
originator  of  wickedness  was  absent  in  their  religious 
notions. 

There  is  a  great  family-likeness  between  Satan  and 
Ahriman,  more  so  than  with  the  Babylonian  Tiamat 
and  the  Egyptian  Typhon.  Both  are  called  the  serpent, 
and  both  appear  as  tempters,  and  there  is  not  less  re- 
semblance between  Yahveh  and  Ahura.  Nevertheless, 
closely  considered,  Satan  and  Ahriman  are  different. 
To  characterise  briefly  the  difference,  we  might  say 
that  the  Hebrew  Satan  of  the  Old  Testament  (as  he 
appears  in  Zechariah  and  Job)  is  a  personification  of 
the  guilty  conscience.  He  is  the  accuser,  threatening 
God's  punishment  for  sin,  and  thus  bringing  upon  man- 
kind, according  to  God's  decree,  physical  evil  as  a 
result  of  moral  evil.  In  the  Zendavesta,  Ahriman  {Azi 
Dahaka,  the  fiendish  snake)  appears  as  the  principle  of 
all  evil,  physical  as  well  as  moral. 


PROF.  C.  H.  CORNILL  ON  THE  PROPHETS  OF  ISRAEL. 

Two  years  ago  Prof.  V.  Valentin,  the  president  of  the  Frtif 
Dcii/si/ie  I/oihstifl,  which  is  an  institute  at  Frankfort  on  the  Main, 
quite  similar  to  the  Lowell  Institute  at  Boston,  requested  Prof. 
Carl  Heinrich  Cornill  to  give  a  series  of  lectures  on  the  prophetism 
of  Israel,  on  the  basis  of  the  maturest  and  latest  researches  of  Old 
Testament  criticism.  Professor  Cornill  accepted  the  call  and  de- 
livered his  lectures  from  his  notes,  expecting  to  give  nothing  more 
than  a  resume  oi  the  subject  as  it  lived  in  his  mind.  But  the  in- 
terest of  his  audience  was  so  great  that  the  Professor  was  urged  to 
write  his  lectures  down  and  have  them  published — a  request  which 
he  reluctantly  granted.  The  lectures  were  published  in  pamphlet 
form  by  Triibner  of  Strassburg,  and  an  English  translation  (in 
which  the  material  was  arranged  more  systematically  than  in  the 
German  original)  appeared  a  few  months  later  in  the  columns  of 
Tlie  Open  Court. 

Professor  Cornill's  articles  found  much  favor  with  many  of 
our  readers,  who  in  private  letters  frequently  expressed  their  satis- 
faction with  both  the  intellectual  depth  and  the  noble  spirit  that 
animated  their  learned  author.  Several  religious  periodicals  of 
this  country  reprinted  some  of  them,  with  laudatory  comments. 
And  indeed  the  intrinsic  worth  of  Professor  Cornill's  expositions 
is  so  unquestionable  that  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.  deemed 
it  wise  to  republish  them  in  book-form,  and  we  can  announce  to 
our  readers  that  Professor  Cornill's  book.  The  Prophets  of  /snie/,^ 
is  now  ready  for  the  public. 

Professor  Cornill  states  in  the  preface  that  his  lectures  con- 
tain the  results  of  the  inquiries  of  Wellhausen,  Kuenen,  Duhm, 
Stade,  Smend,  and  others,  forgetful,  in  his  native  modesty,  that 
he  also  is  one  of  those  who  contributed  his  share  to  the  solution 
of  various  problems.  Moreover,  the  condensation  of  many  learned 
bcoks  and  the  sifting  of  the  material,  too,  is  a  woik  which  requires 
skill,  scholarship,  and  critical    tact.     But  the  most  essential  part 

1  The  Prophets  o/ Israel.  Popular  Sketches  from  Old  Testament  History. 
By  Carl  Heinrich  Cornill,  Professor  of  Old  Testament  History  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Konigsberg.  Frontispiece,  Michael  Angelo's  Moses.  Price,  Cloth, 
Si. 00. 


4694 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


of  the  book  is  the  attitude  of  the  author,  with  whom  the  combina- 
tion of  a  deeply  religious  sentiment  with  scientific  accuracy  seems 
to  be  so  natural  as  to  appear  like  a  happy  instinct. 

In  £;lancing  over  the  pages  of  this  little  volume  of  scarcely  200 
pages,  into  which  so  much  knowledge  has  been  condensed,  we  do 
not  remember  having  seen  a  more  popular  and  brilliant  exposition 
of  this  chapter  of  the  history  of  Israel.  The  lives  and  the  condi- 
tions of  the  prophets  of  Israel  are  very  little  known,  and  yet  they 
deserve  the  greatest  attention.  Professor  Cornill  speaks  from 
the  fulness  of  his  knowledge,  and  his  report  is  as  if  he  himself  had 
been  among  the  ancient  Israelite?,  as  if  he  had  moved  among  them 
and  had  seen  the  prophets  face  to  face.  They  rise  from  the  grave 
again,  and  we  learn  to  understand  their  anxieties  about  Israel, 
their  faith  in  the  God  of  the  fathers,  their  indignation  at  the  fickle- 
ness of  the  people,  and  their  enthusiasm  for  the  great  cause  which 
they  serve. 


DR.  THOMAS  ON  COLONEL  INQERSOLL. 

The  Chicago  Tribune  publishes  the  following  report  of  Dr.  H. 
W.  Thomas's  sermon  of  last  Sunday : 

Before  a  large  congregation  at  the  People's  Church.  McVick- 
er's  Theater,  yesterday  morning.  Dr.  H.  W.  Thomas  made  a  re 
ply  to  Colonel  IngersoHs  lecture  on  the  "  Foundation  of  Faith.'' 
Dr.  Thomas  used  the  same  theme,  but  did  not  attack  Colonel  In- 
gersol.  In  fact,  there  is  a  warm  personal  friendship  between  the 
preacher  and  the  noted  lecturer.  Dr.  Thomas  carried  out  his 
theme  in  three  lines,  dwelling  upon  IngersoHs  attitude  towards 
the  literature  of  the  Bible,  his  attitude  as  a  moralist  and  as  a  pa- 
triot, and  closing  with  a  reply  to  the  lecture  on  the  foundation  of 
faith.     He  said : 

"  The  old  view  of  inspiration,  that  all  parts  of  the  Bible  are 
equally  inspired  and  infallible,  cannot  be  defended  on  literary 
grounds.  It  has  gone  down  before  the  most  conservative  school 
of  the  higher  criticism.  And  on  moral  grounds  the  doctrine  of 
original  sin,  atonement,  and  endless  punishment  can  no  longer  be 
justified  before  the  higher,  rational,  and  moral  consciences  of  the 
present  age.  This  is  what  Dr.  Swazey  meant  when  he  said  to 
me;  '  The  churches  have  made  a  place  for  Colonel  IngersoU.'  It 
is  what  Dr.  Drummond  meant  when  he  said  ;  '  Orthodoxy  is  re- 
sponsible for  much  of  the  infidelity  there  is  in  the  world.' 

"Colonel  IngersoU  owes  it  to  himself  to  do  something  more 
and  better  than  he  is  doing.  A  man  of  his  ability  and  love  for 
mankind  should  not  be  content  with  simply  tearing  down.  As  a 
literary  man  he  should  be  just  to  literature  ;  he  should  not  spend 
all  bis  time  pointing  out  the  weak,  the  crude,  the  unfortunate 
things  in  the  Bible  ;  he  should  dwell  upon  its  excellencies,  its 
great  and  noble  things  as  well.  He  should  be  just  to  the  Bible. 
He  should  study  it  in  the  light  of  the  ages,  the  forms  of  civilisa- 
tion and  social  conditions  under  which  its  different  books  were 
written. 

"As  a  moralist  he  should  treat  the  evolution  of  moral  ideas  in 
the  process  of  becoming  the  ideal,  becoming  the  higher  actual,  and 
still  the  noble  ideals  rising  up  and  leading  on  as  the  inspirations 
of  a  better  future.  It  is  no  excuse  that  theologians  have  tortured 
the  Bible,  made  it  teach  what  it  does  not  teach.  The  Bible  should 
be  judged  by  its  own  merits  in  the  light  of  all  the  facts.  In  our 
age  of  slavery  it  tolerated  slavery,  but  it  sought  to  make  lighter 
the  bondage  of  the  slave.  In  darker  ages  it  tolerated  the  common 
custom  of  polygamy,  but  sought  through  all  to  elevate  woman. 
Where  in  all  literature  is  to  be  found  a  nobler  tribute  to  wife  and 
mother  than  the  last  chapter  of  Proverbs  ?  Where  is  virtue  so 
deeply  centered  and  guarded  as  in  the  words  of  the  Christ  that 
condemns  impure  thought  ?  Where  in  all  the  world  is  there  such 
a  tender  and  beautiful  recognition  of  childhood  as  when  Jesus  took 


little  children  in  his  arms  and  blessed  them  and  said  :  'Of  such  is 
the  kingdom  of  Heaven  ' '  But  Colonel  IngersoU  forgets  all  these 
things. 

"Colonel  IngersoU  is  a  patriot,  loves  his  country,  loves  lib- 
erty, and  surely  he  must  know  that  however  much  the  Bible  may 
have  been  used  in  support  of  slavery  and  religious  persecutions, 
still  there  is  something  in  it  that  has  given  strength,  confidence, 
and  hope  in  the  greatest  struggles  for  the  rights  of  man.  The  Pil- 
grims brought  their  Bible  with  them,  and,  if  in  their  '  zeal  for 
good  without  understanding,'  they  burned  witches,  still  they  had 
with  all  their  narrownesa  liifi  germs  that  grew  at  last  into  a  great 
love  of  liberty  that  brokt:  the  chains  of  slavery. 

"But  the  Bible  is  not  th^  last  foundation  of  faith  ;  there  is 
something  deeper,  something  back  of  the  Bible.  Geology  is  in  the 
earth  ;  astronomy  in  the  stars,  and  not  in  books  about  these  sci- 
ences. The  foundation  of  religion  is  in  the  spiritual  nature  and 
needs  of  man,  and  the  answering  fulness  of  the  infinite  reason, 
love,  and  life.  Religion  made  the  Bible,  and  not  the  Bible  reli- 
gion ;  and  religion  made  the  Church.  The  Bible  and  the  Church 
are  the  creatures  and  expressions  of  this  something  deeper  that 
lies  back  of  them  and  breathes  through  them.  ThejTare  the  body 
of  the  soul  that  lives  within. 

"  Creeds  and  confessions  are  not  the  foundation  of  faith  ;  but 
the  expression  of  a  faith  that  already  is,  and  hence  as  the  life 
grows  creeds  and  church  forms  should  be  permitted  to  grow  with 
the  life,  and  not  become  a  limiting  environment.  The  foundation 
of  faith  is  not  in  Looks,  but  in  the  wr  -Id  beyond  the  books  ;  'P  ♦^'e 
reason  and  conscience  u  Tirin  as  he  faces  the  i:;finite.  Ano  .'n 
this  truth  is  realised  there  v..'i  be  less  fear  that  fait'-  -vill  b«  ^^' 
in  the  growth  and  changes  of  a  world." 

THE  OPEN   COUK 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARDS,  Editor. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  427. 

THE  PARISIAN  BUDDHA.     Moncure  D.  Conwav 4687 

THE  SONG  OF  SONGS.   II.     The  Character  of  the  Poem. 

The  Rev.  T.  A.  Goodwin,  D.D 4688 

FABLES  OF  THE  NEW  ,ESOP.      Sports  of   the   Gods. 

HuDOR  Genone 4691 

AZAZEL  AND  SATAN.     Editor 4692 

PROF.  C.  H.  CORNILL  ON   THE  PROPHETS  OF  IS- 
RAEL      4693 

DR.  THOMAS  ON  COLONEL  INGERSOLL 4694 


^;y 


The  Open  Court. 


A   WEEKLY   JOUKNAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  428.     (Vol.  IX.-45  ) 


CHICAGO,   NOVEMBER  7,   1895. 


j  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
f  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


THE  SONG  OF  SONGS. 

BY  THE  REV.   T.    A.    GOODWIN,    D.  D. 
III.    LOVERS  THREE  THOUS.^ND  YEARS  .\G0. 

The  poem  begins  abruptl}'.  The  women,  her  keep- 
ers, had  just  feasted  her  at  the  family  table  of  the 
King's  household.  Wine  had  constituted  a  conspicu- 
ous part  of  the  bill  of  fare,  and  the  women  had  praised 
the  luxuries  which  the  King's  family  enjoyed,  con- 
trasting it  with  the  simple  fare  of  a  vine-dresser  among 
the  hills  of  Issachar  ;  assuring  her  that  all  this  was  at 
the  service  of  a  wife  of  the  King.  The  purpose  for 
which  she  had  been  enticed  from  her  country  home 
and  from  the  shepherd  youth  whom  she  loved,  was 
now  for  the  first  time  broached  to  her.  It  was  not  to 
be  a  domestic  in  the  King's  palace,  but  to  become  one 
of  his  wives,  alread}'  numbering  sixty.  At  this  she 
promptly  rebelled.  She  would  never  consent  to  the 
lustful  embraces  of  one  whom  she  could  not  love, 
though  he  be  a  king,  and  informing  the  women  she 
had  a  lover  among  the  shepherds  of  Shulam  she  breaks 
out  : 

"  Let  him  kiss  me  with  the  kisses  of  his  mouth." 

Then  turning  to  the   lover  himself  who  in  the  dia-. 
logue  is  made  to  be  opportunely  present  she  says : 

' '  For  thy  love  is  better  than  wine. 

Thine  ointments  have  a  goodly  fragrance. 

Thy  name  is  as  ointment  poured  forth, 

Therefore  do  maidens  love  thee. 

Draw  me  after  thee,  let  us  run  ! 

The  King  hath  brought  me  into  his  harem. 

We  will  greatly  rejoice  in  thee. 

We  will  esteem  thy  caress  more  than  wine. 

Rightly  do  the  maidens  love  thee." 

Addressing  the  women  she  continues  : 

"  I  am  black  but  I  am  comely, 

O,  ye  daughters  of  Jerusalem  ; 

Like  the  tents  of  Kedar, 

Like  the  pavilions  of  Solomon. 

Despise  me  not  because  I  am  swarthy. 

Because  the  sun  hath  scorched  me, 

My  half-brothers  were  incensed  against  me. 

They  made  me  keeper  of  the  vineyards. 

Mine  own  vineyard  I  have  not  kept." 

Again  addressing  the  lover,  she  says  : 

"Tell  me,  thou  whom  my  soul  loveth. 

Where  thou  feedest  thy  flock,  where  thou  makest  it  to  rest  at  noon. 


For  why  should  I  be  as  a  woman  veiled. 
Beside  the  flocks  of  thy  companions  ?  " 

The  answer  of  the  women  to  this  frantic  outburst 
of  love  and  fidelity  is  a  compliment  to  the  woman- 
heart  that  had  survived  all  the  blandishments  of  the 
royal  household.  It  at  once  awakened  recollections 
of  earlier  days  when  the  voice  and  society  of  some 
rustic  lover  was  all  the  world  to  them,  but  from  whom 
they  had  been  allured  by  the  displays  of  ease  and  lux- 
ury in  the  King's  palace,  and  whose  love  they  had 
bartered  aw'ay  for  the  dubious  honors  and  the  unsatis- 
fying pleasures  of  the  King's  court  and  the  King's 
chamber.  Moved  to  sympathy  b}'  her  appeals  to  them 
and  to  her  lover  ;  and  in  their  woman-hearts  wishing 
she  might  escape  the  fate  that  had  befallen  themselves, 
they  reply  : 

"  If  thou  knowest  not,  O  thou  fairest  among  women  ! 
Get  thee  again  to  the  footsteps  of  thy  flock, 
And  feed  thy  kids  beside  the  shepherd's  tent." 

The  shepherd  now  addresses  his  lover,  returning 
the  personal  compliment  she  had  so  handsomely  paid 
him  : 

"  I  have  compared  thee,  O,  my  love  ! 
To  a  steed  in  Pharoah's  chariots. 
Thy  cheeks  are  comely  with  plaits  of  hair. 
Thy  neck  with  strings  of  jewels." 

The  women,  to  neutralise  the  effect  of  this  compli- 
ment to  her  beaut}'  interpose,  saying  , 

"We  will  make  thee  plaits  of  gold, 

With  studs  of  silver,  if  thou  become  a  queen." 

The  shepherdess,  addressing  the  women,  pays  her 
lover  this  beautiful  compliment  : 

"While  the  King  sat  at  his  table. 

My  spikenard  sent  forth  its  fragrance. 

But  ray  beloved  is  unto  me  as  a  bundle  of  myrrh. 

That  lieth  between  my  breasts: 

My  beloved  is  unto  me  as  a  cluster  of  camphire, 

From  the  vineyards  of  Engedi." 

The  following  playful  interchange  of  compliments 
between  the  two  lovers  cannot  be  excelled  in  any  love 
story,  nor  often  in  real  life.  It  is  both  delicate  and 
extravagant.      He  begins  : 

"Behold  thou  art  fair,  my  love,  behold  thou  art  fair. 
Thine  eyes  are  as  doves'  eyes." 

To  this  she  replies  : 


4696 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


"  Behold  thou  art  fair,  my  beloved,  yea,  very  pleasant, 
Also  our  couch  is  green." 

In  answer  to  this  allusion  to  the  place  of  their  out- 
door courtships  he  refers  to  the  cedars  and  firs  under 
which  they  sat  : 
' '  The  beams  of  our  house  are  cedars, 
And  our  rafters  are  firs." 

There  is  a  spice  of  humor  in  her  self-praise  : 

"  I  am  a  rose  of  Sharon, 
A  lily  of  the  valley." 

But  he  is  equal  to  the  occasion  and  turns  her  self- 
compliment  to  good  account  by  accepting  it  with  em- 
phasis : 

"As  a  lily  among  the  thorns, 

So  is  my  beloved  among  the  daughters." 

Turning  to  the  women  the  shepherdess  continues 
to  compliment  her  lover  and  avow  her  fidelity  to  him  : 
"As  an  apple-tree  among  the  trees  of  the  forest. 
So  is  my  beloved  among  the  sons. 
I  sat  under  his  shadow  with  great  delight. 
And  his  fruit  was  sweet  to  my  taste. 
He  brought  me  to  his  wine-house, 
And  his  banner  over  me  was  love. 
Stay  me  with  grapes,  comfort  me  with  apples. 
For  I  am  sick  of  love. 
Only  his  left  hand  shall  sustain  my  head. 
And  only  his  right  hand  shall  embrace  me. 
I  adjure  you,  O  daughters  of  Jerusalem, 
By  the  roes  and  by  the  hinds  of  the  field. 
That  you  stir  not  up  nor  awaken  love, 
Until  it  please." 

This  appeal  to  the  women  to  not  attempt  to  force 
love  is  both  pathetic  and  philosophic.  Love  finds  its 
own  time  and  object  without  the  intermeddling  of 
others.      The  shepherdess  continues  abstractedly: 

"  The  voice  of  my  beloved  !   behold  he  cometh. 

Leaping  upon  the  mountains,  skipping  upon  the  hills. 

My  beloved  is  like  a  roe  or  a  young  hart. 

Behold  !  he  standeth  behind  our  wall, 

He  cometh  in  at  the  window. 

He  peepeth  through  the  lattice. 

My  beloved  spake  and  said  unto  me  : 

Rise  up  my  love,  my  fair  one,  and  come  away, 

For  lo  !   the  winter  is  past. 

The  rain  is  over  and  gone  ; 

The  flowers  appear  upon  the  earth. 

The  time  of  the  singing  of  birds  has  come 

And  the  voice  of  the  turtle  is  heard  in  our  land. 

The  fig-tree  ripens  her  figs 

And  the  vines  are  in  blossom  ; 

They  give  forth  their  fragrance." 

Turning  to  the  shepherd  again,  she  says  : 

"Arise,  my  love,  my  fair  one,  and  come  away, 

O  my  dove  !  thou  art  in  the  clefts  of  the  rocks,  in  the  covert  of  the 

steep  place  ; 
Let  me  see  thy  face,  let  me  hear  thy  voice, 
For  charming  is  thy  voice  and  thy  features  are  lovely. 
Take  us  the  foxes,  the  little  foxes  that  ruin  the  vineyards. 
For  our  vineyards  are  in  blossom." 

Turning  to  address  the  women,  she  continues  : 


"  My  beloved  is  mine  and  I  am  his. 

He  feedeth  his  flocks  among  the  lilies 

Until  the  day  be  cool  and  the  shadows  flee  away." 

Again  addressing  the  shepherd,  she  says  : 

"Turn,  my  beloved,  and  be  thou  like  a  roe  or  a  young  hart 
Upon  the  mountains  of  Bather." 

She  relates  a  dream  : 
"  By  night,  on  my  bed,  I  sought  him  whom  my  soul  loveth, 
I  sought  him  but  I  found  him  not, 
I  said  I  will  rise  now  and  go  about  the  city, 
In  the  streets  and  in  the  broad  ways, 
I  will  seek  him  whom  my  soul  loveth  : 
I  sought  him  in  my  dream  but  I  found  him  not. 
The  watchmen  that  go  about  the  city  found  me  ; 
I  said  to  them,  saw  ye  him  whom  my  soul  loveth  ? 
I  was  but  a  little  passed  from  them 
When  I  found  him  whom  my  soul  loveth  ; 
I  caught  him  and  would  not  let  him  go 
Until  he  had  brought  me  to  my  mother's  house. 
Into  the  chamber  of  her  that  gave  me  birth." 

Again,  turning  to  the  women  she  charges  them  not 
to  attempt  to  force  love. 
"  I  adjure  you,  O  daughters  of  Jerusalem, 
By  the  roes  and  the  hinds  of  the  field. 
That  ye  stir  not  up  nor  awaken  love 
Until  it  please." 

At  this  point  a  ro3'al  cortege  is  seen  in  the  distance. 
It  had  no  necessary  connexion  with  the  work  of  recon- 
ciling this  pure  country  girl  to  the  proposed  new  con- 
ditions, but  it  offered  a  new  argument,  as  they  sup- 
posed ;  hence  they  called  attention  to  it  and  especially 
to  the  fact  that  one  of  the  queens  was  a  partaker  with 
the  King  of  all  its  magnificence.  As  it  was  only  one 
of  the  frequent  parades  of  the  King  they  sought  to  ex- 
cite her  womanly  love  of  display  by  the  assurance  that 
a  like  honor  awaited  her  if  she  would  consent  to  be- 
come a  queen  also.  One  of  the  women  calls  attention 
to  it  by  asking  ; 
"Who  is  this  that  cometh  up  out  of  the  wilderness  like  pillars  of 

smoke  ? 
Perfumed  with  myrrh  and  frankincense. 
With  all  the  powders  of  the  merchant  ?" 

A  second  woman  : 

"  Behold  it  is  the  litter  of  Solomon  ; 

Three-score  mighty  men  are  about  it. 

Of  the  mighty  men  of  Israel. 

They  all  handle  the  sword  and  are  expert  in  war. 

Every  man  hath  his  sword  on  his  thigh; 

Because  of  fear  in  the  night." 

The  third  woman  takes  it  up  : 

"  King  Solomon  made  himself  a  car  of  state 

Of  the  wood  of  Lebanon. 

He  made  the  posts  thereof  of  silver, 

The  bottoms  thereof  of  gold,  the  seat  thereof  of  purple. 

In  the  midst  thereof  sits  a  sparkling  beauty 

From  the  daughters  of  Jerusalem." 

The  shepherdess's  answer  to  all  this  is  one  of  the 
finest  touches  in  the  whole  poem.  Reduced  to  plain 
prose  it  is  equivalent  to  saying  :  if  such  splendors  have 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4697 


attractions  for  you,  you  are  welcome  to  them  all,  for 
they  do  not  move  me  : 

"Go  forth,  O  daughters  of  Zion,  and  behold  King  Solomon 

With  the  crown  wherewith  his  mother  crowned  him  in  the  day  of 

his  espousals  ; 
And  in  the  day  of  the  gladness  of  his  heart." 

The  following  rhapsody  of  the  shepherd  lover  has 
no  rival  in  an}'  language  for  hyperbole.  Compared 
witli  it  Shakespeare's  most  famous, 

"  But  you,  O  you, 
So  perfect  and  so  peerless  are  created 
Of  every  creature's  best," 

seems  quite  tame.  It  is  such  touches  of  nature  that 
preserved  this  poem  through  those  centuries  of  war 
and  captivity  and  which  ultimately  gave  it  a  place  in 
the  sacred  literature  of  the  restored  Hebrews,  and  still 
later,  a  place  among  the  sacred  books  of  Christians  ; 
and  now,  after  three  thousand  years  many  a  gray- 
headed  sire  will  read  it  and  recall  the  time  in  his  own 
experience  when,  as  far  as  he  was  able,  he  indited  just 
such  a  sonnet  to  a  pair  of  dove's  eyes  and  scarlet  lips, 
and  a  pretty  neck  with  teeth  and  temples  to  match. 

"  Behold  thou  art  fair,  my  love,  behold  thou  art  fair. 

Thine  eyes  are  as  dove's  eyes  behind  thy  veil. 

Thy  hair  is  as  a  flock  of  goats 

That  lie  along  the  side  of  Gilead  ; 

Thy  teeth  are  like  a  flock  of  sheep  newly  shorn, 

Which  come  up  from  the  washing. 

Whereof  every  one  of  them  hath  twins. 

And  not  one  of  them  is  bereaved. 

Thy  lips  are  like  a  thread  of  scarlet 

And  thy  mouth  is  comely  ; 

Thy  cheek  is  like  a  side  of  a  pomegranate 

Behind  thy  veil. 

Thy  neck  is  like  the  tower  of  David,  builded  for  an  armory. 

Wherein  there  hang  a  thousand  bucklers 

And  all  the  shields  of  mighty  men. 

Thy  two  breasts  are  like  two  twin  fawns  of  a  roe 

Which  feed  among  the  lilies." 

The  shepherdess,  pretending  with  true  womanly 
affectation  to  desire  no  more  of  such  adulation,  seeks 
to  interrupt  him  by  saying  : 

"  Until  the  day  be  cool  and  the  shadows  lengthen, 
I  will  get  me  to  the  mountain  of  myrrh 
And  to  the  hill  of  frankincense." 

But  he  was  not  to  be  silenced.  The  interruption 
only  intensified  his  speech.  Beginning  at  the  same 
beginning  as  before  he   becomes  much  more  violent  : 

"  Thou  art  fair  my  love. 

And  there  is  no  spot  in  thee. 

Come  with  me  from  Lebanon,  my  spouse. 

With  me  from  Lebanon. 

Look  upon  me  from  the  top  of  Araena, 

From  the  top  of  Senir  and  Hermon, 

From  the  depths  of  the  lion's  den. 

From  the  mountains  of  leopards. 

Thou  hast  ravished  my  heart,  my  sister,  ray  spouse, 

Thou  hast  ravished  my  heart  with  one  glance  of  thine  eyes. 

With  one  of  the  ringlets  that  encircle  thy  neck. 

How  pleasant  is  thy  love,  my  sister,  my  spouse  ; 


How  much  better  is  thine  embrace  than  wine  ! 
And  the  odor  of  thy  perfumes  than  all  manner  of  spices. 
Thy  lips,  O  my  spouse,  distil  odors  as  the  honey-comb. 
Honey  and  milk  are  concealed  under  thy  tongue. 
And  the  fragrance  of  thy  garments  is  like  the  fragrance  of  Lebanon, 
A  garden  enclosed,  is  my  sister,  my  spouse, 
A  spring  shut  up,  a  fountain  sealed  : 

A  paradise,  where  the  pomegranate  blossoms,   together  with  pre- 
cious fruits, 
Camphire  with  spikenard  plants. 
Spikenard  and  saffron. 

Calamus  and  cinnamon  with  all   manner  of  sweet-smelling  plants. 
Myrrh  and  aloes  with  all  the  chief  spices. 
Thou  art  a  fountain  of  gardens, 
A  well  of  living  waters. 
And  flowing  streams  from  Lebanon. 

Awake,  O  north  wind  and  come  thou  south. 

Blow  upon  my  garden  that  the  fragrance   thereof   may  flow  out  !  " 

The  shepherdess  answers  : 

"  Let  my  beloved  come  into  his  garden. 
And  eat  his  precious  fruits." 

The  shepherd  : 

"  I  have  come  into  my  garden,  my  sister,  my  spouse, 
I  have  gathered  my  myrrh  and  my  spices, 
I  have  eaten  my  honey-comb  with  my  honey 
I  have  drunk  my  wine  with  my  milk. 

Eat,  O  friends. 

Drink,  yea,  drink  abundantly." 

The  shepherdess,  that  she  may  the  more  impress 
her  keepers,  the  women,  that  it  was  cruel  to  separate 
her  from  her  devoted  lover,  relates  another  recent 
dream  : 

"  I  was  asleep,  but  my  heart  was  awake. 

It  was  the  voice  of  my  beloved.     As  he  knocked. 

He  said,  open  to  me,  my  sister,  my  love,  my  dove,  my  perfect  one  ; 

For  my  head  is  covered  with  dew. 

My  locks  with  the  drops  of  the  night. 

To  tease  him  I  said,  I  have  put  off  my  coat,  how  shall  I  put  it  on  ? 

I  have  washed  my  feet,  why  should  I  soil  them  ? 

At  this  my  beloved  withdrew  his  hand  from  the  latch. 

And  my  bosom  quivered  thereat. 

I  then  rose  up  to  open  to  my  beloved, 

And  my  hands  dropped  with  myrrh. 

And  my  fingers  with  liquid  myrrh 

Overflowed  upon  the  handle  of  the  lock. 

When  I  opened  to  my  beloved. 

Behold  my  beloved  had  withdrawn  himself,  and  was  gone. 

(When  I  spake  to  him  I  was  bereft  of  reason.) 

I  sought  him,  but  I  could  not  find  him  ; 

I  called,  but  he  gave  me  no  answer  ; 

I  dreamed  the  watchmen  that  go  about  the  city  found  me. 

They  smote  me,  they  wounded  me. 

And  the  keepers  on  the  wall  took  away  my  veil : 

I  adjure  you,  O  ye  daughters  of  Jerusalem,  if  ye  find  my  beloved, 
That  you  tell  him  I  am  dying  of  lo%'e." 

Again  the  enthusiasm  of  the  young  shepherdess 
aroused  the  sympathy  of  the  women,  who  had  not  for- 
gotten experiences  in  their  own  earlier  lives  not  greatly 
unlike  this,  hence,  instead   of  longer  persisting  in  at- 


4698 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


tempts  to  persuade  their  ward  to  consent  to  become 
such  as  the}-  were,  they  offer  assistance  to  her,  or,  at 
least,  the}-  wish  to  know  more  about  the  young  man 
she  had  left  behind  ;  hence  they  ask  : 

" -VVhat  is  thy  beloved  more  than  another  beloved, 
O  thou  fairest  among  women  ? 
What  is  thy  beloved  more  than  another  beloved, 
That  thou  shouldst  so  adjure  us  ?  " 

This  gave  the  shepherdess  occasion  to  describe  him 
as  she  viewed  him,  and,  unless  love  was  blind,  he  was 
worthy  her  love  : 

"  My  beloved  is  white  and  ruddy. 

The  fairest  among  ten  thousand. 

His  head  is  as  the  most  fine  gold, 

His  locks  are  curling  and  black  as  a  raven. 

His  eyes  are  as  doves'  eyes,  reflecting  in  the  water-brooks. 

Washing  in  milk  and  sitting  in  full  streams, 

His  cheeks  are  as  a  bed  of  balsam,  as  towers  of  perfumes, 

His  lips  are  as  lilies,  dropping  liquid  myrrh. 

His  hands  are  as  rings  of  gold  set  with  beryl. 

His  reins  are  as  ivory  work  overlaid  with  sapphires. 

His  legs  are  as  pillars  of  marble  set  on  pedestals  of  gold. 

His  appearance  is  as  Lebanon,  beautiful  as  the  cedars. 

His  mouth  is  most  sweet,  yea,  his  person  is  altogether  lovely 

Such  is  my  beloved,  such  is  my  friend, 
O  daughters  of  Jerusalem." 

This  enthusiastic  description  of  the  absent  lover 
only  increased   the   interest  which  the  women  felt  in 
their  ward,  and  they  wish  to  hear  more  about  him 
hence  they  ask  ; 

"  Whither  is  thy  beloved  gone, 

0  thou  fairest  among  women  ? 
Whither  is  thy  beloved  turned  aside. 
That  we  may  seek  him  with  thee  ?  " 

The  shepherdess  : 

"  My  beloved  has  gone  down  to  his  garden  to  the  beds  of  balsam, 
To  feed  his  flocks  in  the  garden  and  to  gather  lilies. 

1  am  my  beloved's  and  he  is  mine. 

My  beloved  who  feedeth  his  flocks  among  the  lilies." 

The  shepherd  again  praises  the  beauty  of  his  spouse, 
repeating,  as  would  be  natural,  much  that  he  had  said 
before  : 

"  Thou  art  beautiful,  O  my  love,  as  Tirzah, 

Charming  as  Jerusalem, 

Terrible  as  an  army  in  battle. 

Turn  away  thine  eyes  from  me. 

For  they  have  overcome  me. 

Thy  hair  is  like  a  flock  of  goats 

Lying  along  the  side  of  Gilead. 

Thy  teeth  are  like  a  flock  of  sheep 

Which  have  just  been  washed. 

Whereof  every  one  hath  twins. 

And  none  is  bereaved  among  them. 

Thy  cheek  is  as  a  slice  of  pomegranate 

Behind  thy  veil." 

To  show  the  great  wrong  there  would  be  in  press- 
ing one  so  dear  to  him  into  a  harem  already  crowded, 
he  says  : 


"  There  are  in  the  household  of  Solomon  already  three-score 
queens,  and  four-score  concubines, 

And  young  maidens  without  number. 

My  dove,  my  perfect  one,  is  but  one  ; 

She  is  the  only  one  of  her  mother  ; 

She  is  the  choice  one  of  her  that  gave  her  birth. 

The  young  saw  her  and  called  her  blessed. 

The  queens  and  the  concubines  saw  her  and  they  praised  her  say- 
ing : 

Who  is  she  that  looketh  forth  like  the  morning 

Fair  as  the  moon. 

Clear  as  the  sun. 

Terrible  as  an  army  in  battle  ?  " 

The  shepherdess  here  narrates  a  reverie  : 

"  In  fancy  I  went  down  to  the  garden  of  nuts, 
To  see  the  green  plants  of  the  valley; 
To  see  whether  the  vine  budded, 
And  the  pomegranates  were  in  flower. 
Before  I  was  aware,  my  desire  set  me 
Among  the  chariots  of  my  people." 

The  interest  of  the  women  in  the  absent  lover  was 
so  aroused  that  they  desire  to  see  him,  lience  they  say: 

"Return,  O  Shulammite  shepherd. 
Return,  return,  that  we  may  see  thee." 

The  shepherdess  rebukes  their  idle  curiosity  by 
saying  : 

' '  Why  wish  ye  to  look  upon  the  Shulammite, 
As  upon  the  dance  of  angels  at  Mahanaim  ?  " 

The  scene  of  the  following  is  in  the  ladies'  toilette. 
The  women,  notwithstanding  the  sympathy  they  had 
expressed  for  the  unwilling  victim  of  their  scheme,  de- 
termined to  make  one  more  effort  to  overcome  her  ob- 
jections. This  time  they  resort  to  flattery  by  praising 
her  personal  beauty.  She  had  just  come  from  the 
bath  and  had  put  on  only  her  slippers,  when  they  be- 
gan, hoping  to  so  arouse  her  vanity  that  she  would  at 
once  discard  her  country  lover  : 

"  How  beautiful  are  thy  feet  in  sandals,  O  prince's  daughter  ! 

Thy  round  thighs  are  like  ornaments. 

The  work  of  the  hand  of  a  cunning  workman. 

Thy  waist  is  like  a  round  goblet. 

Wherein  aromatic  wine  is  abundant. 

Thy  body  is  like  a  heap  of  wheat, 

Encircled  with  lilies. 

Thy  two  breasts  are  like  two  fawns 

That  are  twins  of  a  roe. 

Thy  neck  is  like  a  tower  of  ivory. 

Thine  eyes  are  like  the   pools  of   Heshbon  by  the  gate  of  Bath- 

rabbim  ; 
Thy  nose  is  like  the  side  of  the  tower  of  Lebanon, 
Which  looketh  towards  Damascus  ; 
Thine  head  upon  thee  is  like  Carmel, 
And  the  locks  of  thine  head  are  like  threads  of  purple  ; 
The  King  will  be  held  captive  in  the  tresses  thereof. 
How  fair  and  how  charming  art  thou, 
O  love,  for  delights  ! 
Thy  stature  is  like  a  palm-tree. 
And  thy  breasts  are  like  to  clusters  of  grapes." 

The  shepherd  interposes  with  his  claim  to  all  these 
charms  : 


THE    OF»EK    COURT. 


4699 


' '  I  said  I  will  climb  up  into  my  palm-tree, 

I  will  take  hold  of  the  branches  thereof ; 

Thy  breasts  shall  be  to  me  as  clusters  of  grapes, 

And  the  odor  of  thy  breath  like  apples  ; 

And  thy  mouth  as  the  best  of  wine. 

That  goeth  down  sweetly  for  my  beloved, 

Causing  the  lips  of  those  that  are  asleep  to  speak." 

The  shepherdess  answers  the  appeal  of  the  women, 
and  she  consents  to  the  proposition  of  the  lover,  thus 
settling  the  question  by  saying  : 

"  I  am  my  beloved's. 

And  his  desire  is  towards  me." 

Thereupon  the  lover  proposes  that  they  leave  the 
palace  and  go  forth  : 

"  Come,  my  beloved,  let  us  go  forth  into  the  lieUls, 
Let  us  lodge  in  the  villages, 
Let  us  get  up  early  and  go  to  the  vines. 
Let  us  see  whether  the  vine-stalks  have  budded. 
And  the  tender  grapes  appear. 
Whether  the  pomegranate  be  in  flower  ; 
There  will  I  give  thee  my  caress. 
The  mandrakes  give  forth  fragrance. 

And  at  our  gates  are  all  manner  of  fruits,  both  new  and  old, 
Which  I  have  laid  up  for  thee,  O  beloved  !" 

The  shepherdess,  feeling  hampered  by  the  conven- 
tionalities of  the  times,  which  did  not  allow  her  to  em- 
brace her  lover  in  public,  yet  tolerated  the  osculation 
and  caressing  of  a  brother,  replies: 

"  O  that  thou  wert  as  my  brother. 

Who  nursed  at  the  breast  of  my  mother. 

So  that  when  I  should  meet  thee  without  I  could  embrace  thee. 

And  none  would  despise  me  therefor! 

I  would  lead  thee  and  bring  thee  into  my  mother's  house. 

Where  thou  mightest  instruct  me. 

And  I  would  cause  thee  to  drink  of  spiced  wine. 

Of  the  sweet  wine  of  my  pomegranates." 

Turning  to  the  women,  she  says  : 

"  Only  his  left  hand  shall  sustain  my  head. 

And  only  his  right  hand  shall  embrace  me. 

I  adjure  you,  O  daughters  of  Jerusalem, 

That  ye  stir  not  up  nor  awaken  love,  until  it  please." 

The  women  at  last  consent  to  her  leaving  the  pal- 
ace in  company  with  her  shepherd  lover,  who  escorted 
her  to  the  home  of  her  mother.  The  neighbors  seeing 
them  returning,  ask  : 

"Who  is  this  that  cometh  up  from  the  wilderness, 
Leaning  upon  her  beloved  ?" 

Before  reaching  the  house  they  stop  a  moment  un- 
der the  apple-tree,  which  had  often  listened  to  their 
mutual  avowals  of  love.  Once  there,  seated  upon  the 
rustic  seat  they  had  so  often  occupied,  he  recalls  other 
meetings  at  that  sacred  spot,  and  says  : 
"  Under  this  apple-tree  I  first  aroused  thy  love." 

Then,  pointing  to  the  house  beyond  the  garden,  he 
says  : 

' '  In  yonder  house  thy  mother  conceived  thee, 
There  she  was  in  travail  and  there  she  gave  thee  birth  ; 
Now  set  me  as  a  seal  upon  thine  heart,  as  a  bracelet  upon  thine  arm, 


For  love  is  strong  as  death  ; 
Jealousy  is  cruel  as  the  grave. 
Its  flames  are  flames  of  fire, 
Its  arrows  the  fire  of  Jehovah. 
Great  waters  cannot  quench  love, 
And  rivers  cannot  overwhelm  it." 

Then,  delicately  alluding  to  the  late  experience  of 
his  faithful  lover  in  resisting  the  blandishments  of  the 
King's  palace,  he  adds  : 

"  If  a  man  would  offer  all  his  substance  for  love 
He  would  only  reap  contusion." 

The  two  half-brothers  now  appear.  They  had  lost 
none  of  their  opposition  to  this  love-affair.  At  first 
they  had  sought  to  break  it  off  bj'  taking  their  sister 
from  the  care  of  the  sheep,  which  afforded  too  many 
opportunities  for  the  lovers  to  meet  each  other,  and 
putting  her  to  the  harder  work  of  dressing  the  family 
vineyard.  This  failing,  they  had  connived  at,  if  they 
had  not  suggested  and  promoted,  the  scheme  of  get- 
ting her  into  Solomon's  harem.  For  their  sister  to  be 
a  wife  of  the  King,  though  only  one  of  many,  was  much 
preferable,  in  their  minds,  to  her  being  the  wife  of  a 
humble  shepherd,  even  if  some  personal  grudge  against 
their  j'oung  neighbor  had  not  something  to  do  in  the 
case.  But  in  this  they  were  again  baffled,  and  they 
find  her  once  more  in  the  famil}'  home,  more  devoted 
than  ever  to  her  rustic  lover.  Their  last  hope  now  is 
to  belittle  their  sister,  and  to  postpone,  if  not  to  en- 
tirely prevent,  the  marriage,  by  alleging  that  she  was 
too  young,  and  by  insinuating  other  and  grave  impedi- 
ments. They  derisively  ask  what  shall  be  the  wedding 
presents  in  the  case  of  a  marriage,  as  well  as  insinuate 
unfitness  for  wifehood.      They  say: 

' '  We  have  a  little  sister. 

And  she  hath  no  breasts  ; 

What  shall  we  do  for  our  sister 

In  the  day  when  she  shall  be  spoken  for  ? 

If  she  be  a  wall. 

We  will  build  upon  her  a  turret  of  silver  ; 

If  she  be  a  door. 

We  will  inclose  her  with  boards  of  cedar." 

Her  answer  is  both  womanly  and  defiant.  Recog- 
nising that  she  is  in  no  sense  under  obligations  to  them 
for  what  she  is,  and  what  she  hopes  to  be  soon,  the 
bride  of  one  who  will  be  to  her  a  wall  of  defence,  she 
says  : 

"  I  have  been  a  wall. 

And  my  breasts  have  been  towers. 

Hence  I  was  in  my  lover's  eyes  as  a  woman  that  finds  peace. 

Solomon  had  a  vineyard  at  Baal-hamon  ; 

He  let  out  the  vineyard  to  keepers. 

Every  one  to  bring,  as  rent,  a  thousand  of  silver. 

My  vineyard  is  in  front  of  me. 

Thou,  O  Solomon,  may  have  the  thousand, 

And  thy  keepers  may  have  two  hundred." 

The  shepherd  : 

"  Thou  that  dwellest  in  the  gardens, 


4700 


THE    OPKTST    COURT. 


The  companions  are  listening  to  thy  voice, 
Cause  me  to  hear  it." 

The  shepherdess  : 

'■  Make  haste,  my  beloved. 

And  be  thou  like  to  a  roe  or  a  young  hart 

Upon  the  mountain  of  spices." 

Ordinary  love  stories  end  in  the  marriage  of  the 
chief  characters.  This  does  not,  but  it  is  easy  to  see 
that  such  constancy  on  the  part  of  each,  under  such 
inducements  to  unfaithfulness,  can  end  no  otherwise 
after  reaching  the  point  where  the  poem  leaves  them. 
Though  when  read  as  an  allegory,  this  poem  is  utterly 
meaningless  ;  yet  when  read  as  a  love  story  in  verse, 
no  pure  man  or  woman  can  rise  from  its  reading  with- 
out having  been  benefited.  It  touches  at  many  points 
the  experience  of  true  lovers  in  all  the  ages,  and  hence 
its  immortality. 

Inevitably,  a  poem  of  so  great  antiquity,  abounding 
in  Orientalisms,  must  contain  many  historic,  geo- 
graphic, and  social  allusions,  which  it  is  difficult,  if 
not  impossible,  to  understand  to-day.  All  parts  of 
the  old  Hebrew  Scriptures  are  in  the  same  category. 
What  if  we  cannot  understand  what  was  meant  in  its 
time  by  "the  dance  of  angels  at  Mahanaim,"  or  why 
it  was  interesting  to  be  looked  upon  from  the  lion's 
den  or  the  mountains  of  leopards  ?  It  is  sheer  folly  to 
seek  a  meaning  for  these  in  allegory  or  parable.  But, 
given  the  instinctive  drawings  of  a  virtuous  youth  and 
a  virtuous  maiden  of  congenial  tastes,  we  have  the  key 
to  this  inimitable  poem.  Though  therefore  we  may 
not  understand  all  its  allusions,  when  we  read  it  as  a 
poem  intended  to  set  forth  a  victory  of  faithful  love  in 
the  form  of  a  dialogue,  which  may  easily  be  acted  by 
amateurs,  we  are  compelled  to  concede  its  right  to  a 
place  in  our  sacred  collection  of  the  books  which  con- 
stitute our  Bible.  It  can  never  cease  to  be  of  interest 
to  all  pure  minds.  No  better  lesson  is  taught  in  any 
Bible  story,  nor  ever  can  be,  while  the  maximum  of 
human  happiness  is  found  only  in  households  where 
true  love  reigns  supreme  ;  and  not  the  least  lesson  it 
teaches  is  the  unchanging  elements  of  love — the  same 
three  thousand  years  ago  as  now. 


THE  APOCRYPHA  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT. 

There  are  a  number  of  books  written  by  Jewish 
anthors  in  the  first  three  centuries  before  Christ  which 
have  not  received  the  same  recognition  as  the  canon- 
ical books  ;  yet  they  are  of  great  interest  because  they 
characterise  the  era  of  transition  to  the  New  Testa- 
ment. They  afford  us  an  insight  into  the  religious  as- 
pirations of  the  age  immediately  preceding  the  advent 
of  Jesus. 

In  the  apocryphal  books  of  the  Old  Testament  the 
conception  of  Satan   grows  more  mythological  and  at 


the  same  time  more  dualistic.  He  develops  into  an 
independent  demon  of  evil,  and  now  the  adversary  of 
man  becomes  the  adversary  of  God  himself. 

In  the  story  of  Tobit  (150  B.  C.)  an  evil  spirit  of 
unquestionably  Persian  origin,  called  Asmodi,  plays 
an  important  part.  He  tries  to  prevent  Sarah's  mar- 
riage, because  he  is  in  love  with  her  himself.  In  the 
Talmud,  Asmodi  develops  into  the  demon  of  lust. 

The  Book  of  Wisdom,  the  product  of  Alexandrian 
Judaism,  in  the  second  century  before  Christ,  speaks 
of  wisdom  nearly  as  a  Buddhist  monk  would  speak  of 
enlightenment.  "Wickedness  has  blinded  the  eyes  of 
the  evil-doer"  (ii.,  21),  and  "whereas  they  lived  in 
the  great  war  of  ignorance,  those  so  great  plagues 
called  they  peace"  (xiv.,  22).  Chastity  is  recom- 
mended, and  we  read  that  "it  is  better  to  have  no 
children  and  to  have  virtue."  The  material  and  the 
spiritual  are  represented  as  antagonistic  : 

"  The  corruptible  body  presseth  down  the  soul,  and  the  earthy 
tabernacle  weigheth  down  the  mind  that  museth  upon  many 
things." — ix.,  15. 

"  Wickedness  is  wearying  itself,  leading  through 
deserts."  "  Pride  and  riches  profit  nothing,"  and  "the 
hope  of  the  ungodly  is  like  dust  that  is  blown  away 
with  the  wind."  But  "the  righteous  live  forever- 
more,  for  the  Lord  will  protect  them  "  : 

"He  shall  put  on  righteousness  as  a  breastplate,  and  true 
judgment  instead  of  an  helmet. 

"  He  shall  take  holiness  for  an  invincible  shield. 

"His  severe  wrath  shall  he  sharpen  for  a  sword,  and  the 
world  shall  fight  with  him  against  the  unwise. — v.,  1S-20. 

Buddhists  call  the  troubles  of  the  world  the  stream 
of  Samsara  which  must  be  crossed  by  him  who  would 
reach  the  shore  of  Nirvana.  The  same  allegory  is 
used  in  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon  : 

"Again,  one  preparing  himself  to  sail,  and  about  to  pass 
through  the  raging  waves,  calleth  upon  a  piece  of  wood  more  rot- 
ten than  the  vessel  that  carrieth  him. 

"For  verily  desire  of  gain  devised  that,  and  the  workman 
built  it  by  his  skill. 

"  But  thy  providence.  O  Fatlier,  governeth  it  :  for  thou  hast 
made  a  way  in  the  sea,  and  a  safe  path  in  the  waves  ; 

' '  Shewing  thai  thou  canst  save  from  all  danger  :  yea,  though  a 
man  went  to  sea  without  art. 

"Nevertheless  thou  wouldest  not  that  the  works  of  thy  wis- 
dom should  be  idle,  and  therefore  do  men  commit  their  lives  to  a 
small  piece  of  wood,  and  passing  the  rough  sea  in  a  weak  vessel 
are  saved. 

■ '  For  in  the  old  time  also,  when  the  proud  giants  perished,  the 
hope  of  the  world  governed  by  thy  hand  escaped  in  a  weak  vessel, 
and  left  to  all  ages  a  seed  of  generation. 

"  For  blessed  is  the  wood  whereby  righteousness  cometh." — 
xiv.,  1-7. 

As  Buddhists  are  saved  by  enlightenment,  so  the 
author  of  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon  seeks  salvation  in 
wisdom,  saying,  "by  means  of  her  I  shall  obtain  im- 
mortality" (viii.,  13).  He  praises  wisdom  in  terms 
that  anticipate  partly  the  Logos-idea  of  the  New-Pla- 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4701 


tonists,  and  parti)'  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Holy 
Ghost.      He  says  : 

"  Wisdom,  which  is  the  worker  of  all  things,  taught  me  ;  for 
in  her  is  an  understanding  spirit,  holy,  one  only,  manifold,  subtil, 
lively,  clear,  undefiled,  plain,  not  subject  to  hurt,  loving  the  thing 
that  is  good,  quick,  which  cannot  be  letted,  ready  to  do  good, 

"Kind  to  man,  stedfast,  sure,  free  from  care,  having  all 
power,  overseeing  all  things,  and  going  through  all  understanding, 
pure,  and  most  subtil,  spirits. 

"  For  wisdom  is  more  moving  than  any  motion  :  she  passeth 
and  goeth  through  all  things  by  reason  of  her  pureness. 

"  For  she  is  the  breath  of  the  power  of  God,  and  a  pure  in- 
fluence flowing  from  the  glory  of  the  Almighty:  therefore  can  no 
defiled  thing  fall  into  her. 

"For  she  is  the  brightness  of  the  everlasting  light,  the  un- 
spotted mirror  of  the  power  of  God,  and  the  image  of  his  good- 
ness. 

"And  being  but  one,  she  can  do  all  things:  and  remaining  in 
herself,  she  maketh  all  things  new:  and  in  all  ages  entering  into 
holy  souls,  she  maketh  them  friends  of  Gori,  and  prophets. 

"  For  God  loveth  none  but  him  that  dwelleth  with  wisdom.'' 
— vii.,  22   28, 

Wisdom,  the  Greek  aoipia,  is  feminine,  and  thus 
our  author  speaks  of  Wisdom  as  a  woman  whom  he 
loved  and  desired  to  make  his  spouse.  Yea,  she  is 
the  spouse  of  God.      He  says  : 

"In  that  she  is  conversant  with  God,  she  magnifieth  her  no- 
bility: yea,  the  Lord  of  all  things  himself  loved  her. 

"For  she  is  privy  to  the  mysteries  of  the  knowledge  of  God, 
and  a  lover  of  his  works." — viii.,  3-4. 

As  to  the  origin  of  evil,  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon 
speaks  of  the  Devil  as  having  through  envy  introduced 
evil  into  the  world.      We  read  : 

"God  created  man  to  be  immortal,  and  made  him  to  be  an 
image  of  his  own  eternity;  nevertheless,  through  envy  of  the  Devil 
came  death  into  Ihe  world,  and  they  that  do  hold  of  his  side  do 
find  it." 

Another  interesting  work  of  an  apocryphal  author 
is  ascribed  to  the  patriarch  Enoch. 

God's  plan  of  the  world's  history  is,  in  the  Book 
of  Enoch,  explained  in  allegorical  form.  The  Israel- 
ites are  compared  to  a  flock  of  sheep  to  whom  a  great 
sword  is  given  to  wage  war  against  the  animals  of  the 
field.  The  sealed  book  of  guilt  shall  be  opened,  and 
judgment  will  be  pronounced  over  the  stars  and  the 
seventy  shepherds  (the  chiefs  of  the  Gentiles);  they 
are  condemned  and  together  with  the  blind  sheep  (the 
apostate  Jews)  thrown  into  the  fiery  pit.  But  from 
the  midst  of  the  sheep  rises  a  white  bull  (the  Messiah) 
with  great  horns,  whom  the  animals  of  the  field  will 
fear;  and  all  the  races  of  the  earth  will  become  like 
the  white  bull.  Then  a  new  heaven  will  be  in  the 
place  of  the  old  heaven,  and  thus  the  goal  of  life  is 
reached. 

While  Enoch's  demonology  smacks  of  the  religious 
myths  of  the  Gentiles,  his  ideas  of  a  Messiah  are 
strongly  spiritualised.  We  read  of  the  Messiah,  com- 
monly designated  ' '  the  son  of  the  woman, "  sometimes 


"the  son  of  man,"  and  once  "the  son  of  God,"  that 
he  existed  from  the  beginning  : 

"Ere  the  sun  and  the  signs  [in  the  zodiac]  were  made,  ere 
the  stars  of  the  heavens  were  created,  his  name  was  pronounced 
before  the  Lord  of  the  spirits.  Before  the  creation  of  the  world 
he  was  chosen  and  hidden  before  Him  [God],  and  before  Him  he 
will  be  from  eternity  to  eternity." 

It  is-a  pity  that  we  do  not  possess  the  original,  but 
only  an  Ethiopian  version  of  the  Book  of  Enoch,  which 
has  been  translated  into  German  by  Dillmann,  for  it  is 
of  great  interest  to  the  historian.  It  apparently  em- 
bodies two  heterogeneous  views:  one  Judaistic,  the 
other  one  gnostic  ;  and  it  is  probable  that  the  original 
Book  of  Enoch,  written  by  a  jew  of  the  Pharisee  party, 
found  an  Essene  interpolator  who  superadded  the 
spiritualistic  ideas  of  his  sect.  The  hypotheses  of  a 
Christian  interpolation  is  not  very  probable,  because  a 
Christian  would  naturally  have  introduced  some  posi- 
tive and  definite  features  of  Christ's  life,  such  as  it  was 
represented  in  the  early  Church,  the  more  so  as  the 
gnostic  interpolations  of  the  book  are  very  pronounced 
and  even  in  translations  easily  recognised.  We  read, 
e.  g.  (in  xlii.,  2): 

"Wisdom  came  to  live  among  men  and  found  no  dwelling- 
place.  Then  she  returned  home  and  took  her  seat  among  the  an- 
gels." 

The  salvation  of  mankind  is  not  expected  from  the 
death  of  the  Messiah,  but  through  the  revelation  of 
the  divine  gnosis  : 

Enoch  proclaims  that — 

"All  the  secrets  of  wisdom  will  flow  from  the  thoughts  of  his 
mouth,  for  the  Lord  of  the  spirits  has  given  wisdom  unto  him  and 
has  glorified  him.  In  him  liveth  the  spirit  of  wisdom,  and  the 
spirit  of  Him  who  giveth  comprehension,  and  the  spirit  of  the 
doctrine  and  of  the  power,  and  the  spirit  of  all  those  who  are 
justified  and  are  now  sleeping.  .\nd  He  will  judge  all  hidden 
things,  and  no  one  will  speak  trifling  words  before  Him,  for  He 
is  chosen  before  the  Lord  of  the  spirits.  He  is  powerful  in  all 
secrets  of  justification,  and  injustice  has  no  place  before  Him  " 

While  the  spiritualistic  views  in  the  Book  of  Enoch, 
especially  the  supernatural  personality  of  the  Messiah, 
are  not  peculiarly  Christian,  but  Essenic  or  gnostic, 
standing  in  contradiction  to  the  idea  that  the  Messiah 
would  become  flesh  and  live  among  men  as  a  real  man, 
we  must  recognise  the  fact  that  the  gnostic  interpo- 
lations, or  at  least  one  passage  must  have  been  writ- 
ten in  the  year  79  A.  D.,  or  shortly  after,  as  it  ap- 
pears to  refer  to  the  eruption  of  \'esuvius  and  the 
formation  of  the  hot  springs  at  Baja»,  while  other  pas- 
ages  relating  to  the  enemies  of  the  Jews  ignore  the 
Romans  so  completely  that  they  must  have  been  writ- 
ten at  a  much  earlier  date.^ 

Very  valuable  books  among  the  Apocrypha  are  the 
book  of  Daniel  and  the  two  books  of  Esdras  ;  yet  even 
here  the  noblest   thoughts   are    mixed  with  Judaistic 

1  Ewald  assigns  one  part  of  the  book  to  the  year  144  B.  C.  and  the  other 
two  to  several  years  later,  about  136-106. 


o 


4702 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


chauvinism  and  bitter  hatred  of  the  gentile  nations. 
In  these  books  the  idea  of  a  bodily  resurrection  of  the 
dead  from  their  graves  is,  for  the  first  time  in  Jewish 
literature,  pronounced  with  great  vigor.  We  read  in 
the  book  of  Daniel  : 

"  Many  of  those  who  sleep  in  the  dust  of  the  earth  will  awaken 
again,  some  to  eternal  life,  the  others  to  shame,  to  an  eternal 
abomination.  But  the  wise  will  shine  like  the  radiance  of  heaven, 
and  those  who  have  lead  many  to  righteousness  like  the  stars  for 
ever  and  aye." — Daniel,  xii.,  2-3 

And  Esdras  says : 

"In  the  grave  the  chambers  of  souls  are  like  the  womb  of  a 
woman : 

"For  like  as  a  woman  that  travaileth  maketh  haste  to  escape 
the  necessity  of  the  travail  :  even  so  do  these  places  haste  to  de- 
liver those  things  that  are  committed  unto  them." — 2  Esdras,  iv  , 
41-42. 

