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VOL.  XXIX.    (No.  3) MARCH,  1915 NO.  706 

CONTENTS: 


PACK 


Frontispiece.    Aristophanes. 

The  Position  of  Holland  in  the  European  War.    Albert  Oosterheerdt  . . .   129 

The  Night  (A  Drama).    Barrie  Americanus  Neutralis 137 

The  Life  of  Socrates  (Illustrated).    William  Ellery  Leonard 151 

Conybeare  on  "The  Historical  Christ."    William  Benjamin  Smith 163 

Germany's  Destruction  as  Foretold  by  a  Frenchman.    A.  Kampmeier 190 

"Bos  et  Asinus"  Again.    Maximilian  Josef  Rudwin 191 

Notes 192 


Just  Published-Holiday  Edition 

Truth  and  Other  Poems:  By  Paul  Carus. 
Cloth,  white  and  gold,  pp.  64.  Price  $1.00. 

A  group  of  brief  philosophical  problems  in  blank  verse  on  the  themet 
"Truth/*  "Time,"  "Love"  and  "Death,"  and  also  a  longer  poem  "De 
Rerum  Natura,"  divided  into  three  parts:  (1)  The  Problem;  (2)  The 
Soul;  (3)  The  All.    The  last  poem,  "Death,"  contains  these  lines: 

"Traditions  of  parental  past  are  we. 
Handing  the  gain  of  our  expanding  souls 
Down  to  succeeding  ages  which  we  build. 
The  lives  of  predecessors  live  in  us 
And  we  continue  in  the  race  to  come. 
Thus  in  the  Eleusinian  Mysteries 
A  burning  torch  was  passed  from  hand  to  hand, 
And  every  hand  was  needed  in  the  chain 
To  keep  the  holy  flame  aglow— the  symbol 
Of  spirit-life,  of  higher  aspirations." 

The  Open  Court  Publishing  Company 

Chicago  -  -  London 


ARISTOPHANES. 


Frontispiece  to  The  Open  Court. 


The  Open  Court 


A  MONTHLY  MAGAZINE 


Devoted  to  the  Science  of  Religion,  the  Religion  of  Science,  and 
the  Extension  of  the  Religious  Parliament  Idea. 


VOL.  XXIX.  (No.  3)  MARCH,  1915  NO.  706 

Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Company,  1915 


THE  POSITION  OF  HOLLAND   IN  THE  EURO- 
PEAN WAR. 

BY  ALBERT  OOSTERHEERDT. 

THE  position  of  Holland  in  the  great  European  war  is  both  a 
difficult  and  a  delicate  one.  In  the  center  almost  of  the  con- 
flict, related  to  the  principal  warring  nations  by  ties  of  blood,  com- 
merce and  trade,  herself  an  exponent  of  international  law,  which  it 
is  charged  from  many  sides  has  been  rudely  broken,  suffering 
greatly  from  the  effects  of  the  war  in  her  trade,  industry  and  gen- 
eral condition,  compelled  in  addition  to  relieve  a  multitude  of 
refugees,  Holland  has,  though  neutral,  a  most  unenviable  position, 
incurring  nearly  all  the  evil  results  of  war  without  experiencing 
at  the  same  time  that  national  exaltation  which  is  often  a  comple- 
ment of  it.  Officially,  of  course,  the  Netherlands  are  neutral,  and, 
as  far  as  the  government  is  concerned,  this  neutrality  has  been 
admirably  kept,  nor  have  the  people  at  large  been  committing  overt 
acts  of  hostility  toward  any  of  the  powers  involved ;  but  it  would 
be  idle  to  assume  that  the  Dutch  are  wholly  without  sympathies  in 
this  war,  or  that  they  alone  have  attained  that  state  of  philosophic 
calm  which  seems  an  absolute  requirement  for  a  complete  neutral- 

ity.  ■  .       .  . 

The  ties  of  blood  and  racial  origin  alone  make  the  position  of 
the  Dutch  peculiarly  difficult.  One  of  the  purest  Germanic  nations, 
although  not  without  a  strong  admixture  of  Roman  blood,  speak- 
ing an  almost  entirely  Teutonic  language,  which  is  perhaps  a  better 
development  of  the  ancient  German  than  the  modern  German  with 
its  artificial  constructions  and  ponderous  word-formations,  the 
Dutch  have  at  all  times  been  an  outpost  of  das  Deutschttim,  of 
equal  rank  with  the  other  nations  of  Teutonic  extraction.     Part 


130  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

and  parcel  of  Germanic  civilization,  their  relations  with  Belgium, 
and  especially  Brabant  and  Flanders,  populated  by  the  Flemish 
people,  practically  of  the  same  stock  and  using  the  same  language, 
have  been  particularly  close.  Formerly,  when  the  seventeen  Nether- 
land  provinces  were  united  under  the  scepter  of  Charles  V,  only  to 
be  driven  apart  during  the  reign  of  his  son  Philip  II,  there  existed 
the  most  intimate  relationship  between  Belgium  and  Holland,  two 
parts  indeed  of  one  country.  From  the  southern  Netherlands  the 
northern  provinces  derived  much,  in  fact  nearly  all  of  that  which 
afterwards  made  the  Dutch  Republic  famous  in  art,  industry,  trade 
and  commerce.  When  the  southern  Netherlands  were  subdued  by 
Don  Juan  of  Spain  and  Alexander  of  Parma,  the  trade  and  com- 
merce of  the  great  Flemish  cities  were  moved  almost  bodily  to 
Amsterdam  and  the  other  cities  of  Holland  and  Zealand,  which  owe 
their  growth  and  industry  in  great  part  to  the  Flemish  artisans, 
weavers,  merchants  and  bankers  who  came  fleeing  from  Antwerp 
and  Flanders  after  the  Spanish  fury  of  1585  had  done  its  fearful 
work  in  that  city.  Henceforth  the  connection  between  the  two 
Netherlands  is  broken,  and  Holland  profits  at  the  expense  of  Bel- 
gium. The  political  separation  is  accentuated  by  the  religious  and 
commercial  antagonism ;  the  northern  Netherlands  wax  great  and 
mighty,  the  southern  Netherlands  lead  a  miserable  existence  under 
foreign  domination. 

This  condition  lasts  for  two  centuries,  and  is  ended  by  the 
effects  of  the  great  French  revolution.  France  wrests  Belgium 
from  Austria,  while,  soon  after,  the  Dutch  republic  comes  to  an 
inglorious  end  in  1795,  the  Prince  of  Orange  taking  refuge  in  Eng- 
land, and  Holland  as  well  as  Belgium  falling  under  French  dom- 
ination. The  fall  of  Napoleon  sees  both  countries  once  more 
united ;  to  Holland,  already  independent  in  1813,  Belgium  is  added 
in  1815,  at  the  command  of  the  Vienna  Congress.  The  union,  al- 
though quite  promising  at  first,  comes  to  naught  in  1830,  when  the 
clerical  and  liberal  parties  of  Belgium  form  an  alliance,  set  up  a 
revolutionary  government  and  defy  the  northern  provinces  and  the 
king.  An  attempt  by  the  Dutch  government  to  suppress  the  revolt 
culminated  in  the  famous  "Ten  Days'  Campaign,"  at  the  end  of 
which  all  Belgium  lay  at  the  feet  of  the  victorious  Dutch  army. 
At  this  juncture,  however,  foreign  powers  intervened;  both  Eng- 
land and  France  assumed  a  threatening  attitude,  and  by  means  of 
a  French  army  compelled  Holland  to  relinquish  her  hold  upon 
Belgium.  A  long  period  of  suspense  followed,  to  be  concluded 
finally  by  the  neutrality  treaty  of  1839,  signed  by  Great  Britain, 


THE  POSITION  OF  HOLLAND  IN  THE  EUROPEAN  WAR.  131 

France,  Russia,  the  Germanic  Confederation,  and  Belgium  and 
Holland  themselves. 

The  first  period  of  Belgian  independence  was  necessarily  very 
French  in  spirit  and  culture,  thereby  suppressing  the  old  national 
character  of  Flanders  and  Brabant.  A  natural  reaction  followed,  in 
which  the  ancient  Flemish  verse  and  prose  regained  their  former 
preeminence — a  new  period  of  youthful  vigor  and  noble  expression 
in  the  old  language  of  the  people.  The  connection  with  Holland, 
never  entirely  lost,  became  more  intimate  as  the  literatures  of  both 
countries  became  the  common  property  of  each.  Many  strands  of 
different  kinds  continued  to  form  an  almost  indissoluble  link  be- 
tween the  two  peoples,  not  least  of  which  was  the  General  Dutch 
Alliance  (Algemeen  N ederlandsch  Verhond).  Little  wonder  then 
that  Dutch  sympathy  for  Belgium  in  this  war  is  ardent  and  sin- 
cere, and  that  the  manifestations  of  charity  and  esteem  have  been 
universal  and  full  throughout  the  whole  of  Holland.  As  indicative 
of  Dutch  feeling  toward  unhappy  Belgium  the  following  quotations 
from  Neerlandia,  the  official  organ  of  the  General  Dutch  Alliance, 
which  has  its  members  in  every  civilized  country  in  the  world,  will 
be  found  illuminating.  Editorially,  Neerlandia  says:  "Being  pub- 
lished in  a  neutral  country,  Neerlandia  must  also  be  neutral.  As 
Holland  does  not  share  in  the  fighting,  the  Dutch  people  must,  both 
in  speech  and  writing,  withhold  itself  from  making  attacks.  But 
as  far  as  Belgium  is  concerned — for  the  major  part  inhabited  by 
a  people  of  Dutch  race  and  Dutch  language,  accordingly,  from  the 
view-point  of  our  Alliance  and  Neerlandia,  inhabited  by  our  race — 
we  must,  in  all  calmness  and  sincerity,  utter  a  word  of  protest 
against  this  invasion. 

"In  fact,  Germany  herself  has,  in  the  utterances  of  her  chan- 
cellor, admitted  that  she  was  doing  Belgium  an  injustice.  We  do 
not  enter  here  into  an  inquiry  as  to  which  power  or  which  group 
of  powers  bears  the  blame  for  the  outbreak  of  this  world-wide 
war.  We  also  do  not  raise  the  question  whether  Germany  has 
good  reasons  for  saying  that  she  fights  for  her  existence  and  not 
for  conquest,  and  that  she  was  compelled  in  self-defense  to  go 
through  Belgium;  willingly  or  unwillingly,  she  committed  injustice. 

"But  we  have  confidence  in  the  German  people.  They  will, 
in  case  they  are  victorious,  make  amends  and  rectify  what  they 
have  done  to  Belgium.  And  they  will  leave  the  country  its  freedom 
and  independence.  When  the  anger  and  the  fever  of  war  have 
passed  they  will  have  admiration  and  respect  for  the  small  nation 
which  was  too  proud  to  allow  invasion  of  its  territory,  and  which. 


132  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

in  defense  of  its  honor  and  independence,  dared  to  fight  with  a 
powerful  enemy.  And  they  will  understand  that  the  Dutch  nation, 
although  it  remains  firmly  neutral,  sympathizes  with  the  heroic 
Belgian  nation,  in  part  a  related  nation,  and  gives  expression  to  its 
admiration  and  pity."^ 

In  perfect  agreement  with  the  thought  and  sentiment  of  this 
noble  protest  has  been  the  hospitality  and  treatment  accorded  to  the 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  Belgian  refugees  in  Holland.  The  gov- 
ernment itself  has  done  everything  possible  for  these  poor  people, 
and  besides  the  national  fund  for  home  charity  another  fund  has 
been  devoted  exclusively  to  the  Belgians.  While  greatly  suffering 
herself,  Holland  has  nobly  responded  to  this  additional  burden, 
refusing  to  receive  the  proffered  aid  of  Great  Britain  and  America 
to  help  in  caring  for  the  thousands  of  destitute  Belgians.  A  duty 
voluntarily  undertaken  would  be  fulfilled  in  the  spirit  in  which  it 
was  begun ;  this  and  national  patriotism  urged  the  government  to 
reject  these  otherwise  welcome  offers  of  aid.  That  the  Belgians 
have  appreciated  this  generosity  and  unlimited  hospitality  on  the 
part  of  Holland,  which  dispelled  forever  the  unjust  suspicions  held 
against  the  Dutch  in  the  beginning  of  the  war,  may  be  conclusively 
seen  from  an  address  to  Queen  Wilhelmina,  sent  by  two  Flemish 
representatives  in  the  Belgian  parliament  and  signed  by  many  prom- 
inent refugees  and  others.  The  text  of  this  eloquent  address  is  too 
long  to  quote  in  full,  but  a  translation  of  part  of  it  will  indicate  its 
fervent  feeling  and  heartfelt  gratitude.  "Not  only,"  says  the  ad- 
dress, "have  tens  of  thousands  of  Belgians  to  thank  Holland  for  the 
preservation  of  their  very  lives,  but  also  for  their  re-quickened  faith 
in  life  and  humanity Through  her  magnanimous  love  of  human- 
ity has  Holland,  in  these  days,  gained  more  than  a  battle  of  arms. 
She  has  earned  the  eternal  gratitude  of  a  sister  nation,  compelled 
the  admiration  of  all  combatants  and  brought  upon  herself  a  blessing 
from  on  high."- 

While  bleeding  Belgium  is  thus  a  recipient  of  Dutch  (and 
American)  bounty,  the  relations  of  Holland  with  the  other  com- 
batant nations  are  no  less  close  and  essential.  Germany,  as  might 
be  expected,  looms  very  large  in  the  Dutch  consciousness.  From  Ger- 
many their  language  and  customs  are  derived,  the  royal  house  of 
Orange  is  of  German  descent,  as  are  also  many  Dutch  citizens 
whose  forefathers  fled  to  the  Netherlands  during  the  religious  wars 
in  Germany,  or  who  themselves  are  of  more  recent  immigration ; 

'  Page  199,  Nov.  1914.     English  translation. 
^  Neerlandia,  Nov.  1914,  page  208. 


THE  POSITION  OF  HOLLAND  IN  THE  EUROPEAN   WAR.  133 

much  of  their  science,  philosophy  and  arts  is  of  German  importa- 
tion, while  the  phenomenal  growth  of  their  commerce,  industry  and 
trade  within  the  last  forty  years  has  been  in  great  part  due  to  the 
equally  remarkable  development  of  Germany  in  the  same  period. 
In  the  great  exodus  of  foreigners  out  of  Germany  at  the  beginning 
of  the  war  the  Dutch  took  little  or  no  part;  even  more  than  the 
Americans  they  were  honored  and  trusted  by  the  Germans.  While 
there  was  a  fear  in  Holland  at  first  that  they  would  be  drawn  into 
the  war.  events  have  shown  that  Holland  has  nothing,  for  the  pres- 
ent at  least,  to  fear  from  Germany.  The  Germans  have  scrupu- 
lously respected  Dutch  neutrality,  firmly  as  it  has  been  kept.  After 
the  fall  of  Antwerp  there  was  a  great  temptation  to  Germany  to 
take  possession  of  the  mouth  of  the  Scheldt,  an  undertaking  which 
would  certainly  have  resulted  in  war  with  the  Dutch.  But  as  Eng- 
land had  refrained  from  sending  her  warships  up  the  Scheldt,  so 
Germany  refrained  from  doing  anything  which  would  violate  Dutch 
neutrality. 

The  Netherlands  have  grievances  enough,  however,  against 
both  England  and  Germany.  Dutch  trade  is  well-nigh  suspended, 
thanks  to  the  ubiquitous  use  of  mines  by  these  great  powers.  As 
the  English  admiralty  board  has  declared,  the  entire  North  Sea  is 
dangerous  to  shipping,  greatly  to  the  detriment  and  loss  of  the 
Scandinavian  countries  and  Holland,  thus  illustrating  the  direct 
loss  and  danger  to  neutral  lands  in  this  most  sanguinary  war.  At 
Rotterdam,  where  sixty  boats  normally  enter  port  daily,  there  are 
now  only  a  few  steamers  docking,  and  there  is  thus  an  almost  total 
cessation  of  commerce  and  trade,  making  it  difficult  even  to  pro- 
cure sufficient  foodstuffs  from  abroad.  Thanks  to  the  energetic 
action  of  the  Dutch  government  there  is  no  famine  in  the  land, 
all  hoarding  of  grain  being  strictly  forbidden,  and  in  many  com- 
munes it  is  being  sold  under  the  direct  control  of  the  government. 
While  there  is  not,  and  cannot  be,  a  comparison  with  conditions  in 
Belgium,  there  is  acute  distress  and  a  serious  condition  of  affairs, 
which  cannot  be  allowed  to  last  indefinitely. 

That  the  Dutch  are  among  the  principal  sufferers  from  the 
war  may  easily  be  inferred  from  the  fact  of  their  being,  for  their 
population,  the  greatest  commercial  and  trading  nation  on  earth. 
In  actual  exports  and  imports  the  Netherlands  are  only  exceeded 
by  Great  Britain,  France,  Germany,  and  the  United  States.  With 
one-seventh  of  the  population.  Holland  has  a  total  foreign  com- 
merce nearly  equal  to  that  of  France,  with  one-tenth  of  Germany's 
millions,  more  than  one-half  her  trade.    According  to  the  Statistical 


134  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

Abstract  of  the  United  States  for  1911  French  imports  and  exports 
for  the  year  1910  amounted  to  $1,384,453,000  and  $1,203,124,000, 
respectively;  those  of  Germany,  $2,126,322,000  and  $1,778,969,000; 
the  British  figures  are  $3,300,738,000  and  $2,094,467,000;  and  the 
American,  $1,527,966,000  and  $2,013,549,000;  while  the  imports  of 
little  Holland  in  1909  were  $1,249,423,000,  and  her  exports  $984- 
397,000,^  amazing  totals  for  such  a  small  country  of  but  six  million 
inhabitants.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  this  marvelous  foreign  trade 
is  to  a  great  extent  a  carrying  trade  and  does  not  represent  the 
country's  industry  accurately,  but  it  indicates  emphatically  the 
dominant  trading  character  of  the  Dutch  nation  and  the  absolute 
necessity  of  keeping  open  the  great  trade-routes  and  neutral  waters. 
That  the  principles  of  international  law  have  been  violated  by  the 
indiscriminate  sowing  of  mines  in  the  North  Sea  is  indisputable, 
and  that  Holland,  already  handicapped  by  the  great  war  at  her 
borders,  has  thus  innocently  been  deprived  in  great  part  of  her 
main  source  of  making  a  living,  is  equally  beyond  cavil  or  doubt. 

It  is,  indeed,  one  of  the  tragic  ironies  of  this  war  that  the 
countries  which  have  been  among  the  foremost  defenders  of  inter- 
national law  and  justice  have  also  been  cruelly  suffering  because 
of  their  violation.  Belgium,  whose  very  existence  depends  on  the 
inviolability  of  an  international  treaty,  herself  the  creation  of  the 
great  powers  of  Europe,  has  seen  her  life-blood  slowly  ebbing  away 
in  defense  of  it ;  Holland,  the  home  of  world-jurisprudence,  whose 
great  son,  Hugo  de  Groot,  laid  the  foundations  of  international 
law  in  his  famous  book,  De  Jure  Belli  ac  Pads,  the  seat  of  the 
Permanent  Court  of  Arbitration  at  The  Hague,  where  it  has  its 
quarters  in  the  Palace  of  Peace — the  most  hopeful  building  of 
modern  times — has  seen  her  trade  and  industry  paralyzed  in  defi- 
ance of  her  neutrality ;  both  countries  victims,  albeit  not  in  the 
same  degree,  of  a  cruel  war  which  they  were  powerless  to  prevent. 
The  Netherlands  certainly  did  not  deserve  the  fate  meted  out  to 
them,  for  no  country  has  done  more  for  international  comity  and 
justice  than  Holland.  As  Motley  says  on  this  subject:  "To  the 
Dutch  Republic,  even  more  than  to  Florence  at  an  earlier  day,  is 
the  world  indebted  for  practical  instruction  in  that  great  science 
of  political  equilibrium  which  must  always  become  more  and  more 
important  as  the  various  states  of  the  civilized  world  are  pressed 
more  closely  together,  and  as  the  struggle  for  preeminence  becomes 
more  feverish  and  fatal."*     It  is  on  this  account  that  the  neutral 

*  U.  S.  Statistical  Abstract,  pp.  762-3. 

*  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  Preface,  p.  iv. 


THE  POSITION  OF  HOLLAND  IN  THE  EUROPEAN  WAR.  135 

nations  like  Holland  and  the  United  States  will  have  much  to  say 
as  to  the  final  terms  of  peace.  There  can  be  no  lasting  peace  which 
leaves  neutrality  undefined  and  unprotected,  which  does  not  limit 
the  scope  and  area  of  a  conflict,  or  which  does  not  prevent  the 
visitation  of  war  upon  innocent  nations. 

It  is  a  matter  of  uncommon  interest  to  Holland  that  the  posi- 
tions of  the  great  neighboring  powers  with  respect  to  her  have 
apparently  completely  changed  from  what  they  were  historically. 
Thus  for  centuries  France  was  the  most  dangerous  enemy  of  the 
Netherlands,  and  the  famous  Barriere  in  the  southern  Netherlands 
was  directed  against  her  possible  sudden  attack,  just  as  the  Triple 
Alliance  between  England,  Holland  and  the  Emperor  during  the 
eighteenth  century  was  for  the  purpose  of  checking  the  ambitious 
designs  of  France.  In  this  war,  however,  Holland  and  France 
have  no  differences,  the  Dutch  having  no  fear  from  the  French, 
while  Germany  and  England,  formerly  Holland's  protectors  against 
France,  have  become  menacing  to  Dutch  interests.  England,  to 
be  sure,  has  not  always  been  friendly  to  the  Dutch,  as  the  three 
wars  in  the  period  between  1650  and  1674  clearly  indicate,  but 
otherwise  Dutch  and  English  interests  were  by  no  means  mutually 
exclusive,  but  rather  parallel,  if  not  quite  identical.  The  Dutch 
war  for  independence  from  Spain  was  greatly  aided  by  England's 
fight  in  behalf  of  a  common  Protestantism,  which  required  the  un- 
divided support  of  both  maritime  powers  in  order  to  win  against 
a  recrudescent  Catholicism,  as  personified  in  the  house  of  Hapsburg. 
A  century  later,  when  William  of  Orange  had  become  king  of 
England,  the  alliance  between  England  and  Holland  was  formed, 
which,  together  with  their  common  alliance  with  the  emperor,  was, 
as  Professor  Blok  terms  it,  "a  political  and  economical  necessity." 

At  present,  however,  England  has  at  least  temporarily  en- 
dangered the  existence  of  Holland,  although  she  claims  of  course 
that  her  measures  are  purely  defensive,  and  necessary  as  counter- 
acting the  offensive  naval  tactics  of  Germany.  That  England  should 
desire  a  permanent  foothold  on  -the  continent,  for  example  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Scheldt,  is  strongly  to  be  doubted.  Such  a  position 
would  be  precarious  to  hold,  and  it  would  ensure  the  lasting  enmity 
of  Holland  as  well  as  of  Germany.  It  is  equally  improbable,  how- 
ever, that  Germany  would  care  to  lord  it  over  the  Dutch,  or  annex 
their  country.  The  Germans  know  too  well  the  history  and  char- 
acter of  the  Dutch,  and  have  always  been  too  friendly  to  them  to 
doom  them  to  national  extinction.  It  is  quite  possible,  however, 
that  Germany  and  the  Netherlands  will  be  somewhat  more  closely 


136  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

related  after  the  war  than  before,  and  that  the  Dutch  will  prefer 
the  friendship  and  protection  of  powerful  Germany  rather  than  her 
possible  distrust,  and  perhaps  conquest  at  her  hands.  That  the 
Dutch  race,  whether  in  Holland  or  Flanders,  will  draw  nearer  to- 
gether, is  already  certain.  Of  one  other  thing  the  world  may  be 
certain,  that  Holland  wishes  "heroic  Belgium  restored  to  the  fulness 
of  her  material  life  and  her  political  independence,"  as  Premier 
Viviani  has  stated,  "that  it  may  be  possible  to  reconstruct,  on  a 
basis  of  justice,  a  Europe  finally  regenerated." 


