THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
AGENTS IN AME1UCA
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
THE
ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
AND
OTHEE ADDKESSES AND ESSAYS
KARL PEARSON, F.R.S.
FORMERLY FELLOW OF KING S COLLEGE. CAMBRIDGE ; PROFESSOR OF APPLIED
MATHEMATICS AND MECHANICS, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON
Freiheit, aber vereint mit der Freiheit immer den edleu
Ernst nnd die Streuge des Lebens, die heilige Sitte
HAMERLING
SECOND EDITION (REVISED)
LONDON
ADAM AND CHAELES BLACK
1901
TO THE
of 1Rin0 s
AS
A SLIGHT TOKEN OF GRATITUDE
FOR SEVERAL SUNNY YEARS
OF COLLEGE LIFE
AND SOME INVALUABLE FRIENDSHIPS
And what wealth then shall be left us when none shall gather gold
To buy his friend in the market, and pinch and pine the sold ?
Nay. what save the lovely city, and the little house on the hill,
And the wastes and the woodland beauty, and the happy fields we till.
And the homes of ancient stories, and the tombs of the mighty dead ;
And the wise men seeking out marvels, and the poet s teeming head ;
And the painter s hand of wonder ; and the marvellous fiddle-bow,
And the banded choirs of music : all those that do and know.
For all these shall be ours and all men s, nor shall any lack a share
Of the toil and the gain of living in the days Avhen the world grows fair.
WILLIAM MORRIS.
PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
I HAVE allowed the original preface to this work, as well as
one or two essays, to be again reprinted with but slight revision,
not because they express exactly what I think to-day, but
because read together they may explain to some readers the
circumstances, partly historical and partly personal, under
which these lectures and essays \vere written. During the years
1880 and 1881 comparatively few lectures on Socialism were
to be heard at working men s clubs, and I well remember
what curious questions would then be put as to the teaching
of Lassalle and Marx. The last twenty years have changed
this entirely one of the chief features being the excellent
educational work of the Fabian Society. Twenty years ago
the discussion of sex-problems was equally unusual. Now a
considerable literature on the subject has sprung into exist
ence. Occasionally we come across a morbid outgrowth, but
on the whole what has been written is thoughtful, whole
some, and sane in its conclusions.
The fourteen years which have elapsed since the first
edition of this work may be looked upon by the social
reformer as years of steady, if somewhat slow, progress. The
problems of labour and of sex are now recognised as the
problems of our generation, and the discussion of them, so
recently held in bad repute, appears likely to be soon a mark
of fashion.
x THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
new width to the faith of his childhood. Starting then from
the axiom, that the Christian " verities " are quite outside the
field of profitable discussion, the first five papers of this volume
endeavour to formulate the opinions which a rational being
of to-day may hold with regard to the physical and intellec
tual worlds. They advocate with what measure of success I
must leave the reader to judge n rational enthusiasm and a
rational basis of morals. They insist on the almost sacred
nature of doubt, and at the same time emphasise scientific and
historical study as the sole path to knowledge, the only safe
guide to right action. The Freethinker s position differs to
some extent from that of the Agnostic. While the latter
asserts that some questions lie beyond man s power of solution,
the former contents himself with the statement that on these
points he does not know at present, but that, looking to the
past, he can set no limit to the knowledge of the future. He
has faith in the steady investigation of successive generations
solving most problems, and meanwhile he will allow no myth
to screen his ignorance. The Freethinker is not an Atheist,
but he vigorously denies the possibility of any god hitherto put
forward, because the idea of one and all of them by contradict
ing some law of thought involves an absurdity. He further
considers that in the present state of our knowledge and of our
mental development, the attempt to create self-consistent gods
is doomed to failure. It is mere waste of intellectual energy.
The second or historical group of papers regards one or
two phases of past thought and life from the Freethinker s
standpoint. The selection was here somewhat more difficult,
as I had more material to choose from. The first two papers
are related fairly closely to points treated in the first section.
The last three deal with a period in which the forces tending
to revolutionise society were in many respects akin to those
we find in action at the present time. The man of the study,
the demagogue, the Utopian, and the fanatic were all busily
PEEFACE TO THE FIKST EDITION xi
at work in early sixteenth-century Germany, and to mark the
success and failure of their respective efforts ought not to be
without interest for us to-day.
The last section of this book is the one which is most
likely to meet with severe criticism and disapproval. It
deals with great race problems, which, in my opinion, are
becoming daily more and more urgent. The decline of our
foreign trade must inevitably force upon us economic questions
which reach to the very roots of our present family and
social life. It is the very closeness of these matters to our
personal conduct and to our home privacy which renders it
necessary and yet immensely difficult to speak plainly. For
another generation Society may hold up its hands in
astonishment at any free discussion of matters which are
becoming more and more pressing with the great mass of
our toiling population ; deprecation may be possible, I re
peat, for another generation, but in two if respectability is
still sitting on the safety-valve well, then it is likely to
learn too late that prejudice and false modesty will never
suffice to check great folk-movements, nor satisfy pressing folk-
needs. There are powerful forces at work likely to revolutionise
social ideas and shake social stability. It is the duty of those,
who have the leisure to investigate, to show how by gradual
and continuous changes we can restrain these forces within
safe channels, so that society shall emerge strong and
efficient again from the difficulties of our nineteenth-century
Renascence and Keformation. This possibility will depend to
a great extent, I believe, on the Humanists of to-day keeping
touch with the feelings and needs of the mass of their fellow-
countrymen, otherwise our society is likely to be shipwrecked
by a democracy trusting for its spiritual guidance to the
Salvation Army, and for its economic theories to the Social-
Democratic Federation. One word more : the last papers of
this section are essentially tentative ; they endeavour to point
xii THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
out problems rather than offer final solutions. Their purpose
will be fulfilled if they induce some few earnest men and
women to investigate and discuss ; to prepare the path for
the social reformer and the statesman of the future.
KAEL PEARSON.
SAIG, September 18S7.
CONTENTS
I. FEEETHOUGHT
1. THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT . . 1
2. MATTER AND SOUL ... 21
3. THE PROSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 45
4. THE ETHIC OF RENUNCIATION . . 66
5. THE ENTHUSIASM OF THE MARKET-PLACE AND OF THE STUDY 103
II. HISTOEY
6. MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA . 125
7. MEISTER ECKEHART THE MYSTIC . .143
8. HUMANISM IN GERMANY . .161
NOTE ON JACOB WIMPFELING . . . . .185
\ 9. THE INFLUENCE OF MARTIN LUTHER ON THE SOCIAL AND
INTELLECTUAL WELFARE OF GERMANY . . 193
10. THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER . . 246
III. SOCIOLOGY
11. THE MORAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM . .301
12. SOCIALISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE .... 330
13. THE WOMAN S QUESTION . ... . 354
14. SKETCH OF THE EELATIONS OF SEX IN GERMANY . . 379
15. SOCIALISM AND SEX . 411
FREETHOUGHT
The order of Mind is one with the order of Matter ; hence that Mind
alone is free which finds itself in Nature, and Nature in itself.
THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 1
The truth, is that Nature is due to the statuting of Mind. Hegel.
IT is not without considerable hesitation that I venture to
address you to-night. There are periods of a man s life
when it is better for him to be silent to listen rather
than to preach. The world at the present time is very full
of prophets ; they crowd the market-places, they set their
stools at every possible corner, and perched thereon, they
cry out the merits of their several wares to as large a
crowd of folk as their enthusiasm can attract, or their
tongues reach. Philosophers, scientists, orthodox Christians,
freethinkers wise men, fools, and fanatics are all shouting
on the market-places, teaching, creating, and destroying,
perhaps working, through their very antagonism to some
greater truth of whose existence they, one and all, are alike
unconscious. Amidst such a hubbub and clatter of truth
and of falsehood, of dogma and of doubt what right has
any chance individual to set up his stool and teach his
doctrine ? Were it not far better for him, in the language
of Uncle Remus, to " lie low " ? Or if he do chance to
mount, that a kindly friend 2 should pull his stool from
under him ?
I feel that no man has a right to address his fellows on
1 This lecture was delivered at South Place Institute on March 6, 1883, and
was afterwards printed as a pamphlet.
2 [Accomplished in the discussion which followed the lecture by G.B.S., then
perhaps as unknown to fame as he was to the lecturer.]
2 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
one of what Carlyle would have termed the Infinities or
Eternities unless he feels some special call to the task
unless he is deeply conscious of some truth which he must
communicate to others, some falsehood which he must sweep
away. The power of speech is scarcely to he exercised in
private without wholesome fear ; in public it becomes a most
sacred trust which ought to be used by few of us, and then
only on the rarest occasions.
Hence my hesitation in addressing you this evening. I
have no new truth to propound, no old falsehood to sweep
away ; much of what / can tell you, you have all probably
heard before in a truer and clearer note from those who rank
as the leaders of our modern thought. I come here to learn
rather than to teach, and my excuse for being here at all
is the discussion which usually follows these papers. I am
egotistical enough to hope that that discussion will be rather
a sifting of your views than a criticism of mine that it
should take rather the form of debate than of mere question
and answer. With this end in view I shall endeavour to
avoid all controversy. I do not understand by a discussion
on Freethought an attack on orthodox Christianity ; the
emancipated intelligence of our age ought to have advanced
in the consciousness of its own strength far beyond such
attacks ; its mission is to educate rather than to denounce to
create rather than to destroy. I shall assume, therefore,
that the majority of my audience are freethinkers ; that they
do not accept Christianity as a divine or miraculous re
velation ; and I would ask all, who holding other views
may chance to be here to-night, to try and accept for the
time our standpoint in order to grasp how the world looks
to us from it. For only by such sympathy can they dis
cover the ultimate truth or falsehood of our respective creeds ;
only such sympathy distinguishes the thinker from the
bigot.
In order to explain the somewhat criticised title of my
lecture I am going to ask you to accept for the present my
definitions of Eeligion, Freethought, and Dogmatism. I do
not ask you to accept these definitions as binding, but only
THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 3
to adopt them for the purpose of following my reasoning. I
shall begin with an axiom which is, I fear, a dogmatic pro
ceeding yet I think the majority of you will be inclined to
accept it. My axiom runs as follows : " The whole is not
identical with a part." This axiom leads us at once to a
problem : What relation has the part to the whole ? Ap
plying this to a particular case, we state : The individual is
not identical with the universe ; and we ask : What relation
has the individual to the universe ? Now I shall not
venture to assert that there is any aim or end in the universe
whatever ; all I would ask you to grant me is that its con
figuration alters, whether that alteration be the result of
mere chance, or of a law inherent in matter, or of a cogitative
superior being, is for my present purpose indifferent. I simply
assert that the universe alters, is becoming ; what it is
becoming I will not venture to say. Next I will ask you
to grant that the individual too is altering, is not only a
being, but also a becoming. These alterations, what
ever their nature, be it physical or spiritual (if there be in
deed any distinction) I shall merely for convenience term
life. We may then state our problem as follows : What
relation has the life of the individual to the life of the
universe ? Now without committing ourselves to any definite
dogma I think we may recognise the enormous disparity of
those two expressions, the life of the individual and the life
of the universe. The former is absolutely subordinate, utterly
infinitesimal compared with the latter. The becoming
of the latter bears 110 apparent relation to the becoming
of the former. In other words, the life of the universe does
not appear to possess the slightest ratio to the life of the in
dividual. The one seems finite, limited, temporal, the other
by comparison infinite, boundless, eternal. This disparity
has forced itself upon the attention of man ever since his
first childlike attempts at thought. The Eternal Why
then began to haunt his mind. Why, eternally why am I
here ? he asked. What relation do I, a part, bear to the
whole, to the sum of all things material and spiritual ? What
connection has the finite with the infinite ? the temporal
4 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
with the eternal ? Primitive man endeavoured to answer
. this question off-hand. He found a power within himself
capable apparently of reviewing the whole ; he rushed to
the satisfactory conclusion that that power must be itself
infinite ; that he, man, was not altogether finite, and so
he developed a doctrine of the soul and its immortality.
Then grew up myths, superstitions, primitive religions,
dogmas, whereby the infinite was made subject to the finite
floating on this huge bladder of man s supposed immor
tality. The universe is given a purpose, and that purpose
is man, the whole is made subordinate to the part.
That is the first solution of the problem, the keystone of
most concrete religions. I do not intend to discuss the
validity of this solution. I have advanced so far merely
i to arrive at a definition, and that is the following : Religion
\is the relation of the finite to the infinite. Note that I say
religion is the relation. You will mark at once that if there
be only one relation, there can be only one religion. Any
given concrete system of religion is only so far true as it
actually explains the relation of the finite to the infinite.
In so far as it builds up an imaginary relation between
finite and infinite it is false. Hence, since no existing
religion lays out before us fully the relation of finite and
infinite, all systems of religion are of necessity but half
truths. I say half truths, not whole falsehoods, for many
religions may have made some, if small, advance towards
the solution of the problem.
The great danger of most existing systems lies in this :
that not content witli our real knowledge of the relation
of the finite to the infinite, they slur over our vast ignorance
by the help of the imagination. Myth supplies the place of
true knowledge where we are ignorant of the connection
between finite and infinite. Hence we may say that most
concrete systems of religion present us with a certain small
amount of knowledge but a great deal of myth. Now our
knowledge of the relation of finite to infinite, small as it
may be, is still continually increasing ; science and philo
sophy are continually presenting us with broader views of
THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 5
the relation of man to Nature and of individual thought to
abstract thought. It follows at once therefore that, since
our knowledge of the relation between the finite and the in
finite, that is, our acquaintance with the one true religion, is
by however small degrees ever increasing, so in every con
crete religion the knowledge element ought to increase and
the myth element to decrease, or, as we may express it, every
concrete religion ought to be in a state of development.
Is this a fact ? To a certain small extent it is. Christianity,
for example, to-day is a very different matter to what it was
eighteen hundred years ago. But small as our increase in
knowledge may be, concrete systems of religion have not
kept pace with it. They persist in explaining by myth,
portions of the relation of the finite to the infinite, con
cerning which we have true knowledge. Hence we see the
danger, if not the absolute evil, of any myth at all. An
imaginary explanation of the relation of finite to infinite too
often impedes the spread of the true explanation when man has
found it. This gives rise to the so-called contests of religion
and science or of religion and philosophy those unintelligible
conflicts of faith and ( reason which can only arise in the
minds of persons who cannot perceive clearly the distinction
between myth and knowledge. The holding of a myth ex
planation of any problem whereon mankind has attained, or
may hereafter attain, true knowledge is what I term enslaved
thought or dogmatism. Owing to the slow rate of development
of most concrete religions, they are all more or less dogmatic.
The rejection of all myth explanation, the frank acceptance of
all ascertained truths with regard to the relation of the finite to
the infinite, is what I term freetliouglit or true religious
knowledge. In other words, the freethinker, in my sense of
the term, possesses more real religion, knows more of the
relation of the finite to the infinite than any believer in myth ;
his very knowledge makes him in the highest sense of the
words a religious man.
I hope you will note at once the extreme difficulty accord
ing to this definition of obtaining freedom of thought. Free-
thought is rather an ideal than an actuality ; it is, also, a
6 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
progressive ideal, one advancing with every advance of posi
tive knowledge. The freethinker is not one who thinks
things as he will, but one who thinks them as they must be.
To become a freethinker it is not sufficient to throw off all
forms of dogmatism, still less to attack them with coarse
satire ; this is but negative action. The true freethinker
must be in the possession of the highest knowledge of his
day ; he must stand on the slope of his century and mark
what the past has achieved, what the present is achieving;
still better if he himself is working for the increase of human
knowledge or for its spread among his fellows such a man
may truly be termed a high priest of freethought. You will
see at once what a positive, creative task the freethinker has
before him. To reject Christianity, or to scoff at all concrete
religion, by no means constitutes freethought, nay, is too
often sheer dogmatism. The true freethinker must not only
be aware of the points wherein he has truth, but must recog
nise the points wherein he is still ignorant. Like the true
man of science, he must never be ashamed to say : Here I am
ignorant, this I cannot explain. Such a confession draws the
attention of thinkers, and causes research to be made at the
dark points in our knowledge ; it is not a confession of weak
ness, but really a sign of strength. To slur over such points
with an assumed knowledge is the dogmatism of philosophy
or the dogmatism of science, or rather of false philosophy and
false science just as dangerous as the dogmatism of a concrete
religion. Were I to tell you that certain forces were inherent
in matter, that these forces sufficed to explain the union of
atoms into molecules, the formation out of molecules of
chemical compounds, that certain chemical compounds were
identical with protoplasm, and hence build up life from a
primitive cell even to man, 1 were I to tell you all this and
not put down my finger every now and then and say : This is
an assumption, here we are really ignorant ; this is possible,
but as yet we have on this point no exact knowledge ; were I
to do this I should be no true naturalist ; it would be the
1 A well-known Secularist had made statements to this effect from the
same platform a few weeks previously.
THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 7
dogmatism of false science, of false freethought, every bit
as dangerous as that religious dogmatism which would explain
all things by the existence of a personal god or of a triune
deity. Hence, materialism in so far as by dogmatism it slurs
over scientific ignorance ; atheism in so far as it is merely
negative ; positivism while it declares the relation of the
finite to the infinite to be beyond solution ; and pessimism
which also treating the problem as beyond solution, replaces
belief by no system of enthusiastic human morality these
one and all are not identical with freethought.
True freethought never slurs over ignorance by dogmatism;
it is not only destructive but creative ; it believes the problem
of life to be in gradual process of solution ; it is not the
apotheosis of ignorance, but rather that of knowledge. Thus
I cannot help thinking that no true man of science is ever a
materialist,, a positivist, or a pessimist. If he be the first, he
must be a dogmatist ; if he be either of the latter, he must hold
his task impossible or useless. I do not by this identify free-
thought with science. Far from it ! Freethought, as we have
seen, is knowledge of the relation of the finite to the infinite,
and science, in so far as it explains the position of the indi
vidual with regard to the whole, is a very important element,
but not the totality of such knowledge.
I trust you will pardon the length at which I have dis
cussed Religion, Frectl Bought, and Dogmatism. I want to
succeed in conveying to you what I understand by these terms.
Religion I have defined as the relation of the finite to the
infinite ; Freethought as our necessarily partial knowledge of
this one true religion ; and Dogmatism as that mental habit
which replaces the known by the mythical, or at least supple
ments the known by products of the imagination, a habit in
every way impeding the growth of freethought.
You will say at once that it is an extremely difficult, if not
impossible, task to be a freethinker. I cannot deny it. It is
extremely difficult to approach closely any religious ideal.
How many perfect Christians have there been in the last
nineteen hundred years ? Answer that, and judge how many
perfect freethinkers fall to the lot of a century ! No more
8 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
than baptism really makes a man a Christian, will shaking off
dogmatism make a man a freethinker. It is the result of
long thought, of patient study, the labour of a life, it is the
single-eyed devotion to truth, even though its acquirement
may destroy a previously cherished conviction. There must
be no interested motive, no working to support a party, an
individual, or a theory ; such action but leads to the distortion
of knowledge, and those who do not seek truth from an
unbiassed standpoint are, from the freethinker s standpoint,
ministers in the devil s synagogue. The attainment of perfect
freethought may be impossible, for all mortals are subject to
prejudice, and are more or less dogmatic, yet the approach
towards this ideal is open to all of us. In this sense our
greatest poets, philosophers, and naturalists, men such as
Goethe, Spinoza, and Darwin, have all been freethinkers ; they
strove, regardless of dogmatic belief, and armed with the
highest knowledge arid thought of their time, to cast light on
the one great problem of life. We, who painfully struggle in
their footsteps, can well look to them as to the high priests of
our religion.
Having noted what I consider the essence of freethought,
and suggested the difficulty of its attainment, I wish, before
passing to what I may term its mission, to make a remark
on my definition of religion. Some of you may feel inclined
to ask : " If you assert the existence of religion, surely you
must believe in the existence of a God, and probably of the
so-called immortality of the soul ? " Now I must request
you to notice that I have made no assertion whatever on these
points. By denning religion as the relation of the finite
to the infinite, I have not asserted the existence of a deity.
In fact, while that definition makes religion a necessary and
logical category, it only gives God a contingent existence. My
meaning will be perhaps better explained by reference to a
concrete religion, which places entirely on one side the exist
ence of God and the hope of immortality. I refer to
Buddhism, and take the following sentences from Ehys Davids
lectures :
" Try to get as near to wisdom and goodness as you can
THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 9
in this life. Trouble not yourself about the gods. Disturb
yourself not by curiosities or desires about any future ex
istence. Seek only after the fruit of the noble path of self-
culture and self-control."
The discussion of the future of the soul is called the
"walking in delusion," the "jungle," the "puppet-show," and
the " wilderness." " Of sentient beings," we are told, " nothing
will survive save the result of their actions ; and he who
believes, who hopes in anything else, will be blinded, hindered,
hampered in his religious growth by the most fatal of delusions."
Such notions render Buddhism perhaps the most valuable
study among concrete religious systems to the modern free
thinker.
I can now proceed to consider what seems to me the
mission of the freethought I have just denned. In the
beginning of my lecture I endeavoured to point out how the
disparity between the finite and the infinite, between the
individual and the universe, forces itself upon the attention
of man. Struggle against it as he may, the Eternal Why
still haunts his mind. If he sees no answer to this question,
or rather if he discovers no method by which he may attempt
its solution, he is not seldom driven to despair, to pessimism,
to absolute spiritual misery. \ Note, too, that this spiritual
misery is something quite distinct from that physical misery,
that want of bread and butter, which, though little regarded,
is yearly crying out louder and louder in this London of
ours ; though distinct, it is none the less real. The relief of
physical misery is a question of morality, of the relation of
man to man, an urgent question just now, pressing for
immediate attention, yet beyond the limits of our present
discourse. The relief of spiritual misery, also very prevalent
nowadays, owing to the rapid collapse of so many concrete
religious systems, that is the mission of freethought. I
do not think I am assuming anything very extravagant in
asserting that it is the duty of humanity to lessen in every
possible way the misery of humanity ; it is really only a truer
expression of the basis of utilitarian morality. Hence the
mission of freethought to relieve spiritual misery is the con-
10 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
necting link between freethought as concrete religion and free-
thought as morality. Let us examine a little more closely
the meaning of this mission.
The individual freethinker, except in very rare cases,
can advance but little our partial knowledge of the relation
between the finite and the infinite. He must content him
self with assimilating so far as in him lies the already ascer
tained truth. Now, although this portion of truth be but an
infinitesimal part of the truth yet undiscovered, nevertheless
the amount of truth added to our stock in any generation is
in itself insignificant compared with what we have received
from the past. In other words, the greater portion of our
knowledge is handed down to us from the past, it is our
heritage the birthright of each one of us as men. Every
freethinker, then, owes an intense debt of <>Tatitude to the
* * o
past ; he is necessarily full of reverence for the men who
have preceded him ; their struggles, their failures, and their
successes, taken as a whole, have given him the great mass of
his knowledge. Hence it is that he feels sympathy even
with the very failures, the false steps of the men of the past.
He never forgets what he owes to every stage of past mental
development. He can with no greater reason jeer at or abuse
such a stage than he can jeer at or abuse his ancestors or the
anthropoidal apes. ; Even when he finds his neighbour still
halting in such a past stage of mental development, he has
no right to abuse, he can only endeavour to educate. The
freethinker must treat the past with the deepest sympathy
and reverence. Herein lies, I think, a crucial test of much
that calls itself freethought. A tendency to mock stages of
past development, to jeer at neighbours still in the bondage
of dogmatic faith, lias cast an odium over the name free
thinker which it will be difficult to shake off. To mock and
to jeer can never be the true mission of freethought.
Let us now suppose our ideal freethinker has educated
himself. By this I mean that he has assimilated the results
of the highest scientific and philosophical knowledge of his
day. It is not impossible that even then you may turn
round upon me and say he has not yet solved the problem of
THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT 11
life. I admit it. Still in so far as he is in possession of
some real knowledge, that is, of some truth, he has made a
beginning of his solution. For this very word truth itself
denotes some fixed and clear relation between things, and
therefore a connection between the finite and the infinite. But
not only has he made a beginning of his solution ; he has
started himself also in the right direction, wherein he must
continue to labour, if he would help to solve life s problem.
No myth, no dogmatism can then lead him astray. The
freethinker of to-day has this advantage over the believer of
the past, that where he is ignorant, he confesses it, and this
in itself increases the rate at which the problem of life is
being worked out. At every step there will not be the ever
renascent myth to be swept away ; at every turn our own
dogmatism w r ill not act as a drag upon our progress.
Hence it seems to me that the true freethinker can relieve
a vast amount of spiritual misery ; he can point out how
much of the problem, albeit little, has been solved ; he can
point out the direction in which further solution is to be
sought. Tims we may determine his mission the spread
of actually acquired truth the destruction of dogmatism
beneath the irresistible logic of fact. It is an educational, a
creative, and not merely a destructive mission. Do not think
this mission a light one ; it is simply appalling how the mass
of truth already acquired has remained in a few minds ; it
is not spread broadcast among the people. I do not speak so
much of the working - classes, who, so far as the present serf
dom of labour allows, are beginning to inquire and to think
for themselves, but rather of those wiio are curiously termed
the educated. Take the average clergyman of whatever
denomination, the church or chapel-going lawyer, merchant,
or tradesman, and as a rule you will find absolute ignorance
of the real bearings of modern philosophy and of modern
science on social conduct. Here freethought has an endless
task of education. A remedy seems scarcely possible till
science and philosophy are made essential parts of the cur
riculum of all our schools and universities.
The mission of freethought, however, lies not only in the
12 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
propagation of existing, but in the discovery of new truth.
Here we find its noblest function, its deepest meaning. This
pursuit of knowledge is the true worship of man the union
between finite and infinite, the highest pleasure of which the
human mind is capable. It is hard for us to appreciate the
intense delight which must follow upon the discovery of some
great truth. Kepler, after years of observation, deducing the
laws which govern the planetary system ; Newton, after long
puzzling, hitting upon the principle of gravitation ; or Sir
W. R. Hamilton, as the conclusion of complicated analysis,
finding the existence of conical refraction and verifying the
wave theory of light in all these and many other cases the
conviction of truth must have brought unbounded pleasure.
Even as Spinoza has said, " He who has a true idea is aware
at the same time that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt
of the thing." So with truth comes conviction and the
consequent pleasure. Yet this is no self-complacency, but an
enthusiastic desire to convey the newly -acquired truth to
others, the intense wish to spread the new knowledge, to
scatter its light into dark corners, to sweep away error and
with it all the cobwebs of myth and ignorance. Hence it is
that those from whom freethought has received the greatest
services have been, as a rule, either philosophers or scientists,
for such men have done most to extend the limits of existing
knowledge ; it is to them that freethought must look for its
leaders and teachers. Here note, too, a very remarkable
difference between freethought and the older concrete re
ligions ; the priest of freethought must be fully acquainted
with the most advanced knowledge of his day ; it will no
longer be possible to send the duffer of the family to make a
living out of religion ; only the thinker can appeal to the
reason of men, although the semi -educated has too often
served to influence their undisciplined emotion.
But I have wandered somewhat from my point, that
portion of the mission of freethought which relates to the
discovery of new truth. It is in this aspect that the essen
tially religious character of freethought appears. It is not a
stagnant religious system with a crystallised and unchangeable
THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 13
creed, forced to reject all new truth which is not in keeping
with its dogma, but one which actually demands new truth,
the sole end of which is the growth and spread of human
knowledge, and which must perforce adopt every great dis
covery as essentially a portion of itself. From this pursuit of
religious truth ought to arise the enthusiasm of freethought ;
from this source it ought to find a continuous supply of fuel
which no dogmatic faith can draw upon. If freethought
once grasped this aspect of its mission, I cannot help thinking
the consequent enthusiasm would soon carry it as the domi
nant religious system through all grades of society. So long
as freethought is merely the cynical antagonism of individuals
towards dogma, so long as it is merely negative and destruc
tive, it will never become a great living force. To do so, it
must become strong in the conviction of its own absolute
lightness, creative, sympathetic with the past, assured of the
future, above all enthusiastic. No world -movement ever
spread without enthusiasm. In the words of the greatest of
recent German poets
Wisset, ini Schwarmgeist brauset das Wehen des ewigeii Geistes !
Was da Grosses gesclieh n, das Thaten auf Erden die Scliwarmer !
It is no insignificant future which I would paint for this new
religious movement, yet it is perhaps the only one which has a
future ; all others are of the past. It will have to shake
itself free of many faults, of many debasing influences, to take
a broader and truer view of its mission and of itself. Yet
the day I believe will come when its evangelists will spread
through the country, be heard in every house, and be seen on
every street preaching and teaching the only faith which is
consonant with the reason, with the dignity of man. Not by
myth, not by guesses of the imagination is the problem of life
to be solved ; but by earnest application, by downright hard
work of the brain, spread over the lifetime of many men
nay, of many centuries of men, extending even to the lifetime
of the world ; for the solution of the problem is identical with
the mental development of humanity, and none can say where
that shall end. Such then seems to me the mission of free-
14 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
thought, and the freethinker who is conscious of this mission
may say proudly in the words of the prophet of Galilee, " I
came not to destroy but to fulfil."