The  expressions,  "the  son  of  man"  and  "the  son 
of  God,"  now  become  current  terms  in  literature.  The 
enemies  of  the  Jews  are  at  present  triumphant,  but 
they  are  doomed  to  perish  in  the  near  future.  The 
present  is  characterised  as  a  period  of  trial,  in  which 
many  Israelites  will  abandon  the  cause  of  God,  but  a 
remnant  will  remain,  for  again  and  again  are  we  as- 
sured that  the  world  has  been  made  for  the  sake  of 
Israel,  and  the  other  nations  are  like  unto  spittle.  (2 
Esdras,  vi.,  56.) 

The  end  of  this  world  draws  near.      Esdras  says  : 

"The  world  hath  lost  his  youth,  and  the  times  begin  to  wax 
old." — 2  Esdras,  xiv,  10. 

Great  tribulation  prevails  and  greater  still  is  to 
come  upon  the  world,  but  "evil  shall  be  put  out  and 
deceit  shall  be  quenched."     (2  Esdras,  vi.,  27.) 

Better  times  will  come  and  the  earth  shall  be  given 
to  the  people  of  God  for  whom  the  world  was  created. 
That  which  is  mortal  will  be  done  away  with,  and  the 
life  of  the  chosen  people  will  be  purely  spiritual. 

Esdras  sees  in  a  vision  a  great  people  praising 
God  in  song  upon  Mount  Zion,  and  one  young  man 
in  the  midst  of  them  of  high  stature,  taller  than  the 
rest,  setting  crowns  upon  their  heads.  Esdras  asked 
the  angel  that  stood  by  him  : 

"  Sir,  what  are  these  ? 

"He  answered  and  said  unto  me,  These  be  they  that  have 
put  off  the  mortal  clothing,  and  put  on  the  immortal,  and  have 
confessed  the  name  of  God  ;  now  are  they  crowned,  and  receive 
palms. 

"Then  said  I  unto  the  angel.  What  young  person  is  it  that 
crowneth  them,  and  giveth  them  palms  in  their  hands  ? 

"So  he  answered  and  said  unto  me,  It  is  the  Son  of  God, 
whom  they  have  confessed  in  the  world." — 2  Esdras,  ii.,  44-47. 

Esdras  proclaims  even  the  name  of  the  Messiah. 
He  informs  us  that  the  Lord  said  to  him  (2  Esdras, 
vii.,  28): 

"My  son  Jesus  shall  be  revealed  with  those  that  be  with  him, 
and  they  that  remain  shall  rejoice  within  four  hundred  years." 


In  addition  to  a  definite  fixation  of  the  name  and 
personality  of  the  Saviour  so  eagerly  longed  for,  we 
find  in  the  Book  of  Esdras  and  other  apocrypha  many 
most  beautiful  gems  of  thought,  which  partly  remind 
us  of  Christian  ways  of  thinking  and  partly  directly 
anticipate  their  phraseology.      Thus  we  read  : 

"  For  the  empty  are  empty  things,  and  for  the  full  are  the 
full  things.  —  2  Esdras,  vii.,  25. 

"The  most  High  hath  made  this  world  for  many,  but  the 
world  to  come  for  few. — 2  Esdras,  viii.,  i. 

"  There  be  many  created,  but  few  shall  be  saved. — 2  Esdras, 
viii.,  3. 

"Notwithstanding  the  law  perisheth  not,  but  remaineth  in 
his  force. — 2  Esdras,  ix.,  37. 

"Forgive  thy  neighbour  the  hurt  that  he  hath  done  unto 
thee,  so  shall  thy  sins  also  be  forgiven  when  thou  prayest." — Eccl., 
xxviii.,  2. 

Esdras  mentions  two  abysmal  beings,  Enoch  and 
Leviathan,  but  they  do  not  take  any  part  in  the  pro- 
duction of  evil.  He  might  as  well  have  omitted  to 
mention  them.  In  the  name  of  God,  an  angel  ex- 
plains to  him  the  origin  of  evil  as  follows  : 

"A  city  is  builded,  and  set  upon  a  broad  field,  and  is  full  of 
all  good  things: 

"The  entrance  thereof  is  narrow,  and  is  set  in  a  dangerous 
place  to  fall,  like  as  if  there  were  a  fire  on  the  right  hand,  and  on 
the  left  a  deep  water  ; 

"And  one  only  path  between  them  both,  even  between  the 
fire  and  the  water,  so  small  that  there  could  but  one  man  go  there 
at  once. 

"  If  this  city  now  were  given  unto  a  man  for  an  inheritance,  if 
he  never  shall  pass  the  danger  set  before  it,  how  shall  he  receive 
this  inheritance  ? 

"And  I  said,  It  is  so.  Lord.  Then  said  he  unto  me,  Even  so 
also  is  Israel's  portion. 

"  Because  for  their  sakes  I  made  the  world  :  and  when  Adam 
transgressed  my  statutes,  then  was  decreed  that  now  is  done. 

"  Then  were  the  entrances  of  this  world  made  narrow,  full  of 
sorrow  and  travail :  they  are  but  few  and  evil,  full  of  perils,  and 
very  painful. 

"  For  the  entrances  of  the  elder  world  were  wide  and  sure, 
and  brought  immortal  fruit. 

"  If  then  they  that  live  labour  not  to  enter  these  strait  and 
vain  things,  they  can  never  receive  those  that  are  laid  up  for 
them." — 2  Esdras,  vii.,  6-14. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  334  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION; 

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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  428. 

THE   SONG  OF  SONGS.      III.      Lovers  Three  Thousand 

Years  Ago.     The  Rev.  T.  A.  Goodwin,  D.D 4695 

THE    APOCRYPHA    OF    THE     OLD     TESTAMENT. 

Editor 47°° 


^;' 


The  Open  Court. 


A   "HTEEKLY   JOUENAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  429.     (Vol.  IX  —46) 


CHICAGO,    NOVEMBER   14,   1895. 


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THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY. 

BY   F.    M.   HOLLAND. 

Many  years  ago,  when  it  was  proposed  to  rectify 
•the  boundary  between  Indiana  and  Michigan,  it  was 
reported  that  a  woman,  who  lived  close  to  the  line 
in  the  former  State,  was  much  alarmed  at  the  prospect 
that  her  home  might  be  annexed  to  the  latter.  It  was 
all  she  could  do,  she  said,  to  stand  the  cold  in  Indiana  ; 
and  she  knew  she  should  freeze  to  death  in  Michigan, 
where  the  winters  were  dreadful.  People  are  not  much 
wiser  to-day,  in  talking  about  the  necessary  collapse 
of  literature  and  morality,  because  we  are  at  the  end 
of  a  centur}',  and  the  certainty  that  the  next  one  will 
bring  the  millennium.  But  if  this  generation  is  worse 
than  its  predecessors,  there  must  be  causes  at  work, 
which  will  make  the  twentieth  century  worse  still ;  and 
if  that  century  is  to  be  better  than  this  one,  it  may 
reasonably  be  supposed  that  the  upward  tendency  has 
already  made  itself  felt.  It  must  also  be  remembered 
that  the  division  between  century  and  century  is  as 
artificial  as  that  between  Michigan  and  Indiana.  To 
know  what  kind  of  men  and  women  are  going  to  take 
the  lead  in  giving  form  and  character  to  the  twentieth 
century,  we  have  only  to  look  around  us.  If  the  cal- 
culations of  Chrysostom,  Hailes,  Keppler,  Blair,  and 
other  eminent  chronologists  are  correct,  we  have  al- 
ready entered  upon  the  twentieth  century  without 
knowing  it.  There  will  probably  be  about  as  little 
difference  between  the  first  years  of  the  new  century 
and  the  last  years  of  the  old  one,  as  between  the  trees 
on  opposite  sides  of  a  town  line. 

The  man,  who  predicts  that  the  twentieth  century 
will  accomplish  every  change  for  which  he  wishes  in- 
dividually, may  turn  out  a  false  prophet.  We  differ 
irreconcilably  in  our  expectations;  and  most  of  us 
would  find  the  future  fail  to  realise  all  our  hopes.  For 
our  race,  however,  there  will  be  little  disappointment. 
There  are  some  desires  which  are  so  generally  felt, 
and  which  have  been  so  much  better  gratified  in  this 
century  than  ever  before,  that  they  are  sure  to  find 
more  complete  satisfaction  in  the  future  than  in  the 
past.  Physical  comfort,  for  instance,  has  always  been 
desired  strongly  ;  and  people  are  now  less  hindered 
from  seeking  it  than  they  were  formerly,  either  by  su- 
perstitious scruples  or  by  fears  of  danger  and  expense. 


Herbert  Spencer  has  shown  that  pleasure  is  health  ; 
and  competition  among  merchants,  inventors,  and 
manufacturers  has  made  it  easy  for  the  masses  to  enjoy 
countless  comforts  which  were  unattainable,  two  hun- 
dred years  ago,  except  by  the  favored  few.  It  is  need- 
less to  state  the  particulars  in  which  the  average  man 
is  better  fed,  clothed,  lodged,  amused,  doctored,  and 
protected  against  ill  usage  than  any  of  his  ancestors 
were.  It  would  be  equally  unnecessary  to  dilate  upon 
such  facts  as  that  much  more  is  known  about  science 
than  ever  before,  and  that  the  value  of  knowledge  is 
now  recognised  universally.  We  delight  in  building 
universities,  public  libraries,  and  common  schools,  as 
our  forefathers  did  in  building  cathedrals  and  monas- 
teries. And  there  is  still  a  third  particular  in  which 
the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries  have  differed 
from  all  their  predecessors.  They  have  been  demo- 
cratic. The  right  of  the  people  to  govern  themselves 
was  nowhere  established  on  any  large  scale  before  our 
own  revolution.  What  were  called  republics  were 
really  aristocracies.  Even  our  own  govt3rnment  was 
not  so  completely  democratic  a  hundred  years  ago  as 
at  present.  Denial  of  the  negro's  rights  put  those  of 
the  white  laborer  in  such  jeopardy  as  can  never  re- 
turn. The  principle  that  all  just  government  requires 
the  consent  of  the  governed  was  much  more  limited, 
even  after  the  abolition  of  slavery,  by  prejudices  on 
account  of  sex  than  is  now  the  case.  During  this  cen- 
tury, democracy  has  become  more  consistent  than 
ever  before.  It  has  quietly  taken  the  place  of  aris- 
tocracy in  Great  Britain  ;  and  it  has  made  itself  per- 
manent in  France  by  regaining  the  popularity  which 
was  lost  there  nearly  a  hundred  years  ago.  Local 
self-government  is  coming  into  existence  in  India. 
The  next  century  seems  likely  to  be  even  more  dem- 
ocratic than  this.  The  future  will  bring  greater  com- 
fort, knowledge,  and  freedom. 

It  is  hard  to  tell  which  will  be  the  next  nation  to 
become  a  democracy,  and  whether  this  change  will 
take  place  as  peaceably  as  in  England,  or  as  violently 
as  in  France.  More  than  one  sovereign  may  have  to 
choose  between  meeting  the  inevitable  revolution  like 
\'ictoria,  or  like  Louis  XVI.  The  most  certain  feature 
of  the  progress  of  liberty  will  be  the  extension,  in  this 
country,  France,  and   Great   Britain,  of   the   methods 


4704 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


already  in  use  for  enabling  the  majority  to  state  its 
commands.  I  mean  the  Australian  ballot,  the  Myers 
machine  for  registering  every  vote  as  it  is  cast,  and 
the  laws  to  prevent  corrupt  practices  at  elections.  The 
legislators  may  also  be  expected  to  take  more  notice 
than  hitherto  of  these  two  facts  :  The  majority  has  no 
right  to  hold  more  than  its  fair  share  of  power  :  the 
stability  of  republican  institutions  requires  that  the 
population  of  every  one  of  our  cities  become  so  capa- 
ble of  self-government,  as  not  to  need  to  be  governed 
by  a  State  Legislature  or  by  Congress.  It  is  hard  to 
say  how  this  is  to  be  done,  but  it  certainly  will  be 
done,  for  our  people  will  not  suffer  the  republic  to 
perish.  Already  we  know  how  to  establish  Milton's 
definition  of  freedom,  namely  "the  civil  rights  and 
advancements  of  every  person  according  to  his  merit  "; 
and  it  will  not  be  long  before  most  of  our  voters  find 
out  why  a  professional  politician  hates  compulsory  ex- 
amination for  office.  We  must  not  be  too  sanguine. 
It  may  be  more  than  a  hundred  years  before  either  the 
English  or  the  Americans  become  so  conscious  of  the 
holiness  of  freedom  as  to  allow  her  temple  to  remain 
open  on  Sunday.  It  may  be  long  before  either  France 
or  America  accept  Britannia' s  proof  that  industry  pros- 
pers best  when  least  interfered  with,  and  that  when- 
ever government  tries  to  "protect"  a  nation's  weakest 
industries,  it  injures  her  most  strong  and  valuable 
ones.  Individual  liberty  is  not  likely  to  be  smothered 
by  the  growth  of  popular  sovereignty,  for  neither  can 
exist  long  without  some  aid  from  the  other  ;  but  more 
than  one  ceatury  may  pass  away  before  the  full  and 
final  reconciliation  of  their  claims. 

All  this  must  seem  tame  to  the  admirers  of  such 
prophets  as  Charles  H.  Pearson  and  Henry  Lazarus. 
The  former  predicts  that  the  nations  which  have  hith- 
erto ruled  are  to  be  superseded  by  the  Chinese,  Hin- 
dus, and  South  Americans.  The  latter's  prognostica- 
tion of  "The  English  Revolution  of  the  Twentieth 
Century,"  is  to  be  fulfilled  on  St.  Valentine's  day,  when 
the  Salvation  Army  is  to  establish  socialism,  and  the 
king  will  find  himself  unable  to  retain  his  throne,  ex- 
cept on  condition  of  promising  to  carry  out  two  most 
sorely  needed  reforms,  namely,  the  disuse  of  jewelry, 
and  the  abolition  of  low-necked  dress.  The  Chinese 
army  has  already  lost  its  terrors  ;  and  socialism  is  cer- 
tainly not  so  strong  in  France  as  in  1S48,  when  all 
citizens  were  promised  work  by  the  State,  or  as  it 
was  in  the  United  States  in  1843,  when  it  was  taught 
by  most  of  the  popular  authors,  and  practised  by  some 
twenty  hopeful  but  short-lived  communities.  The 
schemes,  which  were  too  visionary  to  retain  their  hold 
on  the  transcendentalism  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
are  likely  to  win  even  less  favor  in  that  reign  of  sci- 
ence which  will  characterise  the  twentieth.  One  thing 
at  least  may  safely  be  predicted  of  the  socialists.   They 


will  never  revolutionise  North  America.  So  long  as 
they  remain  a  minority, — and  they  are  a  very  small 
one  at  present, — their  revolt  would  be  their  own  de- 
struction. If  they  ever  become  the  majority,  they  will 
be  able  to  get  all  they  want  without  a  revolution. 

There  can  be  little  danger  of  socialism,  while  peo- 
ple value  comforts  which  are  the  fruit  of  competition. 
It  is  certain  that  those  things  which  already  keep  life 
healthy  and  pleasant  will  come  into  more  and  more 
general  use  among  the  poor.  It  is  probable  that  the 
inventions  and  discoveries  of  the  nineteenth  century 
will  soon  be  surpassed.  All  our  visions  of  flying  ma- 
chines, pleasure  carriages  and  skiffs  driven  by  elec- 
tricity, refrigerators  for  keeping  our  houses  cool  in  the- 
hottest  summer,  and  cures  of  all  diseases  may  fail  to 
do  justice  to  the  achievements  of  the  coming  century. 
The  tyranny  of  fashion  may  be  checked  by  such  prac- 
tical considerations  as  are  already  forcing  rich  women 
to  follow  the  example  of  the  poor,  and  mount  the 
wheel.  All  doubt  whether  life  is  worth  living  may 
soon  be  out  of  date. 

There  are  higher  needs  than  those  of  the  body ; 
but  we  have  already  seen  that  science  is  likely  to  have 
more  influence  in  the  future  than  ever  in  the  past.  In- 
tolerance, superstition,  and  doubt  will  disappear,  as 
knowledge  spreads.  Who  can  say  how  many  nations 
will  be  set  free  from  darkness  in  the  twentieth  century, 
as  Japan  has  been  in  the  nineteenth?  It  would  be 
presumption  to  try  to  predict  precisely  what  science  is 
about  to  announce.  We  may  have  to  wait  even  longer 
for  another  Darwin  than  we  have  done  for  a  second 
Newton.  The  next  century  may  do  little  besides  fur- 
nish corroborations  and  applications  of  its  predecessor's 
discoveries.  We  can  be  sure  that  it  will  make  scien- 
tific methods  of  thought  not  only  more  common  than 
ever  before,  but  more  consistent  and  enduring.  The 
men  of  the  twentieth  century  may  know  as  little  as  we 
about  the  problems  of  deity  and  immortality  ;  but  they 
will  be  better  satisfied  with  what  little  light  science 
can  give. 

And  what  about  religion?  Shall  we  say  that  as 
she  is  weaker  now  than  she  was  in  the  last  century, 
and  much  weaker  than  in  the  sixteenth,  she  will  be 
weaker  still  in  the  twentieth  ?  Lucretius,  Cicero,  and 
Horace  thought  so  ;  but  the  next  century  brought 
Christianity.  Never  was  irreligion  growing  more  rap- 
idly than  just  before  the  Reformation.  These  out- 
bursts of  pious  feeling  are  perfectly  natural  ;  and  it  is 
possible  that  the  next  generation  may  be  irresistibly 
attracted  towards  the  ancient  shrines,  or  else  to  new 
forms  of  transcendental  and  scientific  faith.  It  is  also 
possible  that  emotion  and  aspiration  may  be  fed  so 
abundantly,  and  conscience  guided  so  safely,  by  the 
literature  and  art  of  the  future,  as  to  make  new  reli- 
gions superfluous,  and  defeat  any  attempt  to  drag  forth 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4705 


the  church  from  her  quiet  place  of  honor  in  the  back- 
ground of  tlie  busy  scene  of  life.  The  influence  of  our 
great  poets  is  likely  to  become  mightier  than  ever  ;  but 
how  much  longer  must  the  world  wait  for  a  new  star? 
There  will  be  no  other  Homer,  or  Dante,  or  Shake- 
speare, though  there  may  be  other  Bacons.  Future 
generations  will  probably  find  most  of  their  inspiration 
and  guidance  in  their  novels  ;  and  the  standard  of  pop- 
ular fiction  ma)'  reasonably  be  expected  to  rise  during 
the  next  century,  as  it  has  done  steadily  in  this.  Music, 
painting,  sculpture,  and  architecture  will  have  the 
benefit  of  more  thorough  training  than  before,  as  well 
as  of  more  liberal  patronage  ;  and  the  results  will  be 
grand  accordingly. 

As  I  try  to  state  the  sum  of  these  predictions,  I  am 
surprised  to  find  it  amount  to  a  prophecy,  which  may 
be  all  the  more  true  because  I  had  no  intention  of 
making  it.  The  coming  century  was  foreshadowed  by 
the  Chicago  Exposition,  though  not  so  accurately  as  if 
France  and  England  had  been  more  prominent  among 
the  nations,  while  romance  had  found  a  more  refined 
embodiment  than  the  Midway  Plaisance. 


THE  IRRELIQION  OF  THE  FUTURE. 

BY    ELLIS    THURTELL. 

L' Irre/igion  de  P A'l'enir  is  the  bold  title  of  the  best 
known  work  of  the  lamented  Marie  Jean  Guyau.  It 
was  published  in  1887,  the  year  preceding  that  in 
which  its  brilliant  author  died — at  an  age,  thirty-four, 
when  anything  like  a  first  rate  philosophic  reputation 
is  rarely  won.  It  is  described  as  an  Elude  Sociologiqiic : 
while  the  first  headline  to  the  first  contents  table  of 
the  book  is  Fond  Sociologiquc  de  la  Religion.  The  table 
concludes  with  valeur  el  iitilite  pro'oisoire  des  7-eUgions: 
leiir  insuffisancc  finale.  These  words  in  fact  give 
Guyau's  own  summing  up  of  the  whole  matter.  And 
the  introduction  above  which  they  stand  presents  us 
with  an  admirably  lucid  and  condensed  account  of  his 
case  against  the  various  religions  of  the  future  with 
which  we  are  so  freely  threatened.  It  would  seem 
well  worthy  of  a  careful  scrutiny. 

Many,  says  Guyau,  are  the  definitions  of  religion 
with  which  we  meet.  Some  are  conceived  from  the 
physical,  some  from  the  metaphysical,  some  from  the 
moral  standpoint  mainly,  some  from  a  blending  among 
these  ;  none  from  the  social  side.  And  3'et,  if  we  look 
into  it,  we  shall  find  that  the  idea  of  a  social  bond  be- 
tween man  and  superior  powers  is  the  very  feature  in 
which  the  unity  of  all  religious  conceptions  actually 
consists.  Man  becomes  truly  religious  only  when  to 
human  society  he  adds  in  thought  another  society, 
more  powerful  and  more  elevated — one,  moreover, 
with  which  he  can  hold  communication  to  the  advan- 
tage of  his  mind,  body,  and  estate. 

"  La  religion,"  Guyau  insists,    "est  un  sociomor- 


phisme  universe!."  It  has  been  historically  a  physical, 
metaphysical,  and  moral  explanation  of  all  things 
that  are,  under  an  imaginative  and  symbolic  form, 
and  by  analogy  with  the  human  society  we  know. 
"  Elle  est  en  deux  mots  une  explication  sociologique 
universelle  a  forme  mythique." 

Guyau  himself  holds  that  the  most  important  at- 
tempts in  recent  times  to  define  the  proper  meaning 
are  those  of  Schleiermacher,  Feuerbach,  and  Strauss. 
According  to  Schleiermacher  the  essence  of  religion 
consists  in  our  sentiment  of  absolute  dependence  upon 
powers  whom  we  have  named  divinities.  According 
to  Feuerbach  the  essence  of  religion  is  desire —  to  at- 
tain good  and  avoid  evil.  According  to  Strauss  we 
must  superimpose  these  two  conceptions.  The  re- 
ligious sentiment  is  no  doubt  in  its  origin  that  of  de- 
pendence, but  this  feeling  of  dependence,  in  order  to 
give  rise  to  a  religion  in  the  completest  sense,  must 
provoke  a  psychical  reaction  upon  our  side.  This  re- 
action is  the  desire  of  deliverance  from  evil  and  en- 
dowment with  all  good. 

Of  these  accounts  that  of  Strauss  is  the  one  which 
Guyau  considers  as  more  nearly  approaching  a  satis- 
factory and  final  solution  of  the  problem  than  any 
hitherto  proposed.  This,  then,  is  the  true  inward- 
ness of  religion — desire  of  deliverance  and  endow- 
ment at  the  hands  of  divinity,  approached  through 
propitiatory  rites  and  prayers.  Let  us  now  see  what, 
historically  speaking,  are  found  to  be  the  distinctive 
and  essential  elements  in  the  various  religions  known 
to  us. 

These  are,  according  to  Guyau,  three  in  number. 
First,  there  is  the  niytliical  and  non-scientific  explana- 
tion of  natural  phenomena,  as  in  miracles,  incarna- 
tions and  revelations.  Secondly,  there  is  a  system  of 
dogmas  imposed  upon  faith  as  absolute  verities,  even 
though  not  susceptible  of  philosophic  justification  or 
scientific  proof.  Thirdly,  there  is  a  system  of  rites 
and  ceremonies,  regarded  as  having  a  propitious  in- 
fluence over  the  ordering  of  events. 

A  religion  without  myl/i,  without  dogma,  without 
ritual,  though  often  vaunted  as  a  modern  advance  on 
ancient  superstition,  is,  in  Guyau's  opinion,  but  a 
bastard  thing,  bound  sooner  or  later  to  be  absorbed 
in  metaphysic.  It  is  in  fact  philosophy,  and  no  re- 
ligion. 

But  we  have  not  yet  reached  the  limit  of  Guyau's 
penetrating,  profound,  and  fearless  criticism  of  re- 
ligion's quintessential  being.  Not  only  do  the  three 
elements  just  named  form  the  features  which  distin- 
guish religion  from  metaphysic,  and  therefore  from 
philosophy,  of  which  metaphysic  is  a  part,  but  more  ; 
these  very  elements,  necessary  to  religion  as  they 
are,  also  are  doomed  to  eventual  annihilation.  And 
therefore  religion  itself,  depending  absolutely  on  them, 


47o6 


XHE     OPEN     COURT. 


as  we  must  say  it  does,  will  also  die.  Guyau  indeed, 
with  striking  iconoclastic  scorn,  insists,  "in  this  sense 
then  we  reject  the  religion  of  the  future,  as  we  should 
reject  the  alchemy  of  tlie  future,  ox  ihe  astrology  of  the 
future." 

So  that  the  full  meaning  of  our  author's  startling 
title,  "The  Irreligion  of  the  Future,"  stands  now 
quite  revealed.  It  conveys  his  carefully  reasoned  out, 
and  firmly  fixed  assurance  that  the  wrongly  called 
"religion"  of  the  naturalist,  which  is  the  child  of  the 
rightly  called  religion  of  the  supernaturalist,  will  become 
the  parent  of  a  non-religious  metaphysic  or  irreligion 
in  the  future.  As  to  morality,  though  he  discusses 
the  question  in  the  body  of  his  work,  here  in  the  sum- 
marising introduction  Guyau  scarcely  mentions  it,  so 
obviously  separate  to  him  is  ethical  theory  and  prac- 
tice from  metaphysical  principle  or  religious  creed. 
Did  he  not  three  years  before  the  publication  of  the 
fine  book  now  under  our  consideration  write  his  Es- 
quisse  d'une  morale  sans  obligation,  ni  sanction  / 

In  emphasising  his  rejection  of  all  religions  of  the 
future  our  author  does  not  forget  to  guard  himself 
against  possible  unfair  and  intemperate  attacks  from 
would-be  religion  founders,  whether  in  the  realm  of 
science,  morals,  or  metaphysics.  He  explains  that 
by  his  irreligion  or  a- religion  he  of  course  does  not 
imply  any  superficial  or  paradoxical  contempt  for  the 
ethical  or  metaphysical  basis  of  old  creeds.  What  he 
does  imply  is  simply  the  rejection  "of  all  dogma,  of 
all  traditional  and  supernatural  authority,  of  all  revel- 
ation, of  all  miracles,  of  all  myth,  of  all  rite  erected 
into  duty."  The  irreligion  of  the  future,  he  deliber- 
ately asserts,  will  preserve  not  a  little  of  the  sentiment 
that  has  been  associated  with  the  religions  of  the  past. 
There  are  at  any  rate  two  grand  sources  of  such  sen- 
timent that  no  philosophy  worthy  of  the  name  will 
ever  be  able  to  ignore.  The  one  is  what  has  been 
called  cosmic  emotion  or  cosmic  awe;  the  other  is 
the  pursuit  of  an  ideal  lying  beyond  the  limits  of  re- 
ality, and  being  not  only  more  than  individual,  but 
also,  in  its  rarest  and  highest  manifestations,  more 
than  social, — being  even  in  a  certain  sense  of  cosmic 
character. 

The  really  original  and  audacious  nature  of  Guyau's 
contention  consists  in  the  definiteness  and  decision 
with  which  he  denies  that  these  sentiments  have  any 
claim  to  the  much  fought-for  title  of  "religious."  He 
declares — and  as  it  seems  to  the  present  writer  with 
irresistible  force — that  it  is  only  by  an  abuse  of  lan- 
guage that  metaphysical  and  ethical  speculations 
upon  the  Unknowable,  the  Infinite,  the  Unconscious 
can  be  described  as  peculiar  and  essential  elements 
of  "religion."  And  hereby  Herbert  Spencer,  Max 
Miiller,  Renan,  Hartmann  (to  mention  no  lesser  names) 
stand  all  alike  condemned  of  imperfect  philosophical 


analysis,  and  of  confusion  between  the  permanent 
lineaments  of  metaphysic  and  morals,  and  to  perish- 
able— nay  perishing — features  of  religion. 

The  present-day  application  of  this  learnedly  illus- 
trated and  completely  worked-out  principle  of  Guyau's 
is  wide-spread  and  perspicuous  enough.  His  prin- 
ciple assuredly  makes  a  clean  and  uncompromising 
sweep  of  all  the  various  brand-new  and  ambitious 
competitors  with  Christianity  for  the  title  of  "  Religion 
of  the  Future."  It  takes  Comte's  Religion  of  Human- 
ity, and  shows  that  the  word  "religion"  in  this  sense 
is  no  better  than  a  misleading  metaphor.  It  takes 
Herbert  Spencer's  doctrine  that  religion  and  science 
can  be  "reconciled"  through  their  conjoint  recogni- 
tion of  an  incomprehensible  mystery,  and  shows  that 
Herbert  Spencer  should  have  substituted  metaphysic 
for  religion  in  order  to  give  his  reconciliation  scheme 
any  permanent  value  to  a  later  generation's  more  crit- 
ical and  accurate  eye.  It  takes  Hartmann's  own  par- 
ticular Religion  de  VAvenir — a  curious  synthesis  of 
philosophical  Buddhism  with  non-miraculous  Chris- 
tianity, upon  a  purely  pantheistic  basis — and  points 
out  that  Hartmann  has  only  succeeded  in  making  a 
monstrosity. 

In  the  same  fiery  crucible  of  criticism  Guyau  places 
the  spurious  "religions"  of  Transcendentalism,  of 
Cosmism,  of  Ethicism,  of  Secularism,  of  Socialism, 
and,  as  religions,  they  inevitably  melt.  Let  us  now 
add  to  these  the  closely  similar  "  Religion  of  Science  " 
about  which  Dr.  Carus  says  so  much.  And  what  see 
we,  carefully  regarding  the  result?  Well,  do  we  not 
plainly  see  it,  as  religion,  when  submitted  to  Guyau's 
powerfully  disintegrating  tests,  pass  simply  into  the 
formless  fluidity  to  which  all  the  other  misnamed 
"natural  religions"  have  been  reduced?  Unquestion- 
ably, as  I  think,  we  do. 

No  attempt  can  be  made  here  to  do  justice  to  the 
singularly  thorough  thrashing-out  of  the  whole  ques- 
tion as  to  the  rationality  of  religion  which  Guyau 
has  given  us  in  the  remarkable  volume  under  notice. 
It  may  very  well  be  doubted  whether  there  exists  in 
English  any  treatise  on  comparative  religion  that  can 
at  all  compare  with  this  volume  for  comprehensive 
scope,  masterful  grasp,  and  independently  construc- 
tive issue  as  result.  That  result  can  be  gathered 
without  doubt  or  difficulty  by  any  one  who  reads  and 
digests  the  Introduction  to  V Irreligion  de  I'Avenir. 
While  in  the  third  and  last  division  of  the  book  (whose 
headline  gives  the  title  to  the  whole)  it  is  set  out  at 
length  with  most  able  and  ample  discussion  of  its 
bearings  on  urgent  and  up-to-date  questions  of  re- 
ligion or  philosophy. 

Guyau  sees  quite  clearly  that  there  is  one  sense 
only  in  which  the  word  religion  can  be  rightly  used, 
and   that   this   sense   is  psychic   intercourse  nuth   God. 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4707 


In  true  religion,  therefore,  unqualified  assent  to  two 
propositions  is  absolutely  needful.  One  is  the  rxi's- 
teiice  of  God.  The  other  is  our  capacily  for  communion 
with  Him.  The  first  is  a  proposition  of  metaphysic 
merely.  The  second  includes  the  first,  and  carries 
over  metaphysic  into  the  region  of  religion.  A  tlico- 
iogical  (as  contrasted  with  an  at/ieoiogical)  metaphysic 
may  thus  exist  without  religion.  And  it  is  this  theo- 
logical metaphysic  which  has  so  frequently  and  con- 
fusedly usurped  the  more  popular  title  of  religion 
in  the  various  ethical,  scientific,  and  philosophical 
pseudo-religions  of  the  day. 

Guyau  accordingly  rejects  outright,  as  only  unsub- 
stantial wraiths  of  departed  or  departing  supernatural 
creeds,  all  the  varied  forms  of  what  is  so  undiscrimin- 
ately  miscalled  natural  religion.  He  insists  that  the 
whole  of  what  is  really  rational  in  them — apart  from 
their  ethics,  their  science,  or  their  sociology — is  not 
religious  in  the  least,  but  merely  metaphysical. 

We  now  know  exactly  where  we  are.  In  default 
of  supernatural  religion  it  is  natural  metaphysic  only 
that  is  left  to  us.  The  particular  form  of  metaphysical 
naturalism  which  Guyau  personally  advocates  is  that 
which  is  nowadays  so  greatly  gaining  ground  under 
the  name  of  Monism.  This  monism  of  Guyau's  would 
appear  not  largely  to  differ  from  that  which  Professor 
Haeckel  advocates,  with  the  proviso  that  the  unfortu- 
nate term  mechanical  is  left  out,  and  that  there  is 
nothing  which  is  ever  to  be  called  religion  in  it.  M. 
Guyau's  theory  may  be  in  fact  considered  as  a  more 
advanced  and  satisfactory  stage  in  the  development 
of  Monism  than  has  yet  been  brought  to  light.  It 
certainly  clears  our  philosophic  atmosphere  of  many 
reactionary  and  obscurantist  elements.  And  it  does 
so,  not  by  any  stealing  of  theologians'  thunder,  but 
by  vigorously  wielding  the  all-shattering  levenbolts 
which  steady,  profound,  and  courageous  contempla- 
tion of  man  and  nature  has  revealed  to  view. 


FABLES  FROM  THE  NEW  /ESOP. 


BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 


Parasus's  Predicament. 

One  of  the  smaller  communities  in  the  Peloponne- 
sus found  itself  in  a  very  serious  dilemma.  There  was 
none  to  take  the  office  of  magistrate.  One  after 
another  of  the  more  eminent  citizens  was  appealed 
to,  but  one  after  another  declined.  They  did  not  give 
as  a  reason  for  their  declination  either  other  duties, 
cares  of  business  or  family,  or  want  of  needful  learn- 
ing ;  but  all  united  in  saying  that  they  declined  be- 
cause the  populace  was  fickle  and  unreasonable,  and 
as  they  had  theretofore  stood  well  in  the  estimation 
of  their  neighbors,  they  did  not  care  to  risk  adverse 
criticism  of  what  judgments  they  might  render. 


Parasus  was  a  member  of  this  community,  a  good 
companion  and  much  esteemed  for  his  wit.  He  was 
of  so  jovial  a  disposition  that  none  ever  laid  it  to  his 
charge  that  he  was  jealous  at  not  being  preferred  to 
the  office,  when  he  laughed  and  made  sport  of  these 
reasons.  They  continued  seeking  one  who  should  be 
magister,  and  rather  enjoyed  Parasus's  humor  and 
sarcasms. 

But  after  a  time  the  people  became  nettled  that 
Parasus  seemed  to  be  so  amused. 

"  Could  you,"  said  they  to  him,  "could  you,  in  the 
position  of  magistrate,  render  judgments  so  adroitly 
and  yet  so  justly  as  to  excite  no  animosity  of  the 
worsted  party  ?" 

"Could  I?"  said  Parasus  scornfully,  "could  I  do 
that  which  all  my  life  I  have  done?  What  more  easy? 
You,  neighbors  and  friends,  know  me  well.  Where 
are  my  enemies?  If  any  there  be  to  say  I  ever  af- 
fronted him,  let  him  now  speak." 

The  people  cheered,  for  they  knew  Parasus  spoke 
the  truth.  Then  one  proposed  that  he  should  be 
allowed  to  tr}'  his  genial  and  accommodating  nature 
on  the  judicial  bench,  and  at  this  the  people  shouted 
more  lustily  still,  and  forthwith  they  installed  him, — 
surprised  at  the  turn  things  had  taken,  but  not  un- 
willing,— with  the  ermine  of  office. 

To  give  him  due  credit,  Parasus  did  not  lack  quali- 
fications. He  was  sufficiently  learned,  patient  and 
painstaking,  and,  as  between  litigants,  did  certainly 
contrive  to  dispense  justice  so  evenhandedl)'  that  the 
worsted  went  away  from  court  chagrined,  to  be  sure, 
and  dissatisfied  with  this  judgment,  but  cherishing  no 
ill  feeling  towards  the  judge. 

But  the  populace,  the  very  ones  to  whose  loud 
acclaims  he  owed  his  elevation,  the  very  neighbors 
with  whom  he  had  always  been  a  hail  and  well-met 
fellow,  with  them  it  had  now  become  another  matter. 

They  were  all  on  hand  at  each  day's  dikastery  and 
felt  free  after  each  decision  to  give  their  views.  When 
Parasus  was  especially  suave  and  polite,  they  said  he 
smirked  to  curry  favor ;  when  he  spoke  with  due  de- 
liberation, they  declared  him  slow,  and  prosy,  and 
wasteful  of  time;  but  if  he  hastened  a  decree  (were  it 
ever  so  plain),  they  had  it  that  he  gave  too  little  time 
to  points  of  law.  If  he  gave  a  decision  briefly,  saying 
nothing  of  authorities,  they  ridiculed  him  for  want  of 
learning,  and  yet  if  he  quoted  precedents  from  other 
courts,  they  insisted  that  this  was  only  pedantry  put 
on  to  gloss  his  lack.  If  he  smiled,  he  was  trifling  ;  if 
he  looked  grave,  he  aped  Solon  ;  if  he  decided  for  the 
rich  man,  he  was  a  sycophant;  for  the  boor,  he  was 
a  proletariat;  in  short,  all  his  best  endeavors  were 
accepted  at  their  face  value  and  redeemed  in  the  cur- 
rency of  worst  imputations. 

Parasus   saw  that   he   was   in  a  predicament;    he 


47o8 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


discovered  that  the  very  qualities  which  made  him 
acceptable  socially  were  serious  detriments  politi- 
cally ;  he  must  elect  whether  to  be  continually  mis- 
judged and  reviled  as  a  magistrate,  or  give  up  his 
office  and  be  restored  to  his  status  as  a  man. 

The  Egotist's  Cure. 

A  CERTAIN  egotist,  surfeited  with  the  sordid  world 
and  desirous  of  ridding  himself  of  all  contact  with  his 
kind,  left  the  vicinity  of  his  abode,  and  went  to  a 
lonely  place  on  the  sea-coast  where  he  could  commune 
in  peace  and  solitude  with  himself  and  nature  and 
dream,  unvexed  and  uncontaminated,  lofty  dreams  of 
the  eternal  and  illimitable. 

He  would  have  liked  better  had  his  nature  been 
of  an  order  to  dispense  with  even  the  inn,  but  un- 
fortunately he  was  mortal,  and  being  so,  at  times 
craved  nutrition,  and  nutrition,  as  he  well  knew,  ex- 
acted cooks.  A  roof,  too,  and  a  bed  were  essential, 
so  unwillingly  but  of  necessity  he  put  money  in  his 
purse,  and  having  arranged  for  accommodations  at 
the  inn,  spent  his  time  upon  a  rocky  cliff,  far  from 
the  haunts  of  men,  that  overlooked  the  sea. 

And  yet  he  was  not  altogether  happy,  for  at  the 
inn  was  a  young  woman  who  had  come  there  with  her 
parents,  and  she,  giddy  as  most  maids  of  nineteen  or 
so,  having  innocently  made  acquaintance  with  him, 
was  wont  to  rally  him  upon  his  solitary  life  and  ask 
him  questions,  some  of  which,  wise  as  he  was,  he 
could  not  answer. 

But  it  was  these  very  unanswerable  questions  that 
set  him  thinking  all  the  more.  One  day  he  was  at 
his  accustomed  cliff  alone,  with  the  blue  of  the  sea 
before  him  and  of  the  sky  above  and  the  fiery  sun 
dropping  slowly  down,  he  mused  his  fill. 

"All  this  is  mine,"  he  thought,  "for  me,  for  the 
ego  that  is  me  was  all  this  made  ;  for  me,  out  of  the 
chaos  of  nothing  the  spirals  whirled  slow  and  swift, 
evolving  a  vast  sphere  of  fire,  then  a  little  ball  revolv- 
ing, first  fire,  too,  then  viscous,  and  at  the  last,  little 
by  little,  fitter  and  fitter,  to  this  very  hour,  all  for  me. 
How  wonderful  am  I, — I  the  centered  self  of  infinity, 
the  soul  of  eternity,  master  of  matter,  divinity  of  des- 
tiny." 

So  he  mused,  "the  world  forgetting,  by  the  world 
forgot."  But  not  quite  that;  for  the  sun  dipped  down 
into  the  sea,  and  the  lengthening  shadows  told  our 
philosopher  of  the  flight  of  time,  and  feeling — base, 
carnal,  thoughtless  feeling — twitched  him  within,  re- 
minding of  supper  at  the  inn.  Then  he  turned  his 
face  earthward,  and  as  he  turned  there,  framed  against 
the  glowing  sky,  a  thing  of  beauty,  stood  the  little 
minx. 

There  she  stood  directly  in  his  path.  But  it  was 
not  alone  the  physical  reality  that  disturbed  him  ;  no. 


worse  than  that,  for  of  a  sudden  the  unbidden  thought 
rushed  at  our  egotist  and  jostled  and  shook  him 
rudely. 

"Wake  up,  dreamer,"  it  cried,  "wake  up  and 
contemplate  a  fresh  revelation.  For  this  being,  this 
little  minx,  out  of  the  chaotic  nothingness  the  spirals 
spun  the  planets,  and  the  great  sun,  and  made  the 
grass  grow,  and  bit  by  bit  manufactured  her  sweet- 
ness and  foolishness, — another  centered  self,  a  soul  of 
eternity,  a  mistress  of  matter,  a  divinity  of  destiny." 

The  result  was  natural.  The  egotist  was  quite 
young,  and,  apart  from  his  egotism,  not  ill  favored. 
So  the  cares  of  this  world  and  the  needs  of  looking 
after  a  family  in  time  cured  even  that;  he  married 
the  minx. 


THE  PROSPECTS  OF  RELIGION. 

Religion  is  at  present  in  a  critical  state;  it  is  a 
state  of  transition.  An  old  world-view  is  breaking 
down,  and  a  new  one  is  growing.  New  problems 
have  arisen,  a  new  world-conception  is  dawning  upon 
mankind,  the  voice  of  scientific  critique  can  no  longer 
be  hushed,  and  those  who  bear  the  burdens  of  life  de- 
mand as  their  due  right,  not  only  an  emancipation  so 
far  as  it  be  possible  from  the  toil  of  their  drudgery, 
but  also,  and  that  is  the  most  important  issue  of  the 
labor  problem,  a  recognition  of  the  dignity  of  their 
manhood. 

What,  under  these  conditions,  will  become  of  re- 
ligion ? 

There  are  men  who  imagine  that  the  future  of  man- 
kind will  be  irreligious,  and  their  opinion  is  based 
upon  arguments  which  upon  the  whole  are  a  mere 
matter  of  definition.  They  identify  religion  with  super- 
stition, supernaturalism,  ritualism,  belief  in  an  indi- 
vidual God-being,  and  what  not.  They  overlook  that 
religion  is  a  reality  in  the  world,  which  passes  through 
various  phases,  and  the  end  of  its  history  is  not  yet 
here.  The  last  word  is  still  to  be  spoken.  Those 
who  proclaim  that  religion  is  not  fit  for  survival  judge 
it  according  to  the  narrow  view  of  some  schools  of  re- 
ligious thought,  and  are  blind  to  the  fact  that  religion 
is  a  living  power  and  not  merely  a  chimera  of  unsub- 
stantial visions,  that  it  is  in  a  state  of  growth,  and 
that  its  potentialities  belong  to  its  nature  as  much  as 
its  present  and  past  conditions. 

Religion,  cosmic  emotion,  panpathy,  or  by  what- 
ever name  you  may  call  it,  is  not  comparable  to  grif- 
fins or  sphinxes,  which  are  nonentities  and  mere  prod- 
ucts of  our  imagination  ;  it  is  like  love,  like  fear,  like 
hope,  a  spiritual  reality  in  the  hearts  of  men.  The 
religious  impulse  is  an  actuality,  which,  when  guided 
by  erroneous  notions,  will,  like  love  that  is  squandered 
upon   unworthy  persons,  tend  in  a  wrong  direction  ; 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4709 


but  for  that  reason  religion  itself  is  neither  an  ab- 
erration, nor  is  it  unreal. 

Any  one  who  is  disappointed  in  an  intense  and  deep 
love  may  never  be  able  to  love  again  ;  he  may  deny 
the  existence  of  true  love  ;  he  may  denounce  it  as  a 
diseased  condition,  or  ridicule  the  dupes  of  its  illu- 
sions :  for  all  that,  love  remains  deeply  founded  in 
the  nature  of  the  human  heart ;  and  so  is  religion. 
The  prevalence  of  superstition  in  religion  only  proves 
how  important  it  is  to  teach  mankind  the  right  reli- 
gion and  to  purify  the  religions  that  now  exist  of  their 
errors  and  misconceptions. 

We  might  just  as  well  speak  of  a  soulless  as  of  an 
irreligious  futurity  of  mankind,  on  the  simple  argument 
that  such  a  soul-being  as  the  old  school  of  psychology 
postulates  does  not  exist.  The  wrong  metaphysics  of 
the  old  psychology  will  be  abandoned,  but  the  man  of 
the  future  will  have  the  same  kind  of  soul  as  the  man 
of  the  past,  only  let  us  hope  better,  nobler,  and  more 
enlightened.  In  the  same  way  the  wrong  metaphysics 
of  the  old  religions  will  be  abandoned,  but  religion 
will  remain.  The  moral,  emotional,  and  intellectual 
needs  that  begot  the  mythological  world-view  of  the 
lower  phases  of  religion,  will  not  disappear  when,  on 
a  higher  plane  of  human  evolution,  myth  yields  to 
scientific  clearness. 

The  apostles  of  an  irreligious  future  of  mankind 
imagine  that  religion  will  be  disposed  of  as  soon  as  a 
scientific  insight  into  the  laws  of  nature  proves  the 
impossibilitv  of  miracles.  Religion  is  to  them  the 
illusion  or  fraud  of  miracle-mongers.  Those  who  can 
fathom  the  depths  of  man's  heart,  who  can  feel  the 
thrill  of  its  mysterious  longings,  and  recognise  the 
power  of  ideal  aspirations,  know  better.  No  super- 
natural revelation  is  needed,  but  only  good  common 
sense,  to  see  with  a  prophet's  eye  the  future  of  man- 
kind, and  to  predict  that  after  a  century  or  two,  when 
the  scientific  world-conception  has  been  firmly  estab- 
lished in  the  souls  of  the  leading  nations  of  theAvorld, 
religion  will  be  more  important  a  factor  than  ever. 

The  religion  of  the  future  will  be  conditioned  by 
the  same  needs  as  the  religion  of  to-da}',  but  it  will  be 
so  much  grander,  truer,  and  more  elevating,  as  the 
intelligence  of  the  generations  to  come  will  surpass 
the  confused  and  erroneous  notions  that  still  prevail 
in  the  present  age.  p.  c. 


CORRESPOXDENXE. 

THE  PRESENT  NEED  IN  RELIGION. 

To  the  Editor  cf  The  Open  Ccurl : 

What  is  the  need  of  the  hour  in  religion  ?  It  is  not  easy  to 
sa)'.  Our  age  is  one  of  discontent  and  transition.  These  two  con- 
ditions mark  the  conclusions  of  the  old  and  the  beginnings  of  the 
new  in  all  the  great  eras  of  the  world  ;  or  the  great  eras,  in  their 
beginnings,  are  always  characterised  by  these  conditions. 


The  world  is  spiritually  hungry.  Upon  this  condition  Jesus 
pronounced  a  benediction,  "Happy  are  they  who  hunger  and 
thirst,"  earnestly  long  for,  "righteousness,  for  they  shall  be  satis- 
fied." This  hunger  takes  many  forms — for  fame,  wealth,  pleasure, 
and  ease,  but  in  the  last  analysis  it  is  a  genuine  spiritual  hunger. 
Many  are  unaware  of  this,  having  never  analysed  their  inner  expe- 
riences and  feelings. 

If  the  race  for  wealth  is  intense  and  appalling,  it  is  so  because 
men  have  not  been  fed  spiritually.  Here  is  the  great  opportunity 
for  the  pulpit.  .\  majority  of  men  come  under  its  influence  directly, 
all  men  indirectly.  If  this  attempt  to  satisfy  the  soul  with  food 
for  the  body  is  to  be  modified,  changed,  there  is  no  power  that 
can  so  successfully  do  it  as  the  pulpit.  It  ought  to  rise  to  the 
gravity  of  the  situation,  and  is  doing  so  quite  slowly.  The  world 
has  been  most  effectively  helped  by  living  individuals — men  alive 
in  the  highest  sense. 

■■  "Tis  life  of  which  our  souls  are  scant, 
"Tis  life  and  more  life  that  we  want." 

These  apostles  of  the  new  evangel  should  be  dynamic  centres 
of  light  and  love,  breathing  peace  and  encouragement  wherever 
they  go.  They  should  be  as  strong  as  the  fabled  heroes,  great 
enough  to  sit  among  the  divinities  of  Olympus  ;  simple  enough 
not  to  embarrass  the  plainest,  and  tender  as  the  child  caressing 
its  mother. 

Language  and  action  are  not  the  greatest  interpreters  of  the 
soul's  message.  .\11  speech,  all  action  is  condescension.  Those 
who  are  trying  to  feed  the  heart  in  these  ways  only  will  not 
fully  succeed.  Nature  feeds  by  giving  of  itself.  We  feed  of 
each  other  by  giving  of  our  best,  most  inner  selves.  Language 
and  deeds  help  in  this,  but  the  substance  conveyed  is  always 
greater  than  the  means  of  conveyance.  Words  and  deeds  express 
truth — and  truth  is  love's,  is  life's  medium.  It  is  soul  in  touch 
with  soul  that  fulfils  the  conditions  of  the  highest  helpfulness. 

The  new  evangelist  ought  to  be  a  lighthouse  as  well  as  a 
dynamo,  but  not  dynamite.  He  needs  faith  and  trust,  hope  and 
intuition. 

He  should  be  large  and  profound.  When  the  soul  of  "Ring, 
greatest  of  monarchs,"  left  this  world,  he  rode  richly  on  the 
golden  hoofed  steed,  over  Bifrost,  the  arched  bridge  descending 
to  meet  him,  and  the  portals  of  noble  Walhalla  sprang  wide  to 
receive  him,  and  the  gods,  rejoicing,  grasped  him  by  the  hand 
and  gave  him  a  right  royal  entrance  into  the  heaven  of  peace. 

This  spirit  of  largeness,  strength,  kindly  human  cheer  will  be 
dominant  in  the  movement  that  is  destined  to  join  men  in  the 
upward  march. 

Thus  will  the  religion  of  science,  when  incarnated  in  noble 
men,  unobscured  by  ordinary  frailties,  become  worldwide,  and 
ever  helpful. 

"  Therefore,  by  us  was 
Ring  well-beloved. 
His  shield  ever  guarding 
Regions  of  peace. 
Whence  the  loveliest  image 
of  might  unoffending 
Before  us,  like  incense. 
Forever  arose." — Frithiof' s  Saga. 

J.  W.  Caldwell. 


THE  TER.M  "RELIGION"  NEEDLESS. 

.Anenl  the  Criticism  of  Cor\  inus. 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Open  Court  : 

Ahei  reading  the  criticism  of  "  Corvinus  "  on  your  remarks 
concerning  the  reconciliation  of  science  and  religion,  I  concluded 
that  the  subject  had  not  been  put  before  your  readers  in  as  clear 
a  manner  as  the  facts  in  the  case  demand.     There  is  a  vast  differ- 


47  lo 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


ence  between  religion  and  the  true  faith  of  the  scriptures.  It  must 
be  conceded  that  a  man's  belief  is  his  religion  expressed  in  his  the- 
ology—his ideas  of  the  cosmos  and  his  relation  to  it.  Between 
this  religion  and  science  there  certainly  is  a  conflict ;  a  reconcilia- 
tion is  not  possible.  But  there  is  no  conflict  between  the  faith,  or 
consciousness  which  all  good  people  have,  "that  good  at  last  shall 
come  to  all." 

From  the  standpoint  of  science,  religion  is  merely  a  transient 
superstition— old  clothes  that  must  be  cast  away  entirely  when  we 
cross  over  from  the  domain  of  superstition  to  that  of  truth.  Reli- 
gion assumes  that  mankind  can  be  moral  or  immoral  at  will,  just 
the  same  as  Dr.  H.  W.  Thomas  in  his  reply  to  Colonel  Ingersoll 
assumed  that  the  latter  could  do  other  than  he  is  doing.  Science, 
on  the  contrary,  emphatically  declares  that  mankind  must  do  just 
as  they  are  doing,  and  will  continue  to  do  so  until  there  is  a  nat- 
ural moral  evolution.  Something  more  must  be  worked  within 
before  anything  more  can  be  expressed  outwardly.  Religion  as- 
sumes that  man  is  as  a  branch  cut  off  from  the  rest  of  the  cosmos 
and  that  he  must  meritoriously  work  his  way  back  to  a  God  against 
whom  he  has  rebelled  and  strayed  away  from.  Science  declares 
that  no  particle  of  matter,  organic  and  inorganic,  can  be  separated 
from  the  universal  mass  and  that  merit  and  demerit  is  entirely  out 
of  the  question.  As  forms  are  combined,  evolved  and  environed 
so  they  must  express  themselves,  whether  good  or  bad  ;  hence 
there  never  can  be  harmony  between  science  and  religion.  Reli- 
gion assumes  that  man  has  sinned  willfully  and  deserves  punish- 
ment ;  science,  that  he  is  viciously  inclined  by  nature  (where  he 
is)  and  that  he  needs  moral  development  by  the  same  power  that 
made  him  immoral.  Religion  puts  the  responsibility  of  sin  and 
misery  upon  mankind  ;  science,  upon  the  laws  of  nature  and  na- 
ture's God.  While  religion  is  scientific  in  its  relation  to  the  needs 
of  mankind  while  in  a  vicious  condition  wherein  they  need  urging 
and  scaring,  yet  its  teachings  are  false  in  regard  to  the  true  na- 
ture of  things.  A  true  knowledge  of  things  is  fit  only  for  those 
who  are  able  to  receive  it— for  those  who  are  able  to  fulfil  the 
moral  law. 

All  religions  are  based  upon  a  premise  which  concludes  in 
merit  and  demerit.  Science  utterly  repudiates  that  superstition- 
In  a  universe  of  law  where  all  things  are  relative  merit  and  de- 
merit cannot  be.  This  principle  is  in  accord  with  the  faith  of  the 
Scriptures,  which  is  a  free  gift  of  God  ;  a  power  within  man  that 
supports  him  under  affliction  and  causes  him  to  hope.  "Where 
is  boasting  then  '  It  is  excluded.  By  what  law?  By  the  law  of 
faith."  The  "Constitution  De  Fide  Cattolica"  declares  that  taere 
can  be  "no  real  conflict  between  faith  and  reason.  .  .  .  The  empty 
appearance  of  contradiction  arises  chiefly  from  this  :  either  that 
the  dogmas  of  faith  have  not  been  understood  or  explained  accord- 
ing to  the  church's  mind,  or  that  mere  theories  have  been  put  for- 
ward as  right  reason."  Science  declares  that  this  is  just  what  has 
been  done.  Theological  theories  have  been  put  forth  by  religion 
instead  of  the  true  principle  of  faith  which  is  scientific  in  its  na- 
ture and  application  to  the  need  of  mankind.  Religion  condemns 
mankind  by  its  substitution  of  belief  in  superstition  for  the  true 
faith,  but  science  justifies  mankind  by  that  true  faith. 

There  is  a  conflict,  therefore,  between  science  and  religion, 
but  not  between  science  and  the  true  faith,  because  they  are  a 
unit.  It  is  a  great  mistake  to  drag  the  term  religion  over  into  the 
domain  of  science.  Many  are  being  confused  thereby  as  well  as 
"Corvinus."  Let  us  have  clearness.  We  cannot  logically  talk 
about  a  reconciliation  between  science  and  a  faith  which  has  not 
been  understood  or  rationally  taught.  When  it  is  understood  it 
will  be  science. 