THE  NIGHT. 

ENGLISH    DIPLOMACY   AND    THE    TRIPLE   ENTENTE.i 

A   PHANTASMAGORIA   IN   ONE  ACT 
BY  BARRIE  AMERICANUS   NEUTRALIS 

CHARACTERS 

King  Edward  The  Witch  of  Time 

British  Premier  Pages 

John,  the  King's  valet 

In  Vision : 

Kaiser  Wilhelm  II  King  George  V 

Czar  of  Russia  Bismarck 

President  of  France  Officers,  Soldiers,  etc. 
Russian  General 

The  King's  dressing  room  in  the  palace.  A  dressing  table  with  a  large 
mirror  on  one  side.  John,  the  King's  valet,  places  the  several  toilet  utensils, 
brushes,  powder-box,  rouge,  nail-clip  and  file  in  order  on  the  dressing-tabl0, 
first  using  all  the  articles  on  himself. 

John.  When  next  these  things  are  used  it  will  be  on  a  crowned 
king,  but  of  course  I  have  used  them  first  on  myself.  I  am 
very  close  to  His  Majesty, — I  had  almost  said  "His  Royal 
Highness."  So  far  my  master  has  been  Prince  of  Wales, 
but  now  he  is  King  of  England,  and  I  must  become  accus- 
tomed to  saying  "Your  Majesty."  Of  course  I  have  risen 
with  him.  Henceforth  I  am  "Valet  to  His  Majesty  King 
Edward  the   Seventh."     It  is  time  he   was  back   from  the 

^  Sir  James  Matthew  Barrie,  the  famous  author  of  Peter  Pan,  has  written 
a  short  dramatic  poem  in  one  act  entitled  "Der  Tag"  or  The  Tragic  Man  in 
which  he  characterizes  the  Kaiser  as  a  lover  of  peace,  but  weak  and  under  the 
influence  of  the  Prussian  Camarilla  as  represented  in  his  minister  who  urges 
him  on  to  war  until  he  finally  signs  the  fatal  document  and  "Der  Tag"  breaks 
when  war  becomes  unavoidable.  However  poetic  Barrie's  little  play  may  be, 
it  is  utterly  false  in  its  premises;  it  misrepresents  the  Kaiser  and  his  policy, 


138  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

coronation,  I  wonder  how  he  feels.  He  looks  funny  enough. 
What  would  his  Anglo-Saxon  ancestors  have  said  of  their 
latest  successor,  this  stumpy  follower  of  the  fair  sex !  I  do 
not  blame  him  for  his  follies  for  he  is  king  and  can  do  as  he 
pleases.  And,  after  all,  as  the  proverb  says,  no  man  is  a 
hero  to  his  valet,  and  I  suppose  it  is  true.  But  I  only  find 
fault  with  his  bad  taste.  However,  that  is  his  business.  It 
is  he  that  has  to  take  all  the  consequences.  Here  he  comes 
now. 

(John  bows  deeply.  Enter  the  King  with  scepter  and  crown, 
dressed  in  royal  ermine  and  purple,  his  train  carried  by  pages. 
The  pages  kneel,  then  leave  the  room.) 

King.  At  last !  At  last !    I  have  been  waiting  long 

For  this  momentous  day  which  sees  me  crowned. 
John,  come  and  take  the  scepter. 

(John  approaches.) 

Tarry  a  little 
And  leave  these  emblems  but  a  moment  longer 
Within  my  grasp.    They  mean  so  very  much. 
Now  leave  me  with  my  royal  thoughts  alone. 
And  when  I  ring  come  back  and  help  disrobe  me. 

(/oHN  boivs  and  withdraws.    The  King  poses  before  the  mirror.) 

King.  There,  at  last!  Behold,  King  Edward  the  Seventh!  I  am 
delighted  to  see  myself  in  this  garb.  I  am  the  seventh  of 
my  name.  Seven  is  a  holy  number,  a  significant  number. 
The  Archbishop  said  it  is  a  sacred  number  and  all-compre- 
hensive. It  is  three  plus  four.  "Three"  means  God  and 
"four"  the  world.  So  "seven"  means  all,  God  and  the  world. 
It  means  completeness.  There  are  seven  wonders  of  the 
world ;  there  are  the  seven  colors  of  the  rainbow ;  there  are 
seven  stars  in  the  Pleiades  constellation ;  there  are  the  seven 
sages ;  there  are  seven  gifts  of  the  spirit ; — and  there  are 
seven  Edwards !  Yes,  seven  kings  of  England  of  that  name ; 
and  I  am  the  seventh. 

I  am  King  of  England.     That  means  I  am  the  ruler  of 

and  is  obviously  written  to  exonerate  Great  Britain  from  responsibility  for  the 
war.  The  formation  of  the  Triple  Entente  was  but  a  preparatory  step  for  a 
war  on  Germany  which  it  was  hoped  could  be  finished  quickly  by  a  crushing 
blow  dealt  suddenly  by  the  French  and  Russians  witliout  involving  England 
in  the  evils  of  a  war.  We  submit  herewith  a  poem  describing  the  situation 
as  it  appears  to  the  eyes  of  an  impartial  bystander  and  which  the  author  hopes 
reflects  the  truth  more  accurately  than  Sir  James  Barrie's  appealing  sketch. 


THE  NIGHT. 


139 


Great  Britain,  and  as  ruler  of  Great  Britain  I  rule  the  world. 
Britannia  indeed  rules  the  waves ;  the  British  empire  extends 
over  every  sea  and  into  every  clime.  It  is  God's  gift  to  Ok! 
England,  and  that  is  why  this  scepter  and  this  golden  crown 
upon  my  head  mean  so  much.  They  mean  dominion  over 
the  world. 

For  every  country  that  is  reached  by  ships 

Pays  tribute  to  the  mistress  of  the  seas, 

And  we  lay  down  the  law  to  all  the  nations. 

Could  I  but  peer  into  the  distant  future ! 

I  fain  would  see  the  destiny  of  England, 

Her  dangers  and  her  triumphs — triumphs  yea! 

For  I  am  sure  w^  are  the  chosen  people 

Whom  God  has  blessed  above  all  other  nations 

To  rule  the  world  and  bear  the  white  man's  burden. 

Dark  powers  of  things  to  come,  reveal  to  me, 

The  King  of  England,  England's  destiny! 

{The  Witch  of  Time,  a  tall  old  woman, rises  from  the  ground. 
She  is  veiled  in  gray.) 

King.  Mysterious  woman,  let  me  see  thy  face ! 
(Witch  unveils  her  face.) 

Witch.  Thou  callest  me.  King  Edward,  and  I  come 
Out  of  the  depth  of  that  unfathomed  night 
Which  shrouds  the  distant  time.    Hear  thou  my  words, 
That  thou,  the  seventh  of  thy  name,  completest 
The  day  of  England's  greatness.    Evening  falls, 
The  sun  is  setting  on  a  glorious  reign. 
The  Anglo-Saxons'  queens  are  great,  but  not 
Their  kings,  and  the  Victorian  age  is  past. 
Thou  wouldst  begin  a  new,  more  manly  era. 
But  if  thou  imitatest  not  Prince  Hal 
'T  will  be  no  better,  it  will  surely  lead 
Old  England  down — down  to  her  sure  destruction. 

King.  Who  art  thou,  dastardly  old  toothless  woman. 
Hag  of  the  night,  curse  of  a  wayward  fate? 

Witch.  My  name — that  matters  not.    But  heed  thou  well 
The  warning  which  I  come  to  bring  to  thee. 
God,  the  Omnipotent,  long  suffering, 
The  God  of  history,  has  truly  blessed 


140  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

The  land  whose  guidance  with  this  scepter  is 

Entrusted  now  to  thee.    But  have  thy  statesmen 

Used  wisely  and  with  justice  their  great  power? 

Does  England  merit  the  supremacy 

Which  has  been  hers?     God's  patience  long  endures, 

But  finally  He  calls  all  to  account. 

Art  thou  the  man  to  rectify  past  wrongs 

And  lead  Old  England  on  to  higher  things? 

King.  What  qualities  are  needed  for  the  task? 
Witch.  One,  merely  one  alone,  and  it  is  manhood. 

King.  My  predecessor  was  a  woman. 
Witch.  Yea ! 

King.  I  am  a  man ! 
Witch.  Not  every  man  has  manhood. 

King.  What  is  thy  meaning,  hag?    Speak  plainly. 

Witch.  Well 

I  mean  by  manhood  simple  honesty. 

King.  If  that  be  all,  I  do  not  fear  the  task 

Of  being  King  and  governing  the  world. 

I  think  that  simple  honesty  is  good. 

Yea  very  good  if  it  be  used  as  mask 

To  hide  the  cunning  of  our  statecraft's  art. 

What  England  needeth  is  diplomacy. 

The  Hindus  did  not  lack  in  honesty, 

But  honesty  is  good  for  simpletons 

Who  would  be  duped.     The  Irish  patriots 

Possess  enough  of  simple  honesty. 

But  never  have  they  independence  gained. 

The  Chinese  in  their  simple  honesty 

Thought  to  debar  our  opium  from  their  ports. 

The  Boer  insisted  on  his  right  to  block 

The  British  progress ;  but  his  honesty 

Assuredly  was  of  no  use  to  him. 

Oh  no,  my  good  old  witch,  you  are  mistaken;- 

On  honesty  Old  England  cannot  prosper ; 

Pure  honesty  is  but  for  simpletons. 

We  need  much  more — we  need  diplomacy. 


THE  NIGHT,  141 

Witch.  It  takes  a  hero  to  be  truly  honest. 

King.  I  am  no  hero,  but  a  mortal  man 

With  human,  all  too  human,  faults.     But  then 
I'm  keen  of  wit  and  can  accomplish  much 
By  mere  persuasion  and  by  shrewd  designs. 
I  want  to  be  prepared  for  my  great  task 
And  wish  to  see  what  dangers  are  in  store. 

Witch.  Great  Britain  has  no  friends ;  she  stands  alone. 
Protected  by  the  sea  in  isolation. 
She  is  surrovinded  by  great  enemies. 
See  here  the  French,  your  foes  of  centuries. 

(In  the  background,  on  the  right  side,  an  arch  appears,  like  the 
Arch  of  Triumph  in  Paris,  with  the  tricolor  Hying  above  it. 
Underneath,  in  dress  suit,  covered  with  a  red,  white  and 
blue  scarf,  the  President  of  France,  surrounded  by  French 
officers  in  uniform.    The  President  speaks  to  his  generals.) 

President.  We  hate  John  Bull.     He  is  our  meanest  foe. 
The  Germans  have  been  bad  enough ;  they  took 
Alsace-Lorraine  when  we,  all  unprepared, 
Still  bore  the  yoke  of  the  third  Bonaparte ; 
But  they  at  least  beat  us  in  open  battle, 
While  England  robbed  us  by  diplomacy. 
Messieurs,  remember  Suez  and   Fashoda. 
.  Lesseps,  a  Frenchman,  a  French  genius, 
Built  that  canal  with  our  own  capital. 
And  now  'tis  England's.     'Twas  our  caravan 
That  first  crossed  Africa  to  far  Fashoda ; 
'Tis  England  now  reaps  all  the  benefit. 
Therefore  beware !     A  snake  lurks  in  the  grass 
Where'er  a  British  diplomat  has  stepped. 
The  Germans  fight  in  fair  and  open  battle ; 
The  English  rob  us  by  diplomacy. 

{The  picture  fades  away.) 

Witch.  You  have  worse  enemies  and  more  than  France. 

Look  at  the  Slav  in  his  barbaric  might ! 
..   V  All  over  Asia  see  his  agents  swarm. 

He  spins  intrigues  which  will  be  difficult 
For  you  to  rend.     Behold  another  danger — 

(On  the  left  the  background  opens  and  shozvs  a  typical  Russian 
church  entrance  zvith  a  Russian  General  in  fur  coat  and 


142  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

cap,  with  a  knout  in  hand.  At  his  right  the  Czar  dressed  in 
his  imperial  state;  behind  both,  Russian  soldiers  and  Cos- 
sacks. ) 

General.  The  present  age  belongs  to  Western  Europe, 
To  England  and  to  Germany  and  France; 
But  soon  a  new  and  brighter  morn  shall  break ; 
Soon  shall  we  reach  in  our  triumphant  march 
That  ancient  city  of  the  Bosphorus, 
And  thence  to  Suez,  gateway  to  the  East ; 
Then  Persia,  helpless,  and  Afghanistan 
Will  fall  before  us ;  and  at  last  our  arms 
Shall  be  supreme  where  now  the  Briton  rules — 
In  India,  the  treasury  of  the  East. 
Let  England  rule  the  waves,  we'll  rule  the  land. 
And  England  will  be  helpless  'gainst  our  armies. 
Uncounted  and  invincible.     Yea,  sire, 
Be  confident.    Our  victory  is  sure. 
Ere  long  all  Asia  shall  be  'neath  our  sway, 
And  then  in  our  victorious  march  we'll  turn 
Upon  our  western  foe,  the  mighty  Teuton. 
France  clamors  for  revenge ;  she'll  be  our  friend. 
Then  shall  the  Teuton,  too,  bow  low  his  knee, 
And  all  the  world  be  ours ;  in  every  land 
Our  faith  shall  spread,  and  holy  Russia  will 
Fulfil  her  destiny  decreed  by  God. 

(The  Russian  group  disappears.) 

King.  All  these  our  enemies?    Have  we  no  friends? 

Witch.  England  has  nowhere  friends  unless  the  Germans. 
They  are  your  kin.    But  in  these  later  days 
Distrust  has  grown  among  them,  for  they  fear 
The  ill  designs  of  your  diplomacy. 
Germania  grows  apace ;  her  sons  aspire 
To  noble  things,  and  greatness  they  achieve. 
And  honor  and  renown  among  all  nations. 
Behold  the  guardian  spirit  of  her  people! 

(The  center  of  the  background  opens,  and  Bismarck  appears 
with  the  young  Kaiser  William  II.) 

Kaiser.  O  venerable  trusty  counselor 

Of  my  grandfather,  let  me  learn  from  you 
How  I  can  strengthen  Germany's  position 


THE  NIGHT.  143 

That  ne'er  again  she  shall  experience 
The  agonies  of  conquest  as  of  yore ; 
For  I  would  foster  in  our  Fatherland 
All  sciences  and  arts  and  industries. 
I  shall  be  proud  if  our  posterity 
Will  call  me  once  the  emperor  of  peace. 

Bismarck.  Remember,  Si  vis  pacem  para  helium. 
We  are  surrounded,  sire,  by  enemies. 
And  by  no  other  means  is  peace  preserved 
Than  by  a  constant  readiness  for  war. 
The  French  are  in  alliance  with  the  Russians 
And  we  must  learn  to  fight  the  two  at  once. 
Since  your  grandfather  beat  the  French,  they've  grown 
In  afifluence  and  military  power; 
And  Russia  is  a  giant,  great  and  mighty, 
Yet,  happily,  but  crude  and  barbarous. 
And  lacking  wisdom  and  experience. 

Kaiser.  War  is  a  curse  and  ever  fraught  with  danger. 
As  long  as  possible  I  will  preserve 
The  benefits  of  peace,  that  so  my  people 
May  prosper  in  all  good  and  useful  ways, 
In  all  things  worthy  of  a  noble  race. 
And  should  the  day  of  trial  come,  God  grant 
That  I  may  be  the  first  to  draw  the  sword. 
I  will  be  worthy  of  my  ancestors. 
I'll  either  wield  my  sword  in  victory 
Or  I  will  die  in  open  field  with  honor. 
We  Germans  fear  but  God,  and  nothing  else, 

{The  picture  in  the  center  disappears.) 

King.  Not  even  Germany  is  our  good  friend. 

She  seems  more  dangerous  than  all  the  rest. 
In  Germany  there  slumbers  native  strength, 
And  if  her  growth  continues  as  of  late 
She  will  be  England's  must  undaunted  rival. 
The  others  are  not  rivals,  they  are  foes. 
Foes  may  be  changed  by  good  diplomacy 
So  as  to  be  of  service,  not  so  rivals ; 
Therefore  I  fear  but  Germany  alone. 
'Tis  true  she  helped  us  in  our  recent  trouble ; 
But  then  she  simply  did  oppose  the  French 


144  THE  OPEN   COURT. 

Lest  they  perchance  became  too  strong.     'Tis  true 
The  Russians  tried  to  take  the  Dardanelles 
That  they  from  thence  might  threaten  the  canal, 
And  that  design,  too,  Bismarck  did  defeat. 
He  favored  us,  but  solely  for  the  reason 
That  Russia  must  not  be  allowed  to  grow. 
But  now  I  have  a  plan ;  and  not  in  vain 
These  phantom  visions  have  appeared  to  me. 
Great  Britain  shall  be  ever,  as  to-day, 
Supreme  and  mistress  of  the  seven  seas. 
Old  witch,  I  bid  thee  gratefully  farewell. 

Witch.  I  warn  thee  once  again  to  act  the  man. 

The  fate  of  England  hangs  on  thy  decision. 

(She  disappears.     The  King  rings  the  bell.) 

King.  Come,  John,  take  these  insignia. 

{He  hands  John  tJie  scepter.) 

Here,  take  off  the  crown  ;  it  presses  rather  hard ;  and  even  the 
robe  is  unwieldy ;  it  makes  me  perspire.  Go  now  and  bid 
the  Premier  come  to  me. 

John.  Your  Majesty,  his  Excellency  is  waiting  at  the  door. 

King.  Let  him  enter  at  once. 
{Eyiit  John.) 
I  hope  the  new  Premier  is  to  my  heart. 
I  know  at  least  that  he  is  like  a  fox, 
Cunning  and  smart  and  full  of  clever  tricks. 

(John  shozvs  in  the  Premier,  bows  and  withdraws.) 

Premier.  I  thought  you  might  wish  to  see  me,  your  Majesty; 
therefore  I  came  uncalled. 

King.  Well  considered  and  well  done.  I  want  to  know  what  you 
think  of  the  European  situation. 

Premier.  Your  noble  mother  has  been  very  kind  to  Germany,  very 
gracious  and  forbearing.  She  was  so  loving  in  her  parental 
affection.  The  Kaiser  is  her  grandson,  and  a  grandmother 
is  naturally  fond  of  her  grandchildren. 

King.  Yes,  yes,  I  know,  and  she  was  proud  of  the  young  man,  but 
though  he  is  my  nephew  I  must  confess  he  does  not  act  with 


THE  NIGHT.  145 

becoming  modesty.  His  utterances  on  more  than  one  occa- 
sion have  been  provocative  and  threatening.  He  prates  over- 
much of  the  mailed  fist. 

Premier.  Yes,  and  he  persists  in  increasing  his  navy. 

King.  His  navy? 

Premier.  Indeed,  Your  Majesty.  He  has  almost  one-third  as  many 
ships  now  as  England.  His  aggressiveness  may  become  in- 
tolerable. I  fear  that  I  can  say  nothing  better  than  the  an- 
cient dictum  in  a  modern  version :  Caetcrum  censeo  Ger- 
maniam  esse  delendam. 

King.  Do  you  know  what  we  can  do? 

Premier.  My  plan  is  ready,  sire. 

King.  Speak  on. 

Premier.  In  fact  I  must  confess  that  I  have  taken  the  preliminary 
tentative  steps. 

King.  Have  you? 

Premier.  I  have  inquired  in  France  and  in  Russia  as  to  their  plans. 
They  will  unite  under  all  circumstances  to  crush  Germany, 
and  are  but  waiting  for  an  opportunity.  Germany  is  as  in 
a  vise  between  the  two,  and  if  we  join  them  to  ruin  German 
trade  and  cut  the  Germans  off  from  the  rest  of  the  world; 
resistance  will  be  brief.  France  and  Russia  will  be  greatly 
encouraged  to  venture  into  a  war  against  Germany  if  we 
give  them  the  promise  of  our  support  and  form  a  Triple 
Entente  against  her.  There  is  no  risk.  And,  Your  Majesty, 
if  Germany  were  extinguished  to-morrow  there  is  not  an 
Englishman  in  the  world  who  would  not  be  the  richer  the 
day  after.  Neither  France  nor  Russia  is  dangerous  to  us, 
for  both  are  incapable  of  developing  a  strong  navy.  We 
have  only  one  thing  to  fear  and  that  is  the  growth  of  Ger- 
many. 

King.  Germania  est  delendal 

(He  stands  in  thought.) 
But  our  trade  with  Germany  is  not  unimportant.     Should 
we  not  suffer  too  in  case  of  war? 

Premier.  Not  much.  Your  Majesty.  Our  loss  will  be  but  tempo- 
rary and  we  shall  quickly  capture  all  the  German  trade.    The 


146  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

war  will  be  over  as  soon  as  the  Russians  and  French  meet 
in  Berlin.  But  there  is  one  point  of  importance:  we  must 
support  the  allies  with  our  navy,  otherwise  they  will  not 
venture  into  the  war.  We  may  be  confident  that  the  allies 
will  accomplish  the  bulk  of  the  task  without  us,  for  the 
Russians  can  raise  nine  million  troops  and  the  French  five 
or  six.  Fifteen  million  men  will  be  too  much  even  for  Ger- 
many, and  we  can  count  also  on  a  rebellion  of  the  Social 
Democrats  in  that  country.  They  are  a  strong  and  well 
organized  party,  almost  one-third  of  the  whole  people ;  they 
hate  the  Kaiser  and  will  do  anything  to  have  him  deposed 
or  exiled  or  slain.  Be  assured,  Germany  cannot  stand  a  war. 
But  we  must  lend  France  and  Russia  our  moral  support. 
Possibly  they  may  demand  our  army  too. 

King.  We  could  send  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men. 

Premier.  No  doubt  we  should  have  to,  and  possibly  more. 

King.  The  time  is  not  yet  ripe,  but  we  must  prepare  and  make 
ready  for  war.  The  Triple  Entente  alone  will  be  sufficient 
to  assure  victory,  but  we  shall  have,  besides,  the  help  of  all 
the  smaller  powers.  Belgium  is  sure  to  join  us,  and  we 
may  hope  to  gain  the  Dutch,  the  Danes,  the  Swedes,  and 
the  Norwegians  too ;  if  they  remain  neutral  they  shall  suffer 
for  their  anti-British  attitude  after  the  war.  Italy  and 
Austria  are  now  allied  with  Germany,  but  we  can  induce 
at  least  the  government  at  Rome  to  stand  by  us,  for  we 
could  ruin  the  long  and  exposed  coast  of  their  peninsula. 
Our  navy  would  bombard  their  cities  from  Genoa  and  Venice 
down  to  Messina  with  absolute  impunity.  They  are  at  our 
mercy,  so  they  would  at  least  remain  neutral ;  and  hence 
Germany  will  stand  alone  with  Austria. 