There still remains a point in which, perhaps, above all
others, my ethic of freethought may seem to you vague and
unmeaning. I refer to the nature of that truth, that know
ledge of the relation between the finite and infinite, which it
is the principal duty of freethought to seek after.
If we could assert that all things are chaos, that there is
no invariable relation between one finite thing and another
finite thing ; that precisely the same set of circumstances
leads to-day to a different effect from what it did yesterday ;
that the lives of worlds and of nations, phases of being and of
civilisation, are ever passing without ordered beginning or end
into nothingness ; that on all sides mighty upheavals and vast
revolutions are for ever starting, for ever ceasing without co
ordination and as the mocking play work of chaos, were this
the case, all hope of connecting the finite and the infinite
would be impossible. Not only the recorded experience of our
own and every past age tells us that this is not the case, but
I venture to assert that it is absolutely impossible it should
be the case ; and for the very simple reason that no man can
conceive it. The very existence of such chaos would render
all thought impossible, conception itself must cease in such
a world. Once obtain a clear conception of any finite thing,
say water, and another clear conception of any other finite
thing, say wine : then if one day these conceptions may be
different and the next day the same it is obvious that all
clear thinking will be at an end, and if this confusion reigns
between all finite things, it will be impossible for man to form
any conceptions at all, impossible for him to think. 1
The very fact that man does think seems to me sufficient
to show that there is a definite relation, a fixed order between
one finite thing and another. This definite relation, this
finite order is what we term Law, and hence follows that
1 [This dependence of thought, the power of drawing conceptions, upon per
sistence in the sequence of our sensations, I have emphasised and more fully
developed in my Grammar of Science, 2nd edit., 1899.]
THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT 15
axiom without which it is impossible for any knowledge, any
thought, to exist, namely : " The same set of causes always
produces precisely the same effect." That is the very essence
of the creed of freethought, and the rule by which every man
practically guides his conduct. What is the nature of this
Law, this ordered outcome of cause in effect ? Obviously/ik is
not a finite changeable thing, it is absolute, infinite, inde
pendent of all conceptions of time or change, or particular
groups of finite things. Hence it is what we have been seek
ing as the relation between finite and infinite. It is that
which binds together the individual and the universe, giving
him a necessary place in its life. / Law makes his becoming ;
a necessary part of the becoming of the universe ; neither
could exist without the other. Knowledge, therefore, of the
relation of the finite to the infinite is a knowledge of law.
Keligion according to the definition I have given you to-night
is law, 1 and the mission of freethought is to spread acquired
knowledge and gain new knowledge of this law."
Let me strive to explain my meaning more clearly by an
example. Supposing you were to grant me the truth of the
principles of gravitation and the conservation of energy as
applied to the planetary system. Then I should be able to
tell you, almost to the fraction of a second, the exact rate of
motion and the position at a given time of each and all the
planetary bodies. Nay, I might go further, and describe the
becoming of each individual planet, its loss of external
motion, motion of translation and rotation ; then, too, its loss
of internal motion, motion of vibration, or heat, etc. All this
would follow necessarily from the principles you had granted
me, and the complicated work of mathematical analysis would
be verified by observation. Now note, every step of that
mathematical analysis follows a definite law of thought, one
step does not follow another chaotically, but of absolute logical
1 A fact dimly grasped by the Jews, and even suggested by the Latin
Teligio.
2 [I should now-a-days place the necessity of causation in the first place in the
thinker, neither in phenomena nor ill things-in-themselves. The possibility of
a conceptual model being devised to fit perceptual experience I should now
attribute to the correlated growths of the perceptual and rational faculties. ]
16 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
necessity. T can think the succession in one way only, and
that one way is what ? Why, the very method in which the
phenomena appear to me to be occurring in so-called Nature !
This enables me to draw your attention to another phase
of law, namely, the only possible way in which we can think
things seems to be identical with the actual way in which
they appear to us to occur. When the thought-relation does
not agree with the fact-relation the incongruity is always the
result either of unclear thinking, or of unclear facts false
thought or false perception of facts. Let me explain more
closely my meaning. When we say that two and two make
four, we recognise at once a principle which, if contradicted,
would render all thinking impossible. Now it is precisely a
like aspect of the so-called laws of nature which I wish to
bring into prominence. Take, for example, Kepler s laws of
planetary motion ; these he discovered by the tedious com
parison of long series of observations. At first sight they
appear as merely laws inherent in the planetary system
empirical laws which regulate that particular portion of the
material universe. But mark what happens : Newton invents
the law of gravitation ; then thought can only conceive the
planets as moving in the manner prescribed by Kepler s laws.
In other words, the planets move in the only way thought can
conceive them as moving. Kepler s laws cease to be empirical,
they become as necessary as a law of thought. The law of
gravitation being granted, the mind must consider the planets
to move precisely as they do, even as it must consider that
two and two make four. You may perhaps object : " But at
least the law of gravitation is an empirical law, a mere de
scription of a blind force inherent in matter ; it might have
varied as the inverse cube or any other power, just as well as
the inverse square." Not at all ! It is not my object to
explain to you to-night how near physicists seem to be to a
conceptual proof of the necessity of the law of gravitation,
what wondrous conceptions the very existence of an universal
fluid medium forces upon them. But as a hypothetical case I
may mention that, if we were to conceive matter as ultimately
consisting of spherical atoms capable of surface pulsations,
THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 17
and there is much to confirm such a supposition then, owing
to their mere existence in the fluid medium, thought would be
compelled to conceive them as acting upon each other in a
certain definite manner, and as a result of analysis this manner
turns out to be something very akin to the so-called law of
gravitation. Thus gravitation itself, granted the atom and
the medium, would become as necessary mentally as that two
and two make four ! We should have another link in the
thought-chain, another stage in that statuting of mind, which
is the source of sequence in Nature.
At present our positive knowledge is far too small to
allow us to piece together the whole universe in this fashion.
) Many of our so-called laws are merely empirical laws, the
result of observation ; but the progress of knowledge seems to
me to point to a far-distant time when all the finite things of
the universe shall be shown to be united by law, and that law
itself to be the only possible law which thought can conceive.
Suppose the highly developed reason of some future man to
start, say, with clear conceptions of the lifeless chaotic mass of
60,000,000 years ago, which now forms our planetary system,
then from those conceptions alone he will be able to think out
a 60,000,000 years history of the world, with every finite
phase which it would pass through ; each would have its
necessary place, its necessary course in this thought system.
And what of the total history he would have thought out ?
It would be identical with the actual history of the world ;
for that history has evolved in the one sole way conceivable.
The universe is what it is, because that is the only conceivable
fashion in which it could be, in which it could be thought.
Every finite thing in tit is what it is, because that is the only
possible way in which it could be. It is absurd to ask why
things are not other than they are, because were our ideas
sufficiently clear, we should see that they exist in the only
way in which they are thinkable. ./ Equally absurd is it to
ask why any finite thing or any finite individual exists the
existence is a logical necessity a necessary step or element in the
complete thought-analysis of the universe, and without that step
our thought-analysis, the universe itself, could have no existence.
18 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
There is another standpoint from which we may view this
relation of law to the individual thinker. There has long been
apparent antagonism between two schools of philosophical
thinkers the Materialists and the Idealists. The latter in
their latest development have made the individual I the only
objective entity in existence. The I knows nought but its
own sensations, whence it forms the subjective notions which
we may term the idea of the I and the idea of the universe.
The relation of these two ideas is, as in all systems of philo
sophy, the great problem. But in this idealism the idea of
the I and the idea of the universe are, as it were, absolutely
under the thumb of the individual I it is objective, they
are subjective ; it proudly dictates the laws, which they must
obey. It is the pure thought -law of the I which deter
mines the relation between the idea of the I and the idea
of the universe. On the other hand, the materialist finds in
nature certain unchangeable laws, which he supposes in some
manner inherent in his uudefinable reality, matter ; these laws
do not appear in any way the outcome of the individual I,
but something outside it, with regard to which the I is
subjective, which, regardless of the thought of the I/
dictates its relation to the universe. Is the antagonism
between these two methods of considering the I and the
universe so great as it at first sight appears ? Or rather, is
not the distinction an idle one of the schools ? Let us return
to our idealist. Having made his thought the proud ruler of
the relation between the idea of the I and the idea of the
universe, he is compelled, in order to grasp his own position
and regulate his own conduct in life, to place himself his I
in the subjective attitude of the idea of the I ; to identify
himself with the idea of the I. This act is the abnegation
of his objectivity, he becomes subjective, and the objective
entity which rules his relation to the universe is an abstract
I/ pure thought it is this which determines the connection
between the I and all other finite things, between finite
and infinite. In other words, idealism forces upon us the
conception that the law which binds the finite to the infinite
is a pure law of thought, that the only existing objectivity is
THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT 19
the logic of pure thought. But this is precisely the result
to which materialism, as based on physical science, seems to
point, namely, that all so-called material or natural laws will
ultimately be found to be the only laws thought can conceive ;
that so-called natural laws are but steps in the logic of pure
thought. Thus, with the growth of scientific knowledge, all
distinction between Idealism and Materialism seems destined
to vanish.
Keligion, then, or the relation of the finite to the infinite,
must be looked upon as essentially law ; not the mindless law
of matter, but the law of thought, even akin to : " Nothing-
can both be and not be." We have to look upon the universe
as one vast intellectual process, every fact corresponds to a
conception, and every succession of facts to an inevitable
sequence of conceptions ; as thought progresses in logical order
of intellect only, so only does fact. The law of the one is
identical with the law of the other. ! To assert, therefore, that
a law of the universe may be interfered with or altered, is to
assert that it is possible to conceive a thing otherwise than in
the only conceivable way. Hence arises the indifference of
the true freethinker to the question of the existence or non-
existence of a personal God. Such a being can stand in no
relation whatever of active interference to the law of the
universe ; in other words, so far as man is concerned, his
existence cannot be a matter of the least importance. ; To
repeat Buddha s words, " Trouble yourselves not about the
gods ! " If, like the frogs or the Jews, who would have a
king, you insist upon having a God, then call the universe,
with its vast system of unchangeable law, God even as
Spinoza. You will not be likely to fall into much error con
cerning his nature.
Lastly, let me draw your attention to another point which
has especial value for the religion of freethought. We have
seen how the disparity between finite and- infinite tends to
depress man to the lowest depth of spiritual misery, such a
depth as you will find portrayed in James Thomson s City of
Dreadful Night. This misery is too often the result of the
first necessary step towards freedom of thought, namely, the
20 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
complete rejection of all forms of dogmatic faith. It can only
be dispelled by a recognition of the true meaning of the
problem of life, the relation of the finite to the infinite. But
in the very nature of this problem, as I have endeavoured to
express it to-night, lies a strange inexpressible pleasure ; it is
the apparently finite mind of man which itself rules the
infinite ; it is human thought which dictates the laws of the
universe ; only what man can think, can possibly be. 1 The
very immensities which appal him, are they not in a sense his
own creations ? Nay, paradoxical as it may seem, there is
much truth in the assertion, that : It is the mind of man which
rules the universe. Freethought in making the freethinker
master of his own reason renders him lord of the world. / That
seems to me the endless joy of the freethinker s faith. It is
a real and a living faith, which creative, sympathetic, and
above all, enthusiastic, is destined to be the creed of the
future. 2
Do you smile at the notion of freethought linked to
enthusiasm ? Remember the lines of the poet :
Enthusiasts tliey will call us aye, enthusiasts even we must be :
Has not long enough ruled the empty word and the letter ?
Stand, oh, mankind, on thine own feet at last, thou overgrown child !
And canst thou not stand not even yet must thou still fall to the
ground
Without crutches, then fall to the ground, for thou art not worthy to
stand !
(Hcunerling.)
1 It does not, of course, follow that everything that is, has yet been thought.
We have as yet got only a very small way in the intellectual analysis of Nature.
But this little encourages the belief that the remainder is also capable of
intellectual analysis.
2 While still heartily assenting to what may be termed the ethical portion
of this lecture, I should now state somewhat differently the relations between
natural law and thought not so much changing the conclusions as the phrase
ology. My more fully developed views are expressed in The Grammar of
Science, 2nd edit, 1899.
II
MATTEE AND SOUL 1
On earth there s nothing great but man, in man there s nothing great
but mind. Sir William Hamilton.
I DO not think I shall be making a great assumption if I
suppose the majority of my audience to have read or at least to
have heard about Mr. Gladstone s recent article in the Nineteenth
Century. It is not my intention to criticise that defence of
what our late Prime Minister terms the " majestic process "
of creation described in the first chapter of Genesis. The
writer exhibits throughout such a hopeless ignorance of the
real aims and methods of modern science, that even the
humblest of her servants may be excused for treating his
article not as a matter for criticism, but as an interesting-
psychological study. It unveils for us the picture of a mind
which is not uncommon at the present time. A mind,
whose emotional needs require it to imagine behind natural
phenomena a will and an intellect similar in kind, if differing
in degree, from the human will and the human intellect ;
which places behind nature an anthropopathetic, if not an
anthropomorphic deity. On the other hand, this mind finds
in what science has to say of the growth of the universe only
a mechanical process. It is longing for the intellectual/
it finds the ( mechanical. From this feeling arises the revolt
against modern scientific thought. Such a mind refuses to
1 This lecture was delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society at St.
George s Hall, December 6, 1885. It was afterwards published by the Society
as a pamphlet.
22 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
allow that the universe is nought but bits of matter attracting
and repelling each other/ and we have the remarkable spectacle
of a person, to whom at least our nineteenth century know
ledge and culture is not a forbidden field, preferring the
" majestic process " of the Mosaic account of creation to all
that truth which the world s great thinkers have been slowly ^
discovering from the age of Galilei to that of Darwin. Ke-
markable indeed is the spectacle of a mind which finds it
almost a catastrophe that the myth of a semi-barbaric people
should be replaced by the knowledge gained by centuries of
patient research !
- 1 venture to think that this confusion of ideas, which is
of undoubted psychological interest,! is really due first to the
want of a clear conception as to what meanings must be
attached to the words intellectual and mechanical/ and
secondly to a very slight acquaintance with the actual concepts
of modern science, i If for a moment I were to use the word
mechanical in what appears to be Mr. Gladstone s sense, as
something opposed to spiritual, I should be compelled to de
scribe the " majestic process " of the Mosaic creation as
mechanical, while [the theories of modern science as to the
development of nature, so far from being mechanical would
appear to me spiritual, 4 They would for the first time raise
the universe to an intelligible entity. From them I should
for the first time be led to suspect that intellectual sequence
and natural law do not differ toto cvdo ; that thought and the
sequence of physical phenomena cannot in any way be scientifi
cally opposed ; that so far from stuff and soul, matter and mind,
having in reality utterly different attributes, the little we have
yet learnt of them points rather to similarity than difference.
What if it be the function of modern science to show that the
old distinction of the schools between idealism and materialism
is merely historical and not logical ? , What, if after analysing
the concepts of matter peculiar to modern science, we find that
the only thing with which we are acquainted that at all
resembles it, is mind ? Surely this will be rendering the
world intelligible rather than mechanical (-using the latter
word not in the scientific, but in Mr. Gladstone s sense. To
MATTEK AND SOUL 23
show that possibly idealism and materialism are not opposite
mental poles, that possibly matter and spirit are not utterly
distinct entities, will be the endeavour of my present lecture.
Its thesis, then, is : That science, so far from having in the
popular sense materialised the world, has idealised it ; for the
first time rendered it possible for us to regard the universe as
something intelligible rather than material.
Let us begin our investigations by striving to ascertain
what science i has got to tell us of matter. But first I must
warn you that science, like theology, has had an historical
past. She has retained some prejudices, even some dogmas, from
the past, and is only to-day throwing off these old confused
ideas, and distinguishing what she really knows from plausible
theory, and plausible theory from gratuitous assumption.
There is no fundamental conception of science about which
more gratuitous assumptions have been made than matter, and
curiously enough matter is a thing which physical science
could afford to entirely neglect. It does require a physical
concept called mass, but it has been a misfortune of the
historical evolution of science that mass has been connected
with matter. This connection was ratified by Newton in his
famous definition of mass as the quantity of matter in a body.
As every physicist knows what mass is, and no physicist can
offer anything but plausible theories as to what matter may
be, the magnitude of the misfortune must be obvious to all.
If I may be allowed to express my own opinion, I should say
that matter was a popular superstition which had forced itself
upon physical science, much as the popular, or at least
theological superstition of soul has forced itself upon mental
science. In order to explain to you more clearly what I
mean, let me endeavour to analyse the popular superstition
with regard to matter.
To the ordinary mind matter is something everywhere
tangible, something hard, impenetrable, that which exerts force.
The ordinary mind cannot exactly define, but it is quite sure
that it understands matter it is a fact of everyday experience.
This deliciously naive conception has reacted upon science, and
more than one recent writer describes matter as " one of the
24 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
inevitable primary conceptions of the mind." If all the
primary conceptions of the mind were so confused as this one
of matter, I venture to think the mind would make very little
progress indeed ; science would be mere dogma, based upon
confused ideas. If we question what is meant by the terms
hard and impenetrable, we are thrown back on the conception
of pressure, or of resistance to motion ; we are thus finally
driven to the last refuge of the materialists force. Matter is
that which exerts force ; matter and force are two entities
always occurring together, by means of which we can explain
the whole working of the universe. I In order, therefore,
that we may approach matter, we must understand force.
Let us see if we can understand force, or if it can in any way
help us in our difficulties. If any of my audience were to ask
the first person they meet after leaving this lecture hall, wliy
the earth describes an orbit about the sun, I have little doubt
that the answer would be : Because of the law of gravitation.
Being further questioned as to what the law of gravitation
might be, the answer would not improbably consist in the
statement that a force varying inversely as the square of the
distance, and directly as the product of the masses, acts between
the sun and the earth. Now I boldly assert that Newton has
not told us why the earth describes an orbit about the sun any
more than Kepler did. The man who can tell us why the
earth describes an orbit about the sun will be even a greater
philosopher than Newton. I should be loth to say the problem
is insoluble, but it is very far from being solved at present.
Kepler described how the earth moved round the sun, and that
is precisely what Newton did too, only with far greater clear
ness and generality. The law of gravitation is a description and
not an explanation of a certain motion. The motion of the
earth, said Newton, is such that its change can be described in
such and such a fashion. But why does its motion change in
this fashion ? Newton did not answer that question. Nobody
has yet answered it ; f and he who fully answers it will have
probably discovered the relation between matter and mind.
Force is not then a real cause of change in motion, it is merely
a description of change in motion. Force is a how and not a
MATTER AND SOUL 25
why. It is a description of how bodies change their motion,
and how they change their motion we can only discover by
observation. Force is, then, not a physical entity, but a state
ment of experimental fact. Could anything be more com
pletely absurd that the definition : " Matter is that which
exerts a statement of experimental fact " ?
But force being the how of a motion may naturally
suggest that matter is that which moves. This is a suggestion
well worth considering, although it has brought us very far
from the popular conception of a hard, impenetrable, force-
exerting entity. There can, in fact, be little doubt that all
the sensations which a thing, a so-called external body, pro
duces in us its visible form, its smell, its taste, its touch are
attributed by the physicist to various phases of motion which
he supposes to exist in it. Once put an end to those motions,
and we should have no sensations, the thing for us would cease
to exist. It is no dogma, but downright common sense to
assert that if everything in the universe were brought to rest,
the universe would cease to be perceptible, or for all human
purposes we may say it would cease to be. The sensible
existence of matter is entirely dependent on the existence of
motion. Force having failed us, let us now see if we can
approach matter better through motion. I do not think it is
necessary for me to explain to you what we understand by
position and shape, these are things of which the mind can
form very clear ideas ; it can also form clear conceptions of
change of position and change of shape ; but such changes are
what we term motion. Motion is something, then, which is
intelligible to all of us, although all of us may not be able to
measure it with scientific accuracy. Can we now state any
great law of motion which, without requiring us to dogmatise
as to matter, will help us on our way ? I think we can.
Suppose we take two bodies and let them in any way influence
each other, what do we observe ? Why, that they change
each other s motions. This is the great fact of all physical
experience : Bodies are able to change each other s motions.
So sure is this fact, that we might even make a general
statement /and say that everything in the universe is to a
26 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
greater or less extent changing the motion of every other
thing. Why is everything in the universe changing the
motion of every other thing in the universe ? The scientist
does not know, and he says so ; the metaphysician does not
know, but he does not say so. How is everything in the
universe changing the motion of every other thing ? The
scientist knows in a great many cases, and he says so ; it
is, in fact, the whole object of the physical sciences to describe
this how. The metaphysician does not know, but he generally
asserts he does, and for this reason he is worth reading like
Mr. Gladstone, as a psychological study.
Physicists, solely by the processes of experiment and reason
ing upon experiment, have discovered certain rules by which
bodies change each other s motion. These rules are merely
empirical rules, but they have so invariably given true results,
that no sane person would hesitate to accept them. One of
the most remarkable and valuable of these rules is the follow
ing : If any two bodies change each other s motion, then the
ratio of the rates of change in their motion is a number,
which remains the same for the same two bodies however
they may influence each other ; that is to say, whether one
is placed upon the other, or they are tied together by a string,
or charged with electricity, or whatever the relation may be.
This rule is the great law of motion that we have been seek
ing for, and is the basis of most physical science. There are
many rules subsidiary to this which have been discovered by
experiment connecting the numbers which represent the ratios
of rates of change for different bodies, but upon these I shall
not now enter. It will suffice here to add that physicists
give a name to these numbers ; they term the inverse of such
number the ratio of the masses of the two particular bodies with
which the number is associated. The point to which I wish
particularly to draw your attention is this, that the only thing
a scientist knows of mass is that it is a ratio of changes of
motion. This is perfectly intelligible ; motion is a clear idea,
rate of change of motion is a clear idea, and a number repre
senting what multiple one rate of change of motion is of
another is also a perfectly clear conception. We can all
MATTEE AND SOUL 27
understand motion, we can all understand mass or this ratio
of the rates of change of motion. But upon motion and
mass the whole theory of modern physics depends. You will
see at once, if this be true, that such obscure ideas as force
and matter are quite unnecessary to modern physics, and you
may be pretty certain that, if any one describes the universe
to you as consisting of portions of matter exerting force upon
each other, and supposes therewith that he has given an ex
planation, he is still labouring with confused ideas ; he is
still under the influence of the old superstitions, the old con
ceptions of matter and force. Of matter we know nothing,
and such knowledge is not necessary for physical science ; of
force we can say that it never tells us wliy anything happens,
but is only the description of a certain kind of motion dis
covered by experiment or observation. !
Science has indeed reduced the universe, not to those un
intelligible concepts matter and force, but to the very intellig
ible concept motion ; for, all we can understand at present or
require to understand of mass, is its measurement by motion.
Newton s assertion that mass is the quantity of matter in a
body is gratuitous. It endeavours to explain something of
which we can form a clear idea by something of which we
know absolutely nothing. How then did it arise ? Merely
from a singular result of experiment being linked with the
old superstition of an impenetrable something matter fill
ing space. The singular result of experiment is this : that
the numbers we have called the masses of bodies are found
for bodies of the same material to be proportional to their
sizes. Hence, mass for such bodies being proportional to
size, it was taken to be a measure of the stuff which was
supposed to fill size. By bodies of the same material, I
only mean bodies, every element of which produces in us the
same characteristic sensations, whether chemical or physical.
So long as we consider the universe made up of things moving,
and altering each other s motion, we are on safe ground. But
you will ask : Why not call the things which move matter ?
Is it not a mere quibble as to terms ? I have no objection to
calling the moving things matter, but we must ever bear in
28 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
mind that the moving things may be the last things in the
world which accord with the popular conception of matter,
they may even be its negation. What if the ultimate atom
upon which we build up the apparently substantial realities
of the external world be an absolute vacuum ? or, what if
matter be only non-matter in motion ? I do not say that the
moving thing is of this kind, because nobody as yet knows
what it really is, but let us endeavour to imagine something
of the kind. It will help us if we examine one or two atomic
hypotheses. Descartes, great geometrician as he was, held
extension not impenetrability the essence of matter. " Give
me extension and motion, and I will construct the world," he
cried. There is much to be said for this view of the moving
thing ; that all matter is shape, and not shape necessarily
filled with something, approaches very near some of our
modern hypotheses. " Give me motion, and space capable
of changing its shape, and I will explain the universe to you,"
is far more rational and much less mere boast than Kant s
" Give me matter and I will create the world." For, matter
being granted, not much universe is left to be explained.
But there have been hypotheses of matter hypotheses
which have played no inconsiderable part in scientific theory
which denied it even extension. We may especially note
that of Eoscovitch. For him the ultimate elements of matter
were mathematical points, that is, points without extension ;
these points he endowed with attractive and repulsive forces.
Kemembering that all we can understand of force is a de
scription of motion, we must consider the universe of Bosco-
vitch as made up of points which move in certain fashions.
Boscovitch s matter a point without extension would thus
only be distinguished from non-matter by the fact of its
motion, or we might well describe it as non-matter in motion.
A more probable and more recent hypothesis is the vortex-
atom theory of Sir William Thomson. 1 There are very strong
reasons for believing that all the intervals and spaces between
what we term matter are filled up by something, which, while
it does not perceptibly resist the motion of matter, is yet itself
1 [Now Lord Kelvin.]
MATTEE AND SOUL 29
capable of motion. The existence of this medium, capable of
conveying motion, is specially suggested, almost proven, by
certain phenomena of light. Now this medium, or ether as it
is termed, is quite intangible, it does not seem to influence the
motion of what is generally termed matter, and we are com
pelled to treat it either as non-matter or else as a second and
totally different kind of matter. This dualism bears in itself
something unscientific, and the brilliant idea occurred to Sir
William Thomson that matter might only be a particular
phase of motion in the ether. The form of motion suggested
by him was the vortex ring ; the atom was a vortex ring of
ether moving in the ether, somewhat as a smoker might blow
a smoke-ring into an atmosphere of smoke. The reason the
vortex ring was chosen was because it has been shown that in
a certain kind of fluid such a motion once started is, like
the atom, indestructible. Sir William Thomson thus ; treated
what we popularly term matter as ether in motion. Could we
once stop this motion, the universe would be reduced to that
apparent void which separates our planet from the sun. In
popular language this is again very like asserting that matter
is non-matter in motion. Unfortunately Sir William Thom
son s ether vortex rings do not appear to move in exactly the
same fashion as that in which we require our atoms to move.
The whole theory is still, however, sub judice.
Immaterial as the ether seems to be, we might even sug
gest the possibility that an atom is a small portion of space
in which there is no ether, or in other words void of anything,
even the immaterial ether. A theory which supposes the
boundaries of these voids to be endowed with a certain
amount of energy will indeed account for some of the pheno
mena of gravitation and cohesion. I only refer to this theory
as showing how delusive may be the common conceptions of
matter ; what we term the atom, the ultimate basis of matter,
may be the negation of all that is currently termed material,
it may be a void capable of motion.
Finally, let me mention a hypothesis suggested, but never
worked out, by the late Professor Clifford. Suppose I were to
take a flexible tube of very fine bore ; if I held it out straight
30 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
it might be possible for me to drop a thin straight piece of
wire right through it. On the other hand, if I were to make
a bend in it, the wire would not go through unless it pushed
the bend before it. Now let us suppose the bit of wire
replaced by a worm, or some being which can only conceive
motion forwards, not sideways. If the worm were in the
straight tube it could move ahead, and as it never had moved
sideways it might seem to itself to have perfect freedom of
motion there would be no obstacle in its space. Now let us
suppose a wrinkle or bend in the straight tube ; then if the
worm itself were perfectly flexible, it could go forwards and
find no obstacle in its space, notwithstanding the wrinkle.
But, alas ! for the worm if it were like the bit of wire, in
capable of bending ; when it came to the wrinkle, the
tube, its space, would appear perfectly open before it, but it
would find itself incapable of advancing further. The worm
must either push the bend before it, or else regard it as some
thing impenetrable, as something which, however intangible,
still opposed its motion. The worm would look upon the
bend very much as we look upon matter. Yet the bend is
really geometrical, not material ; it is a change in the shape
of space. Such an example may faintly suggest to your minds
how Clifford looked upon matter ; matter was something in
motion, but that something was purely geometrical, it was
change in the shape of our space. You will note that in this
hypothesis space itself takes the place of the ether filling
space ; instead of a vortex ring in the ether, we shall have a
particular bend, possibly a geometrical twist-ring in space as
an element of matter. Matter would not necessarily cease to
be, because motion ceased, but would at once cease if space
became even, if all the bends, wrinkles, and twists were
smoothed out of it. Matter would only differ from non-
matter in its shape.