Let  us  understand  that  the  term  religion  stands  for  supersti- 
tion. People  can  have  the  right  faith  and  hope  without  what  is 
called  religion — aye,  a  clearer  consciousness  thereof,  because  reli- 
gious faith  is  often  mixed  with  fear  and  dread.     A  scientific  man 


cannot  logically  or  consistently  hold  to  the  term  religion  unless  in 
the  sense  of  "binding  together  anew."  When  we  arrive  at  a  full 
knowledge  of  the  truth,  what  is  the  use  of  a  needless  term?  Mo- 
nists  must  be  monists  in  everything.  Religious  people  cannot  be 
coaxed  or  forced  into  the  ranks  of  science  ;  they  can  only  grow 
into  them  by  natural  evolution.  He  that  sets  up  his  standard  of 
truth  and  stands  unwaveringly  by  it  is  sure  of  victory,  though  his 
truth  may  antagonise  every  existing  sect  ;  for  truth  is  gradually 
evolving  and  the  power  of  evolution  is  the  sole  cause  of  progress. 
Antithetical  reasoning  suits  the  people  who  are  in  the  bonds  of 
superstition,  but  scientists  must  have  their  reasoning  monistically 
straight.  John  Maddock. 


SPIRIT  APPETENCE. 


BY  CHAS.   A.    LANE. 


O  eagle  soul,  thou  hast  but  sparrow  wings! 
A  thirst  for  far-off  clouds  is  in  thy  throat. 
And  longings  haunt  thine  ear  for  sounds  that  float 

In  purple  silence,  where  the  star-choir  sings  ; 

Around  thy  heart,  with  wing-like  flutterings, 
A  dream  is  aching  for  the  fields  remote 
Of  hidden  spaces,  and  thine  eyes  devote 

Their  vigils  to  the  hope's  far  beckonings. 

A  little  while  content  thee,  restless  soul  ! 

This  lowly  life  holds  food  for  thee  and  flowers, 
And  songs,  antiphonal  to  star-choirs,  roll 

Their  mellow  measures  from  this  earth  of  ours  : 
A  little  while,  and  unto  thee  may  ope 

The  silver  Sometime  shimmering  in  thy  hope. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  429. 

THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY.     F.  M.  Holland 4703 

THE  IRRELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE.     Ellis  Thur- 

TELL 4705 

FABLES  FROM  THE  NEW  ^SOP.     Parasus's  Predica- 
ment.    The  Egotist's  cure.      HudorGenone 4707 

THE  PROSPECTS  OF  RELIGION.     Editor 4708 

CORRESPONDENCE. 

The  Present  Need  in  Religion.     J.  W.  Caldwell 4709 

The  Term  "Religion"  Needless.     Anent  the  Criticism 

of  Corvinus.    John  Maddock 4709 

POETRY. 

Spirit  Appetence.     Charles  Alva  Lane 4710 


^  / 


The  Open  Court. 


A  VyEEKLY  JOURNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  430.     (Vol.  IX.— 47. 


CHICAGO,   NOVEMBER  21,   1895. 


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HUXLEY. 


A  Discourse  at  South  Place  Chapel,  London. 


BY  MONCURE  D.    CONWAY. 

On  the  13th  and  14th  of  June,  1878,  a  Congress  of 
Liberal  Thinkers  gathered  in  this  place  from  all  parts 
of  the  United  Kingdom,  and  indeed  among  the  four 
hundred  representatives  some  were  from  other  Euro- 
pean countries  and  from  the  United  States  of  Amer- 
ica. At  the  end  of  very  impressive  discussions  an 
Association  of  Liberal  Thinkers  was  formed,  its  aims 
and  objects  being  defined  as  : 

"I.  The  scientific  study  of  religious  phenomena.  2.  The 
collection  and  diffusion  of  information  concerning  religious  move- 
ments throughout  the  world.  3.  The  emancipation  of  mankind 
from  the  spirit  of  superstition.  4.  Fellowship  among  liberal 
thinkers  of  all  races.  5.  The  promotion  of  the  culture,  progress, 
and  moral  welfare  of  mankind  and  of  whatever  in  any  form  of  re- 
ligion may  tend  towards  that  end.  6.  Membership  in  this  Asso- 
ciation shall  leave  each  individual  responsible  for  his  own  opinion 
alone,  and  in  no  degree  affect  his  relations  with  other  associa- 
tions." 

The  presidency  of  that  Association  was  conferred 
on  Professor  Huxley,  and  by  him  accepted.  I  remem- 
ber well  the  satisfaction  with  which,  referring  to  the 
names,  eminent  in  science,  literature,  and  rational  re- 
ligion, in  the  membership,  our  President  Huxley  said, 
"Freethinkers  are  no  longer  to  be  merely  bullied." 
The  large  committee  met  at  his  house,  and  it  was 
found  impossible  that  members  widely  scattered  about 
the  world  could  be  organised  in  any  central  or  definite 
movement ;  but  the  Association  was  never  dissolved  ; 
in  many  regions  its  surviving  members  are  carrying 
out  its  principles  in  their  several  centres  of  work  and 
influence  ;  and  it  is  not  impossible  that  they  may  be 
again  summoned  in  congress,  and  be  called  on  to 
choose  a  successor  to  him  who  remained  to  his  death 
President  of  the  Association  formed  in  this  place, — 
the  Association  of  Liberal  Thinkers. 

But  we  shall  never  be  able  to  find  a  President 
more  fit  to  be  the  head  of  those  varied  movements  of 
thought,  impossible  of  organisation,  distributed  every- 
where, indefinable,  the  leaven  subtlj'  at  work  like  the 
")'east"  of  his  scientific  essay,  which,  he  says,  "will 
increase  indefinitely  when  grown  in  the  dark."  Yeast 
reminded  him  of  how  other  things  grow  in   the  dark. 


as  those  "living  organisms  buried  beneath  two  or 
three  thousand  fathoms  of  water."  And  the  phenom- 
ena may  remind  us  of  the  liberal  leaven  that  is  increas- 
ing indefinitely  in  places  that  seem  dark  with  super- 
stition. 

We  cannot  help  feeling  some  scandal  when  such  a 
man  as  Huxley  is  buried  with  rites  of  the  church 
whose  every  creed  and  article  he  pronounced  untrue. 
That  part  of  the  service  which  gave  God  hearty  thanks 
for  delivering  our  brother  out  of  the  miseries  of  this 
sinful  world  may  have  met  with  an  unuttered  response 
from  the  clerical  breast, — "We  give  thee  hearty 
thanks  for  that  it  has  pleased  thee  to  deliver  this 
world  from  a  sinful  heretic."  But  not  every  clergy- 
man is  clerical,  and  we  need  not,  like  the  adversary, 
dispute  with  the  archangel  for  the  dead  body  of  our 
scientific  Moses.  The  ancient  Moses  would  seem  to 
have  given  some  rationalistic  explanation  of  the  way 
he  got  water  out  of  the  rock  for  the  thirsty  people  ; 
whereat  Jehovah  was  angry,  and  said  Moses  should 
never  enter  the  Promised  Land  ;  but  nevertheless, 
when  rationalistic  Moses  was  dead,  the  archangel  was 
sent  to  claim  his  body,  as  our  archangels  or  arch- 
bishops claim  the  bodies  of  great  men  whose  living 
spirit  they  could  not  subdue.  This  the  Church  would 
hardly  do  were  there  not  multitudes  within  its  own 
pale  and  its  pulpits  who  inwardly  recognise  the  great 
thinker  as  the  truer  archbishop  of  souls, — real  souls. 
Much  as  we  may  deplore  the  giving  up  of  the  body  of 
the  President  of  the  Association  of  Liberal  Thinkers 
to  burial  under  rites  of  superstitions  he  exposed,  the 
surrender  is  not  all  on  our  side.  The  Church  has 
buried,  in  sure  and  certain  hope  of  his  resurrection  to 
eternal  life,  a  man  who  denied  every  dogma  on  which 
that  Church  declares  eternal  life  to  depend.  Huxley 
did  not  believe  in  the  miracles,  nor  the  inspiration  of 
the  Bible,  nor  the  atonement,  nor  in  any  Deity  as  yet 
affirmed ;  yet  the  Church,  by  its  most  solemn  service, 
has  promised  him  eternal  joy.  Its  old  doctrine,  "He 
that  believeth  not  shall  be  damned,"  is  reserved  for 
common  people  :  it  does  not  apply  to  Members  of  the 
Royal  Society.  I  remember  once  standing  beside  the 
open  grave  of  one  of  England's  greatest  freethinkers, 
in  Westminster  Abbey,  and  as  the  service  proceeded, 
its  ancient  chants  and   prayers  seemed  to  ascend  and 


4712 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


blend  with  the  Abbey's  solemn  arches  and  the  win- 
dows glowing  with  extinct  saints  ;  they  all— arches, 
windows,  chants,  prayers— passed  out  of  their  literal- 
ism, and  were  fulfilling  their  higher  and  only  genuine 
purpose,  of  decorating  the  monument  of  a  great 
thinker  who  had  interpreted  their  evolution  from  real 
to  artistic  symbolism. 

There  has  not  been  by  any  means  a  unanimous 
expression  among  liberal  people  of  admiration  for 
Huxley.  He  trod  on  the  theoretical  toes  of  various 
schools  of  freethinkers  ;  he  repudiated  the  materialis- 
tic as  well  as  the  Christian  flag,  the  atheistic  along 
with  the  theistic;  he  would  not  join  the  Liberationists 
to  disestablish  the  Church,  and  he  held  ideas  of  the 
parental  functions  of  the  State,  which,  while  they 
offended  the  anti-vaccinationists  and  individualists, 
fell  short  of  the  friendship  of  socialists.  Myself  a  per- 
sonal-liberty man,  I  dissent  strongly  from  some  of  his 
sociology.  But  what  of  that?  All  of  these  differen- 
tiations represent  the  man.  That  was  Huxley.  Had 
he  been  able  to  work  in  any  harness,  or  bear  any  la- 
bel, he  would  have  been  another  man  ;  and  though 
the  favored  clan  might  have  rejoiced  in  a  powerful 
chief,  the  empire  of  thought  would  never  have  known 
its  unique  figure,  its  finest  free  lance.  You  who  see,  or 
think  you  see,  faults  in  a  great  man,  remember  the 
profound  truth  of  Shakespeare  :  "  Best  men  are 
moulded  out  of  faults." 

My  friend  Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson,  in  the  current 
Free  Rcihcw  thinks  there  was  some  timidity  in  Hux- 
ley's advocating  Bible  reading  in  the  schools,  and  in 
calling  himself  an  "Agnostic."  I  know  by  long  per- 
sonal acquaintance  with  and  study  of  the  man,  that 
there  was  no  lack  of  courage  in  him.  Both  of  those 
criticised  things,  little  to  my  liking,  represented  an 
important  side  of  a  many-sided  man.  That  side  was 
Huxley's  imagination.  This  was  mainly  developed 
into  the  scientific  imagination,  which  enabled  him  to 
take  the  smallest  themes  suggested  by  others, — such 
as  vertebration  of  the  skull,  or  even  large  themes  like 
natural  selection, — and  carry  them  into  innumerable 
variations,  and  gather  them  all  up  in  mighty  sym- 
phonies of  science,  in  which  protoplasm  and  zoophyte 
and  plant,  worm,  man  were  all  united  in  harmonious 
generalisation.  Who  that  listened  to  those  lectures 
can  ever  forget  how  in  his  hand  the  little  piece  of 
chalk  swelled  to  a  world  populous  with  animal  life,  or 
the  bit  of  coal  became  a  diamond  lens  through  which 
were  seen  the  tree  ferns  and  giant  mosses  of  the  pri- 
meval forest?  I  remember  listening  to  him  on  an  oc- 
casion when  he  invited  us  to  take  our  stand  with  him, 
in  imagination,  on  London  Bridge  ;  with  him  we  re- 
marked the  current  of  the  Thames,  the  slope  of  its 
banks,  their  distant  curving  ;  then  passed  on  beyond 
its  boats,   barges,    and   ships,   to   its   sources   and  its 


mouth,  varied  by  glances  at  primitive  tribes  on  its 
shores  ;  till  we  traced  our  old  river,  its  tides,  its  geo- 
logic work,  back  to  a  different  world  and  to  the  con- 
fines of  the  solar  system.  All  this  was  the  joint  work 
of  imagination  interpreting  scientific  fact,  and  a  fin- 
ished literary  art  which  could  make  an  obscure  thing 
clear  at  once  to  the  taught  and  the  untaught.  For 
his  profound  humanitarian  sympathies  had  led  him  to 
cultivate  to  the  utmost  the  power  of  carrying,  by  both 
speech  and  drawing,  the  illiterate  and  unscientific 
along  with  him  from  first  to  last.  The  most  subtle 
and  far-reaching  hypothesis  ever  made  by  any  one, 
since  the  discovery  of  evolution,  was,  in  my  opinion, 
one  originally  made  by  Huxley  concerning  the  vast 
chasm,  moral  and  mental,  between  man  and  the  high- 
est of  the  lower  animals.  This  was  first  given  in  a 
lecture  to  workingmen,  and  I  will  read  it  to  you  : 

"' Well,  but,'  I  am  told  at  once,  somewhat  triumphantly, 
'you  say  in  the  same  breath  that  there  is  a  great  moral  and  intel- 
lectual chasm  between  man  and  the  lower  animals.  How  is  this 
possible  when  you  declare  that  moral  and  intellectual  character- 
istics depend  on  structure,  and  yet  tell  us  that  there  is  no  such 
gulf  between  the  structure  of  man  and  that  of  the  lower  animals  ? ' 
"I  think  that  objection  is  based  upon  a  misconception  of  the 
real  relations  which  exist  between  structure  and  function,  between 
mechanism  and  work.  Function  is  the  expression  of  molecular 
forces  and  arrangements  no  doubt;  but,  does  it  follow  from  this, 
that  variation  in  function  so  depends  upon  variation  in  structure 
that  the  former  is  always  exactly  proportioned  to  the  latter  ?  If 
there  is  no  such  relation,  if  the  variation  in  function  which  fol- 
lows on  a  variation  in  structure,  may  be  enormously  greater  than 
the  variation  of  structure,  then,  you  see  the  objection  falls  to  the 
ground.  Take  a  couple  of  watches — made  by  the  same  maker, 
and  as  completely  alike  as  possible ;  set  them  upon  the  table,  and 
the  function  of  each — which  is  its  rate  of  going — will  be  performed 
in  the  same  manner,  and  you  shall  be  able  to  distinguish  no  dif- 
ference between  them  ;  but  let  me  take  a  pair  of  pincers,  and  if 
my  hand  is  steady  enough  to  do  it,  let  me  just  lightly  crush  to- 
gether the  bearings  of  the  balance-wheel  or  force  to  a  slightly 
different  angle  the  teeth  of  the  escapement  of  one  of  them,  and  of 
course  you  know  the  immediate  result  will  be  that  the  watch  so 
treated,  from  that  moment  will  cease  to  go.  But  what  proportion 
is  there  between  the  structural  alteration  and  the  functional  re- 
sult ?  Is  it  not  perfectly  obvious  that  the  alteration  is  of  the  min- 
utest kind,  yet  that  slight  as  it  is,  it  has  produced  an  infinite  dif- 
ference in  the  performance  of  the  functions  of  these  two  instru- 
ments ? 

"  Well,  now  apply  that  to  the  present  question.  What  is  it 
that  constitutes  and  makes  man  what  he  is?  What  is  it  but  his 
power  of  language — that  language  giving  him  the  means  of  record- 
ing his  experience — making  every  generation  somewhat  wiser  than 
its  predecessor, — more  in  accordance  with  the  established  order 
of  the  universe  ?  What  is  it  but  this  power  of  speech,  of  record- 
ing experience,  which  enables  men  to  be  men, — looking  before  and 
after  and,  in  some  dim  sense,  understanding  the  working  of  this 
wondrous  universe, — and  which  distinguishes  man  from  the  whole 
brute  world  ?  I  say  that  this  functional  difference  is  vast,  un- 
fathomable, and  truly  infinite  in  its  consequences;  and  I  say  at 
the  same  time,  that  it  may  depend  upon  structural  differences 
which  shall  be  absolutely  inappreciable  to  us  with  our  present 
means  of  investigation.  What  is  this  very  speech  that  we  are 
talking  about  ?     I  am  speaking  to  you  at  this  moment,  but  if  you 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4713 


were  to  alter,  in  the  minutest  degree,  the  proportion  of  the  ner- 
vous forces  now  active  in  the  two  nerves  which  supply  the  muscles 
of  my  glottis,  I  shall  become  suddenly  dumb.  The  voice  is  pro- 
duced only  so  long  as  the  vocal  chords  are  parallel  ;  and  these  are 
parallel  only  so  Ung  as  certain  muscles  contract  with  exact  equal- 
ity; and  that  again  depends  on  the  equality  of  action  of  those  two 
nerves  I  spoke  of.  So  that  a  change  of  the  minutest  kind  in  the 
structure  of  one  of  these  nerves,  or  in  the  structure  of  the  part  in 
which  it  originates,  or  of  the  supply  of  blood  to  that  part,  or  of 
one  of  the  muscles  to  which  it  is  distributed,  might  render  all  of 
us  dumb.  But  a  race  of  dumb  men  deprived  of  all  communication 
with  those  who  could  speak,  would  be  little  indeed  removed  from 
the  brutes.  And  the  moral  and  intellectual  difference  between 
them  and  ourselves  would  be  practically  infinite  though  the  nat- 
uralist should  not  be  able  to  tind  a  single  shadow  of  even  specific 
structural  difference." 

I  remember,  by  the  way,  asking  Professor  Huxley 
whether  if  the  throat  of  a  fine  opera-singer,  Hke  Jenny 
Lind,  and  the  throat  of  a  person  of  coarse  voice,  were 
given  to  an  expert  scientist  to  dissect,  he  could  tell  by 
great  care  which  vocal  chords  belonged  to  the  singer 
and  which  to  the  rude  voice.  He  replied  that  it  would 
be  as  difficult  as  for  a  musical  expert  to  determine  be- 
tween two  violins,  outwardly  alike  in  color  and  shape, 
which  was  the  Cremona,  and  which  an  ordinary  vio- 
lin. He  must  first  hear  a  note  sounded.  How  marvel- 
lous is  this  !  A  difference  of  not  even  a  hair's  breadth, 
— a  difference  undiscoverable  to  the  expert  micro- 
scopist, — yet  makes  all  the  difference  in  function  be- 
tween the  rudest  voice,  and  the  voice  that  enchants 
thousands. 

You  will  observe  in  the  quotation  made  how  per- 
fectly under  control  is  his  scientific  imagination,  in 
dealing  with  a  scientific  problem.  He  does  not  say 
that  language  is  the  agency  by  which  man  has  been 
able  to  store  up  and  apply  his  experiences,  turn  them 
into  wisdom,  and  thereby  far  distance  tlie  dumb  ani- 
mals, even  in  bodily  form  ;  he  merely  suggests  that  as 
a  probable  factor,  a  working  hypothesis.  And  in  the 
same  way  he  curbs  his  imagination  when  he  comes  to 
the  limits  of  certainty  with  regard  to  matter,  and  with 
regard  to  mind.  He  cannot  be  persuaded  to  postu- 
late a  material  substance  causing  mind,  or  a  spiritual 
substance  causing  matter  :  he  refuses  to  be  labelled 
either  Theist  or  Atheist ;  he  says  "  I  do  not  know  " — 
and  that  is  the  English  of  Agnostic.  It  was  put  into 
that  Greek  form  because  it  was  first  used  by  Huxley 
in  a  small  club  of  learned  men,  the  Metaphysical  So- 
ciety. It  was  published  and  popularised  by  others, 
not  by  himself,  and  if  anybody  has  used  it  to  conceal 
his  scepticism  it  certainly  was  not  Huxley.  The  word 
was  a  fair  individual  motto,  like  that  of  Montaigne, 
"Que  srais-Je?"  "  What  know  I  ?"  Huxley  declares 
in  effect  :  "I  know  not  anything  beyond  the  contents 
of  my  consciousness  :  I  say  not  there  is  or  is  not  a 
God;  I  say  not  matter  is  or  is  not  all.  Such  things 
may  be  knowable,  but  to  me  they  are  unknown."  Such 


is  Huxley's  attitude;  and  it  appears  to  me  a  sad  mis- 
use of  this  accidentally  coined  word  "agnostic,"  to 
disguise  under  it  any  beliefs  or  unbeliefs.  It  is  a  mis- 
fortune that  the  word  ever  passed  out  of  the  Meta- 
physical Society,  for  it  is  a  time  when  every  man  should 
speak  his  thought  in  plain  English  speech,  as  Huxley 
certainly  never  failed  to  do. 

But  that  same  imagination  of  his,  so  perfectly  filed 
and  polished  as  an  implement  for  scientific  work,  made 
Huxley  among  worldly  affairs  something  of  a  dreamer, 
and  occasionally  even  a  visionary.  Some  of  his  dreams 
I  share.      Here  is  one  : 

"Again,  I  suppose  it  is  universally  agreed  that  it  would  be 
useless  and  absurd  for  the  State  to  attempt  to  promote  friendship 
and  sympathy  between  man  and  man  directly.  But  I  see  no  rea- 
son why,  if  it  be  otherwise  expedient,  the  State  may  not  do  some- 
thing towards  that  end  indirectly.  For  example,  I  can  conceive 
the  existence  of  an  Established  Church  which  should  be  a  bless- 
ing to  the  community.  A  Church  in  which,  week  by  week,  ser- 
vices should  be  devoted,  not  to  the  iteration  of  abstract  proposi- 
tions in  theology,  but  to  the  setting  before  men's  minds  of  an 
ideal  of  true,  just,  and  pure  living;  a  place  in  which  those  who 
are  weary  of  the  burden  of  daily  cares  should  find  a  moment's 
rest  in  the  contemplation  of  the  higher  life  which  is  possible  for 
all,  though  attained  by  so  few  ;  a  place  in  which  the  man  of  strife 
and  of  business  should  have  time  to  think  how  small  after  all  are 
the  rewards  he  covets  compared  with  peace  and  charity.  Depend 
upon  it,  if  such  a  church  existed  no  one  would  seek  to  disestab- 
lish it." 

But  one  of  his  visions  lay  rather  closer  to  my  voca- 
tion and  experience  than  to  his,  and  always  appeared  to 
me  insubstantial.  Such  was  his  vision  of  the  coming  ca- 
reer of  the  Bible  in  the  public  schools.  It  was  gener- 
ally regarded  by  liberal  thinkers  as  a  lapse  and  a  com- 
promise for  Huxley  to  support  the  reading  of  the 
Bible  in  the  schools,  after  he  had  done  so  much  to 
show  the  unscientific,  unhistorical,  and  mythological 
character  of  that  book.  But  his  view  was  based  on  a 
real  belief  that  the  Bible  would  be  used  in  the  schools 
as  he  himself  would  use  it,  for  the  sake  of  its  good 
English,  its  poetry,  its  good  ethical  teachings, — the 
bad  ethics  omitted, — and  with  such  geographical  and 
historical  explanations,  "by  a  lay  teacher,  as  would 
bring  the  children  into  some  kind  of  mental  connexion 
with  other  countries  and  other  civilisations  of  a  great 
past."  He  believed  the  ethical  ideal  might  thus  be 
raised  in  young  minds,  and  also  the  spirit  of  revolt 
against  clerical  and  political  despotism  which  pervades 
parts  of  the  Bible. 

All  of  this  appeared  to  me  when  he  said  it,  and 
appears  now,  both  credulous  and  visionary.  To  a 
philosopher,  to  a  mature  scholar,  the  Bible  is  an  in- 
valuable book  ;  for  its  myths,  legends,  folk-lore,  poetic 
episodes,  and  ethical  sentiments,  if  not  principles. 
But  it  was  not  for  the  sake  of  these  useful  points  that 
the  Bible  was  forced  on  the  schools  ;  it  was  forced  on 
them  as  the  word  of  God,  to  be  raised  before  the  chil- 


4714 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


dren  daily,  whether  they  could  understand  a  sentence 
of  it  or  not, — to  be  raised  before  them  as  a  thing  to 
be  worshipped,  a  leather-bound  fetish.  And  this 
sacramental  use  of  it  inevitably  paralyses  the  common- 
sense  estimate  of  what  is  read,  on  which  common 
sense  depends  all  the  uses  that  Huxley  hoped  for.  He 
had  a  vision  of  heretical  Huxleys  instructing  innu- 
merable little  Huxleys.  But  that  vision  appears  to 
me  baseless,  and  the  more  probable  result  is  likely  to 
be  a  generation  growing  up  with  an  antipathy  to  the 
Bible,  as  a  burden  on  the  teacher  and  a  bore  to  them- 
selves. Indeed,  I  remember  this  view  urged  on  me 
in  favor  of  Huxley's  course.  "What  made  you  a 
freethinker?"  he  said:  "  Why,  reading  the  Bible." 
Huxley  had  belief  in  English  unorthodoxy  :  the  last 
talk  I  had  with  him  was  on  mottoes  of  the  London 
guilds,  which,  he  said,  are  mostly  deistic.  It  appears 
that  in  boyhood  Huxley  enjoyed  the  Bible  stories  very 
much,  and  his  mature  writings  show  an  acquaintance 
with  the  Bible  rare  even  among  clergymen  and  unex- 
ampled among  the  scientific  men  of  our  time.  He  is 
the  only  scientific  man  of  our  age  who  has  followed 
orthodoxy  and  superstition  into  all  their  Biblical  by- 
ways. 

This  became  necessary  because  of  his  rejection  of 
all  a  priori  method.  Outside  the  pure  mathematics 
he,  like  Kant,  would  pronounce  nothing  impossible. 
To  the  assertion  that  a  man  walked  on  the  water  or 
rose  from  the  dead  he  only  asked  for  the  evidence. 
Prove  it,  and  he  is  ready  at  once  to  catalogue  it  among 
the  phenomena  of  nature.  We  have  plenty  of  mira- 
cles in  science  already,  he  told  the  clergy;  and  have 
not  the  least  objection  to  adding  yours;  but  we  have 
an  obstinate  liking  for  evidence  and  verification. 

It  is  characteristic  of  his  severe  scientific  method 
that  when  the  spiritualists  came  about  with  their  mys- 
terious rappings  Professor  Huxley  at  once  began  to 
search  out  whether  there  might  not  be  some  unused 
potentialities  of  human  nature  causing  them  :  he  ex- 
perimented on  himself,  and  after  a  little  practice  with 
two  of  his  toes  acquired  ability  to  sit  with  motionless 
feet  and  yet  make  raps  with  his  toes  that  sounded 
loudly  through  a  large  room.  He  not  only  believed 
that  it  was  right  to  judge  of  every  alleged  fact  by  its 
own  evidence,  but  drilled  his  mind  to  an  instinct  that 
way;  insomuch  that  once  in  a  company  where  I  was 
present,  met  to  investigate  thought-reading,  when 
Mr.  Bishop  first  came  from  America,  a  marvellous 
thing  was  done,  which  nearly  all  the  scientists  present 
knew  must  be  a  trick,  but  Huxley,  his  knowledge  of 
human  nature  being  mainly  scientific,  at  once  prepared 
to  subject  the  miracle  to  scientific  experimentation. 
Mr.  Bishop,  however,  announced  that  it  was  a  mere 
trick,  and  showed  how  it  was  done.  It  was  one  of 
his   illustrations  and  exposures  of   spiritualist  impos- 


ture, and  he  then  proceeded  to  his  own  genuine  and 
extraordinary  powers  of  deriving  mental  impressions 
through  muscular  action. 

You  will  observe  that  I  am  considering  to-day 
mainly  the  President  of  our  old  Association  of  Liberal 
Thinkers.  His  excursions  into  political  and  socio- 
logical inquiries  appear  to  me  also  visionary:  presup- 
posing a  government  of  Solomons,  instead  of  that 
which  we  have — a  mere  numerical  majority  of  people 
struggling  for  their  class-interests.  Huxley's  career 
is  far  too  large  to  be  dealt  with  in  one  discourse.  His 
educational  work,  his  protest  against  Sabbath-oppres- 
sion, his  services  in  the  cause  of  female  training  in 
science  and  art,  would  need  a  volume  for  their  esti- 
mate. His  great  strength  lay  in  his  scientific  and 
philosophical  culture,  and  in  his  wonderful  critical  in- 
sight. His  contributions  to  science  I  am  not  compe- 
tent to  estimate ;  but  I  heard  many  of  his  lectures, 
and  regard  him  as  by  far  the  most  lucid  and  accom- 
plished expounder  and  interpreter  of  science  to  whom 
I  have  listened.  Of  his  philosophical  genius  some 
account,  though  very  inadequate,  has  been  given  in 
his  maintenance  of  the  agnostic  attitude  with  regard 
to  the  phenomenal  and  the  real  world.  His  philo- 
sophical competency  is  illustrated  in  his  work  on 
Hume,  which  deserves  careful  study.  His  great  crit- 
ical ability  finds  illustrations  in  his  masterly  rejoinders 
to  Dr.  Wace,  Gladstone  and  the  Duke  of  Argyll  from 
five  to  eight  years  ago.  These  are  collected  with 
other  things  in  his  Science  and  Cliristian  Tradition. 
This  volume  represents,  I  believe,  the  only  detailed 
analysis  of  Biblical  narration,  and  exposure  of  super- 
natural and  Christian  fallacies,  made  by  any  eminent 
man  in  this  century.  It  merits  our  reverence  for  its 
courage  ;  it  elicits  our  wonder  that  amid  multifarious 
official  and  scientific  work,  commanding  the  attention 
of  the  world,  this  learned  criticism,  not  equalled  by 
any  professional  theologian  for  thoroughness  could 
have  been  achieved. 

It  is  probable  that  the  clerical  array  in  their  strong- 
hold, besieged  by  these  shining  arrows,  so  finely  feath- 
ered, must  have  reflected  with  pain  on  the  good  old 
time  when  the  Church  held  the  keys  of  learning,  and 
all  such  knowledge  was  under  its  orders.  But  it  is  to 
be  feared  that  our  clergy  only  feel  the  smart  of  such 
arrows  as  Huxley's,  and  do  not  take  to  heart  their 
significance.  Every  heresy  of  Huxley  is  a  handwrit- 
ing on  the  walls  of  the  Church,  admonishing  it  that  so 
long  as  it  bars  out  the  genius  of  the  nation  it  is  reject- 
ing the  only  true  corner-stone  of  a  real  English  Church; 
and  that  stone,  if  still  rejected,  will  fall  on  it  and  grind 
it  to  powder.  The  heaviest  blows  the  Church  has  re- 
ceived this  hundred  years  have  been  from  thinkers  of 
largely  religious  genius,  who  aspired  to  work  in  the 
Church.      Even   Thomas  Paine   first   tried   to   do   his 


XHE    OPEN     COURT. 


4715 


work  in  the  English  Church.  He  knew  science  but 
not  Greek,  and  was  refused.  Darwin  studied  for  Holy 
Orders  ;  Professor  Clifford  had  the  same  aim  ;  and  it 
is  said  Professor  Huxley  had  some  such  desire.  He 
mentions  that  his  friend  Herbert  Spencer  always  said 
there  were  clerical  affinities  about  him.  I  have  read 
you  his  high  ideal  of  an  English  Church. 

Against  clericalism  he  was  severe,  but  always  had 
some  hope  of  the  Church's  conversion.  The  story  of 
his  encounter  with  Bishop  Wilberforce  will  bear  re- 
peating. When  the  British  Association  met  at  Ox- 
ford in  i860,  the  Church,  which  now  has  a  Darwinian 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  was  bitterly  denouncing 
Darwin,  and  in  the  crowded  meeting  at  Oxford,  Bishop 
Wilberforce  turned  on  Huxley,  and  asked  whether  he 
(Huxley)  was  "related  by  his  grandfather's  or  moth- 
er's side  to  an  ape"?  When  Huxley's  turn  came  he 
reviewed  calmly  the  arguments  of  various  speakers 
and  then  as  calmly  said  : 

"  I  asserted,  and  I  repeat,  that  a  man  has  no  reason  to  he 
ashamed  of  having  an  ape  for  his  ancestor.  If  there  were  an  an- 
cestor whom  I  should  feel  shame  in  recalling,  it  would  be  a  pre- 
late of  restless  and  versatile  intellect  who,  not  content  with  an 
equivocal  success  in  his  own  sphere  of  activity,  plunges  into  sci- 
entific questions  with  which  he  has  no  real  acquaintance,  only  to 
distract  attention  from  the  real  issue  by  skilful  appeals  to  reli- 
gious prejudice." 

Sometime  after  receiving  that  rebuke  Bishop  Wil- 
berforce met  Huxley,  and  said,  "Well  Professor,  is 
it  to  be  peace  or  war  ?  "  Huxley  replied,  "A  little  of 
both."  And  that  answer  fairly  represents  his  attitude 
to  the  Church  :  it  was  both  war  and  peace — war 
against  their  dogmas  and  superstitions,  war  against 
their  clerical  arrogance  ;  but  with  it  always  a  strong 
religious  sentiment,  a  fine  moral  nature,  and  every 
quality  of  sympath}',  which  kept  alive  in  him  the  ideal 
of  a  Church.  How  is  it  that  the  clergy  cannot  per- 
ceive how  bad  an  exchange  they  have  rnade  in  ex- 
changing Darwin,  Huxley,  Clifford,  for  Athanasius  ? 
Such  penal  blindness  as  that  which  increasingly  di- 
vorces the  intellect  of  England  from  its  Church — which 
exiles  Huxley  and  takes  Riley  instead  of  him — can 
have  but  one  issue.  Some  of  the  clergy  are  crying  to 
St.  Peter,  as  he  once  to  Jesus:  "Save,  Lord,  or  I 
perish  !  "  But  Peter  cannot  help  them.  In  Greek 
legend  it  is  said  that  a  statue  was  erected  to  Thea- 
genes,  son  of  Hercules,  renowned  for  his  strength  and 
swiftness.  But  some  rival,  whom  in  life  Theagenes 
had  defeated  in  the  Olympian  games,  pulled  down  his 
statue,  which,  however,  in  its  fall  crushed  him  who 
dragged  it  down.  This  is  a  parable  of  the  Church, 
which  was  once  the  home  of  English  genius, — having 
in  its  high  places  such  men  as  Bishop  Jeremy  Taylor 
and  Archbishop  Tillotson,  who  freely  rejected  articles 
and  dogmas  repulsive  to  their  reason  and  conscience. 
That   noble   ideal   was   overthrown   by   a   reactionary 


Church,  and  is  now  crushing  it.  As  the  Greek  legend 
further  runs,  that  barrenness  fell  on  the  country  until 
the  statue  of  Theagenes  was  set  up  again,  so  may  we 
recognise  that  the  Church  will  become  increasingly 
barren  as  a  spiritual  power  in  the  land  until  it  restores 
the  old  standard  of  intellectual  liberty,  and  throws 
open  its  portals  to  all  men  who  prove  with  learning, 
eloquence,  and  fidelity  to  truth,  their  right  to  be  reli- 
gious leaders  of  men.  We  have,  some  of  us,  lived  to 
see  a  procession  of  illustrious  thinkers  passing  to  their 
graves.  Excommunicated  while  alive,  their  sepulchres 
are  garnished  when  dead  :  pure,  brave,  wise,  and 
true,  they  were  teachers  in  the  living  temple  of  this 
great  people  :  and  among  them  towers  the  noble  brow 
of  Thomas  Huxley. 


A  SAVING  ELEMENT. 

BY   IRENE   A.    S.\FFORD. 

He  who  has  seen  a  ghost  can  never  be  as  if  he  had 
not  seen  it,  saj's  Cardinal  Newman.  Modern  society 
has  seen  a  ghost,  and  the  growing  question  is,  can  it 
ever  be  again  as  if  it  had  not  seen  it. 

It  is  true  that  it  is  a  somewhat  disjointed  ghost, 
scattering  stray  gleams  and  revelations  along  its  way 
— here  a  Trilby  foot  and  there  a  Manxman's  forehead 
— but  trailing  ever  clouds  of  passion-splendors  in  its 
wake,  and  stirring,  what  its  French  master  calls, 
"the  subtle  odor  of  love." 

Science  has  caught  its  image  and  turned  its  search- 
Jights  upon  it.  Theology  has  seen  its  handwriting 
on  the  wall  and  striven  not  to  be  found  wanting.  Art 
has  leaped  up  to  welcome  it,  and  all  literature  appears 
to  have  become  its  willing  servant. 

Meantime,  plain,  every-day  men  and  women,  who 
do  not  like  its  lineaments,  are  asking  seriously  what 
is  to  be  the  end  of  its  open-air  diversions,  and  are  we 
ever  to  be  again  as  though  we  had  not  seen  it.  Is  a 
return  to  that  paganism  which  we  are  told  "is  older 
than  Athens"  to  eliminate  all  the  spirituality  of  nine- 
teen Christian  centuries  from  the  "  divine  passion  " 
and  leave  us  but  a  modern  type  of  that  "Aphrodite 
Pandemos"  which  the  better  thought  of  even  the 
pagan  world  rejected. 

Such  certainly  is  the  character  of  that  gho'st  which 
now  haunts  the  courts  of  love,  and,  after  the  fashion 
of  all  things  good  or  bad  verily  determines,  as  the 
great  Cardinal  has  it,  that  they  who  have  seen  it  shall 
never  be  again  as  though  they  had  not  seen  it. 

Now  it  appears  to  be  the  ordinary  and  orthodox 
thing  for  all  who  admit  this  premise,  to  conclude 
mournfully  that  from  conflict  with  such  a  spectre, 
society  must  inevitably  come  out  second  best,  and 
many  are  the  warning  notes  sent  out  from  press  and 
pulpit  to  guard  the  young  person  from  its  vampire 
touch.    But  the  significant  thing  to  be  considered  here 


47i6 


TME    OFEN    COURT. 


is,  that  nothing  in  all  the  facts  and  evidences  of  every- 
day life  would  seem  to  indicate  that  humanity  is  made 
of  such  poor  stuff  as  to  suffer  much  at  the  hands  of 
such  a  foe.  There  never  was  a  time  when  the  level 
head  of  the  young  person  and  all  the  rank  and  file  of 
society  were  more  determinedly  turned  away  from 
any  reckless  and  disturbing  freaks  of  love,  than  at  the 
present  moment.  It  does  not  appear  that  the  women 
who  read  Ibsen  and  Materlink,  discuss  Tess,  and  give 


any  author  or  artist  who  deals  with  it  mainly  from  the 
physical  standpoint,  might  better  commit  his  works 
to  the  beasts  of  the  fields  for  preservation,  than  expect 
an  intelligent  public  will  have  long  patience  with 
them.  Why  some  truly  strong  and  able  writers  of  to- 
day should  be  willing  to  miss  the  ranks  of  the  immor- 
tals through  this  tampering  with  clay,  is  for  them  to 
declare,  but  that  the  deepening  spiritual  conscious- 
ness of  humanity  shall  miss  its  better  ideals  of  love 


Trilby  matinees,  are  any  less  pure  and  well-regulated      and  truth  through  any  forms  or  phantoms  that  they 


in  their  daily  lives  than  their  puritan  sisters  who  were 
brought  up  on  Charlotte  Elizabeth  and  Hannah  More. 
The  prevailing  tone  of  intercourse  between  men 
and  women  generally  was  never  more  bright  and 
wholesome,  more  free  from  sickly  sentimentality  or 
nonsense,  than  in  these  days  of  the  college  educated 
girl  and  the  club-room  freedom  of  study  and  discus- 
sion. However  it  may  be  in  those  European  centres 
of  civilisation  of  which  Max  Nordau  writes,  in  Ame- 
rica we  do  not  find  that  "concomitant  phenomenon 
of  social  crime  and  decay,"  which  he  claims  waits 
upon  the  bold,  bad  literature  of  the  hour,  and  in  a 
special  sense  differentiates  our  time  from  any  other 
troubled  period  of  history.  The  bringing  out  of  the 
ghosts  of  society  into  the  light  of  day  tends  rather  to 
seal  their  doom  at  the  bar  of  common  intelligence  and 
understanding.  And  especially  is  this  so  in  view  of 
the  manner  of  that  bringing  out.  "Vice,"  says  Burke, 
"loses  half  its  evil  by  losing  all  its  grossness,"  but 
the  revolting  grossness  with  which  the  love  tale  of  to- 
day is  handled,  destroys  its  power  for  evil,  however 
"deliciously  wicked"  it  aims  to  be.  It  may  not  be 
going  too  far  to  submit,  indeed,  that  if  simply  the 
French  masters  and  artists  were  left  out  of  the  ac- 
count   there  are  no  others  who  can  touch  that  irregu- 


may  set  up,  is  a  fear  that  need  not  largely  disturb  the 
anxious  inquirer  who  looks  without  the  Max  Nordau 
spectacles  into  the  real  life  about  him. 

As  love  is  at  the  heart  of  all  life,  it  is  generally 
conceded  that  the  first  evidence  of  any  ills  than  can 
afHict  the  social  body  declare  themselves  by  derange- 
ments in  love  ;  but  equally  is  it  true  that  through  the 
eternal  power  and  purity  of  love  are  these  evils  sooner 
or  later  corrected.  It  has  been  recently  set  forth  that 
the  regeneration  of  polygamous  man,  so  far  as  he  is 
regenerated,  has  been  brought  about  through  woman's 
love  for  her  offspring,  but  beyond  even  that  it  may  be 
submitted  that  woman's  love  for  pure  love  and  her 
instinctive  demand  for  its  holiest  ideals,  is  one  of  the 
strongest  forces  in  existence  for  holding  society  to  its 
moorings.  Not  for  her  offspring  alone  but  for  herself 
and  for  all  humanity's  offspring  is  she  forever  com- 
mitted to  monogamy,  to  the  changeless  ideal  of  the 
one  man  to  the  one  woman.  To  "  love  the  highest  " 
is  the  first  need  of  her  soul  and  the  one  sin  that  she 
never  forgives  in  herself  or  her  lover,  is  any  wrong 
done  to  the  white  sanctities  of  love.  It  is  the  strange 
ignoring  of  this  principle  of  everlasting  nature  that 
dooms  much  of  the  strongest  fiction  of  to-day.  The 
artist   who   portraj'S  a  woman   without   this   instinct. 


lar  phase   of   love,   which   makes   the   burden   of  our      whether  he  sets  his  subject  in  the  Latin  Quarter,  or 
present   fiction,   in  a  sufficiently   delicate   and   subtle      in  the  Vale  of  Blackmoor,  or  among  the  Boer  women 


manner  to  make  it  very  dangerous. 

It  takes  these  wicked,  intense,  and  spirit-probing 
Frenchmen  to  invest  Lucifer  with  the  air  of  saint  or 
martyr,  or  make  the  wrecking  of  life  and  honor  a  sub- 
limated offering  to  the  highest  gods.  It  is  they  only 
who  can  fill  their  artistic  productions,  "full  to  over- 
flowing tvith  the  sap  of  impurity,"  as  Saint  Beuve  has 
it,  yet  give  their  fruit  and  flower  a  spirit-fineness  and 
flavor  that  might  bewilder  the  archangels. 

The  English  touch  especially  is  gross  and  heavy, 
and  if  the  English  writers  should  go  on  rolling  out 
their  pessimistic  tales  of  passion  and  despair  to  the 
end  of  time,  they  could  never  blind  the  better  instincts 
of  mankind   sufficiently  to  do  much  harm   with  them. 

The  truth  is,  that,  despite  the  loud  cry  of  "de- 
generacy" and  "retrogression"  on  every  hand,  man- 
kind is  growing  more  and  more  to  recognise  that  love 
is  a  spirit  force,   a  spirit  life  and   regeneration,  and 


in  the  heart  of  Africa,  misses  that  truth  to  nature 
which  art  demands  and  renders  his  work  really  more 
inartistic  than  immoral,  however  he  might  have  pre- 
ferred the  opposite  result.  The  true  masters  never 
err  in  this  way.  Balzac  puts  this  feminine  key-note 
through  all  its  intensest  chords,  but  he  never  once 
suffers  it  to  give  out  this  false  sound.  Tolstoi  strains 
it  to  its  utmost  in  his  Anna  Karenina,  but  makes  the 
tragic  tones  ring  clear  to  it.  Auerbach  "On  the 
Heights"  sets  it  to  royal  music,  but  holds  its  purify- 
ing heart  strains  triumphant.  It  is  a  different  style  of 
writer  who  attempts  to  paint  "  a  pure  woman,"  who 
can  be  blown  by  winds  of  destiny  from  one  man's 
arms  to  another,  or  innocently  follow  love  from  bower 
to  bower  as  a  sweet  pastime.  But  to  suppose  that 
these  writers  can  do  very  much  harm  with  their  "di- 
vigations"  is  to  suppose  that  they  can  reconstruct 
human  nature  and   wipe   out  from  a  large  proportion 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4717 


at  least  o{  the   human  race  the  very  first  instincts  of 
being. 

It  is  strange  that  this  native  and  eternal  bar  to 
chaos  is  so  generally  ignored  by  the  troubled  writers 
on  our  times.  They  appeal  to  religion,  to  the  pro- 
gress of  science,  to  the  better  adjustment  of  new  in- 
ventions and  activities  to  the  understanding  and  ca- 
pacity of  man,  to  countless  outside  elements  and 
forces,  but  seldom  to  the  sound  and  saving  qualities 
of  simple  human  nature  itself.  Untold  feats  and  won- 
ders of  reformation  are  assigned  to  the  "emancipated 
woman"  of  today,  but  here  at  the  fountain  head 
where  her  power  is  mightiest,  nothing  seems  to  be 
expected  of  her.  Nay  worse,  she  is  even  dealt  with 
by  those  who  should  know  her  better  as  if  there  were 
a  danger  in  her  liberties,  and  "half  blind  with  intel- 
lectual light,  half  brutalised  with  civilisation"  she 
reall}'  might  fall  into  some  such  bottomless  pit,  as 
that  opened  to  her  by  Grant  Allen's  "Woman  Who 
Did,"  or  Davidson's  "Ballad  of  a  Nun."  The  ever- 
lasting fact  that  pure  love  is  a  necessity  to  her,  and 
that  all  the  "erotic  writers"  in  creation  could  not 
blind  her  to  the  knowledge  that  true  marriage  is  the 
whitest  human  flower  of  it,  is  left  entirely  out  of  the 
account.  And  yet  to  these  springs  of  purification  in 
human  nature  itself,  to  that  inherent  and  untrained 
morality  which  Sophocles  calls  "the  eternal  law  of 
the  gods,"  must  the  final  hope  and  appeal  of  course 
be  turned.  He  who  does  not  believe  in  these,  need 
not  take  counsel  with  Ma.x  Nordau  for  the  "physical 
regeneration"  of  mankind,  nor  yet  with  Mayo  Hazel- 
tine  for  the  spiritual,  but  might  as  well  commit  him- 
self at  once  to  the  rigors  of  an  older  counsellor  and 
"curse  God  and  die,"  for  there  would  be  nothing  left 
in  His  "sweet  human  creation"  that  the  onriding 
powers  of  brute  force  could  not  overcome.  To  those, 
however,  who  would  still  believe  that  God  made  man 
and  probably  woman  upright,  it  is  yet  possible  to  say, 
"cling  to  the  old  faith,  look  hopefull)'  about  you,  see 
how  in  quiet  homes  and  orderly  communities  your 
neighbors  and  acquaintances  live  out  their  patient, 
law-abiding  lives,  note  how  the  temples  to  the  Invis- 
ible still  lift  their  glistening  spires  to  heaven  and 
through  all  shifting  forms  of  warring  forces,  the  yearn- 
ing heart  of  humanity  yet  holds  its  fundamental  faith 
in  the  true,  the  eternal,  and  the  divine." 


THE  IDEA  OF  EVIL  IN  EARLY  CHRISTIANITY. 

The  Evil  One  played  an  important  part  in  the 
imagination  of  the  people  in  the  time  of  Christ.  Satan 
is  mentioned  repeatedly  by  the  scribes  and  the  people 
of  Israel  in  the  synoptic  gospels,  by  the  Apostles,  es- 
pecially by  St.  Paul,  and  ver}'  often  in  the  revelation 
of  St.  John.  Jesus  follows  the  common  belief  of  the 
time  in  attributing  mental  diseases  to  the  possession 


of  demons,  and  we  might  expect  that  he  shared  the 
popular  view.  Nevertheless,  he  speaks,  upon  the 
whole,  less  of  the  Devil   than   do  his  contemporaries. 

The  Jesus  of  the  Gospels  is  said  to  have  been 
tempted  by  the  Devil  in  much  the  same  way  that 
Buddha  was  tempted  by  Mara,  the  Evil  One.  Even 
the  details  of  the  story  of  their  temptation  possess 
many  features  of  resemblance. 

Christ  represents  the  Devil  as  the  enemy  that  sows 
tares  among  the  wheat,  and  addresses  as  Satan  one  of 
his  disciples  who  speaks  words  that  might  lead  him 
into  temptation.  We  read  in  Mark,  viii.,  33,  and 
Math.,  xvi.,  23: 

"He  rebuked  Peter,  saying;  'Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan, 
for  thou  savorest  not  the  things  that  be  of  God,  but  the  things 
that  be  of  men.'  " 

This  fact  alone  appears  suflicient  to  prove  that, 
while  it  is  natural  that  Christ  used  the  traditional  idea 
of  Satan  as  a  personification  of  the  evil  powers  to  fur- 
nish him  with  materials  for  his  parables,  Satan  to  him 
was  mainly  a  symbol  of  anything  wicked  or  morally 
evil. 

In  addition  to  his  old  names  of  Satan,  Beelzebub, 
and  Devil  (which  latter  appears  first  in  Jesus  Sirach), 
the  Evil  One  is  called  in  the  New  Testament  the 
prince  of  this  world,  the  great  dragon,  the  old  ser- 
pent, the  prince  of  the  devils,  the  prince  of  the  power 
of  the  air,  the  spirit  that  now  worketh  in  the  children 
of  disbelief,  the  Antichrist.  Satan  is  represented  as 
the  founder  of  an  empire  that  struggles  with  and 
counteracts  the  kingdom  of  God  upon  earth.  He  is 
powerful,  but  less  powerful  than  Christ  and  his  an- 
gels. He  is  conquered  and  doomed  through  Christ, 
but  he  is  still  unfettered. 

The  Christian  Fathers  lived  in  a  time  when  pagan- 
ism was  still  a  power.  The  gods  of  paganism,  ac- 
cordingly, naturally  helped  to  swell  the  Christian 
demonology.  On  the  one  hand,  the  idea  of  angels  as 
a  hierarchy  of  ministers,  messengers,  and  plenipoten- 
tiaries of  God  became  more  and  more  developed.  On 
the  other  hand,  Satan  and  the  Satanic  host  were  dual- 
istically  represented  in  a  perfect  dualism  as  the  hostile 
camp  of  God's  adversaries. 

Tertullian  calls  the  Devil  the  ape  of  God,  and 
maintains  that  he  imitates  the  Lord,  and  tries  to  copy 
him  even  in  smaller  matters.  Whenever  church  in- 
stitutions are  found  to  agree  with  pagan  modes  of 
worship,  Tertullian  regards  such  coincidences  as  a 
work  of  the  Devil.'  This  is  a  good  instance  of  the 
Devil's  extraordinary  cunning.  He  must  either  have 
had  daring  spies  in  heaven  or  he  himself  must  have 
anticipated  the  Lord's  plans  ;  for  the  most  of  the  pagan 
institutions  spoken  of  as  Satanic  imitations  are  older 
than  Christianity. 

1  Dei  sacravtcnta  Satanas  aj/'et-lat.     De  cxh.  cast.,  13. 


ct 


4718 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


The  Gnostics  represent  the  demiurge,  i.  e.  the 
architect  of  the  world,  whom  they  identify  with  the 
Jewish  Yahveh,  as  the  father  of  all  evil.  They  de- 
scribe him  as  irascible,  jealous,  and  revengeful,  and 
contrast  him  to  the  highest  God  who  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  creation.  As  the  demiurge  created  the  world, 
he  has  a  right  to  it,  but  he  was  beaten  through  the 
death  of  Jesus.  The  demiurge  thought  to  conquer 
Jesus  when  he  let  him  die  on  the  cross,  but  his  triumph 
was  preposterous,  for  through  the  passion  and  death 
of  the  innocent  Jesus  the  victory  of  God  was  won  and 
the  salvation  of  mankind  became  established. 

One  peculiarly  interesting  sect  of  the  Gnostics  is 
called  the  Ophites  or  serpent  worshippers.  The  demi- 
urge (so  they  hold),  on  recognising  the  danger  that 
might  result  from  the  emancipation  of  man  through 
gnosis  (i.  e.,  knowledge  or  enlightenment),  forbade 
him  to  eat  from  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  knowledge. 
But  the  God,  the  highest  Lord,  the  all  good  and  all- 
wise,  took  compassion  on  man  and  sent  the  serpent  to 
induce  him.  to  eat  of  the  tree  of  knowledge  so  that  he 
might  escape  the  bondage  of  ignorance  in  which  Yah- 
veh, the  demiurge,  tried  to  hold  him. 

Irenaeus,  an  adversary  of  the  gnostic  view,  replaced 
the  demiurge  by  the  Devil,  whom  he  regards  as  a  rebel 
angel,  having  fallen  by  pride  and  arrogance,  envying 
God's  creation  {Adv.  hcrr.,  No.  40).  He  agrees,  how- 
ever, with  the  Gnostics,  in  that  he  maintains  that  the 
Devil  had  claims  upon  man  because  of  man's  sin. 
Jesus,  however,  having  paid  the  debt  of  mankind,  has 
the  power  to  redeem  the  souls  of  men  from  the  clutches 
of  the  Devil,  who,  by  having  treated  a  sinless  man  as 
a  sinner,  became  himself  a  debtor  of  mankind. 

This  juridical  theory  of  the  death  of  Jesus  and  his 
relation  to  the  Devil  was  further  elaborated  by  Origen. 
According  to  Origen  the  sacrifice  of  Jesus  is  not  ren- 
dered to  make  an  atonement  with  God  or  satisfy  his 
feeling  of  justice  (which  is  the  Protestant  conception), 
but  to  pay  off  the  Devil.  Jesus  is,  as  it  were,  a  bait 
for  the  Devil.  Satan  imagines  he  must  destroy  Jesus, 
but  having  succeeded  in  killing  him,  finds  out,  to  his 
unspeakable  regret,  that  he  has  been  outwitted  by  the 
good  Lord.  God  had  set  a  trap,  and  the  Devil  was 
foolish  enough  to  allow  himself  to  be  caught. 

The  last  attempt  to  represent  evil  as  an  indepen- 
dent power  was  made  by  the  adherents  of  Manes,  a 
man  who  had  been  educated  in  the  Zoroastrian  faith 
of  the  Persians,  and  endeavored  to  found  a  universal 
religion  through  the  synthesis  of  all  the  religions  he 
knew.  His  views  are  called  Manicheism.  Because 
Manicheism  contains  many  Christian  elements,  it  is 
commonly  regarded  as  a  Christian  sect,  but  since 
Manes  preserved  the  Persian  dualism,  his  views  were 
strongly  denounced  as  heretical  by  St.  Augustine  who 
denied  that  the  evil  in  the  world  had  any  independent 


existence  or  a  separate  origin  of  its  own.  He  ex- 
plained the  presence  of  evil  in  the  world  from  the 
free  will  of  God's  creatures,  and  regarded  it  as  a 
means  in  God's  method  of  education.  p.  c. 


NOTES. 

A  reader  of  The  Open  Coiirl  writes  as  follows  :  "Allow  me  to 
congratulate  you  on  the  publication  of  that  great  poem,  "The 
Usurper's  Assassin,  "by  Viroc,  in  the  latest  Open  Court}  Far  more 
daring  than  anything  I  know  of  in  Swinburne,  it  yet  has  all  Swin- 
burne's grace  and  perfection  of  workmanship.  The  power  of  a 
master  speaks  in  every  line,  and  I  am  proud  to  pay  to  such  a  mind 
the  tribute  of  prompt  homage  and  recognition.  As  a  force  work- 
ing for  Truth  and  Freedom,  I  feel  that  this  poem  will  do  more  to 
enlighten  and  uplift  humanity  than  all  the  sermons  that  were  ever 
preached  in  church  or  synagogue.  It  deserves  to  rank  with  Shel- 
ley's "Prometheus."  Every  lover  of  Truth  who  will  read  it  until 
he  knows  it  by  heart  and  can  recite  it  aloud,  will  find  himself 
strengthened  and  uplifted." 

' '  Viroe  "  and  ' '  Hudor  Genone  "  are  noins  de  pitiiiie  of  the  same 
author. 


Tlie  Union,  a  semi-monthly  journal  for  English  and  Ameri- 
cans in  Germany,  is  edited  in  Wiesbaden  (Wilhelmstrasse  2)  by  an 
enterprising  young  Chicago  woman.  Miss  Linda  M.  Prussing, 
daughter  of  one  of  t!ie  early  settlers,  whose  memory  is  still  pre- 
served and  respected  among  his  many  friends  in  the  city  of  the 
World's  Fair.  The  journal  (now  in  its  fourth  month)  is  full  of 
various  topics  of  interest  to  English  speaking  people  in  Europe. 
Some  numbers  contain  well-executed  illustrations,  and  the  general 
management  shows  the  spirit  of  Western  enterprise.  We  hope 
that  the  undertaking  will  prove  a  success. 


Virchand  R.  Gandhi  attended  the  Religious  Parliament  in 
Ajmere,  India,  and  he  writes  to  Mrs.  Maude  Howard  of  Chicago 
as  follows  :  "I  staid  in  Ajmere  for  a  week.  The  religious  confer- 
ence held  there  on  the  26th  to  28th  of  September  was  a  success. 
There  were  representatives  of  eighteen  different  faiths  present, 
including  Mohammedanism  and  Christianity.  I  represented  Jain- 
ism.  The  President  was  Mr.  Fateh  Chand,  a  Jain,  barrister  of 
Ajmere,  who  is  now  a  judge  there.  The  proceedings  were  con- 
ducted with  tolerance  and  in  brotherly  attitude. 'i*' 

1  No.  423.  October  3,  iSgg. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION: 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  430. 