Premier.  Yes,  that  is  true.  But  let  us  not  be  overconfident.  It 
is  not  likely  that  Holland  and  the  northern  countries  will 
join  us;  they  would  remain  neutral.  However,  we  have 
created  Belgium ;  she  owes  us  her  existence,  therefore  she  is 
our  friend.  She  will  open  her  formidable  fortresses  to  us 
and  allow  us  free  passage  for  an  attack  on  Charlemagne's 
ancient  capital,  Aix-la-Chapelle. 

King.  That  is  excellent,  and  England  will  thus  be  able  to  dispose 
of  her  most  dangerous   rival.     I  myself  may  not  see  the 


THE  NIGHT.  147 

final  triumph,  but  the  time  is  surely  coming  and  my  son  will 
inherit  the  fruitage  of  my  work,  the  results  of  my  diplomacy. 
We  will  run  no  risk. 

Premier.  We  must  put  an  end  to  Germany's  naval  power ;  we  must 
blockade  her  ports.  Then  we  will  capture  her  trade,  and 
check  her  growing  wealth  and  commerce.  The  French  and 
the  Russians  will  break  her  military  power,  her  Prussianism 
and  her  ambition. 

King.  Is  there  no  way  to  avoid  a  war? 

Premier.  None,  Your  Majesty!  Germany  has  begun  to  rival  us 
in  manufactures,  and  she  threatens  to  surpass  us  in  com- 
merce. Then  our  supremacy  will  be  lost.  This  must  not  be ! 
We  must  cripple  her  pretensions  and  dampen  her  inordinate 
ambition.  We  must  engage  her  enemies,  both  Slav  and  Gall, 
and  between  her  foes  to  east  and  west  her  doom  is  sure. 

King.  I'll  have  my  ministers  approach  both  France  and  Russia 
and  arrange  an  entente  against  our  common  enemy.  But 
then  would  you  have  the  fatherland  of  our  old  Saxons  di- 
vided between  the  Russians  and  the  Celts? 

Premier.  We  need  waste  no  sentimentality  on  statecraft. 

King.  Maybe  you  are  right. 

Premier.  I'll  give  to  Celt  and  Slav  his  share,  but  Germany,  though 
in  a  crippled  shape,  we  leave  for  future  conflicts  with  Russia. 

King.  Yea,  sir.  I  know  a  better  way.  Germany  shall  have  her 
freedom.  Old  England  stands  for  liberty.  German  culture 
reached  its  best  and  highest  development  at  the  time  of  her 
,  deepest  political  humiliation,  but  it  is  being  ruined  by  mili- 
tarism. When  we  expel  her  tyrants  we  shall  restore  the 
glorious  days  when  she  was  famous  as  the  country  of  poets 
and  thinkers.  Schiller  and  Beethoven  were  greater  than 
Bismarck  and  Moltke.  We  shall  liberate  the  Germans  from 
the  Hohenzollerns.  We  shall  restore  the  older,  nobler  and 
better  Germany. 

Premier.  Your  Majesty  is  the  greatest  diplomat  the  world  has 
known.  You  will  mend  the  mistakes  that  your  royal  mother, 
otherwise  so  noble,  has  committed.  But  remember  we  must 
act  before  it  is  too  late.  The  Germans  are  warlike.  They 
will  gladly  hail  a  war.     Their  officers  in  the  army  drink  to 


148  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

the  day  when  the  struggle  will  begin ;  they  clink  their  glasses 
and  shout  Der  Tag\ 

King  {astonished).     What!    To  the  day,  the  Germans  clink  their 
glasses  ? 
The  day  of  war,  of  bloody,  fierce  decision? 
The  peaceful  Germans? 

Premier.  Yea,  the  peaceful  Germans, 

They  think  it  is  their  right  to  build  a  navy 
And  they  do  feel  that  we  will  check  their  growth. 
The  peaceful  Germans  are  most  warlike  people 
As  soon  as  they  believe  they  suffer  wrong. 

King.  Oh,  you  are  right.     I  fear  the  German  danger, 
But  think  the  day  of  war  will  be  a  night, 
A  setting  of  the  sun  for  either  nation. 

Premier.  Your  majesty!  a  night  for  Germany, 
A  victory  for  us !  unfailing  victory. 

King.  May  be  't  will  be  for  both  of  us  a  night. 

Well,  let  us  hope  the  best.     I  trust  you're  right. 

(Premier  hotvs  lozv  and  zuithdraws.) 

King  (musing).  It  is  an  old  tradition  of  Great  Britain 
To  keep  the  nations  on  the  continent 
In  equal  balance.     But  should  one  be  stronger 
Than  all  the  others,  we  must  break  her  strength ; 
Therefore  we  will  ally  with  France  and  Russia. 
The  strongest  one  is  Germany.     'Gainst  her 
We  must  proceed.     Our  prospects  promise  much. 
I'll  have  my  ministers  make  haste  straightway. 
Confer  with  France  and  Russia  as  to  terms 
And  have  the  papers  drawn  up  with  dispatch. 
Would  that  the  powers  of  destiny  vouchsafed 
The  secret  which  the  future  darkly  bears. 
How  will  it  be  with  England  when  I'm  gone? 
I  fain  would  know  the  fruitage  of  my  plans. 

(Background  darkens  and  Witch  reappears.) 

Witch.  King  Edward,  listen  to  my  warning  voice. 

War  will  not  help  you.     War  in  fact  destroys 
Your  own  prosperity  and  power  as  much 
As  of  your  enemies.     Old  England  thrives 


THE  NIGHT.  149 

In  peace.     Indeed  her  wars  in  recent  times 

Have  worked  her  ill,  and  would  you  add  one  more, 

A  greater  ill,  to  swell  those  of  the  past? 

I  see  naught  but  bad  omens  in  your  plans, 

Your  sly  designs  and  your  diplomacy. 

If  you  would  keep  Great  Britain  in  the  lead. 

Let  England's  sons  her  battles  fight  with  honor 

In  open  field ;  do  not  rely  on  others 

Nor  win  by  gold  or  base  diplomacy. 

King.  'Tis  time  to  act  before  it  be  too  late, 

And  we  must  use  the  greatest  circumspection. 

Witch.  You  fear  that  England  falls  behind  and  that 
The  Germans  grow  in  industry  and  power. 
This  may  be  true.     I  recognize  the  danger. 
And  here  is  the  advice  I  have  to  give : 
Follow  the  German  method !     Introduce 
Reform  all  round,  in  school,  in  church,  in  state. 
Have  Englishmen  progress  and  let  them  learn 
The  cause  of  Germany's  advance.     Thus  only 
Will  England  keep  her  old  supremacy. 

King.  First  must  we  overcome  the  German  danger, 
Then  we  will  use  reform!     We  shall  ally 
The  world  against  the  Kaiser.    Let  me  see 
The  German  Emperor. — Lo !  there  he  rises. 

{The  German  Kaiser  rises  in  the  middle  of  the  background, 
first  alone  in  his  uniform  of  the  guards.) 

I  grant  that  he  is  strong.     He  is  courageous. 

But  how  he'll  wince  with  all  these  foes  against  him ! 

(,The  Witch  lifts  her  wand.  On  the  right  rise  the  Russians 
and  on  the  left  the  French,  with  some  English  and  Belgian 
troops.  Among  the  English  is  King  George  V,  and  the 
Belgians  are  behind  the  walls  of  a  fort.) 

Kaiser  {addressing  King  George  F). 

O  cousin,  what  a  dreadful  game  is  this ! 

Do  I  see  you  among  my  enemies? 

King  Edward.  The  Kaiser  is  afraid.   Stand  firm.  Don't  waver. 

King  George.  I  am  in  honor  bound  to  draw  the  sword 
And  stand  by  my  allies. 


150  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

King  Edward.  •  Well  done,  my  son ! 

(To  the  Witch.) 

Our  friends  are  strong  and  we  prefer  a  war ! 

Witch.  If  thou  preferest  war,  let  war  prevail. 

(At  this  declaration  all  draw  their  swords  against  the  Kaiser. 
The  latter  raises  his  sword  and  rises  higher  surrounded  by 
German  soldiers  and  cannon  coming  out  of  the  ground.) 

Kaiser.  We  Germans  fear  but  God,  and  naught  else  in  the  world ! 

(At  this  point  the  first  shots  Hash  from  the  German  cannon 
with  loud  report  and  the  Belgian  fortifications  fall.  The  Ger- 
man soldiers  advance  to  the  sound  of  German  war  music 
toward  the  French  and  Russians,  who  fall  back,  and  the 
background  of  the  stage  is  mainly  covered  with  advancing 
Germans.  King  Edward  sinks  back  in  his  chair.  Night 
covers  the  scene  and  German  national  songs  are  heard.) 


THE  LIFE  OF  SOCRATES. 

by  william  ellery  leonard. 

[conclusion.] 
IV. 

Meantime  there  were  those  who  began  to  look  askance :  this 
Socrates  is  not  only  erratic,  but  meddlesome ;  not  only  meddlesome, 
but  dangerous. 

In  423,  in  the  ninth  year  of  the  Peloponnesian  war,  and  twenty- 
four  years  before  his  death,  the  son  of  Sophroniscus,  now  a  man 
of  forty-seven,  saw  himself  ridiculed  from  the  stage  of  the  Dio- 
nysiac  theater — the  platform  of  Greece.  The  father  of  philosophy 
had  fallen  into  the  youthful  and  merciless  hands  of  the  greatest 
satirist  and  the  greatest  comic  poet  of  the  ancient  world.  Through 
the  Clouds,  Aristophanes,  harking  back,  with  that  conservative  spirit 
characteristic  of  satire  to 

"The  men  who  fought  at  Marathon" 

in  fine  ethical  nature-verse  touched  with  the  love  of  Athens,  attacks 
in  the  person  of  Socrates  atheistic  doctrines  of  physicists,  immoral 
instruction  of  sophists,  and  incidentally  all  unprofitable  studies. 
The  Clouds  are  the  aery  speculations  which  Socrates  here  calls  his 
deities,  giving  him 

"Fallacious  cunning  and  intelligence." 

He  has  thrown  over  the  old  gods — 

"What  Zeus? — nay  jest  not— there  is  none," 

and  he  has  ready  his  "rationalistic"  explanation  of  thunder  and 
rain.  In  Socrates's  school  (obviously  an  invention  of  the  poet  for 
dramatic  convenience)  they  study  how  far  fleas  can  leap,  from 
which  end  of  their  bodies  gnats  sing,  besides  mysteries  of  astron- 


152 


THE  OPEN  COURT. 


omy,  grammar,  and  versification.  The  same  Chaerephon  who  is 
said  to  have  brought  back  the  oracle's  response  is  here  with  other 
disciples,  and  all  duly  revere  the  wondrous  sage.  What  is  that? — 
asks  the  visiting  rustic,  bewildered,  as  Socrates,  on  his  first  entrance 
on  the  stage,  floats  into  the  chamber  in  a  basket.  Autos,  is  the  sol- 
emn response — autos,  "himself."  But  old  Strepsiades  has  not  come 
up  from  the  country  to  learn  the  natural  sciences  or  to  join  the 
disciples — or  even  to  clean  out  the  Corinthian  bugs  that  infest  the 
couches  of  the  crazy  place.  He  wants  practical  instruction  how  to 
evade  by  sophistical  reasonings  the  creditors  whom  his  extravagant 
son — a  type  of  the  smart  and  smug  young  sport  of  Athens — has 


THEATER  AND  PRECINCT  OF  DIONYSUS. 
From  the  Acropolis. 

brought  buzzing  round  his  ears.  Socrates,  finding  him  hopelessly 
stupid,  has  him  fetch,  as  a  likelier  pupil,  the  son,  Phidippides  him- 
self, and  the  old  fellow  soon  "gets  him  back,"  as  the  sage  had  prom- 
ised, "a  dexterous  sophist"  indeed,  who  beats  his  sire,  old  fogy  that 
he  is,  in  a  quarrel  touching  the  merits  of  Euripides  (whom  the 
satirist  couples  again  with  Socrates  in  the  Frogs,  of  date  405),  and 
then  proves  by  argument  that  his  conduct  is  just.  The  denouement 
is  swift  and  complete :  Strepsiades,  his  aged  shanks  still  aching  and 
his  poor  brain  amuddle,  in  revenge  sets  fire  to  the  school  of  Socrates 
and  smokes  out  the  whole  cult.  Thus,  whatever  hostility  Aristoph- 
anes may  show  by  the  way,  it  is  clear  that  he  intends  as  primary 


THE   LIFE   OF   SOCRATES. 


153 


that  charge  which  is  inherent  in  the  plot  itself,  where  Socrates  ap- 
pears as  playing  fast  and  loose  with  the  logic  of  moral  conduct  and 
corrupting  the  civic  honesty  and  fireside  humility  of  the  young  men. 
This  is  the  episode  of  423  so   far  as  it  concerns  biography. 


The  bearing  of  the  brilliant  burlesque  on  Socrates's  thought  and 
character  we  can  consider,  if  need  be,  in  later  chapters. 

What  may  have  been  the  effect  of  the  Clouds  on  Socrates  we 
have  no  means  of  telling.     He  may  well  have  been  amused;  it  is 


154  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

possible  that  he  at  some  time  exchanged  jests  with  the  author 
over  the  wine  as  in  Plato's  Symposium.  To  the  professional  satir- 
ist, especially  when  he  clothes  his  comments  in  the  fantastic  crea- 
tions of  a  tale  and  the  remoter  language  of  poetry,  much  has  always 
been  forgiven;  and  the  personal  jibe  was  the  familiar  custom  in 
the  old  comedy.  Moreover,  though  Aristophanes  is  certainly  ex- 
pressing a  serious  conviction,  the  spirit  of  mirth  is  here  regnant 
over  bitterness  and  spite.  It  is  the  large  laughter  of  Dryden,  not 
the  stinging  sneer  of  Pope.  Nor  could  Socrates  have  realized,  look- 
ing forward,  as  he  must  have  come  to  realize,  looking  back  in  his 
last  days  (Apology  of  Plato)  that  the  fun  his  unique  habits  of  life 
and  thought  furnished  the  comic  poets  (for  Eupolis^  and  others 
beside  Aristophanes  appropriated  him)  was  sowing  the  seed  from 
the  mature  plant  of  which  the  drops  of  hemlock  would  one  day  be 
distilled.  This  is  not  the  only  case  on  record,  though  the  chief, 
where  human  laughter  has  ended  in  human  tears.  But  assuredly 
Socrates  left  the  comic  poets  to  themselves :  they  worked  their  work, 
he  his.  About  twenty  years  later,  if  we  credit  Xenophon  (Memora- 
bilia, I,  2)  Critias,  still  nursing  an  old  grudge  against  his  quondam 
teacher  for  an  ugly  vice  publicly  rebuked,  got  the  despicable 
Thirty  of  whom  he  was  the  leader,  to  pass  a  law  "against  teaching 
the  art  of  words,"  aimed  against  Socrates.  Shortly  afterward,  a 
caustic  comment  on  their  wholesale  slaughter  of  the  first  citizens 
to  the  effect  that  "it  was  a  sorry  cowherd  who  would  kill  off  his 
own  cattle"  caused  him  to  be  summoned  before  Critias  and  his 
fellow-member  Charicles,  and  reminded  peremptorily  of  the  edict. 
Xenophon  represents  Socrates  imperturbably  and  archly  asking 
questions  on  its  exact  meaning  and  scope  and  just  what  he  may 
talk  about  anyway,  the  dialogue  concluding: 

Charicles : .  . .  .  "But  at  the  same  time  you  had  better  have  done 
with  your  shoemakers,  carpenters,  and  coppersmiths.  These  must 
be  pretty  well  trodden  out  at  heel  by  this  time,  considering  the 
circulation  you  have  given  them.". — Socrates:  "And  am  I  to  hold 
away  from  their  attendant  topics  also — the  just,  the  holy,  and  the 
like?" — Charicles:  "Most  assuredly,  and  from  cowherds  in  partic- 
ular ;  or  else  see  that  you  do  not  lessen  the  number  of  the  herd  your- 
self." 

We  have  already  observed  Socrates  disobeying  the  Thirty  at 
the  risk  of  his  life.'    Their  hatred  of  him  certainly  had  a  deeper 

^  Eupolis  seems  to  have  been  particularly  sharp :  in  one  fragment  a  char- 
acter says,  "I  too  hate  this  Socrates,  the  beggar  of  a  twaddler" ;  and  another 
fragment  hints  at  criminal  conduct  (atheism?)  and  advises  burning  him  in  the 
the  cross-ways. 


THE   LIFE   OF   SOCRATES. 


155 


source  than  the  spite  of  their  leader ;  they  too  worked  their  work, 

he  his. 

But  for  all  their  bloodshed,  the  execution  of  Socrates  was  to  be 
reserved  for  others.     Democracy,  in  one  more  effort  to  vindicate 


itself  as  the  highest  principle  of  government  among  mankind,  has 
once  more  control  in  Athens,  as  we  come  to  the  one  remaining  date  in 
Socrates's  career  that  has  been  preserved  for  posterity. 

We  are  there  in  the  year  399  before  Christ.     We  see  little 


156  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

groups  talking  in  the  street.  We  see  an  ever  shifting  crowd  at  the 
portico  before  the  office  of  the  second  archon.  Now  a  scholar  with 
book-roll  in  the  folds  of  his  mantle,  now  an  artisan  with  saw  and 
square,  now  a  farmer  with  a  basket  of  fruit,  now  a  pair  of  young 
dandies,  with  staffs  in  their  hands  and  rings  on  their  fingers,  cross 
over  and,  having  edged  near  enough  for  a  look  at  the  parchment 
hung  up  on  the  wall,  go  their  ways,  some  with  the  heartlessness 
of  jest  or  of  pitying  commonplaces,  some  with  the  sorrow  and  in- 
dignation of  true  hearts. 

We  see,  also,  an  old  man  of  seventy  years  coming  down  the 
step.  He,  too,  has  had  a  look,  but  from  the  whimsical  wrinkles  on 
his  cheek  and  brow  we  cannot  make  out  what  he  thinks  of  it.  A 
number  of  urchins  follow  after  him  hooting. 

It  seems  that  Meletus,  instigated  by  Anytus  and  Lycon,  has 
done  this  thing;  and  on  the  parchment  which  he  but  this  morning 
affixed  in  the  portico  are  the  following  words : 

"indictment. 

"Socrates  is  guilty  of  crime :  Urst  for  not  worshiping  the  gods 
zvhoin  the  city  zvorships,  but  introducing  nezv  divinities  of  his  own; 
next  for  corrupting  the  youth.    Penalty:  DEATH." 

Tradition  has  it  that  Socrates  had  offended  Anytus,  a  rich 
dealer  in  leather,  by  trying  to  dissuade  him  from  bringing  up  his 
talented  son  in  his  father's  profession,  Anytus  being,  besides,  a 
leading  politician  and  one  of  the  helpers  of  Thrasybulus  in  expelling 
Critias  and  the  Thirty.  But  it  would  be  a  superficial  reading  of  his- 
tory to  see  in  Anytus  more  than  the  unenviable  symbol  or  spokes- 
man of  a  hostility  that  had  been  gathering  head  for  over  a  genera- 
tion, and  the  wonder  is  that  it  reserved  its  indictment  so  long.  In 
no  other  city  of  the  ancient  world,  as  Grote  was  presumably  the 
first  to  point  out,  would  there  have  been  that  long  toleration  of 
such  individual  dissent  of  opinion,  taste,  and  behavior.  If  Athens 
needed  a  Socrates,  no  less  did  a  Socrates  need  an  Athens ;  nor  has 
history  a  parallel  to  such  reciprocal  opportunity  between  a  citizen 
and  his  city.  The  forces  that  finally  destroyed  Socrates  should  not 
blind  us  to  this. 

Those  forces  may  be  speedily  set  down.  There  were  the  popu- 
lar prejudices  and  vagrom  misconceptions  of  the  conservative  or 
ignorant,  gentlemen  of  the  old  school  and  nondescript  proletariat, 
who  saw  in  Socrates  the  father  of  the  rascalities  of  Alcibiades  and 
Critias,  and  the  clever  humbug  of  the  stage  of  the  Dionysiac  theater. 


THE  LIFE   OF   SOCRATES.  157 

There  was  the  personal  resentment  of  no  small  number  of  influential 
men  (if  we  make  shrewd  use  of  the  hints  in  our  source-books), 
whose  pretensions  had  been  exploded  by  the  Socratic  wit  or  mocked 
by  the  Socratic  irony ;  and  truth  has  ever  been  a  nauseous  drug  in 
the  belly  of  Sham,  nor  always  a  cure.  Lycon  the  rhetorician,  and 
Meletus,  the  poet,  may  have  been  among  them.  There  was,  again, 
the  democratic  reaction  at  the  turn  of  the  century,  dangerous  to 
Socrates  not  only  as  giving  free  play  to  the  forces  named,  but,  like 
any  defeated  party  again  in  power,  as  peculiarly  suspicious  of  moral 
or  political  heresy.  Socrates  at  this  time  (if  not,  as  seems  likely, 
also  in  early  years)  exercised  his  ethical  influence  chiefly  on  young 
men ;  and  he  was  suspected  of  aristocratic  sympathies,  from  the 
political  character  of  some  of  his  associates  and  from  such  not 
very  dark  sayings  as  that  on  the  folly  of  electing  ships'-pilots  by 
lot. 

Yet,  so  high  his  reputation  for  goodness  and  wisdom,  so  loyal 
and  earnest  his  friends,  that  even  now  he  might  have  escaped  the 
worst,  had  it  not  been  for  his  own  lofty  indifiference.  He  seems 
as  one  driven  to  furnish  to  the  aftertimes  the  logical  conclusion  of 
such  a  life: 

"Die  wenigen,  die  von  der  Wahrheit  was  erkannt, 
Und  thoricht  genug  ihr  voiles  Herz  nicht  wahrten, 
Dem  Pobel  ihr  Gefiihl,  ihr  Schauen  offenbarten. 
Hat  man  von  je  gekreuzigt  und  verbrannt." 

The  orator  Lysias  is  said  to  have  offered  him  a  written  speech, 
which  he  refused.  His  warning  voice  checked  him,  it  is  said, 
whenever  he  himself  meditated  what  tactics  to  employ.  And  to  a 
friend  urging  him  to  prepare  a  defense  he  is  reported  to  have  an- 
swered, "Do  I  not  seem  to  have  been  preparing  that  my  whole  life 
long?"  And  so  he  continued  "conversing  and  discussing  everything 
rather  than  the  pending  suit,"  until  sun  rose  on  the  day  of  the  trial. 

The  dicasts  are  assembled,  some  five  hundred  citizen  judges 
over  thirty  years  of  age,  ultimately  owing  their  positions  merely  to 
the  chance  of  choice  by  lot — a  supreme  court  of  idlers,  artisans, 
and  everybodies.  The  accusers  speak ;  they  reiterate  the  old  charges : 
Men  of  Athens,  behold  the  infidel,  behold  the  corrupter  of  your 
sons.  Socrates,  rising,  disdains  the  customary  appeals  for  clemency, 
which  even  Pericles  is  said  to  have  stooped  to  when  Aspasia  had  been 
indicted  before  the  dicastery  for  impiety:  not  merely  because  such 
whimpering  is  contrary  to  the  laws — but  because  it  is  contrary 
to  Socrates.    He  reviews  his  life.    He  is  eloquent,  uncompromising. 