Without laying stress upon any of the theories of matter
which I have briefly described to you, I would yet draw your
attention to a common feature of them all. They one and all
endeavour to reduce that obscure idea, matter, to something of
which we have a clearer conception, to our ideas of motion or
MATTEE AND SOUL 31
to our ideas of shape. 1 . Matter is non-matter in motion, or
matter is non-matter shaped. The ultimate element of matter
is something beyond the reach of experiment ; it is obvious
that these theories of matter are really only attempts to
describe our sensations by reducing them to motion and ex
tension, categories of which we can form clear conceptions.
The sensible universe is for us built up of extension and
motion ; observation of the manner in which bodies influence
each other s motion enables us to lay down laws of motion
by which we render intelligible many physical phenomena.
Theories of matter are but attempts to render intelligible the
various kinds of motion which bodies produce in each other,
to explain the why of motion. No theory of matter can be
considered as a satisfactory, or at least as a final solution,
which only reduces matter of one kind to matter of another.
Thus, if the vortex-atom theory of Sir William Thomson be
true, we are only thrown back on the question : What is the
ether that it acts like a perfect fluid ? Or in other words,
what is it that causes the parts of the ether to exert pressure
on each other, or to change each other s motion ? We are
again thrown back on the why of a particular kind of motion.
The fact that it is impossible to explain matter by matter, to
deduce the laws which govern motion from bodies which them
selves obey the laws of motion, has not always been clearly
recognised. It is no real explanation of gravitation and
cohesion, if I deduce them from the motion of the parts of
an ether, which again requires me to explain why its parts
mutually act upon each other. I may invent another ether
for this purpose, but where is the series to stop ? ( To explain
matter on mechanical principles seems to me a hopeless task,
since our next step would be to deduce those mechanical
principles from the characteristics of our matter. The laws
of motion must flow from the nature of matter, and cannot
themselves explain matter. Hence if we explain our atom by
the laws of motion we may have gone back a useful and a
necessary stage, but we can be quite sure that the atom we are
considering is not the ultimate element of matter. !
The problem of matter may be insoluble, but at least it
32 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
cannot be solved on mechanical principles. If the laws of
motion are ever to be raised from the empirical to the
intelligible, we must find the source of mechanism behind
matter. As to what the nature of that source may be, science
is at present agnostic ; the source may be of the nature of
mind, or it may be of a nature at present inconceivable to
us ; it cannot, however, be material, nor can it be mechanical,
for that would be merely explaining matter by matter,
mechanism by mechanism.
Now although science must as yet remain purely agnostic
with regard to this problem, it is still of value to keep in
view every possibility as to the nature of matter. We find,
although we are in no way able to account for it, that two
bodies in each other s presence influence each other s motion.
We have often been able to state the how, but never as yet
the why. Is there any other phenomenon of which we are
conscious that at all resembles this apparently spontaneous
change of motion ? There is one which bears considerable
resemblance to it. I raise my hand, the change of motion
appears to you spontaneous ; the how of it might be explained
by a series of nerve-excitements and muscular motions, but
the why of it, the ultimate cause, you might possibly attribute
to something you termed my will. The will is something
which at least appears capable of changing motion. But
something moving is capable of changing the motion of some
thing else. It is not a far step to suggest from analogy that
the something moving, namely matter, may be will. This
step was taken by Schopenhauer, who asserted that the basis
of the*. universe, the reality popularly termed matter, is will.
I must confess that I cannot fully understand the arguments
by which Schopenhauer arrived at this conclusion. It seems
to me as pure a bit of dogmatism as Boscovitch s mathematical
point. Still, dogma as it is, there is nothing absolutely absurd
in such a hypothesis ; it at least does not attempt to explain
matter through matter. As a mere suggestion it will serve
to remind us of the possible nature of this unknown, if not
unknowable, entity matter.
We are now in a better position to form general con-
MATTEE AND SOUL 33
elusions as to the part matter plays in the scientific conception
of the universe.
1. The - scientific view of the physical universe is based
upon motion and mass, the latter being merely a ratio of rates
of change of motion, hence we may say it is based simply on
motion. The rational theory of the physical universe deduced
from this view depends upon certain experimental laws of
motion. Once grant these laws, and science is capable of
rendering intelligible the most complex physical phenomena.
2. With regard to the nature of matter science is at
present entirely agnostic. It recognises, however, that if the
nature of matter could be discovered, the laws of motion l
would cease to be merely empirical and become rational.
We may, I think, add to these statements the following :
3. It does not seem possible to explain matter on
mechanical principles, because to do so is merely to throw
back a gross matter on a possibly less gross matter, and is in
reality no explanation.
4. But, while science is entirely agnostic with regard to
matter, it is right for us to bear in mind the various attempts
which have been made to render matter intelligible ; notably,
Clifford s, which attempts to explain matter not on mechanical
but on geometrical principles which would deduce mechanism
from geometry ; and Schopenhauer s, which attempts to explain
matter by the analogy of will.
Science is not indeed called upon at present to declare for
Clifford, Schopenhauer, or any other matter theorist ; yet it is
as well to remember that their theories open the door to the
possibilities of an infinite beyond. Were Clifford s theory
true, we must assert the existence of a space of four dimensions,
for otherwise we could not conceive a bend in our own space
we throw back the problem of matter upon a universe outside
our own of which we can know nothing we can only assert
its existence. Were Schopenhauer s theory true, we should be
1 The terra "laws of motion " in this lecture is used in a wider sense than
that of dynamical text-books. It includes the hows of the fundamental motions,
or what are usually termed the laws of gravitating, cohesive, magnetic, and
other forces.
34 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
thrown back on the psychological problem of will, and might
possibly have to assert universal consciousness. Luckily,
science is not called upon at present to take any such leap
into obscurity ; it contents itself with recognising this vast
unknown as a problem of the future, and steadily refuses to
accept any solution, whether based upon a mechanical, a meta
physical, or a theological dogma.
If I have in any way placed before you the true scientific
view of the universe, I think you will agree with me that the
popular conception of matter, as a hard, dead something, is
merely a superstition. The very essence of matter is motion,
and motion of such a kind that although we can describe
how it takes place, we in no single case have yet discovered
why. We do not say that the motion induced by tw T o
particles of the ether in each other is really, but at least
it appears spontaneous. We do not say, when we see a
man raising his arm, that the motion is really, but at least
it appears spontaneous, the outcome of what we term his
will. We are accustomed to associate apparently spontaneous
motion with life. Is there not, then, something extremely
absurd in terming matter dead ?
Let us take the most primitive organism possible, a simple
organic cell what do we find in it at first sight ? A com
bination of apparently spontaneous motions ; we believe
those motions are possibly not spontaneous, but we can only
say that we are unable at present to explain them. Let us
take the ultimate form of matter if gross matter is going
to be explained by the ether, then a particle of the ether
what do we find ? Why, that this particle has motion, and
is capable in some way of influencing the motion of other
particles. Where is it possible to draw the line between the
ultimate germ of life and the ultimate element of matter ?
Some of you may feel inclined to answer : But the ultimate
germ of life can reproduce itself. What does this exactly
mean ? It means that, if placed under favourable conditions,
it can collect other particles of matter and endow them with
movements similar to its own. But is there in this any
thing more wonderful, more peculiarly a sign of life, than
MATTEE AND SOUL 35
there is in atoms collecting to form molecules, in molecules
collecting to form chemical compounds, and in chemical com
pounds massing to form nebulas and eventually new planets ?
Why is one a more material process than the other ?
All life is matter, say some. This statement may mean
anything or nothing, according as to the dogma held with
regard to matter. But I venture to assert that the converse
means just as much, or just as little : All matter is life, is not
a whit more absurd or dogmatic than : All life is matter. Our
ultimate element of matter has certain motions and capacities
for influencing motion, which we have not explained, so has
our ultimate germ of life. What then ? Shall we explain
life by mechanism ? Certainly, if we find that dogma satis
factory, but remember that we have still to explain in what
mechanism consists. On the other hand, why not explain
mechanism by life ? Certainly, if we find that dogma more
satisfactory than the first, but remember that no one has yet
discovered what life is !
, But I fancy one of you objecting : This may be very true,
but it neglects the fundamental distinction between matter
and life, namely the phenomenon of consciousness. Very good,
my dear sir, let us endeavour to analyse this phenomenon
of consciousness, and see whether denying consciousness to
matter may not be just as dogmatic as asserting that matter
possesses it. Now let me ask you a question : Do you think
I am a conscious being, and if so, why ? The only answer you
can give to that question will be agnostic. You really do not
know whether I am conscious or not. Each individual ego can
assert of itself that it is conscious, but to assert that that
group of sensations which you term me is conscious, is an
assumption, however reasonable it may appear. For you, sir, I
and the rest of the external world are automata, pure bits of
mechanism ; it may be practically advisable for you to endow
us with consciousness, but how can you prove it ? You will
reply : I see spontaneous actions on your part, similar to those
I can produce myself. I am compelled by analogy to endow
you with will and consciousness. Good ! you argue by analogy
that I have consciousness ; you will doubtless grant it to the
36 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
animal world ; now you cannot break the chain of analogy any
where till you have descended through the whole plant world
to the simple cell, there you find apparently spontaneous
motion and argue life consciousness. Now I carry your
argument a step further and tell you that I find in the ulti
mate atom of matter most complex phases of motion and
capacity for influencing the motion of others. All these things
are to me inexplicable. They appear spontaneous motion ;
ergo by analogy, dear sir, matter is conscious.
Now the only thing, which I am certain is conscious, is
my own individual ego ; I find nothing, however, more absurd
in the assertion that matter is conscious, than in the asser
tion that the simple cell is conscious, or working upwards
that you are conscious. They are all at present unproven
assertions. That matter is conscious is no more nonsense
than that life is mechanism ; possibly some day, as the human
intellect develops with the centuries, we may be able to show
that one or other of these statements is true, or more probably
that both are true.
Those of you who have followed what I have said as to
force and matter will recognise that to consider the universe
capable of explanation on the basis of matter and force is to
endeavour to explain it by obscure terms, and is therefore
utterly unscientific. To the man of science, force is the
description of h-ovj a motion changes, and tells him nothing
of the why. To the man of science, matter is something
which is behind mechanism ; if he knew its nature he could
explain why motions are changed, but he does not know. For
aught science can say, matter may be something as spiritual as
life, as mental as consciousness. How absurd, then, is the cry
of the theologian and the theologically minded, that modern
science would reduce the universe to a dead mechanism, to
little bits of matter exerting force on each other. Modern
science has been striving to render the universe intelligible, to
replace the dead mechanism of the old creation-tales by a
rational, an intelligible process of evolution. What, then, if
she at present halts at the empirical laws of motion ? Is she
not quite sure that if she can but discover the nature of matter,
MATTEE AND SOUL 37
mechanism will be an intelligible and rational result of that
nature ? I admit a certain danger here ; so long as there was
no physical science, theologian and metaphysician rushed in, and
explained by dogma and with obscure definition the whole
physical universe. If men of science once clearly assert that
they are at present quite ignorant as to the nature of matter,
that the one thing they are sure of is that it is not
mechanism, but explains mechanism, then will not the
retreating band of theologians and metaphysicians take
refuge in this unknown land, and offer great opposition to the
true discoverers, the true colonists of the unknown, when
they finally approach its shores ? Something of this kind is
very likely to happen, but I do not apprehend much danger.
So long as the human intellect is in its present state of
development there will be theologians, and metaphysicians
will come into being, and it is perhaps as well they should
have some out-of-the-way corner to spin their cobwebs in.
Matter is perhaps as good a spot for them as soul, and might
keep them well occupied for some time. Further, the possibility
of resistance in this sort of folk to the progress of knowledge
is now not very great ; its back has been broken in the
contest wherein scientific thought won for itself the physical
universe. The theologians of Galilei s era were all-powerful,
they could be aggressive and force him to recant ; the theo
logians of to-day in congress assembled mourn over the pro
gress of knowledge, but they cannot resist it. Let them make
what they will of matter ; science can only say : At present I
am ignorant, but I will not accept your dogma. If the day
comes, as I believe it will, when I shall know, then you and
your cobwebs will be promptly swept out. [ Not by inspira
tion, not by myth, is the problem of matter to be solved, but
by the patient investigation and thought of trained minds
spread over years, possibly over centuries./ What is im
possible to the human intellect of to-day, may be easy for the
human intellect of the future. Each problem solved, not
only marks a step in the sum of human knowledge, but in
general connotes a corresponding widening in the capacity
of the human mind. The greater the mass of knowledge
38 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
acquired, the more developed will be the faculty which has
been employed in acquiring such knowledge. We can look
fearlessly to the future, if we but fully cultivate and employ
our intellectual faculties in the present.
Let us now turn from matter to soul, and inquire how far
we can make any definite assertions with regard to soul. I have
used the word soul in my lecture, although mind would have
better suited my purpose, because had I spoken only of mind
you might have been led to imagine I admitted the existence
of a soul in the theological sense apart from mind. Now as
we are trying to discover facts and avoid imaginings, we must
dismiss from our thoughts at once all theological or meta
physical dogma with regard to the soul. It may be matter of
myth, or of revelation, or of belief in any form, that the soul is
immortal, but it is not a matter of science that is, of know
ledge ; on the whole it is a delusive, if not a dangerous hypo
thesis. Aristotle, in his great work on the soul, practically
identifies it with life (De Anima ii. 3). So also does his
disciple, the great Jewish philosopher, Maimonides, who even
grants a soul to the plant world (Eight Chapters. Chapter /.).
It remained for Christian theology with dogmatic purpose to
distinguish soul from life. Hegel has defined the soul as the
notion of life, and though we must accept the definition of a
metaphysician with great caution, yet I do not think we shall
go far wrong in following him, at least on this point. For, if
we begin to inquire what we mean by the notion of life, we
are inevitably thrown back on the phenomena of consciousness
and of will, in fact, upon those apparently spontaneous
motions, which we have before referred to. Wherever we find
the notion of life, there we postulate consciousness, or the possi
bility of consciousness, and, except in the case of our indi
vidual selves, we judge of consciousness only by apparently
spontaneous motions. r If we accept the soul as the notion of
life, we cannot deny soul to any living thing, it must exist in
the most primitive organism ; but,; as we have seen, it is mere
dogmatism which asserts that there is a qualitative difference
between the simplest cell and the ultimate vibrating atom.
We cannot say what is the ultimate element of matter ; it is
MATTER AND SOUL 39
equally idle to say, in the present state of our knowledge,
1 matter is conscious, or matter is unconscious. If this be
so, and the possibility of consciousness be our notion of life,
or of soul, then it is nonsense for any one at the present time
to assert either that soul is matter, or matter is soul. We
must on this point be absolutely agnostic, but we must at the
same time remember that all persons who draw a distinction
between soul and stuff, between matter and mind, are pure
dogmatists. There may be a distinction or there may not ;
we certainly cannot assert that there is. / So far, then, from
idealism and materialism being opposed methods of thought,
it is within the range of possibility that they represent an
idle distinction of the schools. To assert that mind is the
basis of the universe and to assert that matter is the basis of
the universe are not necessarily opposed propositions, because
for aught we can say to the contrary mind and matter may
be at the bottom one and the same thing, or at least be only
different manifestations of one and the same thing. To assert
that mind is matter, or that matter is mind, is purely
meaningless, so long as we remain in our present complete
ignorance of the nature of the ultimate element of either.
Both are dogmas which can only be confirmed or refuted by
the growth of positive knowledge.
If our consideration of matter and mind has been of any
value, it will have at least led us to admit the possibility of
the same element being at the basis alike of the physical and
of the mental universe. Let us inquire, in conclusion, whether
this possibility is in any way denied or confirmed by our
conceptions of physical and of mental law.
We may best reach our goal by a concrete example. The
old Greek astronomers, by observations as careful as the
means then possible allowed, discovered something of the
character of the motion of the sun, the earth, and the moon ;
this motion they represented with a certain degree of accuracy
by a complex system of circles, by eccentric and epicycle.
This was a result which satisfies the notion still widely
current that a physical law is a mere statement of physical
fact. Experiment and observation give us a class of facts
40 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
which we can embrace under one general statement. We
have before our experiment no reason for saying the statement
will be of one kind rather than another, and after our experi
ment the only reason for the statement is the sensible fact on
which we base it. Such a physical statement is termed an
empirical law, its discovery depends not on reason, but on
observation. Physical science abounds in such empirical laws,
and their existence has led certain confused thinkers to look
upon the physical universe asl a complex of empirical law, not
as an intelligible whole. ; At this point the mathematician
steps in and says there is something behind your empirical
laws, they are not independent statements, but flow rationally
one from the other. Tell me the laws of motion and I will
rationally deduce the physical universe ; the physical universe
no longer shall appear a complex of empirical law, you shall
see it as an intelligible whole, f If Newton s description of
the manner in which sun, earth, and moon fall towards each
other be the true one, then they must move in such and such
a fashion. The Greek eccentric and epicycle are no longer
empirical descriptions of motion, they have become intellectual
necessities, the logical outcome of Newton s description of
planetary motion. Grant for a moment that Newton s law of
gravitation is the whole truth, then I say earth, sun, and
moon must move in such and such a fashion. So great is our
confidence in the power of the reason, that when it leads us
to a result which has not been confirmed or discovered by
physical observation, we say : Look more carefully, get better
instruments, and you will find it must be so. There are
several instances of reason discovering before observation the
existence of a new physical phenomenon.
Now in this process of rendering the universe an in
telligible whole, a very important fact comes to light, to
which I wish to draw your special attention. Let us grant
for a moment that we have in Newton s law of gravitation
the whole truth as to the way earth, sun, and moon are
falling towards each other. We work out on our paper the
whole of their most complex motions, and we find that the
results agree completely with the physical phenomena. But
MATTEE AND SOUL 41
why should they? Why should the intellectual, rational
process on our paper coincide absolutely with the physical
process outside ? Why is it not possible for one empirical law
of the universe to be logically contrary to another ? , Starting
from one empirical law, why should we not by reasoning
thereon arrive at a result opposed to another ? But you will
answer : This is absurd, Nature cannot contradict herself. I
can only say my experience teaches me she never does con
tradict herself, but that does not explain why she never does.
When we say that Nature cannot contradict herself, we
are really only asserting that experience teaches us that
Nature never contradicts, not herself, but our logic. In
other words, the laws of the physical universe are logically
related to each other, flow rationally the one from the other.
This is really the greatest result of human experience, the
greatest triumph of the human mind. The laics of the
physical universe follow the logical processes of the human mind.
The intellect the human mind is the keynote to the
physical universe. To contrast a law of matter and a law of
mind is as dogmatic as to contrast matter and mind. It is
true that we are a long way yet from that glorious epoch
when empirical laws will be dismissed from science. Even if
we deduced all such laws from the simplest laws of motion,
we should have still to show how those laws of motion are a
rational result of the nature of matter ; we have still to dis
cover what matter is, before we render the whole physical
universe intelligible. But did we know the nature of matter,
there is little doubt that we could rationally create the whole
universe ; every step would be a logical, a mental process.
It is a strong argument for the possible identity of matter
and mind, if from one and from the other alike the whole
physical universe can be deduced. Externally, matter appears
as the basis of a world, every process of which is in logical
sequence ; internally, mind pictures a similar world following
exactly the same sequence. It is difficult to deny the possi
bility of both having their ultimate element of a like quality.
This identity of the physical and the rational processes is the
greatest truth mankind has learnt from experience. So great
42 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
is our confidence in this truth that we reject any statement
of a physical fact which opposes our clear reasoning. To state
that a physical fact is opposed to reason, is, nowadays, to
destroy the possibility of thought. We argue at once that
our senses have deceived us, that the fact is a delusion, a
misstatement of what took place. Any physical fact which is
opposed to a physical law is opposed to a mental law ; we
cannot think it, it is impossible.
That is all the man of science means when he says that for
a dead man to arise out of his tomb and talk is nonsense ; he
would have to cease thinking, were such things possible. My
law of thought is to me a greater truth, a greater necessity of
my being than the God of the theologian. If that God,
according to the theologian, does something which is contrary
to my law of thought, I can only say I rate my mind above
his God. i. I prefer to treat the world as an intelligible whole,
rather than to reduce it to what it seems to me the theologian
ought in his own language to term a blind mechanism.
To any one who tells me that he only means by God the
spiritual something which is at the basis of physical pheno
mena, I reply : Very good, your God then will never con
tradict my reason, and the best guide I can adopt in life is
my reason, which, when rightly applied, will never be at
variance with your God. Nay, I might even suggest a
further possibility. What we call the external, the pheno
menal world, is for us but a succession of sensations ; of
the ultimate cause of those sensations, if there be one, we
know nothing. All we can say is, that when we analyse
those sensations we find more than a barren succession, we
find a logical sequence. This logical sequence is for us the
external world as an intelligible whole. But what if it be
the mind itself which gives this logical sequence to our
sensations ? What if our sensating faculty must receive its
images in the logical order of mind ? We know too well that
when the mind fails the sensations no longer follow a logical
order. To the madman and the idiot there is no real
world, no intelligible universe as we know it. May it not be
the human mind itself which brings the intelligible into
MATTER AND SOUL 43
phenomena ? Then they who call the intelligible which they
find in the laws of the physical universe God will be but
deifying the human mind. It is but a possibility I have
hinted at, but one full of the richest suggestions for our life
and for our thought. The mind of man may be that which
creates for him the intelligible world ! ; At least it suggests a
worship and a religion which cannot lead us far away from
the truth.
If for a moment we choose to use the old theological terms,
hallowed as they are with all the feelings and emotions of the
past, how rich they appear once more with these new and
deeper meanings ! Symbols which may raise in the men of the
future an enthusiasm as great as the symbols of Christianity
have raised in the men of the past ! Eeligious devotion would
become the pursuit of knowledge, worship the contemplation of
what the human mind has achieved and is achieving ; the
saints and priests of this faith would be those who have worked
or are working for the discovery of truth. Theology, no longer
a dogma, would develop with the thought, with the intellect
of man. No room here for dissent, no room here for sect ;
not belief variable as the human emotions, but knowledge
single as the human reason would dictate our creed. Nothing
assuming, neither fearing to confess our ignorance, nor hesi
tating to proclaim our knowledge, surely we all might worship
in one church. Then, again, the Church might become
national ; nay, universal, for one Reason existeth in all men.
Cultivate only that one God we are certain of, the mind in
man ; and then surely we may look forward in the future to
a day when the churches shall be cleared of their cobwebs,
when loud-tongued ignorance shall no longer brazen it in their
pulpits, nor meaningless symbols be exposed upon their altars.
Then will come the day when we may blot out from their
portals : " He is dead and has arisen ; I believe because it is
impossible ; " and may inscribe thereon (as Sir William
Hamilton over his class-room) : " On earth there s nothing
great but man : in man there s nothing great but
mind " "I believe because I understand." Not to con
vert the world into a dead mechanism, but to give to
44 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
humanity in the future a religion worthy of its intel
lect, seems to me the mission which modern science has
before it.
NOTE TO PAGES 16 and 23. The old idea of matter affords an ex
cellent example of how it is impossible to think things other than they
really are without coming to an unthought, a self-contradictory concept.
Matter is that which exerts force and is characterised by extension.
Mass is the quantity of matter in a body. An Atom is the ultimate
indivisible element of Matter. But the physicist endows his atom with
mass ; hence the basis of material sensations itself possesses matter, i.e.,
is extended. "We thus find it impossible to conceive it as indivisible or
ultimate. Professor E. du Bois-Reymond, in his well-known lecture
(Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens, Leipzig, 1876, pp. 14, 15), finds
here an unloslicher Widerspruch, and despairing over this limit to our
understanding, cries : Ignorabimus ! But what can we expect but an
intellectual chaos, if we start from the hypothesis that : the material
world will be scientifically intelligible so soon as we have deduced it from
atomic motions caused by the mutual action of central atomic forces ?
[The writer, although he had at this date thrown off the materialism
embodied in a phenomenal matter and force, still with the majority of
physicists had failed to recognise the conceptual character of motion.
He had not realised all science as a description, and physical concepts as
symbols. He still looked upon them as images of phenomenal realities.]
Ill
THE PEOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 1
How fertile of resource is the theologic method, when it once has clay
for its wheel lCli/ord.
AN interesting psychological study might well be based on a
comparison of the mental characteristics of the present and the
late Presidents of the Eoyal Society. The former unrivalled
in his analysis of intricate physical problems, demands absolute
accuracy in mathematical reasoning, and is ever ready to
destroy the argument from analogy or the flimsy hypothesis
witness his earlier polemic against the pseudo-hydrodynamicists.
The latter has spent the greater part of his energies on the
investigation and elucidation of a branch of science which as
yet has hardly developed beyond the descriptive stage, Place
before these tw T o men a complex problem needing the most
cautious reasoning, the most careful balancing of all the
arguments that can be brought forward, and the most stringent
logic can there be a doubt that the mathematically trained
mind will see farther and more clearly than the mind of the
descriptive scientist ? The argument from analogy, while
shunned by the former, will seem natural to the latter, who has
been accustomed to qualitative rather than quantitative
distinctions. Yet how totally opposed to this plausible con
clusion is the actual state of the case ! How much more
than scientific training is evidently needed to give the mind
logical accuracy when dealing with intellectual problems ! It
is Professor Huxley, who, well versed in what the thinkers of
1 Written in 1887.
46 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
the past have contributed to human knowledge, shatters with
irresistible logic the obscure cosmical speculations of Ezra and
Mr. Gladstone. It is Professor Stokes, 1 who like a resuscitated
Paley, discovers in the human eye an evidence of design, and
startles the countrymen of Hume with a physico- theological
proof of the existence of the deity ! Poor Scotland ! What
with yearly Burnett Lectures and three Clifford iProfessors of
Natural Theology, her people will either be driven into blatant
atheism or have their mental calibre reduced to the level of a
Bridgewater treatise ! It is true Professor Drummond has
written a work wherein, by the light of analogy, dogma is seen
draped in the mantle of science a work, the sale of which by
the tens of thousands is, like the Society for Psychical Research,
gratifying evidence of an almost desperate craving for a last
stimulant to supersensuous belief. It is true the neo-Hegelians
of Glasgow can deduce the Trinity by an ontological process
almost as glibly as their brethren of Balliol ; yet it remained
for Professor Stokes to present Scotland with a new edition of
the rare old " argument from design." J We doubt whether
his fellow natural theologians will thank the Professor for the
gift, for they are already well on the road to the discovery
of a hitherto neglected category which shall supersede causa
tion at least for the physiologists. It is worth while,
however, to consider this gift a little more closely because it
is quite certain that if the natural theologian does not re
gard it with favour, the supernatural theologian, in other
words the workaday parson, will be only too glad (like the
mediaeval schoolman who cancelled one set of twenty -five
authorities by a second twenty-five) to cancel one president of
the Royal Society by a second.
Let us approach the problem by trying to state briefly
what is legitimately deducible from the order of the
universe, and then expose the fallacies of Professor Stokes
reasoning. The first and the only fundamentally safe con
clusion we can draw from the apparently invariable sequence
1 [Now Sir George Gabriel Stokes.]
2 On the Bewficial Effects of Light. Burnett Lectures. By George Gabriel
Stokes, M.A., F.R.S., etc. Fourth lecture, pp. 78-97.
THE PEOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 47
or order of natural phenomena, is that : Like sensations
invariably occur to us in similar groupings. This is no
absolute knowledge of natural phenomena, but a knowledge
of our own sensations. Further, our knowledge of the
invariability is only the result of experience, and is
based, therefore, upon probability. The probability deduced
from the sameness experienced in the sequences of one
repeated group of sensations is not the only factor, however,
of this invariability. There is an enormous probability in
favour of a general sameness in the sequences of all repeated
groups of sensations. In ordinary language this is expressed
in the fundamental scientific law: "The same causes will
always produce the same effects." In any case where a new
group of causes produces a novel effect, we do not want to repeat
this new grouping an enormous number of times in order to be
sure that the like effect always follows. We repeat the group
ing only so often as will suffice to acquaint us with the exact
sequence of cause and effect, and then we are convinced that
the effect will always follow owing to the enormous probability
in favour of the inference as to sameness in the sequence of a
repeated grouping. 1 Our confidence in the order of natural
phenomena is thus proportional to our knowledge of its enormous
probability ; this is based upon wide experience in the sameness of
the sequences which groupings of sensations adopt whenever they
are repeated. The order, so far as we are able to trace it back,
lies in the sameness of the sensational sequences, not necessarily
in the Dinge an sich. The sensations reach the perceptive
faculty under the fundamental forms of time and space ;
sequence of sensations in time, and sometimes apparent con
junction in space, have led mankind to formulate the category
of causation. If the sensation A invariably follows B, or even
if B is invariably found associated with A, we speak of them
as cause and effect. But as yet , there is not the slightest
evidence that the order extends beyond our perceptive faculty
1 A good example of this is the solidification of hydrogen, which has perhaps
only been accomplished (1886) two or three times, yet no scientist doubts its
possibility. The criticism of Boole on the probability basis of our knowledge of
sequence in natural phenomena {Laws of Thought, pp. 370-75) has been, I think,
sufficiently met by Professor F. Y. Edgeworth (Mind, 1885).