HUXLEY.     A  Discourse  at  South   Place  Chapel,  London. 

MoNCURE  D.  Conway 4711 

A  SAVING  ELEMENT.     Irene  A.  Safford 4715 

THE    IDEA    OF  EVIL    IN    EARLY    CHRISTIANITY. 

Editor 4717 

NOTES 4718 


^ 


The  Open  Court. 


A  ■HTEEKLY  JOUENAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  431.     (Vol.  IX.— 4S.) 


CHICAGO,   NOVEMBER  28,   1895. 


j  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
I  Single  Coi  ' 


i  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


THROUGH  IRRELIGION  TO  TRUE  MORALITY. 

BV  CORVINUS. 

It  is  with  no  little  degree  of  hesitancy  that  I  un- 
dertake to  analyse  the  replication  with  which  the  able 
editor  of  The  Open  Court  has  honored  me,  in  a  recent 
issue  of  his  valuable  hebdomadal,  in  answer  to  my  at- 
tempt to  prove  the  futility  of  sacrificing  one's  best 
forces  in  the  work  of  bringing  about  a  conciliation  be- 
tween religion  and  science  ;  between  religion  as  a  be- 
lief in  the  arbitrary  interference  in  human  affairs  of 
capricious,  supernatural  forces  and  science  as  syste- 
matised  knowledge — such  knowledge  as  we  are  ena- 
bled to  acquire  through  unbiassed  investigation  of  the 
problem  of  existence,  of  the  why  and  wherefore  of  life 
in  its  different  forms  ;  in  short  the  knowledge  acquired 
through  experience  and  observation,  which  to  make 
we  are  impelled  by  an  inherent  desire  to  discover  the 
truth.  I  hesitated  to  reply  because  I  realise  the  fact 
that  the  readers  of  this  paper  are  more  or  less  indif- 
ferent as  to  the  words  a  writer  may  give  preference  to 
in  expressing  his  thoughts.  As  a  rule,  not  words  but 
the  ideas  one  tries  to  convey  to  others  receive  con- 
sideration ;  nevertheless,  I  am  constrained  to  main- 
tain that,  where  possible,  ambiguity,  which  with  Dr. 
Carus  may  be  unintentional,  should  be  avoided  in  the 
discussion  of  questions  raised  for  the  purpose  of  fur- 
thering the  propagation  of  the  advanced  thoughts 
originating  in  the  minds  of  talented,  noble  men. 

But,  in  picking  up  the  gauntlet  thrown  in  front  of 
me  by  Dr.  Carus,  I  am  led  by  a  reason  outweighing 
the  objection  raised  above  to  writing  these  lines  :  it  is 
the  desire  to  imitate — as  I  have  been  in  the  habit  of 
doing — the  example  of  Hunyady's  great  son,  to  deal 
justly  with  everybody,  asking  in  return  nothing  else 
but  that  the  same  measure  should  be  made  use  of  in 
commenting  upon  my  actions,  or  the  views  I  hold  in 
regard  to  the  world-moving  questions  agitating,  in 
this  turbulent  age  of  ours,  the  mind  of  the  thinking 
public. 

Weighty  grounds  have  aroused  in  me  the  suspicion 
that  Dr.  Carus  merely  glanced  over  the  lines  of  my 
essay,  which  Mr.  Green  was  kind  enough  to  publish 
in  pamphlet  form,  otherwise  he  could  not  have  failed 
to  detect  the  fact  that  I  speak  with  deference  not  only 
of  his  ability  as  a  writer  but  also  of  the  noble  ideals 


worshipped  by  him  ;  and  that  my  attack  is  mainly  di- 
rected against  the  form,  or  manner,  in  which  he  pre- 
sents his  ideas  to  the  public.  While  it  is  true  that  I 
differ  from  him  on  many  important  points — here  I 
only  mention  the  views  he  holds  about  the  Gospels 
and  Clirist — I  openly  admit  that  I  support  many  of 
the  suggestions  he  has  to  make  as  to  the  purification 
of  the  religious  conceptions  to  which  the  great  mass 
of  believing  humanity  adhere  with  a  tenacity  only  jus- 
tified by  ignorance  and  force  of  habit. 

Dr.  Carus  accuses  me  of  identifying  "the  negativ- 
ism of  my  peculiar  freethought  with  science."  I  chal- 
lenge him  to  quote  one  sentence  from  the  lines  of  my 
essay  which  would  exclude  every  doubt  as  to  the  cor- 
rectness of  his  assertion.  If,  what  he  claims  were 
true,  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  Dr.  Carus  lowered  him- 
self ;  that  he  has  stained  his  honor,  as  a  scientist  and 
thinker  of  repute,  in  wasting  his  time  upon  the  con- 
sideration of  diverse  propositions  advanced  by  one  so 
ignorant  as  to  identify  the  negativism  of  his  or  any 
freethought — or  for  that  matter  freethought  itself — 
with  science. 

Fortunately — or  unfortunately — for  him  he  cannot 
verify  his  assertion.  In  contrasting  science  with  reli- 
gion I  even  accepted  and  quoted  his  definition  of  sci- 
ence. But  what  I  said  is  that  "systematised  knowl- 
edge, and  religion — that  sanctifies  the  absurd — ^are 
irreconcilable.  If  religion  is  being  identified  with  the 
ethical  nature  of  man,  with  his  aspiration  to  find  the 
truth  by  the  most  reliable  and  truly  scientific  methods 
then  no  conflict  exists  between  religion  and  science," 
because  such  a  religion  is  science,  and  what  I  contend 
for  is  that  it  should  be  called  by  its  proper  name. 

I  am  also  accused  by  Dr.  Carus  of  misrepresenting 
him.  I  can  assure  him  that  I  have  with  scrupulous 
care  avoided  misrepresentations.  To  misrepresent 
proves  prejudice,  and  if  there  is  anything  that  I  have 
always  scrupulously  guarded  against,  it  was  the  be- 
trayel  of  thoughtless  prejudice.  In  order  to  control 
that  tendency  that  only  too  often — as  is  quite  natural 
— urges  men  of  mature  convictions  to  regard  with  de- 
cided suspicion  the  opinions,  consequently  the  just 
claims  also,  of  their  opponents,  I  never  fail  to  recall 
to  my  memory,  when  taking  part  in  the  discussion  of 
important  matters,  that  prejudice — implying  onesided- 


4720 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


ness  and  proving  mental  weakness  in  a  certain  meas- 
ure or  certain  direction — can  be  productive  of  very 
little  good,  as  it  impairs  clear  vision,  hence  the  estab- 
lishment of  unassailable  truth.  Having  thus  learned 
to  move  with  caution,  though  with  a  firm  step,  in  the 
arena  of  intellectual  combats, — to  which  I  may  per- 
chance, once  in  a  great  while,  gain  access, — I  have 
succeeded  in  strengthening  the  tie  of  friendship  and 
mutual  respect  that  binds  me  to  that  Httle  circle  of  my 
society,  where — I  regret  to  say — the  belief  in  prepos- 
terous church  tenets  still  prevails. 

If  the  following  instance — a  similar  one  to  those 
commented  upon  by  me  in  the  Freetlunight  Magazine 
— which  could  be  multiplied,  and  which  I  mention  in 
support  of  my  assertion  and  as  an  illustration  of  Dr. 
Carus's  inclination  to  ambiguity,  deserves  to  be  called 
a  misrepresentation  I  am  willing  to  plead  guilty  to  the 
charge  of  having,  on  former  occasions,  also,  misrep- 
resented statements  made  by  him  :  "The  religion  of 
science  is  not  and  cannot  be  the  Christianity  of  those 
who  call  themselves  orthodox  Christians,  but  it  is  and 
will  remain  the  Christianity  of  Christ.  "^  Contrast 
this  sentence  with  the  following:  "Christianity  is 
falling  to  pieces,  but  the  religio-etliical  ideas  of  human - 
//)'- will  not  be  destroyed  with  it;  on  the  contrary, 
they  must  be  shaped  anew  upon  the  basis  of  a  scien- 
tific world-conception."^ 

Is  the  religion  of  science  the  Christianity  of  Christ? 
Is  it  the  true  Christianity  that  Dr.  Carus  preaches? 
I  deny  both  ;  noticing  with  great  satisfaction  that  he 
unconsciously  supports  this  denial  in  admitting  that 
the  religio-ethical  ideas  of  humanity  will  not  be  de- 
stroyed though  Christianity  may  fall  to  pieces,  and 
that  these  ideas  were  not  the  exclusive  property  of 
Christianity  but  only  part  of  the  religious  belief  known 
by  that  name. 

I  have  quoted  the  above  phrases  only  for  the  pur- 
pose of  showing  that  Dr.  Carus  cannot  possibly  avoid 
inconsistency  in  using  so  many  old  words  in  a  new 
sense,  because  at  times,  for  the  sake  of  conciseness 
and  clearness,  he  is  led,  unconsciously,  as  it  were,  to 
use  certain  terms  in  the  same  sense  that  they  are  used 
by  the  masses.      This  I  call  ambiguity. 

The  symbols  of  a  creed  can  be  transfigured  into 
exact  truth  without  reverting  to  terms  implying  am- 
biguity. Dr.  Carus  wishes  to  show  the  dogmatic  be- 
liever a  way  out  of  his  narrowness.  Can  he  do  it  by 
using  ambiguous  terms?  I  say,  no  !  Because  the  dog- 
matic believer  will  interpret  such  terms  to  suit  his 
fancy,  whereby  nothing  is  gained  ;  and  with  the  radi- 
cal reformer  it  creates  discontent,  owing  to  the  slow 
progress  freethought,  or,  let  me  say,  modern  thoughts 


1  The  Open  Court,  No.  303.  p.  3700, 

2  Italics  are  mine. 
^Milwaukee  Freidenker,  No.  816 


necessarily  make   when  their  exponents  use  obscure 
language. 

No  doubt  exists  in  my  mind  that  the  inclination  of 
some  modern  reformers  to  cloak  such  terms  as  Chris- 
tianity, God,  religion,  soul,  in  new  garments,  impedes 
the  intellectual  and  moral  progress  of  the  masses, 
rather  than  advances  it.  This  being  the  case,  I  can 
see  no  earthly  reason — prejudice  does  not  come  in 
question  at  all ;  I  am  only  impelled  by  the  desire  to 
see  humanity  throw  off  its  mental  shackles  and  to  use 
without  timidity  and  constraint  that  greatest  of  na- 
ture's gifts  that  sets  man  so  high  above  the  animal — 
to  dish  up  to  the  people  Christianity,  that  is,  a  reli- 
gious belief  which  recognises  in  Christ  its  founder,  its 
perfect  teacher,  and  the  divine  Saviour  of  mankind, 
as  modern  views  of  ethics  ;  religion,  that  has  at  all 
times  been  identified  with  submission  to  supernatural 
forces,  with  belief  in  teachings  owing  their  origin  to 
ignorance  and  caprice,  rather  than  to  scientific  inves- 
tigation and  observation,  as  man's  noble  aspirations 
and  ethical  nature  ;  God,  who  has  always  been  an 
anthropomorphic  conception  ;  and  soul,  that  was  con- 
sidered an  individual,  self-conscious  entity  by  all — 
but  few  such  men  as  Dr.  Carus,  who  agreed  in  the 
opinion  that  the  terminology  of  the  masses,  as  to  these 
terms,  is  mere  rubbish — as  the  laws  of  nature,  as  rea- 
son ;  and  as  the  habits,  convictions,  and  ideas  of  man- 
kind. To  do  this  is,  to  say  the  least,  misleading  and 
therefore  impractical. 

Regarding  the  mysteries  of  traditional  religions,  I 
would  say  that  I  frequently  point  out  myself  the  beau- 
ties of  mythological  fables  to  others,  but  I  am  not  in 
the  habit  of  practising  self-deception  in  order  to  gain 
the  favor  of  the  thoughtless  masses  through  arbitrary, 
high-sounding,  seemingly  learned  interpretations  of 
absurdities  rendered  sacred,  with  the  good  Christian, 
through  tradition  ;  or  with  a  view  of  reconciling  these 
absurdities — with  which  my  brain  also  was  infected  in 
its  early  stages  of  development — with  common  sense 
and  reason,  through  allegorical  expositions,  in  order 
thus  to  save  my  reputation  as  a  thinker  and— as  a 
pious  person. 

The  beauty  of  many  Christian  fables  consists  in 
nothing  else  but  their  acceptance  as  beautiful  fables 
upon  questionable  authority.  As  an  instance,  I  only 
mention  the  grotesque  idea  that  an  infinitely  wise  and 
perfect  God  should  run  through  all  phases  of  embryo- 
logical  evolution,  be  born  as  an  infant,  nursed  as  such, 
and,  when  grown  up  to  manhood,  commit  suicide. 
No  matter  how  we  may  interpret  this  fable,  and  try  to 
draw  elevating  thoughts  from  such  interpretations, 
the  fact  remains  that  a  truly  noble  mind,  unshackled 
from  degrading  superstition,  turns  with  contempt  upon 
the  mere  assumption  that  a  perfect  Being  should  se- 
lect such  meaos  to  reveal  its  presence  and  save  hu- 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4721 


manity  from  everlasting  perdition.  Apprehended  as 
mere  allegory,  the  value  of  this  fable  can  hardly  be 
said  to  equal  that  of  others,  owing  to  the  fact  that  it 
mars  the  picture  conceived  by  noble  minds  of  the 
Most  High. 

"Moralit}', "  Dr.  Carus  claims,  "  without  religion — 
religion  in  the  highest  sense — would  have  simply  been 
fear  of  the  police,  and  nothing  more."  I  do  not  deny 
that  this  may  have  been  the  case  and  is  still  the  case 
with  many,  but  we  have  entered  a  phase  of  ethical 
evolution  where  we  are  justified  in  asking  the  question  : 
"When  will  men  learn  to  see  that  the  sources  of  the 
noblest  and  most  elevated  actions  of  which  we  are 
capable  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  ideas  we  may 
hold  about  God,  about  life  after  death,  and  about  the 
realm  of  spirits  ? "  I  most  emphaticallj'  assert  that 
true  morality  can  exist  without  religion  and  without 
police  supervision. 

The  raison  d'etre  plays  no  part  in  the  moral  life  of 
those  who  know  the  nature  of  true  morality;  of  a  mo- 
rality that  bows  to  no  master  and  no  ruler;  of  a  mo- 
rality that  asks  no  questions  as  to  the  purpose,  the 
why  and  wherefore  of  exerting  itself,  but  that  draws 
pleasure  simply  from  the  knowledge  of  its  existence 
and  its  self-love. 

I  am  an  atheist ;  I  believe  in  no  God,  no  heaven 
and  hell.  I  do  not  believe  in  Christ,  though  I  accept 
many  of  the  moral  teachings  that  Christ,  in  common 
with  others,  supported.  Still,  I  try  to  lead  a  moral 
life,  to  practise  virtue,  in  short,  to  be  good.  Why? 
What  purpose  have  I  in  view  in  doing  this  ?  Thus 
asks  the  religious  man  ;  the  believer  in  a  future  life  in 
the  immediate  presence  of  God,  proving  thus  his  utter 
incapability  of  understanding  the  nature  of  true  mo- 
rality. I  have  no  purpose  in  leading  a  moral  life  ;  I 
simply  love  to  do  it.  I  love  kindness,  charity,  hon- 
esty, justice,  self-respect.  I  find  satisfaction  and 
happiness  in  the  consciousness  of  loving  and  practis- 
ing these  virtues.  To  commit  some  low  act  is  repul- 
sive to  my  nature  ;  my  sentiments  revolt  against  vice 
in  every  form,  and — far  from  being  perfect,  as  a  hu- 
man being — if,  in  a  weak  moment  my  animal  desires 
— which  I,  in  common  with  the  rest  of  humanity,  have 
inherited  from  my  more  animal-like  predecessors — 
supervene,  when  I  commit  an  act  regarded  by  the 
society  I  live  in  as  an  offence  against  the  moral  law,  I 
am  blamed  for  it  by  my  conscience,  the  moral  gov- 
ernor living  in  me,  as  the  offspring  of  my  education 
and  self-training. 

Mind  you,  I  deny  God  !  I  ridicule  the  idea  that  a 
heavenly  voice  speaks  from  within  when  I  shrink 
back  from  doing  wrong.  This  statement  I  make  to 
meet  the  objection — childish,  as  it  would  be — that 
God,  whom  I  deny,  whom  I  chase  away  from  my 
presence,  with  whom  1   have  no  desire  whatever  to 


commune,  is  bent  on  pitching  his  tent  in  my  bosom, 
and  on  guiding  me  along  the  path  of  virtue.  I  repel 
him,  I  don't  want  him  ;  still  I  feel  the  desire  of  lead- 
ing a  moral  life  ;  without  any  definite  purpose,  with- 
out any  definite  aim  ;  without  fear  of  eternal  punish- 
ment ;  without  hope  of  a  future  reward  ;  without 
speculating  on  the  result  of  my  actions,  and  without 
considering  the  beneficial  influence  my  exemplary  life 
may  have  upon  others  ;  simply  because  I  love  to  lead 
a  moral  life. 

Love  for  morality  is  with  me  the  sole  motive  for 
practising  it.  The  hope  thus  to  gain  the  respect  and 
admiration  of  my  fellowmen,  and  to  see  my  associates 
imitate  nie  gives  me  pleasure  and  fills  my  heart  with 
joy;  but  this  pleasure,  this  joy  is  only,  as  it  were,  the 
delicious  juice  of  a  rare  fruit,  of  which  I  become  con- 
scious after  it  touches  the  palate.  And  I  claim,  with- 
out fear  of  successful  contradiction,  that  such  mo- 
rality that  does  not  ponder  the  reason  why  it  exerts 
itself  and  the  purpose  of  its  existence,  is  so  far  su- 
perior to  that  of  our  professional  Christian  preachers 
of  morality,  as  the  intelligence  of  a  Darwin  is  superior 
to  that  of  a  Bushman. 

As  an  outspoken  atheist  I  am  ostracised  by  so- 
called  respectable  society  ;  I  am  regarded  as  an  out- 
cast, as  a  depraved  creature,  by  ministers  and  priests, 
by  hypocrites  and  sincere  believers  alike  ;  h\  them 
that  claim  that  virtue  without  a  reward  loses  all  its 
charm,  and  that  devotion  to  such  virtue  becomes  un- 
reasonable— an  amiable  but  quixotic  weakness. 

I  seize  this  occasion  to  tell  you,  mentally  near- 
sighted banner-bearers  of  the  Galilean  dreamer's  nu- 
merous flock,  that  I  look  with  pity  upon  you,  as  well 
as  upon  your  thoughtless  followers  ;  that  it  grieves 
me  to  notice  your  utter  incapability  of  comprehending 
what  true  morality  is  ;  and  that  I  rejoice  in  the  knowl- 
edge that  you  stand  beneath  me,  beneath  the  pariah 
of  society.  You  deny  the  possibility  of  a  virtuous  life 
without  a  purpose.  I  claim  the  possibility  of  such  a 
one,  and,  as  an  example,  the  nature  of  the  proposi- 
tion forces  me  to  present  mj'self,  though  modesty  ob- 
jects. 

Human  life  has  a  purpose,  the  same  purpose  that 
all  life  has  during  the  limited  period  in  which  it  ap- 
pears in  a  certain  form  :  to  live  in  conformity  with  the 
conditions  into  which  it  sprang  ;  but  do  not  ask  for 
the  purpose  of  a  virtuous  life.  Instill  love  for  virtue 
in  the  human  mind,  direct  your  efforts  toward  making 
the  practice  of  virtue  a  pleasant  habit,  and,  this  ac- 
complished, you  will  forget  to  propose  the  question 
as  to  the  purpose  of  a  moral  life,  because  the  problem 
has  found  its  solution. 

"A  why  for  the  moral  life,  in  the  sen^e  of  an  ulterior  motive 
other  than  that  life  itself,  there  cannot  be.  The  attempt  to  erect 
one  at  once  destroys  the  conception  of   morality,  whose  essence 


4722 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


lies  in  the  objects  of  will.  The  only  sense  in  which,  if  I  am  right, 
a  'why  '  for  moral  life  can  be  assigned,  is  that  of  an  explanation, 
not  the  indication  of  an  ulterior  motive. "' 

I  leave  out  of  consideration  the  assertion  that  : 
"  the  freethinker  who  recognises  no  authority  to  which 
he  bows  save  his  own  pleasure  or  displeasure  his  God 
is  Self."  Because  the  freethinker  who  loves  virtue 
for  its  own  sake  may  be  placed  in  the  position  where 
he  can  choose  between  happiness  and  duty,  and  his 
choice  may  fall  upon  the  latter.  He  may  believe  in 
the  attainment  of  as  great  an  amount  of  happiness  as 
possible,  but  not  to  the  exclusion  of  duty. 

Is  this  pure  negativism  of  barren  freethought  ?  I 
deny  it.  Nor  can  I  agree  with  Dr.  Carus  when  he 
says,  "that  freethought  has  been  barren  because  of 
its  negativism  and  because  it  has  failed  to  come  out 
with  positive  issues." 

Modern  freethought  has  neither  neglected  to  come 
out  with  positive  issues  nor  is  it  barren.  In  trying  to 
demolish  the  Church — not  the  moral  teachings  of  re- 
ligion— that  hotbed  of  a  plant  upon  the  stem  of  which 
the  buds  of  morality  thrive  only  as  parasitic  excres- 
cences, because  the  juice  they  receive  for  their  nour- 
ishment is  drawn  from  a  soil  richly  fertilised  by  super- 
stition ;  in  trying  to  undermine  the  pernicious  influence 
exerted  by  the  highest  dignitaries  down  to  the  lowest 
upon  the  public  in  their  unscrupulous  endeavor  to  pre- 
vent the  dissemination  of  knowledge  and  the  spread  of 
truth  ;  in  warring  against  the  dogmatology  of  tradi- 
tional religions  and  the  systematic  inculcation  of  ab- 
surd doctrines  in  the  susceptible  mind  of  the  growing 
generation  ;  with  that  aim  in  view  to  erect  instead  in- 
stitutions of  learning  where  the  discoveries  of  science 
and  the  thoughts  of  master  minds  are  truthfully  rep- 
resented to  a  laity  desirous  of  knowing  the  truth  ; 
where  children  as  well  as  adults  can  ennoble  their  na- 
ture and  draw  elevating  thoughts  from  lectures  deliv- 
ered for  the  purpose  of  pointing  out  the  crude  notions 
the  believer  in  dogmatic  Christianity  holds  about  the 
principle  of  good  and  evil,  about  duties  and  rights, 
and  about  knowledge  and  belief ;  the  essence  of  which 
is  to  illustrate  the  moral  superiority  of  those  who 
worship  noble  ideals  and  who  hold  reason,  the  guide 
showing  the  way  to  light,  in  high  esteem,  in  compari- 
son to  the  morality  of  those  that  pray  to  an  impotent 
deity  and  that  heed  not  the  voice  of  reason  ;  in  which 
the  childish  tales  and  myths  of  religious  creeds  are 
expounded  as  such,  and  where  man's  mind  and  emo- 
tional nature  receives  that  training  which  enables  him 
to  comprehend  and  appreciate  the  value  and  grandeur 
of  modern  ethics. 

The  freethought  of  to-day  is  battling  against  the 
systematic  perversion  of  the  human  mind  when  the 
same  receives  its  most  lasting  impression  ;  it  comes 

1  B.  Bosanquet. 


out  with  positive  issues  in  advocating  the  abandon- 
ment of  our  present  mode  of  religious  education,  with 
a  view  of  substituting  instead  an  education  purely 
moral — aiming  thus  at  raising  a  moraJ  instead  of  a  re- 
ligious generation.  This  it  tries  to  accomplish  by  dis- 
carding religion,  by  throwing  overboard,  as  dangerous 
ballast,  the  superstitious  notions  of  believing  human- 
ity now  taught  in  connexion  with  a  peculiar  kind  of 
morality,  and  by  trying  to  mould  noble  souls,  not  by 
teaching  children  gratitude  and  love  for  a  Being  no- 
body knows  how  to  describe,  but  by  admonishing  them 
to  love  and  be  grateful  to  their  parents,  to  obey  and 
respect  them  ;  to  honor  and  always  to  treat  politely 
their  brothers,  sisters,  and  companions;  to  be  kind, 
polite,  industrious,  candid,  truthful,  temperate,  and 
clean  ;  always  to  behave  well,  to  maintain  their  per- 
sonal dignity  and  self-respect ;  to  detest  ignorance 
and  idleness;  to  exercise  justice  and  charity;  never 
to  slander  any  one's  reputation,  and  never  to  endanger 
the  life  of  a  human  being  ;  in  short,  to  love  virtue  for 
its  own  sake  and  to  detest  vice  for  the  same  reason. 

Thus  prepared  for  his  future  existence  man,  as  he 
grows  in  intelligence,  will  not  yearn  toward  such  a 
moral  support  as  is  furnished  him  at  present  by  a  pre- 
posterous religious  belief,  but  will  satisfy  his  emo- 
tions, and  find  strength  to  withstand  all  temptations 
in  life,  in  noble  self-reliance — besides  being  thus  en- 
abled to  grasp  the  ennobling  thoughts  of  exceptional 
great  minds  and  to  purify  his  sentiments  by  possessing 
himself  of  such  thoughts. 

I  have  very  briefly  shown,  as  I  think,  that  modern 
freethought  does  not  consist  in  negativism  merely, 
but  that  it  comes  out  with  positive  issues  ;  and  even 
Dr.  Carus  himself,  though  he  denies  this,  involuntarily 
admits  it  in  advancing  his  assertion  in  the  form  of  a 
condition:  "7/, " ^  says  he,  "to  be  a  freethinker  means 
to  be  purely  negative,  etc." 

I  regret  to  say  that  Dr.  Carus  is  not  fair  in  his  ar- 
gumentation, at  least  with  me;  or  else  he  did  not 
succeed  in  correctly  interpreting  my  thoughts,  though 
I  tried  to  present  them  in  as  clear  and  concise  a  form 
as  I  was  capable  of.  He  accuses  me  of  identifying 
the  negativism  of  freethought  with  science.  When 
and  where  has  this  been  done  by  me?  He  charges  me 
with  misrepresentations,  forgetting  to  support  the 
charge  by  proofs.  He  also  imputes  to  me  the  con- 
cealed statement,  "that  all  religions,  and  especially 
Christianity,  are  errors  and  unmitigated  nonsense." 

What  I  said  is  that  all  positive  religions  contain 
errors  and  tenets  exerting  a  demoralising  influence 
upon  the  public,  and  that  Christianity,  as  a  religious 
system,  is  nonsense,  because  it  is  based  upon  assump- 
tions which  not  only  border  the  realm  of  the  absurd, 
but   are   right  within   it.      I,   myself,   made   reference 

1  Italics  are  mine. 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4723 


to  the  ethical  teachings  of  Christianity,  "as  part  of 
the  religious  system  known  by  that  name."  This 
ought  to  be  sufficient  proof  that  I  draw  a  distinction 
between  Christianity,  as  a  system  of  religion,  and  its 
ethics.  The  former  I  reject  as  absurd, — though  I 
agree  with  Dr.  Cams  that  unbiassed  study  of  the  his- 
tory of  religions  should  be  supported,  because  it  re- 
veals, at  least  to  thinkers,  "the  development  of  that 
most  important  side  of  man's  nature,  which  deter- 
mines the  character  of  his  life, — and  of  the  latter  I 
adopt  what  meets  with  my  approval.  Thus  I  accept 
the  truth,  no  matter  where  I  ma}'  find  it,  while  I  re- 
ject that  which,  in  my  opinion,  is  false. 

Regarding  the  claim  that  freethought  has  been 
barren,  I  simply  propose  the  question  :  "  How  many 
centuries  elapsed  before  Christianity  could  gain  a  firm 
footing  on  continental  Europe  ?  "  Considering  the  fact 
that  it  took  more  than  a  thousand  years  to  convert  the 
whole  of  Europe  to  a  religion  essentially  materialistic, 
and  therefore  easily  comprehended  even  by  uncultured 
minds,  it  is  not  at  all  surprising  that  ideal  freethought 
is  making  very  slow  progress.  There  is  no  reason  for 
discontent.  Only  a  few  years  ago  freethought  was  a 
weak  sapling,  to-day  it  is  a  mighty  tree,  spreading 
its  green  branches,  despite  the  formidable  influences 
brought  to  bear  to  kill  them  in  the  bud,  in  every  di- 
rection— slow  of  growth,  but  of  healthy  constitution. 

Dr.  Carus  agrees  with  Professor  Haeckel  that 
ethics  is  always  the  expression  of  a  world  conception. 
It  would  lead  me  too  far  to  dwell  at  length  upon  the 
reasons  why  I  reject  this  assumption.  Until  some 
better  theory  will  be  advanced  regarding  the  forma- 
tion of  solar  systems,  I  adopt  that  of  Kant  and  Laplace  ; 
I  believe  in  the  theory  of  evolution  worked  out  by 
Darwin  and  supported  by  nearly  all  students  of  natu- 
ral sciences ;  I  have  implicit  faith  in  the  potency  of 
science  and  the  potentiality  of  the  germ  of  life  ;  I  am 
firmly  convinced  of  the  immutability  of  the  laws  of 
nature,  and  the  constant  change  that  energy — inher- 
ent in  matter — subjects  matter  to  ;  I  deny  God,  but 
take  it  for  granted  that  intellectual  and  moral  evolu- 
tion is  unceasingly  shaping  the  conditions,  require- 
ments, and  mode  of  conscious  life.  But  I  cannot  say 
that  my  conception  of  morality  has  anything  to  do 
with  all  this;  that  it  is  in  any  way  dependent  upon  or 
affected  by  my  world-view.  This  I  hinted  at  in  speak- 
ing of  a  system  of  pure  ethics,  which  is  objected  to  by 
Dr.  Carus  upon  the  ground  that  "a  system  of  pure 
ethics  "  is  unscientific  ;  and  he  adds  :  "Ethics  is  al- 
ways the  expression  of  a  world-conception." 

I  spoke  of  a  system  of  pure  ethics  in  the  same 
sense  that  I  would  speak  of  religion,  as  a  religious  be- 
lief and  not  as  a  scientific  system.  Theology  is  a 
science.  In  a  broad  sense,  it  is  the  science  of  religion, 
but  itself  it  is  not  religion.      Ethics  is  a  science,  the 


science  of  morals,  but  itself  it  is  not  morality.  Just 
as  religion,  as  a  sort  of  sentiment,  revealing  itself  in 
every  individual  in  more  or  less  grotesque  form,  ex- 
isted and  exists  independent  of  a  correct  method  of 
science,  or  of  a  correct  knowledge  of  the  forces  keep- 
ing the  world  in  motion,  so  it  is  with  those  sentiments 
that  constitute  the  ethical  life  of  the  individual.  They 
also  are  the  expressions  of  emotions,  modified  by  the 
degree  of  intelligence  of  tlie  individual,  and  by  its 
knowledge  and  capability  of  rightly  interpreting  the 
moral  injunctions  in  force. 

In  order  to  present  to  humanity,  in  a  comprehen- 
sible manner,  the  ideals  of  religious  teachers,  their 
conception  of  good  and  evil,  of  vice  and  virtue,  the- 
ology constructed  a  system  of  belief  as  authority  for 
the  moral  conduct  of  their  pupils  and  themselves. 
And  although  this  system  of  belief  was  not  based 
upon  a  correct  knowledge  of  things,  upon  facts  scien- 
tifically established  as  such,  it  acted  as  a  powerful 
agent  in  moulding  the  moral  character  of  humanity. 
Ethics,  likewise,  may  formulate  and  bring  into  compre- 
hensible form  the  precepts  by  which  we  ought  to  be 
governed  in  our  moral  conduct,  without  paying  atten- 
tion to  the — scientific — world-conception ^  of  the  indi- 
vidual, and  the  question  as  to  the  correctness  of  scien- 
tific theories  regarding  the  fulcrum  on  which  the  world 
turns  ;  and  may  thus,  as  a  system  of  pure  ethics,  be 
substituted  in  place  of  the  religious  belief  that  now 
shapes  the  moral  life  of  the  vast  majority.  In  its  ap- 
plication it  is  art,  the  art  of  awakening — dormant — 
emotions  and  of  purifying  them,  i.  e.,  of  turning  them 
into  a  direction  conformable  with  the  noblest  concep- 
tion of  morality. 

We  should  infer  from  what  Dr.  Carus  has  to  saj' 
"that  a  system  of  pure  ethics  is  unscientific,  because 
ethics  is  always  the  expression  of  a  world-conception," 
that  the  ethics  of  the  American  Indian  is  scientific — 
because  it  is  shaped  by  his  world-conception — and 
should  therefore  be  accepted  in  preference  to  my  "  un- 
scientific" system  of  pure  ethics. 

Dr.  Carus  tells  us  that  "he  not  only  believes  but 
knows  that  there  is  a  power  in  this  world  which  we 
have  to  recognise  as  the  norm  of  truth  and  the  stan- 
dard of  right  conduct,  and  in  this  sense  he  upholds 
the  idea  of  God  as  being  a  supreme  authority  for  moral 
conduct."  There  is  certainly  a  norm  of  truth,  but 
this  originated  with  human  intelligence,  is  subject  to 
modifications  by  human  intelligence,  and  is  affected 
by  the  laws  of  nature  only  in  so  far  as  we  have  to  live 
in  obedience  to  these  laws  in  order  to  preserve  the 
race.  The  language  of  Dr.  Carus  betrays  unconscious 
or  concealed  dualism,  or  half-hearted  monism. 

I  am  accused  of  many  misconceptions  by  Dr.  Carus. 

1 1  use  the  term  in  a  restricted  sense,  considering  its  application  to  one's 
conception  of  morality  as  inadmissible. 


4724 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


If  these  ma)ty  misconceptions  were  pointed  out  to  me 
I  might  be  able  to  prove  that,  after  all,  there  is,  at 
least,  a  kernel  of  truth  in  asserting  the  ambiguous 
character  of  his  religio-philosophical  expositions.  This 
he  omitted  to  do,  citing  only  the  following  in  support 
of  his  imputation  :  "If  God  is  being  defined  simply 
as  abstract  thought,  an  idea,  as  something  existing 
only  in  imagination  and  not  in  reality,  it  is  meaning- 
less to  say  science  is  a  revelation  of  God  ;"  comment- 
ing upon  this  as  follows  : 

"God  is  an  abstract  thought,  but  God  himself  is  a  reality. 
There  is  no  abstract  thought  but  it  is  invented  to  describe  a  real- 
ity. Man  cannot  make  the  laws  of  nature,  he  must  describe  them  ; 
he  cannot  establish  facts,  be  must  investigate,  and  can  only  deter 
mine  the  truth  ;  nor  can  he  set  up  a  code  of  morals,  but  he  must 
adapt  himself  to  the  eternal  moral  law  which  is  the  condition  of 
human  society  and  the  factor  that  shapes  the  human  of  man." 

To  me  it  seems  that  several  propositions  are  here 
advanced  which,  standing  in  no  proper  relation,  do 
not  admit  of  the  same  deductions.  Our  knowledge  ; 
our  description  of  the  laws  of  nature;  of  facts  the 
truth  of  which  we  establish,  is  not  based  upon  mere 
assumptions,  but  upon  actual  observation  of  these 
laws,  of  these  facts  ;  upon  observations  that  our  senses 
enable  us  to  make  ;  while  the  claim  of  the  reality  of 
God — as  an  individual,  extramundane  power,  or  as  a 
superpersonal  force,  or  as  norm  for  our  moral  con- 
duct— is  only  based  upon  assumption.  The  laws  of 
nature  we  can  observe,  facts  we  can  notice  ;  our  ideas 
concerning  them  are  representations  of  a  reality  seen 
and  felt  by  us.  Not  so  with  God,  whether  described 
as  a  personal  or  superpersonal  being,  as  is  admitted 
by  Dr.  Carus  himself  in  advancing  no  proof  for  the 
knowledge  he  claims  to  have  of  the  existence  of  God, 
as  a  power  which  we  have  to  recognise  as  the  norm  of 
truth  and  the  standard  of  right  conduct,  but  in  placing 
before  the  reader  the  supposed  proof  merely  in  the 
form  of  a  peculiar  condition:  " //'  the  term  'God' 
did  not  describe  an  actual  reality  it  would  be  mean- 
ingless to  speak  of  science  as  a  revelation  of  God." 

In  opposition  to  Dr.  Carus,  who  says  that  man 
cannot  set  up  a  code  of  morals,  but  must  adapt  him- 
self to  the  eternal  moral  law,  I  say  there  is  no  moral 
law — the  distinction  between  moral  laws  and  moral 
injunctions  is  only  a  theoretical  one — but  what  is  es- 
tablished by  man;  and  I  prove  this  by  the  fact  that 
no  moral  law  can  be  conceived  as  existent  without  the 
presence  of  one  conceiving  it.  The  laws  of  nature,  as 
forces  knowing  nothing  of  compassion  and  morality, 
are  a  reality;  the  moral  law  of  nature — the  condition 
of  human  society  is  no  moral  law  of  nature,  but  a  law 
conditioned  by  human  society — consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously shaping  the  moral  convictions  of  humanity, 
is  a  child  of  the  human  brain  and   as  such  not  self- 

1  Italics  are  mine. 


existent.  Destroy  the  brain  that  conceives  it,  wipe 
humanity  out  of  existence  and  its  phantom  character 
will  reveal  itself. 

The  laws  of  nature,  facts  that  we  can  observe,  are 
real,  and  our  ideas  concerning  them  representations 
of  reality;  while  our  ideas  of  God,  at  least  that  of  the 
monist,  are  only  representations  of  objects  of  imagina- 
tion. Thus  I  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that  there  are 
ideas  which  have  an  objective  reality:  our  ideas  about 
the  laws  of  nature,  etc.;  and  ideas  which  have  no  ob- 
jective reality,  ideas  developed  upon  purely  imagined 
grounds:  our  ideas  of  God — no  matter  whether  con- 
ceived as  a  superpersonal  being,  or  simply  as  the 
moral  law  of  nature. 

"Certainly,"  Dr.  Carus  says,  "the  moral  law  of 
nature  .  .  .  cannot  be  seen  with  the  eye,  or  heard  with 
the  ear,  or  tasted  with  the  tongue,  or  touched  with 
the  hands.  It  is  one  of  those  higher  realities  which 
can  only  be  perceived  by  the  mind.  The  senses  are 
insufficient  to  encompass  it,  but  any  normal  mind  can 
grasp  it." 

It  is  only  with  a  smile  of  sincere  compassion  that 
I  pass  this  cherished  phrase  of  all  true  believers,  re- 
peated in  such  a  serious  vein  by  Dr.  Carus — by  one 
of  the  most  enthusiastic  protagonists  of  monism,  by 
one  who  admits  the  absurdity  of  a  force  hovering  loose 
over  matter — and  dreaded  so  much  by  timid  minds, 
whom  the  fear  of  being  charged  with  superficiality 
and  base  materialism  prevents  from  contradicting  it. 
Well,  I  have  no  desire  to  rob  my  opponents,  whose 
profundity  of  thought,  I  notice,  wades  in  stagnant 
water,  of  their  innocent  pleasure  to  accuse  me  of  su- 
perficiality and  base  materialism,  as  I  find  satisfaction 
in  the  knowledge  that  humanity  owes  a  greater  debt 
to  men  regarded  as  superficial  by  many  and  as  pro- 
found by  few,  than  to  men  regarded  as  profound  by 
many  and  as  superficial  by  few;  and  in  the  conscious- 
ness that  the  materialism  I  represent  is  purer  idealism 
than  is  dreamed  of  by  those  who  parade  with  the 
grandeur  of  the  idealism  they  claim  to  have  discov- 
ered in  the  teachings  of  Christ. 

Dr.  Carus  denies  the  existence  of  an  individual 
God,  but  cosmic  order  reveals  to  him,  as  he  says,  the 
presence  of  a  superindividual  God,  hence  the  presence 
of  a  prototype  of  mind,  or  an  authority  of  conduct. 
This,  I  think,  justifies  the  inference  that  with  him  cos- 
mic order  implies  design — a3'e!  must  implj'  design  in 
order  to  secure  the  foundation  on  which  his  claim 
rests — the  design  to  shape  humanity,  that  itself  is 
powerless  in  a  certain  measure,  in  accordance  with  the 
self-imposed,  irrefragable  order  established  for  this 
purpose — for  the  purpose  of  serving  humanity  as  a 
prototype  of  mind,  as  an  authority  of  conduct.  True, 
there  is  order  in  nature,  but  this  does  not  necessarily 
imply  design,  as  order  can  be  observed  where  more 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4725 


than  one  thing  exists,  though  the  assumption  of  de- 
sign is  excluded  bejond  an^'  reasonable  doubt.  This 
being  the  case,  cosmic  order  existing  without  design, 
I  deny  that  our  moral  convictions  show  its  handiwork  ; 
I  deny  that  the  natural  order  of  the  world  justifies  the 
assumption  of  a  moral  prototype,  as  is  claimed  by  Dr. 
Carus.  Morality  has  evolved  from  sociability,  from 
the  community  of  human  beings,  as  is  proved  by  the 
changes  it  underwent  and  which  it  is  subject  to  even 
now.  The  conceptions  of  right  and  wrong,  good  and 
evil,  not  being  moulded  after  a  given  prototype  or 
standard  of  morality  found  in  nature,  have  nothing 
absolute  about  them,  which  otherwise  would  be  the 
case  ;  they  change  with  time,  place,  and  climate,  and 
at  different  stages  of  civilisation. 

Can  there  be  any  doubt  as  to  the  unreasonableness 
of  maintaining  that  nature  furnishes  us  with  a  moral 
prototype,  when  we  consider  the  fact  that  a  pitiless 
struggle  for  supremacy  is  going  on  all  the  time  in  the 
realm  of  organic  life;  that  numberless  promising 
germs,  as  well  as  highly  developed  beings,  are  daily 
destined  to  destruction,  and  that  the  preservation  of 
higher  intelligence  and  morality  depends  upon  a  con- 
stant defence  against  all  kinds  of  danger  ? 

Dr.  Carus  bewails  the  fact  that  the  work  of  the 
Open  Court  Publishing  Company  is  being  criticised 
and  suspected.  If  he  were  able  to  read  between  the 
lines  he  would  perceive  that  nearly  all  attacks  directed 
against  him  consist  mainly  in  a  criticism,  not  so  much 
of  the  ideas  advanced  by  him,  but  of  the  form  in  which 
these  ideas  receive  expression.  To  illustrate  this  con- 
cisely: To  speak  of  the  laws  of  nature,  of  cosmos,  as 
God,  is  no  tergiversation, — at  least,  it  is  admissible, — 
but  it  becomes  such  when  reference  is  made  to  this 
God  in  terms  leading  the  reader  to  believe,  or  at  least 
admitting  the  conclusion,  that  the  personal  God  of  the 
believer  is  spoken  of;  or,  in  other  words,  when  this 
God  :  nature,  cosmic  order,  is  being  endowed  with 
the  same  or  similar  attributes  possessed  by  the  su- 
preme ruler  of  the  theist.  To  call  the  habits,  emo- 
tions, convictions  of  man,  his  soul,  may  be  permis- 
sible, but  it  becomes  tergiversation  when  reference  is 
had  to  iliis  soul  in  a  manner  conveying  the  idea  that 
the  writer  maintains  the  indestructibility  of  his,  mine, 
or  any  one's  self-consciousness. 

Like  a  red  thread  in  a  sheet  of  white  canvas  this 
unconscious  ambiguity  is  noticeable  in  all  expositions 
of  Dr.  Carus  when  he  discusses  religious  subjects. 
Let  him  eliminate  this  red  thread,  this  ambiguity, 
and,  I  dare  say,  that  hundreds,  who  now  look  with  a 
certain  degree  of  discontent,  aye  suspicion,  upon  his 
work,  will  join  hands  with  him  and  support  him. 

Without  the  least  hesitation  I  claim,  incredible  as 
it  may  seem  to  Dr.  Carus,  that  I  thoroughly  under- 
stand him,  that  the  ideals  he  has  formed,  and  that  he 


worships,  the  noble  thoughts  and  sentiments  that  he 
entertains,  the  aim  he  has  in  view,  and  the  hopes  that 
he  cherishes,  sought  their  abode  in  a  kindred  soul 
long  before  I  knew  him  through  his  writings.  I  always 
wished  for  able  writers  who  would  give  public  expres- 
sion to  these  ideas  and  sentiments,  who  would  cloak 
in  suitable  words  the  ideals  worshipped  by  me,  for  a 
public  aspiring  after  the  truly  noble  and  elevating, 
and  sublime — and  desirous  of  grappling  with  the  pro- 
found questions  proposed  by  life.  The  publications 
of  the  Open  Court  Publishing  Company  seemed,  for  a 
time  at  least,  to  carry  to  realisation  this  ardent  wish 
of  mine,  but  I  suffered  disappointment,  owing  to  the 
irresistible  inclination  of  its  editor  to  force  hostile 
thoughts  into  a  union  which,  owing  to  the  different 
nature  of  the  elements  to  be  united,  can  never  be  ac- 
complished. 

Modern  ethics  is  based  upon  knowledge  and  rea- 
son ;  the  ethics  of  old  mainly  upon  faith  and  instinct. 
The  good,  the  true,  that  originated  with  faith  and  in- 
stinct, reason  will  retain  and  systematise  with  the  aid 
of  knowledge  ;  the  absurd  it  will  not  try  to  embody  in 
the  sensible,  but  it  will  simply  reject  it. 

Above  I  made  the  statement  that  I  thoroughly  un- 
derstand Dr.  Carus  ;  so  much  the  more  do  I  regret  to 
say  that  he  has  failed  properly  to  interpret  my  ideas, 
which  he  proves  by  the  fact  that  he  imputes  thoughts 
to  me  that  I  never  uttered.  It  is  true  that  I  am  not 
indifferent  as  to  the  survival  of  my  ideals,  and  to  those 
sentiments  which  I  may  be  permitted  to  call  my  better 
self.  On  the  contrary,  I  hope  that  those  surviving 
me  will  cherish  the  traits  most  valued  in  me  by  the 
virtuous.  While  I  live  it  gives  me  pleasure  to  think 
that  the  aspirations  of  this  generation  will,  through 
transmission,  benefit  and  help  to  elevate  upon  a  higher 
plane  of  intelligence  and  morality  future  humanity. 
But  of  this  pleasure  I  am  only  conscious  while  I  live, 
with  death  this  pleasure  ceases  ;  any  possible  reward 
for  leading  a  virtuous  life  I  can  only  anticipate  while 
enjoying  self-consciousness ;  to  expect  a  reward  after 
having  ceased  to  live  as  a  conscious  being  is  prepos- 
terous— in  the  eyes  of  those  denying  the  existence  of 
an  ego-soul. 

Both  Dr.  Carus  and  I  have  recognised  the  fact  that 
there  is  dross  in  religion,  and  that  the  great  mass  of 
humanity  has  always  identified  the  term  with  belief  in 
fables,  doctrines,  and  dogmas  which  we  have  learned 
to  regard  as  absurd  and  preposterous.  For  this  rea- 
son, and  in  order  to  avoid  misunderstandings,  I  reject 
the  word  "religion";  he  retains  it,  being  thus  forced 
to  ambiguity,  despite  the  declaration  he  makes  that 
to  him  religion  is — merely — the  prime  factor  which  is 
to  develop  man's  moral  nature. 

Because  I  discard  religion,  because  I  wish  to  place 
in  its  stead  a  system  of  pure  ethics,  a  code  of  morals 


4726 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


that  rejects  religion  and  retains  only  the  good  and 
noble  that  humanity  gave  birth  to, —  which  by  no 
means  was  always  the  product  of  religion,  as  morality 
and  religion  developed  very  frequently  in  different 
directions, — that  teaches  justice,  love,  truth,  without 
the  dross  religion  contains,  he  calls  me  a  bigot  infidel ; 
and  because  he  tries  to  bring  in  harmony  systematised 
knowledge,  modern  views  of  ethics  with  the  religious 
conceptions  of  indolent,  superstitious  humanity,  I  ac- 
cused him  of  suffering  from  the  reconciliation-mania, 
which  claim  I  am  constrained  to  uphold  in  every  par- 
ticular, despite  the  fact  that  I  admire  and  support 
many  of  the  noble  thoughts  he  has  given  expression 
to  in  his  aim  to  perfect  humanity. 


FABLES  FROM  THE  NEW  ^SOP. 


BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 


The  Great  Physician  and  the  Dumb  Broom. 

A  YOUNG  woman  who  had  been  brought  up  by  an 
indulgent  mother,  having  little  to  do  and  plenty  of 
such  dainties  as  that  country  provided,  fell  ill,  more 
from  lassitude  and  surfeit  than  any  real  disorder.  She 
declined  to  take  to  her  bed,  but  went  about  the  house 
languid  and  wretched,  and  wearying  her  anxious 
mother  with  her  complaints. 

The  mother  tried  to  induce  her  to  take  a  potion  of 
herbs  which  she  prepared  with  her  own  hands,  but  the 
daughter  was  wilful  and  declined  the  draught,  saying 
that  she  was  not  ill  enough  for  so  nauseous  a  remedy. 

Then  the  mother  in  great  distress  sent  for  a  j-oung 
mediciner.  He  came  directly,  and  being  handsome 
and  quite  talkative,  the  girl  brightened  up  and  con- 
versed gayly  with  him  and  was  so  sprightly  that  he 
was  convinced  she  had  no  malady,  and  told  the  elder 
woman  at  the  door  on  his  departure,  (at  the  time  he 
took  his  fee, )  that  she  need  be  under  no  apprehension 
on  her  daughter's  account. 

For  a  time  after  this  young  man  left,  the  girl 
seemed  a  different  being,  but  the  day  following  her 
old  ailment  returned,  and  she  moped  and  sighed  and 
languished  again.  When  this  had  been  kept  up  for 
several  days,  the  mother,  now  seriously  troubled,  sent 
to  a  city  near-by  for  another  doctor,  who  was  in  much 
repute. 

He  came  in  state,  looking  very  learned  and  wise, 
and  after  putting  many  questions  both  to  the  young 
woman  and  her  mother  as  to  symptoms,  mode  of  life, 
and  the  like,  he  declared  that  the  patient  was  really  in 
a  perilous  position,  but  needed  no  physic. 

"What  she  really  needs,"  he  said,  "is  a  complete 
course  of  calisthenics.  You  must  purchase  dumb-bells 
forthwith  and  exercise  daily  with  these  according  to 
the  rules  laid  down  in  my  work.  The  Science  of  Ath- 
letics." 


The  learned  physician  thereupon  produced  a  copy 
of  the  volume.  The  price  of  this,  together  with  his 
fee,  (double  that  of  the  young  doctor's),  was  so  great 
that  the  poor  mother,  not  very  well  provided  as  to 
wealth,  had  no  money  left  to  purchase  the  dumb-bells. 

While  in  this  quandary,  (the  daughter  all  the  while 
continuing  indisposed,)  a  neighbor  who  knew  of  her 
trouble  told  her  that  the  great  ^Esculapius  was  pass- 
ing through  that  town.  Him  she  appealed  to,  and 
when  he  came,  after  some  inquiries,  careful  investiga- 
tion, and  knowledge  of  the  remedies  which  had  been 
prescribed,  he  had  this  to  say: 

"The  young  doctor  was  wrong  in  saying  that  your 
daughter  had  no  malady,  for  she  has  a  very  serious 
malady;  and  the  elder  doctor  was  wrong  in  prescrib- 
ing the  remedy.  I  perceive,"  he  continued,  "that  this 
house  is  far  from  cleanly — " 

Here  the  mother,  interrupting,  tried  to  apologise, 
explaining  that  she  herself  had  no  time  left  from  her 
other  duties. 

"  But  this  young  woman,  your  daughter?  " 

"Ah,  sir,  she  is  much  too  ill,"  replied  the  poor 
mother;  "but  pray,  what  might  the  malady  be  that 
you  say  is  so  serious  ?  " 

"Her  malady,"  replied  ^sculapius,  "is  indiffer- 
ence and  unwillingness.  I,  too,  have  a  pi'escription, 
which  is  not  a  dumb  bell,  but  a  dumb  broom.  Let 
her  give  over  her  laziness  and  regain  her  health  by 
sweeping  the  house  ;  so,  seeking  diligently,  she  shall 
find  it." 

With  that  ^sculapius  arose  and  took  his  leave, 
not  heeding  the  pouting  lips  of  his  patient,  and  de- 
clining any  fee  for  his  services. 


NOTES. 

Dr.  Carus's  reply  to  Corvinus's  rejoinder  will  appear  in  the 
next  number  of  TJic  Open  Court. 

THE  OPEN  COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION; 

S1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  431. 

THROUGH  IRRELIGION  TO  TRUE  MORALITY.  Cor- 

VINU.S 4719 

FABLES  FROM  THE  NEW  ^SOP.     The  Great  Physi- 
cian and  the  Dumb  Broom.     Hudor  Genone 4726 

NOTES 4726 


The  Open  Court. 


A   WEEKLY  JOUKNAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  432.     (Vol.  IX.— 49  ) 


CHICAGO,   DECEMBER  5,   1895. 


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Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.— Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


FABLES  FROM  THE  NEW  /ESOP. 


BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 


The  Silly  Triangle. 

In  the  great  region  of  Areas  the  Triangle  lay  lazily 
basking.  It  had  nothing  to  do  but  bask  ;  nothing  to 
live  for  but  laziness.  In  this  respect  it  differed  in  no 
degree  from  its  cousins  and  connexions  of  the  family 
of  regular  figures.  These  all  (and  none  more  than 
the  Triangle)  looked  down  with  the  utmost  contempt 
upon  all  figures  not  strictly  regular,  with  whom  indeed 
they  refused  to  associate,  or  recognise  as  having  any 
claim  upon  either  their  sympathies  or  affections. 

The  Circle,  the  Square,  the  Trapezoid,  the  Trape- 
zium, and  the  Triangle,  all  held — however  they  might 
differ  amongst  themselves — that  they  were  of  finer 
material  than  shapes  less  mathematical,  and  more 
beautiful  than  forms  not  possessed  of  what  they  proudly 
called  homologous  lines. 

The  chief  amusement  these  haught)-  folk  had  to 
solace  the  austerity  of  their  existence  was  to  discuss 
the  excellence  of  their  being,  and  to  comfort  one  an- 
other by  mutual  felicitations  upon  a  life  perfect  in  it- 
self and  demanding  no  exertion  or  effort  for  continu- 
ance. 

"We  just  are,"  they  said,  "and  that  is  quite  enough 
for  us. " 

One  day  an  Atom,  (who  dwells,  you  do  not  need 
to  be  told,  in  a  very  different  realm, — the  kingdom  of 
Solids,)  happening  that  way,  heard  the  Triangle  dis- 
coursing to  his  fellows,  and  for  very  pity  of  their  for- 
lorn condition,  took  a  hand  in  their  conversation. 

"Do  you  really  believe  all  you  have  said?"  he 
asked,  having  drawn  the  Triangle  aside,  because  he 
perceived  him  to  be  sharper  than  the  rest ;  "  Do  you 
really  belie\e  that  in  you  and  your  kind  the  Infinite 
Geometry  has  exhausted  His  potencies?" 

"Certainly,"  replied  the  Triangle,  "I  am  confi- 
dent that  as  the  fountain  can  rise  no  higher  than  its 
source  I  and  my  kind  only,  having  had  breathed  into 
us  the  breath  of  life,  are  the  sole  likenesses  of  our 
Creator.      Is  not  that  plain  ?  " 

"Not  to  a  wayfaring  Atom  who  knows  better," 
was  the  quick  reply;    "but  come,  tell  me,  is  it  because 


of  this  view  which  you  call  plain    that  you  are  known 
as  plain  surfaces  ?  " 

"Plain  surfaces  !  Curious  I  never  thought  of  the 
matter  in  that  light.  It  may  be  though  that  you  have 
stumbled  upon  the  truth." 

"And  your  deity  then  is  plain  Geometry  for  the 
same  reason  ?  " 

"Perhaps,"  replied  the  Triangle,  "though  the 
especial  form  of  doctrine  I  hold  is  Trigonometry." 

"And  quite  properly  too,"  said  the  Atom,  "for  as 
you  yourself  have  quoted — the  reservoir  determines 
the  altitude  of  the  jet.  It  is  therefore  impossible  for 
you  to  worship  a  god  not  in  your  own  likeness,  albeit 
the  sum  and  co-ordination  and  nucleus  of  merit  of  all 
your  possibilities." 

' '  Really, "  said  the  Triangle,  ' '  I  fail  to  follow  you.  " 

"And  no  wonder,"  replied  the  Atom  ;  "but  if  you 
choose  you  may  follow  me.  As  you  may  have  observed 
my  residence  is  in  a  different  locality  from  yours.  You 
are  content  to  be  supine,  I  am  only  happy  in  activity; 
you  are  satisfied  with  the  quiescence  of  mere  being,  I 
ask  for  happiness,  nay,  more,  I  require  for  existence 
not  only  being  but  also  action.  Now  while  )'ou  remain 
continually  in  one  spot  I  move  about, — " 

"I  observe,"  said  the  Triangle  querulously,  "that 
you  are  very  restless." 

"Move  about,"  continued  the  Atom,  disregarding 
the  interruption,  "not  for  the  mere  desire  for  change 
of  scene,  although  that  has  charms,  nor  even  for  the 
purpose  of  getting  fresh  views  of  things  by  becoming 
continually  part  of  new  combinations,  for  that  consti- 
tutes my  chief  utility,  but  that— even  as  you  depend 
for  life  upon  the  existence  of  Trigonometry,  so  in  like, 
though  vastly  higher  and  nobler  manner,  my  life  de- 
pends upon  a  higher  life,  I  too  have  a  god  which  has 
created  and  which  sustains  me.  My  god  is  called 
Chemical  Affinity." 