158 


THE  OPEN  COURT. 


unperturbed.  The  vote  is  taken  on  the  question  of  guilt,  and  the 
verdict  is  against  him  by  an  encouragingly  small  majority.  Socrates 
is  now  offered  according  to  custom  an  opportunity  to  suggest  his 
punishment.  He  has  still  a  fair  chance  to  live.  His  friends  an- 
xiously await  his  reply — will  he  jest  himself  into  eternity? — or  will 
he  preach,  where  he  ought  to  beg?  My  punishment? — let  it  be  a 
place  in  the  prytaneum,  the  public  dining  hall,  where  you  entertain 
at  the  expense  of  the  state  members  of'  the  council,  ambassadors, 
and  at  times  those  private  citizens  whom,  as  owing  most  to,  you 
most  delight  to  honor.  Then,  as  if  they  perhaps  wished  an  alterna- 
tive, he  suggests  a  modest  fine — a  mina  ;  but  "Plato,  Crito,  Critobulus 


INTERIOR   OF  THE   PARTHENON. 


and  Apollodorus,  my  friends  here,  bid  me  say  thirty  minae,  and 
they  will  be  the  sureties."  The  second  vote  is  taken,  and  eighty 
who  had  just  before  voted  him  innocent  are  added  to  that  majority 
which  now  condemns  him  to  death.  It  seems  he  is  rising  again: 
"The  difficulty,  my  friends,  is  not  to  avoid  death,  but  to  avoid  un- 
righteousness;  for  that  runs  faster  than  death...."  As  to  the 
hereafter — perhaps.  ..  .if  eternal  sleep,  good;  if  a  journey  to  an- 
other place,  good.  . .  .  "What  infinite  delight  would  there  be  in  con- 
versing with"  the  great  dead.... "In  another  world  they  do  not 
put  a  man  to  death  for  asking  questions".  . .  ."Wherefore,  O  judges, 
be  of  good  cheer  about  death,  and  know  of  a  certainty,  that  no 
evil  can  befall  a  good  man  whether  he  be  alive  or  dead".  . .  ."But 


THE   LIFE   OF   SOCRATES. 


159 


the  hour  of  departure  is  at  hand,  and  we  go  our  ways — I  to  die, 
you  to  Hve ;  but  which  of  us  unto  the  better  afifair  remains  hid  from 
all  save  the  Divine  (tw  ©ew)." 

Such  are  the  hints  from  Plato's  Apology,  a  document  which, 
as  I  have  indicated  before,  though  it  can  no  longer  be  accepted  as 
stenography,  must  never  lose  in  men's  eyes  its  essential  value  as 
the  most  eminent  disciple's  testimony  to  the  extraordinary  char- 
acter of  his  master's  conduct  and  speech  on  that  impressive  occa- 
sion— for  here  Plato  is  putting  forth  no  one  of  his  own  peculiar 


THE  SO-CALLED  PRISON  OF  SOCRATES. 
Part  of  an  ancient  dwelling. 

doctrines,  and  here,  if  anywhere,  piety  would  tip  his  pen  once  and 
again  with  the  recollected  word  and  cadence.  His  witness  is  borne 
out  by  the  lesser  disciple;  and  Xenophon  says  (Memorabilia,  IV, 8) 
that  the  defense  was  "happy  in  its  truthfulness,  its  freedom,  its 
rectitude" ;  and  that  "he  bore  the  sentence  of  condemnation  with 
infinite  gentleness  and  manliness."  There  exists  no  tradition  or 
assertion  to  the  contrary;  and  Cicero  (De  Oratore,  I,  54)  long  ago 
phrased  what  is  likely  to  remain  the  permanent  judgment  of  man- 
kind :  Socrates  ita  in  judicio  capitis  pro  se  ipse  dixit,  tit  non  siipplex 


160 


THE  OPEN  COURT. 


aut  reus,  sed  magister  aut  dominus  videretur  esse  judicum — "he 
spoke  not  as  suppliant  or  defendant  but  as  master  and  lord  of  his 
judges." 

He  lay  a  month  in  prison ;  for  it  was  "the  holy  season  of  the 
mission  to  Delos."  Phaedo  explains  the  circumstance  to  Eche- 
crates  at  Phlius:  "The  stern  of  the  ship  which  the  Athenians  send 


to  Delos  happened  to  have  been  crowned  on  the  day  before  he  was 
tried.  . .  .the  ship  in  which,  according  to  Athenian  tradition,  Theseus 
went  to  Crete  when  he  took  with  him  the  fourteen  youths,  and  was 
the  saviour  of  them  and  himself.  And  they  are  said  to  have  vowed 
to  Apollo  at  the  time  that,  if  they  were  saved,  they  would  send  a 
yearly  mission  to  Delos.  . .  . Now.  . .  .the  whole  period  of  the  voyage 


THE   LIFE   OF   SOCRATES.  161 

is  a  holy  season,  during  which  the  city  is  not  allowed  to  be  polluted 
by  public  executions .  . .  . "  Let  the  irony  of  the  situation  be  re- 
marked without  bitterness  or  rhetoric :  the  imaginative  but  fatuous 
city  punctiliously  guarding  against  a  formal  and  meaningless  blas- 
phemy only  to  blaspheme  against  truth  by  slaying  its  prophet. 

He  spent  these  days  in  conversation  with  the  Socratic  circle. 
Means  of  escape  to  foreign  parts  seem  to  have  been  arranged  for 
by  his  friends,  which  as  all  the  generations  know,  he  firmly  declined, 
though  men  begin  to  doubt  if  his  reasons  as  given  in  the  Crito  be 
not  primarily  Platonic.  He  would  not  disobey  the  laws,  but  more 
than  that  he  would  not  and  he  could  not,  by  a  kind  of  cowardice 
which  would  have  ever  after  thrown  its  shadow  back  upon  seventy 
brave  years  of  loyalty  to  himself,  violate  the  logic  of  his  being. 
"Socrates  did  well  to  die,"  said  Shelley,  speaking  for  all  of  us ;  and 
martyrdom  was  not  the  least  part  of  his  mission  to  men. 

The  last  day  is  the  subject  of  the  Phaedo.  There  is  a  sublime 
beauty  -and  justice  in  Plato's  electing  this  solemn  time  for  putting 
into  the  mouth  of  Socrates  his  own  doctrines  of  immortality,  though 
metempsychosis  and  the  ideas  were  very  far  from  the  simple  "per- 
haps" and  the  ethical  trust  of  the  more  historic  Socrates  in  the 
Apology.  But,  when  the  argument  is  over,  the  realism  of  art  seems 
to  draw  close  to  that  of  poignant  and  immediate  fact.  Socrates 
has  bathed  to  save  trouble  for  those  who  would  have  to  care  for 
the  corpse,  and  dismissed  poor  Xanthippe  and  the  children  "that  they 
might  not  misbehave"  at  the  crisis.  The  jailer  appears — "Be  not 
angry  with  m,e.  . .  .you  know  my  errand."  Then,  bursting  into  tears, 
he  turns  away  and  goes  out,  as  the  condemned  answers  his  good 
wishes  and  farewells.  The  sun  sets  behind  the  hill-tops,  visible 
possibly  from  the  prison  windows.  "Raising  the  cup  to  his  lips, 
quite  readily  and  cheerfully  he  drinks  off  the  poison."  The  friends 
weep  and  cry  out ;  it  is  Socrates,  with  the  venom  working  through  the 
stiffening  limbs  up  to  the  old  heart,  who  comforts  and  consoles 
them.  Now  he  has  lain  down  and  covered  himself  over.  Perhaps 
the  sobs  are  hushed  in  the  strain  of  the  ultimate  suspense.  He 
throws  back  the  sheet  from  his  face :  "Crito,  I  owe  a  cock  to  Ascle- 
pius;  will  you  remember  to  pay  the  debt?"  These,  adds  Plato, 
were  his  last  words,  the  paganism  of  which  so  distressed  his  ad- 
mirers in  the  early  Christian  church,  who  failed  to  see  their  play- 
ful and  pathetic  gratitude  to  the  god  of  health  who  has  now — cured 
him  of  all  earthly  ills. 

Were  the  people  of  the  planet,  wearied  with  erecting  statues 
of  the  admirals  and  cavaliers,  to  set  up  in  some  city,  more  en- 


162  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

lightened  than  the  rest,  a  memorial  to  this  hero  of  their  ancestral 
stock,  they  should  cause  to  be  carved  upon  one  oblong  of  the  base, 
beside  honest  sayings  of  the  sage's  own  upon  the  other  three:  "No 
one  within  the  memory  of  men  ever  hawed  his  head  more  beauti- 
fully to  Death."  The  judgment  was  true  when  Xenophon  wrote  it 
down ;  and  it  were  to-day  far  more  true  than  most  that  is  graven 
in  bronze  or  stone,  though  since  then  countless  millions  have  met 
Death  where  he  came,  at  the  stake,  on  the  scaffold,  in  the  mountains, 
in  the  highway,  in  the  house ;  some  with  curses,  some  with  exalta- 
tion, some  with  terror,  and  many  with  calm  courage  and  noble 
peace. 


CONYBEARE  ON  'THE  HISTORICAL  CHRIST." 

BY  WILLIAM   BENJAMIN   SMITH. 

INASMUCH  as  Conybeare's  "searching-  criticism,"  so  far  at  least 
as  it  touches  my  work  (and  it  would  be  officious  as  well  as  im- 
pertinent for  me  to  mingle  in  his  fray  with  others),  concerns  itself 
mainly  with  details,  rarely  considering  the  case  on  its  general 
merits,  the  order  of  the  following  comments  would  seem  to  be 
prescribed  by  the  order  of  strictures  presented  in  his  book.  The 
Historical  Christ. 

1.  Conybeare  holds  that  if  Jesus  never  lived,  neither  did  Solon, 
nor  Epimenides,  nor  Pythagoras,  nor  especially  Apollonius  of  Tyana. 
By  what  token?  The  argument  is  not  presented  clearly.  One  can- 
not infer  from  the  Greek  worthies  to  Jesus,  unless  there  be  close 
parallelism ;  that  there  is  really  any  such,  who  will  seriously  affirm  ? 
By  far  the  strongest  example,  on  which  Conybeare  seems  to  rest 
his  case,  is  that  of  the  Tyanean.  But  is  it  a  parallel?  Certainly 
and  absolutely.  No.  How  much  romance  may  lie  in  Philostratus's 
so-called  ''Life  of  Apollonius,"  we  need  not  here  discuss,  nor  the 
numerous  apparent  echoes  of  the  Gospels,  but  all  efforts  to  show 
that  Apollonius  is  a  parallel  to  Jesus  are  idle,  now  as  in  the  days 
of  Hierocles.     Let  us  consider  some  specimens. 

Page  6  of  The  Historical  Christ  bewilders  greatly.  One  won- 
ders where  to  find  such  data, — certainly  not  in  Philostratus.  Exag- 
geration marks  nearly  every  sentence.  E.g.,  "He  had  a  god  Pro- 
teus for  his  father."  But  Philostratus  says,  "his  father  bore  the 
same  name"  (Apollonius),  adding  that  a  "phantom  of  an  Egyptian 
demon  came  to  his  mother  while  pregnant,"  whom  she  undismayed 
asked  what  she  would  bear,  and  who  replied,  "Me."  She  asked, 
"But  who  are  you"?  and  he  answered  "Proteus."  That  is  all,  and  is 
interpreted  by  Philostratus  as  presaging  the  versatility  of  his  hero. 
Philostratus  subjoins  that  the  natives  say  that  Apollonius  was  a 
child  (paida)  of  Zeus,  but  "he  calls  himself  son  of  Apollonius." 
It  is  not  even  hinted  but  positively  excluded  that  he  "was  born  of 


164  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

a  virgin."  The  meteoric  portents  "in  the  heavens"  reduce  to  this: 
"the  natives  say  that  just  as  he  was  born  a  thunderbolt,  seeming 
to  be  going  to  fall  on  the  earth,  was  carried  up  in  the  ether  and 
disappeared  on  high" — just  an  ordinary  fancy  after  the  fact  and 
symbolizing  future  distinction,  as  interpreted  by  Philostratus. 

He  "appeared  after  death  to  an  incredulous  believer."  Verily, 
but  in  a  dream  only!  The  youth  "fell  asleep,"  after  praying  for 
nine  months  that  "Apollonius  would  clear  up  the  doctrine  about  the 
soul,"  then  "starting  up  from  rudely  broken  slumber  and  streaming 
with  perspiration"  he  cried,  "I  believe  thee."  His  companions 
asking  what  was  the  matter,  he  said,  "See  ye  not  Apollonius  the 
sage,  that  he  is  present  with  us,  hearkening  to  our  discourse  and 
reciting  wondrous  words  about  the  soul"  ?  They  though  see  nothing. 
The  youth  says,  "He  seems  to  come  to  converse  with  me  alone 
concerning  what  I  believed  not,"  and  then  quotes  to  them  what 
Apollonius  said.  All  a  mere  dream,  such  as  any  one  might  have 
of  a  revered  teacher,  and  told  as  a  dream,  of  course  with  some 
rhetorical  embellishment. 

He  "ascended  into  heaven  bodily."  Philostratus  gives  three 
stories  of  his  death :  first,  that  he  came  to  his  end  in  Ephesus,  tended 
by  two  handmaids ;  second,  that  it  was  in  Lindus,  where  he  entered 
into  the  temple  of  Athena  and  disappeared  within ;  third,  that  it 
was  still  more  wonderful,  in  Crete,  where  he  came  to  the  temple  of 
Dictynna  late  at  night ;  the  guardian  dogs,  though  fierce,  fawned 
upon  him,  but  the  guardian  men  seized  and  bound  him  as  a  wizard 
and  robber ;  at  midnight  he  loosed  his  bonds,  and  calling  witnesses 
ran  to  the  temple  doors,  which  opened  wide  and  then  closed  after 
receiving  him,  while  rang  out  a  voice  of  maidens  singing,  "Ascend 
from  earth,  ascend  to  heaven,  ascend."  The  story  is  told  by  Phi- 
lostratus merely  as  a  story,  not  as  a  fact ;  its  symbolic  meaning  is 
manifest. 

This  same  note  of  exaggeration  sounds  through  Conybeare's 
translation  of  Philostratus,  and  almost  converts  it  into  a  tendence- 
writing.  Thus  he  says,  "Apollonius  heals  a  demoniac  boy,"  but 
Apollonius  had  naught  to  do  with  it ;  the  actor  is  "one  of  the 
sages,"  the  Indian  sages ;  Apollonius  is  not  mentioned  in  the  chap- 
ter (XXXVni,  Bk.  HI).  "The  sage"  means  the  Indian  sage,  who 
moreover  is  not  even  said  to  heal  the  boy,  but  merely  to  address  a 
threatening  letter  to  the  "ghost,"^ — nothing  is  said  of  the  result. 
Conybeare  regularly  speaks  of  Apollonius  as  "the  sage,"  but  not 

^  ei8o3\ov,  idol;  observe  that  "the  demon,"  possessing  the  boy,  is  also  called 
idol,  the  term  regularly  used  to  denote  the  gods  of  pagandom. 


CONYBEARE  ON   "tHE  HISTORICAL  CHRIST."  165 

Philostratus,  who  says  regularly  "the  man"  (of  Tyana).  Another 
"miracle  of  healing  a  lame  man"  turns  out  to  be  setting  a  dislocated 
hip ;  "but  their  hands  having  massaged  the  hip,  upright  of  gait  the 
youth  went."  Conybeare  says  "immediately,"  but  not  Philostratus. 
"And  another  man  had  had  his  eyes  put  out,  and  he  went  away  having 
recovered  the  sight  of  both  of  them."  Philostratus  says,  "And  one 
having  been  flowing  as  to  his  eyes  (ophthalmo  erryekos)  went  away  all 
having  in  them  light."  The  reference  seems  to  be  to  bleared,  rheumy,^ 
weak  or  watery  eyes  cured  by  the  manipulations  of  the  Indian 
sages.  "Another  had  his  hand  paralyzed  but  left  their  presence 
in  full  possession  of  the  limb."  Philostratus  says  "another  being 
weak  in  his  hand,  went  away  strong"  (egkrates,  empowered), — as 
well  he  might  with  no  miracle.  "Abaris  who  traveled  on  a  broom- 
stick through  the  air.  . .  .is  rivaled  in  his  enterprise  by  Apollonius"  ; 
but  Philostratus  merely  says  that  "to  some  occurred  the  report  of 
Abaris  of  old,  and  that  he  [Apollonius]  might  launch  into  some- 
thing similar,  but  he  [Apollonius]  without  even  declaring  his  mind 
to  Damis  set  sail  with  him  for  Achaia." 

Examples  of  this  tendency  could  be  multiplied  almost  ad 
libitum.  Undoubtedly  Philostratus  means  to  cast  a  glamour  of 
the  extraordinary  over  his  hero  (though  apparently  avoiding  any 
unequivocal  affirmation  of  the  miraculous)  :  he  tells  many  traveler's 
tales  and  sets  down  all  sorts  of  popular  stories,  mainly  of  super- 
normal insight,  foresight,  and  second  sight.  Such  legends  gather 
round  many  or  all  notable  characters,  and  many  not  notable. 
"Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy,"  and  our  neighbor  the  rest 
of  the  time.  No  one  would  think  of  denying  the  historicity  of 
Jesus,  merely  because  miraculous  legends  had  gathered  about  him. 
In  Ecce  Deus  (pp.  78-79)  I  have  distinctly  disclaimed  any  such 
notion.  The  point  is  that  there  must  be  independent  indications  of 
historicity.  The  legends  themselves  are  not  evidence.  If  the  in- 
dependent evidences  be  present,  the  legends  make  no  difference, 

^  The  verb  rheo,  to  flow,  whence  rheum  and  derivatives,  was  regularly  used 
to  denote  such  conditions,  as  well  as  its  derivatives  rhyas  and  others.  To  interpret 
the  words  "having  been  flowing  at  the  eyes"  to  mean  "who  had  had  his  eyes 
put  out"  is  like  interpreting  the  phrase  "who  had  been  bleeding  at  the  lungs" 
to  mean  "who  had  had  his  lungs  cut  out."  Besides,  the  position  of  the  heal- 
ing between  two  others,  one  of  a  dislocated  joint,  the  other  of  a  feeble  hand, 
shows  clearly  that  it  belongs  to  a  series  of  "minor  surgeries." — In  Book  I,  C. 
X,  Philostratus  tells  of  a  man  who  "supplicates  the  god  [Asklepios]  to  give 
him  the  one  of  his  eyes  that  had  flowed  out  (exerryckota),"  for  his  wife  had 
"knocked  out  one  of  his  eyes,  having  stabbed  in  her  brooch-pins."  Observe  that 
the  historian  says  just  what  he  means:  the  stab  had  ruptured  the  eye,  the 
humors  had  literally  flowed  out;  hence  the  prefix  ex,  which  is  not  used  in  the 
present  case,  where  the  eyes  seem  to  have  been  affected  with  chronic  rheum, 
but  did  not  flow  out. 


166  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

but  in  their  absence  the  legends  cannot  attest.  Here  is  the  distinc- 
tion with  the  difference.  No  such  independent  witness  has  been 
presented  for  "the  historical  Jesus." 

On  the  contrary,  the  whole  body  of  evidence  thus  far  adduced 
bears  strongly  against  the  historical  character.  When  Petrie  would 
prove  Apollonius  historical,  what  does  he  do?  "Recognizing  how 
easily  the  marvelous  is  accredited  to  any  striking  character,  we 
place  our  faith  more  on  the  internal  evidence  of  congruity."  The 
"historical  detail"  is  for  Petrie  the  "basis  for  our  acceptance  of  the 
authenticity  of  the  narrative."  He  then  sets  forth  six  pages  of 
details  and  "in  all  this  mass  of  allusions  to  contemporary  history 
and  details  of  journeys  there  is  not  a  single  misplacement  or  con- 
fusion" (Personal  Religion  in  Egypt,  pp.  39-45).  This  is  respect- 
able reasoning.  Will  any  one  hold  that  it  can  be  applied  to  the 
Gospels  ?  Even  in  a  single  detail  ?  Surely  not.  The  cases  are 
polar  opposites.  The  stories  in  Philostratus  do  not  "read  exactly 
like  chapters  out  of  the  Gospels."  A  statement  could  hardly  be 
more  misleading ;  they  read  neither  exactly  nor  at  all  like  Gospel 
chapters.  In  fact,  it  may  be  strongly  recommended  to  the  unbiased 
inquirer  to  read  Philostratus,  if  he  would  form  a  judgment.  The 
whole  atmosphere  is  so  totally  foreign  to  the  evangelic  that  he  may 
be  trusted  to  perceive  that  if  one  is  history  the  other  is  not.  Philos- 
tratus shows  us  clearly  enough  how  a  wonder-loving  age  would 
write  about  a  remarkable  revivalist,  an  impressive  personality,  an 
overmastering  man,  who  lived  in  waxing  fame  and  reverence  for 
nearly  one  hundred  years,  whose  disciples  followed  him  from  shore 
to  shore  and  honored  him  almost  as  a  god  ("he  came  near  being 
deemed  both  demoniac  and  divine,"  Phil.,  I,  2).  The  contrast  with 
the  case  of  Jesus  is  too  broad  to  state  in  a  few  words,  and  it  points 
directly  away  from  the  theory  of  "the  historical  Christ." 

2.  "Jesus,  our  authors  affirm,  was  an  astral  myth."  But  Smith 
is  one  of  "our  authors"  and,  as  Conybeare  knows,  affirms  nothing 
of  the  kind.     At  best,  Conybeare's  statement  is  one-third  false. 

3.  "In  these  earliest  documents  [Mark]  Jesus  is  presented  quite 
naturally  as  the  son  of  Joseph  and  his  wife  Mary,  and  we  learn  quite 
incidentally  the  n?mes  of  his  brothers  and  sisters."  Who  by  reading 
this  is  prepared  for  the  fact  that  Mark  never  mentions  Joseph,  who 
is  named  only  in  Matt.  i.  and  ii.,  Luke  i.,  ii.,  iii.,  (acknowledged  late 
fictions),  iv.  22,  and  John  i.  45,  vi.  42,  also  late?  Moreover,  Mark  in- 
troduces Jesus  zvithout  any  family  reference  and  only  in  two  pas- 
sages refers  to  any  "brethren,"  in  one  of  which  Jesus  declares  his 
mother  and  brethren  to  be  spiritual ;  the  other  passage,  in  which 


CONYBEARE  ON   "tHE  HISTORICAL  CHRIST."  167 

they  are  named,  seems  to  be  a  mere  philologic  play  on  the  stem 
Nasar,  present  both  in  the  Syriac  for  carpenter  and  in  Nasarene. 
This  whole  subject  of  "Jesus's  brethren"  I  have  discussed  in  The 
Open  Court  (1912,  pp.  744-755),  showing  that  there  lies  in  the  term 
no  argument  for  any  historicity  of  Jesus. 

4.  "In  Matthew  v.  Jesus  went  up  into  a  mountain,"  p.  20. 
Matthew  there  says  "the  mountain,"  a  very  different  thing,  showing 
that  he  is  not  speaking  of  a  physical  mount  but  of  "the  mount"  of 
legislative  authority,  as  the  king  ascends  the  throne.  What  more 
unnatural  than  for  a  man  to  ascend  a  physical  mountain  when  the 
multitudes  came  to  be  taught? 