48 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
and the mode of our perception to the Dinge an sich. The
order of the universe may arise from my having to perceive
it, if I perceive it at all, under the forms of space and time.
My perceptive faculty may put the order into my sensations.
To argue that because this order exists there must be an
organising faculty is perfectly legitimate. To proceed, how
ever, from the human mind to the order in sensations, and then
assert that the order we find in the universe (or rather in the
sum of our sensations) requires a universe orderer on an
infinite scale, is the obvious fallacy of what Kant has termed
the physico-theologieal proof of the existence of a deity. It is
to throw the human mind into phenomena, and then let it be
reflected out of them into the unreachable or unknowable God ;
to argue like savages, because we see ourselves in a mirror,
that there is an unknown being on the other side ! From our
sensations we can only deduce something of the same order as
our sensations, or of the perceptive faculty which co-ordinates
them ; from finite perceptions and conceptions we can only pass
to finite perceptions and conceptions ; from physical facts to
physical facts of the same quality. 1 We cannot put into
them anything of an order not involved in their nature. From
sequence in sensations we can reach a perceptive faculty of the
finite magnitude of the human, and nothing more ; we cannot
logically formulate a creator of matter, a single world organiser,
an infinite mind, nor a moral basis of the universe such as the
theologian, the reconciler, or even Kant himself really requires.
An ontological, never a physico-theologieal process may attempt
to deduce the existence of a moral basis. The dogma of
identifying the human with the divine mind will, indeed,
enable us to get out of the argument from design a pantheistic,
but never a moral basis of the universe. The last page of
Professor Stokes work proves that he was himself dimly
conscious of not having deduced exactly the sort of deity he
was in search of. By a series of assumptions, not to say
fallacies, he could reach a deity, either too anthropomorphic
or else a sort of pantheistic abstraction ; as he only started
1 Kant, Der einziy mogliche Beiveisgrund zu einer Demonstration filr das
Dasein Gottes. Ausg. Hartenstein. Bd. ii. pp. 165, 203, etc.
THE PBOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 49
with the human mind, these results are not surprising. To
obtain the divine being of the theologians he must finally
appeal to revelation. We need scarcely remark that had he
begun with it, he would have saved us some bad logic and
left his own position quite unassailable ; the theologian, who
fences himself in behind belief in revelation, and disregards
natural theology and the neo-Hegelian ontology of our modern
schoolmen, is beyond our criticism, and at least deserves our
respect, in that he does not seek to strengthen his conviction
in the accuracy of Peter and Paul s evidence by arraying
dogma in the plumes of science and philosophy.
If the law of causation, the order of the universe, be
really, as we have stated above, a result of the human per
ceptive faculty always co-ordinating sensations in the same
fashion, it is obvious that the basis of the order in the
universe must be sought in the perceptive faculty, and not in
the sensations themselves ; the ultimate law of phenomena, as
we perceive them, will be a law of the perceptive faculty, and
more akin to a law of thought than a law of matter in the
ordinary sense of the term, j Indeed no so-called law of nature
based upon observation of our sensations is anything more than
a description of their sequence ; it is never, as is often vulgarly
supposed, the cause of that sequence. | Although Professor
Stokes undoubtedly recognises this, there are one or two
phrases in his book not unlikely to encourage the vulgar belief.
Thus he speaks in one place (p. 79) of " matter obeying the
law of gravitation," and in another of gravitation " as holding
together the components of the most distant double star as
well as maintaining in their orbits the planets of our system."
The careless reader might be led to look upon the law of
gravitation as the cause of planetary motion, although this
is, of course, not Professor Stokes intention. The law of
gravitation answers no why, only tells us a how ; it is a purely
descriptive account of the sequence in our sensations of the
planets ; it tells us more fully and generally than Kepler s
so-called laws the how of planetary motion ; it tells us that
the planetary and other bodies are changing the velocities with
which they move about each other in a certain fashion.
4
50 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
Why they thus change their velocities it does not attempt to
tell us, and the explanation of the law of gravitation, which
we are all waiting for, will only throw us back on a still
wider, but none the less a descriptive law of the motion of the
parts of the universe. Even if we were able to throw back
the whole complex machinery of the universe on the simplest
motion of its simplest parts, our fundamental physical law
could only, as dealing with sensations, be a descriptive one.
To pass from that descriptive law to its cause we should be
thrown back upon the perceptive faculty, and be compelled to
answer why it must co-ordinate under change in time and
place, or under the category of motion (and in this case
motion of a particular kind), the simplest conceptions to which
it can reduce the universe, or the sum of its sensations..
Granted that I do see one and not a series of coloured images
of an object, it is obviously necessary that when I come to
study the build of my eye I must find it a fairly achromatic
combination, otherwise one series of sensations would be
opposed to another ; our perceptions would contradict each
other, and thought become impossible. I can only think
according to the law that contradictions cannot exist, and
there is no more wonder that T find the eye a fairly achromatic
combination than that I see only one image. Given that I
have a sensation of a single image of an object, my perceptive
faculty compels my sensations of the structure of the eye to
be in harmony with the former sensation. To argue from the
harmony existing among my sensations to a like harmony arid
order in the Dinge an sick is to multiply needlessly the causes
of natural phenomena, and so break Newton s rule of which
Professor Stokes himself expresses approval. If the human
perceptive faculty is capable of so co-ordinating sensations
that all the groups maintain their own sequence, and are in
perfect harmony with each other, shortly that order and
* design appear in natural phenomena, what advantage do we
gain by needlessly multiplying causes and throwing back the
order and harmony of our sensations upon the Dinge an sicli,
and an unknowable intellectual faculty behind them ?
To sum up then the conclusions of this brief treatment
THE PKOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 51
of the problem, in order to investigate by their light Professor
Stokes fourth lecture, we find :
1. That nothing can be deduced from our sensations,
which is not of the same order as those sensations or the
faculty which perceives them ; we can deduce only the physical
(or descriptive law) and the perceptional (or true causative)
law of sequence.
2. That there may or may not be order and harmony in
the Dinge an sich. It is a problem we have not the least
means of answering by physical or psychological investigation.
To assume, however, that the order of our sensations connotes
a like order in the Dinge an sich is to " multiply needlessly
the causes of natural phenomena."
3. That physical science must remain agnostic with regard
to such order and with regard to an infinite mind behind it
among the unknowable bases of our sensations.
4. That theology cannot obtain aid from science in this
matter because the latter deals only with the sensational, and
cannot proceed from that to quantities of an entirely different
nature to the supersensational. To reach the supersensa-
tional, theology must take the responsibility on her own
shoulders of asserting the unthinkable of asserting a revela
tion, an occurrence which lies entirely outside the sensations
and the percipient with which alone science has to deal.
Theology must cry with Tertullian : Credo quia absurdum est.
It will be seen from the above that revelation and matter
the Dinge an sick are the unknowable wherein the theo
logian can safely take refuge from the scientist. Let him
remember that our only conception of matter is drawn from
the sensation of motion, and that the ultimate phase of this
motion we can only describe, not explain, then he will have no
hesitation in shaking hands with Ludwig Blichner, and sharing
the unknowable with that prince of dogmatists. Strange as
it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that in materialism lies
the next lease of life for theology.
Let us now turn to the remarkable fourth lecture of the
third Burnett course. Had the President of the Eoyal Society
been writing on a purely scientific as distinguished from a
52 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
theosophical subject, there is little doubt what his method
would have been. He would have referred to what previous
researchers had ascertained on the subject, he would have
clearly stated the relation of his own work to theirs, and if in
any case he had come to conclusions differing from those of
first-class thinkers, he would have been careful to state the
reasons for his divergence, and shown that he had not lightly
put aside their results. Why should Professor Stokes, when
he approaches an intricate intellectual problem, think he may
discard the scientific and scholarly method ? When an argu
ment, which orthodox and heterodox philosophical thinkers
alike have set aside for nearly a century as valueless, is drawn
in a state of rust from the intellectual armoury, and, without
any pretence to much furbishing, is hurled at the head of our
trusty Scot, surely we must demand some explanation, and not,
like a distinguished Scottish mathematician, hail as an " ex
ceedingly clear statement " l a lecture which gives no evidence
whatever that the writer has duly weighed the lucid dialogues
of Hume, or the elaborate arguments of Kant and the post-
Kantians. Whatever may have been Hume s own opinion,
whether he thoroughly agreed with Cleanthes as he states, or
merely used Cleanthes as a mask for his real opinions as pro
pounded by Philo, there can be no doubt that Cleanthes gives
no valid reply to Philo s arguments ; and as Professor Huxley
has observed, Hume has dealt very unfairly to the reader if
he knew of such a reply and concealed it (Hume, p. 180).
As for Kant, he found, even in his pre-critical days, that the
" only possible proof " for the existence of a deity was onto-
logical, and the process by which, in his post-critical period,
he deduced the second " only possible proof " of the existence
of a deity from the need of a moral world -orderer (when,
transcending the limit of the human understanding, he dis
covered the Dinge an sich to be Will), was the very reverse of
the argument from design. As for Hegel, let us for once
quote from a metaphysician a paragraph which we can approve,
1 Professor P. G. Tait, in a characteristic article in Nature, June 2, 1887.
But then the author of The Unseen Universe probably means by a clear state
ment one which is suggestive but does not involve a logical proof.
THE PKOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 53
and which Professor Stokes would do well to take to
heart :
" Teleological modes of investigation often proceed from a
well-meant desire of displaying the wisdom of God, especially
as it is revealed in nature. Now in thus trying to discover
final causes, for which the things serve as means, we must
remember that we are stopping short at the finite, and are
liable to fall into trifling reflections. An instance of such
triviality is seen when we first of all treat of the vine solely in
reference to the well-known uses which it confers upon man,
and then proceed to view the cork-tree in connection with the
corks which are cut from its bark to put into wine-bottles.
Whole books used to be written in this spirit. It is easy to
see that they promoted the genuine interest neither of religion
nor of science. External design stands immediately in front
of the idea ; but what thus stands on the threshold often for
that reason gives the least satisfaction." l
" Whole books used to be written in this spirit," Hegel
tells us, and now Professor Stokes gives us a whole lecture
without so much as suggesting that his method of argument
has been subjected to the most severe criticism. But perhaps
this absence of reference to previous writers is excusable ; it
may be that Professor Stokes own arguments are so con
clusive that the criticism of the past falls entirely short of
them. Let us investigate this point. Our lecturer commences
by telling us that he is going to devote his last lecture to the
illustration afforded by his subject to the theme proposed by
old John Burnett in his original endowment (1784), namely
" That there is a Being, all-powerful, wise, and good, by
whom everything exists ; and particularly to obviate difficulties
regarding the wisdom and goodness of the Deity ; and this, in
the first place, from considerations independent of written
revelation," and so on.
It must be confessed that the only way we see, in which
old John Burnett s bequest could have been made available
for obviating the before -mentioned difficulties, would be the
proper encouragement of internal illumination, so that the
1 The Logic of Hegel, trans. Wallace, p. 299.
54 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
world might possibly have been provided with oral revelation
of a more modern type than that written revelation/ which
in the first place is to be neglected. However, Professor
Stokes has thought otherwise, and in the Beneficial Effects of
Light he hopes to obviate our intellectual difficulties as to
this all-powerful, wise, and good Being.
He commences by telling us of the order which the law
of gravitation has introduced into our conceptions of the
planetary system, and how, if we went no further than that
treatment of the subject which concentrates the planets into
particles, and so deals only approximately with one side of
their motion, we could predict indefinite continuance in time
to come for the planetary system. All this is admirable
truth, or very nearly truth. Then we are told how the
physical condition of the planetary bodies no longer treated
as particles, but as worlds, is solely but surely changing ; the
sun is losing its heat, the planets their volcanic energies, the
earth her rotation owing to tidal friction, shortly, the
physical condition of the solar system is changing even as its
position in the stellar universe. Again very true, and what
is the just conclusion ? Obviously : That solar systems may
be built up, develop physically for billions of years, and then
collapse ; perhaps in long ages to form again parts of other
systems. So much we may conclude, and nothing more.
But what has our lecturer to say on this point ? Let us
quote his own words :
" The upshot is that even if we leave out of account all
organisation, whether of plants or animals, we fail to find in
the material system of nature that which we can rest on as
self-existent and uncaused. The earth says it is not in me,
and the sun saith it is not in me " (p. 82).
That worlds may come into existence and again pass away,
and that the period during which human life can exist upon them
is limited, are truths which have long been evident to every
one except the endless progress worshippers of the Positivist
type. But what is there in the evolution of worlds more than
in the birth and death of a cock-sparrow to justify us in
assuming that the one more than the other is caused ? The
THE PEOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 55
shape and physical constitution of the universe at one instant
differ from what they are at the next ; and to say that no phase
of universal life is self-existent, is merely to say that universal
life is ever changing. The human being is continually gain
ing new cells and losing old ones, but shall we argue from the
fact that these cells are not self -existent, that the human
being also is not self -existent ? Because the universe loses
one solar system and gains another, is this any evidence that
the universe is not self-existent ? If it be, we may at least
content ourselves with the modest example of a cock-sparrow
whose death is a more obvious fact than the decay of the
planetary system to the ordinary observer.
"When, from the contemplation of mere dead matter, we
pass on to the study of the various forms of life, vegetable
and animal, the previous negative conclusion at which we
had arrived is greatly strengthened." Although Professor
Stokes sees the possibility of the evolution of worlds without
a definite act of creation, he still speaks of a previous conclusion
(as if any real conclusion had been reached at all !), and pro
ceeds to confirm it by showing that animal and vegetable life
is not self -existent or uncaused. Before we examine this
next stage in the argument, we would draw attention to the
almost Gladstonian phrase, mere dead matter. As we have
previously pointed out, we know nothing whatever of the
nature of matter, our simplest physical conceptions are those
of motion ; physicists describe the ultimate elements of the
universe as in motion, but why they are in motion, and
apparently uncaused motion, 1 no one has the least means of
determining. Self -existent motion is not exactly what we
associate with death, and in fact the whole phrase, mere dead
matter, might lead the uninitiated to suppose we had a com
plete knowledge of the cause of our sensations, while in fact
we are in absolute ignorance with regard to it.
Having disposed of dead, let us turn to living matter.
Here there are two problems to be investigated. What is
the origin of life in any form on the earth ? and, What is the
origin of the diverse forms of life that we find upon it ?
1 For example, the internal vibrational energy of the concept atom.
56 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
These are problems to which science has not yet given
final answers ; we at present deal only with probable
hypotheses, but these hypotheses we must judge according
to Newton s rule, " which," in the words of Professor Stokes,
" forbids us needlessly to multiply the causes of natural
phenomena." In attempting to answer the first question we
must keep the following possibilities before us :
1. There never was any origin to life in the universe, it
having existed from all time like the matter which is vulgarly
contrasted with it ; it has changed its form, but. never at any
epoch begun to be.
2. Life has originated " spontaneously from dead matter."
3. Life has arisen from the " operation in time of some
ultra-scientific cause."
These possibilities, which we may term the perpetuity,
the spontaneous generation, and the creation of life, are not
very clearly distinguished by Professor Stokes. He appears
to hold that life must necessarily have had an origin, because
we have ample grounds for asserting that those phases of
life with which we are at present acquainted, could not have
existed in certain past stages of the earth s development.
Eecognising only known types of life, he proceeds to question
whether their germs might not have been brought to earth by
Sir William Thomson s meteorite an hypothesis which he
not unnaturally dismisses. But granted the meteorite, Professor
Stokes continues :
" Of course such a supposition, if adopted, would leave un
touched the problem of the origin of life ; it would merely
invalidate the argument for the origination of life on our
earth within geological time" (p. 85).
We see clearly that the writer supposes life, even if it did
not originate on the earth, must have had an origin. But
why may not life in some type or other be as perpetual as
matter ? We know life which assimilates carbon and elimi
nates oxygen ; we know also life which assimilates oxygen
and eliminates carbon yet between the lowest forms of these
lives we cannot draw a rigid line. Shall we dogmatically
assert, then, that types of life which could survive the gaseous
THE PROSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 57
and thermal changes in the condition of our planet are im
possible ? The word azoic, as applied to an early period of
our earth s history, can only refer to types of life with which
we are now acquainted. There is a distinct possibility of
other types of life, and of these types gradually evolving,
owing to climatological change, into the types of which we
are cognisant. Some of the most apparently simple forms of
life with which we are acquainted must really have an
organism of a most complex kind. The spermatozoon, bear
ing as it does all the personal and intellectual characteristics
of a parent, must have a far more complex organism than its
physiological description would lead us to believe ; the poten
tiality of development must in some way denote a complexity
of structure. Size thus appears to be only a partial measure
of complexity, and the minuteness and apparent simplicity of
certain microscopic organisms by no means prove that they
are the forms of life which carry us back nearest to the so-
called azoic period. For aught we can assert to the con
trary, the types of life extant then may have been complex
as the spermatozoon and as small as the invisible germ, if
one exists, of the microscopic organisms found in putrefying
substances. It is obvious that of such types of life the geo
logical record would bear no trace, and we cannot argue from
their absence in that record to the impossibility of their exist
ence. That no life such as we know it could exist in the
molten state of our planet may be perfectly true, but that is
no proof that germs of a different type of life may not have
survived in the gaseous mass, and developed into known forms
of life as the climato- physical conditions changed. With
regard, then, to the hypothesis of the perpetuity of life, the
scientist can only remain agnostic, and cannot draw any
evidence of the " operation in time of some ultra - scientific
cause," as Professor Stokes seems to think. The perpetuity of
life is, however, a more plausible hypothesis than the creation,
as it does not "needlessly multiply the causes of natural
phenomena." Professor Stokes simply extends his premise,
no living things that we see around us could exist in
the incandescent period/ to no living things at all, and
58 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
thus arrives at the origin of life in an ultra -scientific
cause.
Passing on to the hypothesis of spontaneous generation,
we may note again the same logical fallacy :
" The result of the experiments which have been made in
this subject by the most careful workers is such that most
persons are, I think, now agreed that the evidence of experi
ment is very decidedly against the supposition that even these
minute creatures can be generated spontaneously."
The minute creatures in question are the microscopic
organisms in putrefying matter. The statement may be
perfectly true, but before it would allow us logically to reject
the possibility of the spontaneous generation of life, we should
have to show (1) that the organisms in question were the only
types of life which could be supposed to have generated spon
taneously ; their minuteness is certainly no evidence of this,
unless, accepting the doctrine of evolution, we have shown that
these organisms are with great probability the earliest types of
life known to us, and therefore nearest the type which arose after
the azoic period ; (2) that we have reproduced in our experi
ments the physical conditions extant at the time when life
may be supposed to have been generated. There is no evid
ence to show that a turnip or urine wash, subjected to a very
high temperature and preserved in a hermetically sealed vessel,
at all represents the physical and climatological conditions of
the earth at the close of the azoic period. It is obvious that
these conditions can hardly be fulfilled in experiment ; we
cannot imitate the climato-physical state which possibly only
in long course of millions of years produced a type of life
totally different from anything known to us, and which type,
if reproduced, would not necessarily fall within the limits of
our organs of sense. No negative experiment can lead us to
reject the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, however much
a positive experiment might prove it. Hence, when Professor
Stokes postulates a commencement of life on earth, negatives
spontaneous generation, and arrives at a cause "which for
anything we can see, or that appears probable, lies altogether
outside the ken of science," he is simply piling Pelion upon
THE PEOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 59
Ossa, one dogma upon another, and so ruthlessly thrusting
aside the logically agnostic attitude of the true scientist. As
to the third hypothesis, that of creation, the only arguments
that can be produced in its favour are (1) from the process of
exhaustion i.e., the logical negation of all other hypotheses,
or the proof that all such destroy the harmony existing
between various groups of our sensations ; (2) from the evid
ence of revelation. This latter we are not called upon to deal
with under the heading of natural theology.
When we turn for a moment from descriptive science, or
the classification of sensations, to the simplest intellectual
concepts that the mind has formed with regard to the ulti
mate elements of life and matter, we find very little to
separate the one from the other, certainly nothing which
enables us to assert that there is perpetuity in the one more
than in the other. We analyse our sensations of both, and
find our ultimate concepts very similar. In the ultimate
element of matter, apparently self-existent motion, and capa
city, owing to this motion, of entering into combination with
other elements ; our conception of the ultimate element of
life might almost be described in the same words. Why
this self-existent motion is our ultimate concept, is at present
an unanswered problem, but, as we have pointed out, its
solution is more likely to be reached by a scrutiny of the
perceptive faculty, and the forms under which that faculty
must perceive, than by any results to be drawn from de
scriptive science. Be this as it may, it is sufficient to note
that there is nothing in the perpetuity or, on the other hand,
in the spontaneous generation of life (which is really only
another name for the perpetuity, as the universe will probably
always possess some one or other planet in the zoic stage)
that contradicts the harmony of our sensations, or brings
confusion into our concepts of life and matter.
Professor Stokes next devotes one brief page to statement,
and another to criticism, of the doctrine of evolution. His
second problem being the origin of the variety in living types,
we have next to inquire what natural theology has to say
about it ? Apparently it is content, after stating the stock
60 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
objections, such as small amount of transmutation of form in
actual experiment, the absence of connecting links, and the
deterioration (or degeneration, as Professor Bay Lankester has
termed it) of types of life, to remain agnostic in the matter.
The concluding remarks of Professor Stokes on this point are,
however, suggestive of his real opinion :
" Suffice it to observe that if, as regards the first origin of
life on earth, science is powerless to account for it, and we
must have recourse to some ultra -scientific cause, there is
nothing unphilosophical in the supposition that this ultra-
scientific cause may have acted subsequently also " (p. 89).
The fallacies in this reasoning are almost too obvious to
need comment. It assumes (1) that life has had an origin;
(2) that because science has not hitherto explained something
(which possibly never existed), therefore it must alway remain
unable to do so; (3) that if we have recourse in one case to
an ultra-scientific cause, there is nothing unphilosophical in
doing so again. Indeed there is an obvious rejoinder which
seems strangely to have escaped the lecturer namely, that it
would not accordingly be unphilosophical to attribute all
natural phenomena we have not yet fully explained to ultra-
scientific causes, and so do away with the Eoyal Society
and other scientific bodies as useless and expensive in
stitutions, unnecessarily multiplying the causes of natural
phenomena !
The argument may be paralleled by the following, which
we may suppose drawn from the lecture-room of a mediaeval
schoolman : Since science is powerless to explain why the sun
goes round the earth, and we must have recourse to some
ultra-scientific cause, there is nothing unphilosophical in sup
posing the same cause to raise the tides. Ergo, God daily
raises the tides.
Erom this point onwards the lecturer turns more especially
to the argument from design, and takes as his example the
extremely complex structure of the human eye. Contem
plating all the intricate portions of this organism and its
adaptability to the uses to which it is put, Professor Stokes
finds it " difficult to understand how we can fail to be im-
THE PKOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 61
pressed with the evidence of Design thus imparted to us."
This evidence from design goes, we suppose, to prove the
existence of old John Burnett s "all-powerful, wise, and
good Being." We wonder if Professor Stokes audience would
have been equally impressed with the evidence from design had
he chosen as his example the leprosy bacillus, which is also
wonderfully adapted to the use to which it is put, and the
organisation and life of which are equally evidence from design
of the most interesting kind. But perhaps, notwithstanding
the term beneficial, it is not the anthropomorphic qualities of
wisdom and goodness in the deity which are to be deduced
from the evidence from design. It is only the existence of
constructive mind. If this be so, we may well inquire
whether complexity of construction is always evidence of
mind, and we cannot prove the fallacy of the argument
better than by citing the words in which Philo demolishes
Cleanthes. 1
" The Brahmins assert that the world arose from an infinite
spider, who spun this whole complicated mass from his bowels,
and annihilates afterwards the whole or any part of it by
absorbing it again, and resolving it into his own essence.
Here is a species of cosmogony which appears to us ridiculous,
because the spider is a little contemptible animal, whose
operations we are never likely to take for a model of the whole
universe. But still here is a new species of analogy, even in
the globe. And were there a planet wholly inhabited by
spiders (which is very possible), this inference would there
appear as natural and irrefragable as that which in our planet
ascribes the origin of all things to design and intelligence as
explained by Cleanthes. Why an orderly system may not be
spun from the belly as well as from the brain, it will be
difficult for him to give a satisfactory reason."
The absurdity of the argument from analogy is well
brought out in these lines. Till Professor Stokes has proved
beyond all question that it is not the human perceptive
faculty which produces harmony and order in its world of
sensations, it seems idle to suggest that at the basis of that
1 Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. Partvi. Green s edition, p. 425.
62 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
harmony and order there may be something analogous to
the human mind. \The basis of those sensations the Ding
an sick may after all be a gigantic spider who spins from the
belly, not the brain. \
But even if we adopt for the sake of argument the crude
realism which separates a dead matter from something-
else which it terms mind/ we find in the law of the
survival of the fittest an apparently sufficient cause for the
adaption of structure to function. Professor Stokes remarks,
it is true, that even if this probable hypothesis were proved, it
would not follow that no evidence of design was left ; but it
would follow that the remnant of Professor Stokes natural
theology, so far as he has expounded it in this work, would
collapse. The evidence for design would be thrown back on
those great physical laws which a certain school of thinkers
delight to describe as inherent in dead matter, rather than as
forms of the perceptive faculty. Although Professor Stokes
gives us no real arguments against the possibility of the law
of the survival of the fittest being able to explain the adaption
of structure to function, still he tells us what he believes ;
namely, that this law may account for some (if for some, why
not for all ?) features of a complex whole, " but that we want
nothing more to account for the existence of structures so
exquisite, so admirably adapted to their functions, is to my
mind incredible. I cannot help regarding them as evidences
of design operating in some far more direct manner, I know
not what ; and such, I believe, would be the conclusion of most
persons."
In other words, the last standpoint of natural theology is
belief, and belief as to what the belief of the majority of
persons may be.
Natural theology having thus thrown up a plausible
hypothesis as to the orderly arrangement of phenomena in
exchange for a belief in, not a proof of an ultra-scientific cause,
its further stages are easily marked. Eeturning to its
unproven dogmas that neither matter nor life is self-existent
dogmas based on a misinterpretation of the obvious facts
that planetary systems decay, and life, such as we know it, was
THE PKOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 63
once non-extant in the world natural theology concludes
that the mind, found by analogy in the order of the universe,
is self-existent, and therefore God. But the self-existence
thus deduced as an attribute of the deity is precisely what
revelation has foretold us : " I AM hath sent me unto you."
Here is the unity between science and revelation we have
been in search of ! Here natural theology finds itself in
unison with Moses views as to the nature of his tribal god.
" It is noteworthy/ remarks Professor Stokes, " that it is
precisely this attribute of self-existence that God himself chose
for his own designation." The identification of the ultra-
scientific cause/ of the Jewish tribal god, and of God (with a
capital G), is complete !
It is needless for me to follow Professor Stokes through his
remaining pages; having once got on to the ground of revela
tion, it is not for me to pursue him further. We should expect
to find, and do find, arguments from analogy, and a repetition
of the dogmas deduced by a false logical process ; e.g., " We
have seen that life can proceed only from the living " (when
and where ?) by analogy, why not mind only from mind ?
" The sense of right and wrong is too universal to be attributed to
the result of education" (but why not to the survival of the fittest
in the internecine struggle of human societies ?) and so forth !
In my whole treatment of this contribution to natural
theology I have endeavoured to keep clearly in view the
function which this absurd science sets before itself,
namely, to deduce from the physical and finite sensation a
proof of the supersensuous and infinite. It disregards the
possible influence of the laws of the human perceptive
faculty on the sensations which that faculty co-ordinates ; it
argues from present scientific ignorance to the impossibility
of knowledge. It neglects entirely a rule of equal import
ance with Newton s, which may be thus stated : That where
we have not hitherto discovered a sufficient physical or per
ceptive origin for natural phenomena, it is more philosophical
to wait and investigate than seek refuge in ultra -scientific
causes. Such ultra-scientific causes may be matter for belief
based on revelation, they can never be deduced from a study
64 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
of our sensations. From the order and harmony of our sensa
tions we can only proceed to the law descriptive of their
sequence, to the law of physical cause to this and nothing
more. I cannot help thinking it regrettable that the doyen
of English science, a man to whom every mathematician
and physicist looks with a sense of personal gratitude, should
have closed a most suggestive course of lectures on light by
what appears to me a perversion of the true aims of science.