"That  is  sheer  blasphemy,"  said  the  Triangle. 
"  There  is  but  one  God. " 

"Admitting  that,"  said  the  Atom,  "is  it  blasphemy 
to  investigate  his  possibilities  ?  " 

"They  are  infinite,"  replied  the  Triangle. 

"Then  so  much  more  room  for  investigation  ;  you 
observe  my  motions,  is  it  not  evident  to  you  how  su- 
perior my  functions   are   to  yours  ?     I  move,  but  you 


4728 


XME     OPEN     COURT. 


do  not.  Your  god  is  good  enough  in  his  way,  and 
that  is  for  your  way  ;  but  for  mine  how  superior  my 
deity." 

"  Oh  1  as  to  that,"  said  the  Triangle,  "  I  can  mo\e 
too  if  I  choose." 

"  If  you  choose,"  said  the  Atom  with  some  scorn. 
"Why,  as  you  have  related  your  condition  you  are 
incapable  of  choice." 

At  this  the  Triangle  fired  up. 

"Incapable  of  choice!"  he  exclaimed.  "That 
only  shows  your  ignorance.  Now  watch  me  and  ob- 
serve how  easily  I  move." 

So  saying  the  Triangle  stretched  out  his  arms,  his 
head  got  bigger  and  bigger,  till  all  at  once — trying  to 
do  that  for  which  his  nature  was  not  fitted — he  lost 
his  head  entirely,  and,  far  from  rising  into  that  region 
which  he  boastfully  sought  to  emulate,  he  sank  into  a 
lower,  he  ceased  to  be  a  surface  and  became  a  line. 

"  No  wonder,"  remarked  the  Atom  as  he  went  off 
at  the  call  of  his  Affinity,  "  no  wonder  they  called  him 
an  obtuse  angled  Triangle." 


CONSERVATIVE  RADICALISM. 

Controversies,  lest  they  become  interminable, 
must  be  limited  to  those  issues  in  which  the  differ- 
ences are  not  merely  verbal  but  material.  In  my  re- 
ply to  the  rejoinder  of  Corvinus  I  shall  accordingly 
waive  minor  and  purely  incidental  points. 

Corvinus  declares  that  I  threw  the  gauntlet  to  him, 
while  it  is  he  who  began  the  controversy;  he  criticised 
me,  not  I  him  ;  I  simply  explained  those  subjects  con- 
cerning which  he  felt  misgivings.  Corvinus  speaks  of 
my  "bewailing  the  fact  that  the  Open  Court  Publish- 
ing Company  is  criticised  and  suspected."  Far  from 
bewailing  criticism,  I  rejoice  at  it  ;  and  indeed  I  so- 
licit criticism.  I  regret  criticism  only  if  it  is  based 
upon  mere  misconceptions. 

Among  other  points  of  little  consequence  i  find  a 
remark  made  by  Corvinus,  to  which  I  should  never  have 
thought  of  giving  a  reply,  had  he  not  uttered  it  with 
unusual  emphasis.  Corvinus  resents  my  characterisa- 
tion of  his  views  as  negative,  and  challenges  me  to 
quote  one  sentence  of  his  which  would  prove  the  cor- 
rectness of  my  assertion.  It  appears  that  we  disagree 
regarding  the  terms  "positive"  and  "negative."  Cor- 
vinus understands  by  positive  such  views  as  are  moral 
and  earnest,  which  implies  that  negative  means  im- 
moral, or  at  least  flippant.  My  definition  of  negative 
is  that  which  denies  the  right  of  something  to  exist, 
that  which  proposes  to  destroy.  While  I  endeavor  to 
purify  religion,  religious  ideas,  religious  aspirations, 
and  religious  institutions,  Corvinus  most  emphatically 
declares  that  they  should  be  wiped  out  of  existence. 
This  is  what  I  call  negativism,  and  this  negativism  is 
identified  by  Corvinus  with  scientific  thought. 


But  now  ///  medias  res! 

Corvinus  repeats  his  accusation  of  ambiguity.  He 
imagines  that  I  am  only  joking  when  I  fill  the  old 
terms  of  religious  tradition  with  a  deeper  and  scien- 
tifically more  exact  meaning.  He  speaks  of  tergiver- 
sation and  self-deception  in  "  reconciling  absurdities 
with  common  sense  and  reason,"  for  the  purpose  of 
"gaining  the  favor  of  the  thoughtless  masses  "  and 
"in  order  to  save  my  reputation  as  a  thinker  and — a 
pious  person."  Corvinus  speaks  of  "unconscious 
ambiguity  "  as  though  he  wanted  to  excuse  or  palliate 
the  dishonesty  which  all  ambiguity  implies,  and  he 
assures  me  repeatedly  that  he  understands  me  thor- 
oughly. 

I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  Corvinus  does 
not  understand  me,  for  my  usage  of  the  old  terms  is 
neither  tergiversation  resulting  from  a  desire  of  pan- 
dering to  the  thoughtless,  nor  is  it  unconscious.  I 
know  what  I  am  about  when  I  use  old  terms  in  a  new 
sense,  and  that  I  do  so  is  not  a  matter  of  policy  with 
me,  but  of  conviction. 

The  Religion  of  Science  which,  in  agreement  with 
the  founder  of  The  Open  Court,  I  uphold,  and  which 
with  his  noble  assistance  it  has  become  my  life-work 
to  explain  and  to  propagate,  is  not  a  new-fangled 
theory  or  a  revolution  against  the  traditions  of  man- 
kind, it  is  an  old  aspiration  in  its  latest  rebirth  and  it 
is  rendered  sacred  not  only  by  age,  but  also  by  the  ex- 
ertions of  our  ancestors  in  their  search  for  the  truth. 
The  Religion  of  Science  is  not,  or  at  least  only  in  part, 
a  negation  of  the  old  dogmatic  religions  of  the  past. 
The  Religion  of  Science  is  their  fulfilment ;  it  embod- 
ies all  the  truth  which  they  contain,  adding  thereto 
the  light  that  scientific  investigation  affords. 

When  our  ancestors  formulated  their  religious 
views,  they  were  not  frauds,  although  they  were  un- 
able to  state  the  truth  plainly  and  unmixed  with  error. 
The  martyrs  of  the  various  religions  and  confessions, 
among  the  early  Christians,  among  the  Waldenses, 
the  Huguenots,  the  Dutch  Protestants,  and  others, 
were  not  simply  fools  ;  they  suffered  for  a  purpose. 
And  they  sanctified  their  purpose  by  their  suffering. 
The  old  prophets  were  not  impostors,  but  men  of 
earnest  convictions. 

When  the  prophets  saw  the  extortions  of  the  rich 
and  powerful,  the  insolence  and  other  vices  of  the 
mass  of  the  people,  the  thoughtlessness  of  the  frivo- 
lous, who  lived  for  their  own  pleasure,  regardless  of 
the  duties  that  life  imposed  upon  them,  they  raised 
the  voice  of  warning  ;  they  pointed  out  the  afflictions 
which  come  as  the  curse  of  sin,  and  declared  the  law 
of  justice  which  in  the  end  is  sure  to  destroy  the  evil- 
doer. The  prophets'  observations  are  based  upon 
facts,  and  the  injunctions  derived  from  them  are  im- 
portant for  practical  purposes. 


XHE    OPEN    COURT. 


4729 


What  is  the  raison  d'c/rc  of  the  old  rehgions? 

This  world  of  ours,  although  not  built  by  the  hands 
of  an  architect  after  the  fashion  of  man's  handiwork, 
is  nevertheless  a  harmonious  whole.  There  is  law  in 
it,  and  the  law  is  omnipresent.  The  laws  of  nature 
and  the  cosmic  order  of  the  imiverse  are  real  facts  of 
existence;  indeed,  they  are  more  important  than  any 
other  set  of  facts.  Yet  you  cannot  touch  them  with 
hands  or  perceive  them  with  any  of  the  senses.  You 
can  see  them  alone  with  your  mind's  eye.  They  are 
the  conditions  of  rationality  in  nature,  for  through 
them  alone  man  exists  as  a  thinking  being.  They, 
representing  the  logic  of  facts,  are  the  rationale  of  the 
cosmos,  which  alone  endows  life  with  dignitj',  for  it 
brings  it  about  that  rational  beings  can  pursue  aims, 
lay  down  rules  of  conduct,  and  aspire  for  worthy 
ideals. 

Religious  prophets  are  filled  with  the  awe  of  this 
omnipresence  of  law  and  proclaim  the  injunctions  that 
experience  naturally,  and  often  instinctively,  derives 
from  its  manifestations. 

In  this  statement  I  have  avoided  the  term  God, 
and  spoken  of  laws  of  nature.  1  have  now  to  add,  that 
the  replacement  of  the  old  term  "God"  b)' the  new 
term  "the  laws  of  nature"  is  in  two  respects  mislead- 
ing, (i)  there  is  one  consistent  order  in  the  cosmos, 
not  many  laws,  and  (2)  the  term  "laws  of  nature  "is 
commonly  used  to  denote  the  formulations  of  our  sci- 
entists which  describe  the  various  ways  of  the  cosmos, 
while  I  here  mean  the  realities  themselves  and  not 
man's  conception  of  those  realities.  In  order  to  de- 
note the  oneness,  the  eternality,  the  immutability,  the 
omnipotence  or  more  directly  speaking  the  irrefraga- 
bility,  the  omnipresence,  the  universality,  the  abso- 
lute sovereignty  of  this  something  in  nature  we  call  it 
by  the  old  fashioned  term  God ;  and  claim  that  this 
God  who  is  the  only  true  God  is  not  a  mere  fancy  or 
product  of  man's  imagination,  but  a  reality,  and  in- 
deed the  most  indubitable  reality  of  all  reality  ;  for 
everything  that  is,  exists  in  Him,  through  Him  and  to 
Him.  All  things  and  all  souls  are  in  Him  and  He  is 
in  all  of  them.      There  is  nothing  without  Him. 

This  is  not  Pantheism  ;  for  to  say  that  God  is  in  all 
things  does  not  constitute  him  the  totality  of  beings. 
God  must  not  be  identified  with  the  sum-total  of  exis- 
tence. He  is  more  than  that.  God  is  supernatural 
in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term,  for  the  world-order 
is  not  only  omnipresent  in  this  actual  world  of  ours, 
but  is  the  condition  of  every  possible  world.  There 
may  be  worlds  in  which  the  law  of  gravitation  would 
have  no  application,  in  which  the  properties  of  exis- 
tence might  be  so  different  as  to  render  our  senses 
useless  and  make  other  sensations  possible,  but  there 
can  be  no  world  without  those  universal  laws  which 
we  formulate  in  the   purely  formal  sciences,  such  as 


logic  and  arithmetic.  No  possible  world  can  exist  in 
which  2  ,-  J  could  now  be  5,  now  6,  and  again  some 
other  number.  It  must  be  always  the  selfsame  product 
of  2  -•'  2  which  we  call  4. 

Here  lies  the  essential  difference  between  Cor- 
vinus's  views  and  mine.      Corvinus  says  : 

"  There  is  no  moral  law  but  what  is  established  by  man." 

Corvinus  puts  the  cart  before  the  horse  by  stating  : 

"The  moral  law  of  nature,  the  conditions  of  human  society 
is  no  moral  law  of  nature,  but  a  law  conditioned  by  human  society 
— consciously  or  unconsciously  shaping  the  moral  convictions  of 
humanity — is  a  child  of  the  human  brain.  I  prove  this  by  the 
fact  that  no  moral  law  can  be  conceived  as  existent  without  the 
presence  of  one  conceiving  it." 

If  Corvinus  understood  what  I  mean,  he  would  not 
offer  this  assumption  as  a  proof.  I  mean  by  "  moral 
law  "  the  eternal  conditions  of  nature  which  in  the  evo- 
lution of  life  beget  man  as  a  rational  and  moral  being. 
Why  should  the  existence  of  a  law  of  nature  (in  the 
sense  of  some  modes  of  action  in  the  ways  of  cosmic 
life)  be  dependent  upon  their  being  conceived  ?  Were 
not  the  laws  of  electricity  as  real  as  they  are  now  long 
before  anybody  on  earth  dreamt  of  the  possibility  of 
electric  forces  ?  And  is  not  the  ideal  of  virtue  the  same 
whether  or  not  represented  in  the  brain  of  man  ? 

Let  us  restate  the  issue  on  another  ground,  which, 
not  being  directly  implied  in  the  religious  problem, 
might  allow  our  friend  and  critic  to  think  without 
prejudice.  Is  causality  real  or  not  ?  That  is  to  sa)', 
does  the  law  of  cause  and  effect,  which  our  scientists 
formulate,  describe  conditions  in  the  domain  of  our 
experiences  that  are  real,  or  is  causality  merely  a  child 
of  the  human  brain  ?  The  old  nominalist  school,  to- 
gether with  their  modern  descendents  who  are  repre- 
sented by  Hume,  Kant,  and  Mill,  take  the  negative 
horn  of  the  dilemma,  while  the  philosophy  of  science 
takes  the  positive  horn.  Causality  is  a  real  and  ac- 
tual fact.  Causality  is  not  an  object  ;  it  is  not  a  piece 
of  matter  ;  it  is  not  a  quantity  of  energy  ;  it  cannot  be 
perceived  by  any  one  of  the  senses  ;  yet  is  it  real  ;  and 
indeed  it  is  as  inuch  real  as  any  fact  of  nature.  It  is 
as  real  as  stones,  as  actual  as  a  dynamite  explosion, 
and,  indeed,  it  is  more  important  than  any  one  of  the 
single  facts  or  objects  that  we  meet  with  in  experi- 
ence. It  is  one  of  those  omnipresent  facts  and  is  as 
such  a  part  and  parcel  of  that  reality  which  we  com- 
prise under  the  religious  term  "  God." 

Corvinus  asks  for  a  proof  of  the  objective  reality 
of  the  moral  law  of  nature.  He  might  as  well  ask  for 
a  proof  that  2  >  2  will  always  be  four,  and  he  might 
as  well  deny  the  truth  of  this  statement,  as  J.  S.  Mill 
actually  did.  A  nominalist  only  can  ask  for  a  proof 
that  he  himself  exists  as  a  rational  being. 

The  proof  of  the  objective  reality  of  law  and  of 
the   universality  of  law  must  be  based  upon  the  re- 


4730 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


liability  of  human  reason  in  experience.  Is  it,  or  is 
it  not,  a  fact  that  we  can  rely  upon  rationally  correct 
deductions?  Is  logic  a  safe  guide  in  practical  life? 
Is  universality  of  thought  possible  or  not  ?  The  nom- 
inalist denies  that  universals  are  real,  but  in  doing  so, 
he  denies  the  reality  and  reliability  of  his  rational 
faculty  and  implicitly  declares  that  his  reasoning  has 
no  objective  application.  The  nominalistic  proposi- 
tion appears,  at  first  sight,  more  guarded  than  the 
realistic  doctrine,  but  it  is  actually  a  bold  negation  and 
an  assumption  that  stands  in  contradiction  to  the  most 
assured  and  most  obtrusive  facts.  At  the  same  time, 
it  is  a  suicidal  statement,  for  on  its  own  supposition 
no  universal  statement  whatever,  be  it  positive  or 
negative,  can  be  made. 

A  nominalist  denies  universality,  which  is  to  say, 
he  denies  the  applicability  of  reason  ;  and  yet  he 
argues.  If  he  were  consistent,  he  would  surrender  all 
argument. 

I  do  not  say  that  Corvinus  is  a  nominalist  who 
would  accept  all  the  tenets  of  a  consistent  nominal- 
ism ;  I  only  say  that  he  has  made  nominalistic  state- 
ments and  that  these  statements  are  founded  upon 
error. 

Corvinus  preaches  the  morality  of  pure  ethics,  by 
which  he  means  that  his  conception  of  goodness  has 
nothing  to  do  with  his  views  of  the  nature  of  life  and 
of  the  world.  Nor  does  he  ask  for  the  purpose  of  a 
virtuous  life.  He  feels  the  desire  of  leading  a  moral 
life  without  any  definite  purpose,  without  any  definite 
aim — simply  because  he  loves  to  lead  a  moral  life. 

Corvinus  feels  morally  as  infinitely  above  the  pro- 
fessional Christian  preachers,  as  in  intelligence  Dar- 
win is  superior  to  a  Bushman  ;  and  he  looks  down 
with  pity  on  the  Galilean  dreamer's  numerous  flock 
because  they  are  still  in  the  bondage  of  traditional- 
ism. Considering  the  ring  of  conviction  in  his  exposi- 
tions, we  do  not  doubt  that  he  is  an  unusually  earnest, 
pure-hearted,  and  well-meaning  man.  But  is  there  not 
a  tinge  of  Pharisaism  in  his  reflexions  ? 

There  is  a  difference  between  morality,  which  is  a 
practice  in  daily  life,  and  ethics,  which  is  conscious 
knowledge  of  the  significance  of  morality.  Ethics  is 
helpful  for  the  improvement  of  morality,  but  ethics 
does  not  constitute  morality.  A  bear  is  in  possession 
of  no  ethics  whatever,  but  when  she  defends  her  cubs 
and  sacrifices  herself  for  them,  she  may,  in  morality, 
be  superior  to  many  a  man  who  graduated  in  ethics 
and  is  preaching  morality  either  from  the  pulpit  or  in 
the  university  lecture-hall,  or,  as  I  do,  in  the  editor's 
chair.  He  whose  ethics  are  superior,  has  no  reason 
to  look  down  upon  his  less  favored  brother. 

While  I  do  not  hesitate  to  believe  that  the  morality 
of  Corvinus  is  exemplary,  I  cannot  say  that  his  ethics 
ranks  very  high,    for    what    is    it  but    mere   instinc- 


tive goodness.  Purposeless  and  aimless,  it  may 
briefly  be  characterised  as  the  ethics  of  the  thought- 
less. 

Corvinus  sides  with  Mr.  Salter,  with  whom  I  had 
a  controversy  on  the  question  of  the  basis  of  ethics 
several  years  ago  ;  and  like  Mr.  Salter,  he  identi- 
fies the  problem  of  the  basis  of  ethics  with  the  idea 
that  moral  actions  should  be  done  for  some  selfish 
end.  He  answers  the  ambiguous  question,  "Why 
shall  I  lead  a  moral  life  ?  "  by  saying  "there  is  no 
why?  I  must  not  look  for  a  reward,  but  must  do 
the  good  for  the  sake  of  the  good.  The  problem  of 
the  basis  of  ethics  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  selfish 
motives  why  we  should  do  or  abstain  from  certain  ac- 
tions." 

If  we  inquire  into  the  nature  of  morality,  we  must, 
above  all,  know  what  is  good  and  what  is  bad. 

Supposing  some  one  replies,  "telling  the  truth  is 
good;  a  dutiful  performance  of  duty,  the  alleviation  of 
suffering  is  good,  etc., — while  lying  and  the  shirking 
of  duties  is  bad  ;  stealing,  and  inflicting  pain  is  very 
had,  etc.,  we  ask  again  Why  is  the  former  good  and 
the  latter  bad?  Shall  we  say  with  Corvinus,  "there 
is  no  why  "  ? 

The  ethical  problem  is  not  so  simple  as  he  imag- 
ines. Inflicting  pain  is  bad  ;  but  is  the  action  of  a 
hero,  who  inflicts  wounds  on  his  enemies,  good  or  bad  ? 
And  is  the  man  who  would  not  tell  the  truth  on  the 
rack,  because  it  is  an  important  secret,  to  be  blamed 
or  praised  ? 

Is  there,  indeed,  no  reason  for  morality?  Is  mo- 
rality really  aimless  and  purposeless,  a  mere  efflux  of 
sentiment?  It  is  right  enough  to  lead  a  virtuous  life 
because  one  loves  virtue,  and  not  on  account  of  re- 
wards or  for  fear  of  punishment  here  on  earth  or  in 
some  other  place,  but  for  that  reason  we  need  not  de- 
clare that  virtue  is  without  purpose. 

Corvinus  himself  disagrees  with  his  own  statement 
when  he  says : 

"Human  Life  has  a  purpose,  the  same  purpose  that  all  life 
has  during  the  limited  period  in  which  it  appears  in  a  certain 
form  :  to  live  in  conformity  with  the  conditions  into  which  it 
sprang." 

\'ery  well  !  These  conditions  are  the  formative  fac- 
tors of  all  the  various  forms  of  life  ;  they  are  the  cre- 
ator of  the  present  shape  of  the  world  ;  religiously 
speaking,  they  are  God.  Accordingly  we  say,  ethics 
is  a  correct  comprehension  of  the  tendencies  of  the 
evolution  of  life,  especially  of  human  life,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  conforming  to  its  law. 

Corvinus  does  not  continue  as  we  would;  he  adds 
the  self-contradictory  sentence  : 

"  But  do  not  ask  for  the  purpose  of  a  virtuous  life." 

And  he  declares  : 

"We  should   infer   from   what   Dr.   Carus  has  to  say  that 'a 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4731 


system  of  pure  ethics  is  unscientific,  because  ethics  is  always  the 
expression  of  a  world-conception, '  and  that  the  ethics  of  the  Amer- 
ican Indian  is  scientific — because  it  is  shaped  by  his  world-concep- 
tion, and  should  therefore  be  accepted  in  preference  to  my  '  un- 
scientific '  system  of  ethics." 

My  reply  is,  that  if  an  Indian,  with  his  limited 
knowledge,  conscientiously  ponders  on  the  problems 
of  life  and  endeavors  to  actualise  his  errors  in  super- 
stitious practices,  he  is  so  far,  and  of  course  only  so 
far,  the  superior  of  Corvinus,  in  spite  of  the  latter's 
higher  culture  and  more  comprehensive  knowledge; 
for  the  Indian  is  progressive,  his  life  and  the  evil  re- 
sults of  his  errors  are  valuable  experiments  which  will 
benefit  his  posterity,  while  the  ethics  of  Corvinus  is 
simply  to  live  on  the  accumulated  moral  capital  of 
past  ages,  simply  to  lead  a  moral  life,  because  he 
loves  virtue,  simply  to  do  the  good,  whatever  that  may 
be,  because  the  good  pleases  him. 

What  guarantee  has  Corvinus  from  his  standpoint 
of  pure  ethics  that  his  idea  of  goodness  is  correct  ?  Is 
there  not  danger,  that  in  calling  virtue  what  pleases 
him,  and  in  repudiating  a  "why,"  he  may  be  regard- 
ing certain  actions  as  moral,  merely  because  he  loves 
them?  Any  system  of  pure  ethics,  so  called,  is  unsci- 
entific, because  it  cuts  ethics  loose  from  the  world  and 
our  conception  of  the  World,  and  renders  thus  a  clear 
definition  of  goodness  impossible.  It  makes  of  moral- 
it}'  a  matter  of  mere  sentiment,  and  does  not  trace  its 
connexions  with  the  conditions  and  laws  of  existence. 

Suppose  Corvinus  were  to  agree  with  m}'  exposi- 
tion of  the  nature  of  morality  as  based  upon  definite 
conditions  of  existence,  he  would  still  object  to  my 
calling  these  conditions  by  the  religious  term  of  "God," 
because  he  believes  that  the  term  "God"  is  mislead- 
ing and  ambiguous,  as  it  implies  an  identity  with  the 
anthropomorphic  God-conception  of  our  religious  tra- 
ditions and  even  with  the  foolish  notions  of  the  un- 
thinking masses.  To  which  I  reply,  that  to  consider 
the  conditions  of  our  life  as  so  many  single  items  is 
as  erroneous,  perhaps  more  erroneous,  than  to  repre- 
sent them  under  the  allegory  of  a  personal  Creator; 
for  they  are  one,  and  all  their  various  manifestations 
are,  according  to  circumstances,  so  many  applications 
of  one  and  the  same  principle,  power,  or  tendency, 
law,  or  whatever  you  may  be  pleased  to  call  it. 

But,  whatever  we  may  call  it,  it  remains  a  reality 
of  universal  importance,  the  existence  of  which  can  be 
denied  onl)'  by  those  who  cannot  see  it  on  account  of 
its  omnipresence. 

He  who  seeks  the  omnipresent  in  the  blue  sky,  or 
in  the  statue  of  a  god,  or  in  the  sound  of  a  word,  or 
on  the  altar  of  a  church,  will  not  find  it.  He  must 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  either  it  does  not  exist  or 
that  its  existence  cannot  be  proved.  Taking  this  view, 
Kant  proposed  to   postulate    the   existence    of   God, 


while  I  would  say  that  God  is  an  undeniable  fact  of 
experience.  A  God  whose  existence  can  only  be  pos- 
tulated is  a  poor  God  and  will  be  of  little  use  to  us. 
God,  in  order  to  be  a  true  God,  must  be  an  omnipres- 
ent factor  in  the  formation  of  life  and  in  the  shaping 
of  our  destinies. 

Such  is  the  God  of  the  Religion  of  Science,  and  he 
is  different  from  God,  as  tradition  has  shaped  his  pic- 
ture, in  so  far  as  he  is  nearer  to  us,  as  he  is  truer, 
grander,  and  higher.  But  should  we  for  that  reason 
call  him  by  another  name? 

Our  God-conception  is  the  direct  lineal  descendent 
of  the  old  God  conception,  and  should  on  that  account 
alone  be  called  by  the  same  name,  similarly  as  every 
one  of  us  bears  the  name  of  his  great-great-grand- 
father in  direct  father's  line,  although  our  great-great- 
grandfather might  have  been  ver}'  different  in  charac- 
ter and  occupation  from  us,  and  although  he  may 
have  spoken  a  language  which  we  no  longer  under- 
stand. 

The  God-idea  of  the  Religion  of  Science  is  on  the 
most  essential  point  the  same  as  the  God-  idea  of  Moses 
and  of  Christ.  It  is  the  recognition  of  the  eternal 
omnipresence  of  such  conditions  in  the  universe  which 
make  man  possible,  and  by  man  we  here  understand 
a  rational,  purpose- pursuing,  and  morally- aspiring 
being.  That  the  old  prophets  spoke  of  him  as  a  per- 
sonalitj'  is  unessential  ;  and  there  is  good  reason  for 
claiming  that  this  m.ode  of  speech  was  an  intentional 
allegory  which  was  never  meant  to  convey  the  idea  of  an 
anthropomorphic  God.  This  much  is  certain,  that  the 
religious  leaders  of  mankind  were  prompted  by  their 
experiences  to  teach  and  to  preach.  Whatever  errors 
influenced  their  doctrines,  they  endeavored  to  formu- 
late the  conditions  of  man's  being  in  an  impressive 
and  popular  language  and  applied  the  truth,  such  as 
the}'  understood  it,  to  practical  life. 

There  are  people  who  object  to  parable  teaching 
and  decry  allegories  as  ambiguities,  and  I  confess  that 
there  is  a  truth  in  their  objection.  I  for  one  am  al- 
ways on  my  guard  lest  I  be  satisfied  with  a  fairy-tale 
instead  of  grasping  the  truth.  But  at  the  same  time 
I  am  convinced  of  the  inevitableness  of  symbolic  lan- 
guage, for  even  science  cannot  dispense  with  similes 
and  quid  pro  giio's.  Our  scientific  terminology  is  full 
of  mythological  expressions,  and  if  we  try  to  get  radi- 
cally rid  of  allegoric  speech,  we  find  out  that  it  is  the 
method  of  language  to  name  classes  of  things  with  the 
help  of  comparisons,  figurative  uses  of  words,  and 
similes.  Science  in  quest  of  knowledge  walks  up  hill 
on  the  zigzag  road  of  approximating  truth  by  a  gradual 
approach  to  its  ideal  summit  of  the  perfection  of  ab- 
solute cognition. 

I  join  freethinkers  when  they  deny  the  errors  of 
traditional  religion,  when  they  insist  on   the   foolish- 


4732 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


ness  of  believing  in  a  God-individual  and  in  a  soul- 
essence,  but  I  part  company  with  them  when  they  pro- 
claim that  there  is  nothing  good  in  the  old  traditions, 
that  they  are  a  hotbed  of  poisonous  plants,  and  that 
they  must  be  destroyed. 

The  freethinker's  criticism  is  an  important  factor 
in  the  evolution  of  religion,  and  will  be  better  under- 
stood by  religious  people  when  freethought  has  ac- 
complished its  purpose.  The  keen  sarcasm  of  Colonel 
Ingersoll  awakens  the  old  dogmatists  from  their  slum- 
ber ;  it  cuts  Christian  paganism  with  its  absurdities 
to  the  quick,  but  does  not  touch  real  religion,  the  foun- 
tain-head of  all  religion,  the  spirit  of  which  lingers 
even  in  superstitions  and  aberrations,  although  it  may 
sometimes  be  difficult  to  trace  it. 

The  mission  of  the  Religion  of  Science  is  not  to 
destroy  religion,  but  to  preserve  it  ;  not  to  abolish  the 
churches,  but  to  reform  and  to  quicken  them  ;  not  to 
annihilate  man's  faith  in  the  holiness  of  truth,  but  to 
purify  it  of  prejudice,  to  widen  its  sympathies,  and  to 
develop  it  to  a  nobler  and  higher  apprehension. 

We  are  radical,  and  push  radicalism  to  its  utmost 
extreme;  but  at  the  same  time  we  are  conservative. 
We  do  not  mean  to  begin  the  world  over  again,  but 
expect  that  the  new  must  develop  out  of  the  old. 
Progress  is  growth,  and  can  only  be  brought  about  by 
gradual  improvement  and  transformation. 

Therefore,  far  from  being  hostile  toward  the  churches, 
the  Religion  of  Science  comes  as  their  friend.  We  criti- 
cise the  dogmas  and  ecclesiastical  practices,  not  be- 
cause we  are  irreligious  but  because  we  seek  a  higher 
religion.  Far  from  being  an  atheist  in  the  sense  in 
which  Corvinus  uses  the  word,  I  am  a  theologian. 
My  work  is  not  prompted  by  any  irreverence  or  desire 
to  discredit  the  religious  aspirations  of  the  past,  but 
to  lead  them  out  of  confusion  into  clearness,  out  of 
dreamy  haziness  into  the  full  light  of  conscious  knowl- 
edge, out  of  mythology  into  the  exactness  of  scientific 
truth.  p.  c. 


BOOK  REVIEWS. 


The  Dying  Rah.^t's  Sermon.  Written  in  Pali,  has  been  trans- 
lated into  English  and  published  by  C.  Sniiieyt'sini^'/ia,  Galle, 
Ceylon. 
The  pamphlet  contains  the  Pali  text  in  ninety-eight  stanzas, 
with  a  literal  translation  and  without  any  reflexions  on  the  doc- 
trinal terms  of  Buddhism,  such  as  "the  soullessness  of  the  five 
constituents  of  the  body."  Buddha's  teaching  is  puzzling  so  long 
as  atman  is  translated  by  sonl.  Buddha  denies  the  existence  of 
the  atman,  i.  f.,  of  a  metaphysical  soul-being  that  is  supposed  to 
be  the  agent  behind  the  real  facts  of  man's  psychical  life  ;  but 
Buddha  does  not  deny  the  reality  of  these  facts  themselves.  Man's 
existence  is  his  karma,  and  the  assumption  of  an  atman  that  per- 
forms his  karma  is  absurd.  If  the  atman  is  to  be  called  the  soul, 
Buddha  denies  the  existence  of  the  soul  ;  and  in  this  respect  he 
agrees  with  the  results  of  modern  psychology,  which  alf,o  is  some- 
times inappropriately   characterised   as   a  psychology   without   a 


soul.  But  Buddha  at  the  same  time  insists  on  the  immortality  of 
man's  karma.'  These  two  points  come  out  clearly  enough  in  T/ie 
/''villi;  A'li/iii/'s  Sennan,  which  is  probably  a  very  old  document  of 
Southern  Buddhism.  The  doctrine  of  the  non-existence  of  the 
atman  is  set  forth  in  the  stanzas  56,  57,  58,  59,  62  : 

"  It  is  absurd  to  believe  in  the  existence  of  a  soul  in  this  bodyl 
a  body  which  is  unsteady  and  perishable  as  a  blaze  of  fire.  The 
idea  of  a  soul  is  as  absurd  as  that  of  a  barren  woman's  son  run- 
ning a  race  along  the  shaft  of  a  carriage  made  of  the  horns  of  a 
rabbit. 

"It  is  rank  nonsense  to  say  that  there  is  a  soul  in  this  body; 
a  body  that  if:  actually  soulless  and  equal  to  a  plantain  tree.  He 
that  erroneously  persists  in  believing  that  there  is  a  soul,  is  in- 
deed in  no  way  unequal  to  one  who  attempts  to  drink,  in  order  to 
slake  his  thirst,  a  draught  of  mirage  out  of  a  cup  made  of  a  bubble 
of  water. 

"The  endeavors  of  an  unintelligent  man  to  impute  to  a  mir- 
age scent  extracted  from  the  flowers  of  a  fig  tree  are  all  in  vain, 
and  in  like  manner,  he  that  persists  in  the  erroneous  impression 
that  there  is  a  soul  in  this  body  reaps  no  benefit,  since  there  is  no 
soul  actually  in  existence. 

"  There  is  nothing  to  constitute  a  soul  either  in  the  five  con- 
stituent parts  (the  body,  the  sensation,  the  perception,  the  reason- 
ing, and  the  consciousness)  or  in  the  six  personal  residences'-  (the 
eye,  the  ear,  the  nose,  the  tongue,  the  organ  of  touch  in  the  bodily 
system,  and  the  understanding),  and  he  that  persists  in  the  belief 
of  the  existence  of  a  soul  is  evidently  compared  to  one  persevering 
to  obtain  a  solid  beam  from  the  stem  of  a  plantain  tree. 

"As  the  silly  hart  in  vain  runs  after  the  fanciful  sight  of  yon- 
der mirage,  taking  it  to  be  a  sheet  of  water,  so  do  people  give  way 
to  desire,  purely  from  a  false  impression  that  there  is  steadiness 
in  the  unsteady  existence  of  nature." 

The  positive  element  of  the  immortality  of  the  actual  facts  of 
man's  soul-life,  as  manifested  in  man's  karma,  might  come  out 
stronger;  but  this  apparent  negativism  is  characteristic  of  the 
Southern  Church  of  Buddhism.  Nevertheless  it  is  plainly  ex- 
pressed. For  again  and  again  the  rahat  inculcates  the  injunction 
of  not  to  cling  to  wealth  or  earthly  goods,  but  to  lay  up  prudently 
a  store  of  good  deeds,  which  is  the  only  treasure  that  is  not  imper- 
manent.    We  read  in  stanza  43  : 

"Is  it  wise  in  any  being  to  stick  to  life  and  wealth,  when 
wealth  is  like  wind,  fire,  or  water  ;  when  life  is  like  a  flash  of 
lightning,  which  is  impermanent." 

And  in  stanzas  30-31  : 

"  Hasten  to  do  good  and  to  obtain  Nibbhana,  leaving  undone 
what  may  entail  grief  and  pain  on  any  one. 

"Neither  his  wealth,  friends,  children,  relations,  servants, 
nor  his  wife,  as  dear  as  life,  accompany  him  that  is  about  to  de- 
part this  life;  only  the  result  of  his  own  deeds  of  merit  and  de- 
merit done  in  this  world." 

We  are  glad  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  three  interesting 
and  able  papers  by  Mr.  Lester  F.  Ward,  of  Washington,  D.  C. 
They  are  all  reprints.  The  first  is  on  Fossil  Plnnls  and  is  from 
Vol.  'VI.  of  JoJmson's  Universal  Cyclopudia.  It  gives  a  brief  but 
admirable  resume  of  the  facts  of  palaeobotany.  The  second,  from 
Siieiice,  sketches  the  life  and  work  of  two  eminent  inquirers  in  the 
same  field,  Saporta  and  Williamson,  both  of  whom  died  during 
the  present  year.  The  last  paper  is  a  reprint  from  the  American 
Journal  of  Sorioloxy  and  is  on  '/'lie  Place  of  Sociology  Aiiioug  the 
Sciences.     Mr.    Ward   regards  sociology    as    "the   cap-sheaf    and 

IThat  our  interpretation  of  itie  Buddhistic  doctrine  is  in  harmony  with 
representative  thinkers  of  Southern  Buddhism  may  be  learned  from  the  re- 
view of  The  Gospel  of  BuJtiltii  in  The  Buddhist,  a  reprint  of  wliich  appears  in 
another  column  of  the  present  number. 

:^The  elements  which  constitute  man's  personality. 


THE    OF>EN    COURT. 


4733 


crown  of  any  true  system  of  classification  of  the  sciences,  and  also 
the  last  and  highest  landing  on  the  great  staircase  of  education." 
We  quote  the  following  paragraph,  which  is  interesting  both  in 
itself  and  as  an  illustration  of  the  influence  which  our  predilec- 
tions and  favorite  studies  have  en  our  estimate  of  things.  ' '  Comte 
was  typical  of  the  French  mind  in  general  when  at  its  best.  There 
is  no  greater  error  than  that  of  thinking  it  light  and  trivial.  I  have 
heard  mathematicians,  astronomers,  and  physicists  say  the  same 
fo.'  these  great  departments  of  science.  Every  chemist,  anatomist, 
ani  physiologist  must  be  acquainted  with  French  thought  on  these 
subjects.  It  was  Lamarck  who  really  broke  the  way  to  the  new 
biology  and  gave  it  its  name.  Political  economy,  with  all  its 
merits  and  defects,  originated  with  the  physiocrats.  In  the  very 
word  altruism  Comte  laid  the  foundation  of  a  scientific  ethics. 
And  fur  moral  power  in  fiction  what  author  has  approached  Victor 
Hugo  ?  The  French  mind  penetrates  to  the  very  heart  of  every 
problem  it  attacks  and  is  not  deterred  by  practical  obstacles.  It 
has  thus  been  the  great  organiser  of  human  thought,  leaving  the 
details  and  frictional  hindrances  to  the  German  and  English 
schools.  France  has  furnished  the  warp  of  science  and  philoso- 
phy, other  nations  their  woof." 


NOTES. 

It  is  a  strange  fact  that  liberal  religious  people  are  frequently 
much  more  narrow-minded  than  the  old-fashioned  orthodox  ones. 
As  one  instance,  we  publish  a  review  of  Subhadra  Bhikshu's  Bud- 
Jhisl  Catechism  and  of  The  Gospel  of  BuJJha ,  coming  from  a  liberal 
religious  journal.  The  Outlook  not  only  has  not  the  slightest  idea 
of  the  character  of  the  philosophy  represented  in  The  Ofen  Court. 
which  it  calls  "materialistic  monism"  and  "  pantheism," '  but  it 
also  thinks  that  books  that  attempt  to  interpret  ISuddhistic  thought 
"are  unnecessary  in  the  world,  at  any  rate  to  the  world  of  West- 
ern Christendom."  While  Roman  Catholic  clergymen  at  Paris 
prepare  themselves  for  holding  a  second  Religious  Parliament  in 
igoo.  The  Outlook  proposes  to  shut  Christendom  up  in  a  Chinese 
wall.  The  reviewer  must  have  had  a  dream  while  reading  The 
Gospel  of  Buddha,  for  he  blames  its  author  for  sugge.=;ting  "that 
we  substitute  this  for  the  religion  of  Jesus,"  although  in  the  whole 
Gospel  of  Buddha  there  is  not  the  slightest  attempt  at  proposing 
such  a  substitution.  The  Gospel  of  Buddha  is  intended  to  be  a  sober 
conception  of  Buddhism,  written  for  the  purpose  of  stimulating 
our  religious  thought,  especially  in  its  relation  to  the  psychological 
problem.  Whether  or  not  it  faithfully  represents  the  Buddhistic 
doctrine,  it  is  for  Buddhists  to  say.  We  reprint  the  review  of 
'The  Outlook  \s\\.\io\xi.  further  remark,  as  a  warning  to  thoughtless 
critics  : 

"The  teachings  of  Gautama,  called  the  Buddha,  were  salva- 
tion to  myriads  in  the  Orient  tv\enty-five  hundred  years  ago,  but 
they  are  perdition  to  the  world  of  modern  Christendom.  It  will 
never  be  possible  to  reverse  the  whirling  of  the  wheel  of  progress. 
The  growth  of  the  world  cannot  be  undone,  the  knowledge  of  the 
world  cannot  be  unlearned.  Two  attempts  to  introduce  Buddhism 
lie  before  us;  they  are  of  entirely  different  spirit  and  wisdom. 
They  are  also  entirely  different  interpretations  of  Buddhism.  The 
Buddhist  Catechism,  by  Subhadra  Bikshu  (G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons, 
New  York),  is  a  translation  from  a  German  version,  and  is  mani- 
festly a  propagandist  essay.  We  suspect  that  in  this  book  Bud- 
dhism has  passed  through  a  mind  surcharged  with  the  Occidental- 
ism of  Schopenhauer.  Yet  the  Catechism  professes  to  be  consonant 
with  the  Singalese  sect  of  Buddhists.  This  sect  is  supposed  to  be 
nearest   the  original   doctrine  of   Gautama.      .\s  in  Christianity, 

1  As  to  our  opinion  on  the  subject  oE  materialism,  see  Fundamctttal  Prob- 
lems, second  edition,  pp.  350-354,  and  on  the  subject  of  pantheism,  see  Homi- 
lies 0/ Science,  pp.  90-94.  Compare  also  our  criticism  of  that  kind  of  monism 
which  regards  "matter"  as  "the  thing-in-itself,"  in  The  ironist,  \o\.  IV., 
No.  2,  p.  228  et  seq..  Vol.  V.,  No.  2,  p.  282  et  seq.,  and  other  articles. 


there  is  a  vast  difference  between  the  various  sects  of  Buddhists. 
We  are  not  yet  in  the  position  to  say  with  dogmatism  what  is  the 
only,  or  the  realist,  Buildhism.  Perhaps  there  never  was  an  ab- 
solute uniformity  in  Buddha's  own  day.  It  is  clear  that,  as  his 
sa)ings  are  reported,  he  uttered  many  things  hard  to  reconcile 
This  Catechism  will  be  useful  !0  those  theosophists  who  have  not 
yet  got  beyond  the  stage  of  archsological  occultism.  Dr.  Paul 
Carus,  in  his  Gospel  of  Buddha,  speaks  to  a  different  audience — 
the  rational,  not  the  mystical,  folk.  Nevertheless,  this  rationalism 
is  mystical.  He  redeems  Buddhism  from  the  atheistic  bondage 
only  to  chain  it  to  his  car  of  materialistic  monism.  He  emanci- 
pates the  Gospel  of  the  Light  of  Asia  from  the  service  of  nihilism 
in  order  that  it  may  minister  unto  pantheism.  His  explanations 
are  facile.  We  would  gladly  assent  to  his  preaching  if  behind  his 
pulpit  we  did  not  detect  the  evil  spirit  of  a  blank  materialism. 
Buddhism,  in  one  of  its  forms,  is  precisely  the  garb  to  fit  Dr. 
Carus's  teachings  It  suits  the  purpose  of  the  Philosopher  of 
Chicago,  and,  so  far,  all  is  well.  But  when  it  is  suggested  that 
we  substitute  this  for  the  religion  of  Jesus,  we  ask,  not  as  Chris- 
tians, but  as  philosophers,  'Dr.  Carus,  are  not  you  nodding  ?'  Of 
course,  there  is  much  that  is  fine  in  Buddhism,  especially  as  Dr. 
Carus  expounds  it,  and  there  are  also  not  a  few  superficial  resem- 
blances to  Christianity;  but  would  Dr.  Carus  in  all  seriousness  te 
willing  to  live  in  a  world  entirely  Buddhistic  ?  and  does  not  he 
understand  that  in  their  essence  Christianity  and  Buddhism  are 
diametrically  opposed  ?  I-"or  these  reasons,  if  for  no  other,  we  feel 
indisposed  to  seriously  consider  these  two  books.  They  are  un- 
necessary to  the  world,  at  any  rate  to  the  world  of  Western  Chris- 
tendom.     (The  Open  Court  Company,  Chicago.)" 

"  The  Huddhiit.  X  Weekly  Magazine  and  the  Organ  of  the 
Southern  Church  of  Buddhism,"  published  in  Colombo,  Ceylon, 
contains  in  one  of  its  latest  numbers  (Vol.  VII.,  No.  36)  the  fol- 
lowing editorial  on  'The  Gospel  of  Buddha  :  "Under  the  above 
title  is  a  work  before  us,  compiled  by  Dr.  Paul  Carus  on  Buddhism 
from  old  records.  His  method  of  treatment  of  the  subject  is  at 
once  original,  succinct,  and  comprehensive,  thereby  making  it  less 
tedious  than  most  works  of  the  kind  produced  from  different  points 
of  view  of  the  system,  as  well  as  through  motives  other  than  a  de- 
sire to  faithfully  represent  its  true  character  and  value.  We  are 
glad  to  find,  that  in  the  work  under  review,  the  latter  unfair  ele 
ment  has  not  entered  into  the  mind  of  the  author,  except  the  good 
wish  lo  judge  well  and  to  impart  the  result  of  such  labors  to  others- 
The  eminent  feature  of  the  work  is  its  grasp  of  the  difficult  sub- 
ject and  the  clear  enunciation  of  the  doctrine  of  the  most  puzzling 
problem  of  atman,  as  taught  in  Buddhism.  So  far  as  we  have 
examined  the  question  of  atman  ourselves  from  the  work  of  South- 
ern canon,  the  view  taken  by  Dr.  Paul  Cat  us  is  accurate,  and  we 
venture  to  think  that  it  is  not  opposed  to  the  doctrine  of  Northern 
Buddhism.  The  coi;ception  of  soul  by  advanced  thinkers  of  the 
present  day,  is  in  strange  agreement  with  the  Buddha's  teach- 
ing thereon.  The  theory  of  atman  was,  in  the  time  of  our  Blessed 
Master,  carried  to  such  absurd  extremes,  that  He  was  obliged  to 
deny  the  existence  thereof  in  man.  The  Brahmans  believed  that 
the  soul  is  a  metaphysical  entity  behind  the  Samskaras,  pre  exi.'-t 
ing  in  its  essential  purity  all  throughout  its  various  changes,  and 
being  the  one  witness  of  all  the  phenomena  of  the  senses.  The 
Master  saw  the  mistake,  and  pointed  out  the  utter  inconsistency 
of  the  teaching,  of  the  Brahmans  in  thinking  to  make  an  already 
pure  thing  still  purer  by  personal  works,  and  in  the  necessity  of 
its  [the  soul's]  having  to  descend  into  matter  to  get  back,  after 
many  incarnations,  to  its  starting  point. 

"Then  again,  if  the  soul  is  the  one  witness  of  all  the  phenom- 
ena communicated  through  its  windows  [the  senses],  how  does  it 
not  see,  smell,  taste,  hear,  and  feel  whenever  it  opens  any  one  of 
the  windows  ?     On  the  contrary  this  atman  self,   our  teachings 


4734 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


assert,  is  a  mere  chimera,  and  is  the  root  of  all  error,  doubt, 
ignorance,  and  consequent  evils.  To  forget  self,  and  to  abide  in 
virtue,  pity,  and  universal  love  are  the  watchwords  of  Buddhism  ; 
and  the  cumbersome  rites,  ceremonies,  and  worship  which  the 
priesthood  has  imported  into  it  from  time  to  time,  are  the  wretched 
glitter  of  its  exoteric  paraphernalia.  But  on  that  account  Bud- 
dhism is  not  materialistic,  nor  less  spiritual  in  its  final  end  and 
purpose  with  its  expressed  recognition  of  the  theory  of  Karma, 
Sam?ara  and  Nirvana.  '  Ex  nihilo,  nihil  fit'  is  an  axiom,  which 
was  admitted  by  the  Master,  when  he  asserted  that  two  things  are 
eternal,  changeless,  causeless,  and  Karmaless — they  being  the 
Nirvana  Dhalu  and  the  Akasa  Dhatu.  These  two  co-exist,  and  are 
the  Pratya  and  Hetu  of  all  the  cosmos — though  dual  in  nature 
they  are  but  one  eternal  beeness.  Putting  into  modern  intelligible 
parlance,  the  Nirvana  and  the  Akasa  Dhatus,  are  primary  ;«/;/,/ 
and  matter,  which  according  to  inherent  laws — Swabha  Dharma — 
manifest  themselves,  in  the  various  ways  we  observe  them,  for  the 
working  out  of  a  final  end.  In  the  process  of  evolution  the  '  chitta- 
Paranparawa'  [continuity  of  mind]  is  unbroken — like  an  extinct 
flame  that  has  kindled  another,  or  a  string  which  is  tied  to  oppo- 
site poles  with  numberless  beads  strung  on  :  and  hence  the  iden- 
tity of  the  individual  is  preserved — iiaca  aniio. 

"  We  might  now  touch  upon  the  septenary  principles  of  man 
according  to  theosophical  teachings,  to  point  out  the  strange  coin- 
cidence of  its  views  of  atman  with  that  of  our  conception  thereof. 
The  principles  are  :  Kiipa,  Jiva,  Lingn,  Sariia,  /\iima-Ri<pa, 
Manas,  Btiddhi  and  Alma.  And  all  things  in  nature,  not  except- 
ing man,  are  constituted  of  more  or  less  of  these  principles,  and 
in  a  degree  varying  in  accordance  with  the  stage  of  individual  de- 
velopment. Strictly  speaking  there  is  not  now  among  us  any  one 
man  who  can  lay  claim  to  the  possession  of  the  three  higher  prin- 
ciples to-wit,  Manas- Buddhi  Atman.  In  fact  there  is  none,  who 
has  got  the  pure  spirit  (atman)  in  him,  but  a  distant  ray  only  of 
it ;  thereby  showing  that  which  man  has,  is  not  the  atman,  but  a 
distant  ray  of  it  bound  up  with  the  samskaras.  Man  must  in  the 
due  course  of  events  be  purged  of  the  deadly  poison  of  the  Kama 
Tanlia,  B/iava  Taiilia,  and  Vibliava  Taiilia,  to  realise  the  pure 
eternal  light  of  Nirvana — atman — bliss  everlasting.  The  higher 
planetary  spirits  and  even  Mahatmas,  according  to  theosophical 
teachings  exist  in  their  three  higher  principles — and  they  are  thus 
far  remote  from  being  called  pure  spirits.  The  great  Beyond  un- 
known, is  not  a  safe  field  of  speculation,  and  must  therefore  be 
left  untouched. 

"The  above  remarks,  are  simply  incidental  to  our  recom- 
mending the  Gospel  of  BiiddJia  as  a  very  safe  and  handy  book  to 
the  student  of  our  Agama,  and  even  to  those  who,  to  some  ex- 
tent, studied  the  subject  from  other  sources. 

"  The  value  of  the  book  under  notice,  would  be  apparent  to 
those  who  read  the  brief  statement  of  the  tenets  of  Buddhism  and 
explanations  appended  at  the  last  page  of  the  said  work." 


Emperor  William  of  Germany  has  designed  a  picture,  in  which 
Buddha  riding  on  the  Chinese  dragon  is  represented  as  threaten- 
ing the  civilisation  of  the  Christian  nations.  The  fact  is  that  the 
Chinese  question  is  simply  due  to  the  jealousy  of  those  powers 
who  expect  to  receive  t!ie  lion's  share  of  the  spoils  when  poor 
China  is  no  longer  able  to  hold  her  own  against  her  many  enemies. 

We  ought  to  add  that  while  China  is  covered  with  Buddhistic 
pagodas  and  monasteries,  the  policy  of  the  government  is  by  no 
means  Buddhistic.  The  private  life  of  the  people  is  strongly  in- 
fluenced by  Buddha's  doctrines  but  not  the  government,  a  fact 
which  appears  most  prominently  in  the  bloody  sacrifice  of  a  white 
bull  without  blemish  that  is  annually  offered  by  the  emperor  to 
Shang  Ti.  "the  Lord  on  High,"  who  is  worshipped  as  the  highest 
god,  creator,  and  sovereign  ruler  of  the  world.  If  the  Chinese 
government  were  Buddhistic,  no   bloody  sacrifice  would   be   tole- 


rated. The  higher  classes  of  the  Chinese  nation  are  under  the  in- 
fluence of  Confucius  rather  than  Buddha.  It  was  one  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  Confucius  neither  to  affirm  nor  deny  the  existence  of 
gods  and  ghosts,  and  he  refrained  from  teaching  anything  concern- 
ing the  immortality  of  the  soul.  The  religion  of  Confucius  is 
practically  nothing  more  nor  less  than  agnosticism  and  his  ethics 
consists  in  reverence  of  the  sages  of  yore  who  preached  filial  de- 
votion and  submission  to  established  authority  in  politics  as  well 
as  in  literature  and  science. 

NE  W  PUB  Lie  A  TION. 


The  Prophets  of  Israel. 


POPULAR  SKETCHES  FROM 


OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTORY. 


CARL  HEINRICH  CORNILL, 

DOCTOR    OF    THEOLOGY,    AND    PROFPZSSOR    OF    OLD    TESTAMENT    HISTORY    IN    THE 
UNIVERSITY  OF  KONIGSBERG. 


Frontispiece,  Michael  Anselo's  Moses.  Witli  the  title  in  Hebrew  stamped 
in  gold  on  the  cover.     Pages,  200.     Analytical  Index.     Price,  Cloth,  St. 00,  net. 

A  concise  and  eloquent  account  of  the  course  of  development  and  signifi- 
cance of  the  prophetic  religion  of  Israel  according  to  the  latest  and  most  ap- 
proved researches.  Discusses  the  meaning  of  prophecy,  outlines  the  religion 
of  Moses,  gives  a  new  atenipt  at  a  historical  valuation  of  Elijah,  examines 
the  productions  of  the  prophetic  literature  in  the  chronological  order  estab- 
lished by  Old  Testament  inquiry,  portrays  the  historical  conditions  (Egypt, 
Assyria.  Babylonia,  Persia.  Greece)  and  the  contemporary  environment  of 
the  prophets,  characterises  their  achievements,  and  assigns  to  each  his  logi- 
cal and  organic  position  in  the  development  of  Israel's  religion.  The  book 
may  be  characterised  as  a  brief  sketch,  giving  only  the  salient  and  important 
outlines  of  the  religious  history  of  Israel  from  Mose  'down  to  the  time  of  the 
Maccabees.     It  has  met  with  an  unusually  favorable  reception  in  Europe. 


THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  CO., 

324  DEARBORN  ST.,  CHICAGO,  ILL. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,   Editor 


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CONTENTS  OF  NO.  432. 

FABLES  FROM  THE  NE^W  /ESOP.     The  Silly  Triangle. 

HuDOR  Genone 4727 

CONSERVATIVE    RADICALISM.      Reply    to    Corvinus. 

Editor 4728 

BOOK  NOTICES 4732 

NOTES 4733 


The  Open  Court. 


A   "H/'EEKLY  JOURNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  433.     (Vol.  IX.— 50.) 


CHICAGO,    DECEMBER   12,   1895. 


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THE   OLD    THEOLOGY  AND   THE    NEW  PHILOSOPHY. 

BY  THE  REV.  GEORGE  J.    LOW. 

Does  the  Christian  Church  realise  the  change  of 
front  in  all  secular  learning  which  has  taken  place  in 
the  last  half-century?  Does  she  ever  consider  that 
some  adjustment  is  required  in  her  teachings,  to  adapt 
them  to  that  change  of  front  ?  Does  she  ever  think  of 
the  mischief  resulting  from  a  Bourbon  polic\' of  learn- 
ing nothing  and  unlearning  nothing? 

The  Christian  minister, — no  matter  of  what  denomi- 
nation,— if  he  has  a  soul  above  and  beyond  the  welfare 
of  his  own  special  congregation,  must  needs  be  often 
troubled  over  the  present  condition  of  Christendom. 
And  that,  not  only  because  it  is  divided  into  so  many 
sects,  but  because  so  many  people  belong  to  no  sect 
at  all,  and  so  many  others,  though  nominally  attached 
to  some  form  of  Christianity,  in  point  of  fact  live  in 
total  disregard  of  all  religion.  In  the  Fonini  of  June, 
1892,  President  Hyde  of  Bowdoin  College,  writing  on 
the  "Impending  Paganism  of  New  England,"  draws 
a  gloomy  picture  of  the  state  of  religion  there.  He 
shows  that  in  fifteen  counties  over  one-half  of  the 
population  report  themselves  as  not  attending  any 
church  whatever ;  while  the  churches  themselves  are 
for  the  most  part  dragging  out  a  miserable  and  preca- 
rious existence,  their  "spiritual  life  dependent  on 
sporadic  revivals,"  their  financial  solvency  on  "sew- 
ing circles,  fairs,  and  entertainments,"  and  their  pas- 
torates in  a  constant  state  of  flux. 

Similar  complaints  come  from  other  writers  re- 
specting other  parts  of  the  continent,  and  many  sug- 
gestions are  made  for  bettering  matters.  "  How  to 
keep  the  young  men  in  the  Church,"  is  a  problem 
widely  discussed  ;  should  we  not  study  how  to  keep 
the  elders  also  ?  For  frequently  the  young  men  of  the 
present  day  don't  come  to  church  because  their  fathers 
don't. 

Various  causes  are  assigned  for  this  defection  ;  but 
I  fear  the  most  serious  cause  of  all  does  not  receive 
due  consideration,  and  that  is  : — a  general  conviction 
of  the  strained  relations  which  exist  between  Chris- 
tian doctrines  and  modern  learning.  The  pastor  who 
talks  frankly  with  the  people — or,  rather,  to  whom 
people  will  frankl)'  talk — will  soon  learn  that  there  are 
very  many,  even  of  the  regular  attendants  at  the  ser- 


vices of  the  sanctuary,  who  cannot  accept  the  doc- 
trines propounded  there.  Those  doctrines  are,  they 
deem,  out  of  harmony  with  what  they  learn  elsewhere. 
There  is  in  them  no  "analogy  between  revealed  reli- 
gion and  the  constitution  and  course  of  nature,"  as  it 
is  now  interpreted,  but  rather  a  great  antagonism. 
What  they  hear  from  the  pulpit  seems  to  them  irrecon- 
cilable with  what  they  have  heard  from  the  professor's 
chair  in  tlie  university.  And  seeing  that  nowadays  all 
our  smartest  young  people,  of  both  sexes,  go  to  the 
universities,  the  churches  are  in  danger  of  losing,  not 
only  the  young  men,  but  also  the  young  women. 