5.  W.  B.  Smith  is  named  among  those  that  "insist  on  the 
esoterism  and  secrecy  of  the  cryptic  society  which  in  Jerusalem 
harbored  the  cult,"  p.  31.  W.  B.  Smith  does  naught  of  the  kind, 
has  never  said  aught  of  any  such  society  in  Jerusalem. 

6.  Conybeare  quotes  (p.  32)  as  a  "naive  declaration"  a  state- 
ment on  page  74  of  Ecce  Dens ;  but  he  fails  to  hint  the  reasons  there 
assigned.  This  misleads  the  reader,  who  naturally  thinks  of  naivete 
as  unsupported  by  reasons. 

7.  "W.  B.  Smith's  hypothesis  of  a  God  Joshua"  (p.  35).  Cony- 
beare knows  I  have  made  no  such  hypothesis,  nor  ever  used  such 
phrase.  He  is  seeking  to  identify  my  views  with  Mr.  Robertson's, 
though  knowing  quite  well  they  are  widely  distinct. 

8.  Conybeare  says  the  phrase  "the  things  concerning  Jesus" 
"refers  as  the  context  requires  to  the  history  and  passion  of  Jesus 
of  Galilee."  But  Mr.  Conybeare's  peers,  as  Loisy  and  Soltau, 
admit  that  it  can  not,  but  must  refer  to  a  "religious  doctrine,"  as 
I  have  contended. 

9.  "The  name  Jesus,  according  to  him, means.  . .  .Healer."  How 
can  Conybeare  write  thus?  Where  have  I  said  that  Jesus  means 
Healer?  In  Ecce  Dens  (p.  17)  it  is  stated  that  Jesus  was  "prac- 
tically identical  with  Jeshua,  now  understood  by  most  to  mean 
strictly  Jah-help,  but  easily  confounded  with  a  similar  form  J'shu'ah, 
meaning  deliverance,  Saviour,"  also  "it  suggested  healing  to  the 
Greek,  "its  meaning,  which  was  felt  to  be  Saviour"  (p.  16).  Simi- 
larly, mDervorchristliche  Jesus  (p.  38),  where  it  is  said  explicitly 
that  "Jesus  in  the  Gospels  means  naught  else  than  Saviour."  Zahn 
(whom  even  Conybeare  must  respect)  sets  forth  (Evangelium  des 
Matthdus,  75-76)  clearly  that  "in  assigning  a  reason  for  the  choice 
of  the  name  (Jesus)  the  notion  of  saving,  salvation,  saviour  is  em- 
ployed." I  have  never  said  that  Jesus  properly  meant  healer,  but 
only  that  in  the  consciousness  of  the  early  Christian  in  the  Gospels 


168  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

and  other  old  Christian  literature  it  signified  Saviour,  it  was  under- 
stood to  mean  Saviour.  Such  was  not  the  scientific  but  the  popular 
etymology.  This  is  correct,  in  spite  of  Conybeare,  as  admitted  by 
Zahn  and  others.  Conybeare  adds,  "note,  in  passing,  that  this  ety- 
mology is  wholly  false,  and  rests  on  the  authority  of  a  writer  so 
late,  ignorant,  and  superstitious  as  Epiphanius."  Brave  words  these, 
but  not  discreet.  Conybeare  seems  to  forget  that  Justin  Martyr, 
nearly  200  years  before  Epiphanius,  and  held  in  high  repute  by 
historicists,  says  (Ap.  I,  33,  C),  "But  Jesus,  a  name  in  the  Hebrew 
speech,  in  the  Greek  language  means  Soter"  (Saviour)  ;  also  (Ap. 
II,  6),  "Jesus  has  both  the  name  and  significance  of  man  and 
Saviour";  also  (Iren.  II,  34,  3),  "But  his  Greek  name  [corre- 
sponding to  his  Hebrew  name  Jesus],  which  is  Soter,  that  is 
Saviour."^  Still  earlier  Philo  (in  De  Nom.  Mut.)  translates  Jesus 
more  accurately  by  Lord's  Salvation  (lesous  de,  soteria  kyriou) 
which  is  tantamount  to  Saviour.  Enough,  the  statements  of  Cony- 
beare are  quite  reckless. — It  may  be  added  that  Usener  (for  whom 
Dr.  Conybeare  may  entertain  some  respect)  derives  the  divine  name 
Jasos,  almost  indistinguishable  from  Jesus,  from  iasthai,  to  heal 
(Gotternamen,  p.  156).  It  seems  incredible,  then,  that  the  Greeks 
should  not  have  understood  Jesus  to  mean  Healer,  Saviour. 

10.  "It  would  appear,  then,  that  Apollos  was  perfectly  ac- 
quainted with  the  personal  history  of  Jesus."  For  this  important 
thesis,  where  does  Conybeare  offer  the  faintest  semblance  of  proof? 
The  word  "then"  suggests  that  reasons  have  been  given ;  but  what 
are  even  hinted? 

'  It  is  indeed  plain  from  countless  passages  in  Irenasus  that  Jeshu,  Jesus, 
Soter,  Salvator  were  all  practically  identical  in  the  early  Gnostic-Christian 
consciousness.  Yea,  the  case  is  even  clearer  yet.  In  Iren.  IV,  30  is  a  notable 
passage :  "His  name  is  glorified  among  Gentiles.  But  what  other  name  is 
glorified  among  Gentiles  than  our  Lord's,  through  which  is  glorified  the  Father 
and  is  glorified  man?  Both  because  His  own  Son's  it  is,  and  by  Him  was 
made  man.  His  own  he  calls  it.  Even  as,  if  a  king  himself  paints  his  own 
son's  portrait,  he  justly  calls  it  his  own  portrait,  for  two  reasons,  both  because 
it  is  his  own  son's  and  because  he  himself  made  it:  So  also  Jesus  Christ's 
name,  which  through  all  the  world  is  glorified  in  the  church,  the  Father  con- 
fesses to  be  His  own,  both  because  it  is  His  Son's  and  because  He  Himself 
writing  it  gave  it  unto  salvation  of  men.  Since  therefore  the  Son's  name  is 
the  Father's  own  name,  etc."  What  is  this  wondrous  name  common  to  Father 
and  Son?  Let  Harvey  answer:  "Irenseus  refers,  I  imagine,  to  the  name  Jesus 
— JHVH  Jeshu'ah — Jehovah,  Salvation."  Indeed,  there  is  no  doubt ;  says  the 
Apostle,  "and  vouchsafed  him  the  name  that  is  above  every  name,  that  in  the 
name  of  Jesus  every  knee  may  bow  etc."  (Phil.  ii.  9f.)  Now  it  is  Jehovah 
alone  that  declares,  "Unto  me  every  knee  shall  bow  etc."  (Is.  xiv,  23),  and  only 
the  Tetragram  JHVH  is  "the  name  above  every  name."  In  some  way  then 
the  names  Jesus  and  Jehovah  must  be  united  in  one.  How?  In  the  oft 
recurring  phrase  quoted  by  Harvey  (II,  200).  Remember  that  Jeshu  (\^'>) 
is  the  regular  form  of  the  name  Jesus  in  the  later  Hebrew,  as  in  b.  Sanh.  lof^, 
lof';  Irenaeus  alludes  to  it  as  consisting  of  two  and  a  half  letters  (11.34,4). 


CONYBEARE  ON   "THE   HISTORICAL  CHRIST."  169 

11.  The  rest  of  page  38  is  mere  wild  assertion.  The  passage 
in  Luke  xxiv.  19  I  have  treated  sufficiently  in  Der  vorchristliche 
Jesus,  p.  4;  repetition  is  unnecessary. 

12.  Conybeare  thinks  it  "verges  on  absurdity"  to  refer  "the 
things  concerning  the  Jesus"  (Mark  v.  27)  to  "the  doctrine  about 
Jesus."  He  gives  no  reason,  merely  affirming  the  hemorrhagic 
woman  was  hysterical,  and  that  "in  the  annals  of  faith-healing 
such  cures  are  common."  On  the  contrary,  I  hold  that  "the  doctrine 
about  the  Jesus"  is  meant,  that  the  healing  is  purely  symbolic  like 
all  other  healings,  that  the  cure  of  the  unclean  world  by  faith  is 
set  forth.  The  hysterical  interpretation  of  Conybeare  does  not 
seem  worthy  of  a  mature  mind.  The  Gnostics  saw  clearly  enough 
that  this  woman  typified  something,  and  they  identified  her  with 
the  twelfth  Aeon.  For  this  Irenaeus  charges  them  with  inconsis- 
tency, perhaps  correctly,  but  he  does  not  defend  the  historicity  of 
the  incident ;  indeed  he  seems  inclined  to  think  there  might  be  some 
symbolic  interpretation,  for  he  says:  "If  indeed  eleven  Aeons  were 
said  to  have  been  afifected  with  incurable  passion,  but  the  twelfth 
was  cured,  it  would  be  plausible  to  say  the  woman  was  a  type  of 
them"  (11,34,  1). 

13.  Conybeare's  discussion  of  the  Paris  papyrus  is  simply  con- 
fident assertion,  no  proof  is  attempted.  He  tells  us  Dieterich  says 
it  can  not  be  older  than  the  second  century  B.  C,  but  he  forgets 
to  add  that  Dieterich  ascribes  it  definitely  to  the  Essenes  who  are  the 
"pure  men"  in  question.  "But  who  are  the  pure  men?.  .  .  .Let  us 
say  it  at  once:  they  are  Essenes  or  Therapeutae"  (Dieterich's 
Abraxas,  p.  143).  Here  then  among  these  Essenes,  somewhere 
near  the  beginning  of  our  era,  we  find  Jesus  invoked  in  exorcism 
as  "the  God  of  the  Hebrews."  Deissmann  can  find  no  way  to  evade 
this  but  by  supposing  the  passage  to  be  interpolated ;  but  the  con- 
text forbids  this  conjecture,  the  passage  is  necessary  to  the  struc- 
ture.    This  testimony  to  the  pre-Christian  Jesus  remains  unshaken. 

14.  Conybeare's  discussion  of  the  epithet  Nazorean  is  too  slight 
for  consideration ;  its  force  lies  in  such  phrases  as  "Smith  jumps 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  Christians  were  identical  with  the  sect 
of  Nazorsei  mentioned  in  Epiphanius  as  going  back  to  an  age  before 
Christ."  If  the  reader  will  refer  to  the  original  discussion  (in 
Der  vorchristliche  Jesus,  pp.  54-69),  he  will  see  how  cautiously 
inch  by  inch  this  jump  was  efifected.  That  discussion  cannot  be 
repeated  here,  nor  the  many  elaborate  articles  since  written  on  the 
subject.  Suffice' it  that  the  theses  of  Der  vorchristliche  Jesus  have 
not  been  shaken  and  are  coming  to  clearer  and  more  general  recog- 


170  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

nition.  Read  the  recent  monographs  of  Abbott  and  Burrage  to  see 
how  "unhasting,  unresting"  the  opinion  of  critics  is  turning  into 
position. 

In  a  footnote  Conybeare  seems  to  concede  guardedly  the  pre- 
Christianity  of  the  Nazoraei  (which,  in  fact,  it  is  wildness  to  deny: 
Epiphanius  may  be  many  undesirable  things,  but  he  was  surely  a 
diligent  inquirer  ;  his  witness  may  be  late,  but  it  is  in  ample  measure ; 
he  would  never  have  borne  it  and  tried  vainly  to  evade  it,  had  it 
not  been  essentially  correct.  To  quote  overstrong  words,  which 
Conybeare  at  least  will  recognize,  written  about  this  very  matter, 
"the  Christians  were  great  liars,  but  they  never  lied  against  them- 
selves"). If  so,  then  farewell  to  the  derivation  of  Nazarean  from 
Nazareth,  and  farewell  to  Christianity  as  an  emanation  from  a  man 
Jesus,  for,  says  Conybeare,  "the  Nazoraei  of  Epiphanius  were  a 
Christian  sect."  The  Matthaean  derivation,  now  generally  sur- 
rendered, is  simply  part  of  the  scheme  of  historization  everywhere 
and  increasingly  present  in  the  later  portions  of  the  New  Testament. 
When  Conybeare  speaks  of  "Smith's  contention  that  he  was  a  myth 
and  a  mere  symbol  of  a  God  Joshua,"  he  is  confounding  Smith 
with  some  other — such  is  his  prejudice  against  accuracy. 

15.  Similarly  on  page  45,  where  he  declares  Smith  insists 
"that  the  miraculous  tradition  of  Jesus's  birth  was  coeval  with  the 
earliest  Christianity,"  we  have  another  of  Conybeare's  pious  imagi- 
nations. I  have  uniformly  spoken  of  both  the  Matthean  and  the 
Lucan  "miraculous  tradition"  as  late,  very  late — perhaps  not  earlier 
than  the  second  century. 

16.  Similarly,  p.  58,  Conybeare  says  of  an  "ancient  solar  or 
other  worship  of  a  babe  Joshua,  son  of  Miriam,"  that  "it  looms  large 

in  the  imagination  of Professor  W.  B.   Smith."     As  I  have 

never  anywhere  alluded  to  any  such  "ancient  worship,"  it  would 
seem  that  Conybeare  is  at  best  a  diviner  of  sub-conscious  imagi- 
nations. 

17.  Apparently  Conybeare  urges  no  arguments  against  the  sym- 
bolic interpretation  of  the  miracles,  especially  of  demon-expulsion. 
He  merely  complains  that  Smith's  exposition  "is  barely  consonant 
with  the  thesis  of  his  friends,"  which  may  be  irritating  but  does  not 
touch  the  logical  situation,  since  Smith  is  not  accountable  for  any 
thesis  but  his  own.  But  on  page  67  he  quotes  half  of  page  57  from 
Ecce  Deus,  in  which  it  is  argued  that  the  accepted  view  of  Jesus 
as  establishing  a  new  religion  by  sending  out  disciples  to  heal  a  few 
lunatics  is  quite  absurd,  and  it  is  asked,  "Is  that  the  way  the 
sublimest   of   teachers   would   found  the  new  and   true   religion?" 


CONYBEARE  ON    "tHE   HISTORICAL  CHRIST."  171 

Conybeare  comments :  "In  the  last  sentence  our  author  nods  and 
lapses  into  the  historical  mood ;  for  how  can  one  talk  of  a  mythical 
Joshua  being  a  teacher  and  founding  a  new  religion — of  his  sending 
forth  the  apostles  and  disciples?"  Doubtless  Smith  sometimes 
"nods,"  as  do  his  betters  ;  but  he  rarely  snores  so  visibly  as  Cony- 
beare in  this  comment.  A  child  can  see  that  in  speaking  of  Jesus  as 
"sending  forth  the  apostles"  I  was  not  stating  my  own  view,  but 
the  accepted  view,  which  I  regard  as  ludicrous.  Conybeare  would 
not  allow  Euclid  to  use  a  reductio  ad  ahsiirdum.  On  page  68  Cony- 
beare exaggerates  immeasurably  the  prevalence  of  exorcism  among 
Jews  and  pagans,  and  finds  it  strange  that  the  Protochristians  should 
use  symbolic  language  about  demons,  which  might  be  misunder- 
stood. But  such  symbolic  language  was  very  common ;  it  was  a 
staple  of  discourse  (as  is  clearly  set  forth  in  EcceDeus,t.g.  on  page 
116)  ;  it  was  certainly  used  about  diseases  quite  as  frequently  as 
about  exorcism ;  it  harmonizes  every  way  with  all  the  historical  con- 
ditions, with  the  temper  of  the  time  and  clime.  Mueller  long  ago 
(1861)  interpreted  the  miracles  of  Apollonius  as  symbolic,  and 
Kayser  (whose  text  Conybeare  uses)  adopts  the  interpretation. 
The  fact  is,  the  symbolism  is  often  so  transparent  as  to  be  quite 
unmistakable.  After  seeing  the  solution  of  a  riddle  or  rebus,  you 
cannot  help  seeing  it. 

How  scandalous  is  the  exaggeration  of  Conybeare  may  be 
clearly  seen  from  two  points  of  view.  First,  the  expulsion  of 
demons  appears  in  the  New  Testament  as  a  most  remarkable  ex- 
hibition of  supernatural  power,  as  a  distinctive  sign  of  the  divine 
might  of  the  "new  teaching"  or  teacher.  But  if  "exorcists,  Jewish 
and  pagan,  were  driving  out  demons  of  madness  and  disease  at 
every  street  corner,"  then  where  was  the  wonder?  If  everybody 
was  doing  it.  what  impression  would  it  have  made,  what  attention 
have  excited?  It  seems  strange  also  that  classic  literature  should 
be  practically  devoid  of  allusion  to  such  a  dominant  element  of 
daily  life,  stranger  that  the  revered  Baur  should  write:  "The  belief 
in  possession  by  demons,  at  least  in  the  form  prevailing  among  the 
Jews,  cannot,  it  seems,  be  found  in  Greek  and  Roman  authors  of 
the  time  of  Philostratus,  even  as  to  the  Greek  religion  also  the 
notion  of  evil  demons  remained  almost  wholly  foreign"  {Apollonius 
und  Christiis,  143).  Still  more,  how  amazing  that  Acts  gives  no 
example  of  such  a  demon-expulsion,  not  even  in  xvi.  18,  and  that 
early  Christian  literature  can  furnish  no  example.  But,  secondly, 
consider  Apollonius,  the  master  magician  and  wonder-worker. 
Surely  he  must  have  surpassed  all  others  in  demon-expulsion.  How- 


172  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

ever,  Philostratus  can  tell  of  only  one  such  expulsion,  or  at  most 
two  or  three,  and  these  are  so  transparently  mere  figures  of  speech, 
as  Muller  and  Kayser  have  already  perceived  and  shown,  that  they 
can  not  be  counted  at  all.  Here  then  the  chief  of  all  thaumaturges 
of  the  day  lives  and  works  well-nigh  a  hundred  years  without 
expelling  a  demon !  Or  even  suppose  he  did  expel  half  a  dozen, 
one  every  fifteen  years,  while  others  were  driving  them  out  "at 
every  street  corner" !  Would  not  such  a  prince  of  miracle-mongers 
be  straightway  discharged  for  " inefficiency"?  It  is  clear  as  day  that 
Conybeare's  statements  are  the  merest  caricatures,  not  worth  the 
least  consideration. 

18.  Page  69.  Conybeare  complains  again  of  want  of  harmony 
between  "Mr.  Robertson  and  Mr.  Drews"  and  "Prof.  W.  B.  Smith." 
Well,  what  of  it? 

19.  Page  74.  Conybeare  rejects  Smith's  "thesis  that  the  Chris- 
tian religion  originated  as  a  monotheist  propaganda,"  as  "an  exag- 
geration, for  it  was  at  first  a  Messianic  movement  or  impulse  among 
Jews  etc."  He  offers  no  proof,  nor  says  what  Jews,  whether  in 
Judea  or  in  the  Dispersion.  The  steadily  accumulating  evidence 
points  to  the  Dispersion  and  away  from  Judea  and  shows  more 
and  more  clearly  that  the  Christian  was  one  form  (itself  having  a 
dozen  sub-forms)  of  the  great  monotheistic  movement  in  the  Judeo- 
Greco-Roman  world,  especially  on  the  eastern  coast  of  the  Medi- 
terranean, proclaimed  by  zealous  apostles  from  shore  to  shore,  and 
in  a  more  or  less  definite  type  of  discourse,  such  as  Norden  exhibits 
on  pages  6,  7  of  his  Agnostos  Theos  (1913)  under  the  impressive 
title  of  "the  Jewish-Christian  Ground-Motive."  The  zeal  and  en- 
ergy of  this  propaganda  are  attested  in  Matthew  xxiii.  15,  "Ye 
compass  sea  and  land  to  make  one  proselyte."  How  reconcile  with 
this  incontestable  fact  of  the  wide-spread  monotheistic  preaching 
and  mission  (Missionspredigt,  Norden)  the  notion  that  Christianity 
emanated  from  a  personal  focus,  a  "carpenter  of  Nazareth"?  Im- 
possible. "A  Messianic  movement"  could  be  and  was  a  militant 
monotheism.  It  was  God  under  the  aspect  of  Heavenly  Messiah, 
of  preexistent  Son-of-Man,  who  was  the  "Coming  One"  (Habba). 
now  to  be  revealed  to  the  coming  world.  To  see  in  this  movement 
a  semi-political  semi-racial  agitation  of  a  few  Galilean  crackbrains 
is  to  view  history  through  an  inverted  telescope.  The  notion  finds 
no  sanction  in  any  well-ascertained  facts.  As  far  back  as  our 
knowledge  extends  the  goal  of  the  movement  is  the  monotheization 
of  the  world. 

20.  Page  79,  Conybeare  speaks  of  "the  naif  figure  of  Jesus,  as 


CONYBEARE  ON   "tHE  HISTORICAL  CHRIST."  173 

presented  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels."  Herewith  compare  the  chapter 
on  "The  Characterization  of  Jesus"  in  Christianity  Old  and  New, 
by  Conybeare's  sober  sympathizer,  Bacon  of  Yale,  who  seems  to 
admit  not  one  trace  of  naivete  in  the  thoroughly  "conventionalized 
figure."  It  is  worth  adding  that  Salvatore  Minocchi,  the  leader  of 
Italian  and  a  leader  of  European  modernists,  in  //  Panteon  (1914), 
a  study  of  the  "Origins  of  Christianity,"  while  still  championing 
at  great  length  "the  historical  Jesus,"  admits  that  for  Mark  even 
"he  is  almost  throughout  a  supernatural  being,"  and  that  the  two 
capital  Pauline  testimonies  (1  Cor.  xi.  23-25  and  xv.  2>-7)  are 
interpolations :  "such  passages  were  assuredly  never  written  by 
Paul" — all  of  which  has  already  been  proved  in  Ecce  Deus.  Thus 
leaf  by  leaf  the  roses  fall.  If  one  would  set  forth  great  things 
by  small,  Minocchi's  abandonment  of  these  three  strongholds  might 
be  likened  to  the  simultaneous  surrender  of  Belfort,  Verdun,  and 
Warsaw. 

21.  Pp.  84-85,  Conybeare  sets  forth  his  view  of  Mark's  Gospel, 
protesting  against  the  notion  that  Mark  represents  Jesus  as  divine, 
insisting  that  it  is  John  that  deifies.  But  all  this  is  unsupported 
assertion ;  Conybeare  never  grapples  nor  comes  to  close  quarters. 
He  passes  by  the  minute  discussion  in  Ecce  Deus,  with  a  mere  "we 
rub  our  eyes."  Indeed,  a  hopeful  symptom,  but  Bacon  does  better ; 
he  not  only  rubs  but  also  opens.  While  of  course  not  accepting  the 
thesis  of  Ecce  Deus,  he  goes  far  in  that  direction.  He  tells  us  that 
the  "distinctive  and  characteristic  trait  (of  Jesus)  in  Mark  is 
authority,"  he  might  have  said  "divine  power,"  for  this  "authority" 
is  instantly  recognized  and  obeyed  as  supreme.  From  beginning  to 
end  "Mark  presents  his  central  figure  as  in  heroic  proportions. 
The  'mighty  works'  of  Jesus  occupy  the  foreground."  "  'Christ'  or 
'Son  of  God,'  rather  than  'Lord,'  is  Mark's  distinctive  messianic 
title,"  "but  this  paragraph  [xii.  35-37,  where  Ps.  ex.  1  is  quoted  to 
show  that  Christ  is  'Lord,'  throned  in  heaven]  fully  expresses  his 
own  Christology,  and  sounds  the  keynote  for  his  own  conception  of 
Christ.  Jesus,  from  the  time  of  his  adoption  by  the  Spirit  and  the 
heavenly  Voice  [i.  e.,  from  the  first  of  Mark]  became  a  super- 
human authority.  He  already  sits  at  the  right  hand  of  God."  All 
this  is  correct,  only  still  too  mildly  drawn.  Jesus  is  in  Mark  plainly 
an  over-earthly  being  from  the  very  start ;  the  Gospel  opens  without 
hint  of  earthly  origin  of  its  hero.  As  to  the  title  "Son-of-God," 
who  does  not  know  that  it  has  been  used  for  hundreds  of  years  to 
designate  more  or  less  clearly  a  certain  emanation  or  person  of  the 
supreme  God,  hardly  inferior  in  dignity  or  power  to  that  God  him- 


174  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

self?    All  attempts  to  minimize  the  meaning  of  the  term  are  abor- 
tive. 