He has endeavoured to deduce the self-existence of the deity
by a method of argument long since discarded by thinkers ;
he has only achieved his object by a series of logical fallacies
based on erroneous extension of terms. Authority weighs
more than accurate reasoning with the majority of men, and
on this account the course taken by Professor Stokes is
peculiarly liable to do serious harm. If the human race has
now reached a stage when more efficient conceptions of
morality than the Christian are beginning to be current ;
when more fruitful fields for research and thought than the
theological are open to mankind ; when the inherited instinct
of human service is growing so strong that its gratification is
one of the chief of human pleasures ; then, assuredly he who
attempts to bolster up an insufficient theory of morals, an
idle occupation for the mind, and a religious system which
has become a nigh insupportable tax on the national resources
assuredly this one will be cursed by posterity for his
theology, where it would otherwise have blessed him for
his science ! " You have stretched out your hands to save
the dregs of the sifted sediment of a residuum. Take heed
lest you have given soil and shelter to the seed of that awful
plague which has destroyed two civilisations, and but barely
failed to slay such promise of good as is now struggling to
live among men." l So cried Clifford to two scientists of
repute who stooped in 1 8 7 5 to dabble in the mire of natural
theology. It is a noteworthy and melancholy proof of the
persistency of human prejudice that in 1887 it is necessary
again to repeat his words.
1 Fortnightly Review, June, 1875.
THE PEOSTITUTION OF SCIENCE 65
NOTE TO PAGE 59. It seems to me possible that a wave representing
the zoic stage moves from the lesser sun outwards across each planetary
system. Such a wave would have now reached our earth, and, following
the physical development, would pass on to the external planets, leaving
at most a fossil-record behind it. The motion of this wave would depend
on the physical conditions of the individual sun and its planets, and
might be only a ripple of a larger wave which flowed outward through
stellar space from a more central sun accompanying the dissipation of
energy.
IV
THE ETHIC OF KENUNCIATION >
But if thy mind no longer finds delight
In sights and sounds, and things that please the taste,
What is it, in the world of men or gods,
That thy heart longs for ? Tell me that, Kassapa.
THAT man is born to trouble even as the sparks fly up
wards ; that endowed by race -development with passions
and desires, he is yet placed in a phenomenal world where
their complete gratification is either impossible or attended
with more than a counterbalancing measure of misery,
these are facts which age by age have puzzled alike philo
sopher and prophet. They have driven thinkers to seek
within themselves for some quiet haven, for some still waters
of peace, which they could by no means discover in that
stormy outer world of phenomena. The apparent slave of
his sensations, man in the world of sense seems ever subjective
and suffering ; only mentally, in the inner consciousness, does
there appear a field for free action, for objective creation.
Here man may find a refuge from those irresistible external
forces which carry him with such abrupt transition from the
height of joy to the depth of sorrow. Is it not possible for
the mind to cut itself adrift from race-prejudice, from clogging
human passions, from the body s blind slavery to phenomena,
and thus, free from the bondage of outward sensation, rejoice
in its own objectivity ? Cannot man base his happiness on
1 This essay was written in 1883, but was published for the first time in
188?.
THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 67
something else than the transitory forms of the phenomenal
world ? By some rational process on the one hand, or some
transcendental rebirth on the other, cannot man render him
self indifferent to the ever -changing phases of phenomenal
slavery, and withdraw himself from the world in which fate
has placed him ? The means to this great end may be fitly
termed, Renunciation, renunciation of human passions to
avoid human slavery. . At first sight, for a man to renounce
human passions appears to be a process akin to that of
jumping out of his own skin, yet the great stress which the
foremost thinkers of many ages have laid upon the need of
renunciation justifies a closer investigation of its meaning. I
propose to examine, under the title of Ethic of Renunciation,
a few of the more important theories which have been pro
pounded.
The earliest and perhaps the greatest philosopher who has
propounded a doctrine of renunciation is Gotama the Buddha.
In considering his views I shall adopt a course which I shall
endeavour to pursue throughout this paper, namely, to ascer
tain first, as clearly as possible, what it is that the philosopher
wishes men to renounce, and secondly, what he supposes will
be the result of this renunciation. In the Buddhist theory
it is the sinful grasping condition of mind and heart which
has to be extinguished. This condition is variously described
as Trishna eager yearning thirst and Upadana the grasp
ing state. 1 The origin of the Trishna is to be found in the
sensations which the individual experiences as a portion of
the phenomenal world. When the individual is ignorant of
the nature of these sensations, and does not subordinate them
to his reasoned will, they act upon him as sensuous causes,
and produce in him, as in a sensuous organism, sensuous
effects, namely, sensuous passions and desires of all kinds.
Besides present ignorance as a factor of desire, we have also
to remember the existence of past ignorance ; past ignorance
either of the race or individual has created a predisposition to
the Trishna. The sources, then, of the sinful grasping con-
1 Here, as elsewhere, my description of the Buddhist doctrine is drawn
almost entirely from Professor Rhys Davids well-known works on the subject.
68 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
dition of mind and heart may be concisely described as
ignorance and predisposition which have culminated in
irrational desire. In order that the individual may free
himself from this condition of slavery he must renounce his
desires, his delusions ; the only means to this end is the
extermination of ignorance and predisposition. The Buddhist
doctrine, then, by no means asserts that man can free himself
from the sensational action of the phenomenal world, only
that it is possible for him to renounce the delusive desires
created by that action. It may be concisely defined as a
rational renunciation of the mere sensuous desire which the
uncontrolled influence of sensations tends to produce. The
method of renunciation viewed as destructive of ignorance is
termed self-culture, viewed as destructive of desire, self-control.
From these combined standpoints the method is fitly described
as the noble path of self-culture and self-control.
Let us consider the desires or delusions which, according
to the Buddha, form the elements of the sinful grasping
condition/ and whose immediate cause is to be sought in
ignorance and predisposition. The three principal delusions
upon which corresponding desires are based are termed
sensuality, individuality, and ritualism. These are the
sources from which human sorrow springs. Sensuality may
be supposed, for our present purpose, to include sensuousness,
delight in all forms of pleasure produced by the influence of
the phenomenal world upon the senses. The grosser kinds at
least of sensuality are certainly irrational, and causes of the
greater proportion of human misery. Gotama seems to have
condemned all sensuality, all love of the present world, as a
fetter to human freedom. In this point he was practically
in agreement with the early and mediaeval Christian ascetics.
Both condemned the pleasures of sense the Christian because
he considered them to interfere with the ordering of his life
as dictated by revelation ; the Buddha because he saw much
sorrow arising from them, and could find no rational argument
for their existence. * Both were alike ignorant of their
physiological value, and rushed from Scylla on Charybdis.
The true via media seems in this case to have been taught by
THE ETHIC OF KENUNCIATION 69
Maimonides, another philosopher of renunciation namely,
that the pleasures of sense, although renounced as purpose,
are to be welcomed as means, means to maintain the body in
health, and so the mind in full energy. Sensuality ceasing
to be master was to do necessary work as a servant. The
Egyptian physician had a truer grasp of the physiological
origin and value of desire than the Indian philosopher.
The second of the great delusions to which Gotama
attributed human misery is individuality. The belief in
Attavada, the doctrine of self, is a primary heresy or delu
sion ; it is one of the chief Upadanas, which are the direct
causes of sorrow in the world. Gotama compared the human
individual to a chariot, which is only a chariot so long as
it is a complex of seat, axle, wheels, pole, etc. ; beneath or
beyond there is no substratum which can be called chariot. So
it is with the individual man, he is an ever -changing com
bination of material properties. At no instant can he say,
This is I/ and to do so is a delusion fraught with endless pain.
It follows that when a self is denied to the individual man, no
such entity as soul can be admitted, and it is logical that all
questions as to a future life should be termed a puppet show
or walking in delusion. That the doctrine of Attavada has
been productive of infinite human misery is indisputable. The
belief in the immortality of the soul, and so in a future state,
has led men in the present to endure and inflict endless pain.
To the Christian such pain appears justifiable, it is but a
means to an end. Pushed to its logical outcome it might be a
sin to render a poor man comfortable and well-to-do for fear
of weakening his chances of heaven. It would be highly
criminal to refuse sending one man to the stake in order to save
the souls of a hundred others. The Buddhist finds in all this
nothing but that misery which is the outcome of delusion.
For him the man who believes in a future state is hindered in
his spiritual growth by the most galling chain, the most fatal
Upadana. The Christian, on the one hand, trusting to
revelation, does not demand a rational basis for his belief in
the existence of the soul ; the Buddhist, on the other, has been
charged by Gotama to accept nothing which his reasoning
70 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
powers do uot commend to his belief. Experience
teaches us that here reason can prove nothing. It
is beyond the limits of the theoretical reason, and the
assertions of the practical reason are at best but belief
based upon recognised, but unanalysed desire. So far
Gotama s position seems to me to be correct, the Attavada is
the outcome of desire or of predisposition. But a far more
important step has to be taken before it can be declared a
delusion ; the historical origin of the predisposition, the growth
of the desire must be traced. It may be that the origin is as
natural, and yet as irrational, as the origin of the medieval
belief that the sun goes round the earth. In that case the
predisposition will probably disappear with the knowledge of
its cause. It will be classed as a myth produced by mis
understood sensations ; the seemingly objective action of the
phenomenal world will have been misinterpreted by the
subjective centre, and the error perpetuated have given rise to
a predisposition. Such a necessary criticism was, of course,
not undertaken by Gotama ; it is doubtful whether anthro
pology and the science of comparative religion are even yet
sufficiently advanced to enable us to trace the development of
this predisposition to Attavada. We may certainly lay it
down that, at some stage in the evolution of life, organisms
were not conscious of any belief in the existence of a soul ; it
is not, however, necessary to assert that the belief originated
in man as we know him. Between that early stage and man
as he now is the predisposition has arisen. Until every
element of that between is mapped out it will be impossible
to prove that a theory of instantaneous implantation is fallacious,
however contrary it may be to our general experience of the
growth of ideas. The argument that, as the predisposition
exists, man must satisfy it in order that he may not be
miserable, is by no means valid. Besides the fact that many
individuals live happily after rational renunciation of the
desire for immortality, and so afford a proof that education and
self-culture can free men from the predisposition, we must also
remark that the acceptation of a belief recognised intellectually
as groundless cannot in the long run tend to intellectual
THE ETHIC OF KENUNCIATION 71
happiness. Even if, for an instant, we grant that without
belief in the immortality of the soul our views of life must be
pessimistic, nay, that life without such belief is insupportable
still this admission is no proof of immortality ; it only
shows that man, or at all events man in his present phase of
development, is not well fitted to his phenomenal surroundings.
With regard, then, to this second great factor of human pain,
we notice that Gotama proceeds rather dogmatically than
logically when he asserts that it is a delusion. It is true that
the belief in individuality cannot be rationally deduced,
but the existing predisposition to that belief cannot, on the
other hand, be validly put aside until it has received critical
and historical investigation. I must remark, however, that if
Gotama had firmly convinced himself that the belief in
individuality was a fetter on man s progress towards righteous
ness, he was justified in calling upon men to renounce that
doctrine without demonstrating its absolute falsity. It is not
impossible that the Buddha s conviction, that the belief in
some personal happiness hereafter is destructive of true
spiritual growth, was what led him to denounce the Attavada
as the most terrible of delusions. " However exalted the
virtue, however clear the insight, however humble the faith,
there is no arahatship if the rnind be still darkened by any
hankering after any kind of future life. The desire for a
future life is one of the fetters of the mind, to have broken
which constitutes the noble salvation of freedom. Such a
hope is an actual impediment in the way of the only object we
ought to seek the attainment in this world of the state of
mental and ethical culture summed up in the word arahatship "
(HUtbert Lectures]. Obviously only a philosopher, who has
had deep and bitter experience of the destruction of " mental
and ethical culture " by the sacrifice of this life to some
emotional process of preparation for another life, could give
vent to such a strong condemnation of the belief in indi
viduality.
If we compare Gotama s two first Upadanas we see that
there is between them a qualitative difference ; the one is a
direct physical desire, the other a mental craving only indirectly
72 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
the result of the influence of the phenomenal world on man.
According to the Buddhist theory we ought to renounce both.
We have shown above some reason why, following Maimonides,
the first desire, renounced as an end, should be adopted as a
means to physical health. While a man can admittedly
control and to some extent mould his physical existence, he
cannot without injury wholly subdue his physical wants nor
leave unsatisfied his physical desires. Hence the renunciation
of the first Upadana in its broadest sense is impossible. On
the other hand, it is possible to destroy belief, to eradicate
mental cravings. The mind is in itself an exceedingly plastic
organism, subject to endless variations as the result of educa
tion, and capable at every period of changing its desires under
the influence of self-culture and rational thought. There is
always a possibility, then, of renouncing a mental predisposition.
Such a predisposition cannot, of course, be driven out by force,
it can only be destroyed by a growth of knowledge. Only the
- mind replete with intelligence can free itself from the delusion
of individuality. Knowledge is for Gotama the key to the
higher life ; it alone can free men from the delusions which
produce their misery. Here his teaching is in perfect
harmony with that of Maimonides and Spinoza. It is this
/which makes his theory of renunciation a rationalistic system,
which raises him from a prophet to a philosopher. He strongly
inculcates philosophical doubt ; he holds that all which cannot
be rationally deduced has no claim on belief. " I say unto all
of you," he replied once to his disciples, " do not believe in
what ye have heard ; that is, when you have heard any one
say this is especially good or extremely bad ; do not reason
with yourselves that if it had not been true, it would not
have been asserted, and so believe in its truth ; neither have
faith in traditions, because they have been handed down for
generations and in many places. Do not believe in anything
because it is rumoured and spoken of by many ; do not think
that that is a proof of its truth. Do not believe because the
written statement of some old sage is produced : you cannot
be sure that the writing has ever been revised by the said
sage, or can be relied upon. Do not believe in what you have
THE ETHIC OF KENUNCIATION 73
fancied, thinking that because it is extraordinary it must have
been implanted by a Dewa or some wonderful being." ]
The words quoted in the preceding paragraph show exactly
Gotama s method of treating ideas. When no rational origin
can be discovered, the idea is treated as a delusion. 2 It is
true that the philosopher himself strangely neglected to apply
this test to the dogma of transmigration, and thus evolved
from it his wondrous theory of Karma. But in the third
delusion, that of ritualism, to which I now turn, the test has
been rigorously applied, and the result deduced : that gods,
if they [exist, are things about which it is a delusion to
trouble oneself. We rnay define ritualism as a formal worship
rendered to a being supposed capable of influencing the lives
of men. Gotama satisfied himself that such ritualism was a
delusion without entering into any discussion as to the exist
ence or non-existence of divine beings. Such a discussion
ought of course to follow the same lines as that on the
Attavada. The impossibility of any rational proof of the
existence of a deity would become manifest, and the whole-
question would then turn upon a critical investigation of the
historical origin of the predisposition. The Buddha seems to
have been so impressed with the absolute validity of the law
of change, that for him the very gods under its influence sunk 1
into insignificance ; they were but as butterflies in the ever
growing, ever-decaying cosmos. Could there be any rational
basis for the worship of such gods ? Is it not a mere ignorant
delusion to suppose them eternal ? Shortly, the predisposition
to ritualism is only a debasing superstition, the outcome of
those misinterpreted sensations which the phenomenal world
produces in ignorant man. Ritualism, like the belief in
individuality, is a most fatal hindrance to man s mental and
moral growth. Here, as in the previous case, we notice that
the Buddha s proof is insufficient, and that he dogmatically
asserts ritualism to be a delusion without critically examining
the growth of the predisposition. After once settling his
1 Alabaster, Wheel of the Law, p. 35.
2 It will be at once seen why Buddhism is so much more sympathetic than
Christianity to the modern Freethinker.
74 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
summum lionum, however, it is possible for him to condemn
ritualism a priori, having regard to the enormous evil it has
brought mankind ; for all evil hampers the entrance on that
noble path which ends in arahatship.
Let us endeavour to sum up the results of Gotama s
theory of renunciation. It calls upon man to renounce three
predispositions which have influenced, and in the majority of
cases still do enormously influence, the course of men s actions
in the phenomenal world. Without sensuous pleasure would
life be endurable ? Without belief in immortality can man
l)e moral ? Without worship of a god can man advance to
wards righteousness ? Yes, replies Gotama ; these ends can
be attained, and only attained, by knowledge. Knowledge
alone is the key to the higher path ; the one thing worth
pursuing in life. Sensuality, individuality, and ritualism are,
like witchcraft and fetish -worship, solely the delusions of
ignorance, and so must fetter man s progress towards know
ledge. The pleasures of sense subject man to the phenomenal
world and render him a slave to its evils. Morality is not
dependent upon a belief in immortality; its progress is
identical with the progress of knowledge. Righteousness is
the outcome of self-culture and self-control, and ritualism only
hinders its growth. Knowledge is that which brings calmness
and peace to life, which renders man indifferent to the storms
of the phenomenal world. It produces that state which alone
can be called blessed :
Beneath the stroke of life s changes,
The mind that shaketh not,
Without grief or passion, and secure,
This is the greatest blessing. 1
The knowledge which Gotama thus makes so all-important is
not to be obtained by a transcendental or miraculous process
as that of the Christian mystics, it is purely the product of
the rational and inquiring intellect. Such knowledge the
Buddha, in precisely the same fashion as Maimonides, Averroes,
1 Mangala Sutta, quoted by Rhys Davids : Buddhism, p. 127.
THE ETHIC OF RENUNCIATION 75
and Spinoza, installs as the coping-stone of his theory of
renunciation.
If we turn from the Buddhist to the early Christian
doctrine, we find a no less marked, although extremely different
conception of renunciation. It is a conception which is by
no means easily expressed as a philosophical system, for it
claims revelation, not reason, as its basis. We must content
ourselves here with a few desultory remarks, and leave for
another occasion a more critical examination of the fuller form
of the Christian theory as it is philosophically expressed in
the writings of Meister Eckehart. The Christian, as decisively
ias the Buddhist doctrine proclaims sensuality a delusion.
The phenomenal world is essentially a world of sin, it is the
fetter which hinders man s approach to righteousness. Until
the sensuous world has been renounced, until the flesh with
all its impulses and desires has been crucified, there can be no
entry into the higher life. This renunciation is termed the
rebirth. The rebirth is the entrance to the new moral life,
to the spiritual well-being, to that mystic union with God
which is termed righteousness. The rebirth cannot be attained
by human wisdom or knowledge, it is a transcendental act of
divine grace for which man can only prepare himself by faith
and by good works. Christianity made no more attempt than
Buddhism to reconcile the sensuous and the spiritual in man.
The early fathers looked upon the sensuous nature of humanity
as the origin of universal sin, and went some way towards
deadening moral feeling by bidding men fly from the very
sphere where moral action is alone possible. They make, of
course, no attempt to prove rationally that the sensuous desire
is a delusion ; when once it is admitted that the mystic rebirth
requires renunciation, renunciation follows as a categorical
imperative.
The position taken by the Christian with regard to the
two other great desires differs widely from that of Gotania.
So far from their being delusions for him, they are the terms
which regulate the whole conduct of his life ; they are precisely
what induces him to renounce the world of sense. The
Christian seeks no rational deduction of individuality and
76 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
ritualism, he accepts them as postulated by revelation. The
key to his path of righteousness is faith, not knowledge. If
,the human reason oppose the Christian revelation, this only
shows that the human reason is corrupt. The early Christian
looked upon all rational thought, as he did upon all sensuous-
-ness, as an extremely dangerous thing. Nay, he did not
hesitate to assert that Christianity was in contradiction with
human wisdom and culture. Et mortuus est dei Jilius ; prorsus
credibile est, quiet ineptum est. Et sepultus resurrexit ; cerium
est, quia impossible est. The philosophers are but the
patriarchs of heretics, and their dialectic a snare. " There
is no more curiosity for us, now that Christ has come, nor
any occasion for further investigation, since we have the
gospel. We are to seek for nothing which is not contained
in the doctrine of Christ." Shortly, the only true gnosis is
based upon revelation. Spinoza, following Maimonides, has
identified all knowledge with knowledge of God. To the early
Christian, God was incomprehensible, could not form the subject
of human knowledge ; and every attempt at rational investiga
tion of his nature must lead to atheism. Human perception
of God was only attained by a transcendental process in which
God himself assisted.
That the reader may fully recognise how this view of
Christian renunciation propounded by the early Latin fathers
is essentially identical with that of mediseval theology,
it may not be amiss to quote one or two passages from
a writer whose teaching has met with the approval of
nearly all shades of Christian thought. I refer to Thomas
a Kempis.
" Eestrain that extreme desire of increasing Learning,
which at the same time does but increase Sorrow by involving
the mind in much perplexity and false delusion. For such
are fond of being thought men of Wisdom, and respected as
such. And yet this boasted learning of theirs consists in
many things, which a man s mind is very little, if at all, the
better for the knowledge of. And sure, whatever they may
think of the matter, he who bestows his Time and Pains
upon things that are of no service for promoting the Happi-
THE ETHIC OF KENUNCIATION 77
ness of his Soul, ought by no means to be esteemed a wise
man " (B. i., chap. ii.).
" Why should we, then, with such eager Toil, strive to be
Masters of Logical Definitions ? Or what do our abstracted
Speculations profit us ? He whom the Divine Word instructs
takes a much shorter cut to Truth ; for from this Word alone
all saving knowledge is derived, and without this no man
understands or judges aright. But he who reduces all his
studies to, and governs himself by this Bule, may establish his
mind in perfect Peace, and rest himself securely upon God "
(B. i., chap. iii.).
For Thomas a Kempis as for Tertullian there is a shorter
cut to truth than knowledge and learning, there is a mystic
or transcendental process of instruction by the Divine Word
which brings perfect peace. The revelation is an all-suffi
cient basis for the act of renunciation. The phenomenal
world is for Thomas just as destructive of human freedom as
Gotama has painted it. The earth is a field of tribulation
and anguish ; we must daily renounce its pleasures and crucify
the flesh with all its lusts (cf. B. ii., chap. xii.). He will hold
no parley with the " strong tendencies to pleasures of sense " ;
" true peace and content are never to be had by obeying the
appetites, but by an obstinate resistance to them" (B. i,
chap. vi.). It will be seen that the writer of the Imitatio is
on all essential points in agreement with the Latin father, and
we may not unfairly take the like statements of two such
diverse and distant writers as the real standpoint of Christian
thought. With this assumption we are now to some extent
in a position to formulate the Christian doctrine of renuncia
tion. 1
As in Buddhism, it is the sensuous desires which are to be
renounced. This renunciation is not based on rational, but
on emotional grounds. The Christian arahatship or rebirth
cannot be attained by a purely intellectual process, but only by
passing through a peculiar phase of emotion, transcendental
in character. Herein it differs toto ccdo from the Buddhist
1 The reader will find the Christian doctrine more fully discussed in the
paper on Meister Eckehart.
78 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
conception. The object of renunciation is in both cases the
same to attain blessedness, but in the one case the blessed
ness is mundane and temporal, in the other celestial and
eternal. The Christian admits that by accepting his revelation
or, in other words, by believing in the Buddhist delusions
he reduces this world to a sphere of sorrow and trial a
result foretold by Gotama ; yet, on the other hand, sure of
the after-life, he holds the sacrifice more than justified. The
Buddhist, finding no rational ground for the Christian s belief
in individuality, endeavours to attain his blessedness in this
world, and tries to free himself from the sorrow and pain which
the Christian willingly endures for the sake of his faith. The
one finds in knowledge, the other in the emotions, a road to
salvation. Both renounce the same sensuous desires, but the
one on what he supposes to be rational grounds, the other on
what he considers the dictates of revelation. Such seem to be
the distinguishing features in the ethic of renunciation as
taught by the two great religious systems of the world.
From this Christian doctrine let us turn to a niediseval
Eastern doctrine of renunciation. Here we find ourselves
once more on rational as opposed to emotional ground; here
Jewish thought stands contrasted with Christian. What
influence Indian philosophy may have had over Hebrew and
Arabian it is hardly possible at present to determine, yet the
Arabs were at least acquainted witli more than that life of
Gotama which, received by Christianity, led to his canonisation.
Whatever the influence, there can be no doubt that the Bo
Tree, the tree of knowledge, rather than the Cross, the tree
of mystic redemption, has been the symbol of what we may
term Eastern philosophy. Indian, Arab, and Jew alike have
declared that the fruit of the Bo Tree is the fruit of the tree
of life ; that a knowledge of good and evil leadeth to beatitude
rather than to sin. From this tree Gotama went forth to
give light to those who sit in darkness, to prepare a way of
I salvation for men. The religion of the philosopher, Averroes
! tells us, consists in the deepening of his knowledge ; for man
\ can offer to God no worthier cultus than the knowledge of his
works, through which we attain to the knowledge of God
THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 79
himself in the fulness of his essence. From the cognition of
things sub specie, ceternitatis from the knowledge of God
arises, in the opinion of both Maimonides and Spinoza, the
highest contentment of mind, the beatitude of men. On the
extent of men s wisdom depends their share in the life eternal. 1
Let it be noted that this wisdom lays claim to no transcendental
character ; occasionally it may have been obscured by mystical
language or the dogma of a particular revelation, but in
the main it pretends to be nought but the creation of the
active human intellect. At first we might suppose that there
exists a broad distinction between a doctrine like the
Buddhist, wherein the name of God is only mentioned as
forming the basis of a delusion, and systems like those of
Maimonides and Spinoza, which take the conception of God
for their keystone. The distinction, however, lies rather in
appearance than in reality, Spinoza s conception of the deity
differing toto coelo from the personal gods of the Christian or
the Brahmin, and being quite incapable of giving rise to the
delusion of ritualism. God is for him the sum of all things,
and at the same time their indwelling cause ; he is at once
matter and the laws of matter nescio,cur materia divind naturd
indigna esset (Etliicci i. 15, SchoL), not the ponderous matter
of the physicist, but that reality which must be recognised as
forming the basis of the phenomenal world ; not the mere
law of nature, as stated by the naturalist, but the law of
the phenomenon recognised as an absolute law of thought ;
shortly, the material world realised as existing by and
evolved from intellectual necessity.! Such a conception must -
have been as necessary to Gotama as to Spinoza ; for the
former it is the law of change, which is immeasurably more
powerful than any gods yet conceived ; the latter has only
chosen to call it God. The formal worship of such a God is
1 Maimonides, Fad Hackazakah, Bernard, 1832, pp. 307-8. See the essay
on Maimonides and Spinoza, where the identity between the views of both
philosophers is pointed out. The resemblance to Eckehart is also noteworthy.
The immortality of the soul consists in the eternity of its vorgendezbild in the
mind of God. By the higher knowledge or union with God the soul becomes
conscious of this reality, or realises its eternity. Hell consists in an absence of
this consciousness.
-V
80 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
obviously impossible. Spinoza recognised as fully as the
Buddha what evils spring from the delusion of ritualism ;
far more critically than Gotama he investigates the causes
from which the predisposition to ritualism arises. Noting
that there are many prcejudicia which impede men s knowledge
of the truth, he adds : Et quoniam omnia quce hie indicare
suspicio prcejudicia, pendent ab hoc uno, quod scilicet communiter
supponant homines, omnes res naturales, ut ipsos, propter finem
agere, imo ipsum Deum omnia ad cerium aliquem finem dirigere,
pro certo statuant : dicunt enim, Deum omnia propter hominem
fecisse, hominem autem, ut ipsum coleret (Ethica i., Appendix ;
Van Vloten, vol. i. p. 69). Very carefully does Spinoza
endeavour to show the falseness of this fundamental prejudice ;
he points out how men have come to believe the world was
created for them, and that God directs all for their use ; how
it arises : ut unusqwisquc diver sos Deum colendi modos ex suo
ingenio excogitaverit, ut Deus eos supra reliquos diligeret, et
totam Naturam in usum cceccc illorum cupiditatis et insatiabilis
avariticu dirigeret. So has the prejudice turned into super
stition, and struck its roots deep in the minds of men (Van
Vloten, vol. i. p. 71). He paints blackly enough the resulting
communis vulgi persuasio : the mob bears its religion as a
burden, which after death, as the reward of its slavery, it
trusts to throw aside ; too often it is influenced in addition by
the unhealthy fear of a terrible life in another world. These
wretched men, worn out by the weight of their own piety,
would, but for their belief in a future life, give free play to
all their sensual passions (Ethica v. 41, Schol.). Gotama
could not have better described the outcome of the superstition
among ignorant men ; he nowhere displays such critical
acumen in endeavouring to show that all worship of God is a
delusion (see especially the whole Appendix to Ethica i.).
These remarks apply, though in a lesser extent, to Maimonides
conception of God. The philosophy of Maimonides is struggling
at every point with his dogmatic faith, and he finds it
impossible to hide the antagonism between his conceptions of
God as the world-intellect and as the personal Jehovah of his
religion. The general impression one draws from his writings
THE ETHIC OF KENUNCIATION 81
is, however, that he held with Averroes that the true worship
of God is the attainment of wisdom, or the knowledge of his
works. With regard, then, to the delusion of ritualism, we
find that Spinoza, and at heart Maimonides, are in agreement
with Gotama ; the belief in the worship of the deity is a
prejudice which must be renounced ; it is chief cause of the
ignorance which impedes men s knowledge of the true nature
of God (i.e. the intellectual basis of reality).