It  is  related  by  some  one  (I  think  Professor  Druni- 
mond)  of  some  eminent  scientist  (I  think  Faraday), 
who  was  at  the  same  time  a  devout  Christian,  that 
when  his  researches  conflicted  with  his  religious  pre- 
judices, he  found  the  only  way  to  quiet  his  conscience 
was  to  shut  out  all  religious  sentiment  while  in  the 
laboratory,  and  then  to  equally  shut  out  all  scientific 
truth  in  his  hours  of  devotion.  Of  course,  such  a 
tnodtis  vivciidi  could  not  thoroughly  satisfy  any  one  :  it 
must  eventually  make  one  feel  that  he  was  a  sort  of 
theological  Jekyll  and  scientific  Hyde.  But  is  not 
this  double  existence  enacted  now  by  many  who  "go 
to  church  "  regularly,  to  satisfy  their  religious  emo- 
tions, yet,  when  there,  hear  dogmas  propounded  which 
their  intellects  cannot  accept? 

And  here  let  me  define  my  position.  I  do  not 
think  the  world  would  reject  Christianity  because  of 
the  miraculous  element  in  it.  Men  in  general  feel  the 
need  of  a  revealed  religion,  and  a  revelation  of  any 
kind  must  needs  be  supernatural.  Nor  do  I  think 
the}'  would  reject  the  great  facts  of  Christianity  as 
contained  in,  let  us  say,  the  Apostles'  Creed.  But 
they  cannot  receive  the  rationale  of  those  facts,  the 
philosophical  systems  built  on  them — the  theology  of 
the  pulpit,  in  short. 

Christian  theology,  in  the  course  of  its  history,  has 
at  all  times  been  colored  by  the  dominant  philosophy 
of  the  day;  and  this  was  natural,  and,  indeed,  inevi- 
table. In  the  writings  of  the  Post-Nicene  fathers  it 
was  more  than  colored  with  Greek  philosophy;  it  was 
adulterated  with  it.  In  the  Reformation  age  the  new 
discoveries  and  the  "new  learning"  gave  philosophy 
and   theology  a   new   direction,   not  only  among  the 


4736 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


reformers,  but  even  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 
And  now — with  the  New  Learning  of  this  century, 
causing  our  ideas  of  almost  everything  to  undergo  a 
complete  reversal — the  time  has  come  when  theology 
should  adapt  itself  to  the  changed  currents  of  thought. 

For  effecting  this  purpose  a  great  advantage  is 
possessed  by  the  Church  of  Rome  in  what  she  is 
pleased  to  call  the  "  Living  Voice."  When  the  oppor- 
tune time  comes  she  can  pronounce  on  any  opinion  as 
to  whether  it  is  "iff  JiJc,"  or  only  "tenable,"  or  "tem- 
erarious," or  "heretical."'  And  then,  when  the  times 
change,  the  Living  Voice  can,  if  requisite,  change  its 
tone  ;  as  the  cases  of  Copernicus,  Galileo,  and  others 
testify.  On  the  other  hand,  a  great  disadvantage  un- 
der which  most  Protestant  bodies  labor,  is  the  having 
a  "written  constitution,"  from  which  they  dare  riot 
deviate.  The  more  such  a  document  enters  into  par- 
ticulars, the  more  difficulty  oppresses  the  body  bound 
by  it  :  for  when  new  light  acquired  b}'  science  throws 
new  light  on  religion,  and  modification  is  suggested — 
"then  comes  the  tug  of  war."- 

But  it  is  pretty  evident  that  no  ecclesiastical  body 
as  j'et  realises  the  complete  revolution  which  the  new 
philosophy  is  forcing  on  the  world  of  thought.  There 
has  come  about  a  change  of  front — a  different  point  of 
view — a  reversal  of  what  we  may  call  the  dominant 
idea — of  all  philosophy;  which  I  would  express  in  this 
wise  : 

1.  From  the  time  of  Pythagoras  until  of  late  the 
dominant  idea  was  : — 

There  is  something  lost  which  we  are  seeking  to 
recover, 

2.  In  modern  philosophy  the  dominant  idea  is: — 
There   is   something   never   yet   attained    towards 

which  we  tend. 

The  contrast  between  these  opposing  ideas  may  be 
seen  by  comparing,  let  us  say,  the  "Phaedo"  of  Plato 
with  the  psychology  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  and  other 
moderns.  We  can  understand,  in  studying  the 
"Phaedo,"  how  the  idea  of  "something  lost"  origi- 
nated. Plato's  insistence  upon  those  strange  flashes 
of  "reminiscence,"  which  we  all  have  at  times,  as  the 
grounds  for  maintaining  the  immortality  (and  the  pre- 
existence)  of  the  soul,  was  formerly  looked  upon  as 
sound  reasoning.  But  modern  physiology  has  been 
busy  picking  the  brain  to  pieces,  and  has  accounted 
for  those  "reminiscences,"  or  as  Dr.  Draper  {^Conflict 
Bet7veen   Religion   and  Science,  page    132)   calls   them, 

1  See  "The  Verdict  of  Rome  on  the  Happiness  in  Hell,"  by  Fatlier  Clarke, 
S.  J.,  in  tlie  t^ineteenth  Centurj'  masazlne  of  September,  1S93. 

2  An  illustration  of  this  was  shown  in  May,  1886,  when  the  General  Assem- 
bly of  the  South  Presbyterian  Church,  meeting  in  Augusta,  Ga.,  adopted  by  a 
vote  of  137  to  13  a  resolution  declaring  the  evolution  theory  as  applied  to  man 
unscriptural  and  calculated  to  lead  to  the  denial  of  the  fundamental  truths  of 
the  Christian  faith.  While  at  the  same  time  eminent  Roman  Catholics  like 
Prof.  St.  George  Mivart  were  propounding  these  doctrines  with  impunity. 
See  also  the  Contemporary  Review  of  July,  1895,  for  a  remarkable  deliverance 
on  the  subject  by  Sig.  A.  Fogazzaro. 


"vestiges  of  ganglionic  impressions."  These  faded 
flashes  of  memory,  which  some  circumstance,  trivial 
it  may  be,  happens  for  a  moment  to  redevelop  in  our 
brains,  no  doubt  first  impressed  men  with  that  idea  of 
"  something  lost,"  which  pervaded  all  their  mythology. 
The  story  of  Demeter,  of  Prometheus  and  Pandora, 
of  the  departed  Golden  Age,  and  a  number  of  such 
allusions  to  "something  lost,"  will  occur  to  the  clas- 
sical scholar  ;  and  according  to  late  researches  all  the 
earlier  races  seem  to  have  been  possessed  with  the 
same  idea.  Dr.  Cunningham  Geikie  (Hours  witSi  tlie 
Bible,  Vol.  I.,  Chap.  7)  furnishes  us  with  numerous 
Aryan  and  Semitic  myths  concerning  original  human- 
ity, which  are  looked  upon  by  the  orthodox  as  cor- 
roborations, by  the  critical  as  the  sources,  of  the 
account  in  Genesis,  Chapters  ii.  and  iii.  All  heathen 
philosophy,  it  seems,  was  based  on  the  idea  of  a  pri- 
meval state  of  bliss,  which  was  lost  by  some  catastro- 
phe caused  by  the  perversity  of  men  and  the  wrath  of 
the  gods.  This  leading  thought  was  incorporated  into 
the  Church's  theology,  not  by  the  earlier  fathers,  but 
by  St.  Augustine  and  his  followers  in  the  fifth  century. 
Now  this  idea — of  a  Golden  Age  of  physical  and 
moral  perfection  which  has  been  lost — is  very  hard  to 
reconcile  with  modern  thought.  For  when  could  it 
have  occurred?  Certainly  not  in  the  Silurian  or  Car- 
boniferous period  ;  or  later  when  the  huge  saurians,  the 

"  Dragons  of  the  prime 
That  tare  each  other  in  their  slime," 

were  the  lords  of  nature.  It  could  not  have  been  in 
the  Tertiary  Age,  in  pre-glacial  or  post-glacial  times. 
In  fact,  any  period  of  time,  be  it  ever  so  short,  on  any 
part  of  this  planet,  when  any  living  being  could  have 
passed  a  passionless  and  painless  existence,  is  incon- 
ceivable to  modern  thought.  Nature  is  crowded  with 
vestiges  of  the  past  reaching  back  to  untold  cycles  ; 
our  very  bodies,  so  physiologists  say,  are  museums  of 
the  relics  of  what  we  once  were.  But  these  fossils, 
these  vestiges,  these  relics,  never  indicate  a  Golden 
Age.  Whether  we  contemplate  the  trilobites  in  the 
limestone,  or  the  skeleton  of  the  Deinosaur,  or  the 
skulls  of  palaeolithic  men,  or  the  vermiform  appendix 
of  the  human  body  of  to-day,  there  is  no  indication  of 
a  past  glory  on  which  "  Ichabod"  is  stamped,  or  which 
we  would  desire  to  see  restored.  Everything — from  a 
scientific  point  of  view — tends  to  show  that  we  have 
emerged  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  state,  and  not  fallen 
from  an  ineffably  glorious  to  an  intolerably  debased 
condition. 

Such  are  the  general  impressions,  be  it  remem- 
bered, on  the  mind  of  every  young  graduate  or  student 
(or,  indeed,  thinker)  of  to-day.  And  when  he  "goes 
to  church,"  he  will  probably  hear  a  sermon  in  which 
the  whole  Christian  scheme  is  based,  explicitly  or  im- 
plicitly, on  a  "Fall"  worse  than  that  of  Prometheus  : 


THE    OF»EN     COURT. 


4737 


so  he  naturally  infers  that  Christianity  rests  on  false 
premises.  This  antithesis — and  not  the  supernatural 
element  in  the  New  Testament — is,  I  feel  sure,  the 
main  cause  of  the  impression  which  is  abroad,  (as  as- 
serted in  the  beginning  of  this  article, )  that  Christian 
doctrines  cannot  be  made  to  square  with  "  the  new 
learning."' 

The  question,  then, — and  it  is  a  momentous  one, — 
which  confronts  the  theologian  of  to-day  is  this  :  Does 
the  Christian  religion  so  depend  on  the  conventional 
story  of  the  Fall,  that  the  whole  Gospel  must  stand  or 
fall  with  it?  By  the  term,  "conventional  story,"  I 
mean  the  account  as  formulated  b}'  St.  Augustine, 
adopted  by  most  of  the  fathers  after  him,  elaborated 
by  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  and  the  Cahinistic  reformers, 
and  reaching  its  acme  in  Milton's  epic  of  "Paradise 
Lost." 

Dr.  Draper,  in  the  work  before  referred  to,  points 
out  "  the  complete  absence  of  the  doctrines  of  original 
sin,  total  depravity,"  etc.,  in  the  writings  of  the  anti- 
Nicene  fathers,  and  states  that  the  result  of  the  Pela- 
gian controversy  in  the  fifth  century,  was  that  thence- 
forth "the  Book  of  Genesis  was  made  the  basis  of 
Christianity."-  These  statements  of  the  sceptical 
philosopher  are  corroborated,  as  to  the  matters  of 
fact,  by  the  Christian  theologian,  Mr.  Oxenham,  in 
his  work,  Tlie  Catholic  Doctriiw  of  ilic  Atoiuiiwnt  ; 
though  a  very  different  complexion,  of  course,  is  given 
by  him  to  the  development.-'  But  the  fact  remains 
that  "the  Fall"  was  not  made  the  basis  of  Christian 
theology  until  the  time  of  St.  Augustine.  Certainly 
the  New  Testament  lays  no  stress  on  it;  nothing  like 
that  which  can  be  noticed  in  almost  ever}'  page  of  Mr. 
Oxenham's  work.  Even  in  his  summing  up  in  the 
last  chapter  he  says  (p.  303):  "Pain,  deformity,  sick- 
ness, sorrow,  old  age  are  an  heirloom  of  the  Fall." 
Now  this  is  a  proposition  which  seems  to  the  modern 
student  too  unscientific,  too  untenable,  not  to  say  too 
absurd,  to  be  entertained  as  the  premise  of  any  argu- 
ment. St.  Paul  (Romans  v.  and  i  Corinth,  xv. )  does 
indeed  draw  a  contrast  between  sin  and  death  through 
Adam,  and  grace  and  life  through  Christ  :  but  that  is 
a  ver}'  different  thing.  That  parallel  appeals  to  our 
reason,  and  is  quite  compatible  with  even  the  theory 
of  evolution  ;  but  neither  St.  Paul  nor  any  other  New 
Testament  writer  dwells  on  the  primal  innocence  and 
bliss  which  had  been  "lost." 

1 A  case  in  point  is  furnished  by  an  article  entitled  "  Tiie  High  Church 
Doctrine  of  Marriage  and  Divorce  "  in  the  Contetytporary  of  July,  1S95.  It  is 
a  review  of  Mr.  Watltins's  work  on  Holy  Matriinony  by  Dr.  Serrell.  The 
reader  of  it  will  see  how  argunjents  based  on  the  "  State  of  Innocence  in  the 
Garden  of  Eden  "  strike  one  who  is  familiar  with  modern  ideas. 

'^History  of  the  Coujlict  Beiiveeti  Religion  and  Science,  by  J.  W.  Draper, 
M.D.,  fifth  edition,  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  Chap.  II.,  p.  57. 

SThe  full  title  is:  The  Catholic  Doctrine  of  the  Atonement:  An  Historical 
Enquiry  Into  Its  Development  in  the  Church,  by  Henry  Nutcombe  Oxenham, 
M..A..,  second  edition.  London  :  W.  H.  Allen  &  Co.  The  first  paragraph  of 
the  Introduction  is  very  suggestive. 


Mr.  Oxenham,  though  he  insists  so  strongly  and 
so  constantly  on  the  "  Fall"  (always  with  a  capital 
"F"),  yet  rejects  with  disgust  what  he  calls  the  Cal- 
vinistic,  "juridical"  notion  of  the  Atonement,  which 
reduces  it  to  a  sort  of  compact  or  bargain.'  But  it  is 
scarcely  fair  to  charge  the  reformers  with  the  author- 
ship of  this  view.  Their  doctrines  were  simply  logical 
deductions  from  the  propositions  of  St.  Augustine  and 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  indeed  all  other  predestina- 
rians,  Mohammedans  included. - 

But  while  the  Thomist  doctors  in  the  Catholic 
Church  maintained  that  the  Atonement  was  the  con- 
sequent of  the  Fall,  and  but  for  it  would  not  have 
occurred,  nor  have  been  needed  ;  the  Scotists  main- 
tained with  their  master.  Duns  Scotus,  that  the  Incar- 
nation would  have  taken  place  even  if  there  had  been 
no  "Fall,"  because  Christ,  the  second  Adam,  was 
needed  to  raise  mankind  to  a  still  higher  state  than 
that  of  the  first  Adam.'* 

The  difference  then  on  this  point  between  the  doc- 
trines of  the  two  schools  was  that  (a)  The  Thomists 
held  that  the  death  of  Christ  was  necessitated  by  the 
Fall,  and  the  Incarnation  was  incidental  and  subsid- 
iary to  that  death; — (7')  The  Scotists  declared  that 
the  death  of  Christ — although  its  atoning  value  was 
attributable  to  the  Fall — was  a  necessary  incident  of  the 
Incarnation  which  was  paramount  and  was  decreed 
to  take  place  in  any  event,  in  order  that  the  second 
Adam  should  infuse  a  still  higher  life  into  the  race. 

We  can  see,  then,  how  the  Scotist  doctrine,  part- 
ing from  the  Thomist  on  this  seemingly  small  issue, 
gives  a  very  different  aspect  to  the  whole  Gospel.  To 
the  momentous  question  before  us  it  can  reply:  "The 
Christian  religion  does  not  depend  on  the  conventional 
story  of  the  Fall."  It  can  show  an  "analogy  between 
revealed  religion  and  the  constitution  and  course  of 
nature,"  even  if  interpreted  by  evolution:  for  the  In- 
carnation, as  the  principle  of  a  new  and  higher  life 
imparted  into  human  nature,  becomes  the  factor  of 
the  further  evolution  of  humanity. 

1  See  pages  209-220,  286,  etc. 

2  That  the  anomalies  involved  in  the  literal  and  predestinarian  rendering 
of  the  "Fall,"  present  themselves  to  speculative  minds,  in  Islam  as  well  as  in 
Christendom,  is  known  to  all  readers  of  Fitzgerald's  version  of  that  Persian 
heretic's  poem,  "The  Rabbayat  of  Omar  Kahyam"; 

"  What ! — Out  of  senseless  nothing  to  evoke 
A  conscious  Something,  to  resist  the  yoke 
Of  unpermitted  pleasure,  under  pain 
Of  everlasting  punishment,  if  broke  ? 

"  What : — From  His  wretched  creatures  be  repaid 
Pure  gold  for  what  He  lent  us  dross-allayed  ; 
Sue  for  a  debt  we  never  did  contract 
And  cannot  answer  ?     Oh,  the  sorry  trade  ! 

"  Oh  Thou — who  didst  with  pit-fall  and  with  gin 
Beset  the  road  I  was  to  travel  in  ; 
Thou  wilt  not  with  predestined  Evil  mesh 
Me  round,  and  then — impute  my  fall  to  Sin  ! 

"  Oh  Thou — who  man  of  baser  clay  didst  make. 
And  even  with  Paradise  devise  the  Snake,"  etc. 
■'0.^enham.  Catholic  Doctrine,  pp.  193,  194 


4738 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


This  view  is  more  adaptable  to  modern  thought, 
and  can  more  readily  free  itself  from  the  paganising  of 
the  Biblical  cosmogony,  which  was  done  by  the  later 
fathers  reading  into  it  the  classical  ideas  of  things. 
For,  after  all,  what  does  the  story  of  Genesis  ii.  and 
iii.  teach  us,  when  stripped  of  all  Neo-Platonism  and 
of  mediaeval  and  Miltonic  accretions?  To  understand 
it  rightl}',  we  should  bear  in  mind  that  the  book,  as 
Butler's  Analogy  says,  was  "evidently  written  in  a 
rude  and  unlettered  age";  and  moreover,  that  it  was 
written  for  one  of  those  Oriental  races  who  still  revel 
in  poetical  imagery,  and  allegory,  and  figures  of 
speech,  to  an  extent  that  we  matter-of-fact  Western- 
ers cannot  apprehend.  Well,  then,  reduced  to  plain 
prose  the  story  teaches  us  that  our  original  ancestors 
were  naked,  frugivorous,  and  ignorant  of  everything, 
even  of  the  difference  between  right  and  wrong  ;  and 
that  when  their  "  eyes  were  opened  "  to  that  difference 
a  step  forward  was  taken  in  the  development  of  their 
faculties.      (Gen.  ii.,  i6,  17,  25;  iii.,  22.) 

This  view  also  disposes  of  all  that  bootless  specu- 
lation concerning  the  "origin  of  evil,"  which  per- 
plexed the  theologians  and  philosophers  of  former 
times. 1  For  what  is  meant  by  "  Evil"?  If  we  include 
physical  evil,  such  as  Mr.  Oxenham's  list  of  "pain, 
deformity,  sickness,  sorrow,  old  age,"  we  may  say 
that  its  origin  was  contemporaneous  with  the  origin 
of  physical  life  :  say  with  the  first  time  that  a  speck  of 
protoplasm  was  devoured  by  a  bigger  or  more  devel- 
oped speck — or,  let  us  say,  the  first  time  an  Eozoon 
found  itself  assailed  by  a  Protozoon  :  and  from  that 
time  onwards,  pain,  death,  etc.,  increased  and  multi- 
plied with  the  development  of  organic  life,  for  many 
millions  of  years  until  the  advent  of  man.  If  we  con- 
fine our  investigations  to  the  origin  of  moral  evil — 
that  is,  Sin — we  must  first  find  out  the  origin  of  moral 
law,  of  which  moral  evil  is  the  infraction.  A  certain 
course  of  action  must  be  ordered,  by  some  authority, 
before  it  can  be  accounted  wrong  not  to  pursue  that 
course.  Sin  presupposes  law;  so  argue  St.  Paul  (Ro- 
mans vii.,  7-13)  and  St.  John  (i  John  iii.,  4).  And 
with  all  due  deference  to  Kant's  philosophy,  the  com- 
mon mind  conceives  that  even  the  Categorieal  Impera- 
tive postulates  an  Imperator. 

The  Scotist  view,  then,  of  the  point  in  question, 
always  permitted,  and  now  in  favor,  in  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church,  will  doubtless  be  hereafter  insisted 
upon  as  the  one  best  adapted  to  modern  thought.  In 
the  Anglican  Church  the  famous  book,  Lux  Mundi, 
elaborates  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  on  the  lines 
indicated.  And  much  as  that  book  has  shocked  the 
religious  prejudices  of  many,  we  cannot  help  feeling 
that   its   conclusions  are  not  only  in   touch   with  the 

1  Which  Mr.  Oxenham  (p.  239)  calls  the  •■  one  insoluble  riddle  of  all  meta- 
physics and  all  theology." 


change  of  front  in  modern  thought,  but  also  give  force 
and  value  to  St.  Paul's  line  of  reasoning  in  that  grand 
passage  (i  Corinthians  xv.,  44-49)  where  he  dilates, 
not  on  "  something  lost, "  but  on  "something  yet  to 
be  attained  ": 

"  That  was  not  first  which  is  spiritual,  but  that  which  is  nat- 
ural ;  and  afterward  that  which  is  spiritual.  The  first  man  was 
of  the  earth,  earthy;  the  second  man  is  from  heaven.  ...  As  we 
have  borne  the  image  of  the  earthy,  we  shall  also  bear  the  image 
of  the  heavenly." 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  RESURRECTION  AND  ITS  SIQNIFI  = 
CANCE  IN  THE  NEW  CHRISTIANITY. 

I  TAKE  pleasure  in  presenting  in  this  number  to 
our  readers  an  article  by  the  Rev.  George  J.  Low,  of 
whom  Mr.  Allan  Pringle  says  that  he  is  'j  the  Dean 
Stanley  of  the  Anglican  Church  of  Canada." 

We  are  glad  to  observe  that  Mr.  Low  does  not 
stand  alone,  for  the  sentiments  which  he  utters  are 
representative  of  a  large  class  of  his  colleagues,  and 
his  article  is  one  symptom  only  among  several,  indi- 
cating that  the  clergy  are  awakening  to  the  needs  of 
the  present  time.  The  Rev.  Dr.  Haweis,  a  member 
of  the  "broad  church"  section  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, has  published  in  The  Contemporary  Review  for 
October  an  article  in  which  he  arraigns  his  brethren, 
more  vigorously  than  Mr.  Low,  for  being  responsi- 
ble for  the  degeneration  of  church  life.  He  declares 
that  the  Church  of  England  needs  a  new  clergy.  That 
the  Church  needs  men  whose  opinions  are  not  de- 
spised, whose  fitness  is  not  called  in  question,  and 
who  are  up  to  date  in  scientific  education.  The  pres- 
ent clergy  are  trained  to  preach  a  sort  of  thing  the 
people  decline  any  longer  to  listen  to.  Mr.  Haweis 
says  : 

" the  man  in  the  pew  thinks  he  has  a  right  to  remon- 
strate with  the  man  in  the  pulpit  who  denounces  him  as  an  unbe- 
liever. He  may  fairly  say  to  his  clergyman  :  '  You  complain  of 
me  for  not  believing  what  you  call  church  doctrines  ;  how  much 
do  you  believe  yourself?  Now,  you  don't  actually  believe  that 
after  this  life,  without  further  explanation,  the  population  of  the 
world  will  be  divided  into  two  parts,  the  converted  and  the  uncon- 
verted, and  that  one  half  will  go  straight  to  heaven  and  be  happy 
forever,  and  the  other  half  will  be  sent  straight  to  hell  to  be  tor- 
mented forever.  You  don't  believe  that  yourself,  because  you  are 
not  such  a  fool ;  then  why  do  you  expect  me  to  sit  in  church  and 
listen  to  you  patiently  while  you  preach  it  ?'  ...  I  need  not  go 
through  the  dreary  catalogue  of  outworn  dogmas ;  dry  rot  is  in 
the  whole  thing,  and  it  is  ready  to  crumble  at  a  touch  !  It  has 
come  to  this  :  the  laity  not  only  despise  the  clergy  for  their  affirma- 
tions, but  still  more  for  their  reticences,  and  yet  few  (some  do) 
have  the  heart  to  condemn  them  as  unscrupulous  hypocrites — 
they  are  really  often  such  nice  fellows  in  many  ways,  and  moral 
fellows,  too  ;  so  as  people  don't  like  to  think  they  are  liars,  and 
cannot  quite  believe  they  are  idiots,  they  conclude  that  they  are  a 
race  of  men  apart,  and  hence  the  witty  saying  has  arisen,  '  Society 
is  composed  of  three  sexes,  men,  women,  and  clergyman';  and  this 
is  all  very  well  as  a  grim  sort  of  joke,  but  it  solves  nothing  and 
mends  nothing.     Sooner  or  later  the  question  has  to  be  asked. 


XHK    OPEN     COURX. 


4739 


'  Why  keep  up  so  many  doctrinal  shams,  when  even  bishops  are 
capable  of  making  and  accepting  moderate  and  even  helpful  re- 
statements ? '  " 

The  Rev.  Mr.  Haweis  yearns  for  an  intellectual 
reformation.  The  reformation  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury was  more  of  a  moral  than  of  a  doctrinal  reform. 
The  new  reformation  must  be  mainly  doctrinal.  What 
we  need  is  a  new  Christ  ideal.  He  concludes  his  ar- 
ticle as  follows  : 

"  He  who  will  give  us  not  only  a  restatement  in  doctrine,  but 
the  true  law  of  subordination  of  the  lower  to  the  higher  in  the  con- 
duct of  life,  the  life  of  progress  in  the  scale  of  ascension  ;  he  who 
will  show  the  purity,  because  the  fitness,  of  all  things  in  due  sea- 
son and  in  ripe  proportion,  who  will  preach,  with  Christ  and  Paul, 
the  supremacy  of  love,  which  is  the  loss  of  selfish  life  in  the  fiood- 
tide  of  regenerated  humanity — he  will  be  the  new  priest  of  the 
near  future.  We  will  have  no  more  mongrel  philosophy;  we  will 
have  no  more  divided  allegiance,  and  no  more  confused  ideals. 
The  dear  old  angels  may  have  to  go  out,  but  the  great  archangels 
will  come  in  ;  we  shall  know  them,  and  we  shall  follow  them  ; 
they  will  lead  us  to  '  the  Christ  that  is  to  be  ! '  " 

When  the  clerg)'  begin  to  speak  as  boldly  as  Mr. 
Haweis,  the  time  for  a  radical  reformation  appears  to 
have  come. 

Mr.  Low  is  a  man  who  represents  the  growing  in- 
tellectuality among  the  clergy.  But,  in  our  opinion,  he 
does  not  as  yet  hit  the  real  point  at  issue.  The  doc- 
trine of  the  Fall  is  merely  a  side  issue  in  the  whole 
structure  of  church  doctrines,  and  the  objectionable 
features  of  the  first  chapters  of  Genesis  ma)'  easily  be 
overcome   in  some   such  way  as  Mr.  Low  points  out. 

We  do  not  agree  with  Mr.  Low  that  the  conception 
of  the  Fall  is  due  to  the  pagan  influence  of  Greek 
thought  after  the  Nicene  Council.  St.  Paul  believed  in 
it  as  much  as  did  St.  Augustine,  and  St.  Thomas  Aqui- 
nas, and  even  Duns  Scotus.  After  rereading  the  pas- 
sage in  St.  Paul's  epistle  in  which  he  contrasts  Christ 
with  Adam,  considering  Christ  as  the  second  Adam, 
we  cannot  help  believing  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Fall 
is  to  him  a  matter  of  fact  which  he  never  thought  of 
calling  in  question. 

The  main  problem  of  modern  Christianity  lies  in  a 
field  different  from  that  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Fall.  It 
is  not  a  question  of  one  or  two  dogmas  which  collide 
with  the  scientific  notions  of  the  present  day.  It  is 
founded  upon  a  contrast  between  two  radically  differ- 
ent world-views.  The  old  view  cherishes  the  belief 
in  the  extra-mundane  existence  of  a  spiritual  domain, 
which  constantly  interferes  by  means  of  miracles 
with  this  natural  order  of  a  material  universe,  and  is 
a  dualistic  conception  of  the  world.  The  new  view  is 
monistic.  The  two  worlds — the  spiritual  and  the  ma- 
terial— are  one.  The  supernatural,  that  is  to  say,  the 
domain  of  spirit  and  spiritual  aspiration,  is  in  its  germ 
contained  in  the  natural,  and  it  crops  out  wherever 
the  occasion  arises  according  to  natural  law.  The 
monistic  view   does   not  deny  the  existence  of  spirit. 


It  only  denies  the  existence  of  pure  spirit  or  ghost, 
and  it  denies  at  the  same  time  the  existence  of  pure 
matter  as  a  dead  and  merely  inert  substance.  The 
whole  world,  according  to  the  monistic  world-view,  is 
aglow  with  potential  life,  and  all  existence  contains 
the  possibilities  of  a  spiritual  development.  The  new 
view  does  not  imply  that  the  higher  domain  of  life  has 
dropped  out  of  our  conceptions.  On  the  contrary,  the 
lower  is  recognised  as  being  pervaded  all  through  by 
the  potentiality  of  developing  the  higher.  The  natural 
can  no  longer  be  regarded  as  debased.  It  is  recognised 
as  being  spiritualised  all  through.  The  world-order, 
such  as  it  appears  in  the  laws  of  nature,  far  from  being 
a  mere  display  of  chance  or  an  arbitrary  manufacture 
of  a  demiurge  is  recognised  in  its  intrinsic  necessity 
as  a  part  and  parcel  of  God  himself.  Thus  God  ceases 
to  be  a  mere  God-individual  analogous  to  the  pagan 
conception  of  Zeus  or  Jupiter,  but  manifests  himself 
in  his  superpersonal  omnipresence,  not  only  in  this 
actual  world  of  ours,  but  also  as  the  condition  of  any 
possible  world  that  might  rise  into  existence. 

The  Rev.  Mr.  Low  says  that  the  difference  be- 
tween the  old  and  new  world-conception  appears  most 
strikingly  in  the  doctrine  of  the  fall  of  man  and  trusts 
that  otherwise  there  is  no  necessity  for  rejecting  "the 
other  great  facts  of  Christianity  as  contained  in  the 
Apostles'  Creed."  Such  is  not  the  case.  The  Apos- 
tles' Creed  will  have  to  be  regarded  by  the  church  of 
the  future  as  a  historical  document,  embodying  the 
belief  of  the  early  church,  which  can  only  be  retained 
as  a  mere  symbolic  expression  of  spiritual  truths 
which  every  Christian  is  at  liberty  to  interpret  as  he 
sees  fit.  The  Roman  Catholic  Church,  which  in  many 
respects  is  wiser  than  Protestant  Christianity,  has 
judiciousl}'  refrained  from  enforcing  a  literal  belief  in 
dogma.  The  Roman  Church  leaves  the  question  of  in- 
terpretation open,  and  possesses,  as  Mr.  Low  recog- 
nises, the  great  advantage  of  "the  living  voice"  of 
the  Pope,  who  can,  according  to  conditions,  declare 
what  at  the  present  time  has  to  be  accepted  or  re- 
jected. The  Roman  Church  has  actually,  in  this  par- 
ticular respect,  a  better  chance  for  progress  than  our 
Protestant  denominations,  which  unhappily  are  tied 
down  to  the  dead  letter  of  their  various  confessions  of 
faith. 

If  the  Apostles'  Creed  and  the  main  doctrines  of 
Christianity  are  to  be  allowed  to  remain,  and  if  our 
reformation  should  consist  only  in  the  removal  of  one 
or  two  objectionable  beliefs,  the  result  will  be  little 
satisfactory  to  the  educated  class  of  mankind,  for  in- 
deed the  difference  between  the  old  and  the  new  world- 
conception  is  a  color-line  which  is  very  decidedly 
marked.  If  we  accept  at  all  any  one  or  the  main  of 
the  old  doctrines  of  an  extra-mundane  supernatural- 
ism,  we  might  just  as  well  accept  the  whole  mass  of 


4740 


THK     OPEN     COURT. 


superstitions  connected  therewith.  He  who  can  make 
up  his  mind  to  beheve  in  an  individual  Godbeing, 
a  being  that  like  a  fickle  man  is  ready  to  change  his  will 
as  the  occasion  may  arise,  and  not  only  can,  but  actu- 
ally does  work  miracles  such  as  are  told  in  our  sacred 
Scriptures,  who  for  trivial  reasons,  antagonising  him- 
self, interferes  with  his  own  world-order,  might  just  as 
well  believe  in  the  story  of  the  Fall,  in  the  creation  of 
woman  from  the  rib  of  man,  or  in  any  other  Biblical 
legend  in  spite  of  all  the  refutations  and  explanations 
that  science  has  brought  forth  during  the  last  two 
centuries.  To  believe  in  a  million  miracles  is  not  more 
difficult  than  to  believe  in  one.  If  God  is  a  personal 
being  like  man,  he  might  as  well  be  triune,  extra- 
mundane,  or  intra-mundane ;  he  might  have  created 
a  paradise  for  the  then  innocent  parents  of  mankind, 
simply  that  they  might  enjoy  themselves.  He  might 
hate  those  who  do  not  believe  in  him,  so  as  to  stop 
the  mechanism  of  the  solar  system  for  a  few  hours  for 
the  sole  purpose  of  having  a  few  hundred  of  his  ene- 
mies slain  ;  and  may  be  in  possession  of  all  those  hu- 
man, and,  indeed,  very  human,  features  which  are  at- 
tributed to  him  by  many  of  the  prophets  and  saints  of 
the  Christian  Church. 

The  cardinal  point  on  which  the  difference  between 
the  old  and  the  new  view  comes  out  lies,  not  in  the 
fall  of  man,  but  in  the  resurrection  of  Christ.  The 
doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body  of  Christ  is 
the  true  touchstone  of  the  old  conception  of  Christian- 
ity and  the  new  one.  He  who  believes  that  the  stone 
had  to  be  rolled  away  from  the  grave,  so  as  to  make 
room  for  the  resurrected  Jesus,  he  who  cannot  think 
of  immortality  except  in  terms  of  a  corporeal  revivifica- 
tion of  the  dead  bones,  muscles,  and  nerves  of  the 
deceased,  and  believes  that  Jesus  after  his  death  de- 
scended into  a  place  called  hell,  thence  to  rise  again 
and  re-awaken  bodily  from  the  sleep  of  death,  is  one 
of  those  who  belong  to  the  old  kind  of  a  childlike  state 
of  civilisation,  whether  he  believes  still  in  the  fall  of 
man  or  not.  If  Christianity  would  be  a  factor  in  the 
scientific  world-conception  it  must  undergo  a  radical 
reformation.  The  new  Christianity  must  fearlessly 
confront  the  problem  of  the  resurrection  of  Christ ; 
and  must  allow  the  clergy  freely  to  utter  their  opinions 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 

The  paramount  importance  of  Christianity  will 
then  be  seen  to  be  a  great  truth  embodied  in  a  myth- 
ological tale.  Jesus  indeed  is  not  dead.  When  Jesus 
was  crucified  his  body  was,  as  every  living  body  will 
have  to  be,  delivered  to  that  state  of  disintegration 
which  is  called  "death."  The  body  of  Jesus  is  as 
much  doomed  to  decay  as  any  other  organism,  but  the 
soul  of  Jesus  cannot  die.  The  soul  of  Jesus  has  be- 
come and  is  even  to-daj'  a  living  presence  in  the  aspi- 
rations  of  mankind.      Our   whole   civilisation   is  per- 


meated by  the  spirit  of  Jesus,  and  he  indeed  will  be 
with  us  and  in  us  unto  the  end  of  the  world. 

The  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body  of  Je- 
sus should  be  replaced  by  a  doctrine  of  the  immortal- 
ity of  the  soul  of  Jesus.  The  moral  aspirations  of  Jesus 
must  be  impressed  into  the  minds  of  men.  He  must 
be  resurrected  in  every  heart  so  as  to  become  the 
dominant  power  of  all  impulses,  the  directive  control 
in  life,  the  ultimate  motive  of  all  actions.  And  not 
until  our  clergy  will  become  impressed  with  the  real 
significance  of  this  central  doctrine  of  Christianity 
will  they  be  able  to  free  themselves  from  the  old  tra- 
ditional dualism  that  separates  the  doctrinal  Chris- 
tianity of  the  past  from  the  scientific  conception  of 
Christianity  of  the  future. 

What  we  need  is  a  new  Christianity,  or  better  a 
new  conception  of  the  old  Christianity,  affording  a 
higher  and  a  deeper,  a  broader  and  a  more  compre- 
hensive insight  into  the  facts  of  experience  and  the 
laws  of  life, — a  Christianity  which  with  all  reverence 
towards  the  past  will  without  compromise  accept  the 
truth,  whatever  the  truth  may  be.  And  the  truth  can- 
not be  obtained  by  a  blind  belief  in  traditional  inter- 
pretations of  facts  or  supposed  facts  that  happened 
almost  nineteen  hundred  years  ago.  The  truth  can 
only  be  found  in  that  ever-present  revelation  of  the 
Deity  that  surrounds  us  in  the  objective  world  in  which 
we  live. 

The  touchstone  of  truth  is  contained  in  the  eternally 
repeated  experiences  with  which  every  one  of  us  is 
familiar.  If  the  truths  of  Christianity  cannot  be  dem- 
onstrated to  be  facts  of  our  spiritual  and  intellectual 
experience,  if  God  cannot  be  reduced  to  the  features 
of  reality  from  which  man  has  developed  in  the  slow 
process  of  evolution,  according  to  eternal  laws,  we  had 
better  abandon  all  belief  in  God.  If  religion  is  not 
the  natural  response  of  the  soul  to  the  demands  of 
life,  we  should  suppress  all  religious  aspirations.  But 
the  truth  is  that  religion  is  deeply  rooted  in  the  emo- 
tional and  intellectual  needs  of  man.  The  difficulty  is 
only  to  determine  the  nature  of  genuine  religion,  and 
to  winnow  the  wheat  from  the  chaff. 

As  the  bodily  organism  of  man  is  the  product  of  a 
slow  growth,  which  has  to  pass  through  many  stages, 
as  science  was  once  represented  in  the  wisdom  of  the 
medicine-man,  as  astronomy  had  to  pass  through  the 
stage  of  astrology,  chemistry  through  the  stage  of 
alchemy,  so  religion  had  to  pass  through  the  stage  of 
mythology.  The  mythological  Christianity  of  the  past 
is  still  a  pagan  conception.  The  monotheism  of  the 
Church  is,  as  held  by  the  mass  of  the  people  to-day, 
philosophically  considered,  a  polytheism  in  which  the 
number  of  the  gods  is  reduced  to  one.  It  is  not  as 
yet  the  religious  ideal  according  to  which  the  divine 
attributes    of    God,    his    omnipresence,    the    intrinsic 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4741 


necessity  and  universality  of  his  nature,  are  taken  se- 
riously. 

The  time  will  come  and  is  near  at  hand  when  the 
churches  will  outgrow  the  paganism  of  their  mythol- 
ogy. The  issue  cannot  be  avoided,  nor  is  there  any 
doubt  about  its  final  decision.  As  the  fruit  will  ripen 
when  the  petals  of  the  flower  drop  to  the  ground,  so 
the  truth  will  appear  when  the  fairy-tale  beauty  of  its 
symbolism  begins  to  vanish. 

How  long  it  will  take  to  Christianise  Christianity, 
we  cannot  say,  but  this  much  is  sure,  that  the  new 
Christianity  that  is  to  come,  will,  like  the  old  Chris- 
tianity, emphasise  the  doctrine  of  immortality.  The 
burning  question  of  the  religious  problem  lies  in  the 
domain  of  psychology.  A  better  comprehension  of 
the  nature  of  the  soul  will  inevitably  lead  to  a  truer 
comprehension  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 

That  there  are  clergymen  speaking  as  boldl}'  as  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Haweis  and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Low  is  a  fair  in- 
dication of  the  beginning  of  a  new  religious  era  that  is 
now  dawning  on  the  horizon  of  our  civilisation,      p.  c. 


PURITANISM  AND  THE  NOVEMBER  PORTENTS. 

EV  DR.    FELIX  L.   OSWALD. 

Professor  Weil,  in  his  history  of  the  Chalifs,  men- 
tions a  strange  legend  from  ancient  Bagdad,  where, 
on  the  eve  of  the  insurrection  against  the  tyrant  .^1- 
mohtadi,  a  warning  voice  cried  from  the  tombs,  pre- 
saging woe  to  the  race  of  the  Abbassides,  whose  de- 
scendant had  silenced  ever)'  other  monitor. 

Such  portents  of  revolt  can,  indeed,  not  be  pre- 
vented by  the  suppression  of  free  speech.  At  the  end 
of  the  fourteenth  century,  when  the  power  of  the  Ro- 
man pontiffs  was  at  its  zenith  height,  and  a  whisper 
against  the  atrocities  of  the  Inquisition  was  punished 
with  death,  the  citizens  of  Barcelona  rose  against  their 
heretic-hunters,  and  in  Sicily,  Majorca,  and  Northern 
Italy  several  emissaries  of  the  Holy  Office  were  slain 
like  wild  beasts.  The  resentment  of  the  populace 
could  not  be  allayed  by  the  manifestoes  of  the  clerical 
censors,  and  neither  the  wails  nor  the  threats  of  our 
"American  Press-Gag  League"  have  obviated  two 
portentous  protests  against  the  despotism  of  Sabbata- 
rian fanatics. 

In  the  commercial  metropolis  of  the  New  World 
sixty-eight  thousand  voters  deliberate]}'  renounced  the 
fruits  of  a  hard-won  reform-fight  in  order  to  accom- 
plish the  removal,  or  at  least  the  alleviation,  of  a  yoke 
more  intolerable  than  that  of  a  robber  ring,  by  just  as 
much  as  the  loss  of  freedom  is  more  grievous  than  the 
loss  of  coin. 

"  The  reactionary  result  in  this  city,"  said  the  Ne^a 
York  World,  "was  provoked  by  the  pigheaded  folly 
of  the  president  of  the  police  board.  But  for  the  ex- 
asperating effect  of   Mr.  Roosevelt's  uncalled-for,  un- 


just, harsh,  and  oppressive  execution  of  the  Sunday 
laws,  a  union  of  all  the  anti-Tammany  forces  would 
have  been  as  eas)'  and  triumphant  as  it  was  last  year. 
The  predicted  reaction  has  come.  Tammany  triumphs 
in  the  first  election  after  its  tremendous  overthrow. 
The  result  is  discouraging.  It  impeaches  the  capacity 
of  the  people  for  self-government." 

Yet  the  insurgents  did  not  underrate  the  risks  of 
their  new  alliance.  They  knew  that  they  had  invoked 
the  aid  of  the  most  unscrupulous  corruptionists  on 
earth.  They  had  strong  reasons  to  surmise  that  their 
assistants  would  profit  by  the  lessons  of  their  recent 
defeat  and  render  their  stronghold  practically  impreg- 
nable. They  could  not  expect  the  favorable  conjunc- 
tion for  the  union  of  the  various  reform-elements  to 
recur  for  years.  They  fully  expected  to  be  plundered 
again.  But  they  also  knew  that  the  same  officials  who 
had  connived  at  the  violation  of  so  many  salutary  laws 
could  probably  be  induced  to  connive  at  the  circum- 
vention of  insane  and  inhuman  laws.  The  picaroon 
plague  had  made  the  struggle  for  existence  harder. 
The  Puritan  plague  had  robbed  existence  itself  of  its 
value.  Better  double  work  and  picnics  than  half 
work  embittered  by  the  prospect  of  a  blue-law  Sab- 
bath. Better  a  semi-annual  encounter  with  the  free- 
booters of  Dick  Turpin  than  a  weekly  scuffle  with  the 
bullies  of  Sir  Hudibras. 

Tlie  ranks  of  the  mutineers  were  swelled  by  thou- 
sands who  only  a  year  ago  had  hailed  the  defeat  of 
Tammany  as  the  most  auspicious  event  in  the  historj- 
of  their  native  city,  and  also  by  numerous  sympathis- 
ers of  the  temperance  movement.  The  latter  would 
have  been  willing  to  attain  the  triumph  of  their  cause 
by  the  arduous  path  of  constant  agitation,  but  know, 
by  sad  experience,  that  they  would  miss  their  way 
under  the  banner  of  bigotry.  The  road  to  the  rum- 
shop  is  paved  with  blue  laws.  "  For  nature,"  says  a 
correspondent  of  the  Saturday  Review,  "will  have  her 
revenge,  and  when  the  most  ordinary  and  harmless 
recreations  are  forbidden  as  sinful,  is  apt  to  seek  com- 
pensation in  indulgences  which  no  moralist  would  be 
willing  to  condone,  .  .  .  and  the  strictest  observance 
of  all  those  minute  and  oppressive  Sabbatarian  regu- 
lations was  found  compatible  with  consecrating  the 
day  of  rest  to  a  quiet  but  unlimited  assimilation  of  the 
liquid  which  inebriates  but  does  not  cheer." 

Puritanism  has  not  promoted  the  cause  of  temper- 
ance one  step,  and  the  alleged  immoral  tendency  of  a 
free  Sunday  is  as  imaginary  as  the  supposed  identity 
of  mirth  and  sin.  Compare  the  Sunday  police  reports 
of  Baltimore  and  San  Francisco,  or  let  an  Edinburgh 
Sabbatarian  try  to  confirm  his  prejudices  by  a  visit  to 
Brussels,  in  point  of  holiday  laws  the  freest  city  of 
modern  Europe.  Let  him  try  to  count  the  thousands 
of  merry  faces  of  recreation-seekers,  streaming  from 


4^42 


TKE    OPEN    COURT. 


sunrise  to  sunset  through  the  Porte  de  Hal  to  the 
Laeken  Park  and  the  Alee  Verte,  witness  the  meadow- 
sports,  the  foot-races  and  leaping-matches,  the  ball- 
games,  bilhoqiict  contests  and  round  dances,  see  hun- 
dreds of  well-behaved  spectators  crowd  about  the 
shooting-galleries  and  nine-pin  alleys,  the  skittle-rings 
and  rack-race  pits,  listen  to  the  shouts  of  happy  chil- 
dren, the  chorus-songs  of  rival  music- clubs,  and  re- 
member the  groans  of  drunkards  weltering  in  the 
Kirk-town  gutters  of  his  native  land.  "  Not  silent 
all,"  the  birthland  of  blue  laws,  not  even  in  the  shades 
of  HoljTOod  Palace,  "for  in  my  ear  the  well-remem- 
bered gin- whoops  ring,"  alcohol  yells,  mingled  with 
the  shrieks  of  brutal  scuffles  and  the  cat-calls  of  ribald 
rou^s. 

"Every  one,"  says  Lecky,  "who  considers  the 
world  as  it  really  exists,  and  not  as  it  appears  in  the 
imagination  of  visionaries,  must  have  convinced  him- 
self that  in  great  towns  public  amusements  of  an  ex- 
citing order  are  absolutely  necessary,  and  that  to  sup- 
press them  is  simply  to  plunge  an  immense  portion  of 
the  population  into  the  lowest  depths  of  vice." 

Even  from  a  moral  point  of  view  the  refugees  in 
the  robber- wigwam  of  Tammany  may  have  chosen  a 
lesser  evil. 

A  perhaps  still  more  suggestive  sign  of  the  times 
is  the  result  of  the  suffrage  referendum  in  the  State  of 
Massachusetts.  The  fairness  of  the  count  and  of  the 
voting-method  has  not  been  disputed.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  believe  that  the  people  of  the  educational 
champion  State  were  biassed  by  fallacies,  which,  to 
use  the  words  of  Miss  Alice  Blackwell,  have  long  since 
become  an  insult  to  the  intelligence  of  a  ten-year-old 
boy.  The  citizens  of  Massachusetts  were  not  behind 
the  mountaineers  of  Wyoming  and  Colorado  in  recog- 
nising the  absurdity  of  the  current  anti-suffrage  argu- 
ments. A  very  large  plurality  of  male  voters  probably 
considered  woman  the  moral  superior  of  her  brethren, 
and  oti  the  whole  (i.  e.,  almost  in  every  respect  except 
one  of  incidental  local  importance)  their  intellectual 
equal.  Yet  the  proposition  was  defeated  by  a  plural- 
ity of  more  than  seventy-five  thousand.  Perhaps 
ninety  per  cent,  of  those  adverse  voters  would  have 
welcomed  their  sisters  as  political  reform-factors. 
They  recognised  their  economical  talents,  their  in- 
stinctive charity,  their  innate  love  of  order.  But  all 
those  considerations  were  outweighed  by  the  dread  of 
an  innovation,  tending,  through  the  temperance  bias 
of  the  proposed  new  voters,  to  deliver  the  State  into 
the  hands  of  clerical  fanatics.  On  the  liquor-question 
per  se  the  views  of  the  Bay  State  differ  not  materially 
from  those  of  neighboring  Maine.  A  plebiscite  has 
more  than  once  proved  their  appreciation  of  reform- 
projects.  The  voters  of  Massachusetts  did  not  object 
to  the  W.  C.  T.  U.,  but  to  its  Sabbatarian  confede- 


rates. The  curse  of  blue  laws  is  felt  more  severely  in 
recreation-needing  cities  than  in  rural  districts  abound- 
ing with  the  opportunities  for  outdoor  pastimes.  Now 
in  proportion  to  its  population,  Wyoming  has  about 
the  smallest  number  of  large  cities,  and  Massachusetts 
the  largest.  Hence  the  astonishing  contrasts  of  their 
referenda.  In  other  words,  the  alliance  of  Sabbata- 
rianism has  proved  as  fatal  to  the  suffrage-movement 
as  to  the  cause  of  temperance  and  reform. 

Incidentally  the  November  lessons  have  also  an- 
swered the  doubts  on  the  timeliness  of  a  Religion  of 
Science.  The  dualistic  conceptions  of  God  and  Na- 
ture are  the  most  formidable  obstacles  in  the  paths  of 
reform. 

"The  Cinderella  of  Science,"  says  Thomas  Hux- 
ley, "is  constantly  snubbed  by  her  hyperphysical  sis- 
ters. She  lights  the  fire,  sweeps  the  house,  and  pro- 
vides the  dinner,  and  is  rewarded  by  being  told  that 
she  is  a  base  creature,  devoted  to  low  and  material 
interests.  But  in  her  garret  she  has  fairy  visions  out 
of  ken  of  the  shrews  who  are  quarrelling  downstairs. 
She  sees  the  order  which  pervades  the  seeming  disorder 
of  the  world,  and  she  learns,  in  her  heart  of  hearts,  the 
lesson,  that  the  foundation  of  morality  is  to  have  done, 
once  and  for  all,  with  lying,  and  to  give  up  pretend- 
ing to  believe  that  for  which  there  is  no  evidence,  .  .  . 
for  of  that  firm  and  lively  faith  it  is  her  mission  to  be 
the  priestess." 

And  one  of  the  most  baneful  of  the  untenable  ten- 
ets which  we  should  cease  to  profess  is  the  belief  in 
the  possibility  of  promoting  the  true  interests  of  any 
social,  political,  or  moral  cause  by  the  aid  of  Puritan- 
ical despotism. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN  STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,   Editok. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION; 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  433. 

THE    OLD    THEOLOGY    AND    THE    NEW    PHILOS 

OPHY.     The  Rev.  George  J.  Low 4735 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  RESURRECTION  AND  ITS  SIG- 
NIFICANCE IN  THE  NEW  CHRISTIANITY.  Ed- 
itor     4738 

PURITANISM    AND    THE    NOVEMBER    PORTENTS. 

Dr.  Felix  L.  O.swald 4741 


47 


The  Open  Court. 


A    WEEKLY   JOUKNAL 


DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.   434.      (Vol.  IX —51. 


CHICAGO,    DECEMBER   19,   1895. 


J  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
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Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  Riving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


THE  OMNIPOTENCE  OF  GOOD. 

BY  WOODS   HUTCHINSON,  A.M.,    M,D. 

M.^n's  conceptions  of  the  World-Spirit  have  varied 
with  the  stage  of  his  progress.  They  are  ahnost  as 
numerous,  and  quite  as  diverse,  as  the  individuals  that 
hold  them  ;  yet  there  is  a  strong  family- likeness  be- 
tween them  all. 

In  the  infancy  of  the  race,  the  controlling  forces 
of  the  world  about  him  were  conceived  of  as  numerous 
and  purely  local  demons  or  sprites. 

So  limited  are  they  that  they  are  conceived  of  pri- 
marily, as  actually  inhabiting  and  inspiring  certain 
objects  or  animals  about  him.  The  black,  sullen  snag 
that  breaks  the  meshes  of  his  rude  fishing-net,  the  tree 
that  falls  crashing  across  his  mud-hut,  the  tiger  that 
pounces  upon  his  flocks,  the  breeze  that  frightens 
away  the  buffalo  which  he  is  stalking, — these  are  each 
and  all  supernatural  beings  that  may  be  propitiated  by 
sacrifice  and  pleased  by  worship.  They  are  nearly  all, 
oddly  enough  as  it  would  appear  at  first  glance,  more 
or  less  malevolent,  or  at  least  mischievous,  in  disposi- 
tion, and  the  earliest  worship  and  ritual  aims  purely 
to  secure  a  polic}'  of  non-interference  on  the  part  of 
the  divinities,  by  flattering  and  coaxing,  or  even  by 
frightening  them.  A  moment's  reflexion,  however, 
will  show  us  that  this  curious  tendency  is  merely  the 
result  of  the  much  more  vivid  impression  produced 
upon  our  senses  by  pain  and  ill-fortune,  than  by  their 
opposites.  The  latter  we  take  as  a  matter  of  course,  a 
necessary  reward  of  our  merits,  no  amount  of  them 
disturbs  our  equanimity;  the  former  excites  our  live- 
liest interest  and  resentment,  and  compels  our  respect 
and  attention.  "  Good  luck  "  may  be  left  to  take  care 
of  itself;  no  need  to  worry  ourselves  about  it;  "bad 
luck"  demands  our  immediate  personal  attention  and 
promptest  and  most  vigorous  action  to  prevent  its  re- 
currence. Consequently  the  dominant  idea  in  the 
savage  conception  of  nature  is  a  distinctly  unfriendly, 
if  not  actually  spiteful,  one.  As  Sir  John  Lubbock 
declares,  "It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  horrible 
dread  of  unknown  evil  hangs  like  a  thick  cloud  over 
savage  life,  and  embitters  every  pleasure."  If  there 
be  any  other  powers  at  work,  they  ma}'  be  neglected 
with  safety,  especially  as  the  evil  ones  are  so  much 
more  powerful  and  active. 


The  nixies,  kelpies,  and  Loreleis,  which  lurk  for 
their  prey  at  the  bottom  of  rivers  and  pools,  the  witches 
of  the  Brocken,  the  grisly  "Wild  Huntsman"  who 
sweeps  through  the  forest  on  the  wings  of  the  mid- 
night storm,  the  gnomes,  bogies,  and  fetches  that  hide 
in  the  mountain-glens,  the  ghouls  of  the  lonely  church- 
yard, the  banshee  and  "will-o'-the-wisp  "  of  the  mists 
and  marshes,  and  the  cluricans  of  the  black  bog  are 
the  ghostly  scattered  survivors  of  the  earliest  deities 
of  our  ancestors.  And  to  this  day  such  influence  as 
they  are  supposed  to  possess  is  almost  universally 
dreaded,  and  their  very  apparition  the  foreboder  of 
disaster  or  death. 

As  the  family,  tribe,  and  clan  gradually  organised 
themselves  in  slow  succession,  these  explanatory  con- 
ceptions got  classified  and  simplified  somewhat.  In- 
stead of  each  individual,  family,  or  valley  having  its 
own  particular  "familiar  spirit,"  as  was  still  actually 
the  case  scarcely  three  generations  ago  with  the  "  Bo- 
dach  glas"  of  the  Mclvors  and  the  "banshee  "  of  the 
O'Donahues,  some  two  or  three  are  agreed  upon  as 
the  gods  of  the  tribe  or  country.  And  this  increase  of 
dominion  and  dignity  on  their  part  is  accompanied  by 
some  improvement  in  disposition.  Though,  like  their 
earthly  prototype,  the  embryo  Napoleon  of  the  tribe, 
they  may  oppress  and  plunder  their  own  people,  they 
will  at  least  protect  them  against  their  enemies  and 
even  administer  a  rude  justice  among  them.  This  is 
the  stage  in  which  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant  is  carried 
into  battle  and  the  Philistines  explain  their  defeat  on 
the  ground  that  the  battle  was  fought  among  the  hills, 
the  "native  heath"  of  Israel's  gods,  while  "our  gods 
are  the  gods  of  the  plain."  From  this  it  is  but  a  step 
to  the  conception  of  gods  who,  except  when  their  ven- 
geance is  roused  or  cupidity  excited,  are  comparatively 
indifferent  to  mankind,  and  whose  attention  should  be 
consequently  avoided  as  completely  as  possible.  Pros- 
perity, especially,  provokes  their  jealous}',  and  it  is 
still  popularl}'  regarded  as  "dangerous"  to  be  too 
happy. 