As  to  John,  of  course  it  was  never  said  and  never  meant  that 
he  reduced  the  power  or  majesty  of  the  Logos,  but  only  that  he 
strove  to  humanize  and  sentimentalize,  that  he  sought  to  ascribe 
distinctly  human  traits,  and  to  add  a  so-called  affective  hue  to  his 
representations,  as  when  he  says  "Jesus  wept."  This  attempted 
humanization  and  sentimentalization  runs  through  the  Fourth  Gos- 
pel and  is  plain  to  open  eyes. 

22.  Page  88,  Conybeare  admits  that  Christianity  was  "a.  protest 
against  idolatry,  a  crusade  for  monotheism,"  "when  we  pass  outside 
the  Gospels."  If  so,  then  it  must  be  our  own  fault  that  we  do  not 
find  it  in  the  Gospels  themselves.  Christianity  can  hardly  be  one 
thing  outside  and  another  thing  inside  the  Gospels.  The  truth  is 
that,  as  the  Apostle  puts  it,  "our  Gospel  is  veiled."  The  whole  heal- 
ing and  saving  activity  of  Jesus  in  the  Gospels  is  a  "veiled"  state- 
ment of  the  progress  of  the  early  Jesus-cult  in  redeeming  humanity 
from  the  sin  (of  idolatry  and  its  endless  train  of  vices).  According 
to  the  apocalyptist  (Rev.  xiv.  7),  the  "eternal  Gospel"  proclaimed 
to  all  the  earth  is  monotheism  pure  and  simple:  "Fear  God  and  give 
him  glory." 

From  such  dreary  details  one  is  glad  to  emerge  more  into  the 
open  in  reviewing  the  next  chapter  (III)  on  the  "Argument  from 
Silence."  Conybeare's  discussion  must  of  course  contain  much  that 
is  correct,  yet  it  is  vitiated  at  vital  points  by  rash  assertions  and 
tendentious  constructions.  He  tells  us  that  Matthew  and  Luke  "Re- 
arrange, modify  and  omit,"  but  adds  that  their  handling  of  the 
Marcan  and  non-Marcan  documents  is  "inexplicable  on  the  hypoth- 
esis that  they  considered  them  to  be  mere  romances."  But  who- 
ever said  they  considered  them  "mere  romances"  ?  On  the  contrary, 
they  revered  these  documents  as  much  more  than  historical,  as  deep 
religious  poems  and  doctrinal  treatises.  But  the  fact  that  they  did 
"re-arrange,  modify,  and  omit"  (nay  more,  unquestionably,  invent 
wholesale,  and  contradict  each  other  at  will,  as  Conybeare  will  not 
deny)  shows  clearly  as  possible  that  they  did  not  regard  these 
documents  as  authoritative  or  binding  in  any  historic  sense.  So 
much  we  may  uncompromisingly  maintain. 

Luke's  foreword  strongly  confirms  our  thesis.  True,  he  says 
naught  about  "Osiris  dramas"  nor  yet  again  about  "the  facts  about 
Jesus,"  a  fine  phrase  of  Conybeare's  own  invention ;  his  language 
is  suspiciously  vague,  certainly  not  what  this  modern  historicist 
would  have  used.     For  Conybeare  speaks  thrice  of  Jesus  in  six 


CONYBEARE  ON   "tHE   HISTORICAL  CHRIST."  175 

short  lines ;  Luke  does  not  once  use  the  word  in  his  prologue. 
Luke  says  naught  about  any  history,  he  speaks  of  "setting  in  order 
matters  fully  accredited  among  us."  The  word  peplerophoremenon 
is  rendered  vollgeglauhten  by  the  German  master  Holtzmann.  If 
you  render  it  "fulfilled"  or  "fully  established,"  the  meaning  is  not 
altered ;  the  reference  is  not  to  a  biography  but  to  a  body  of 
teaching,  for  these  "matters"  (pragmata)  "delivered  us  those  who 
from  the  first  were  eyewitnesses  and  servants" — of  what?  of  bio- 
graphic details?  Nay,  but  "of  the  word"  (the  doctrine)  ;  and  why 
does  Luke  undertake  this  task?  That  Theophilus  (God-loved)  may 
know  the  surety  of — what?  of  a  set  of  biographic  incidents?  Nay, 
but  "of  the  doctrines  (logon)  about  which  thou  wast  taught  orally." 
Sane  commentators — who  is  saner  than  Holtzmann? — recognize 
that  it  is  here  a  question  of  doctrine :  "The  closing  words  give  the 
whole  account  a  doctrinal  purpose,"  and  he  renders  logon  as  above, 
by  Lehre  (doctrine). 

Herewith  then  tumbles  this  whole  chapter  HI  of  The  Histor- 
ical Christ.  It  makes  no  diflference  whether  there  were  thirteen  or 
three  hundred  "such  documents" ;  their  primitive  object  was  not 
history  but  Logos,  doctrine,  which  they  set  forth  in  various  ways, 
by  sayings,  by  parables,  by  edifying  arguments,  by  symbolic  stories. 
The  idea  of  Luke,  or  any  other  evangelist,  as  crowding  his  pages 
with  every  form  of  historic  impossibility  (as  Conybeare  cannot 
deny)  and  at  the  same  time  gravely  concerned  and  deprecating  that 
Theophilus  should  get  any  historically  inexact  "information  about 
Jesus,"  is  one  of  the  most  amusing  conceits  in  literature.  Does 
not  every  one  know  that  his  chapters  I  and  II  are  elaborate  inven- 
tions contradicting  Matthew's  similar  invention  at  every  point? 
Does  not  even  Loisy  recognize  the  prevalence  of  symbolism  in 
Luke,  whom  he  calls  "the  great  symbolist"?  Yet  this  patent  doc- 
trinaire appears  to  Conybeare  as  a  painstaking  documentary  biog- 
rapher!    We  might  have  expected  the  like  from  Ramsay. 

This  chapter  and  the  whole  argument  from  "independent  docu- 
ments," upon  which  Conybeare  has  put  forth  his  most  earnest 
efiforts,  are  disabled  by  two  immedicable  maladies :  the  documents, 
whether  two  or  a  hundred,  are  not  independent,  and  they  are  not 
biographic.  They  proceed  from  schools  of  religious  and  theosophic 
thought,  their  authors  are  quite  unknown,  no  one  knows  how  many 
hands  have  been  at  work  on  each ;  there  is  not  one  sentence  that 
may  not  have  undergone  revision  after  revision ;  the  marks  of  ex- 
tensive and  intensive  redaction,  of  insertion  and  excision,  of  every 
form  of  overworking,  are  still  visible  on  nearly  every  page,  and 


176  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

to  speak  of  such  "documents,"  no  part  of  which  we  certainly  possess 
in  any  primitive  form,  as  independent  witnesses  is  to  use  words 
apart  from  their  meaning.  These  schools  were  indeed  not  all  alike, 
they  differed  among  themselves  like  the  colors  of  the  spectrum, 
widely,  more  widely,  and  less  widely ;  this  fact  complicates  the  gen- 
eral phenomenon  but  does  not  change  its  nature.  Conybeare  admits 
(p.  103)  that  John's  Gospel  "is  half-docetic."  Yet  it  certainly 
strives  to  humanize  and  sentimentalize  beyond  the  Synoptics ;  it  is 
especially  concerned  to  exhibit  Jesus  as  "the  Logos  become  flesh." 
On  its  face  this  object  is  historization,  to  show  forth  a  divinity  in 
the  guise  of  flesh ;  the  very  reverse  of  Conybeare's  view  that  it  was 
to  exalt  a  pure  human  being  into  a  God. 

Conybeare  refers  (p.  104)  to  Ignatius's  treatment  of  Docetism. 
"I  too  have  not  been  idle,"  but  have  discussed  the  matter  through 
pp.  351-364  of  The  Open  Court  (June,  1913),  with  the  unequivocal 
result  that  the  witness  of  Ignatius  is  directly  and  decisively  against 
the  historicists,  a  conclusion  reached  quite  independently  by  no  less 
a  scholar  than  Salomon  Reinach.  If  Conybeare  will  uphold  his  po- 
sition he  must  answer  these  arguments.  It  is  not  hard  to  show 
that  Ignatius  represents  a  grozving  dogma  of  the  humanity  of  Jesus, 
that  he  strives  mightily  to  defend  it  against  an  earlier  view,  and 
that  he  has  no  historic  data  at  command  to  support  it,  though  he 
might  have  been  alive  at  the  supposed  crucifixion,  though  he  might 
have  known  the  apostles  themselves,  and  though  he  lived  but  a 
short  distance  from  Galilee.  Docetism  was  not  primitive  Chris- 
tianity, it  was  itself  a  secondary  growth,  and  yet  Jerome  attests 
that  it  flourished  "while  the  apostles  were  still  alive  on  earth,  while 
the  blood  of  Christ  was  still  fresh  in  Judea."  Conybeare's  inter- 
pretation of  Docetism  is  quite  indefensible. 

Page  111,  he  entirely  misinterprets  the  hostility  of  the  Judean 
Jew  to  the  Jesus-cult.  It  was  the  universalism  of  the  "new  doc- 
trine" (Mark  i.  27),  its  breaking  down  the  wall  between  Jew  and 
Greek,  its  abolition  of  the  Jewish  prerogative,  that  was  naturally 
enough  born  in  the  Dispersion  but  proved  less  and  less  acceptable 
to  the  Jews  of  Judea,  where  naturally  nationalism  was  far  more 
intense.  Hence  the  Jezvs  of  Jerusalem  are  said  to  have  crucified 
the  Jesus,  that  is,  they  rejected  the  Jesus-cult  with  scorn  and  dis- 
dain. The  Judean  stumbled,  was  "offended,"  at  the  notion  of  the 
Saviour-God  of  the  "new  doctrine,"  the  Jesus-cult ;  hence  the  plain 
words  attributed  to  Jesus:  "Blessed  is  he  whosoever  shall  not  be 
offended  in  me"  (Matt.  xi.  6).  The  whole  story  of  the  Passion  is 
an  additament  to  the  primitive  Gospels ;  it  is  not  in  O,  as  admitted 


CONYBEARE  ON   "tHE  HISTORICAL  CHRIST."  177 

even  by  Hariiack.    All  the  historic  facts  in  the  case  fall  into  order 
from  this  point  of  view. 

In  the  following  pages  of  Conybeare's  work  much  seems  wisely 
written,  especially  his  frank  recognition  of  the  "brotherhood"  of 
"monotheists  of  the  Jewish  type"  "all  about  the  Mediterranean," 
who  were  "something  besides"  in  that  "they  accepted  a  gospel. . .  . 
about  a  Lord  Jesus  Christ" — all  of  which  I  might  have  written 
myself,  had  mine  been  the  pen  of  such  a  ready  writer.  It  was 
pondering  just  such  facts  that  forced  me  to  the  general  conception 
of  multifocal  Protochristianity  as  first  set  forth  in  Der  vorchristliche 
Jesus.  How  any  one  can  interpret  such  facts  as  implying  the  em- 
anation of  Protochristianity  from  a  Galilean  carpenter  crucified  a 
few  years  before,  we  shall  understand  when  we  learn  how  an  ir- 
regular polygon  grows  out  of  a  point. 

In  passing  it  is  worth  while  to  note  that  "Van  Manen  never 
for  a  moment  questioned  the  historical  reality  of  Jesus."  Certainly 
not,  for  the  dark  overtook  him  midway ;  "the  season  of  figs  was 
not  yet."  After  opposing  Loman's  view  of  "Pauline  Questions" 
strenuously  for  years,  with  singular  nobility  and  plasticity  of  mind 
Van  Manen  reversed  his  spear  and  drove  it  directly  against  the 
dogma  he  had  so  valiantly  defended.  Had  his  health  been  spared 
a  few  years  longer,  he  might  have  written  not  only  the  third  article 
in  the  Hibberf  on  "Did  Paul  write  Romans?"  but  have  accepted  the 
radical  view  as  thoroughly  as  now  does  his  learned  compatriot  Hol- 
land. 

Page  123,  Conybeare  assumes  (without  any  proof)  everything 
in  dispute,  declaring  that  "all  these  documents  are  independent  of 
one  another  in  style  and  contents,  yet  they  all  have  a  common  in- 
terest— namely,  the  memory  of  a  historical  man  Jesus."  I  traverse 
this  pleading  in  toto.  It  is  not  true  that  any  of  these  documents 
has  for  its  "interest"  "the  memory  of  a  historical  man  Jesus."  The 
"common  interest"  in  question  is  not  a  "memory"  at  all,  neither  of 
an  historical  nor  of  an  unhistorical  man  Jesus.  The  "common  inter- 
est" is  in  a  dogma  or  body  of  dogmas,  a  "doctrine  about  the  Jesus," 
a  Religionsanschauung ,  as  Soltau,  reviewing  Der  vorchristliche 
Jesus,  admits.  It  is  notorious  that  no  one  can  learn  from  Acts  and 
Epistles  anything  abotit  Jesus  that  has  biographic  content,  it  is  all  of 
dogmatic  import.  The  primitive  preaching  of  Peter  and  Paul  tells 
us  nothing  about  the  life  of  Jesus,  but  primarily  only  that  God  had 
"raised  up  Jesus,"  where  "raised  up"  (anestesen)  is  used  in  its 
regular  (Old  Testament  and  Septuagint)  sense  of  "set  up,"  "estab- 
lish," "install,"  "inaugurate,"  the  allusion  being  to  the  "new  doc- 


178  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

trine,"  the  Hellenized  "monotheistic  Jesus-cult"  (Deissmann). 
Afterwards,  as  the  process  of  historizing  went  on  apace,  this  primi- 
tive proclamation  was  expanded  and  pictorialized  into  a  story  of 
"resurrection  from  the  dead,"  where  "raised  up"  has  been  dislocated 
in  its  reference.  All  this  is  set  forth  in  the  article  "Anastasis"  in 
Der  vorchristUche  Jesus,  and  in  substance  it  is  now  powerfully  con- 
firmed in  Bousset's  Kyrios  Christos. 

The  story  of  the  crucifixion  is  a  similar  development,  a  pic- 
torial representation  or  symbolization  of  the  rejection  of  that  same 
Jesus-cult  by  the  Jews  of  Jerusalem.  The  proof  of  this  is  already 
elaborated  in  an  essay  written  in  1913  and  perhaps  soon  to  appear 
in  print.  But  whether  these  particular  interpretations  be  quite  cor- 
rect is  not  the  real  point,  which  is  that  the  "documents"  in  question 
were  not  primarily,  in  their  original  form,  historical,  nor  was  their 
"common  interest"  historical,  but  dogmatic  and  doctrinal ;  as  is  clear 
from  the  fact  that  they  tell  us  nothing  of  strictly  biographic  or 
historic  scope,  nothing  that  is  not  thus  dogmatic  and  doctrinal,  and 
from  the  further  fact  that  they  freely  and  everywhere  mould  the 
quasi-historical  features  to  suit  the  doctrine  under  consideration. 

Of  course,  no  one  denies  the  presence  of  these  quasi-historical 
features,  they  are  obvious ;  but  perhaps  in  every  instance  they  may 
be  shown  to  be  thus  tendentious,  to  be  free  inventions,  having 
generally  symbolic  but  often  purely  poetic  or  dramatic  function. 
As  time  went  on,  these  fictions  multiplied  beyond  measure,  taking 
such  romantic  forms  as  in  the  first  two  chapters  of  Matthew  and 
of  Luke,  and  gradually  all  feeling  for  the  original  sense  of  the  Gos- 
pel was  lost,  even  as  feeling  for  the  primal  meaning  of  the  Greek 
myths  was  lost  in  bald  Euhemerism.  "It  is  curious  to  observe  the 
treatment  which  the  Greek  myths  met  with  at  the  hands  of  for- 
eigners. The  Oriental  mind,  quite  unable  to  appreciate  poetry  of 
such  a  character,  stripped  the  legends  bare  of  all  that  beautified 
them,  and  then  treated  them,  thus  vulgarized,  as  matters  of  simple 
history."  Mutatis  mutandis,  these  words  of  Rawlinson  fit  exactly 
the  case  of  Christianity,  whose  deplorable  but  natural  and  inevi- 
table vulgarization  has  lasted  to  this  day  and  in  its  totality  consti- 
tutes the  saddest  sight  that  earth  has  ever  shown  the  sun. 

Page  124,  Conybeare  thinks  it  incredible  that  one  tradition 
(much  more  six  or  seven)  "should  allegorize  the  myth  of  a  Saviour- 
God  as  the  career  of  a  man,  and  that  man  a  Galilean  teacher,  in 
whose  humanity  the  church  believed  from  the  first."  Verily !  But 
in  the  final  clause  he  quietly  assumes  the  very  thing  to  be  proved, 
the  very  thing  emphatically  denied.     The  "church"  did  not  believe 


CONYBEARE  ON   "tHE   HISTORICAL  CHRIST."  179 

in  the  humanity  of  Jesus  "from  the  first."  No  scintilla  of  proof 
can  Conybeare  show  forth.  The  earliest  evidences  exhibit  a  "new 
doctrine"  of  a  Saviour-God,  of  "Jesus  raised  up"  by  God  as  a 
Pro-Jehovah.  The  traces  of  gradual  humanization  are  surprisingly 
abundant.;  numerous  and  manifest^  too,  are  the  interpolations  made 
in  the  interest  of  the  dogma  of  the  humanity  (as  I  have  set  forth 
in  an  elaborate  essay  soon  to  be  published).  But  even  in  the  second 
century  the  humanity  was  far  from  universally  accepted.  The 
Teaching,  venerable  and  authoritative,  knows  nothing  of  it ;  neither 
does  the  learned  Epistle  of  James  ;  neither  do  other  New  Testament 
Scriptures ;  the  most  popular  Shepherd  of  Hermas,  issuing  from  and 
addressed  to  the  inmost  Roman  Christian  consciousness  and  es- 
teemed as  "inspired"  by  the  highest  authorities,  knows  nothing  what- 
ever of  any  earthly  life  of  Jesus,  whose  name  it  never  mentions. 
All  these  matters  are  only  mentioned  here  but  are  treated  at  length 
in  essays  practically  ready  for  the  press. 

Passing  to  "the  Epistles  of  Paul,"  Conybeare  apposes  on  page 
126  two  passages  from  Romans  (i.  29-32)  and  I.  Clement  XXXV, 
5,  6,  to  show  that  Clement  used  Paul.  But  the  apposition  is  vain 
and  belongs  to  a  stage  of  literary  criticism  already  overcome.  The 
matter  is  treated  in  Der  vorchristUche  Jesus,  not  in  eight  short  lines 
but  in  four  long  pages  (170-173),  and  it  is  clearly  shown  that  it  is 
reckless  to  speak  of  Clement's  quoting  from  Paul,  since  it  is  blind- 
ness not  to  recognize  in  Romans  itself  a  quotation  or  at  least  a 
reminiscence  of  a  Jewish  Vidui  or  Confession  for  Day  of  Atone- 
ment, an  acrostic  of  twenty-two  sins,  one  for  each  letter  of  the 
Hebrew  alphabet.  To  think  of  Paul's  actually  originating  such  a  list 
in  the  midst  of  a  heated  argument  is  far  more  absurd  than  for  a 
lawyer  to  extemporize  a  sonnet  in  a  passionate  appeal  to  a  jury. 
Says  T.  Rendel  Harris  in  his  masterly  monograph  The  Teaching 
of  the  Apostles  (82iTf.)  :  "There  is  ground  for  a  suspicion  that  the 
Vidui  of  the  Day  of  Atonement,  the  Catalogue  of  Vices  in  the 
Teaching,  and  the  catalogue  in  the  first  chapter  of  Romans,  are  all 
derived  from  a  lost  alphabetical  catalogue  of  sins."  He  might  have 
added  the  catalogue  in  2  Tim.  iii.  2-5.  Neither  Clement  nor  Paul 
is  originating,  but  both  are  quoting  from  common  or  related  orig- 
inals. Moreover  the  whole  passage  in  Rom.  i.  18-32,  is  on  its  face 
no  original  part  of  a  letter  to  Romans  ("Rome"  in  verse  7  is  now 
admitted  by  Harnack  and  Zahn  to  be  interpolated ;  the  whole  is  no 
letter  but  a  theological  treatise,  a  precipitate  of  generations  of  de- 
bate), but  is  a  part  of  the  general  "missionary  preaching"  of  the 
monotheistic  propaganda,  a  bitter  denunciation  of   idolatry,   itself 


180  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

much  revised,  and  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  v^^ith  any  man  Jesus 
or  with  the  Gospel  story. 

"The  New  Testament  in  the  Apostolic  Fathers,"  to  which 
Conybeare  refers  p.  126,  is  certainly  an  extremely  valuable  com- 
pendium, for  which  we  cannot  be  too  grateful,  but  what  is  its 
logical  worth  may  be  inferred  from  its  classifying  the  parallelism 
between  Romans  and  Clement  as  "A  a",  to  indicate  the  very  highest 
degree  of  probability,  whereas  we  have  just  seen  there  is  no  proba- 
bility worth  mention. 

Conybeare's  statement  of  the  argument  of  my  Sceculi  silentium 
has  so  little  relation  to  the  facts  in  the  case  as  to  make  any  dis- 
cussion well-nigh  impossible.  The  causes  (named  on  p.  130)  of  dis- 
appearance of  Christian  literature,  alteration  of  creeds  and  rivalry 
of  schools  of  thought,  did  indeed  operate,  but  not  against  the  canon- 
ical writings.  To  paraphrase  the  words  already  quoted,  "The  ortho- 
dox Christians  were  great  destroyers,  but  they  did  not  destroy  their 
own."  But  this  is  not  the  worst  of  it.  Conybeare  seems  to  have  mis- 
taken quite  the  airg\iv[iQ.nioiSc£cnli  silentium.  It  is  not  there  a  question 
about  writings  that  have  disappeared,  granted  that  they  are  countless  ; 
the  question  is  about  the  works  that  have  not  disappeared,  but  abide 
with  us  even  to-day.  It  is  the  century  of  such  still  extant  works 
that  is  considered,  and  this  century  is  found  to  be  silent.  It  seems 
hardly  possible  that  Conybeare  could  have  read  Scrculi  silentium 
with  any  care.  On  pages  189-194  of  Der  vorchristliche  Jesus  the 
matter  is  clearly  presented.  The  point  is  this.  We  have  still  with 
us  copious  works  of  that  century,  Clement,  Polycarp,  Barnabas, 
Ignatius,  Hermas,  Justin  Martyr.  These  writers  had  frequent  and 
urgent  need  for  just  such  matter  as  lay  at  hand  in  the  Epistle  to 
Romans  and  other  Paulines.  They  delighted  in  quotation,  it  was 
the  staple  of  their  argument ;  they  seek  diligently  and  with  tears  for 
authoritative  utterances.  If  then  they  knew  anything  of  our  Romans, 
why  did  they  pass  it  by  in  silence  for  a  century?  Such  is  the  argu- 
ment in  ScBculi  silentium,  nor  can  it  be  answered  by  exclamation 
points  and  by  caricature. 