If we turn to the second Buddhist delusion, we find Mai
monides and Spinoza in essential agreement with, although
formally differing from, Gotama. Both Jewish philosophers
base man s immortality on his possession of wisdom, his
knowledge of the deity ; the older with some obscurity, 1 the
later with direct reference to a theory of ideal reality existing
in God. The scholastic variation of the Platonic doctrine
of ideas, which placed all things secundum esse intelligibile in
the mind of God, 2 was not without great influence on the
thought of Spinoza. He found in the esse intelligibile an in
destructible element of the human soul ; this idea in God, or
the individual sub specie ceternitatis, was the conception which
led him to assert that aliquid remanet, quod outer num est
(Ethica v. 22, 23). The realisation by the mind of its own
esse intelligibile, that is, its knowledge of God (v. 30), is laid
down as the quantitative measure of the mind s immortality
(cf. the passage : Sapiens . . . sui et Dei . . . conscius, nunquam
esse desinit, Ethica v. 42, Schol.). We may ask how far
this possible eternity of the mind can affect men s actions.
In the case of both Maimonides and Spinoza the quantum of
eternity is based on the quantum of wisdom ; not by any
ritual, not by any particular line of conduct, not by any
faith solely by the possession of wisdom can the eternity of
the mind be realised. Imagination, memory, personality,
cease with death ; no material duration belongs to the
eternity of the mind (v. 23, Schol., and 34, Schol. ). Surely
this is denouncing with Gotama individuality as a delusion !
1 A comparison of the doctrines of Spinoza and Maimonides on the immor
tality of the soul is given in the sixth paper of this volume.
2 This form of the Platonic idealism is precisely that laid down by Wyclif
in the first book of the Trialogus.
6
82 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
Such eternity is no reward for virtue; we do not attain
beatitude because we restrain our sensuality, but we realise
our eternity in this world by the higher cognition ; and it is
this knowledge, this beatitude, which enables us to control
our passions (v. 42). Surely Spinoza s beatitude is but
another name for the Buddhist Nirvana ! What Spinozist
/could ever be driven by a theory of reward hereafter to re
ligious persecution, to asceticism, or to that religious nihilism
which scorns reason ? He rejects such evils, and discards the
Attavada as decisively as Gotama himself. 1
If we turn to the third groat Buddhist delusion, the
pleasures of sense, we find the Jewish philosophers by no
means so unrestrictedly call for its renunciation as the
followers of Gotama and Jesus. The, great goal of human
life, according to their philosophy, is the attainment of
wisdom, and renunciation is to be of those things only which
are a hindrance in the path of intellectual development.
Unsatisfied desire may be as real an obstacle as the same
desire converted into the rule of life ; to make the renuncia
tion of such desires the chief maxim of conduct is to raise
the secondary phenomenal above the primary intellectual.
Fitness of body is an essential condition for fitness of mind,
and the passage of life s span, mens sana in corpore sano, is
the requisite for human happiness (Etliicci v. 39). To re
nounce, then, the gratification of certain sensuous desires,
which have a physiological value, is merely by an unfit body
to hamper the progress of the mind. To make these sensuous
desires the motive of human conduct is equally reprehensible ;
the sole method of escape lies in the ma media. Clearly
enough does Maimonides reject ascetic renunciation : " Per
chance one will say : since jealousy, lust, ambition, and the
like passions are bad, and tend to put men out of the w r orld,
I will part with them altogether, and remove to the other
1 I may cite a passage thoroughly Spinozist in character : Buddhism
takes as its ultimate fact the existence of the material world and of conscious
beings living within it ; and it holds that everything is constantly, though
imperceptibly, changing. There is no place where this law does not operate ;
no heaven or hell, therefore, in the ordinary sense " (Rhys Davids : Buddhism,
p. 87).
THE ETHIC OF KENUNCIATION 83
extreme and in this he might go so far as even not to eat
meat, not to drink wine, not to take a wife, not to reside in a
fine dwelling-house, and not to put on any fine garments, but
only sackcloth, or coarse wool or the like stuff, just as the
priests of the worshippers of idols do ; this, too, is a wicked
way, and it is not lawful to walk in the same " ( Yad Hacka-
zakali, Bernard, p. 170). The keynote to all sensuous pleasure
is to be found in its treatment as medicine, whereby the body
may be preserved in good health. 1 In precisely similar
fashion Spinoza tells us that only superstition can persuade
us that what brings us sorrow is good, and again, that what
causes joy is evil. " Cum igitur res illse sint bonoe, quse
corporis partes juvant, ut suo officio fungantur, et Lsetitia in
eo consistat, quod hominis potentia quatenus Mente et Cor-
pore constat juvat vel augetur : sunt ergo ilia omnia, quae
Leetitiam afferunt, bona. Attamen, quoniam contra non eum
in finem res agunt, ut nos Lsetitia afficiant, nee earum agendi
potentia ex nostra utilitate temperatur, et denique quoniam
Laetitia plerumque ad unam Corporis partem potissimum
refertur ; habent ergo plerumque Laetitiae affectus (nisi Ratio
et mgilantia adsif), et consequenter Cupiditatis etiam, quae ex
iisdem generantur, excessum" (Etliica iv., Appendix, cc. 30,
31). These quotations must suffice to show how different
the Hebrew standpoint is to the Buddhist or Christian ; it
approaches nearer the Greek. It consists in the rational
satisfaction (not renunciation) of sensuous desires as a neces
sary step towards bodily health and consequent mental fitness
(see Maimonides, Yad, pp. 167-169 ; Spinoza, Etliica iv. 38,
39, and Appendix, c. 27).
1 The following passage is so characteristic of the Hebrew standpoint, that
it deserves to be cited : " When a man eats or drinks, or has sexual intercourse,
his purpose in doing these things ought to be not merely that of enjoying him
self, so that he should eat or drink that only which is pleasant to the palate,
or have sexual intercourse merely for the sake of enjoyment ; but his purpose
whilst eating or drinking ought to be solely that of preserving his body and
limbs iu good health" (Yad, B. 173). The position is thoroughly opposed to
Christian asceticism, which Maimonides probably had in his mind when speak
ing above of the "priests of the worshippers of idols." It was doubtless in
Spinoza s thoughts, too, when he wrote: "Multi, prse nimia scilicet animi
impatientia, falsoque religionis studio, inter bruta potius quam inter homines
vivere maluerunt."
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84 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
The reader may feel inclined to ask on what grounds we
have classed Spinoza and Maimonides as philosophers of
renunciation. What do they cstll upon their disciples to
renounce, if they wish to be free from the slavery of the
phenomenal world ? Do they teach no rebirth by which
men may approach beatitude ? Most certainly they do.
They call upon their disciples to renounce not individuality,
ritualism, and sensuality, but obscure ideas on these as on
all other matters. They teach how, by that higher know
ledge which sees the true causes of things, man is born afresh,
born from slavery to freedom. Such is the rebirth which
Spinoza terms the idea of God making man free, and Mai
monides the Holy Spirit coming to dwell with man (see the
paper on Maimonides and Spinoza). We must content our
selves here with a short investigation of Spinoza s doctrine.
What does that philosopher understand by obscure ideas ?
What by the idea of God making man free ? In his system,
God, we have seen, is identified with the reality of things, not
things regarded as phenomena, but as links in an infinite
chain of intellectual causality. He is the \6yo? which dwells
in and is all existence ; laws of nature are only the sensuous
expression of the laws of the divine intellect ; the story of
the world is only the phenomenalising of the successive steps
in the logic of pure thought. Spinoza, then, assumes that
the thought attribute in the deity is qualitatively the same as
that in the human mind. 1 From this it follows, since God s
capacity for thinking and his causation are identical, that it
is theoretically possible for the human mind to grasp things
as they exist in their intellectual necessity. Such knowledge
of things is fitly termed a knowledge of God or an under
standing of things sub specie ccternitatis ; it is seeing phenomena
as they exist in eternal necessity. IsTow, external objects
1 Wyclif (who, by the bye, also identified the divine perception and
creation) makes the same assumption : " Et sic intellectus divinus ac ejus
notitia sunt paris ambitus, sicut intellectus creatus et ejus notitia ; et sic
falsum assumis quod multa intelligis, quse Deus non potest intelligere. Imo
quamvis omne illud intelligis, quod Deus potest intelligere et e contra, tamen
innnitum imperfection modo, quam Deus potest intelligere" (Trialogus, Ed.
Lechler, p. 70).
THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 85
produce in the individual certain sensations, which excite
definite emotions followed by desires in the mind. These
emotions arise from causes external to ourselves ; with re
gard to them we are passive or suffer ; they are what Spinoza
has termed passions. These are the causes of man s misery
in the phenomenal world, the fetters whence human slavery
arises (JEthica iii. ; Def. 1, 2 ; iv. 2-5). By what means
may man free himself from the mastery of these passions ?
They are harmful to him because they arise from causes
external to him, he is not their adequate cause. But, argues
Spinoza, man is a part of nature, and can suffer no changes
except those which can be understood by his own nature, and
of which it is the adequate cause JEthica iv. 4). In other
words, if a man only understands a thing clearly, he becomes
its adequate cause. The human mind, in so far as it perceives ,
things truly (sub specie ceternitatis), is a part of the infinite
intelligence of God ; the thing is dissevered from its external
cause and seen as a necessary outcome of the human (and
divine) intelligence. Henceforth the emotion ceases to be a
passion (ii. 11, v. 3, etc.). In replacing obscure ideas by clear
ideas we renounce our passions, and are reborn from human
slavery to human freedom by the idea of God that is, by
our knowledge of things sub specie ceternitatis. Henceforth we
have the power ordinandi et concatenandi corporis affectiones
secundum ordinem ad intellectum (v. 10); we are no longer
blind suffering implements in the hands of phenomenal
causality. Here, then, we have the Spinozist renunciation
and rebirth. Like the Buddhist road to Arahatship, it is the [
destruction of ignorance by knowledge, the replacing of con- u
fused by clear ideas. It is only to be attained by intellectual
labour, and not by a transcendental mystery. It sets the
attainment of wisdom as the goal of human existence, for by
this alone can humanity free itself from slavery to the
phenomenal world. Difficult is the path which leads to the
Spinozist Arahatship, yet the philosopher himself at least
phenomenalised his system, and taught us to appreciate
quantum sapiens polliat, potiorque sit ignaro, qui sola lilidine
agitur.
86 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
Since Spinoza there has been no great philosopher who
has made a doctrine of renunciation the centre point of his
system. The old difficulties as to the phenomenal world,
the old consciousness of human slavery, have been ever
present in the thoughts of men, but their attention has been
directed more and more to a critical investigation of the
relation of the human mind to the phenomenal world. This
is a necessary preliminary to any theory of practical conduct
whereby man may free himself from phenomenal subjectivity.
The founder of the critical school has, however, enunciated a
theory of rebirth which it is all the more interesting to examine,
as it possesses marked analogies to Eckehart s, and is an
attempted return from the intellectual Hebrew to the mystic
or transcendental Christian standpoint. Before inquiring into
the meaning of the Kantian Wiedergeburt, it may not be
without profit to mark a connecting link between the Spinozist
and Kantian theories, which is to be found in the poet Goethe. 1
Like Spinoza, Goethe believed that God was the inner cause
working and existing in all things ( Weltseele), or, as he
expresses it :
Was war ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse,
Ini Kreis das All am Finger laufen Hesse,
Dim ziemt s, die Welt im Innern zu bewegcn,
Natur in Sicli, Sicli in Natur zu hegen,
So dass, was in Him lebt und webt und ist,
Nie Seine Kraft, nie Seinen Geist vermi^st.
Gott und Welt. Proemion.
But this identification of God with the universe, like all
forms of pantheism, renders it impossible for man to look
upon the world as a mere field for his moral action, its pain
and sorrow as mere means to his own Willenslduterung , and
sensuous desires as mere material for that renunciation which
leads to beatitude. The laws of God s nature cease to be
either good or bad ; it is impossible to assert a moral principle
1 On the philosophy of Goethe, cf. E. Caro : La philosophic de Goethe, Paris,
1866. Especially tor our present purpose, Chapitre vii., Les conceptions sur la
deslinie humaine.
THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 87
as the basis of the world. 1 How, then, is man to regard
those sensuous impressions which alternately elevate and
depress him? Shall he strive, as Buddha and Eckehart
teach, to renounce all sensuous existence ? By no means,
replies Goethe ; the real freedom of men does not consist
in asceticism, but in rational enjoyment of all the world
produces. Life is no valley of tears ; man shall not hate
it and fly into the wilderness because he cannot realise all
his dreams (Prometheus, v. 6) : there is room enough for happy,
joyous existence :
Den Sinneii hast du danii zu trauen ;
Kein Falsches lassen sie dicb. schauen,
Wenn dein Verstand dich wach e-rhu.lt.
Mit friscliem Blick bemerke freudig,
Uiid wandle, siclier wie geschmeidig,
Durch Aueii reich begabter Welt.
Geniesse niassig Full uncl Segen ;
Vernunft sey uberall zugeyen,
Wo Leben sicli des Lebeiis freut.
Dami 1st Vergangenheit bestiindig,
Das Kiinftige voraus lebendig,
Der Augenblick 1st Ewigkeit.
Gott und Welt, Vermachtniss.
With true Greek spirit Goethe is yet practically taking the
same view as Maimonides and Spinoza ; sensuality is not an
unqualified delusion. But the phenomenal world is not
always so kind to man, it is not always possible for him to
enjoy it : there is pain, there is grief, there is death. In the
moment of joy man is cast into the lowest depths of misery ;
how shall man preserve his freedom when, in the midst of
delight in the sensuous world, its great forces may turn and
Denn unfuhlend
1st die Natur :
Es leuchtet die Sonne
fiber Bos und Gute,
Und dem Verbrecher
Glanzen, wie dem Besten,
Der Mond und die Sterne.
Das Gotttichc.
88 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
crush him ? l How can such a man free himself fronv the
slavery of the phenomenal ? Here Goethe adopts the Spinozist
doctrine of renunciation : clear ideas of nature and man s
relation to it will render him immovable amidst the storm of
external circumstance. Only let man recognise the eternal
necessity which rules all being
Nach ewigen, ehrnen,
Grossen Gesetzen
Miissen wir alle
Unseres Daseyns
Kreise vollenden.
Das Guttlichc
and he will put aside all childlike grief, that the world is not
as it ought to be. 3 Let him only see things sub specie
ceternitatis and he will recognise that all phenomena, in
cluding humanity itself, are but passing changes on the
surface of the eternal. " When this deeper insight into the
eternal nature of things has firmly established itself in our
reason, what are those accidents which throw into despair
the thoughtless and the commonplace ? A necessary detail
of the order of the universe, wherein death is the nourishment
of life ; in which law, ever replete in change, destroys all to
renew all." Every step in growth is a stage in decay.
Und umzuschaffen das Gescliaffne,
Damit sicli s niclit zum Starren waffne,
VTirkt ewiges, lebendiges Thun.
Es soil sich regen, schaffend handeln,
Erst sich gestalten, dann verwandeln ;
Nur scheinbar steht s Momente still.
Das Ewige regt sich fort in alien ;
Denn Alles muss in Nichts zerfallen,
"Wenn es im Seyn beharren will.
Gott und Welt. Eins und Alles.
1 Well expressed by Schleiermacher : " Der Mensch kenne nichts als sein
Dasein in der Zeit, und desseii gleitenden Wandel hinab von der sonnigen
Hohe des Genusses in die furchtbare Nacht der Vernichtung " (Monologen, i.,
Betrachtung).
2 Caro, p. 192.
THE ETHIC OF RENUNCIATION 89
In this knowledge of the eternal nature of things is to be
found that contentment of mind which raises man above
temporal sorrow, frees him from the bondage of the pheno
menal. 1 Even as Spinoza deduced an eternity for those minds
which had realised --the eternal essence of things and of them
selves, so Goethe supposed an immortality for those beings
who by clearness of vision had approached spiritual perfection.
Here in this nineteenth century Goethe we find, on the one
hand, the strongest recognition of the Buddhist law of
universal dissolution and composition ; on the other, the
fullest acceptation of the Spinozist doctrine that the knowledge
of things in their eternal aspect is the true means to that
peace of mind which constitutes the Arahatship of Indian
and of Jew alike. Strange is this enunciation of the Eastern
intellectual doctrine at the very time when Kant was busy
reconstructing a transcendental Christian system ! Yet
Goethe is in a certain sense nearer to Kant than Spinoza ; his
belief tends, it is true, rather to a scientific naturalism than
to a transcendental idealism, but yet where his reason does
not carry him, he finds it unnecessary to contest the rights of
faith. He is a poet, and finds no inconsistency between his
rational pantheism and a semi -mystical acceptation of the
Christian dogma. It is here that Kant s position is logically
stronger than Goethe s, and his reconciliation of reason and
the Christian revelation of a more satisfactory character,
because he has not by pantheistic premises previously denied
the possibility of transcendental mystery. 2
We must now turn to Kant s theory of the Christian
Wied&rgeburt. Proceeding on the same lines as Meister
Eckehart, he separates a phenomenal world, or world as it
1 The thought is again well expressed by Schleiermacher. He is referring to
the crushing effect of the phenomenal on the absolutely insignificant individual ,
and then to the effect of the higher knowledge : " Erfass ich nicht mit
meiner Sinne Kraft die Aussenwelt ? trag ich nichtj die ewigen Formen der
Dinge ewig in mir ? und erkenn ich sie nicht nur als den hellen Spiegel
meines Innern" (Monologen, i.).
2 The reconciliation is a noteworthy fact of the critical philosophy. It
might well be termed "transcendental scholasticism," if the name did not
suggest an unfavourable comparison with the depth, logical consistency, and
single-mindedness of Thomas Aquinas.
90 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
appears in the sensuous perception of the human mind, from a
world of reality, the so-called Dinge an sich. The latter he does
not, like the mystic, identify with the intellect (or will) of God.
He identifies it with the sphere of freedom or self-determined
will. Let us endeavour to grasp by what process he arrives
at this conclusion. Man is one of the phenomena of the
sensuous world, and as such is subject to the causality of its
empirical laws. He feels the influence of sensuous causes
impelling him to act after a certain fashion ; his Wollen is
produced by physical causes over which he has no control.
On the other hand, the man is conscious within himself, not
by sensuous perception, but by mere apperception (durck
llosse Apperception], of a certain power of self-determination,
there is something in him of an intelligible character.
He finds in practical life that certain imperatives appear to
rule his action as well as sensuous causes. There is a
Sollen as well as a Wollen. The Sollen, according to Kant,
expresses a necessity which exists nowhere else in the
phenomenal world. " Es nib gen noch so viel Naturgriinde
sein, die mich zuni Wollen antreiben, noch so viel siunliche
Anreize, so kb nnen sie nicht das Sollen hervorbringen,
sondern nur ein noch larige nicht notwendiges, sondern
jederzeit bedingtes Wollen, dem dagegen das Sollen, das
die Vernunft ausspricht, Maass und Ziel, ja Verbot und
Ansehen entgegen setzt." * The existence of this Sollen is
not deduced by reason, it is a fact based upon the common
consciousness of men. Here Kant and Goethe are in perfect
accord :
Sofort nun wende dich nach innen,
Das Centrum findest du da driniien,
Woran kein Edler zweifelii mag.
AVirst keine Regel da vermissen :
Denn das selbststandige Gewissen
1st Sonne deinem Sittentag.
Gott und Welt. Vermdchtniss.
Kant makes no attempt to question whether this Sollen may
1 Kritikd. r. Vernunft. Elementarlehre II., Th. ii., Abth. ii., Buch 2,
Hauptst. 9, Abschn. iii., Moglichkeit dcr Causalitdt durch Freiheit.
THE ETHIC OF EENUNCIATION 91
not be an innate Wollen, an hereditary predisposition, the
outcome of racial experience in the past ; one of the con
ditions by which the human type maintains its position in
the struggle for existence, and which it has consequently
impressed upon all its members. Independent of the im
mediate phenomenal, he assumes its existence not to be due
to sensuous causes. From the existence of this Sollen, this
absolute Sittengesetz, Kant deduces the possibility of freedom ;
the Sollen denotes a Konnen. In other words, the freedom of
the will, its causality, is asserted. Now the conception of
causality carries with it the conception of law ; the empirical
causality connotes natural laws ; this intelligible causality
connotes laws also unchangeable ; but in order that the free
will may not be chimerical (ein Unding), it must be regarded
as self-determinative, as a law to itself. " Der Satz aber : der
Wille ist in alien Handlungen sich selbst ein Gesetz, bezeichnet
nur das Princip, nach keiner anderen Maxime zu handeln,
als die sich selbst auch als ein allgemeines Gesetz zum
Gegenstande haben kann. Dies ist aber gerade die Formel
des kategorischen Imperativs und das Princip der Sittlichkeit ;
also ist einfreier Wille und ein Wille unter sittlicJien Gesetzen
einerlei. 1 It will be seen that Kant identifies the idea of
freedom with the sphere of the moral law; the will is only so
far free as it obeys the fundamental principle of morality,
and obeys it, not from any phenomenal desire, but solely be
cause it is the fundamental principle. 2 Accordingly we find the
world of intelligible causality identified with the moral world ;
but this self-determining will, wherein freedom consists, cannot
exist in time and space ; it cannot be phenomenal, for if it were
it must be subject to empirical causality. We are compelled
to identify it with the Dinge an sich. " Folglich, wenn man
sie (die Freiheit) noch retten will, so bleibt kein Weg iibrig,
1 Grundlegung zur Metapliysik der Sitten, Absclinitt iii. Der Begriff der
Freiheit (Hartenstein, iv. pp. 294, 295).
2 This fundamental principle is the well-known Kantian extension of the
Christian " Do unto others as you would that they should do to you," namely,
" Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die du zugleich wollen kannst,
dass sie ein allgemeines Gesetz werde " (ibid. Abschn. ii. Of. especially the
paragraphs Die A utowmie and Die Heteronomie des Willens).
92 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
als das Dasein eines Dinges, sofern es in der Zeit bestimmbar
1st, folglich auch die Causalita t nach dem Gesetze der Natur-
notwendigheit bios der Erscheinungen, die Freiheit aber
ebendemselben Wesen, als Dinge an sich selbst, beizulegen." 1
Such, then, is the outline of the process by which Kant
identifies the Dinge an sich with the world as will, or the
sphere of the moral law.
We have next to inquire what is the process of Wieder-
geburt whereby man is enabled to disregard the pain and
sorrow of the phenomenal world. Here we are concerned with
a portion of the critical scholasticism/ i.e. Kant s deduction
of the Christian doctrine. In the disposition of the will, and
in that alone, is to be found the basis upon which we may
define good and evil. The good disposition is that which
takes the moral maxim as its sole motive (das Gesetz allein
zur liinreichenden Triebfeder in sich aufgenommen hat) ; the evil
disposition is that which rejects this motive entirely, or is
influenced by others in addition. 2 The passage, then, from
evil to good denotes an entire change of disposition ; it is an
alteration in the very foundation of character ; but an evil
disposition can never will anything but evil. So (according
to Kant) there can be no process of bettering, no passage
from good to evil by a gradual reform. " Wie es nun moglich
sei, dass ein naturlicher Weise boser Mensch sich selbst zum
guten Menscheii mache, das iibersteigt alle unsere Begriffe,
denn wie kann ein boser Baum gute Friichte bringen ? "
But even as there exists an ought to become good, so
there must exist a means. Such means must accordingly
f l)e transcendental quite beyond human comprehension.
The change from good to evil disposition is termed the
Wiedergeburt? Man is conscious only that it is impossible
for him unaided to make the change ; the change is to
him incomprehensible. It needs some supersensuous aid, a
1 Kritik der p. Vernunft, Th. i., B. 1, Hauptst. iii. (Hartenstein, v.
p. 100).
2 Religion innerh. d. Grenzen d. blossen Vernunft, i. Stiick 2. Von dem
Hang zum Bosen (Hartenstein, vi. p. 123, et seq.).
3 Ibid. Allg. Anm. p. 139.
4 Ibid. Allg. Anm. p. 141.
THE ETHIC OF KENUNCIATION 93
mystery to accomplish it. This mystery must be the action of
God. The moral law tells him that he must, and therefore
can, become good ; but without the assistance of God the
mysterious process is impossible ; it depends on the action of
the divine grace. 1 Here is the limit to which the mere
reason can go in matters of religion. The Wiedergeburt is,
then, a transcendental change of disposition ; as such it takes
place not in the phenomenal, but in the intelligible. It is
not a temporal act, but an act of the intelligible character.
On the existence of this intelligible world (the Dinge an
sicli) depends the moral change in man and (according to
Kant) the Christian doctrine of redemption. 2
If we suppose the Wiedergeburt to have taken place, the
question next arises, how the redemption can follow upon it ?
The Wiedergeburt has only effected a change in disposition, it
has by no means wiped out the guilt consequent upon the
old evil. This guilt can only be expiated by corresponding
punishment ; such is absolutely necessary to the conception of
divine justice. In this form of punishment for moral evil,
a primary condition for its being expiatory is the recognition
that it is deserved. Hence there can be no such punishment
so long as the disposition has not changed. The expiatory
punishment must take place after the Wiedergeburt? The
new man must offer himself up as propitiation for the old.
" Der Ausgang aus der verderbten Gesinnung in die gute ist
als (" das Absterben am alten Menschen, Kreuzigung des
Fleisches ") an sich schon Aufopferung und Antretung einer
langen Eeihe von Ubeln des Lebens, die der neue Mensch in
der Gesinnung des Sohnes Gottes, namlich bios um des Guten
willen ubernimmt ; die aber doch eigentlich einem andern,
namlich dem alten (denn dieser ist moralisch em anderer), als
Strafe gebiihrten." Shortly ; after the Wiedergeburt, all the
1 Jeder, so viel als in seinen Kraften ist, thun miisse um ein besserer
Mensch zu werden ; . . . (er kann dann hoffen, dass,) was nicht in seinem Ver-
mogen ist, werde durch hohere Mitwirkung erganzt werden" (ibid. Ally. Anm.
p. 146).
2 On this somewhat obscure point in Kant s treatise on Religion, cf. Kuno
Fischer, Geschichte d. n. Philosophic, Bd. iv. p. 419, et seq., 2 Ausg.
3 Religion innerh. d. Grenzen d. blossen Vernunft, ii. Stuck 1, Absch. c.
(Hartenstein, vi. p. 166, et seq.).
94 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
pain and evil of life, all the phenomenal subjectivity of man,
recognised as merited punishment, are gladly endured because
therein the new-born man finds moral blessedness. The
lasting consciousness that they are merited is to him a proof
of the strength and persistency of his disposition to the good ;
he endures them gladly, because on them he bases his hope of
final forgiveness for his sins. Thus Kant supposes man, by
means of the renunciation of the evil disposition in the mystic
Wiedergeburt, to arrive at a position from which he can re
gard his phenomenal slavery even as a cause of moral
blessedness. 1
We cannot now criticise this fantastic system of Kant s,
which supposes the whole phenomenal world produced as a
means whereby man may purify his will, the goal of uni
versal existence to be the production of morally perfect
humanity. It must suffice here to note its relation to the
doctrines of renunciation previously considered. In its general
lines it agrees with those Christian types we have had under
consideration ; the state of blessedness, Arahatship, is reached
not by an intellectual, but by a supersensuous or mystical pro
cess. Kant, however, differs from Eckehart in that he does
not suppose the state of blessedness to be attained by even a
transcendental form of knowledge. It is not the higher
knowledge of the real nature of things as they exist in the
mind of God, which brings peace, but that willing submission
to punishment which follows on acknowledged moral delin
quency. If we turn to Spinoza s purely intellectual stand
point we find Kant is at the very opposite pole of thought.
For Spinoza only the wise can attain blessedness, for Kant
only the moral. Nor does the latter philosopher by any
means suppose morality a mere component part of wisdom ; it
is based upon a universal moral apperception common to the
1 The following statement is very suggestive of Kant s intensely anthropo
morphic position : Alle Ubel in der Welt im Allgemeinen als Strafen fur
begangene Ubertretungen anzusehen . . . liegt vermutlich der menschlichen
Vernunft sehr nahe, welche geneigt ist, den Lauf der Natur an die Gesetze der
Moralitat anzukniipfen, und die daraus den Gedanken sehr natiirlich hervor-
bringt, dass wir zuvor bessere Menschen zu werden suchen sollen, ehe wir
verlangen konnen, von den Ubeln des Lebens befreit zu werden, oder sic
durch iiberwiegeudes Wohl zu vergiiten " (ibid., footnote, p. 168).
THE ETHIC OF KENUNCIATION 95
ignorant as well as to the wise. Understanding, judgment,
knowledge, do not tend to produce a good will, and are not
necessary : " urn zu wissen, was man zu thun habe, um ehrlich
und gut, ja sogar um weise und tugendhaft zu sein." 1 Could
a greater gulf be well imagined than exists between these two
philosophical systems ? The one, Ptolemsean, causes the whole
universe to revolve about man s moral nature ; the other,
Copernican, does not even allow that nature to be the sun of
its own insignificant system. Only once, when both consider
the freedom of God to consist not in indeterminism, but in
absolute spontaneity, do they seem for an instant to approach.