A  little  further  we  have  the  powerful  group  of 
deities,  such  as  inhabited  Olympus,  who  could  be 
friendly  or  hostile,  according  as  their  interest  or  whim 
suggested,  and  whose  general  attitude  was  that  of  a 
feebly  good-natured  tolerance  of  mankind.      The  first 


4744 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


dawning  of  the  idea  of  a  general  unity  is  here  seen  in 
the  presence  of  a  presiding  deity  in  the  person  of 
Jove,  who,  though  of  distinctly  doubtful  moral  charac- 
ter, on  the  whole  checks  the  worst  excesses  of  his  sub- 
ordinates and  maintains  a  sort  of  rude  justice  among 
and  between  both  mortals  and  immortals.  But  even 
Jove  may  be  bullied  by  Juno,  tempted  by  mortal  wo- 
men, and  threatened  by  conspiracies  of  the  lesser  gods, 
while  ever  behind  him,  vague  but  terrible,  is  the  huge 
black  figure  of  resistless  Fate,  of  Molpa,  which  whirls 
him  helplessly  along. 

So  far  malevolence  and  benevolence,  good  and 
evil,  have  been  inextricably  mixed  together  in  every 
conception,  the  evil  on  the  whole  predominating ;  but 
now  comes  the  noble  step  for  which  we  are  mainly  in- 
debted to  the  great  Semitic  family,  of  separating  the 
evil  and  spiteful  from  the  righteous  and  just,  under 
the  figure  of  the  "  Powers  of  Light "  and  the  "  Powers 
of  Darkness."  At  first  these  powers  are  almost  equally 
divided,  waging  an  incessant  conflict  with  varying 
chances,  man's  assistance  being  often  sufficient  to 
turn  the  scale.  Traces  of  this  last  curious  idea  are  to 
be  found  in  both  the  Old  and  New  Testament,  in  such 
expressions  as  "Coming  up  to  the  help  of  the  Lord 
against  the  mighty.  .  .  .  The  kingdom  of  heaven  suf- 
fereth  violence,  and  the  violent  take  it  by  force,"  and 
in  the  presence  of  the  saints  at  the  battle  of  Arma- 
geddon. 

One  of  the  simplest  forms  of  this  theogony  is  the 
religion  of  the  early  Persians,  where  the  Powers  of 
Light  are  marshalled  under  or  personified  by  the  great 
"Spirit  of  Good,"  Ormuzd  (Ahura  Mazda),  while 
those  of  Darkness  are  similarly  represented  by  the 
great  "Spirit  of  Evil,"  Ahriman. 

Both  of  these  beings  are  regarded  originally  as 
divine,  immorta!,  and  entirely  independent  of  each 
other,  and  are  even  represented  as  making  agreements 
and  treaties  with  each  other,  as  in  the  first  chapter  of 
Job,  or  assisting  one  another,  as  when  the  "lying 
Spirit  "  is  permitted  to  enter  into  the  prophets  of  Ahab 
to  lure  him  on  to  his  death  at  Ramoth-Gilead.  At 
first  they  are  regarded  as  practically  equal  in  power 
and  authority,  evil  if  anything,  being  the  more  active, 
and  certainly  much  more  to  be  dreaded  of  the  two, 
but  as  the  intellectual  and  ethical  standing  of  the  race 
improves,  the  latter  gradually  diminishes  in  power  and 
importance  until  at  last  it  owes  its  very  existence  to 
the  sufferance  of  the  good,  and  degenerates  into  a  mere 
"  Lord  High  Executioner,"  or  "roaring  lion,"  ready 
to  pounce  upon  all  offenders  the  moment  that  the  favor 
of  good  power  is  withdrawn  from  them. 

In  the  earlier  stages,  man  prayed  and  sacrificed  to 
or  made  his  peace  with  the  Power  of  Evil  directly,  a 
sin  whose  enormity  and  alarming  frequency  was  in- 
veighed against   by  every  ecclesiastical  tribunal  up  to 


the  eighteenth  century,  and  whose  possibility  is  still 
to  this  day  admitted  wherever  the  belief  in  witchcraft, 
or  "selling  oneself  to  the  Devil,"  exists.  In  later 
stages  he  prays  and  sacrifices  to  the  Powers  of  Good, 
that  they  may  protect  him  against  the  Powers  of  Evil. 
There  is,  alas,  too  much  of  this  motive,  even  in  the 
worship  of  the  nineteenth  century,  while  to  the  medi- 
aeval Christian,  the  principal  use  of  God  would  seem 
to  have  been  to  protect  him  from  the  Devil.  Indeed, 
so  much  is  the  latter  personage  feared  and  dreaded  in 
all  ages,  in  spite  of  his  fallen  and  degenerate  condi- 
tion, and  so  incessant  and  tremendous  is  the  struggle 
to  escape  his  clutches,  that  one  can  hardly  help  won- 
dering whether  he  has  not  practically  become  the  real 
object  of  worship  to  the  shivering  and  self-tortured 
monk,  the  Jesuit  with  his  torch  and  rack,  the  beauty- 
hating,  witch-burning  Puritan,  or  the  modern  camp- 
meeting  exhorter  with  his  hell-fire  and  brimstone. 
Judged  by  their  frenzied  excesses  and  their  fruits,  Sa- 
tan, rather  than  Jehovah,  is  their  god. 

Both  Christianity  and  Mohammedanism,  while  the- 
oretically declaring  that  God  is  omnipotent,  all-wise, 
all-loving,  with  the  noblest  of  attributes  and  loftiest 
character,  a  being  who  compels  our  worship  and  ad- 
miration, yet  find  themselves  practically  very  much 
concerned  with  a  certain  greatly  inferior  and  defeated, 
but  extremely  active  and  malignant  Evil  Spirit,  who, 
for  some  mysterious  reason,  though  utterly  base  by 
nature  and  of  wholly  injurious  influence,  is  permitted 
to  exist,  although  a  vague  hope  is  held  out  of  his  ulti- 
mate extinction  or  disappearance. 

This  hope,  Darwinism  fulfils.  The  Fourth  Gospel 
declares  that  the  universe  consists  of  an  Eternal  God 
phis  an  Immortal  Devil.  The  "Gospel  according  to 
Darwin  "  rings  out  the  trumpet-call,  "  There  is  no  God 
but  The  Good."  It  bases  this,  its  faith,  upon  no  docu- 
ments save  the  broad  pages  of  the  Book  of  Nature, 
with  their  hieroglyphics  of  green  and  gold  :  no  mir- 
acles, save  the  ever-new  ones,  of  the  sunrise,  the 
springing  of  the  grass,  the  egg  in  the  downy  nest :  no 
voice  save  that  eternal  choral  in  which  the  thunderous 
diapason  of  the  surf  upon  the  crags  blends  with  the 
singing  of  the  morning  stars. 

In  the  realm  of  the  great  physical  forces,  its  sup- 
porting evidence  amounts  almost  to  a  demonstration. 
Here  are  giants  indeed,  fierce,  resistless,  terrible. 
Which  is  the  greatest,  the  most  powerful  ?  First  of 
all,  the  eye  picks  out  instinctively  the  dazzling  helm 
of  the  messenger  of  Jove,  the  lightning  with  his  glit- 
tering spear,  and  his  black-browed  brother,  "Ba-im- 
Wa-Wa,"  the  thunder,  at  the  sound  of  whose  awful 
voice  "deep  calleth  unto  deep."  But  there  is  A 
Mightier  far  than  these.  The  glance  is  next  caught 
by  the  towering,  threatening,  form  of  the  Storm  King 
in  his  mantle  of  black  cloud,  edged  with  snowy  fringes 


I 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4745 


of  sea-foam  ;  he  bows  the  giant  oak  hke  a  bulrush, 
and  crushes  the  iron-clad  leviathans  of  war-like  egg- 
shells, but  there  is  one  who  feels  him  but  as  the 
draught  of  His  fire-place.  Scarce  can  we  turn  our 
heads  ere  we  are  met  by  the  deadly  tiger-like  rush  and 
swirl  and  sulky  foam-crest  of  the  flood-fiend  with  his 
familiars,  the  hissing,  seething  water-spout,  and  silent 
shroud  of  fhe  snow  in  its  soft  but  resistless  and  fatal 
folds. 

Surely  here  is  the  "  Prince  of  the  Powers"  chisel- 
ling out  the  canyons,  levelling  the  hills,  filling  up  the 
valleys,  and  building  the  continents  out  into  the  deeps 
of  ocean,  but  in  the  eyes  of  the  King  he  is  but  a  mere 
gutter-flow.  What  then  is  the  greatest  among  the 
physical  forces,  the  Chief  of  the  great  blind  Titans  ? 
Like  the  "  still,  small  voice,"  it  is  neither  in  the  sweep 
of  the  whirlwind,  the  throb  of  the  earthquake,  nor 
the  glare  of  the  lightning,  but  is  gentler  and  greater 
far  than  any  of  these.  More  penetrating  than  the 
thunderbolt,  stronger  than  the  storm-wind,  more  irre- 
sistible than  the  floods  of  many  waters,  is  the  gentle, 
laughing,  golden  Sunshine,  to  which  the  flowers  lift 
their  faces,  and  little  children  stretch  out  their  tiny 
hands.  Here  is  the  Greatest  Thing  in  the  physical 
world,  and  behold  it  is  Good. 

Let  it  withdraw  itself,  and  the  light  of  the  world  is 
gone.  Let  it  appear,  heat  quickly  follows,  and  with 
it  life  in  all  its  forms.  Without  the  vortex-rings  born 
of  its  warmth,  the  winds  could  not  stir,  and  the  very 
air  would  rot  in  a  stagnant  pool  thirty  miles  deep; 
without  its  ever-plunging  force-pumps,  no  clouds  could 
form  to  refresh  the  earth  and  grind  down  the  moun- 
tains into  meadows,  not  even  the  blue  glitter  of  elec- 
tricity would  relieve  the  deadly  gloom  :  in  fact,  all 
these  tremendous  forces  are  but  puppets  moved  by 
the  Sun  God's  fingers.  And  yet  they  have  been  dei- 
fied a  hundred  times  as  often  as  he  has,  and  seriously 
regarded  as  not  only  independent,  but  even  greater 
than  he. 

Man  is  inclined  to  worship  only  those  things  and 
influences  which  can  make  him  uncomfortable, — for 
obvious  reasons, — hence  his  idea  of  their  relative  im- 
portance. It  may  be  only  a  curious  coincidence,  but 
the  cynical  suggestion  makes  itself,  that  the  light  and 
life  giving  Sun-God  has  mainly  been  worshipped  in  or 
upon  the  borders  of  the  tropics,  where  droughts  and 
sun-strokes  were  to  be  dreaded. 

In  the  realm  of  animate  existence,  what  is  the 
greatest  thing  ? 

Watching  the  tiny  shoots  and  delicate  tendrils  of 
spring  life,  trembling  in  the  blast  or  bowing  before  the 
rainstorm,  they  seem  the  feeblest,  frailest  things  in 
the  world.  In  comparison  with  the  birds  and  the  ani- 
mals, the  robin  scudding  South  before  the  breath  of 
the  Frost  King,  or  the  wolf  crouching  in   his   lair  till 


the  storm  has  abated,  they  seem  like  pygmies  in 
the  grasp  of  Titans.  By  thousands  they  fall  at  our 
side  and  tens  of  thousands  at  our  right  hand,  shrivelled 
in  the  glow  of  the  forest-fire,  flattened  by  the  wind, 
buried  by  the  floods,  blighted  by  the  frosts,  withered 
by  drought,  every  element  seems  their  foe.  Their 
destruction  is  by  wholesale,  their  reproduction  at  re- 
tail. Surely  they  cannot  long  escape  extinction  !  They 
seem  to  have  done  so,  however,  for  some  billions  of 
years,  and  not  only  that,  but  have  grown  and  increased 
in  that  time  from  a  mere  handful  of  tiny  grey  lichens, 
clinging  to  the  inhospitable  surface  of  the  granite,  into 
these  myriads  upon  myriads  of  forms,  ranging  from 
the  most  delicate  beauty  to  the  most  majestic  gran- 
deur, in  the  very  teeth  of  just  such  hostile  conditions. 

They  rise  alike  upon  the  ruins  of  the  grandetir  of 
empires,  and  upon  the  rotting  fragments  of  the  very 
rock  ribs  of  Mother  Earth.  Yielding  to  everything, 
they  conquer  all  things  at  last,  even  Time  himself. 
They  achieve  eternal  life.  This  generation  withers 
and  dies,  but  not  before  its  life  has  fallen  back  into 
the  soil  to  become  the  seed  of  the  next.  Mountains 
change  their  form,  their  granite  crags  crumble  under 
the  frost  and  melt  beneath  the  torrent ;  the  "white 
and  wailing  fringe  of  sea  "  is  continually  changing  its 
sandy  curves  and  steadily  receding  oceanward,  but 
the  carpet  of  living  green  which  robes  the  one  and 
borders  the  other  smiles  on  forever,  unchanged  except 
by  increase.  It  is  not  only  as  everlasting  as  they,  but 
gains  on  them  century  after  century.  And  strange  as 
it  may  seem,  the  softer  it  is,  the  more  intensely  alive, 
and  the  more  irresistible  !  The  ivy  will  destroy  the 
oak  ;  the  pine  root  cleaves  the  solid  rock  ;  the  worm 
pierces  everywhere. 

In  our  own  bodies,  the  hard  and  iron-like  bone, 
and  the  flinty  tooth,  soften  and  melt  before  the  advance 
of  the  soft,  jelly-like  "granulation  tissue"  of  healing 
processes,  or  the  attack  of  the  pol3'p-like  osteoclast, 
while  the  rigid  skull  is  moulded  upon  and  bj'  the  soft 
and  delicate  brain  within.  Here  again  "organised 
sunlight,"  which  we  call  "life,"  is  the  greatest,  the 
strongest,  the  most  enduring  thing  in  the  world.  And 
behold,  it  too  is  Good. 

In  the  world  of  moral  forces,  which  is  the  great- 
est ? 

Is  it  the  great,  positive,  noble,  sunshiny  forces  of 
Love,  Truth,  Honor,  Courage,  or  the  fierce,  narrow, 
bitter,  crouching  impulses  of  Hatred,  Falsehood,  Dis- 
honesty, Cowardice  ? 

The  question  answers  itself.  With  the  exception 
of  Hatred,  all  of  the  latter  group  are  essentially  nega- 
tive, merel}-  the  absence  of  the  virtue  which  is  their 
opposite.  Alone  they  would  fall  by  their  own  weight, 
and  can  only  exist  or  have  influence  at  all  as  excep- 
tions to  a  general  rule.     A  man  must  tell  the  truth  at 


4746 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


least  ten  times  to  be  able  to  lie  once  to  any  advantage, 
and  it  is  only  those  swindlers  who  have  earned  a  high 
reputation  for  probity  by  years  of  honest  living  who 
can  do  any  serious  harm.  No  one  would  think  of 
trusting  an  habitual  liar  or  cheat.  Even  from  a  mere 
commercial  standpoint,  "honesty  is  the  best  policy." 
As  to  the  relative  strength  of  Love  and  Hatred,  the 
general  opinion  would  hesitate  somewhat  before  de- 
ciding. But  it  would  not  be  for  long.  In  the  average 
human  mind,  there  is  a  dread  of  hatred,  a  fear  of 
arousing  enmity,  which  is  positively  superstitious  in 
its  intensity  and  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  real  power 
of  the  passion.  Very  much  for  the  same  reason  that 
our  savage  ancestors  first  worship  the  hostile  influences 
of  nature,  because  they  make  such  vivid  impressions. 
Probably  the  lyric  Wizard  of  the  North  voices  pretty 
nearly  the  popular  sentiment  upon  this  theme  when 
he  makes  the  fierce-eyed  bard  chant, 

"  Kindness  fadeth  away, 

But  vengeance  endureth  forever." 

Then  again  an  enormously  exaggerated  importance 
is  ascribed  to  hatred  from  another  cause.  It  is  so 
much  more  soothing  to  our  self-respect  to  ascribe  our 
misfortunes  and  failures  to  the  malice  and  machina- 
tions of  real  or  imaginary  enemies,  than  it  is  to  admit 
them  to  be  due  to  any  deficiencies  in  ourselves.  The 
justly  defeated  candidate  blames  the  spite  of  his  op- 
ponents or  treachery  of  jealous  friends,  not  his  own 
unfitness;  and  the  moral  transgressor  ascribes  his  own 
sin  to  the  malicious  wiles  of  the  Devil. 

Indeed,  in  this  respect  the  Evil  Spirit  is  a  great 
comfort.  Fully  a  third  of  his  "  bad  eminence  "  in  the 
theology  of  the  day  is  owing  to  it,  and  Darwinism  has 
no  substitute  to  offer  for  him,  though  heredit}'  may 
be  twisted  to  fill  the  gap  by  a  little  ecclesiastical  treat- 
ment. 

But  these  views  of  the  power  of  hatred  are  mere 
optical  illusions  which  vanish  on  careful  inspection. 
Hatred  is  the  leaping  flame  of  the  brush-wood  camp- 
fire,  capable  of  much  damage  at  times,  but  fitful,  short- 
lived, temporary.  Love  is  the  clear,  steady  glow 
under  the  boilers  of  the  great  engine,  purposeful, 
constant,  undying.  Even  that  much-denounced  pas- 
sion, selfishness,  the  motive-power  of  civilisation  and 
the  ruling  impulse  of  the  great  bulk  of  human  action, 
is  essentially,  trite  as  it  may  sound,  a  form  of  it,  viz., 
love  of  self  and  not  hatred  of  others,  as  one  would 
imagine  from  the  vehemence  with  which  it  is  preached 
against.  It  is  a  tremendous  factor  in  progress,  and 
within  reasonable  limits  is  not  only  legitimate,  but 
highly  commendable.  Even  the  Golden  Rule  does  not 
forbid  it,  but  merely  demands  that  "love  of  thy  neigh- 
bor "  shall  equal  it,  because  it  is  the  highest  and  most 
reliable  standard  to  be  found.  It  is  the  love  of  free- 
dom and  of  justice  that  makes  nations  great,  the  love 


of  country  or  devotion  to  gallant  leaders  which  wins 
great  battles,  the  love  of  truth  that  inspires  a  Galileo, 
a  Newton,  a  Columbus  ;  in  short,  love  is  the  main- 
spring of  every  great  achievement. 

What  trophies  can  Hatred  show? 

Even  in  battle  the  best  soldier  is  not  he  who  most 
bitterly  hates  the  enemy,  but  he  who  most  dearly  loves 
his  country.  Hatred  is  not  even  the  ruling  spirit  of 
warfare.  Far  from  it.  A  dozen  other  impulses  are 
more  potent  here,  love  of  country  and  home,  of  glory, 
ambition,  emulation,  obedience,  sympathy,  comrade- 
ship, desire  to  succeed. 

Love  is  far  the  Greatest  Thing  in  the  moral  world, 
and  that  pretty  nearly  includes  the  universe. 

Sweetness  and  Light  are  again  triumphant,  entirely 
on  their  own  merits. 

In  fine,  wherever  the  glance  falls,  whatever  realm 
we  scan,  we  find  the  Good,  omnipotent  and  constant, 
positive — the  Evil,  feeble  and  cringing,  negative.  Evil 
is  the  black  shadow  cast  by  the  sunlight  of  the  Good  ; 
the  exception  to  the  rule  of  goodness,  nay  more,  in 
most  cases  only  a  lower  form  of  it.  As  Browning 
chants  : 

"  The  Evil  is  null,  is  nought. 
Is  Silence  implying  sound  ; 
What  was  good,  shall  be  good 
With,  for  evil,  so  much  good  more," 

If  this  be  the  case,  what  need  is  there,  then,  of  the 
conception  of  an  Evil  Spirit?  Or  what  scope  remains 
for  the  exercise  of  his  powers  ? 

It  is  curious  to  notice  how  the  extent  of  his  do- 
minion has  steadily  shrunken  with  the  progress  of 
knowledge.  In  the  earliest  days,  he  was  master  of 
the  greater  part  of  the  universe,  for  his  sway  was  ab- 
solute during  the  hours  of  darkness :  indeed,  he  is 
known  as  the  "Prince  of  this  World"  to  this  day.  He 
was  a  personification  of  that  fear  of  the  dark  which 
even  yet  casts  a  gloom  over  the  infant  or  ignorant 
mind.  But  darkness  was  soon  found  to  be  just  as 
necessary  to  life,  and  almost  as  beneficial  as  light ; 
and  the  night-demon  is  changed  into  an  angel  whose 
wings  softly  hover  over  the  bosom  of  tired  old  Mother 
Earth.  In  a  like  manner,  also,  the  storm,  the  light- 
ning-bolt, the  ocean-surge,  the  bitter  tooth  of  the  frost 
have  had  their  devils  cast  out  and  sit,  clothed  in  their 
right  mind,  at  the  feet  of  man,  his  best  friends  and 
most  powerful  servants.  Driven  from  these  domains, 
the  evil  spirits  crave  permission,  as  it  were,  "to  enter 
into  swine,"  and  appear  next  in  the  human  body.  The 
pangs  of  hunger  are  attributed  to  them,  and  to  this 
day  the  nineteenth  century  pagan  of  the  Whitechapel 
slums  will  gravely  assure  you  that  she  has  a  "tiger  in 
her  inside,"  to  whose  claws  she  lays  the  pangs  of  hun- 
ger and  the  gnawing  pains  of  indigestion.  Then  disease 
becomes  his  special  manifestation,  and  the  "  medicine- 
man "   is  summoned   with  drum  and   sweat-bath  and 


THE    OFEN     COURT. 


4747 


evil  smells  to  drive  him  out  of  the  sufferer's  body. 
Traces  of  tliis  belief  are  3'et  to  be  found  in  popular 
medicine.  Finally'  in  this  stage,  death  becomes  his 
peculiar  triumph,  and  charms  are  worn,  vows  are  paid, 
and  pilgrimages  undertaken  in  the  hope  of  avoiding  it 
as  long  as  possible. 

But  now,  in  the  clear,  white  light  of  even  such 
knowledge  as  we  have  obtained,  hunger  is  seen  to  be 
one  of  the  greatest  and  most  constant  spurs  to  pro- 
gress ;  disease  but  health-processes  run  riot,  life 
out  of  place  ;  and  death  but  the  kindly  welcome  return 
of  our  tired  bodies  to  the  warm  crucible  of  Mother 
Earth,  thence  to  emerge  again  in  higher,  lovelier 
forms.  As  the  darkness  clears  away,  the  gruesome 
shapes  that  it  has  conjured  up  disappear  with  it. 

Last  of  all,  the  Devil  entereth  into  the  hitherto 
undiscovered  forces  of  nature,  the  realm  of  theology, 
and  the  regions  of  the  future.  He  has  been  com- 
pletely dislodged  from  the  first  stronghold,  but  only 
partially  so  from  the  second  and  third,  which  offer 
peculiar  facilities  for  his  occupancy,  "being  a  thing 
ethereal,  like  himself. "  Everything  that  good  Father 
Boniface  couldn't  understand  was  "of  the  Devil." 
Roger  Bacon  was  in  league  with  him  when  he  pro- 
duced those  tremendous  explosions  in  his  cell,  as  was 
evidenced  bj'  the  sulphurous  smell  which  followed 
them,  and  many  a  noble  discoverer  was  denounced  as 
a  wizard,  or  even  burned  at  the  stake,  for  availing 
himself  of  his  aid.  Had  Edison  lived  but  two  centu- 
ries ago,  he  would  surely  have  been  stoned  like  the 
rest  of  the  prophets.  In  fact,  the  whole  realm  of  the 
mysterious  was  the  peculiar  domain  of  Satan,  as  our 
colloquialism,  "the  Devil  is  in  it,"  still  reminds  us, 
and  to  a  considerable  degree  it  is  so  yet,  but  as  fast  as 
the  mystery  retreats,  so  does  he. 

In  the  theological  world  the  Evil  One  still  holds  an 
important  place,  as  the  author  and  instigator  of  what 
is  technically  known  as  "Sin,"  but  as  some  human 
individual  is  held  to  be  fully  responsible  and  is  se- 
verely punished  for  every  particular  and  specific  item 
of  this  transgression,  it  is  a  little  hard  to  see  just  ex- 
actly what  part  the  agency  of  His  Satanic  Majest}' 
plays  in  it.  If  sin  is  the  work,  not  of  man,  but  of  an 
Evil  Spirit,  why  punish  the  former  for  it  ?  If,  on  the 
other  hand  (to  which  science  cordially  assents),  every 
instance  of  wrong-doing  is  the  voluntar}'  act  of  some 
free  human  being,  and  further,  in  most  cases,  the 
effect  of  a  primarily-beneficent  impulse  run  wild,  a 
superhuman  "Father  of  Sin"  becomes  little  more 
than  a  figure  of  speech.  In  fact,  his  principal  remain- 
ing function  even  here  is  that  of  the  phantom  warder 
of  a  ghostly  future,  or  under-world,  in  which  congenial 
limbo  we  may  leave  him  for  the  present. 

To  conclude,  a  being  or  influence  alisolutely  and 
essentially  evil  is  a  thing  of  which  the  Darwinist  can 


find  no  proof  or  trace  whatever.  It  would  be  incapa- 
ble of  continued  existence,  even  if  brought  into  being, 
is  contrarj'  to  the  whole  tendency  of  the  universe,  and 
is  absolutely  unthinkable.  This  gives  him  the  whole 
universe  to  love  and  to  worship. 

The  Darwinist's  God  is  neither  a  "jealous"  God, 
nor  a  petty  or  revengeful  one,  for  he  worships  the 
Welt;^eist,  that  great  calm,  loving  impulse  which  un- 
derlies all  the  forces  and  pulses  of  nature.  Everything 
in  nature  to  him  is  sacred,  and  an}'  "place  whereon 
he  standeth  is  hoi)'  ground." 

The  forests  are  his  temples,  the  mountains  his 
altars,  the  birds  his  choristers,  and  the  flowers  his 
censers. 

The  Darwinist  alone  can  truly  cry  : 

"  O  world,  as  God  has  made  it, 
All  is  beauty  ! 
And  knowing  this  is  Love — 
And  Love  is  Duly." 


PROF.  F.  MAX  MULLER'S  REMINISCENCES  OF 
J.  BARTHELEMY  SAINT=HILAIRE. 

One  of  the  happiest  and  brightest  hours  during  the  many 
bright  and  happy  hours  which  I  spent  at  Paris  last  month,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  centenary  of  the  Institut  de  France,  was  the  hour 
I  spent  one  morning  with  my  old  friend,  Barthelemy  Saint-Hilaire. 
He  did  not  attend  our  meetings,  and  his  presence  was  missed  by 
many.  I  called  on  him  at  his  house  in  the  Rue  Flandrin,  beyond 
the  Arc  de  Triomphe.  It  was  not  easy  during  that  busy  week  to 
find  time  for  personal  visits,  but  I  was  determined  to  see  the  old 
sage  once  more,  and  I  was  rewarded.  I  went  early,  and  found 
him  as  usual  in  his  study,  which  was  lighted  up  by  lamps,  as  he 
was  afraid  of  sunlight  as  injurious  to  his  eyes,  and  for  years  had 
never  worked  by  daylight.  He  stepped  in  as  erect  as  ever,  in  his 
grey  dressing  gown,  a  small  cap  on  his  head,  and  gave  me  the 
warmest  welcome.  I  looked  at  him  for  a  minute  or  two,  curious 
to  see  whether  old  age  had  worked  any  changes  in  his  face  and  his 
frame.  No,  there  he  was,  the  same  as  ever,  not  bent  in  the  least, 
not  moving  about  slowly  or  timidly,  his  face,  though  pale,  yet 
healthy  and  fresh,  his  eyes  clear  and  steady,  his  voice  even  and 
sonorous,  and  the  grasp  of  his  hands  as  firm  and  as  warm  as  when 
I  met  him  first  fifty  years  ago,  when  we  were  both  attending 
Burnouf's  lectures  at  the  College  de  France.  I  should  have  called 
his  features  perfect  and  beautiful.  There  was  no  sign  in  them  of 
the  disfiguring  ravages  of  old  age,  and  when  I  watched  him  mov- 
ing the  chairs  nearer  to  the  fire,  carrying  about  a  heavy  lamp 
from  one  table  to  another,  fetching  books  from  the  shelves  of  his 
library,  and  plunging  at  once  into  the  profoundest  problems  of 
ancient  and  modern  philosophy.  I  wondered  at  the  triumph  of 
the  spirit  over  the  body,  and  I  said  to  myself,  "  O  Time,  where  is 
thy  sting  !   Old  Age,  where  is  thy  victory!  " 

On  his  writing-table  I  saw  some  volumes  of  Plato,  and  sheets 
of  paper  covered  with  his  own  beautiful  handwriting. 

"  What  are  you  working  at  now  ?  "  I  said. 

"I  have  completed  vay  A  lis  tot  h\"  \ie  replied,  "and  I  have 
finished,  as  I  told  you  I  should,  my  Lifi-  of  Cousin.  I  am  now  be- 
ginning the  translation  of  Plato,  or  rather  my  revision  of  Cousin's 
translation,"  I  looked  incredulous,  but  I  did  not  venture  to  say, 
"At  ninety!"  I  remembered  how  the  last  lime  I  had  seen  him  he 
excused  himself  for  not  having  yet  written  his  I.i/o  of  Cousin.  I 
knew  that  he  looked  upon  that  work  as  a  solemn  duty,  for  Cousin 
had  not  only  been  his  friend  and  patron  through  life,  but  had  left 
him  a  considerable  fortune,   so  as  to  render  him  perfectly  inde- 


4748 


TME     OPEN     COURT. 


pendent  in  his  literary  and  political  career.  "  I  shall  finish  his 
Life."  he  said  to  me  then,  as  if  he  had  no  misgivings,  and  he  kept 
his  promise.  He  fetched  the  three  large  volumes  with  a  certain 
pride  and  gave  them  to  me. 

"Are  you  a  bibliomane  ?"  he  asked  ;  if  so,  I  shall  give  you  a 
copy  on  large  paper." 

"No,"  I  said.  "I  am  fond  of  books,  but  not  of  paper,  least 
of  all  of  waste  paper  in  the  form  of  large  margins."  He  gave  me 
the  three  volumes,  and  they  are  now  lying  before  me,  with  the  in- 
scription in  his  clear  manly  hand,  "A  M.  M.,  Membre  de  I'lnsti- 
tut  de  France,  son  devoue  confrere,  B.  Saint-Hilaire." 

I  gave  him  the  first  volume  of  the  Saaed  Books  of  the  Bud- 
dhists, which  I  had  just  published,  as  I  explained  to  him,  with  the 
generous  assistance  of  the  King  of  Siam,  the  last  Buddhist  sover- 
eign. We  began  at  once  to  speak  about  the  late  Parliament  of 
Religions  at  Chicago,  and  about  the  idea  of  holding  the  second 
meeting  at  Paris  in  igoo.  Barthelemy  Saint-Hilaire  was  full  of 
sympathy  and  even  reverence  for  all  forms  of  religious  faith.  His 
own  religion  was  philosophy,  and  to  him  that  religion  seemed  to 
be  the  best  which  was  most  in  harmony  with  the  teachings  of  phi- 
losophy and  the  dictates  of  conscience.  We  agreed  that  much 
good  might  be  done  by  bringing  properly  qualified  representatives 
of  the  great  religions  of  the  world  into  closer  contact,  and  by  help- 
ing to  spread  a  more  accurate  knowledge  of  their  dogmas.  For 
that  purpose  he  allowed  that  meetings  like  that  at  Chicago  in  1893 
might  be  useful,  though  in  the  end  each  man,  he  thought,  must 
work  out  his  own  religion,  and  if  he  wants  to  share  it  with  large 
numbers  of  his  fellow-men  he  must  be  prepared  to  make  conces- 
sions and  to  submit  to  compromises. 

How  I  wish  I  had  written  down  as  soon  as  I  came  home  all 
that  fell  from  his  eloquent  lips  ;  but  in  the  hurry  of  that  memora- 
ble week  this  was  impossible.  Now  I  only  remember  the  general 
impression  left  on  my  mind,  and  the  delight  of  finding  myself  in 
such  perfect  accord  with  a  man  of  his  age  and  experience,  with  a 
man  whom  I  had  always  looked  up  to  with  veneration  and  love. 
His  mind  seemed  perfectly  serene  and  unruffled  by  political  events. 
Life  seemed  to  have  no  riddles  left  for  him,  except  those  which  the 
human  mind  does  not  attempt  to  solve,  if  it  once  knows  that  they 
are  beyond  its  reach.  The  overpowering  vastness  of  nature  did 
not  make  him  giddy,  because  he  looked  within  and  not  without 
for  the  ttiof  amhakic.  a'lel  on  which  to  take  his  stand  and  to  wait. 

I  reminded  him  of  the  days  when  we  were  both  attending 
Burnouf's  lectures  at  the  College  de  France.  We  agreed  in  our 
admiration,  say  our  amazement,  at  the  wonderful  insight  into  the 
mysteries  of  the  world  displayed  by  some  of  the  ancient  Hindu 
philosophers,  Buddha  not  excepted.  He  shared  ray  indignation 
at  the  caricature  of  Buddhism  and  of  Theosophy  now  hawked 
about  in  India  and  in  Europe.  The  ancient  religions  of  India  and 
Persia  seemed  to  him  wonderful,  and  almost  inexplicable,  con- 
sidering the  times  in  which  they  arose.  But  to  attempt  to  revive 
them,  or  for  enlightened  people  even  to  retain  them,  in  the  face  of 
such  religions  as  Christianity  or  Islam,  seemed  to  both  of  us  un- 
historical,  if  not  perverse. 

He  then  dwelt  on  the  purely  historical  side  of  Christianity, 
on  what  it  had  inherited  from  Greek  philosophy,  which  is  so  often 
forgotten,  while  its  inheritance  from  the  religion  and  morality  of 
the  Jews  is  constantly  insisted  on.  The  fundamental  thought  of 
the  philosophy  of  Christianity,  the  idea  of  the  Logos,  is  but  sel- 
dom included  in  our  catechisms,  and  some  of  our  best  divines  en- 
deavor to  trace  it  back  to  the  wisdom  of  Jewish  preachers  rather 
than  to  the  schools  of  Greek  philosophy.  He  granted  that  the 
Logos  philosophy,  if  properly — that  is,  historically — understood, 
contained  the  quintessence  of  Greek  philosophy,  and  that  without 
it  Christianity  would  sink  down  to  the  level  of  a  mere  moral  and 
social  reform.  It  was  the  Logos  doctrine  that  imparted  the  high- 
est glory  to  Christianity  by  raising  the  phenomenal  world  into  the 


manifestation  of  an  eternal  thought  or  of  eternal  thoughts.  Any 
concession  to  the  ancient  atomic  theories  or  to  the  more  recent 
theory  of  self-development  by  means  of  environment,  natural  se- 
lection, and  struggle  for  life  was,  to  his  mind,  far  more  anti-Greek 
and  anti-philosophical  than  anti-Christian.  There  is  reason,  there 
is  nous,  there  is  wisdom,  there  is  a  God  in  the  world — that  was  the 
practical  and  the  truly  religious  outcome  of  all  Greek  philosophy; 
and  that  was  the  talent  entrusted  to  early  Christianity,  though  for 
a  long  time  wrapped  up  in  a  napkin.  If  we  accept  the  Logos,  we 
learn  that  what  we  call  the  real — that  is,  the  visible — world  is  not 
the  real  world,  but  that  the  really  real  world  is  the  invisible  world 
of  the  ideas,  of  Plato's  ideas.  Everything  in  the  world,  or,  as  we 
call  it,  each  species,  is  the  manifestation  of  a  thought,  of  a  Logos, 
of  an  idea  ;  and,  if  it  is  looked  upon  by  men  of  science  as  the  re- 
sult of  a  long  development,  that  development  could  do  no  more 
than  develop  what  was  from  the  beginning  contained  in  the  idea. 
This  was  the  foundation  of  early  Christian  philosophy,  the  phi- 
losophy of  St.  Clement,  the  Alexandria  philosophers — the  only 
sound  basis  of  all  metaphysics.  On  all  these  points  we  were  in 
full  agreement,  though  he  evidently  thought  that  I  had  gone  too  far 
in  my  Sciime  of  Thought  in  representing  all  human  knowledge  as 
a  knowledge  of  words,  and  words  or  Logoi  as  the  only  possible 
realisation  of  concepts — i.  e.  of  thought. 

We  discussed  the  last  volume  of  my  Gifford  Lectures  on  "The- 
osophy," in  which  the  history  of  the  Logos  had  been  treated,  and 
I  ventured  to  ask  him  the  question  which  I  had  to  leave  unan- 
swered in  my  volume — namely,  in  what  sense  the  Logos  was  said 
to  have  become  incarnate  in  Christ.  Was  it  meant  that  the  Lo- 
gos in  all  his  fulness,  what  is  called  the  Son,  who  from  the  begin- 
ning was  with  God,  and  by  whom  all  things  were  made,  had  be- 
come flesh  in  Jesus  ?  Or  was  it  meant  for  no  more  than  that  the 
Logos  dwelt  in  Christ,  as  he  dwelt,  according  to  Philo,  in  Abraham 
and  other  prophets  ?  Or,  lastly,  was  the  Logos  here  meant  for 
the  highest  of  all  the  Logoi — viz.  the  Logos  of  manhood  ?  And 
was  this  Logos  believed  to  have  been  fully  realised  in  Christ  and 
in  Christ  alone — was  Christ  to  be  accepted  as  the  perfect  ideal  of 
man  as  conceived  by  the  Father  before  all  the  world  ?  All  these 
thoughts  were  perfectly  familiar  to  him,  for  he  had  been,  before 
all  things,  an  historian  of  human  thought  from  the  beginning  to 
the  end  of  his  literary  career.  But  he  seemed  to  think  that  the 
answer  to  this  question  was  to  be  found  not  so  much  by  historical 
research  as  by  our  own  insight,  our  own  enlightenment.  I  could 
not  summon  up  courage  to  controvert  this,  or  to  enter  more  fully 
into  the  historical  side  of  our  problem.  To  listen  to  him  was  so 
much  more  delightful  than  to  interrupt  or  to  question  him.  Bar- 
thelemy Saint-Hilaire  possessed  the  art  of  conversation,  and  of 
thoughtful  conversation,  in  the  highest  degree.  Every  sentence 
was  a  work  of  art,  and  he  seemed  to  watch  it  while  he  was  build- 
ing it  up  stone  upon  stone.  He  possessed  an  extraordinary  com- 
mand of  language — that  is,  of  thought.  I  have  listened  to  greater 
speakers,  but  the  greatest  speaker  is  not  always  a  good  conversa- 
tionalist. With  him  all  he  said  seemed  instantaneous,  and  not 
as  if  it  had  been  laid  up  ready  for  use.  Thoughts  and  words  were 
bubbling  up  at  the  slightest  touch  and  flowed  on  straight  and  clear 
like  a  transparent  spring.  Frenchmen  are  proud  of  their  lan- 
guage, and  well  they  may  be.  They  treat  it  with  proper  respect, 
and  listening  to  Barthelemy  Saint-Hilaire's  outpourings  was  like 
listening  to  a  sonata  of  Haydn's.  It  was  tranquillising,  exhilerat- 
ing,  and  satisfying.  It  left  a  satisfaction  such  as  only  the  highest, 
art  can  give. 

In  politics  Barthelemy  Saint-Hilaire  was  a  thorough  French- 
man and  Republican  of  the  old  school.  He  was  a  true  statesman 
and  diplomatist,  for  he  respected  all  nations,  and  loved  what  was 
best  in  each.  England  had  few  more  sincere  admirers,  but  even 
Germany  never  lost  his  sympathy  and  admiration.  His  patriotism 
was  untainted  by  Chauvinism,  and  he  often  spoke  the  truth,  even 


XHK    OPEN     COURT. 


4749 


when  he  was  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  when   truth   was  very 
unpalatable  to  his  hearers. 

When  I  had  at  last  to  say  good-bye  to  him  I  felt  refreshed 
and  invigorated  ;  ciiriclii,  ououragc,  r^ijciini,  as  I  said  to  him  at 
the  door.  I  thought  and  hoped  we  should  meet  ^gain.  And  to- 
day (November  26)  the  paper  tells  me  that  a  temple  has  crumbled 
to  pieces,  a  soul  has  slipped  its  shackles,  and  a  spirit  has  taken 
flight  to  the  world  of  spirits,  to  a  higher  realm,  to  a  better  world. 
— London  Times. 

THE  BLISS  OF  A  NOBLE  LIFE. 

The  life  of  a  man  who  has  proved  himself  unusually  useful 
to  his  fellowmen  is  always  a  lesson  that  is  worth  pointing  out. 
The  Trdiisiufiofis  of  the  American  Instiliite  of  Mining'  Engineers 
contain  a  biographical  notice  of  Mr.  Eckley  B.  Coxe,  one  of  its 
founders  and  early  presidents,  written  by  R.  W.  Raymond  of 
New  York  City. 

Mr.  Coxe's  family  can  boast  of  many  noble-minded  ancestors, 
who  distinguished  themselves  in  various  ways.  He  himself,  born 
June  4,  1S39,  was  the  eldest  son  of  Brinton  Coxe.  Having  re- 
ceived an  excellent  education,  he  studied  in  Paris  at  the  Eeole  i/es 
Mines,  and  in  Freiberg,  Saxony,  at  the  Bergakadeiiiie. 

"  Here,  as  in  Paris,  he  was  a  zealous  student ;  and  he  became 
particularly  intimate  with  Julius  Weisbach,  the  famous  professor 
of  mechanics  and  engineering,  whose  original  investigations  and 
admirable  text-book  are  still  unsurpassed  in  that  department. 
Professor  Weisbach  authorised  him  to  translate  the  first  part  of 
this  great  treatise,  namely,  the  volume  on  Theoretical  Mechanics ; 
and  the  ardent  young  disciple  carried  out  this  laborious  undertak- 
ing, and  published  in  1S70,  after  his  return  to  the  United  States, 
an  octavo  volume  of  1112  pages  as  the  result.' 

"  He  expended  not  only  labor  but  money  in  his  undertaking  ; 
and  I  doubt  if  it  ever  brought  him  pecuniary  profit.  But  it  speed- 
ily made  him  known  among  students  of  his  profession,  and  pre 
pared  the  way  for  the  general  recognition  of  the  position  which 
he  afterwards  held,  as  the  foremost  mining  engineer  of  the  United 
States." 

"  At  his  father's  death  he  consolidated  in  his  capacity  as  ex- 
ecutor of  his  father's  will  the  Tench  Coxe  estate  (situated  in  the 
coal  districts  of  New  Jersey)  under  one  management,  which  in 
later  years  and  after  successful  enlargements  was  carried  on  under 
the  name  of  The  Cross  Creek  Coal  Co." 

The  example  set  by  Mr.  Coxe  in  his  business  transactions  is 
well  pointed  out  in  the  biographical  notice  before  us,  Mr,  Ray- 
mond says  on  page  10  : 

"  The  remarkable  business  achievement  thus  outlined  may  be 
considered  the  great  work  of  Eckley  B.  Coxe's  life  ;  nor  is  its 
greatness  determined  by  a  sordid  standard,  as  though  it  were 
merely  the  selfish  consolidation  of  a  vast  private  fortune.  Both 
the  methods  and  the  motives  of  this  achievement  were  pure  and 
lofty.  The  methods  were  those  of  open  and  fair  competition  ;  of 
the  honorable  performance  of  contracts  ;  of  wise  and  liberal  econ- 
omy ;  and  of  scientific  improvements,  which  reap  profit  from  the 
resources  of  nature,  not  from  the  sufferings  of  fellow-men.  The 
motives  were  higher  than  those  of  ordinary  so-called  philanthropy. 
The  possessor  of  wealth  may  be  a  mere  raiser,  or  a  mere  spend- 
thrift, or  a  mere  annuitant,  reaping  what  he  does  not  sow,  and  as 
truly  dependent  as  any  pauper  upon  the  bounty  of  others.  Or  he 
may  deserve  praise  for  generous  gifts,  which  are  to  be  administered 
by  others.     In  many  instances,  no  doubt,  wealth  thus  given  away 

I A  Manual  of  the  Mechanics  of  Engineering  and  of  the  Construction  of 
Machines,  with  an  Introduction  to  tlte  Calculus.  Designed  as  a  Test-Book  for 
Technical  Schools  and  Colleges,  and  for  the  Use  of  Engineers,  Architects,  etc. 
By  Julius  Weisbach,  Ph.  D.,  Oberbergrath  and  Professor,  etc.  In  three  vols 
Vol.  I.,  "Theoretical  Mechanics."  Translated  from  the  Fourth  Augmented 
and  Improved  Edition  by  Eckley  B.  Coxe,  A.  M.,  Mining  Engineer.  New 
■(fork:  D.  Van  Nostrand.     i»7o. 


is  wisely  bestowed.  But  the  act  is  a  tacit  confession  that  others 
can  employ,  more  beneficently  than  the  giver,  the  power  thus  re- 
signed. In  any  case,  the  ethical  merit  of  the  act  is  measured  by 
the  degree  in  which  the  actor  'gives  himself  with  his  gift'  ;  and 
the  highest  fulfilment  of  the  New  Testament  conception  of  stew- 
ardship, as  well  as  of  the  scientific  conception  of  true  philanthropy, 
is  realised  when  the  possessor  of  the  power  which  wealth  confers 
neither  repudiates  nor  resigns  its  responsibility,  but  devotes  his 
life  to  the  administration  of  it,  for  the  benefit  of  present  and  fu- 
ture generations.  This  is  what  Eckley  B.  Coxe  did  ;  and  it  seems 
to  me  that  his  example  is  well-nigh  unique." 

Mr.  Coxe  devoted  much  attention  to  the  preparation  and  utili- 
sation of  coal.     We  read  on  page  13  of  Mr.  Raymond's  sketch  ; 

"  Mr.  Coxe's  study  of  the  subject  had  led  him  to  select,  as  the 
most  important  of  all  the  practicable  measures  of  economy,  the 
utilisation  of  the  smallest  sizes  of  coal,  such  as  had  been  allowed 
for  many  years  to  be  lost  in  the  slaty  waste.  His  improved  ma- 
chinery for  preparation,  described  in  his  paper  on  'The  Iron 
Breaker  at  Drifton,'  etc.,  and  his  improved  apparatus  for  the 
combustion  of  small  coals,  described  in  his  paper  on  '  A  Furnace 
with  Automatic  Stoker,"  etc.,  indicate  the  two  lines  of  experiment 
in  which  he  was  ultimately  absorbed;  and  his  work  in  the  latter 
direction  is  admirably  summed  up  in  the  paper  which  he  read  at 
Providence,  R.  I.,  before  the  New  England  Cotton  Manufacturers' 
Association,  April  24,  1895,  less  than  three  weeks  before  his  death. 
The  possible  distrust  with  which  a  consumer  of  coal  might  listen 
to  the  advice  of  a  producer  is  humorously  anticipated  by  the  line 
from  the  .Eneid,  prefixed  to  this  paper  as  a  motto  ; 
"Timeo  Danaos  et  dona  ferentes. 

"  But  such  a  distrust  must  have  been  dispelled  by  the  frank- 
ness of  the  opening  sentences  : 

"It  may  seem  curious  that  a  person  whose  life  has  been  spent  in  mining 
and  marketing  coal  should  appear  before  this  .Association  to  discuss  the  eco- 
nomical production  of  steam,  involving,  as  it  does,  either  the  use  of  less  fuel 
or  fuel  of  less  value.  But  I  am  convinced  that  the  more  valuable  a  ton  of  coal 
becomes  to  our  customers,  the  more  in  the  end  will  be  our  profit  from  it," 

This  characteristic  utterance  might  serve  as  the  motto  of  the 
life  of  Eckley  B.  Coxe — a  life  which  solved  the  antagonism  be- 
tween altruism  and  egoism,  not  by  sacrificing  either,  but  by  view- 
ing both  upon  the  higher  plane  where  they  are  one.  ' '  Enlightened 
selfishness,"  if  it  be  only  sufficiently  enlightened,  and  command  a 
sufficiently  wide  horizon,  is  true  benevolence.  "There  is  that 
scattereth,  and  yet  increasetli.  The  dividend  of  what  we  invest  in 
mankind  is  greater  than  the  principal  of  what  we  hoard.  'This  sort 
of  book-keeping  also  should  be  more  generally  understood." 

Truly  Gustav  Freytag  is  right  when  he  says  : 
"A  noble  human   life  does  not  end  on  earth  with  death.     It  continues  in 
the  minds  and  the  deeds  of  friends,  as  well  as  in  the  thoughts  and  the  activity 
of  the  nation."  p_  c. 


BOOK  NOTICES. 


We  are  daily  expecting  from  Japan  a  unique  edition  of  Dr_ 
Paul  Carus's  well-known  tale,  ICarina:  A  Story  of  Early  Buddhism. 
This  little  book  was  set  up  in  Japan  in  English,  is  printed  on  the 
finest  rice  paper,  tied  in  silk,  and  is  quaintly  illustrated  by  Jap- 
anese artists  in  their  native  style.  Japan  has  made  rapid  strides 
in  the  development  of  its  art,  which  seems  to  have  been  almost 
uninfluenced  by  European  ideas,  but  nevertheless  shows  signs  of 
high  and  original  artistic  potencies.  The  book  will  form  a  rare 
holiday  or  birthday  gift,  as  nothing  like  it  has  been  generally  seen 
in  this  country.  (The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.:  Chicago. 
Price,  75  cents.) 

We  have  also  prepared  a  holiday  edition  of  the  Rev.  T.  A. 
Goodwin's  Zi'tVr.y  Three  Thousand  i'ears  .-igo,  .-Is  /ndicated  l>y  the 
Song  of  Solomon.     The  booklet  is  printed  on  heavy  Enfield  paper, 


475° 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


with  gilt  top,  uncut  edges,  and  stiff  cream-colored  cover.  Our 
readers  will  remember  the  pleasant  story  of  Mr.  Goodwin,  with 
its  charming  glimpses  into  the  rustic  and  court  life  of  ancient 
Israel.  The  whole  text  of  the  Song  of  Songs  is  printed  in  this 
little  volume,  but  arranged  in  the  dialogue  form  in  which  we  now 
know  it  was  spoken,  and  interspersed  with  critical  and  explanatory 
comments.  The  two  introductory  chapters  of  the  book  give  the 
history  and  character  of  the  poem,  and  depict  the  society  and 
civilisation  of  the  age  of  King  Solomon,  as  far  as  they  are  known 
to  us.  (The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.;  Chicago.  Price,  50 
cents.)  

The  editor  of  The  Open  Court  has  made  a  metrical  translation 
of  the  best  known  and  most  importanf  of  the  Xenions  of  Goethe 
and  Schiller.  The  book  will  be  artistically  printed  in  the  shape 
of  an  album,  containing  on  each  page  one  Xenion  with  its  German 
original.  In  an  introductory  chapter  the  author  gives  the  history 
of  the  Xenions,  which  are  satirical  epigrams  having  the  form  of 
disticbs  of  which  the  first  line  is  a  hexameter  and  the  second  a 
pentameter.  He  explains  in  this  chapter  by  metrical  and  musical 
diagrams  the  peculiarity  of  this  form  of  poetry,  and  portrays  the 
salient  features  of  the  golden  age  of  German  literature  in  which 
Goethe  and  Schiller  battled  hard  for  the  new  conceptions  and 
ideals  which  shape  most  of  our  thought  and  life  to-day.  "No 
poetry  is  quoted  more  frequently  in  Germany  than  these  pithy 
aphorisms.  They  have  become  household  words  there,  and  de- 
serve a  place  of  honor  in  the  literature  of  the  world."  This  edi- 
tion will  be  a  very  beautiful  one,  with  the  edges  entirely  in  gold, 
and  as  the  translation  is  accompanied  by  the  original  German 
text,  the  book  will  be  useful  both  to  students  of  German  and  to 
those  who  have  already  mastered  the  language.  (The  Open  Court 
Publishing  Co.:  Chicago.     Price,  Si, 00.) 


NOTES. 

Prof.  Ewald  Hering  has  accepted  a  call  to  the  University  of 
Leipsic.  He  was  formerly  at  Prague.  Professor  Hering  is  one  of 
the  foremost  and  soundest  of  modern  physiologists  and  psycholo- 
gists. Most  of  his  works  are  of  a  highly  special  and  scientific 
character,  his  best  known  and  most  popular  work  being  perhaps 
his  brief  but  famous  paper  on  Metiiory. 

The  Episcopal  Recorder  says  of  Prof.  Carl  Heinrich  Cornill's 
book  on  Tke  Propliets  of  Israel:  "An  infidel  publication  by  one  of 
the  advanced  and  so-called  higher  critics,  based  upon  the  studies 
of  such  scholars  as  \^ellhausen."  If  Professor  Cornill's  sketches 
of  the  prophets  are  infidelity,  make  the  most  of  it !  Certainly  that 
Christianity  which  regards  Professor  Cornill's  book  as  an  infidel 
publication  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  Christian  paganism,  and 
deserves  to  be  the  target  of  Ingersoll  and  his  followers.  Indeed, 
just  such  people  are  responsible  for  the  existence  of  infidelity. 
For,  so  long  as  superstition,  assuming  the  name  of  religion,  decries 
science  and  scientific  investigation,  we  need  men  who  hold  these 
fetich -worshippers  of  the  letter  of  their  traditions  up  to  ridicule. 

Hajee  Abdullah  Browne,  editor  of  the  Egyptian  Herald,  which 
advocates  the  administrative  autonomy  of  Egypt  and  the  interests 
of  Islam  throughout  the  world,  formulates  Mohammedanism  in 
the  following  three  statements:  "  (<;)  That  this  world  has  been 
created  or  formed  by  an  intelligent,  powerful  being,  whom  we 
have  called  God;  (/')  that  man  is  superior  to  all  other  created 
things  in  this  world,  he  only  possessing  a  soul  ;  and  (c)  that  the 
soul  of  man  does  not  perish  at  the  death  of  the  body."  This  is 
in  brief  the  gist  of  Islam  as  advocated  by  other  Mohammedan  or- 
gans that  are  published  in  the  English  language,  among  which  we 
mention  The  Moslem  World,  published  by  Mahomed  Alexander 
Russell  Webb,  New  York,  and  The  Islamic  U'orld,  published  in 
Liverpool,  England. 


HOLIDAY    BOOKS. 


KARMA.  A  STORY  OF  EARLY  BUDDHISM.  By  Paul  Cams.  New 
art  edition.  Printed  and  illustrated  in  Japan.  Quaint  and  odd.  Rice  paper, 
tied  in  silk.     Price,  75  cents.     (This  book  has  not  yet  arrived  but  is  expected 

daily.)  

GOETHE  AND  SCHILLER'S  XENIONS.  Selected  and  translated  by 
Paul  Cams,  Printed  in  album  shape  on  heavy  paper  ;  edges  all  gold.  Pages' 
162.     Price,  §1.00.     (In  the  Press.) 


LOVERS  THREE  THOUSAND  YEARS  AGO.  As  Indicated  by  the  Song 
of  Solomon.  By  the  Rev.  T.  A.  Goodwin^  D.  D.  Printed  on  heavy  Enfield 
paper,  ^ilt  top,  uncut  edges,  and  stiff,  cream-colored  covers.  Pages,  41.  Price, 
50  cents.     (Published  this  week.) 


THE  PROPHETS  OF  ISRAEL.  Popular  Sketches  from  Old  Testament 
History.  By  Pro/.  Carl  Heinrich  Cornill.  Frontispiece,  Michael  Angelo's 
Moses.  Artistically  bound  in  red,  with  the  Hebrew  title  stamped  on  the  cover 
in  gold;  laid  paper,  uncut  edges.     P^ges,  210.     Price,  Si. 00. 

THE  LOST  MANUSCRIPT.  A  Novel.  By  Gustav  Frcytag.  Authorised 
translation  from  the  sixteenth  German  edition,  with  a  special  motto  by  the 
author.  Edition  deluxe.  Two  volumes,  S4. 00.  In  one  volume,  simpler  edi 
tion,  cloth,  Si-oo.  

THE  REDEMPTION  OF  THE  BRAHMAN.  A  Tale  of  Hindu  Life.  By 
Prof.  Richard  Garbe.  Laid  paper.  Veg.  parch,  binding.  Gilt  top.  Pages, 
96.     Price,  75  cents. 

HOMILIES  OF  SCIENCE.     By  Dr.  Paul  Cams.     Pages,  310.     Cloth,  gilt 

top.  Si  '^o. 

TRUTH  IN  FICTION.  Twelve  Tales  with  a  Moral.  By  the  Same.  Laid 
paper,  white  and  gold  binding,  gilt  edges.     Pages,  12S      Price,  Si. 00. 

N.  B.     Orders  should  ''e     jt  in  at  once. 


THE  OPEN   COURT  PUBLISHING  CO., 

324  DEARBORN  STREET,  CHICAGO,  ILL. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN    STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION  ; 

SI. 00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  434. 

THE  OMNIPOTENCE  OF  GOOD.    Woods  Hutchinson, 

A.  M.,  M.  D 4743 

PROF.   F.    M.\X    MUELLER'S    REMINISCENCES    OF 

J.  BARTHELEMY  S.4INT-HILAIRE 4747 

THE  BLISS  OF  A  NOBLE  LIFE.      Editor 474 

BOOK  NOTICES 4749 

NOTES 4750 


The  Open  Court. 


A   VyEEKLY   JOUKNAL 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE. 


No.  435.    (Vol.  IX.-52.) 


CHICAGO,   DECEMBER  26,  1895. 


(  One  Dollar  per  Year. 
I  Single  Copies,  5  Cents. 


Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. — Reprints  are  permitted  only  on  condition  of  giving  full  credit  to  Author  and  Publisher. 


BOOTY'S  GHOST. 


BY  F.    M.  HOLLAND. 