Like  all  other  weapons  of  thought,  the  argument  from  silence 
must  be  used  with  discretion,  but  everywhere  both  in  criticism  and 
in  daily  life  it  is  used  and  is  indispensable.  Hardly  a  book  of 
criticism  can  you  open  but  you  find  it  employed  somewhere.  Thus, 
Munro  (Iliad.  I,  XXVII)  and  Petrie.  That  in  the  case  in  hand 
it  is  used  properly,  and  that  it  wounds  mortally  the  prevalent  notion 
about  Romans,  is  plain  to  see  in  the  intense  anxiety  of  traditionalists 
to  show  that  somewhere  the  silence  has  been  broken ;  to  every  syl- 


CONYBEARE  ON   "tHE  HISTORICAL  CHRIST."  181 

lable  of  the  Fathers  they  apply  the  most  sensitive  microphone  of 
criticism,  if  haply  here  or  there  they  may  detect  the  faintest  echo 
from  the  Epistle. 

Page  131  reveals  a  precious  germ  of  truth,  declaring  that  the 
supreme  and  exclusive  interest  of  the  Paulines,  as  well  as  the  Paul 
(he  might'  have  added  the  Peter)  of  Acts,  is  "in  the  crucifixion, 
death,  and  resurrection  of  Jesus,"  their  author  "manifests  every- 
where the  same  aloofness  from  the  earthly  life  and  teaching  of 
Jesus."  Nobly  and  bravely  said,  with  enviable  clearness  and  pre- 
cision. But  what  other  Epistle  or  (New  Testament)  writer  after 
the  Gospels  shows  any  less  aloofness  from  the  early  career  of  Jesus? 
Is  not  the  supreme  and  exclusive  interest  of  all  "in  the  crucifixion, 
death,  and  resurrection  ?"  And  are  not  these  all  dogmatic  moments  ? 
Is  it  not  their  doctrinal  import  with  which  the  writers  are  ex- 
clusively concerned  ?  One  trivial  amendment  may  be  admitted.  As 
the  Paul  of  Acts  never  uses  the  word  "crucify,"  and  alludes  to  the 
crucifixion  only  in  a  section  (xiii.  27-31)  apparently  inserted  later 
in  his  speech,  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  felt  supreme  interest  in  the 
crucifixion.  Neither  does  Peter,  who  indeed  says  twice  "whom  ye 
crucified"  (Acts  ii.  36;  iv.  10),  and  in  iii.  14;  v.  30;  viii.  35  also 
alludes  to  the  tragedy.  But  all  of  these  notices  seem  to  be  secondary 
additions,  and  to  form  no  part  of  the  primitive  preaching,  which 
turned  about  the  Anastasis,  the  uplifting,  the  establishment  of  Jesus 
as  heavenly  Son-of-Man,  a  pro-Jehovah  and  Lord  Christ,  quite  in- 
dependently of  any  resuscitation  or  any  death.  All  this  has  been 
set  forth  in  Der  vorchristliche  Jesus  (pp.  71-106),  also  with  some 
natural  variation  in  Bousset's  Kyrios  Christos  (pp.  1-92).  The 
primitive  notion  is  the  Anastasis  (Installation,  Erhohimg — Bousset), 
from  which  the  revival,  death,  crucifixion  etc.  have  all  been  con- 
structed backward,  as  in  a  dream.  The  first  genuinely  historic 
interest  that  we  find  is  in  the  birth-stories  of  Matthew  and  Luke, 
admittedly  late  inventions. 

The  testimonies  to  a  human  birth  of  Jesus  that  Conybeare 
thinks  to  find  in  the  Paulines  are  one  and  all  mare's-nests.  It  seems 
strange  he  should  cite  such  a  phrase  as  "born  of  David's  seed  ac- 
cording to  flesh"  (Rom.  i.  2),  embedded  in  a  concretion  of  dogmas 
impossible  as  a  genuine  address  to  Romans,  and  even  there  so  ob- 
viously interpolated  that  our  translators  reached  forward  to  the 
natural  sequent  (verse  4")  and  boldly  wrote  "Concerning  his  Son 
Jesus  Christ  our  Lord,"  thereby  impliedly  recognizing  the  omitted 
words  as  inserted,  though  afterwards  introducing  them;  while  our 
revisers  help  themselves  out  by  interpolating  "even." 


182  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

All  such  examples,  and  there  are  many,  of  dogmatic  phrases 
disturbing  the  context  labor  under  a  strong  antecedent  suspicion  of 
interpolation ;  many  have  been  recognized  as  such  by  the  sagest 
critics,  who  never  dreamed  of  the  present  radical  theory  of  anhis- 
toricity.  It  is  practically  certain  that  many  such  are  intrusions 
into  the  text,  and  it  may  very  well  be  that  all  are.  Undoubtedly 
the  canonic  scriptures  have  been  revised  and  re-revised  at  many 
points  in  dogmatic  interest ;  this  none  will  deny.  According  to  the 
chief  methodological  maxim,  the  law  of  parsimony,  Occam's  Razor, 
we  must  apply  this  admitted  principle  wherever  we  can,  and  intro- 
duce no  other  principle  of  explanation  until  absolutely  necessary. 
Hence  the  historicist  can  prove  nothing  by  any  number  of  doctrinal 
phrases,  easily  detachable  from  their  context  and  intelligible  as 
interpolations,  which  fall  out  as  soon  as  the  text  is  shaken  in  dis- 
cussion. 

He  must  find  some  document  wherein  the  human  birth  etc.  are 
threads  running  through  the  whole  web,  which  cannot  be  isolated 
nor  understood  as  insertions.  This  he  has  not  done,  this  he  has 
not  attempted  to  do,  and  in  default  hereof  he  is  logically  impotent. 

The  principal  Pauline  passages  such  as  1  Cor.  xv.  3  ff. ;  ix.  1 ; 
xi.  23  ff. ;  x.  16,  17,  have  all  been  shown  in  Ecce  Dens  and  else- 
where to  bear  witness  not  for  but  rather  against  the  historical 
hypothesis.  (Compare  Guignebert,  Le  Prohleme  de  Jesus,  for 
notable  concessions.)  Until  these  arguments  are  answered  it  is 
vain  merely  to  point  pathetically  to  these  passages. 

But  on  p.  134  Conybeare  quotes  2  Cor.  xii.  11,  'Tn  nothing 
came  I  behind  the  very  chief  est  apostles,"  and  similar  Pauline  boasts. 
This  seems  suicidal.  For  admittedly  Paul's  Christianity,  his  seeing 
Jesus,  the  Lord,  was  a  psychic  process,  a  matter  of  intellect  and 
not  of  sense  experience ;  when  he  puts  it  in  line  with  the  apostles', 
what  clearer  indication  could  there  be  that  their  experience  also  was 
a  matter  of  intellectual  perception,  of  doctrinal  comprehension,  of 
spiritual  intuition?  Conybeare  assumes  everything,  as  so  often, 
when  he  quietly  identifies  apostle  with  "personal  follower  of  Jesus." 
P)Ut  decidedly  they  were  not  "personal  followers  of  the  Jesus,"  the 
man  of  historic  fancy.  They  were  missionaries  of  "the  doctrine  about 
the  Jesus,"  of  the  Judeo-Grecian  monotheism,  sent  out  from  here  and 
there  all  round  the  Mediterranean,  the  proclaimers  now  in  the  closet 
now  on  the  housetops,  as  wisdom  dictated,  of  the  great  Missions- 
predigt,  set  forth  in  type-form  by  Norden. 

Naturally  many  of  these  twelve  or  seventy  (both  symbolic 
numbers)   might  have  borne  official  relations  to  the  early  propa- 


CONYBEARE  ON   "tHE   HISTORICAL  CHRIST."  183 

ganda,  of  which  they  were  proud.  Paul  would  seem  to  have  been 
more  or  less  independent,  a  marked  individuahst.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  the  relations  between  the  official  apostles  and  the  self-con- 
stituted apostle  were  ever  so  strained  as  would  appear  in  a  few 
passages  in  the  Paulines ;  the  Baurian  antithesis  did  good  service 
in  its  day,  but  its  usefulness  is  over:  " 'Tis  but  a  tent  where  takes 
his  noonday  rest"  the  critic  that  is  addressed  for  the  final  and  in- 
creasing truth.  Apollos  was  another  such  apostle,  also  an  indi- 
vidualist. For  the  more  or  less  official  apostles  we  have  preserved 
in  the  Teaching  a  kind  of  manual  of  preaching  and  practice.  It  is 
a  mere  pious  imagination  on  page  138  that  "the  older  apostles  prided 
themselves  on  their  personal  intercourse  with  Jesus" ;  it  is  not  im- 
plied in  2  Cor.  v.  12,  nor  elsewhere,  save  in  the  riotous  fancy  of  the 
historicist.  Page  138,  Conybeare  italicizes  2  Cor.  v,  16,  "even 
though  we  have  known  Christ  after  the  flesh,"  as  one  of  "some  texts 
which  imply  that  Paul,  if  he  did  not  actually  see  Jesus  walking  about 
on  this  earth,  yet  imply  that  he  might  have  done  so"  (sic).  But 
the  highest  exegetical  authorities  both  conservative  and  liberal  hold 
that  it  implies  no  such  thing.  Thus  Heinrici  (p.  172),  citing  Klop- 
per,  amends  the  elder  view  of  Meyer  and  interprets  thus:  "Yea,  if 
we  considered  even  Christ  himself  fleshwise,  if  we  misunderstood 
him  and  his  kingdom  totally"  (as  does  the  modern  historicist),  and 
(p.  174),  "for  known  by  no  means  presupposes  having  seen,  but 
refers  to  a  discursive  cognition  of  the  specific  dignity  of  Christ." 
Notice  also  with  what  contempt  Holsten  dismisses  such  views  as 
Conybeare's  (Ev.  d.  Paul.  u.  d.  Petr.,  p.  432).  The  passage  still 
remains  obscure  and  questionable,  but  it  affords  no  help  to  his- 
toricism. 

On  page  146  is  mooted  the  question  of  the  "brethren  of  the 
Lord."  This  matter  has  been  discussed  at  much  length  elsewhere 
(in  The  Open  Court)  in  my  article  on  the  "Kindred  of  Jesus  and  the 
Babylon  of  Revelation"  and  in  my  review  of  Loofs's  "What  is 
the  Truth  about  Jesus?"  According  to  the  Theologischer  Jahres- 
bericht  my  position  is  there  "skilfully  defended  against  an  able 
assailant,"  Kampmeier.  Here  be  it  only  observed  that  had  flesh- 
and-blood  brother  been  meant,  the  phrase  would  have  been  "brother 
of  Jesus"  and  not  "brother  of  the  Lord."  Remember  that  Lord 
(Kyrios)  is  the  Greek  for  Jehovah,  also  that  Hegesippus  quoted 
by  Eusebius  (H.  E.,  II,  23,  4-18)  gives  such  an  account  of  this 
James  as  makes  it  clear  that  he  was  "brother  of  the  Lord"  by 
virtue  of  his  prodigious  piety,  and  ridiculous  to  suppose  that  blood- 
kinship  is  meant ;  also  that  Origen  expressly  says  he  was  "brother 


184  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

of  the  Lord,  not  so  much  because  of  consanguinity  or  coeducation 
as  because  of  his  ethics  and  his  doctrine"  (C  Cels.,  I,  47)  ;  also 
that  in  the  Apostolic  Constitutions,  Book  V,  we  read,  "He  that  is 
condemned  for  the  name  of  the  Lord  God  is  an  holy  martyr,  a 
brother  of  the  Lord."  Now  this  James  is  said  in  Hegesippus's 
account  to  have  suffered  martyrdom.  So,  then,  all  the  facts  in  the 
case  are  understood  easily  and  naturally  on  the  supposition  that  the 
reference  is  to  religious  pre-eminence,  and  on  no  other. 

Page  146,  Conybeare  refers  to  the  fact  that  in  Mark  iii.  31-35, 
it  is  implied  of  "his  brethren"  that  they  did  not  believe  in  him,  and 
makes  much  of  this  apparent  contradiction,  as  Kampmeier  before 
him.  But  the  solution  is  simple.  There  is  no  reason  why  "his 
brethren"  should  not  be  used  by  different  writers  or  even  by  the 
same  writer  at  different  times  under  different  conditions,  in  widely 
different  senses.  All  of  us  do  the  like  habitually.  It  was  very 
natural  in  quasi-historic  symbolism  to  speak  of  the  Jews  of  Jeru- 
salem as  "his  brethren"  and  as  rejecting  him,  because  the  Jesus-cult 
was  certainly  Jewish  in  origin,  though  born  in  the  Dispersion. 
Doubtless  the  Jews  laid  special  claims  to  the  idea,  they  were  the 
protagonists  of  monotheism ;  although  half-pagan  "the  monotheistic 
Jesus-cult"  (Deissmann)  was  still  theirs.  And  yet  in  the  main  they 
rejected  it.  Similarly  Jerome  speaks  of  the  Church  at  Jerusalem 
as  the  mother  of  Jesus.  Such  figurative  language  was  everywhere 
current  in  the  Orient.  The  inconsistency  then  is  only  a  seeming  one. 
But  even  if  the  explanation  were  not  so  near-lying,  the  fact  itself 
of  the  double  sense  would  be  incontestable ;  for  in  the  same  Gospel 
"brethren"  certainly  means  "disciples,"  believers  (at  least  so  Mag- 
dalene understood  it,  John  xx.  17-18),  and  just  as  certainly  means 
not  disciples  but  unbelievers  (John  vii.  5,  "neither  did  his  brethren 
believe  in  him").  Here,  then,  is  no  need  to  stumble,  unless  one 
positively  prefers. 

Page  148,  Conybeare  alleges  that  "blood  relationship  is  always 
conveyed  in  the  Paulines  as  in  the  rest  of  the  New  Testament" 
(and  the  Christian  World  of  July  2  rolls  the  statement  like  a  de- 
licious morsel  under  the  tongue),  "when  the  person  whose  brother 
it  is  is  named."  How  is  it  possible  to  characterize  such  a  statement? 
The  word  in  question  {adelphos,  brother)  is  used  in  the  New 
Testament  about  330  times,  thus :  Gospels  88,  Acts  56,  Paulines  132, 
the  rest  54.  In  the  Paulines  it  is  used  130  times  certainly  in  the 
figurative  sense  of  religious  or  racial  brother,  the  only  two  contested 
cases  are  those  under  review  "brother  of  the  Lord"  (Gal.  i.  19), 
"brethren  of  the  Lord"  (1  Cor.  ix.  5).     Conybeare  has  used  "al- 


CONYBEARE  ON   "tHE  HISTORICAL  CHRIST."  185 

ways"  in  the  sense  of  never !  Similarly  in  Acts  it  is  used  54  times  in 
the  figurative  sense,  twice  only  in  the  literal  sense  ("Joseph  was 
made  known  to  his  brethren,"  Acts.  vii.  13;  "James  the  brother  of 
John,"  xii.  2).  The  Gospel  usage  is  about  equally  divided.  In  the 
rest,  the  sense  is  figurative  51  times,  perhaps  literal  thrice,  twice 
of  Cain's  brother,  1  John  iii.  12,  and  of  Jude  brother  of  James, 
Jude  1. 

Page  148,  "Smith  withholds  from  his  readers  the  fact  that 
Jerome  regarded  James  the  brother  of  Jesus  as  his  first  cousin." 
He  also  withheld  countless  other  facts  just  as  irrelevant.  Jerome's 
correct  notion,  agreeing  with  Origen's,  of  the  meaning  of  the  appel- 
lation "brother  of  the  Lord,"  is  not  vitiated  by  his  "Encratite 
rubbish"  about  first  cousins  and  perpetual  virginity  of  Mary;  just 
as  Conybeare's  excellent  investigations  are  but  little  impaired  by 
The  Historical  Christ. 

Page  152,  Conybeare  cites  Col.  ii.  14,  concerning  which  it  is 
sufficient  to  refer  to  Ecce  Deus,  pp.  88,  89,  197-201.  Such  phrases 
as  are  collated  on  pages  152,  153  have  already  been  adequately  noted. 

Passing  now  into  the  broader  champaign  of  "External  Evi- 
dence" Conybeare  complains  that  I  have  mangled  Origen  in  quoting 
contra  Cels.,  I,  47.  The  "mangling"  consists  solely  in  indicating 
by  dots  the  omission  of  irrelevant  matter,  as  must  often  be  done  if 
books  laden  with  citations  are  not  to  become  unwieldy.  Why  quote 
17  lines  when  only  five  are  to  the  point?  But  on  page  159  Cony- 
beare controverts  my  statement  that  "the  passage  is  still  found  in 
some  Josephus  manuscripts,"  and  he  calls  Niese  to  witness  that  there 
are  no  such  manuscripts.  "By  his  neesings  a  light  doth  shine." 
"To-day  the  Captain  is  sober."  I  had  incautiously  accepted  the 
statement  of  Schiirer,  the  almost  inerrant:  "This  passage  occurs 
in  some  of  our  manuscripts  of  Josephus  and  ought  therefore  cer- 
tainly to  be  regarded  as  a  Christian  interpolation  which  has  been 
excluded  from  our  common  text"  ( Geschichte  des  jiidischen  Volkes, 
II,  18),  unheeding  the  words  of  Origen's  Benedictine  editors:  "to- 
day though,  in  Josephus-codices  naught  similar  is  found,"  and  di- 
rectly against  my  own  wont,  to  verify  every  statement  to  the  full 
extent  of  library  and  other  resources  at  command. 

But  by  this  merciless  massacre  of  a  straggling  metic,  who 
richly  deserved  his  fate,  has  Conybeare  disturbed  the  march  of  the 
army?  By  no  means.  The  peccant  sentence  was  an  obiter  dictum 
unessential  to  the  general  argument.  Conybeare,  following  Burkitt, 
who  apparently  follows  the  Benedictines,  regards  Origen's  thrice- 
made  averment  as  an  error  of  Origen's  commonplace  book  confusing 


186  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

Ananus's  murder  of  James  with  Ananus's  own  murder.  Be  that 
as  it  may — here  is  no  room  to  test  it.  In  any  case  the  Josephine 
passage  has  passed  quite  beyond  the  stage  of  discussion  represented 
by  Conybeare  and  Burkitt.  Harnack  followed  by  Barnes  has  come 
to  the  defense  of  its  Josephinity  in  a  widely  read  article  in  the 
Internationale  Monatsschrift,  June,  1913,  1037-1068,  which  has 
rejoiced  the  hearts  of  historicists  almost  as  much  as  his  earlier 
reaction  in  the  Chronologie  tickled  such  as  read  no  further  than  the 
Vorrede.  But  Harnack's  structure  has  been  pulverized  by  his  own 
colleague  E.  Norden  and  scattered  to  the  winds  in  an  elaborate 
memoir  in  the  Neue  Jahrhiicher  fiir  das  klassische  A.,  G.  u.  d.  L., 
XXXI,  pp.  637-666,  after  having  already  been  generally  rejected 
by  his  compatriots. 

There  has  also  just  appeared  in  Preuschen's  Zeitschrift  an 
equally  elaborate,  if  less  rigorously  reasoned,  monograph  by  P. 
Corssen  on  "Die  Zeugnisse  des  Tacitus  und  Pseudo-Josephus  iiber 
Christus,"  1914,  pp.  114-140.  All  of  the  Burkitt-Harnack-Barnes 
contentions  are  most  easily  refuted  (as  I  have  shown  fully  in  an- 
other connection),*  and  the  Josephine  witness  comes  ever  clearer  to 
view  as  in  every  word  one  of  the  most  manifest  and  unmistakable 
of  all  interpolations. 

Page  160,  Conybeare  alludes  to  my  contention  that  the  Tacitus 
passage  is  spurious,  but  his  misrepresentation  of  my  argument  is 
almost  too  gross  for  correction.  Evidently  he  presumes  that  his 
readers  will  never  see  Ecce  Dens,  pp.  238-265,  otherwise  he  surely 
would  never  have  printed  his  own  pages.  Here  it  is  enough,  since 
Conybeare  is  quite  beyond  the  pale  of  discussion,  to  quote  one  sen- 
tence from  an  able  and  honest  though  unsympathetic  reviewer  of 
Ecce  Deus,  Windisch,  in  the  Theol.  Rundschau:  "The  spuriousness 
of  the  Christ-passages  in  Josephus  is  strikingly  demonstrated ;  fully 
as  worthy  of  attention  appear  to  me  his  arguments  concerning 
Tacitus." 

Page  161,  Conybeare  states,  "It  is  practically  certain  that 
Clement  writing  about  A.  D.  95,  refers  to  it"  (Nero's  persecution). 
Discreet  traditionalists  maintain  no  such  thing.  The  sufferings  re- 
ferred to  by  Clement  are  ascribed  to  jealousy,  he  does  not  "record 
that  a  vast  multitude  perished  in  connection  with  the  martyrdom 
of  Peter  and  Paul,"  and  there  is  not  the  remotest  allusion  to  Nero. 
The  passage  is  obscure  and  probably  corrupt ;  the  "Danaids  and 
Dirkae"  are  bracketed  by  Lightfoot.  Apparently  the  reference  is 
to  the  whole  course  of  human  history,  for  he  begins  his  list  of  the 

*  The  Monist,  October,  1914,  pp.  618-634. 


CONYBEARE  ON   "tHE  HISTORICAL  CHRIST."  187 

disasters  wrought  "by  envy  and  jealousy"  with  Cain  and  Abel, 
brings  it  on  down  gradually  to  Peter  and  Paul,  and  then  says  that 
"to  these  men  (i.  e.,  all  the  preceding  examples,  not  merely  Peter 
and  Paul)  of  holy  conversation  was  gathered  a  vast  multitude  of 
the  elect" ;  on  its  face  this  gathering  together  was  from  the  endless 
stretches  of  time  from  which  he  had  taken  so  many  examples.  To 
see  in  it  a  reference  to  a  Neronian  persecution  is  to  fly  in  the  face 
of  common  sense.  Compare  the  magnificent  eleventh  chapter  of 
Hebrews  (especially  verses  32-40),  of  which  Clement's  chapters 
IV-VI  may  be  regarded  as  a  feeble  echo.  The  "great  multitude" 
corresponds  to  the  "so  great  a  cloud  of  witnesses"  in  Heb.  xiii.  1. 

As  to  "the  cult  of  Augustus  Caesar"  by  the  college  of  Augustals, 
as  compared  with  the  Plinian  notice  of  hymns  sung  to  Christ  "as  to 
God,"  little  need  be  said,  since  Conybeare  himself  admits  "one 
might  perhaps  hesitate  about  its  implications,"  "if  this  letter  were 
the  sole  record  etc."  Now  it  is  precisely  the  existence  of  any 
"record"  attesting  the  "purely  human  reality  of  the  Christ  or  Jesus," 
that  is  called  in  question,  and  that  historicists  find  it  impossible  to 
prove, — admittedly  impossible,  for  such  as  Schweitzer  and  Noll 
content  themselves  with  mere  "probability."  The  case  of  Augustus 
is  not  nearly  parallel,  since  there  independent  proof  abounds. 