But even here Kant is regarding the inner moral necessity,
Spinoza the inner intellectual necessity of God s action. 2
Needless is it to compare the Buddhist with the critical
philosophy. So far from Gotama and Kant being at oppo
site poles of thought, they do not even think on the same
planet !
With Kant we must draw to a conclusion this brief review
of some of the various doctrines of renunciation which have
been propounded with the aim of relieving man from his
phenomenal slavery. Hitherto we have contented ourselves
with endeavouring to put them clearly before the reader, and
leaving him as a rule to judge of their logical consistency.
Apart from this, however, there is a deeper question as to
their practical value. In how far is the Buddhist, the Chris
tian, or the Spinozist really superior to the sorrow, the pain,
above all to the passion of the sensuous world ? The lives of
Buddhist monks, of Christian ascetics and pietists, of the
lens-polisher of Amsterdam, prove sufficiently that men can
render themselves more or less indifferent to the storm of
outward sensation. 3 Is such, however, the result of any phase
1 Cf. the Erster AbschnM of the Grundlegung zur Metapliysik der Sitten
(Hartenstein, vi. p. 241), which treats especially of this point.
2 Religion inner Jialb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Stiick 1, Allg.
Anm. (Hartensteiu, vi. p. 144, footnote). Cf. Spinoza, Ethica, i. 17, and
Defn. 7.
3 It is hardly necessary to argue with those who would deny the possibility
of man freeing himself from the intensity of outward sensation. It is matter
of common experience. Der Mensch vergisst sich selbst : er verliert das
Maass der Zeit und seiner sinnlichen Krafte, wenn ihn ein hoher Gedanke
96 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
of theory, or rather an emotional state peculiar to certain
individuals ? Again, may we not question whether the re-
nunciant obtains the greatest joy from life ? May not he
who drinks deeper from the cup of existence find in greater
joy more than sufficient recompense for greater pain ? Nay,
may we not ask with Herder, whether man has any right
to remove himself into this blessed indifference, whether it
must not destroy that sympathy for his fellows which can
only arise from like passions, whether it does not rob the
world of one of its most beautiful phenomena man in his
natural and moral grandeur ? l We cannot now enter upon
any analysis of these doubts ; we refer merely to those philo
sophers who do not absolutely renounce sensuous pleasures,
as giving at least a partial solution, and shall conclude our
ethic by a short investigation of the term phenomenal
slavery, which will perhaps serve as a basis for criticising
any future doctrine of renunciation which may lay claim to
logical consistency.
Phenomena in a variety of ways are capable of holding
in bondage the individual man. All we understand by
1 phenomenal slavery is, that phenomena directly or in
directly produce certain effects in man which he is apparently
incapable of controlling. ( So long as these effects tend to
preserve his existence or favour his growth, he finds them
causes of happiness, and does not recognise them as slavery.
(In the normal state no one objects to being subjected to the
sun s light and heat.) When, however, these effects tend to
destroy existence or check human growth, then they become
sources of pain, and are at once recognised as limiting human
aufruft, und er denselben verfolgt. Die scheusslichsten Qualen des Korpers
haben durch erne einzige lebendige Idee unterdriickt werden konnen, die
damals in der Seele herrsclite. Menschen die von einem Affekt, insonderheit
von dem lebhaftesten reinsten Affekt unter alien, der Liebe Gottes, ergriffen
wurden, haben Leben und Tod nicht geachtet und sich in diesen Abgriinde
aller Ideen wie im Himmel gefuhlt " (Herder : Philosophic der Geschichte der
Menschheit, i., Buch v., Absch. iv.).
1 If any form of Arahatship became common we should cease to meet in
practical life those Hamlets and Fausts who add so much to its richness and
depth. The pious and the resigned are in some respects the most uninteresting
of mortals. It is the restless and the rebellious, the protestant and the doubter
who have created modern literature and even modern civilisation.
THE ETHIC OF KENUNCIATION 97
freedom. ; (The heat of the sun may be so great as to produce
sunstroke.) Besides acting as direct sources of pain and pleasure,
phenomena, either immediately or by continuous repetition,
are capable of producing in man certain desires, predis
positions, and prejudices. v These are not the sources of any
direct pain or pleasure, but become the standard according
to which future sensations will be judged as pleasur
able or painful. To the first kind of phenomenal slavery,
to that which favours man s growth, only the extreme and
of course irrational ascetic can raise any objections. The
extent of these pleasurable phenomena is to the theologian
the argument from design ; to the evolutionist, evidence of
the extent to which mankind and its surroundings have in the
course of their development been mutually adapted. The direct
pain-producing sensations, however, are those which peculiarly
convince man of his absolute subjectivity to the phenomenal
world. The theologian, regarding man as the centre of the
universe, finds his rationale for pain in the supersensuous,
it is means to a Willenslduterung with transcendental effects ;
the evolutionist considers that it merely marks the limit to
which the present human type has adapted itself to its surround
ings. Here the evolutionist can bring less comfort than the
theologian, for the latter teaches the individual that he is
bearing pain with a purpose, i.e. with a view to future
pleasure. Can the philosopher of renunciation also offer
any remedy ? A painful sensation is not like a sensuous
desire ; i there can be no possibility of directly renouncing it.
If we turn to the theories of most of the thinkers we have
examined, we find them asserting thai} a knowledge of the real
nature and cause of the painful sensation the wider insight
which recognises man s true relation to the universe wherein
he is placed will make him indifferent to his personal
discomfort, and so free him from this phenomenal slavery.-
This is the practically identical view of Eckehart, Spinoza,
and Goethe. The intellect ceases to chafe against what it
recognises as an absolute necessity. To the vulgar mind it
might appear that an earthquake would be none the less
crushing a phenomenon, were its causes calculable, and the
7
98 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
catastrophe recognised as an absolutely necessary step in the
cosmic development ; nor, again, is it apparent how a tooth
ache is the less painful because its origin and pathology are
exactly understood. Nevertheless there can be small doubt
that the mental condition has a great influence over the
manner in which pain is endured. Not only is illness often
cured by mental excitement, but, what is more to our purpose,
consciousness of pain is lost. Where faith and superstition
are recognised as influencing factors, is it not perhaps con
ceivable that knowledge too may have its value ? Such at
least has been the opinion of more than one of the world s
great thinkers, and the problem is on this account worth the
investigation of the scientific psychologist.
If we turn to the last type of phenomenal influence we
have referred to, namely, that which leads to the creation of
desires and predispositions, whereby a standard of individual
pleasure and pain is produced we find ourselves in the
peculiar sphere of the renunciant. Here it seems perfectly
possible that the renunciation of a predisposition or desire
may diminish pain, and so lessen the positive or hostile side of
phenomenal slavery. In order to ascertain how renunciation
is possible we must examine briefly the origin of such pre
dispositions and desires. These affections arise from the peculiar
set of either mind or body. Under the term set I refer to
the result of influences such as race -development, social or
physical environment, whereunder the individual is to a great
extent purely subjective. In so far as the mind comes to any
conclusions of its own, and by these conclusions guides the body
or itself, in so far as it adopts a reasoned system of life and
belief it cannot be called subjective. Here there is no
question of phenomenal slavery. What we have to consider
is the tendency of the phenomenal world to form affections in
the individual. For the sake of brevity we shall term the
mental set, a predisposition ; the bodily set, a desire. First,
with regard to the desire : as a general rule, it is the out
come of the past development of the race. To this extent it
is almost beyond the power of the individual to renounce it.
His body and the desire are the outcome of a common growth
THE ETHIC OF KENUNCIATION 99
the desire is a physiological need. It is impossible to
renounce the desire to sleep, or to eat, or to have sexual
intercourse. On the other hand, these racial desires may
to a certain extent be varied, be diminished or exaggerated.
This variation in the desire is capable of becoming as
mental habit a standard of pleasure or pain. Here in the
variation is the sphere of the renunciant. To him the
problem which direction of variation he shall foster, which
he shall repress, becomes all-important. The answer to this
problem can only be ascertained by investigating the nature
of the particular desire, it becomes a matter of psychological
and physiological knowledge ; a clear insight into the causes
of the desire will point out which form of gratification is physio
logically useful, which is harmful. The man is freed from
phenomenal slavery by that renunciation which is based on
knoiuledge. The term harmful must be understood to refer
not only to direct injury to the individual, but to that which
is indirectly harmful to him by producing injury to his
fellows. It will indeed be found on investigation that as the
human type has been persistent in the struggle for exist
ence chiefly by its development of the social instinct, so that
variation which is harmful to others is in general checked by
the fact that it brings direct injury to the varying individual.
Finally, let us turn to the predisposition. The field for
inquiry is here so extensive, that it must suffice to note one
or two aspects of the subject. Predispositions exercise an
enormous influence over the life and the thought of the
human race ; it is within the bounds of possibility that the
individual actually comes into the world disposed to accept
the beliefs and modes of thought customary to his forefathers.
But at any rate long before he arrives at years when he can
investigate for himself, the customary methods of thought
and belief have been engrained in his mind ; his mind has
received a permanent set. Social and religious prejudices are
so grafted by youthful surroundings and early training upon
his nature that man does not stop to inquire whether they have
any rational bases, they have become predispositions, and he
treats them much as he does his innate physical desires. As
100 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
examples of such predispositions we may mention the beliefs
in the immortality of the soul and in the existence of a
masterful personal God in short, the two Buddhist delusions
of individuality and ritualism. These predispositions have
led the theologian to assert the truth of the belief owing to
the universality of its existence ; the anthropologist to inquire
whether man will not always arrive at the same mental con
ceptions under the influence of similar forces of development ;
and the evolutionist to suggest that something in these pre
dispositions may tend in the struggle for existence to preserve
the groups that possess them. For example, the tribe which
has evolved in some random manner the conception of immor
tality may be more fearless in battle than its neighbours, and
thus be the more likely to predominate ; or, again, a second
tribe which has attained to a strong belief in the existence of
a personal god, and thus possesses a centre for common worship
and a symbol for united action, may thereby be placed in a
position of advantage with regard to other groups having a
less definite religion, or no religion at all. We thus see how
a tribe with a prejudice may possibly tend to be a surviving
variation. 1 A predisposition or a prejudice having absolutely
no rational basis, may have a social value and tend to pre
serve an individual or group of individuals in the struggle for
existence. Do we not here catch a glimpse of how a nearly
universal predisposition may exist without our being able to
give it a rational basis? We can perhaps trace its historical
growth, we may see how it took root, and the mode in which
it has developed ; but the utmost we can assert is, that its
origin and permanence are due to the assistance it gives the
human race in the struggle for life. What is true of such pre
dispositions, and of the resulting prejudices or beliefs in the
mind of mankind as a whole, applies equally well to the
customary beliefs of smaller sections of human society. Such
beliefs may have absolutely no rational basis, may indeed be
demonstrably false, but the race, the tribe, the society may
1 There is little doubt in my own mind, that the survival of the Jewish
race has been largely due to two irrational beliefs, the one in the special efficacy
of their tribal god, and the other in the value of circumcision.
THE ETHIC OF KENUNCIATION 101
in the long run force them upon all or upon the majority of its
members, those who do not accept the belief being destroyed,
expelled, or ostracised. The deeper knowledge, the clearer
insight may show the individual that many beliefs are due
only to racial predispositions ; that they are intellectually
false and productive of pain and misery to the individual.
He may go so far as to renounce for himself all the Buddhist
delusions, but can such renunciation become a general rule ?
May not the non-renouncing sections of humanity ultimately
survive ? Will the race always force its predispositions as
factors of permanence upon the great mass of its members ?
For the sake of race survival may not the individual be com
pelled to believe what is intellectually absurd ? We can free
ourselves by study from our predispositions, but may we not
thus be opposing the interests of the race by eliminating
certain factors of its permanency ? As in the days of early
Christianity, mankind may again come to look upon the intellect
as prejudicial to its welfare. A movement akin to that of the
Salvation Army might carry society over a critical period when
its very existence hung in the balance, and humanity might
again believe with Luther that intellect is the devil s arch whore.
Herein lies one of the deepest and most momentous problems
of renunciation, and one which the philosophers of renuncia
tion have but lightly touched upon. This is the secret of our
modern pessimism and optimism, they are involved in the
impossibility or the possibility of permanent intellectual
progress for all classes. The answer given to this problem
will determine the value to be placed upon a life of intellectual
activity and the wisdom or folly of those who attempt to
enlarge the sphere of human knowledge. Does the human
mind, as the centuries roll by, tend to free itself from irrational
beliefs, and grasp things in their true relation to their sur
roundings ? Does it more and more succeed in casting off
phenomenal slavery by reducing its sensations to an intelligible
sequence? Do human predispositions; tend to take the firmer
basis of intellect, or must the individual always be ultimately
sacrificed to everything which, regardless of its intellectual truth
or falsehood, contributes to the preservation of the race ? Does
102 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
or does not surviving belief approximate more and more to
rational insight ? On the answers which are given to these
questions must largely depend the possibility of man s freedom
from phenomenal slavery. We shall not have long to wait
for these answers as far as concerns our own folk. In the
.great social and religious changes which are looming so
la rge in the near future, will intellect or market-place
rhetoric guide our people ?
THE ENTHUSIASM OF THE MAEKET-PLACE
AND OF THE STUDY 1
Who will absolve you bad Christians ? Study, I replied, and
Knowledge. Conrad Muth in a letter to Peter Eberbach, circa 1510
THERE are two types of human character which must have
impressed themselves even upon those least observant of the
phases of life which surround us. Nor is it only in observing
the present, but also in studying the past, that we find the
same two types influencing, each in its own peculiar fashion,
the growth of human thought and the forms of human society.
By studying the past I do not mean reading a popular
historical work, but taking a hundred, or better fifty, years in
the life of a nation, and studying thoroughly that period.
Each one of us is capable of such a study, although it may
require the leisure moments, not of weeks, but of years. It
means understanding, not only the politics of that nation
during those years ; not only what its thinkers wrote ; not
only how the educated classes thought and lived; but in
addition how the mass of the folk struggled, and what aroused
their feeling or stirred them to action. In this latter respect
more may often be learnt from folk-songs and broadsheets
than from a whole round of foreign campaigns. Any one
who has made some such study as I have suggested, will not
only have recognised these two opposing types of human
1 This lecture was delivered at South Place Institute, on Sunday, November
29, 1885, and afterwards printed as a pamphlet, dedicated to Henry Bradshaw,
a genuine man of the study.
104 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
character, but be better able to judge of the parts which they
have played in human development. Without asserting that
one of these types is thoroughly harmful, and that the other
is alone of real social value, we may still inquire whether the
one be not of more service to humanity than the other, and
whether we ought not to try and repress the one and cultivate
the other. If, on examining longer periods of human history, we
find that in the more developed extant societies the first type
is tending to recede before the second, we shall be considerably
aided in arriving at a judgment of their relative social value.
The two types which I am desirous of placing before you
this morning I term the " Man of the Market-Place," and the
" Man of the Study." Let me endeavour to explain to you
what meanings I attach to those names.
In the earlier forms of human society impulses to certain
lines of social conduct are transmitted from generation to
generation, either by direct contact between old and young,
or possibly by some hereditary principle. Upon these im
pulses the stability of the society depends ; they have been
evolved in the race-struggle for existence. Looked at from
an outside point of view, they form the social custom and
the current morality of that stage of society. Without them
the society would decay, and yet no man in that primitive state
understands when or how they have arisen. Viewed on the one
side as indispensable to the race, and on the other appearing
to have no origin in human reason or human power, it is not to
be wondered at if we find morality and custom in these early
_Jbrms of civilisation associated with the superhuman. j| To
give the strongest possible sanction to morality for on that
sanction race -existence depends it is associated with the
supersensuous, it becomes part of a religious cult. Immorality,
f- the only rational meaning of which is something anti-
Asocial, becomes sin; it plays a part in the relation of each
individual to the supernatural. Nor is it hard to under
stand how such a superstition might be a valuable factor in
race -preservation. On the scientific and historical basis
there is no difficulty whatever in explaining how morality
has come to have a supernatural value, nor why the belief in
THE MAEKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 105
a supernatural sanction should be so widespread. You may
be inclined to object : But every reasoning person considers
immorality as another term for what is anti-social ! This
may be quite true, but reasoning persons are not to be met with
on every Sabbath day s journey ; and I find vast numbers of
those with whom I come in contact still talk of morality
and immorality, of good and evil, as if they had an absolute or
abstract value, and were not synonymous with what is social
and anti-social. When a great modern thinker like Kant can
lay down the absurd proposition that the world exists in
order that man may have a field for moral action ; when from
thousands of voices in this land, from the platform and the press,
we hear vague cries for justice and morality, for human rights,
and for divine retribution, then indeed we become conscious
how widespread is the delusion that there is an absolute code
of morality or justice which is hidden somewhere in the
inner consciousness of each individual. In judging of
Christianity, not as a revelation, but as a system of morality,
we are often apt to give it too high praise, forgetting that to
the teaching of Jesus the Christ, carried to its legitimate
outcome in the Latin Fathers, modern Europe owes the
superstition that life is created for morality, not morality
created for life. I assert, that life exists for wider purposes
than mere morality ; morality is only a condition which
renders social life possible. I am moral, not because such is
the object of my life, but because by being so I gratify the
social impulses impressed upon me by early education, and
by hereditary instinct. Gratification of impulse brings
pleasure, and pleasure in life is one of the conditions necessary
to our grasping it and working it to the full extent of its rich
possibilities.
If we agree, then, that morality is what is social, and
immorality what is anti-social, that neither has an absolute
or supernatural value, we shall be led to inquire of any course
of action how it affects the welfare of society ; not only the
welfare of those towards whom the action may be directed, but
of him who is its source, for both alike belong to society.
To judge whether an action be moral or not we must investi-
106 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
gate its effects, iiot only on others, but on self. Now if the
things we had to deal with were all as simple as murder or
brute-sensuality, there would be no difficulty in judging their
effect on others or on self, in determining their anti-social
character. But most of our conduct in. human life is far
more difficult of analysis, far more complex in its bearings
on others and on self. In addition conduct often requires
an immediate decision. When a man decides rapidly on
his course of action, we say he is a man of character ; when
his decisions prove in the sequel to have been generally
correct, we attribute to him insight or wisdom. We look
upon him as a wise man, and endeavour to imitate him, or
to learn from him. The insight or wisdom we have thus
spoken of, and which is so intimately connected with
character, is the result of training, of mental discipline, or of
what in the broad sense of the word \ve may term education.
It is not only experience of men, but still more a knowledge
of the laws which govern human society, of the effects of
certain courses of action as manifested in history, nay even
of natural laws, whether mechanical or physiological, which
govern man because he is a part of nature ; it is all this which
makes up education. But more, this knowledge, this education,
in itself is not sufficient to form what we term a wise man ;
each truth learnt from science or history must have become
a part of man s existence ; the theoretical truth must form
such a part of his very being, that it influences almost
unconsciously every practical action ; the comparatively
trivial doings of each day must all be consistent with, I will
even say dictated by, those general laws which have been
deduced from a study of history and from a study of science. /
Then and then only a man s actions become certain, har
monious, and definite in purpose ; then we recognise that we
have to deal with a man of character; with a man whose
morality is something more than a superstition it is an
integral part of his thinking being. If a theory of life is
worth studying, let its propounder give evidence that it has
moulded his own character, that it has been the mainspring of
his own actions. There is no truer touchstone of the value
THE MAKKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 107
of a philosophical system. Examine the lives of the great
German metaphysicians, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, you
will find them men who were petulant, irritable, even cowardly
in action. Examine the life of a Spinoza and you will for the
first time understand his philosophy ; it was an element of
his being.
Lecturing from this platform nearly three years ago, I
described freethought not merely as the shaking off of dog
matism, but as the single-minded devotion to the pursuit of
truth. Deep thought, patient study, even the labour of a
whole life might be needed before a man obtained the right
to call himself a freethinker. Some of my audience, in the
discussion which followed, strongly objected to such a system
as leaving no place for morality, for the play of the emotions.
I was much struck by the objections at the time, as it showed
me what a gulf separated my conception of morality from that
of some of my audience. Practical morality was then, and is
still to me the gratification of the social passion in one s
actions. But in what fashion must this gratification take
place ? On the basis of those principles of human conduct
which we have deduced lnj study from history and from
science. As I said then the ignorant and the uneducated
cannot be freethinkers ; so I say now the ignorant and the
uneducated cannot be moral. As I said then freethought is
an ideal to which we can only approximate, an ideal which
expands with every advance of our positive knowledge ; so
I say now morality is an ideal of human action to which
we can only approximate an ideal which expands with
every advance of our positive knowledge. As the true free
thinker must be in possession of the highest knowledge of
his time, so he will be in possession of all that is known of
the laws of human development. He, and he only, is
capable of fulfilling his social instinct in accordance with
those laws. He, and he only, is capable of being really moral.
Morality is not the blind following of a social impulse, but a
habit of action based upon character, a habit moulded by that
knowledge of truth which must become an integral part of
our being.
108 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
Let me give you one or two examples of what I mean by
the relation of morality to knowledge. The question of
compulsory vaccination is one which can only be answered
by investigation of general laws and particular statistics, not
always easily accessible or easily intelligible when accessible ;
yet, notwithstanding this, the question has been dragged on
to the hustings, made a matter of human right, individual
liberty, and those other vague generalities which abound on
the market-place. Another good example is that of sexual
morality ; here the most difficult questions arise, which are
intimately connected with almost every phase of our modern
social life. These questions are extremely hard to answer ;
they involve not only a wide study of comparative history,
but frequently of the most complex problems in biology ; often
problems which that science, still only in its infancy, has
not yet solved. Such questions we ought to approach with
the most cautious, the most impartial, the most earnest minds,
because their very nature tends to excite our prejudices,
to thrust aside our intellectual rule, and so, to warp our
judgment. But what do we find in actual life ? These
questions are brought on to the market-place ; they are made
the subject of appeal on the one side to the supernatural, or to
some absolute code of morality, on the other side to strong
emotions, which, utterly untutored, are the natural outcome
of our strong social impulses. Where we might expect a calm
appeal to the results of science and the facts of human history,
we are confronted with the deity, absolute justice, the moral
rights of man, and other terms which are calculated to excite
strong feeling, while they successfully screen the yawning void
of our ignorance.
As a last example, let me point to a problem which is
becoming all -important to our age the great social change,
the economic reorganisation, which is pressing upon us.
We none of us know exactly what is coming ; we are only
conscious of a vast feeling of unrest, of discontent with our
present social organisation, which manifests itself, not in one
or two little groups of men, but throughout all the strata of
society. The socialistic movement in England would have
THE MAEKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 109
little meaning if we were to weigh its importance by the
existing socialist societies or their organs in the press. It is
because we find throughout all classes a decay of the old
conceptions of social justice and of the old principles of
social action a growing disbelief in once accepted economic
laws a tendency to question the very foundations of our
social system ; it is because of these manifestations that we
can speak of a great social problem before us. This problem
is one of the hardest which a nation can have to work out ;
one which requires all its energy, and all its intellect ; it is
fraught with the highest possibilities and the most terrible
dangers. Human society cannot be changed in a year,
scarcely in a hundred years ; it is an organism as complex
as that of the most differentiated type of physical life ; you
can ruin that organism as you can destroy life, but remould
it you cannot without the patient labour of generations, even
of centuries. That labour itself must be directed by know
ledge, knowledge of the laws which have dictated the rise
and decay of human societies, and of those physical influences
which manifest themselves in humanity as temperament, im
pulse, and passion. No single man, no single group of men,
no generation of men can remodel human society ; their in
fluence when measured in the future will be found wondrously
insignificant. They may, if they are strong men of the
market-place, produce a German Eeformation or a French
Eevolution ; but when the historian, not of the outside, but
of the inside, comes to investigate that phase of society before
and after the movement, what does he find ? A great deal of
human pain, a great deal of destruction. And of human
creation ? The veriest little ; new forms here and there
perhaps, but under them the old slave turning the old wheel ;
humanity toiling on under the old yoke ; the same round of
human selfishness, of human misery, of human ignorance
touched here and there, as of old, by the same human beauty,
the same human greatness.
It is because the man of the study recognises how little is
the all which even extended insight will enable him to do for
social change that he condemns the man of the market-place,
110 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
who not only thinks he understands the terms of the social
problem, but has even found its solution. The man of the
study is convinced that really to change human society re
quires long generations of educational labour. Human pro
gress, like Nature, never leaps ; this is the most certain of all
laws deduced from the study of human development. If this
be formulated in the somewhat obscure phase : " Social growth
takes place by evolution not by revolution," the man of the
market-place declares in one breath that his revolution is an
evolution, and in the next either sings some glorious chant,
a blind appeal to force, or informs you that he can shoulder
a ritle, and could render our present society impossible by
the use of dynamite, with the properties of which he is
well acquainted. Poor fellow ! would that he were as well
acquainted with the properties of human nature !
The examples I have placed before you may be sufficient
to show how much morality is a question not of feeling but
of knowledge and study. In a speech at the recent Church
Congress a theologian, a man of the market-place, declared
that he considered questions of ethics as lying outside the
field of the intellect ; that is one of the most immoral state
ments I have ever come across. 1 It causes one almost to
despair of one s country and its people, when it is possible
for the holders of such views to be raised to positions of
great social and educational influence !
You will feel, I know, that it is a very hard saying : The
ignorant cannot be moral. It is so opposed to all the Chris
tian conceptions of morality in which we ourselves have been
reared, and which have been impressed upon our forefathers
for generations. Morality with the Christian is a matter of
feeling ; obedience to a code revealed by a transcendental
manifestation of the deity. The hundreds of appeals made
weekly from the pulpits of this country, urging mankind to a
moral course of life, are appeals to the emotions, not to the
reason. In my sense of the words, they are made by men of
the market-place, not by men of the study. The Christian
1 [While the anarchist of the preceding paragraph has sunk into the abysm,
the theologian of this has now reached a bishopric.]
THE MAKKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 111
movement, as Mark Pattison has well pointed out, arose
entirely outside the sphere of educated thought. Unlike
modern freethought, it was not the outcome of the knowledge
and culture of its age. In its neglect of the great Greek
systems of philosophy, it was a return to blind emotion, even
to barbarism. \ This opposition of Christianity and Eeason
reached its climax in the second century, possibly with Ter-
tullian. " What," writes this Father, " have the philosopher
and Christian in common ? The disciple of Greece and the
disciple of heaven ? What have Athens and Jerusalem, the
Church and the Academy, heretics and Christians, in common ?
There is no more curiosity for us, now that Christ has come,
nor any occasion for further investigation, since we have the
Gospel. . . . The Son of God is dead ; it is right credible,
because it is absurd ; being buried, he has arisen ; it is certain,
because it is impossible."
Although there have been periods of history when Chris
tianity has stood in the van of intellectual progress, we must
yet hold that she has on the whole, and perhaps not un
naturally, exhibited a suspicion of human reason. She has
preferred the methods of the market-place to those of the
study ; men of words, prophets, and orators may be picked up
at every street corner ; the scholar, the man of thought re
quires a lifetime in the making, and, being made, will he any
longer be a Christian ? If, and if only, he finds Christianity
to be one with the highest knowledge of his age.
I have endeavoured to emphasise this relation of Chris
tianity to the intellect, because our current morality is essen
tially Christian is essentially a matter of blind feeling and
hence it comes about that we find the statement : The ignorant
cannot l)e moral, such a very hard saying. The freethinker,
placing on one side the supernatural, finding an all-sufficient
religion in the pursuit of truth, in the investigation of law,
will surely not be content to accept the old Christian con
ception of morality ? To leave his reason on this point out
of account, and to appeal to feeling as a test of truth ? Let
him remember what other teachers, in their way as great as or
greater than Jesus greater if we measure them by intel-
112 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
lectual power have taught. With Gotama the Buddha
knowledge was the key to the higher life ; right living the
outcome of self-culture. Moses the son of Mairnon, chief of
Jewish philosophers, tells us that evil is the work of infirm
souls, and that infirm souls shall seek the wise, the physicians of
the soul. Averroes, the greatest of mediaeval freethinkers, whom
Christian art depicted with Judas crushed in the Jaws of
Satan, asserted that knowledge is the only key to perfect
living. That Spinoza taught that all evil arises from confused
ideas, from ignorance, is more generally known. If the philo
sophers, as Tertullian has declaimed, are the patriarchs and
prophets of heretics, then surely we freethinkers should attend
to what they have taught ! But I can give you a still more
striking instance of how the men of the study have based
morality upon knowledge. I refer to that little band of real
workers, to the Humanists of the early sixteenth century.
Men like Erasmus, Sebastian Brant, and Conrad Muth were
working for a real reformation of the German people on the
basis of education, of knowledge, of that progress which alone
is sure, because it is based on the reason. These men, one
and all, identified immorality with ignorance ; the immoral
man with the fool. Feared on the one side by the monks,
abused on the other by the Lutherans, they were asked : Who
will absolve you bad Christians ? Study/ they replied, and
Knowledge. It were instructive, had we time, to see how
the labour of these men of the study was swept away by the
popular passion roused by the men of the market-place.