The  boldest  and  most  original  newspaper  in  Amer- 
ica, in  1830,  was  the  Fi-ee  Enquirer,  then  edited  by 
Robert  Dale  Owen  and  Frances  Wright.  In  turning 
over  its  dingy  little  pages  I  have  met  with  many  stories 
which  seem  worth  reprinting.  Let  us  begin  with  an 
unusually  well  authenticated  apparition. 

In  1687,  the  captains  of  three  British  ships  ap- 
peared in  the  court  of  the  King's  Bench  with  their 
log-books,  in  each  of  which  was  the  following  record : 
"  Friday,  May  15th.  We  had  the  observation  of  Mr. 
Booty  this  day. "  All  three  had  gone  on  shore  with 
other  men  to  shoot  rabbits  on  the  little  island  of  Strom- 
boli,  where  there  is  an  active  volcano.  "And  about 
half  an  hour  and  fourteen  minutes  after  three  in  the 
afternoon,  to  our  great  surprise,  we  all  of  us  saw  two 
men  running  towards  us  with  such  swiftness,  that  no 
living  man  could  run  half  so  fast  as  they  did  run.  All 
of  us  heard  Captain  Barnaby  say,  '  Lord  bless  me  ! 
The  foremost  is  old  Booty,  my  next  door  neighbor.' 
But  he  said  he  did  not  know  the  other  who  ran  be- 
hind :  he  was  in  black  clothes,  and  the  foremost  was 
in  gray."  All  this  they  put  down  at  Captain  Barna- 
by's  request.  "  For  we  none  of  us  ever  heard  or  saw 
the  like  before  ;  and  we  were  firmly  convinced  that 
we  saw  old  Booty  chased  by  the  Devil  round  Strom- 
boli,  and  then  whipped  into  the  flames  of  hell." 

When  they  came  back  to  England,  they  heard  that 
Mr.  Booty  was  dead  ;  and  Captain  Barnaby  said  he 
had  seen  him  "running  into  hell."  He  was  prose- 
cuted for  libel  by  the  widow;  and  the  damages  were 
estimated  at  ^1000.  It  was  proved  at  the  trial  that 
"  The  time  when  the  two  men  were  seen  and  that 
when  Booty  died  coincided  within  about  two  minutes. " 
The  captains  and  many  sailors  swore  to  the  accuracy 
of  the  log-books  ;  and  ten  men  even  swore  to  the  but- 
tons on  Mr.  Booty's  coat,  which  was  brought  into 
court.  One  witness,  named  Spinks,  was  asked  if  he 
knew  Mr.  Booty,  and  replied,  "I  knew  him  well,  and 
am  satisfied  that  I  saw  him  hunted  on  the  burning 
mountain,  and  plunged  into  the  pit  of  hell,  which  lies 
under  the  summit  of  Stromboli."  Then  the  judge 
said,  "Lord  have  mercy  upon  me,  and  grant  that  I  may 


never  see  what  you  have  seen  !  One,  two,  or  three 
may  be  mistaken  ;  but  thirty  never  can  be  mistaken." 
So  the  widow  lost  her  case. 

This  story  may  have  been  published  by  the  Frc'c 
Enquirer  in  order  to  bring  its  readers  face  to  face  with 
the  question,  whether  any  amount  of  evidence  could 
prove  that  the  order  of  nature  does  not  exist.  Here 
is  a  ghost  story,  which  is  supported  by  the  testimony 
of  thirty  witnesses ;  and  moreover,  to  quote  Captain 
Cuttle,  "It's  entered  on  the  ship's  log,  and  that's  the 
truest  book  as  a  man  can  write."  If  all  this  proves 
anything,  it  is  a  personal  devil,  and  a  hell  with  real 
fire  under  that  volcano. 

Another  instance  of  the  power  of  the  imagination 
is  given  in  the  number  for  January  26,  1833.  A  phy- 
sician residing  on  Block  Island,  R.  I.,  Dr.  A.  C.  Wil- 
ley,  tells  how  he  had  seen  the  meteor  known  as  the 
Palatine  light,  and  supposed  to  represent  a  ship  on 
fire  with  all  her  ropes,  masts,  and  sails.  Wbittier,  in 
a  poem  first  printed  in  his  Tent  on  tlie  Beaeh,  and  called 
"The  Palatine,"  says  that  a  ship  with  that  name  was 
lured  upon  the  rocks  with  false  lights  by  the  island- 
ers, more  than  a  hundred  years  ago  ;  and  that  the 
meteor  was  seen  on  the  very  spot  where  the  wreck  was 
burned,  after  it  had  been  stripped  of  everything  worth 
carrying  off.  Dr.  Willey  says  that  the  Palatine  was 
run  on  shore  by  the  seamen,  who  had  murdered  some 
of  her  passengers  ;  and  these  latter  are  stated  in  a 
note  to  have  been  emigrants  from  Southern  Germany. 
Dr.  Willey  also  says  that  the  people  of  the  island  spoke 
of  the  light  only  as  seen  on  the  water,  and  from  half  a 
mile  to  six  or  seven  miles  from  the  north  shore.  It 
was  described  as  appearing  often,  usually  on  still 
nights  before  a  storm,  and  sometimes  for  several  even- 
ings in  succession.  He  saw  it  twice  himself,  first  for 
fifteen  minutes  at  evening  twilight  in  February,  1830. 
"  It  was  large  and  gently  lambent,"  or  flickering  "very 
bright,  broad  at  the  bottom,  and  terminating  acutely 
upward.  From  each  side  seemed  to  issue  rays  of  faint 
light."  The  next  time  it  was  small,  and  moved  back 
and  forth  parallel  to  the  shore,  with  an  occasional 
halt.  This  time  the  light  may  have  been  on  a  vessel 
which  was  tacking  frequently.  What  the  doctor  saw 
in  Februar}'  was  probably  the  aurora  borealis.  I  sus- 
spect  that  none  of  the  islanders  saw  as  much  as  they 


4752 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


thought  they  did,  and  tliat  those  talked  most  who  saw 
least. 

Among  the  Enquirer's  stories  of  village  life  in  Con- 
necticut, shortly  before  1830,  is  one  of  a  man,  who 
was  voted  out  of  the  church,  presumably  for  heresy, 
but  on  every  communion  Sunday  brought  his  own  wine 
and  bread  to  his  pew,  where  he  partook  of  a  sacra- 
ment which  was  quite  as  holy  as  if  it  had  been  blessed 
by  any  man  who  was  paid  for  doing  it. 

In  another  of  the  little  towns,  the  tavern  was  kept 
by  a  deacon,  who  was  also  a  farmer,  a  wheelwright,  a 
captain  in  the  militia,  and  a  tithingman.  In  the  last 
capacity,  he  stopped  people  who  were  travelling  on 
Sunday,  and  forced  them  to  put  up  at  his  tavern.  One 
forenoon,  he  arrested  a  pedlar,  who  begged  for  leave 
to  travel  on  a  little  further  to  his  uncle's  where  he  and 
his  horse  could  get  the  food  which  they  needed  sadly. 
"Never  mind  your  uncle, "  said  the  deacon.  "You 
shall  have  plenty  to  eat  and  drink  here  ;  and  I'll  put 
up  your  horse."  The  pedlar  yielded  accordingly,  and 
accepted  whatever  was  offered  him,  including  an  invi- 
tation to  go  to  church,  but  took  care  not  to  ask  for 
anything.  Early  the  next  morning,  he  got  ready  to 
depart ;  but  the  deacon  urged  him  to  stay  to  break- 
fast, and  at  the  same  time  offered  to  feed  his  horse 
with  oats.  The  pedlar  then  took  a  stroll  about  the 
village,  before  returning  in  time  to  take  a  hearty  meal. 
In  fact,  both  he  and  his  horse  were  in  much  better 
condition  than  when  they  were  arrested.  He  mounted 
his  wagon,  thanked  the  deacon  for  his  hospitality,  and 
told  him  "  If  you  come  our  way — "  "  But  you're  not 
going  without  paying  your  bill  ?  " 

"Yes,  but  I  am  though.  You  compelled  me  to 
stop,  and  then  invited  me  to  eat,  drink,  and  lodge 
with  you.  You  took  care  of  my  horse,  too,  all  of  your 
own  accord.  Of  course,  I  couldn't  very  well  refuse. 
I  can't  allow  you  to  sully  your  hospitality  taking  money 
for  it;  but  I'll  return  the  favor  when  I  get  to  be  a 
tithingman,  and  meet  you  travelling  on  Sunday." 

"You  won't  pay  your  bill,  then?" 

"Not  I,  Deacon.     I'm  much  obliged  to  you." 

"Then  I  shall  get  a  writ  for  the  amount,  and  also 
a  warrant  against  you  for  travelling  on  the  Lord's 
day." 

"You  may  save  yourself  that  trouble  and  expense, 
friend  Deacon.  As  to  the  travelling,  I  called  on  the 
'Squire  before  breakfast,  and  complained  of  myself, 
which  saved  half  the  fine.  I  can  prove  that  you  in- 
vited me  to  be  fed  and  lodged,  and  have  my  horse 
taken  care  of.  I  took  care  not  to  ask  for  anything. 
It's  as  contrary  to  law  as  to  good  manners  to  present 
that 'ere  bill.      So  good  morning. " 

Equally  justifiable  was  the  shrewdness  with  which 
a  negro  made  good  his  escape  from  slavery.  He  had 
already    reached    Pennsylvania,  and    was   journeying 


northward  on  foot,  when  he  was  overtaken  by  two 
mounted  kidnappers.  He  made  no  resistance,  but 
appeared  very  weary.  After  a  while,  he  was  put  on 
what  he  saw  to  be  the  best  of  the  horses.  He  really 
was  an  expert  rider ;  but  he  pretended  to  be  so  much 
afraid  of  falling  off,  that  the  captors  soon  ceased  to 
take  much  trouble  about  leading  the  horse,  which  was 
willing  enough  to  follow  his  master.  The  first  thing 
they  knew,  the  negro  was  off  at  full  gallop  ;  and  the 
pursuit  was  as  vain  as  that  after  the  young  Lochinvar. 

Another  colored  man  was  the  shepherd  of  a  flock 
of  black  sheep  in  Albany,  New  York,  at  the  time  when 
the  Legislature  voted  that  every  pastor  in  that  city 
should  be  invited  in  turn  to  open  the  proceedings  with 
prayer,  and  be  paid  accordingly.  He  applied  for  an 
opportunity  to  officiate  in  his  turn  ;  and  the  situation 
was  embarrassing.  At  last,  a  compromise  was  agreed 
upon  ;  and  the  colored  preacher  received  as  much  pay 
for  not  making  a  prayer,  as  any  white  brother  had  for 
making  one. 

As  a  specimen  of  the  solid  matter  in  the  Enquirer, 
I  may  add  that  early  in  1832,  Robert  Dale  Owen,  who 
was  a  leading  socialist,  stated  that  there  had  been 
"  considerable  improvement"  at  New  Harmony  since 
there  ceased  to  be  "anything  in  the  shape  of  a  com- 
munity of  common  property."  He  still  thought  there 
was  too  much  competition  in  England  ;  but  "  Here  it 
is  far  different.  The  race  of  competition  is  not  yet 
run.  The  evils  we  feel  are  not  those  of  competition, 
but  of  its  absence."  He  also  admits  that  "There  is, 
there  must  be,  more  of  what  in  one  sense  may  be 
termed  restraint  in  a  co-operative  community  than  in 
individual  society."  "  I  think,"  he  adds,  "  that  what- 
ever progress  is  made  here  will  be  made,  for  many 
years  to  come,  under  the  individual  system  of  small 
landed  proprietors."  There  are  advantages  in  combin- 
ing for  such  objects  as  public  libraries  and  scientific 
lectures.  "  But  for  the  more  intimate  and  comprehen- 
sive measures  of  co-operation,  the  breaking  up  of  do- 
mestic households  and  the  abandonment  of  private 
property,  I  doubt  whether,  in  this  generation  and  this 
country,  men  are  prepared  for  it.  There  is  nothing 
here  to  drive  them  into  it  ;  and  men  so  seldom  change 
any  darling  habits  until  they  are  driven  to  the  change." 
In  a  postscript  he  insists  on  "The  absence  of  all  ne- 
cessity for  co-operation  ;  and  that  after  all  is  the  main 
point.  When  a  man  has  enough  to  furnish  wholesome 
food  and  comfortable  clothing  for  himself  and  family, 
the  hope  of  a  few  dollars  more  or  less  is  not  induce- 
ment sufficient  to  make  him  subvert  the  habits  of  a 
lifetime." 

America  was  too  prosperous  for  socialism  in  1832, 
according  to  so  good  a  judge  as  Robert  Dale  Owen  ; 
and  our  country  is  still  more  prosperous  now.  There 
is  an  article  in  the  North  American  Review  for  Septem- 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


4753 


ber,  1895,  proving  that  wages  average  twice  as  high 
per  operative  at  present  as  in  1S60.  It  is  also  shown 
that  there  has  been  such  great  improvement  in  the 
production  and  distribution  of  all  tlie  comforts  and 
luxuries  "which  make  the  life  of  the  people  worth 
living,"  that  we  are  much  more  comfortable  than  our 
parents  were  in  1850;  and  our  children,  in  the  twen- 
tieth century,  "will  have  twice  as  many  luxuries  and 
live  twice  as  easy  and  comfortable  lives"  as  we  do  to- 
day." Many  of  us  remember  that  the  daily  meals  and 
ordinary  furniture  are  much  more  luxurious  now  than 
they  were  forty  years  ago.  What  were  rare  luxuries 
then  are  common  comforts  now  ;  and  there  are  few 
luxuries  at  present  which  cannot  be  enjoj'ed  by  the 
great  majority  of  Americans.  The  inhabitants  of  this 
country  will  in  all  probabilit}  continue  much  too  well 
off  to  feel  any  need  of  making  as  great  a  change  as  is 
demanded  by  the  socialists.  The  visions  of  Bellamy 
and  Morris  are  likely  to  remain  as  different  from  any 
possible  reality  as  the  Palatine  light  or  old  Booty's 
ghost. 

PAN'EQOISM  THE  KEY=NOTE  OF  THE  UNIVERSE.' 

1  Posthumous  Article.) 

BY  THE  LATE  ROBERT  LEWINS,  M.  D. 

"Alone  in  the  kingdom  of  Space  I  stand. 
Witli  Hell  and  Heaven  on  either  hand. 
Men  and  their  Gods  pass  away,  but  still 
/am  Maker  and  End.  /am  God,  /am  Will." 
— A.  Mary  F.  Robinson. 

Let  me  venture  on  this  occasion  to  furnish  a 
few  more  data  out  of  the  inexhaustible  cornucopia 
of  the  above  theory.  My  position  is  very  clear  from 
the  title  of  this  sketch  alone,  viz.,  to  make  each  indi- 
vidual sentient  self  or  ego  what  the  Greeks  term  «&) 
(breath),  i.  e.,  alpha  and  omega,  first  and  last,  begin- 
ning and  ending,  or,  in  other  words,  the  omnc  scibilc  of 
all  knowledge,  outside  which  can  be  only  nullity.  Or, 
otherwise  stated,  that  perception  and  conception  are 
alike  apperception,  or  self-perception,  autosism  or 
egoism.  So  that  each  of  us,  while  seemingly  absorbed 
in  scientific  research  or  devotion  is,  in  the  last  resort, 
only  experimenting  on,  or  communing  with,  our  own 
egoity.  Deity  and  all  other  objects  other  than  that 
egoity  become  thus  not  only  qiiantitcs  ncgligcablcs,  but 
in  the  relative  sphere  altogether  non-existent.  As 
Goethe  says,  "In  Beschrankung  zeigt  sich  der  Mei- 
ster. "  The  world  and  all  other  objects  of  thought, 
abstract  and  'concrete,  vanish  as  swallowed  up  in, 
and  by,  the  victorious  subject  self  or  ego.  Subject 
and  object  are  reconciled,  self-evidently  thus  verifying 
the  poetic  couplet  of  : 

"  Unloosening  all  the  chains  that  tie 
The  hidden  soul  of  harmony." 

and  shattering  all  seeming  antinomy.  All,  therefore, 
that  has  been  predicated  of  the  Soul,  God,  Logos,  or 
Holy  Ghost  must  be  transferred  to  this  somatic  pan- 


ego,  illustrating,  on  up  to  date  scientific  postulates, 
the  motto  attached  to  this  paper  by  a  youthful  poetess 
of  our  age.  If  we  weakly  must  have  an  object  for 
divine  worship,  the  very  need  of  which  is  already 
mental  esurienc}',  as  a  form  of  desire  (suffering),  we 
must  be  (//.fcontent,  like  Narcissus,  with  self-worship 
— a  fact  which  to  a  sober,  self-possessed,  and  dispas- 
sionate mind  puts  all  worship  whatsoever,  in  our  age, 
out  of  court. 

Natural  religion,  as  that  of  Voltaire's,  Rousseau's, 
etc.,  is  thus  an  apostacy  from  the  higher  forms  of 
/^■('^(/('-revealed  ones — a  clear  case  of  "out  of  the  fry- 
ing-pan into  the  fire.  All  of  the  latter — the  Semitic,  Is- 
lamic, and  Christian  especially — are  attempts  of  well- 
intentioned,  but  ill-judging,  not  to  say  "cranky," 
enthusiasts  of  humanity  to  institute,  by  servile  modes 
of  propitiation,  a  modus  viveiidi  with  a  provisional  al- 
mighty power,  which  as  "Author  of  Nature"  reveals 
itself  as  indifferent  and  even  malignant  towards  man- 
kind and  other  sentient  beings.  As  before  stated. 
Bishop  Butler,  in  his  Sermons  and  Analogy,  is  per- 
haps the  profoundest  apologist  for  natural  and  revealed 
religion  in  any  age  or  clime.  Yet  basing  his  argu- 
ment, as  he  does,  on  the  imaginary  perfection  of  na- 
ture, it  is  seen  to  be,  as  soon  as  we  arraign  the  latter 
as  imperfect  and  incomplete,  thoroughly  invalid, — as 
are  all  teleologicalones,  including  Paley'sjS'zvVd'wt-iL'.f  and 
TIw  Bridgcwatei'  Treatises.  And  if  nature  be  thus  faulty 
what  must  be  our  verdict  on  its  author  supposing  him 
to  be,  unlike  the  classic  Pantheon — thoroughly  uncon- 
ditioned and  uncontrolled  by  fate  (which  already  the 
Epicureans  identified  with  Chance)  or  other  inhibitory 
factor  ?  So  of  the  visible  and  concrete  world.  It  can 
only  be  the  content  of  our  own  sense  and  thought, 
which  are  essentially  one  ;  a  proposition  in  which  is 
implicit,  and  indeed  explicit,  that  all  our  knowledge 
of  it  is  apperceptive  or  self-derivative,  i.  e.  the  pro- 
duct of  our  own  sensoritim,  which  is  thus  not  a  pas- 
sively receptive,  but  an  actually  constructive,  scnsifa- 
eient  or  creative  agent.  Each  sentient  self  is  thus 
both  creator  and  creation  of  the  only  world,  visible  or 
invisible,  to  which,  through  consciousness,  it  has  ac- 
cess. The  transcendence  of  Pan-Egoism  viee  Pan- 
theism, is  thus  seen  to  be  a  reductio  ad  irrationale  et 
impossibile.  To  postulate  as  explanation,  or  rationale, 
an  occult  causa  eausarum,  is  indeed,  as  I  have  ever 
insisted  on,  the  "unpardonable  sin  "  in  the  sphere  of 
common  sense  and  right  reason.  It  means  the  futile 
attempt  to  "explain"  one  crux  by  another  still  more 
obscure  and,  from  its  nature,  utterly  unverifiable.  The 
touch-stone  of  verification  is  completely  absent.  In 
this  direction  Lord  Bacon  and  most  modern  scientists 
who,  as  realists  must  be  dualists,  and  as  such  never 
can  identify  thought  and  thing,  are  just  as  much  at 
fault,  on  one  side,  as  divines  on  the  other.      Both  il- 


4754 


THE    Or^EN    COURT. 


lustrate  Luther's  metaphor  of  human  nature  being 
Hke  a  drunken  man  on  horseback  :  "  Shove  him  up  on 
one  side,  over  he  goes  on  the  other."  Let  us  try  to 
change  all  that,  or  at  least  to  lay  the  foundations  for 
such  change. 


OTHER  WORLDS  THAN  OURS. 

BY  HUDOR  GENONE. 

Two  TRAVELLERS  having  returned  from  a  lengthy 
sojourn  in  other  worlds  were  welcomed  home  and  en- 
tertained hospitably  by  their  friends.  After  the  re- 
past, in  response  to  the  unanimous  request  of  those 
assembled,  one  of  these  had  the  following  to  say  in 
respect  to  his  travels  and  to  the  things  he  had  seen 
while  away  from  home. 

"I  saw,"  he  said,  "a  great  gulf,  so  deep  that  it 
had  or  seemed  to  have  no  bottom  ;  dense  black  clouds 
rolled  within  it,  sometimes  breaking  away  and  permit- 
ting a  sight  through  the  jagged  edges  of  the  vapor  of 
depths  blacker  than  the  blackest  cloud  below.  Whether 
this  meant  an  underlying  stratum  of  opaque  cloud,  or 
reflected, — to  borrow  a  symbol  from  the  light  where 
light  there  was  none, — or  was  the  real  bottom,  or 
opened  up  a  glimpse  of  a  final,  fearful  void,  I  know 
not.  It  was  a  black  abyss  with  nothing  in  it.  Over- 
head in  like  manner  as  below  was  hung  a  great  dome, 
wherein  a  mighty  monster  dwelt,  who  winked  contin- 
ually, and  whilst  his  lids  were  up  glared  like  a  face  of 
brass,  and  when  they  were  down  he  scowled,  black  as 
the  gulf  below,  though  on  his  features  little  fiends  of 
blazing  yellow  disported,  blinking  like  the  big  fiend 
himself,  and  one  calm  face,  stolid  and  passionless 
peered  out,  sometimes  round  and  coldly  indifferent, 
and  at  others  of  different  shapes,  even  (as  if  trying  to 
get  away  from  all  view  of  what  I  shall  tell  you)  shrunk 
to  a  thin,  cadaverous  glinting  line. 

"  One  shore  of  the  gulf  was  distinctly  visible.  All 
the  time  I  stood  not  far  from  its  brink,  and  there  I 
saw  the  solid,  substantial  abutment  of  what  appeared 
to  be  a  fine,  strong,  arched  bridge.  This  was  what 
first  caught  my  eye.  Of  unsurpassed  symmetry  of 
shape,  colossal  in  size,  magnificent  in  design,  beauti- 
ful with  mj'riad  adornments,  and  carvings  and  ara- 
besques, quaint  and  fanciful,  signs  and  symbols  and 
intricate  characters  and  tracery,  of  which  indeed  I 
could  make  little  sense,  only  that  graven  on  each 
voussoir  was  the  single  word  'Advance.' 

"I  say  this  structure  had  the  appearance  of  being 
a  bridge  ;  whether  it  were  one  or  not  I  leave  to  you — 
each  for  himself.  I  have  a  turn  for  mathematics,  un- 
derstand how,  with  given  data,  to  measure  angles  and 
reckon  curves  and  orbits.  So  I  took  from  the  spring- 
ing line,  along  the  sweep  of  the  arch,  point  by  point, 
the  facts  of  situation  I  needed,  and  then  made  a  map, 
plotted  it  down  and  studied  it  when  done,  if  I  might 


be  sure  what  sort  of  curve  it  was.  No  circle,  that  was 
sure  ;  one  could  tell  at  an  eye-glance,  nor  ellipse,  nor 
curve  of  centres,  few  or  many,  odd  or  even.  Eventu- 
ally in  my  mind  it  resolved  itself  into  this  :  was  it  a 
parabola  or  hyperbola?  for  my  reckoning,  though  car- 
ried out  mechanically  and  by  equations  to  many  places 
of  decimals  could  not  tell  which. 

"  Neither  could  mj?  eye  or  field  glass  bring  out,  by 
perspective  or  otherwise,  anything  at  all,  since  the 
rolling  clouds  came  up  out  of  the  murk  and  continu- 
ously rolled  and  rolled  along  the  farther  parts  of  the 
bridge,  and  utterly  forbade  sight  that  way,  though, 
perhaps  had  I  been  able  to  see  from  a  higher  altitude 
I  might  have  gathered  information,  for  I  perceived 
rifts  in  the  cloud  ahead,  but  I  confess,  all  too  high  up 
for  me. 

"  Now  on  this  bridge  was  a  charger,  and  on  the 
charger  a  shape.  The  steed  was  pallid  in  color,  but 
the  rider  was  clad  in  a  robe  blood  red.  What  was  very 
strange,  as  he  sat  astride,  I  noticed,  looking  very  close, 
that  his  legs  were  firmly  strapped  beneath  the  cours- 
er's belly,  to  the  girth  and,  that  his  face  was  set  not 
towards  the  front  and  pommel  but  to  the  rear  and  crup- 
per. As  he  rode,  seemingly  all  at  ease,  I  hailed  him  : 
'Rider,  Red  Rider,'  I  said,  'whence  ridest  thou,  and 
whither  dost  thou  ride,  and  why  is  thy  face  not  set  to 
see  thy  path,  and  wherefore  art  thou  so  tied  as  plainly 
not  to  be  able  to  dismount  ?  Tell  me,  Red  Rider,  if 
thou  canst,  these  things.' 

"  The  strange  being,  looking  full  at  me,  took  some 
time  to  collect  himself  and  then  answered  me  about 
like  this:  'I  understand,'  he  said,  'how  wonderful 
this  journey  of  mine  must  seem  to  thee,  and,  saying 
that,  I  have  said  about  all  that  I  do  really  understand. 
I  find  myself  as  thou  hast  found  me,  and  as  countless 
others  in  times  past  have  found  me.  Often  in  the 
past,  deluded  by  sophistry  of  one  sort  or  another, 
when  the  questions  thou  hast  put  were  asked  me,  I 
have  replied,  saying  that  I  understood  and  claiming 
to  know  what  I  did  not  know. 

"'Listen;  right  before  my  face  as  I  front  rear- 
ward I  perceive  a  long,  well-travelled  road,  straight  as 
an  arrow,  then  curving,  now  winding,  sometimes  level, 
at  others  up  and  down,  at  one  time  smooth,  at  others 
rugged  ;  at  one  through  verdant  meads,  and  by  pleas- 
ant brooks,  again  amidst  frowning  cliffs  and  crackling 
glaciers.  It  seems  to  me  that  I  have  been  among 
those  scenes,  but  when  I  think  soberly  I  am  sure  that 
this  is  not  so  ;  I — the  I  that  is  I — have  never  been  ex- 
cept on  this  bridge,  riding  as  you  see,  strapped  as  you 
see,  robed  as  you  see,  helpless  as  you  see.  All  else 
is  a  sort  of  a  dream. 

"'Whence  did  I  ride?  I  know  not.  Whither  I 
know  not.  I  stare  and  stare  and  strive  to  forecast  the 
course  from  the  materials  of  the  past.      If  I  look  up  I 


THE     OPEN     COURT. 


4755 


am  blinded  and  dazzled,  down  I  grow  giddy  with  ter- 
ror. I  try  to  turn  my  head,  but  it  is  fixed  in  a  vise. 
I  feel  a  motion,  and  it  seems  progress,  but  when  I 
reason  it  is  only  that  something,  the  aggregate  of  many 
things,  has  slipped  backward,  and  so  I  only  hold  my 
breath  and  stare  and  wonder.'  " 

The  company,  having  listened  with  profound  at- 
tention uttered  a  great  sigh  of  relief  when  the  recital 
ended.  None  spoke  for  a  time,  till  at  last  the  other 
traveller,  who  had  not  seemed  in  the  least  disturbed 
as  the  others  were,  began  : 

"  My  experience,"  he  said,  "has  been  of  a  quite 
different  character.  My  journey  took  me  to  the  head 
waters  and  afterwards  along  the  entire  course  of  a 
great  river,  from  whose  margin  I  observed  all  that  I 
am  about  to  relate.  I  came  first  to  a  little  spring  far 
up  a  mountain  side,  a  spring  that  gushed  and  bubbled, 
and  then — the  waters  having  collected  in  a  pool — flowed 
thence  downward  singing  and  prattling  to  the  mossy 
banks  and  the  hard-faced  rocks.  Soon,  joined  by  other 
water  courses,  the  flood  grew  big  and  bigger,  till  at  a 
turn,  yet  high  up  among  the  hills,  I  came  upon  a  tiny 
canoe,  made  of  birch  bark,  and  frail,  and  in  it,  a  beau- 
tiful spirit,  moving  forward  now  and  then,  sometimes 
by  what  appeared  fitful  impulses,  or  again  dallying  at 
either  bank  with  ferns  and  lotus  fiowers  ;  sometimes 
paddling  on  with  a  sedate,  wise  look,  and  at  others 
madly  beating  the  water,  all  without  (so  at  least  it 
seemed  to  me)  aim  or  purpose. 

"'Sweet  spirit,'  I  asked,  'how  came  you  to  be 
here  alone  and  in  so  frail  a  boat  ?  Where  are  they 
who  should  care  for  you?' 

"The  being  looked  at  me  with  wide,  wondering 
eyes,  and  then,  as  over  his  face  rippled  a  smile  like  to 
the  ripples  of  the  wind  on  the  still  waters  on  which  he 
floated,  but,  never  answering,  paddled  swiftly  away, 
dashing  the  waters  into  foam  as  he  went. 

"Then  a  mist  floated  up  from  the  vale  below  and 
hid  the  canoe  and  the  spirit  shape,  whilst  I  plodded 
slowly  along  the  meandering  stream,  thinking  some- 
what sad  thoughts  of  the  spirit's  fate.  Sad  thoughts 
they  were  because,  above  the  plashing  of  his  paddle, 
and  the  whirring  winds  and  the  babble  of  the  brook 
higher  up,  below,  out  of  the  dense  fog  I  heard  the 
steady  hum  of  a  waterfall. 

"Before  him  were  rapids,  sunken  rocks,  and  then 
a  cataract.  Poor  spirit,  I  thought,  how  unconsciously 
and  all  smiling  and  bearing  your  pretty  burden  of 
flowers  you  go  to  an  untimely  end. 

"  Yet,  after  all,  he  escaped  these  perils,  and  in  due 
time,  coming  by  a  detour  again  to  the  stream,  I  per- 
ceived him  once  more,  this  time,  curious  as  it  seems, 
in  a  stout  bateau,  laden,  not  with  flowers  but  fruits 
and  grain  and  all  kinds  of  produce,  which,  when  I 
hailed  him,  he  said,  breathless  and  between  the  sweeps 


of  his  oars,  he  was  taking  to  a  market  down  the  river. 
Yes,  the  stream  too  had  changed  ;  that  which  had 
been  a  rill  and  then  a  brook  had  broadened  out  into  a 
somewhat  stately  river,  that,  as  I  saw  plainly,  in  the 
distance  grew  continually  broader  and  broader. 

"  'Poor  spirit,'  I  said  again  to  myself,  '  I  pity  you, 
toiling  on  for  a  bare  subsistence,  your  flowers  with- 
ered, and  without  hope  of  rest.' 

"But  far  across  the  waters  I  heard  the  spirit  sing- 
ing blithely  at  his  task,  and  though  darkness  fell  I 
heard  in  rhythm  with  the  oars  the  song  growing  fainter 
in  the  gloom. 

"In  my  journeying  I  came  again,  some  time  after, 
to  the  river.  It  was  where  a  city  was  built,  and  in 
midstream  a  stately  ship  lay  moored,  and  I  saw  upon 
the  deck  the  captain  of  the  ship,  and  it  was  the  spirit 
once  more.  He  saw  me  also,  and  in  the  midst  of  his 
arduous  toil,  (for  he  was  superintending  the  lading  of 
the  ship  and  preparations  for  sailing,)  he  waved  his 
hand  gayly  and  smiled  with  the  same  sweet  smile  I 
had  known  before. 

"I  stood  upon  the  wharf  and  watched  the  sails 
set,  the  anchor  hove  to  the  bow,  and  the  canvas  fill, 
and  the  wake  glisten  with  shafts  of  silver. 

"A  citizen  of  the  city  happening  to  be  near,  I 
asked  him  where  the  ship  was  bound  ;  but  he  only 
stared  at  me.  Would  I  see  the  last  of  her,  he  said,  I 
had  better  go  to  yon  headland,  which  he  pointed  out. 
There,  perhaps,  if  I  had  what  he  called  faith,  I  might 
discern  the  course  the  ship  would  take  when  out  of 
harbor  on  the  open  sea.  'But  as  to  where  she  sails, 
ask  me  not,'  he  added,  with  a  look  of  pain,  'for  this 
port  gives  no  clearance  papers.' 

"Well,  I  went  to  the  headland,  and  stood  there 
watching  as  the  ship  receded  from  the  shore.  She 
sailed  on  at  first  in  smooth  waters  of  the  harbor;  but 
a  ways  out  she  met  the  surges  of  the  outer  sea,  and  I 
heard  the  moaning  of  the  surf  as  it  beat  upon  the  reef, 
and  saw  the  glint  of  the  sun  upon  the  flashing  foam, 
till  at  last,  beyond  the  line  of  tumultuous  breakers, 
she  seemed  for  a  moment  to  stand  still,  and  then,  her 
yards  braced  and  all  sails  swelling  in  a  favoring  wind, 
she  stood  out  to  the  open  ocean. 

"While  I  was  wondering,  (for  I  lacked  the  sort  of 
faith  that  citizen  spoke  of,)  I  perceived  a  little  pin- 
nace coming  from  the  direction  the  ship  had  sailed, 
and  as  it  drew  near  and  nearer,  propelled  by  stout 
oarsmen,  I  discerned  that  it  bore  a  burden  robed  in 
black  drapery,  and  all  about  plumes  of  black. 

"  'Would  you  see  the  face  of  the  Captain  for  the 
last  time  ? '  said  the  citizen,  who  had  accompanied 
me.  And  when  I  drew  near,  the  catafalque-bearers 
came  and  thrusting  the  drapery  aside  showed  a  face 
pallid,  and  cold,  and  still.  And  when  they  had  thus 
disclosed  his  features  to  our  brief  view,  the  bearers 


4756 


THE    OPEN    COURT. 


bore  him  away,  to  sleep,  (so  the  citizen  said,)  his  last 
long  sleep. 

"I  had  thought  to  have  seen  the  face  of  the  spirit, 
bnt  his  face  that  I  saw  reposing  in  the  catafalque  was 
a  quite  different  one.  It  was  not  the  spirit,  but,  as  I 
knew,  the  pilot  of  the  ship.  A  pilot's  duty  is  to  com- 
mand the  ship  while  it  is  in  the  harbor,  through  the 
channels  to  the  sea,  and  past  the  harbor  bar.  There 
he  gives  over  his  command  to  the  Captain. 

"Of  all  this  I  said  something  to  the  friendly  citi- 
zen ;  but  he  said,  No,  it  was  the  face  of  the  ship's 
captain  I  had  seen — changed. 

"  'You  cannot  tell  me,'  I  said,  '  whither  the  ship  is 
bound,  and  now  you  tell  me  she  has  lost  her  com- 
mander. How  fares  it  with  the  ship  ?  Is  she  drifting 
b)'  chance  of  changing  winds  and  tides  through  count- 
less seas?  To  what  end,  then,  was  she  launched?  To 
what  end  was  she  stored  at  the  wharves  of  your  city 
with  rich  cargoes  of  merchandise?' 

"The  citizen  could  not  answer  my  questions,  but 
I  knew  that  the  spirit  still  lived,  and  was  still  in  com- 
mand of  the  ship,  because  I  knew  his  face." 

The  company  all  thought  these  adventures  very 
wonderful,  and  were  urgent  in  their  questions  as  to 
what  curious  worlds  those  were,  "so  vastly  different," 
said  they,  "from  our  own."  They  knew  not — neither 
the  two  travellers  nor  their  entertainers — that  I  could 
have  told  them,  for  I  had  lived  in  both.  Have  you? 
Which  do  you  prefer?  The  choice  is  free. 


SHE  DIED  FOR  ME. 

BY    VOLTAIRINE    DE    CLEYRE. 

The  Doctor  was  a  lean  dark  man,  with  sad  eyes. 
They  looked  up,  wide  and  singularly  deep,  as  his  visi- 
tor said  :  "  I  don't  understand  you  half-way  free- 
thinkers in  the  least.  I  am  out  and  out.  1  have 
no  patience  with  wishy-washiness.  I  just  tell  them 
straight  that  I  haven't  any  use  for  their  musty  old 
frauds,  nor  their  whole  outfit  of  priests  that  live  by 
them.  But  you — you  know  religion  is  all  supersti- 
tion, yet  you  go  on  talking  to  those  people  as  if  you 
accepted  their  belief  in  God  and  immortality  and  the 
vicarious  atonement  and  the  whole  programme  !  " 

The  voice  was  loud  and  disagreeably  disputative  ; 
just  such  a  voice  as  one  might  expect  from  the  hard 
mouth  above  the  close-shaven  chin. 

"Perhaps  I  do,  in  a  way,"  answered  the  doctor, 
slowly  and  a  little  wearily. 

"Perhaps  you  do,"  was  the  testy  echo;  "oh,  yes, 
perhaps  you  do,  in  a  way  !  That's  your  fine-spun  ag- 
nosticism. Perhaps  the  moon  is  green  cheese,  too,  in 
a  way,  to  a  set  of  senses  that  have  never  existed  !  " 

The  Doctor  shook  his  head  and  smiled  a  little 
denying  smile.  Just  then  the  door  opened,  and  an 
odd  red-lipped,  round-eyed,  fuzzy-haired   little  thing 


looked  in  curiously.  The  Doctor  held  out  his  hand  : 
"Come,  Sonya."  The  queer  small  figure,  almost  gro- 
tesquely dressed,  came  hopping  to  his  side,  stretching 
up  her  fat  little  confident  hands. 

"Your  little  girl,  I  presu;ne?"  said  the  visitor, 
with  that  air  of  polite  boredom  with  which  your  born 
disputant  bears  an  interruption  of  his  favorite  pastime. 

"  Yes, — mine,"  with  a  loving  stroke  upon  the  fuzzy 
head,  "only  mine — her  mother  is  dead."  The  visitor 
was  silent.  "And  that,  you  see,"  went  on  the  Doctor, 
with  a  little  catch  in  his  voice,  "is  one  of  the  reasons 
I  believe — in  a  way.  Sonya's  mother  was  a  very 
strong  woman,  strong  every  way.  I  was  weak,  not 
so  much  in  my  body  as — " 

He  pressed  the  fuzzy  head  against  his  cheek  and 
went  on  in  an  unnaturally  dry  voice  :  "  In  fact,  I  am 
so  yet,  too  much.  She  was  a  midwife  over  there  in 
Russia,  and  when  we  came  here  she  urged  me  to 
study.  We  were  poor,  of  course.  It  was  in  the  days 
of  the  persecution  and  we  had  had  to  sacrifice  every- 
thing. My  Sonya  was  not  born  then,  and  her  father 
was  sent  to  Siberia.  To  us  they  gave  forty-eight  hours 
to  sell  all  and  go.  So  we  had  nothing.  Only  my  sis- 
ter had  ever  her  courageous  heart, — the  heart  I  think 
of  all  our  old  forefathers  in  the  wilderness.  She  always 
saw  a  Promised  Land  before  her,  always  made  a  way 
through  the  desert  to  it.  She  kept  us  up  ;  she  never 
complained  ;  she  worked,  she  said,  to  rest — to  rest 
from  the  thought  of  the  lonely  figure,  or  may  be  only 
a  grave,  there  in  the  ice-blasts  and  the  white  desert." 

The  deep  eyes  looked  far  away  to  the  eastward. 
There  was  a  silence  and  a  sigh,  and  then  : 

"  Yes,  she  kept  us  up,  and  paid  my  way  at  college. 
I  didn't  wish  it  at  first,  but  she  would  have  it  so,  and, 
as  I  told  you,  she  was  stronger  than  I.  And  then  the 
love  of  study  came  upon  me,  which  is  greater  than  all 
other  loves  ;  and  I  did  not  think  of  her  part  any  more, 
the  heavy,  patient  burden-bearing.  I  did  not  see  how 
she  grew  wan  and  weak  ;  and  she — she  never  said, 
'  Look  at  me.' 

"  It  was  just  a  week  before  I  graduated  that  I  knew 
it  first,  when  I  came  in  and  found  her  dead  upon  the 
bed.  Just  a  week  before  !  And  she  died  and  never 
knew  she  had  not  worked  in  vain.  She  would  not  let 
them  send  for  me;  she  would  not  tell  them  where  to 
find  me;  she  said:  'Don't  bother  him.  I  shall  be 
better.' 

"  It  was  black  to  me  after  that.  I  passed  the  ex- 
aminations. I  don't  know  how, — somc\\ovi.  I  fancied 
I  had  to,  for  her  sake.  Somewhere  in  those  dark, 
numb  days  the  explanation  worked  itself  out  to  me,  (at 
least,  I  believe  it  is  an  explanation,)  that  she  is  not 
dead,  not  really  dead.  I  am  not  so  weak  and  selfish 
as  I  was  ;  that  is  because  some  of  her  strength  was  im- 
pressed on  me.    The  better  part  of  me  is  she  j  even  the 


THE    OPEN     COURT. 


4757 


little  knowledge  I  have  to  soften  pain,  surely  she 
bought  it — it  is  hers.  I  do  not  know  whether  Jesus 
of  Galilee  died  for  others'  sins  or  not,  but  I  know 
surely  that  she  died  for  nie.  And  I  should  not  be 
able  to  bear  it,  if  I  could  not  think  she  still  lived, — if 
I  did  not  know  that  her  great  unselfish  spirit  was  not 
lost,  only  broken  through  the  frail  ego-bubble,  and 
mixing,  not  in  me  alone,  though  truly  much  in  me, 
but  in  every  one  she  helped  in  her  helpful  life.  And 
for  that  sake  I  love  all  determined  ones,  all  patient, 
all  devoted,  all  uncomplaining  ones,  whether  they  be 
what  you  would  call  enlightened  or  not,  seeing  her  in 
them." 

"Truly  now,"  murmured  the  visitor,  "  I  shouldn't." 

"That  is  because,  in  spite  of  your  freethought,  30U 

are  orthodox  and  place  reality  in  shadows,"  answered 

the  other,  looking  very  steadily  at  the  falling  snow  and 

cuddling  Sonya's  head  beneath  his  chin. 


WAVES. 

BY  MARY  MORGAN  (gOWAN  LEA). 

My  head  upon  my  hand,  and  then  a  long-drawn  sigh. 

O  what  is  this  I  feel,  or  whereof  do  I  dream  ? 

My  solemn  hope,  my  faith — what  are  they  ?  For  I  seem 
Forever  wandering  hand  in  hand  with  mystery. 
A  cloudless  azure  sky  is  looking  down  on  me, 

While  sings  the  shimmering  sea  all  musically,  low  ; 

Upon  the  crested  waves  my  thoughts  float  to  and  fro. 
Spending  themselves  perchance,  alas  !  as  aimlessly. 

Ye  subtle  waves  of  thought,  invisible  !      O  what 

Your  power  on  Mother  Earth,  your  future  in  the  All  ? 

From  morning  until  eve  you  clamour  and  you  call. 
Forever  questioning,  alluring,  answering  not. 

Against  the  rocks  the  ocean-waves  break  with  dull  sound  ; 

But  onward  roll   the  waves  of  thought   nor  know  a  bound  ! 


CORRESPONDENCE. 


SABBATARIANISM  AND  WOMAN'S  SUFFRAGE  IN 
MASSACHUSETTS. 

To  the  Editor  of  TJie  Open  Court: 

As  A  native  of  Massachusetts  and  a  resident  in  it  off  and  on 
during  the  political  canvass  of  last  Fall,  I  have  read  with  much  in- 
terest and  some  amusement  Dr.  Oswald's  explanation  in  the  De- 
cember I2th  Open  Court  of  the  State's  majority  vote  on  the  wo- 
man's suffrage  referendum.  Advanced  scientific  men  are  apt  to 
forget,  especially  if  they  are  a  little  biassed  on  some  aspect  of  the 
subject  under  consideration,  that  the  v  orld  also  is  advancing,  and 
that  it  will  not  do  to  attempt  to  account  for  an  event  of  to-day  by  a 
condition  of  things  which  may  have  existed  several  years  ago. 
And  as  regards  this  vote,  instead  of  its  being  caused  by  "the 
dread  of  an  innovation,  tending,  through  the  temperance  bias  of 
the  proposed  new  voters,  to  deliver  the  State  into  the  hands  of 
clerical  fanatics,"  and  by  "the  alliance  of  Sabbatarianism"  with 
the  suffrage  movement,  my  observations  on  the  spot  led  me  to  be- 
lieve that  it  was  caused  by  exactly  the  opposite  fear. 

Whatever  may  have  been  true  of  the  old  State  once,  all  its 
able-bodied  Sabbatarianism,  or  Sundayism,  as,  I  suppose,  the 
Doctor  means,  emigrated  from  it  long  since  and  went  West,  and 


there  is  about  as  little  fear  of  it  there  now  as  there  is  of  Indians 
and  bears.  Not  only  in  the  cities,  but  also  in  the  towns  and  vil- 
lages, Sunday  is  used  as  freely  and  as  variously,  so  far  as  law  or 
even  public  opinion  is  concerned,  as  is  any  other  day  of  the  week. 
There  is  less  church  going  there  than  in  any  other  part  of  the 
Union.  Roman  Catholicism,  not  I'uritanism,  keeps  it  up.  And, 
starting  from  Boston  and  going  west,  you  can  reckon  the  longitude 
you  are  in  almost  exactly  by  the  increasing  proportion  of  the  popu- 
lation who  can  be  seen  Sunday  morning  on  their  way  to  religious 
worship. 

Analysing  the  vote  on  the  woman's  suffrage  referendum,  the 
foundation  of  it  was  a  stolid,  subconscious  jealousy  of  woman's 
superiority.  It  is  the  one  thing  in  which  alone  multitudes  of  men 
are  above  women,  and  they  doggedly  hold  on  to  it  as  their  last 
hope  of  supremacy.  Another  element  was  the  more  wholesome 
apprehension  that  the  granting  of  it  would  tend  to  make  woman 
too  much  a  public  character  and  mar  her  specially  feminine  char- 
acteristics. Then  there  are  some  men  like  John  Fiske,  who  theo- 
retically and  intellectually  are  progressives,  but  who  historically 
and  practically  are  the  most  timid  standstills.  We  have  lots  of 
them  in  our  Unitarian  denomination  ;  and  the  Episcopal  woods 
are  full  of  them.  Lowell  was  one,  writing  with  his  mind  Credi- 
diimis  Joi'eni  Re\^nare,  but  buried  as  to  his  body  in  the  old  prayer- 
book  faith  of  two  hundred  years  ago.  And  they  all  voted  against 
the  woman's  suffrage  proposition. 

But  what  beyond  these  decided  its  fate  was  the  dread  not  of 
its  alliance  with  Sabbatarianism  and  Puritanic  rigor,  but  of  its 
alliance  with  radicalism  and  free  love  and  a  general  loosening  of 
soci-jl  and  moral  restraints.  As  one  man  said,  "  So  far  as  voting  is 
concerned,  I  would  just  as  lief  my  wife  and  daughters  should  go  with 
me  to  the  polls  as  to  church  ;  but  if  we  open  the  doors  to  let  their 
voting  in,  there  is  no  knowing  what  hosts  of  other  less  desirable 
changes  may  follow  in  its  train  till  by  and  by  they  will  be  going, 
the  same  as  we  men  do,  to  drinking-saloons  and  gambling-hells." 
While  there  are  probably  not  five  thousand  people  in  Massachu- 
setts who  associate  woman's  suffrage  with  Sabbatarianism,  there 
are,  perhaps,  fifty  thousand  there  who  still  associate  it  with  free 
love,  free  divorce,  free  religion,  a  bloomer  dress  and  no  Sunday 
at  all  ;  and  their  votes  and  influence  were  solidly  against  the 
movement. 

Another  thing  needs  to  be  remembered.  Massachusetts  Puri- 
tanism with  all  its  rigors  was  at  its  heart  and  for  its  day  a  move- 
ment in  the  direction  of  freedom.  It  did  not  go  far  itself,  but  it 
produced  offspring  that  have  not  yet  stopped  going  ;  and  the  ex- 
perience of  all  ages  shows  that  it  is  out  of  such  old,  gnarled  roots 
and  trunks,  full  of  fanatical  vigor,  that  branches  grow  laden  with 
the  sweetest  fruits  of  liberty, — its  Emersons,  Channings,  Parkers, 
Phillipses,  and  Garrisons.  The  Women's  Temperance  Union  is 
such  a  root  ;  and  though  we  cannot  sympathise  with  its  present 
fanaticism  and  narrowness,  shall  we  not  ourselves  cherish  a  phi- 
losophy which  is  broad  and  liberal  enough  to  recognise  the  prom- 
ise of  what  is  at  its  heart  ?  John  C.  Kimball. 

Ann  Arbor,  Mich. 


BOOK  REVIEWS. 

Fables  and  Essays.  By  John  Bryan  of  Ohio.  New  York :  The 
Arts  and  Lettres  Co.  1895.  Pages,  245. 
The  author  of  Fables  and  Essays  "humbly  begs  the  public's 
pardon  for  perpetrating  the  book  upon  it."  He  has  copyrighted 
it  but  only  to  prevent  others  from  selling  it  at  a  gainful  price. 
Otherwise  he  is  against  copyright  and  exclaims  :  "  What  if  Jesus 
had  copyrighted  and  charged  a  fee  for  his  Sermon  on  the  Mount  ?'' 
In  fact  the  author  confesses  that  far  from  preventing  the  circula- 
tion of  his  book  he  should  be  "much  obliged  to  the  public  for 
reading  it  at  all,  let  alone  pay  a  profit  on  its  manufacture."  He 
says  in  the  Preface  : 


4758 


XHE     OPEN     COURT. 


"One  who  gathers  and  writes  news  is  worthy  of  hire;  but 
what  shall  we  say  of  the  author  who  button-holes  the  impatient 
public  upon  the  street  and  harangues  it,  and  then,  hat  in  hand, 
begs  the  strolling  buffoon's  fee  ?  " 

Addressing  the  reader,  he  adds  : 

"  I  expect  you  will  pardon  me,  for  you  know  as  well  as  I  there 
are  emergencies  in  nature  which  a  person  can't  help  ;  there  are 
times  when  a  thing  can  no  longer  be  concealed,  and  publication  is 
a  relief. 

"I've  had  these  manuscripts  about  me  for  years  and  tried  to 
suppress  them  until  those  who  knew  me  gave  me  a  character  of 
mystery  and  whispered  among  themselves  that  they  expected 
something  unusual  from  me;  I've  even  'sat  on  the  safety-valve  ' 
until  I  knew  the  explosion  could  no  longer  be  delayed. 

"  I  even  got  my  hair  cut  quite  short  and  ordered  fashionable 
clothes  ;  but  all  to  no  purpose.  So  here  I  am,  again  begging  your 
pardon,  and  thanking  you  in  advance  for  granting  it.  If  you  read 
my  book  at  all  I  shall  feel  that  I  have  not  exploded  in  vain." 

Having  read  this  Preface,  we  find  a  note  which  refers  us  to 
an  additional  Preface  on  page  119,  where  we  are  informed  that 
"  as  the  printing  of  this  book  proceeds  the  author  finds  that  he  has 
got  the  wrong  Preface  to  the  wrong  book,"  and  now,  we  are  told 
that  everything  in  this  book,  including  the  Preface,  was  written 
within  the  last  four  months  prior  to  its  publication,  and  the  printer 
has  taken  much  of  it  wet  from  his  pen.  The  author  further  be^s 
the  reader  to  not  judge  his  book  by  any  single  part  of  it,  but  to  be 
easy  on  him  in  certain  spots,  adding  :  "Perhaps  I  myself  am  as 
good  an  illustration  of  some  of  the  fables  and  other  points  as  the 
reader  is." 

The  contents  of  the  book  consists  of  fables  in  the  usual  style, 
each  with  a  moral  attached  to  it, — some  of  them  equal  to  the  best 
iEsopian  fables,  some  of  them  mediocre,  and  some  poor.  He  who 
knows  how  difficult  it  is  to  invent  new  fables  that  are  neither  dry 
nor  trivial,  will  forgive  him  his  literary  sins  and  only  remember 
the  good  fables.  The  author  opposes  woman  emancipation  ;  he 
jeers  at  the  quarrels  between  Protestants  and  Roman  Catholics, 
and  exposes  the  various  petty  vices  common  among  men.  To  give 
a  fair  specimen  of  the  contents  we  here  reproduce  a  few  short 
fables. 

"THE  M.MD  AND  THE  FOWLS. 

"A  young  cock,  who  had  been  brought  but  recently  into  the 
farm-yard,  asked  an  older  cock  why  it  was  that  when  the  farmer, 
who  was  master  of  all  the  lands,  came  to  his  door  the  fowls  were 
indifferent  toward  him  or  ran  away  in  fear  ;  but  when  the  maid 
came  to  the  door  they  ran  to  her  in  great  numbers. 

"  '  She  often  comes  to  the  door  to  shake  the  table-cloth,'  said 
the  older  cock. 

"Moral:  I.  Generous  persons  will  have  many  friends.  2. 
We  often  get  credit  for  generosity  when  we  do  not  deserve  it. 

"  EVERY  TREE  LEANS. 

"A  woodman  and  his  son  went  into  the  forest  to  fell  trees. 
Having  decided  to  cut  down  a  certain  tree,  the  son  asked  his 
father  on  which  sides  he  should  cut  the  notches. 

"  '  It  will  fall  easiest,'  said  the  man,  '  in  the  direction  toward 
which  it  leans.  Every  tree  leans  a  little;  every  tree  has  its  way 
to  fall.' 

"Moral:  Every  character  has  its  weaker  side. 

"THE  GREY  SQUIRREL  AND  THE  POLITICIANS. 

"Two  politicians  of  different  parties  went  into  a   forest  to 
hunt   squirrels.     Having  treed  a  squirrel,  one  of  them  stood  on 
one  side  of   the  tree   and  one  on  the  other.     One  of  them  at  last 
drew  aim  at  the  squirrel,  when  the  latter  cried  out: 
"  'What  are  you — Republican  or  Democrat  ?' 
"  '  Republican,'  said  the  man  ;    '  what  is  that  to  you  ?' 
"'It   is  a  good  deal   to  me,  sir,' said   the  squirrel;   'if  you 


were  a  Democrat  you   might  shoot  all  day  at  me,  for  they  never 
hit  a  mark  they  aim  at.' 

"  '  That  squirrel  is  too  smart  to  be  killed,'  said  the  man,  lower- 
ing his  gun. 

"By  this  time  the  other  man  took  aim,  when  the  squirrel 
called  out  ; 

"  '  Democrat  or  Republican  ?' 

"  '  Democrat,'  said  the  man. 

"  '  Then  you  had  better  shoot  at  that  black  squirrel  in  the 
other  tree  yonder.' 

"As  the  Democrat  turned  his  head  to  look  for  the  black  squir- 
rel, the  grey  squirrel  crept  down  the  trunk  of  the  tree  into  a  hole 
and  was  safe. 

"  'H,-:'lo!'  cried  the  two  men,  at  once  standing  together; 
'Come  out,  Mr.  Squirrel,  and  we  shall  be  friends.  We  won't 
shoot.' 

"  'Honor  bright  ?'  barked  the  squirrel  from  behind  the  side  of 
the  hole. 

"  '  Honor  bright,'  said  the  men. 

"At  this  the  squirrel  came  to  the  door  of  the  hole. 

"  'Why  did  you  ask  our  politics  ?'  said  the  men. 

"'I  did  it,' said  the  squirrel,  'to  gain  time  to  escape.  My 
old  father  used  to  say  that  he  could  tell  a  Democrat  "by  the  way 
he  shot ;  "  but  you  can't  do  it  now.  As  you  are  politicians  I  can't 
trust  either  of  you.     Good-day,  gentlemen.' 

"Moral:  Between  the  two  parties  the  people  have  a  hard 
time." 

NOTES. 

Louis  Prang  &  Co.  of  Boston  have  again  appeared  in  the  field 
with  a  rich  and  dainty  selection  of  Christmas  and  New  Year's 
cards  and  calendars,  designed  by  native  artists  and  preserving  the 
high  reputation  of  the  house.  We  note  especially  Bessie  Grey's 
booklet  of  wild  violets  From  a  Poet's  Garden,  containing  passages 
selected  from  Shelley,  with  appropriate  illustrations. 


Mr.  H.  L.  Green  informs  us  that  with  the  January  number 
The  Frccthoiight  Magazine,  which  is  the  most  prominent  exponent 
of  progressive  liberalism,  will  be  enlarged. 

THE  OPEN   COURT 

"THE  MONON,"  324  DEARBORN   STREET. 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS,  Post  Office  Drawer  F. 


E.  C.  HEGELER,  Publisher. 


DR.  PAUL  CARUS,  Editor. 


TERMS  THROUGHOUT  THE  POSTAL  UNION. 

$1.00  PER  YEAR.  $0.50  FOR  SIX  MONTHS. 

CONTENTS  OF  NO.  435. 

BOOTY'S  GHOST.     F.  M.  Holland 4751 

PAN-EGOISM  THE  KEY-NOTE  OF  THE  UNIVERSE. 

The  Late  Dr   Robert  Lewins 4753 

OTHER  WORLDS  THAN  OURS.     Hudor  Genone 4754 

SHE  DIED  FOR  ME.     Voltairine  de  Cleyre 4756 

POETRY. 

Waves.     Mary  Morgan  (Gowan  Lea) 4757 

CORRESPONDENCE. 

Sabbatarianism   and   Woman's   Suffrage   in   Massachu- 
setts.    John  C.  Kimball 4757 

BOOK   REVIEWS 4757 

NOTES 475S