Page  176,  Conybeare  says  that  in  the  "basal  documents  Mark 
and  Q"  "Jesus  first  comes  on  the  scene  as  the  humble  son  of  Joseph 
and  Mary  to  repent  of  his  sins  etc."  What  must  be  said  of  such 
writing?  Is  it  reckless  or  merely  "daring,  bold,  and  venturous"? 
Compare  it  with  the  facts,  that  Q  as  restored  by  Harnack  contains 
no  mention  of  any  baptism  of  Jesus,  that  its  first  reference  to  Jesus 
declares  he  "was  upborne  into  the  wilderness  by  the  Spirit  to  be 
tempted  by  the  Devil,  etc.,"  all  of  which  is  strictly  supernatural; 
also  that  Mark  says  naught  about  Jesus  as  "humble  son  of  Joseph 
and  Mary,"  naught  about  his  confessing  sins  but  merely  says  "he 
came  and  was  baptized,  and  immediately  upon  his  going  up  from 
the  water  he  saw  the  heavens  rent  asunder  etc."  The  whole  story 
is  merely  figurative,  as  Usener  has  clearly  shown,  and  by  no  means 
testifies  to  historic  fact.  "Originally  John  the  Baptist  had  borne 
only  prophetic  witness  of  Jesus.  That  satisfied  neither  those  who 
had  Jesus  walk  as  God  on  earth  nor  those  for  whom  Jesus  was 
born  as  man"  (Das  Weihnachtsfest,  70).  Hence  the  many  varying 
accounts  of  the  baptism,  all  of  them  dogmatic  symbolic  fictions.  As 
complete  corrective  of  these  pages  of  Conybeare,  it  is  enough  to 
refer  to  a  hostile  work  both  honest  and  learned,  to  Bousset's  Kyrios 
Christos  (1913),  where  the  practical  immediacy  of  the  worship  of 


188  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

Jesus  as  "a  heavenly  preexistent  spiritual  being  descended  from 
above"  is  strongly  stressed,  as  well  as  the  fact  that  the  Gentile 
mission  "was  in  flood  before  the  conversion  of  Paul,  whom  it 
upbore  on  its  current"  (p.  92),  and  that  the  term  Lord  (Kyrios, 
Greek  for  Jehovah)  was  in  use  among  the  Gentiles,  so  far  as  we  can 
see,  from  the  very  first.  Conybeare  here  seems  to  represent  a  point 
of  view  already  overcome. 

Like  may  be  said  of  his  remarks  on  page  187  against  the  notion 
that  the  primitive  propaganda  was  a  militant  monotheism.  At  this 
point  he  should  read  Norden's  Agnostos  Theos,  as  well  as  Acts, 
more  carefully.    A  single  passage  may  be  quoted: 

"I.  THE  SERMON  ON  MARS'  HILL  AS  TYPE  OF  MISSIONARY 

PREACHING. 

I.   THE  JEWISH-CHRISTIAN   GROUND-MOTIVE. 

"  'Knowledge  of  God'  was  a  concept  known  even  to  the  religion 
of  the  prophets,  but  in  the  Christian  religion  it  became  central ;  in 
the  rivalry  of  the  Hellenic  religions,  including  the  Jewish-Christian, 
'gnosis  of  God'  was  so  to  speak  the  password  with  which  the  mis- 
sionaries plied  their  propaganda :  he  who  brought  the  true  gnosis — 
and  only  one  could  be  the  true — guaranteed  to  the  believers  the  true 
God-worship  also,  for  knowledge  and  worship  (eusebia)  were  in 
these  circles  one"  (p.  3).  Compare  herewith  a  modest  footnote  in  £cc^ 
Deus  (p.  64)  :  "Hence  the  genuine  Protochristian  terms  'gnosis' 
and  'gnostic'  Knowledge  of  God  and  worship  of  God  are  the  two 
polestars  of  the  Protochristian  heavens."  As  soon  as  one  sees  that 
the  repentance  of  the  New  Testament  is  turning  from  the  sin  (of 
idolatry  and  its  concomitants),  that  faith  towards  God  is  the  ac- 
ceptance of  monotheism  (or  "the  monotheistic  Jesus-cult"),  and  that 
the  Kingdom  of  God  is  the  community  of  his  worshipers,  of  the 
world  converted  to  monotheism,  all  the  difficulties  that  trouble  our 
author  dissolve  and  vanish — and  all  of  these  things  are  treated  in 
Ecce  Deus.  The  cure  for  Conybeare's  "Art  of  Criticism"  would 
seem  to  be  a  little  more  science  of  criticism. 

Page  190,  complaint  is  made  that  Jesus  is  taken  as  human  and 
historical  where  use  is  made  of  the  phrase  "he  said  unto  them." 
By  no  means !  We  use  the  Old  Testament  phrase,  "Thus  saith 
Jehovah,"  with  no  suspicion  that  Jehovah  is  or  was  human  or  ever 
uttered  such  words.  The  ancient  religionist  regularly  accredited 
his  own  ideas  and  expressions  to  his  God.  On  the  following  pages, 
191-198,  Conybeare  asks  many  questions,  all  of  which  answer  them- 


CONYBEARE  ON   "tHE  HISTORICAL  CHRIST."  189 

selves  for  the  careful  reader  of  Der  vorchristliche  Jesus  and  Ecce 
Deus.  Dr.  Conybeare  also  marvels  much  at  many  contentions  in 
these  volumes,  which  seem  to  have  such  frightful  mien  as  to  be 
hated  needs  but  to  be  seen.  When  he  grows  familiar  with  their 
face,  we  shall  see  what  follows.  Meantime  let  us  deprecate  any 
reference  to  Habakkuk:  "Behold,  ye  despisers,  and  wonder  and 
perish."  But  what  if  the  historizing  tendency  of  the  Protochristians 
be  queer  and  hard  for  Conybeare  to  understand?  Does  not  Pindar 
say,  "Truly,  many  things  are  wonderful"?  The  real  question  is 
not.  Was  it  strange?  but.  Was  it  a  fact?  Did  they  actually  his- 
torize?  Let  Conybeare  himself  answer,  in  his  Myth,  Magic,  and 
Morals  (p.  231)  :  "Here  we  see  turned  into  incident  an  allegory 
often  employed  by  Philo."  And  again:  "What  is  metaphor  and 
allegory  in  Philo  was  turned  into  history  by  the  Christians." 

Herewith,  then,  having  noted  everything  relevant  that  seems 
worth  note,  and  more,  we  close  the  review  of  this  book,  a  work 
of  learning  and  power,  not  indeed  bringing  new  arms  into  the  fray 
but  wielding  old  ones  with  strength  and  with  skill.  The  author 
deserves  and  will  receive  the  hearty  thanks  of  all  who  were  curious 
to  see  the  very  best  that  could  be  done  with  "rusty  weapons"  such 
as,  the  able  historicist  Klostermann  says,  "should  be  laid  aside  in 
the  corner."  Regarding  the  tone  I  rise  to  no  point  of  order ;  Grat- 
tan  has  taught  us  that  for  some  it  is  difficult  to  be  severe  without 
being  unparliamentary.  A  reviewer  in  the  Academy  discovers  in 
the  book  "a  fine  contempt" — and  at  times  it  might  indeed  appear 
to  display  a  high  disdain  for  certain  things  that  other  men  of  honor 
revere.  However,  the  appearance  is  doubtless  deceptive ;  it  is  only 
the  zeal  of  the  author  that  hath  eaten  him  up.  Besides,  the  radical 
criticism  is  certainly  irritating  (it  is  not  every  man  that  will  write 
with  Holtzmann :  "I  am  too  old  now  to  unlearn  everything  and  learn 
it  all  over  another  way :  but  for  much  new  knowledge  and  for  many 
a  new  insight  I  thank  you  most  heartily"),  and  Dr.  Conybeare  in- 
tends to  show  it  all  the  fairness  it  deserves.  Nevertheless,  with  all 
its  rare  merits  and  its  modest  ambition  to  serve  as  a  model  of 
moderation,  the  book  remains  one  of  heat  rather  than  of  light,  not 
always  both  cool  and  clear.  The  judicious  admirers  of  the  great 
scholar  will  not  secretly  rejoice  as  they  read  it,  but  they  may  repeat 
the  consoling  words  of  Pindar:  "And  yet,  with  fair  fortune  for- 
getfulness  may  come." 


MISCELLANEOUS. 


GERMANY'S  DESTRUCTION  AS  FORETOLD  BY  A  FRENCHMAN. 

In  Major  de  Civrieux's  book,  La  fin  de  tempire  allemande. — La  bataille 
du  Champ  des  Bouleaux  igi.  .(Paris  and  Limoges,  Henri  Charles-Lavanzelle, 
1912),  we  gain  an  interesting  insight  into  the  Belgian  neutrality  question  as 
seen  through  French  spectacles,  and  we  get  the  impression  that  the  invasion 
of  Belgium  by  Germany  was  not  only  expected  by  France  but  ardently  hoped 
for  in  order  to  make  an  end  of  Germany. 

The  book  gives  an  imaginary  picture  of  the  end  of  Germany  in  the  near 
future.  This  takes  place  in  the  following  way :  After  the  German  fleet  has 
been  annihilated  through  a  sudden  attack  by  the  English  fleet,  following,  as 
the  book  says,  the  example  of  Japan  in  the  Russo-Japanese  war,  without  any 
further  declaration  of  war,  the  invading  German  armies  are  defeated  by  the 
French  at  Apremont,  southwest  of  Metz,  then  at  Neufchateau,  south  of  Toul,  and 
on  the  Ourthe  in  Belgium;  in  the  latter  battle  in  conjunction  with  the  English 
and  Belgians.  After  these  defeats  the  victors,  strengthened  further  by  the 
Dutch,  press  forward  from  different  directions  through  the  Rhine  province 
and  Westphalia,  and  finally  make  an  end  of  Germany  in  "the  battle  of  the 
Birch  field"  near  Hamm.  William  II  is  also  killed  in  this  battle,  as  the  last 
German  emperor,  his  headquarters  being  smashed  into  a  thousand  fragments 
by  bombs  thrown  from  French  flying  machines. 

In  the  book  the  following  sentences  are  significant.  First,  that  one  in  the 
preface,  written  by  Major  Driant,  representative  from  Nancy,  to  the  author 
of  the  book,  and  those  by  the  author  himself.  Major  Driant  says:  "The  pro- 
posed violation  of  Belgian  neutrality  has  long  ceased  to  be  a  secret.  True, 
every  one  resists  this  idea,  we  know  that ;  but  in  spite  of  this,  and  in  conse- 
quence of  the  intimate  relations  between  France  and  England,  this  violation 
is  unavoidable.  It  is  of  the  most  pressing  interest  to  Germany  to  march 
through  Belgium  as  quickly  as  possible,  first,  in  order  to  hinder  the  junction 
of  the  British  forces  and  the  northern  French  armies,  second,  in  order  to  gain 
the  shortest  and  most  weakly  defended  route  to  Paris." 

The  author,  Civrieux,  says  in  his  imaginary  description  of  the  future  war : 
"As  long  as  the  Belgian  border  was  barred  to  the  French  movements  every 
French  attack,  which  found  itself  confined  within  the  narrow  space  between 
Basel  and  Mezieres,  had  to  go  to  pieces  against  the  powerful  girdle  of  German 
fortifications  in  Alsace-Lorraine,  and,  behind  them,  against  the  fortified  line 
of  the  Rhine.  On  this  narrow  space  a  campaign  having  a  prospect  of  victory 
was  impossible.  Never  could  it  have  carried  our  troops  along  with  enthusiasm. 
It  would  have  come  to  a  bitter  and  terrible  struggle,  and  one  of  extreme  sacri- 
fice, without  a  spark  of  hope  for  victory  in  the  hearts  of  the  fighters.  On  the 
contrary,  the  superior  mass  of  the  Germans  would  have  crushed  the  French 
through  its  weight  alone,  for  the  mobility  of  the  French  would  have  been  re- 
stricted by  the  narrowness  of  the  war  area,  yes  would  have  been  made 
entirely  ineffective.  But  now,  all  at  once,  the  plains  of  Belgium  were  open  to 
the  French  armies,  where,  besides,  there  were  100,000  Belgians  ready  to  de- 
fend the  violation  of  their  neutrality.  Now  the  prospect  was  altogether  differ- 
ent. After  a  victorious  fight  on  Belgian  soil  there  would  be  an  invasion  into 
the  enemy's  country,  toward  the  Lower  Rhine,  which  was  without  fortifica- 
tions, hand  in  hand  with  the  English  ally  who  ruled  the  sea  and  would  now 
set  foot  on  the  continent." 

A.  Kampmeier. 

Iowa  City,  Ia.,  Feb.  11,  1915. 


MISCELLANEOUS.  191 


"BOS  ET  ASINUS"  AGAIN. 

That  the  reading  in  medio  duoruni  animalium  is  already  found  in  the 
Septuagint  all  students  of  Biblical  archeology  know,  myself  not  excepted. 
Note  4  of  my  brief  paper  in  the  January  number  of  The  Open  Court  makes 
mention  of  this  passage  in  the  LXX,  and  in  my  essay  in  Modern  Language 
Notes  (April,  1914)  I  quoted  the  corresponding  Septuagint  reading  verbatim. 
Prof.  H.  J.  Heuser  must  then  have  overlooked  my  footnote,  else  he  would 
have  known  that  the  Itala  did  not  form  the  last  source  of  this  erroneous 
version  for  me.  I  have  mentioned  the  Itala  as  the  version  from  which  the 
Roman  Breviary  has  taken  the  reading  in  medio  duorum  animalium  verbally, 
but  the  Itala  version  is,  of  course,  to  be  led  back  directly  or  indirectly  to  the 
LXX,  for  the  Itala  undoubtedly  represents  a  Greek  original  prior  to  Origen's 
Hexapla.  The  Itala  is  the  immediate,  but  not  the  ultimate  source  of  the  ver- 
sion in  the  Breviary. 

In  this  footnote,  which  Professor  Heuser  seems  to  have  overlooked  or 
ignored  in  his  criticism,  I  made  the  statement  that  the  in  medio  duoruni  ani- 
malium reading  in  the  LXX  is  a  patristic  interpolation  intended  to  make  of 
this  text  a  Messianic  prophecy.  It  is  inconceivable,  as  Professor  Heuser  in 
his  comment  in  the  February  number  of  The  Open  Court  would  have  it,  that 
this  corruption  of  the  text  was  made  by  the  Jewish  rabbis (?),  who,  in  fact,  in 
their  translation  of  the  Masoretic  text  "were  necessarily  and  entirely  guided 
by  the  living  tradition  which  had  its  focus  in  the  synagogal  lessons"  (Encycl. 
Brit.,  article  "Septuagint").  I  am  the  last  man  on  earth  to  take  up  the 
cudgels  for  the  Jewish  "rabbis,"  but  as  an  unbiased  student  of  ancient  as  well 
as  modern  literature  I  maintain  that  this  wilful  alteration  of  the  text  cannot 
be  laid  at  the  doors  of  the  Alexandrian  Hellenists  of  pre-Christian  days.  It 
is  true  that  the  palpable  mistakes  they  otherwise  made  would  go  to  show  that 
though  proficient  in  Greek  they  had  "an  inadequate  knowledge  of  Hebrew" 
(ibid.),  but  this  reading  in  medio  duorum  animalium  instead  of  in  medio 
annorum  is  beyond  the  least  shadow  of  a  doubt  an  intentional  alteration,  and 
these  Hellenists  living  one  and  a  half  centuries  before  Christ  had  no  motive 
whatsoever  to  corrupt  the  text.  We  must  bear  in  mind  that  this  erroneous 
passage  is  not  due  alone  to  a  wrong  pointing  of  an  unpointed  text,  though  one 
would  expect  that  the  translators,  who  were  well  familiar  with  the  Bible, 
knew  the  correct  pointing  of  this  very  common  word ;  in  order  to  mispoint 
this  word  it  was  necessary  for  them  to  misread  the  word  following,  to  sub- 
stitute false  letters.  And  what  is  more,  this  very  same  word  which  the  trans- 
lators mispointed,  though  in  order  to  do  so  they  had  to  corrupt  the  following 
word,  was  correctly  pointed  by  them  in  the  very  same  verse.  Does  common 
sense  not  tell  us  that  this  change  was  intentional  ?  And  in  order  to  remove 
just  suspicion  a  commentary  was  added  to  the  word  when  it  was  correctly 
pointed.  To  make  my  meaning  clear  let  me  place  side  by  side  the  two  ver- 
sions. 

Habakkuk  iii.  2 

Septuagint.^  Vulgat. 

Domine  audivi  auditionem  tuam  et  Domine  audivi  auditionem  tuam  et 

timui.     Domine  opus  tuum,  in  medio  timui.     Domine  opus  tuum,  in  medio 

duorum  animalium.     In  medio  anno-  annorum  vivifica  illud.    In  medio  an- 

rum  notum  facies  cum  advenerit  tem-  norum  notum  facies. 
pus  demonstraberis. 

Professor  Heuser  thinks  that  in  rendering  the  prophecy  of  Habakkuk 
into  Greek  the  prophecy  of  Isaiah  (i.  3)  may  have  been  ringing  in  the  ears 
of  the  translator.  Quite  aside  from  the  fact  that  Isaiah  could  not  have  meant 
anything  else  but  the  inferiority  of  Israel  to  the  most  stupid  animals  in  his 
ingratitude  to  the  Lord,  the  Giver  of  all  life  and  sustenance.  Professor  Heuser 

^  The  Greek  reads  : 
Kupte   eiaaK-fiKoa   tt/v  aKoriv  aov,   koI  i(f>o^7i0r]v.      KaTev6T)aa   to,   ^pya   aov^   Kal 
e^iarriv.     iv  (leau  Svo  ^liiwv  yvuiffOriar]^  ev  rto  iyyl^eiv  ra  2tij  eTnyvuaO-^ffr], 


192  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

might  be  interested  to  know  that  it  was  reserved  to  Cornelius  to  see  in  the 
two  animals  between  which  Christ  was  to  be  born  the  ox  and  the  ass.  First 
these  animals  were  thought  to  be  the  Medes  and  the  Persians.  Then  Theophy- 
lactus  saw  in  these  animals  the  two  cherubim,  others  the  two  seraphim,  others 
again  the  two  robbers  between  whom  the  Man  of  Nazareth  was  crucified 
(Cf.  Georges  Duriez,  La  theologie  dans  le  drame  religieux  en  Alleniagne  an 
moyen  age,  Lille  and  Paris,  1914,  p.  240). 

But  though  I  hold  the  Church  Fathers  responsible  for  this  spurious  pas- 
sage I  have  not  the  least  doubt  of  the  purity  of  their  motives,  and  my  rev- 
erence for  their  fiery  zeal  in  winning  the  world  for  Christ  is  not  lessened  by 
the  fact  that  they  had  no  scruples  in  putting  into  the  mouth  of  a  man  who 
lived  some  six  centuries  before,  words  he  would  never  have  dreamt  of  saying. 
We  all  know  that  authors  in  those  days  were  in  the  habit  of  attributing  their 
works  to  men  who  lived  centuries  upon  centuries  before  them  with  the  purpose 
of  gaining  a  better  hearing.  How  many  books  in  the  Bible  bear  the  names 
of  men  who  have  by  no  means  written  them.  We  must  bear  in  mind  that  all 
the  Christian  evidence  in  those  days  was  limited  to  the  Bible.  If  the  Jews 
interpreted  everything  out  of,  and,  if  need  be,  even  into  the  Bible,  the  early 
Christians  had  to  use  the  same  weapons.  Instead  of  calling  this  passage 
erroneous  I  consider  it  with  Cornelius-a-Lapide  (Comment,  in  Habac.  Ill) 
prophetic.  For  though  these  words  did  not  come  from  a  man  who  lived  six 
centuries  before  the  supposed  event,  but  possibly  from  a  man  who  lived  a 
century  after  it,  they  were  nonetheless  inspired — inspired  by  the  loftiest  and 
noblest  motives. 

Father  Heuser  is  anxious  to  assure  us  at  the  close  of  his  communication 
to  The  Open  Court  that  the  medieval  mystery  playwright  was  familiar  with  the 
corresponding  passage  in  the  Vulgate,  a  point  which  I  have  not  touched  at  all 
in  my  paper.  Many  critics  of  medieval  literature  deny  Biblical  knowledge  to 
the  clerical  dramatists  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  prophetical  quotations  in  the 
medieval  mystery  plays  are  so  deficient  and  incorrect,  as  I  have  shown  in  my 
little  work  on  the  prophet-scenes  in  the  medieval  religious  plays  of  Germany 
(Cf.  Die  Prophet enspriiche  tind  -citate  im  religiosen  Drama  des  deutschen 
Mittelalters,  Leipsic  and  Dresden,  1913,  pp.  20-21  and  App.)  that  I  feel  justi- 
fied in  my  statement  {Modern  Language  Notes,  April,  1914)  that  the  Bible 
was  for  the  medieval  playwright  a  terra  incognita.  For  a  further  defense  of 
my  standpoint  and  a  repudiation  of  the  charge  of  mal  connaitre  I'esprit  du 
moyen  age  I  refer  my  critic  to  my  review  of  Duriez's  works  in  one  of  the 
approaching  numbers  of  Modern  Language  Notes. 

Maximilian  Josef  Rudwin. 

Purdue  University. 


NOTES. 

The  University  of  Pennsylvania  has  published,  in  connection  with  the 
Babylonian  Section  of  its  Museum,  a  volume  entitled  "Legal  and  Adminis- 
trative Documents  from  Nippur  Chiefly  from  the  Dynasties  of  Isin  and 
Larsa,"  embodying  the  results  of  research  work  done  by  Dr.  Edward  Chiera, 
Harrison  Research  Fellow  in  Semitics  in  the  University  of  Pennsylvania, 
on  materials  obtained  in  Nippur  by  four  expeditions  conducted  by  that  in- 
stitution. The  book  contains  110  pages  devoted  chiefly  to  transliterations, 
translations  and  annotations  of  specimen  texts,  lists  of  date-formulae  of  the 
Isin  and  Larsa  dynasties,  and  a  list  of  personal  names.  Following  the  read- 
ing matter  and  occupying  one-half  of  the  volume  are  a  large  number  of 
plates,  chiefly  autograph  copies  of  the  tablets  in  question.  /i 


SP 


B.  C.  vs.  A.  D. 


METHCSAIiEH  lived  nine  hundred  and  sixtr-nine  years  and  vrote  all  his  letter*  as 
his  fathers  did.  Why  shouldn't  he?  He  had  plenty  oC  time.  With  him  it  wasn't  a 
case  of  savinectime  but  of  killing  time.  But  we  don't  live  so  lone  nowadays  and  most 
of  Q8  have  gotten  over  the  Methusaloh  idea  in  the  last  thirty  years.  We  have  found  that 
the  time  saved  and  the  labor  saved  by  the  writing  machine  is  worth  saving  by  every- 
one who  haswritine  todo.  Typewriting  is  two  or  three  times  faster  than  pen  writing,  it  is 
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Beasons  a-plenty  for  buying  a  typewriter,  don't  you  think  T 
.'    •  .  The  tyi>ewriter  for  whieh  VOU 


and  most  people  have  been  waiting  is  the  new 


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'o:wai'yeTu:dme"t*h"|5'w,\  [Incorporat.dl 

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writer. 

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[Incorporated! 

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