Suffice it to say that Luther described evil-doing as dis
obedience to a supernatural code ; sin as a want of belief in
Jesus the Christ ; and reason as the archwhore and devil s
bride. Appealing to popular ignorance and blind emotion,
he reimposed upon half Europe the Christian conception of
morality ; and we freethinkers of to-day have again to start
from the standpoint of the Humanists : Study and Knowledge
alone absolve from sin ; morality is impossible to the ignorant.
If you will agree with me, at least for the purposes of my
present lecture, that the ideal moral nature is a character
moulded by study and knowledge a mind which is not only
THE MARKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 113
in possession of facts, but in which the laws drawn from
these facts have become modes of thought inexplicably wound
up with its being, then we may proceed further and inquire :
How can this ideal be approached ? What is the motive
force behind it ? How does it affect our practical conduct ?
How can this ideal be approached ? If immorality be one
with ignorance, this question is not hard to answer. The moral
life to the freethinker is like the religious life, it is a growth
a growth in knowledge. As the freethinker s religion is the
pursuit of truth and his sole guide the reason, so his morality
consists in the application of that truth to the practical side of
life. The freethinker s morality is a part of his religious nature,
even as much as the Christian s is part of his. More than
once a Christian has said to me : "I do not deny that you
present freethinkers may be moral. You have been brought
up in the Christian faith, and its morality still influences
your lives. How will it be, however, with your children and
your children s children, who have never felt that influence ? " *
"Never felt that influence?" I reply. "No! but the
influence of something more human, something which is
matter not of belief, but of knowledge ; something which can
guide their life infinitely more surely than a supernatural code.
The morality which springs from the human, the rational
guidance of the social impulse, is ten times more stable than
the morality which is based upon the emotional appeals of a
dogmatic faith." When the Christian comes to me and prates
of his morality, the enthusiasm of the market-place masters me,
I feel like Hamlet scorning Laertes love for Ophelia
Why, I will fight with him upon this theme
Until my eyelids will no longer wag.
Swounds, show me what thou lt do :
Woo t weep ? woo t fight ? woo t fast ? woo t tear thyself ?
"Woo t drink up eisel ? eat a crocodile ?
I ll do it. Dost thou come here to whine ?
1 This remarkable argument, were it valid, would demonstrate that there
was no morality before Christ, or among heathen nations, whereas no herd of
men, however savage, can continue to exist without a social code, a morality of
some sort.
8
114 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
To outface me with leaping in her grave ?
Be buried quick with her, and so will I :
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart ! Nay, an thou lt mouth,
I ll rant as well as thou.
That we freethinkers have no moral code, or only the
remnants of an antique faith prejudices gained from a
Christian education which cling like limpets to the rock of
our intellectual being is the libel of ignorance. We have
a morality, and those who hold it assert that it stands above
the Christian dispensation, as the Christian above the Hebrew.
Like the Hebrew, however, it is a matter of law, and tbe law
giver is Eeason. Beason. is the only lawgiver, by whom the
intellectual forces of the nineteenth century can be ordered
and disciplined. The only practical method of making society
as a whole approach the freethinker s ideal of morality is to
educate it, to teach it to use its reason in guiding race instincts
and social impulses. Understand what I mean by the end of
education. I do not mean mere knowledge of scientific or historic
facts; but these facts co-ordinated into laws, and these laws made
so much a mode of thought, that they are the received rules of
human action. The learned man may be in no sense of the
word educated, and is thus frequently immoral. Often what
we are accustomed to call education is merely the means to its
attainment. You must give your folk if you wish it to be
moral, to have social stability not only the means of educa
tion, but the leisure to pursue that means to its end. Let us
put this statement in a more direct form. Society depends for
its stability on the morality of the individual. The morality
of the individual is co-ordinate with his education. It is there
fore a primary function of society to educate its members.
It may even seem to some of you a platitude when I say
that to improve the morality of society you must improve its
education. Yet how far is this principle carried into practice
by our would-be moral reformers ? Do they set themselves
down to the life -long task of slowly but surely educating
their fellows ? Or do they rush out into the market-place,
THE MAEKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 115
proclaim that God bids men do this or that ; that this or
that course of action is virtuous, is righteous, is moral, without
once troubling to define their words ? How many such
moral reformers have made that study of science and history,
have gained that knowledge of social and physical law which
would enable them to be moral themselves, to say nothing of
guiding their fellows ? In many of the complex problems of
modern life, we freethinkers can only say, that we are
struggling towards the light, that we are endeavouring to
gain that knowledge which will lead us to their solution.
And yet how often does the man of the market-place rush
by us proclaiming what he thinks an obvious truth, appealing
to the blind passions of the ignorant mass of humanity, and
drawing after him such a flood of popular energy that those
germs of intellectual life and rational action which for years
we may have been laboriously implanting disappear in the
torrent ! After the flood has subsided, when human life has
returned, as history shows us it invariably does, to its old
channels, the men of the study come back to what may be
left of their old labours and begin afresh their endless process
of education. Some few will be disheartened and lose all faith,
but the many know that the work in which they are engaged
requires the slow evolution of centuries, not to accomplish,
because there is no end to human knowledge, no end to the
discovery of truth, but even to manifest itself in its results.
The man of the study has no desire to leave a name as the
propounder of an idea ; he is content to have enjoyed the
fulness of life, to have passed a life religious, because it is
rational, because it has been spent in accordance with the
highest knowledge of his day, and moral, because it has been
directed to social ends, to the purposes of education, to the
discovery and spread of truth.
It is easy to see how the man who has time for education,
for self-culture, may strive towards the freethinker s standard
of morality. But what about the toiler, the man whose days
are spent in the hard round of purely mechanical labour ? I
can only reply that so long as such a man has no time for
the development of his intellectual nature, he cannot be
116 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
moral in my sense of the word. He may follow instinctively a
certain course of action, which may not in ordinary matters be
directly anti- social, but in the complex problems of life he
will as often go wrong as go right. The existence of large
masses of men in our present society incapable of moral action
is one of the gravest questions of the time : it indicates the
instability of our social forms. It places at the disposal of
the men of the market-place a power of stirring up popular
passion, the danger of which it is hard to exaggerate. That
education is now a privilege of class, is the strongest argument
which our socialistic friends could adopt if they knew how to
use it aright, but it is not one with which they can appeal to
the blind feeling of the masses. If all social reform be, as I
am convinced it is, the outcome of increased morality alone,
and if morality be a matter of education and of knowledge,
then all real social reform can only proceed step by step with
the slow, often hardly perceptible, process of popular education.
What a field of social action lies here for all who wish to
enjoy the fulness of life ! Here the freethinker s mission is at
once religious and moral. His morality not perhaps in the
sense of the market-place, but at least in that of the study
is socialism, his religious cult is that pursuit of truth,
which, when obtained, directs his moral, his social action.
Would that more men of learning were so educated as to recog
nise this new code of social action ! We want education for
the masses, not that the workman may make ten good screws
where he formerly made nine bad ones, but that every member
of society may be capable of moral, that is, of social action.
Men of science are always asserting the need of technical
education for the English artisan, if he is to survive in the
battle for existence with German and American rivals. A more
pitiable plea for technical education could hardly be imagined.
Freethinkers demand technical education for the workman,
because we believe that it enables him to replace a mechanical
routine by a series of intelligent acts ; we believe that when
he is accustomed to intelligent, rather than to empirical
action in handicraft, he will no longer be content with an
unreasoned code of social action ; he will begin to inquire and
THE MAKKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 117
to investigate ; his morality also will become a matter of
thought and of knowledge, no longer of faith and of custom.
That would indeed be a great step towards social reform, a
great advance in social stability. To the freethinkers of the
old school, who fancy their sole mission is to destroy Chris
tianity, we of the new school cry : Go and study Christianity ;
learn what it, as a purely human institution, has in 1900
years done and failed to do, then only will you be in a position
in destroying to create; to create that religion which alone
can play a great part in the future. To the socialists of the
old school, who think that revolutionary agitation, paper
schemes of social reconstruction, and manifestoes appealing to
class passion, are the only possible modes of action, we of the
new school cry : Go out and educate, create a new morality,
the basis of which shall be knowledge, and socialism will
come, although in a shape which none of us have imagined.
It may need the labour of centuries, but it is the one method
of action, which at each step gives us sure foothold. To the
firm ground of reason trusts the man who would build for
posterity.
So much, then, in answer to our first question of the
method by which we can approach the moral ideal.
Our second question: Wliat is the motive force behind this
morality ? leads me to a point, which has given the title to
this lecture, and presents undoubted difficulty to those who
have thrown aside all appeal to the emotions as the motive
force in conduct. The energy which enables a man of the
market-place to carry out his projects, may be measured by
the amount of enthusiasm he is capable of raising among his
fellow men. To create enthusiasm by an appeal to the
emotions, and direct it to a definite goal, is essentially the
method of the man of the market-place. He does not try
to move men through their reasons, he does not try to
educate them, but he strives to influence their feelings, to
excite their passions, and, in so doing, to raise their enthu
siasm for the cause he has at heart. \ Party passion, super
stition, religious hatred, national prejudices, class - feeling,
every phase of individual desire or of race-impulse, is made
118 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
use of by the man of the market-place to raise the excite
ment necessary for the accomplishment of his purpose.
Where can the man of the study find a motive force, an
enthusiasm like this ? How can his calm appeal to the
reason, his slow process of education, ever produce the
enthusiasm needful for the achievement of a great end ? Is
there no enthusiasm of the study which can be compared
with the enthusiasm of the market-place ? This is the
question we have to answer. Here is the void which so
many have felt in the freethinker s faith, in that morality
which is based on knowledge. What is there in the calm
pursuit of truth to call forth enthusiasm, what great social
heroism can be based on a study of the laws of human life ?
I do not know whether any of you ever read the sermons
of Christian divines, but for me they form a frequent source
of amusement and instruction. They afford an insight into
human character, human ignorance, and human striving,
such as hardly manifests itself elsewhere. A theologian,
preaching before the University of Cambridge a few years
since, made use of the following words :
" But what is enthusiasm, but, as the term imports, the
state of one who is habitually evQeos, possessed by some
power of God ? "
The sentence is interesting, not only as bearing upon the
character of the preacher, who could dismiss with a philo
logical quibble the possibility of an enthusiasm among free
thinkers, but also as clearly marking the gulf which separates
the enthusiasm of the market-place from that of the study.
Perhaps, indeed, the gulf is so great that we ought not to
call the two things by the same name, yet to do so is con
venient if only for the sake of the contrast.
The enthusiasm of the market-place is, as our theologian
expresses it, the state of one who is possessed (or rather
imagines he is possessed) by some superhuman power. It
is not a state of rational inspiration, but rather of frenzy,
of religious, social, or political fanaticism. It is the state of
excitement to which the ignorant may be aroused on the
one hand, by confused ideas taking possession of their fancy,
THE MAEKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 119
or, on the other hand, by a rhetorical appeal to their pre
judice and to their passion. Enthusiasm of the market
place is so prevalent to-day that we have not to go far in
search of samples. It is rampant in our political and social
life. The politicians to whom we entrust the destinies of our
country are essentially men of the market-place ; men who
have won their present positions by appeal to class prejudice
and to passionate ignorance. The politician who discusses a
bill considering its social value, who does not speak from
a party standpoint, and who tries to reason in the House, is
scarcely yet known. The present Prime Minister raises
enthusiasm among a section of his countrymen by express
ing his horror at the wave of infidelity which he tells us is
sweeping across the land ; the late Prime Minister raises
enthusiasm in another section of his countrymen by employ
ing his leisure in defending what he terms the majestic
process of creation described in the first chapter of Genesis.
When a writer talks of " the detachment and collection of
light, leaving in darkness as it proceeded the still chaotic
mass from which it was detached/ we recognise how
hopelessly ignorant he is of the conceptions of modern
science as to light. We demand what intellectual right he
has to criticise what he describes as the vain and boastful
theories of modern thought. We cry : Understand, go
into the school and learn, before you come into the market
place and talk. Mr. Gladstone, in his recent article in the
Nineteenth Century, writes again that : " We do not hear the
authority of Scripture impeached on the ground that it
assigns to the Almighty eyes and ears, hands, arms, and
feet ; nay, even the emotions of the human being." Now,
these are precisely the strongest arguments which free
thinkers at present use against Scripture, and which many
great philosophers have used in the past : " The under
standing, will, and intelligence, ascribed to God," says
Spinoza, " can have no more in common with our human
faculties than the Dog a sign in the heavens has with the
barking animal we call a dog on earth." Is Mr. Gladstone
ignorant alike of past and present ? Those of you who wish
120 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
to study enthusiasm of the market-place should read his
article, notably the last two pages, wherein he tilts at the
scientific doctrine of evolution as Don Quixote tilted at
the windmill. The language is magnificent, the rhetoric is
unsurpassed, only there is an utter absence of logical thought,
or of the spirit of scholarly investigation. If our political
leaders make such statements, what shall we say of them ?
Are they intellectually inferior men, or are they intellectually
dishonest ? Let us content ourselves by describing them as
men of the market-place.
Such enthusiasm as I have described an enthusiasm in
the sense of the Cambridge theologian based upon prejudice,
not upon reason, is an impossibility for the man of the study.
If this is all enthusiasm means, then the ideal freethinker
must be without it. But is there nothing which can take its
place ? Nothing which can be termed enthusiasm of the
study ? I think there is, although as its strength lies in
calmness not in fanaticism, in persistence rather than petu
lance, it is not easy to make it manifest to those who have
not experienced it as a motive power in action.
The enthusiasm of which I speak springs from the desire
of knowledge. You cannot deny the existence of this desire,
amounting in many cases to an absolute passion. Men have
sacrificed everything, even their life, in the pursuit of truth.
Nor was the spirit which moved all of them ambition : many
neither sought nor knew anything of fame. Granted that
knowledge plays a great part in the struggle for existence, it
is not hard to understand how the pursuit of truth has become
a passion in a portion of mankind. All life which does not
grasp the laws of the social and physical world surround
ing it, is of necessity cramped and suffering ; its sphere of
action is limited, and it cannot enjoy existence to the full.
Increased knowledge brings with it increased activity ; life
becomes an intelligible whole, every physical law without is
found to be one with a mental process within ; crude con
ceptions of a distinction between matter and spirit fade
away. That process of science which Mr. Gladstone speaks
bitterly of as converting the world into a huge mechanism,
THE MAEKET-PLACE AND THE STUDY 121
is grasped as the one process by which the world becomes
intelligible spiritual, if you will. Physical law and social
law become as much facts of the intellect as any mental
process. The truth gained by study becomes a part of a
man s intellectual nature, and it is as impossible for him to
contradict it in action as to destroy a part of his own body.
The man of the study would as soon think of breaking through
a social law the truth of which he had discovered by historical
research, as of acting contrary to a physical law ; both would
be alike destructive of a part of his intellectual nature. It
is this! consistency of action, this uniform obedience to rational
law, which gives the man of the study character, raises his
morality from a matter of feeling to a matter of reason. The
steady persistency which arises when knowledge of truth,
social and physical, has become a part of man s intellectual
nature, is what I term the enthusiasm of the study. It is
this enthusiasm of the study which, I believe, must be at the
back of all really social action. - Enthusiasm of the market
place may for the moment appear to move mountains, but it
is an appearance only. The reaction comes, and when the flood
has subsided we find how little the religious, the social, or
the political fanatic has in truth accomplished ! The froth
remains the name, the institution, the form but the real
social good is too often what the mathematician terms a
negative quantity. The long, scarcely perceptible swell of
the sea may be more dangerous to an ironclad than the storm
which breaks over it. So it is that the scarcely perceptible
influence of enthusiasm of the study may with the centuries
achieve more than all the strong eloquence of the market
place. It is faith in this one principle which makes us
struggle towards the ideal of freethought, which makes us
proclaim reason and knowledge as the sole factors of moral
action ; nay, which makes us believe that the future may
bring a social regeneration for our folk, if in the social storms
of the future it trusts for guidance to the enthusiasm of
the study rather than to the enthusiasm of the market
place.
If I have made my meaning in the least clear to you, it
122 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
would seem almost idle to attempt an answer to my third
question : What effect should these doctrines have on our
: practical conduct ? To cultivate in ourselves the persistent
enthusiasm of the study; to endeavour by every means in
! our power to assist the education of others who have not the
; like means of intellectual development ; to insist that moral
problems shall be solved not on the basis of customary
morality or individual prejudice, but solely by a thorough
investigation of physical and social law ; to repress so far as
lies in our power those men of the market-place, who render
our political life an apotheosis of ignorance, not a field for
the display of a nation s wisdom ; to recollect that inspiration
and blind will, the prophet and the martyr, are not wanted in
this our nineteenth century, that they belong to the past ; to
refuse, should any man cry out that he has discovered a great
truth, to listen to any emotional appeal, but to demand the
rational grounds of his faith, however great be his name or
respected his authority ; to refuse belief to any opinion,
although it be held by the many, until we find a rational
basis for its existence ; shortly, to consider all things which
are not based on the firm ground of reason subject to the
sacred right of doubt ; to treat all mere belief as delusion, and
to reckon the unknown not as a field for dogma, but as a
problem to be solved ; to act thus and think thus, surely
is to allow the doctrines of freethought to influence our
practical conduct ? It is to convert the market-place into the
study. And if his life be spent in only struggling towards
these ideals, in the long task of learning how to live, may we
not at least place as an epitaph over our freethinker, Robert
Browning s lines to the old Humanist who perished before he
had satisfied his craving for knowledge :
Did not he magnify the mind, show clear
Just what it all meant ?
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it :
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
HISTOEY
Alle wahre Geschiclite hat iiberall zuerst einen religiosen Zweck gehabt,
und ist von religiusen Ideen ausgegangen.
Schleiermacher.
VI
MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 1
PROF. SCHAAESCHMIDT, in his excellent preface to Spinoza s
Korte VerJiandeling van God, etc. (Amsterdam, 1869), has
drawn attention to the somewhat one-sided view usually
taken of Spinoza s position in the evolution of thought : the
importance attributed to the influence of Descartes, and the
slight weight given to the Jewish writers. He concludes
his considerations with the remark : " Attamen in gravis-
simis rebus ab eo (Cartesio) differt et his ipsis cum Judasorum
philosophia congruit, quorum quidem orthodoxiam repudi-
avit, ingenium ipsum et mentem refcinuit." (Praefatio xxiv.)
The subject is all the more important because even an
historian like Kuno Fischer (Gesch. der neuern Philos., 3rd
ed., 1880) still regards Spinoza as a mere link after Descartes
in the chain of philosophical development, rejecting the view that
he belongs rather to Jewish than to Christian Philosophy.
The hypothesis that Spinoza was very slightly influenced by
Hebrew thought has become traditional, and is to be found
in the most recent English works on Spinoza. Mr. Pollock
writes that the influence of Maimonides on the pure philo
sophy of Spinoza was comparatively slight (p. 94). Dr.
Martineau tells us somewhat dogmatically that " no stress
can be laid on the evidence of Spinoza s indebtedness to
Eabbinical philosophy" (p. 56). These opinions seem in
part based on a perusal of Maimonides More Nebucliim and
1 Reprinted from Mind : a Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy.
No. 31.
126 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
of Joel s ZUT Genesis der Lehre Spinozas (1871), taken in
conjunction with Mr. W. E. S or ley s " Jewish Mediaeval
Philosophy and Spinoza" in Mind, No. 19. Neither Mr.
Pollock nor Dr. Martineau seems acquainted with Maimonides
Yad Hachazakah. It is the relation of this work to Spinoza s
Ethica to which I wish at present to refer. 1
Maimonides (1135-1204) completed his More Nebucldm
about 1190, its aim being to explain on the ground of reason
the many obscure passages of Scripture and apparently
irrational rites instituted by Moses. Hence the book was
termed the " Guide of the Perplexed," being intended to
lighten the difficult path of Biblical study. As might easily
be supposed, it is only concerned in the second place with
philosophical ethics. The influence of such a book on
Spinoza is, as we might anticipate, most manifest in the
Tractatus Theoloyico-Politicus. The Yad Hachazakah, how
ever, or the " Mighty Hand," written some ten years
previously, has for greater importance for the student of
Spinoza s Ethica. Its author originally termed it " The
Twofold Law," i.e. the written and the traditional law Bible
and Talmud, and under fourteen headings or books con
sidered some of the most important problems in theology
and ethics. Portions of the Yad were in 1832 translated by
Herman Hedwig Bernard, and published in Cambridge
under the title : The Main Principles of the Creed and Ethics
of the Jews exhibited in selections from the Yad Hachazakah of
Maimonides. Of this book I propose to make use in the
following remarks on the intellectual resemblance between
o
Spinoza and Maimonides. 2 I shall omit all matter which
1 While on the subject of works concerning Spinoza and Jewish Philosophy
I may give the following titles : E. Saisset : " Maimonide et Spinoza," Ilcmie
tfes deux Mondcs, 1862 ; Salomo Rnbinus : Spinoza und Maimonides, Vienna,
1868.
2 Two other translations of the First Book of the Yad may be mentioned,
both "edited" by the Polish Rabbi, Elias Soloweyczik. The first into German
(Konigsberg, 1846) omits the last or fifth part of the First Book containing :
"The Precepts of Repentance." The second into English (Nicholson, 1863)
nominally contains all five parts, but really omits many of their most interesting
sub-chapters (e.g., Part III., cc. v.-vii., on the relation of a scholar to his teacher
and on respect for the wise). This English edition, too, loses much of its
scientific value owing to the omission or perversion of many paragraphs where
MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 127
has no direct bearing on Spinoza s Ethica, however interesting
it may otherwise be, and endeavour to make allowance for
the age and theologico- philosophical language in which
Maimonides wrote. We have rather to consider the spirit
in which Spinoza read the Yad than that in which the Yad
itself was composed.
Let us first of all consider Maimonides conception of
God. This is contained in the " Precepts relating to the
Foundations of the Law," and the " Precepts relating to
Kepentance," especially in the chapters entitled by Bernard
" On the Deity and the Angels" (p. 71), and "On the Love
of God and the true way of serving him" (p. 314), which
correspond roughly to Ethica i. and v. of Spinoza. Maimo
nides, to start with, sweeps away all human attributes and
affections from the Godhead. God has neither body nor
frame, nor limit of any kind ; he has none of the accidental
the editor has with a very false modesty thought Maimonides too outspoken for
modern readers. On the title-page stand the words : Translated from the
Hebrew into English by several Learned Writers." The chief of these
"Learned Writers" is Bernard, who has been freely used without apparent
acknowledgment. Portions of the remainder appear to be translated from
the German, and not directly from the Hebrew. Appended to this English
edition is a translation of the fifth Chapter of Book xiv. of the Yad : i.e.
"Laws concerning Kings and their Wars." Whatever may have been the
causes which gave rise to this so-called English translation, it must be
noted that Soloweyczik s German translation is an independent work
suffering from none of these faults, and of considerable value to the student of
Maimonides.
Before entering upon a comparison of the intellectual relation of Maimonides
to Spinoza, I may refer to a close connection between Spinoza s method of life
and Maimonides theory of how a wise man should earn his livelihood. It
seems to me the keynote of Spinoza s life at the optical bench, his refusal of the
professorial chair. " Let," writes Maimonides, " thy fixed occupation be the
study of the Law" (i.e. divine wisdom), "and thy worldly pursuits be of
secondary consideration." After stating that all business is only a means to
study, in that it provides the necessities of life, he continues : "He who
resolves upon occupying himself solely with the study of the Law, not attending
to any work or trade, but living on charity, denies the sacred name and heaps
up contumely upon the Law. Study must have active labour joined with it, or
it is worthless, produces sin, and leads the man to injure his neighbour." . . .
" It is a cardinal virtue to live by the work of one s hands, and it is one of the
great characteristics of the pious of yore, even that whereby one attains to all
respect and felicity in this and the future world." (After Soloweyczik, Part
III., chap. iii. 5-11.) Why does Spinoza s life stand in such contrast to
that of all other modern philosophers ? Because his life at least, if not his
philosophy, has an oriental character !
128 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
qualities of bodies " neither composition nor decomposition ;
neither place nor measure ; neither ascent nor descent ;
neither right nor left ; neither before nor behind ; neither
sitting nor standing; neither does he exist in time, so that
he should have a beginning or an end or a number of years ;
nor is he liable to change, since in him there is nothing
which can cause a change in him" (B. 78). Add to this,
God is one, but this unity is not that of an individual or a
material body, " but such an One that there is no other
Unity like his in the Universe" (B. 73). That God has
similitude or form in the Scripture is due only to an
" apparition of prophecy " ; while the assertion that God
created man in his own image refers only to the soul or
intellectual element in man. It has no reference to shape
or to manner of life, but to that knowledge which consti
tutes the "quality" of the soul (B. 106). The "pillar of
wisdom" is to know that this first Being exists, and "that
he has called all other beings into existence, and that
all things existing, heaven, earth, and whatever is between
them, exist only through the truth of his existence, so that
if we were to suppose that he did not exist, no other thing
could exist" (B. 71). Among the propositions which Spinoza,
in the Appendix to Ethica i., tells us that he has sought to
prove are these : that God exists necessarily ; " quod sit
unicus ; . . . quod sit omnium rerum causa libera, et quo-
modo ; quod oninia in Deo sint, et ab ipso ita pendeant, ut
sine ipso nee esse nee concipi possint," words which might
almost stand as a translation of Maimonides. Compare also
Ethica i. 14 and Corollary, and 15.
That God is not divisible (B. 73) Spinoza proves, i. 13 ;
that he is without limit, i. 19, or better, Principia Cartesii, 19 ;
that God is incapable of change, i. 20, Coroll. 2 ; the notion
that God has body or form is termed a "childish fancy," i. 15,
Scholium ; while the infinite and eternal nature of God is
asserted at the very commencement of the Ethica. Add to
this that Maimonides conception of the Deity, without being
professedly pantheistic, is yet extremely anti - personal and
diffused. Still more striking is the coincidence when we turn
MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 129
to the denial of human affections. Maimonid.es tells us that
with God " there is neither death nor life like the life of a
living body : neither folly nor wisdom, like the wisdom of a
wise man ; neither sleep nor waking ; neither anger nor
laughter ; neither joy nor sorrow ; neither silence nor speech,
like the speech of the sons of men" (B. 79). Compare with
this Spinoza s assertions that the intellect of God differs toto
coelo from human intellect (i. 17, Schol.), and that "God is
without passions, and is not affected by any emotion of joy or
sorrow" "He neither loves nor hates any one" (v. 17 and
Coroll.).
Curiously enough, while both Maimonides and Spinoza
strip God of all conceivable human characteristics, they yet
hold it [possible for the mind of man to attain to some, if an
imperfect, knowledge of God, and make the attainment of such
knowledge the highest good of life. There would be some
danger of self-contradiction in this matter, if their conception
of the Deity had not ceased to be a personal one, and become
rather the recognition of an intellectual cause or law running
through all phenomena which, showing beneath a material
succession an intellectual sequence or mental necessity, is for
them the Highest Wisdom, to be acquainted with which
becomes the end of human life. This intellectual relation of
man to God forms an all-important feature in the ethics of
both Maimonides and Spinoza ; it is in fact a vein of mystic
gold which runs through the great mass of Hebrew thought. 1
Before entering upon Maimonides conception of the rela
tion of God to man, it may be as well to premise what he
understands by intelligence. The Eabbinical writers oppose
the term quality (or property*) to the term matter (B. Note,
1 The Talmudic picture of the world to come, Avhere the righteous sit with
their crowns on their heads delighting in the shining glory of the Shechinah "
is thus interpreted : their crowns denote intelligence or wisdom, while
"delighting in the glory of the Shechinah" signifies that they know more of
the truth of God than while in this dark and abject body. The attainment of
wisdom as the self-sufficient end of life is one of the highest and most emphasised
lessons of the Talmud and its commentators. The strong reaction against a
merely formal knowledge at the beginning of our era led the founder of
Christianity and his earlier followers to a somewhat one-sided view of life which
neglected this all-important truth.
9
130 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
p. 82) ; most frequently, and in the Yad invariably, when these
terms are opposed, the former signifies intelligence or thought ;
so that in the language of Spinoza we may very well call them
thought and extension. If we leave out of account the angels,
to whom Maimonides, rather on doctrinal and theological
than on philosophical grounds, assigned an anomalous position,
we find that all things in the universe are composed of matter
and quality (i.e. extension and thought), though possessing
these attributes in different degrees. These degrees form the
basis of all classification and individuality (B. 82-84). We
now arrive at a proposition which may be said to form the
very foundation of Spinoza s Ethica : " You can never see
matter without quality, nor quality without matter, and it is
only the understanding of man which abstractedly parts the
existing body and knows that it is composed of matter and
quality" (B. 105). This coexistence of matter and quality,
or extension and thought, is carried, as in Spinoza s case,
throughout all being. Even "all the planets and orbs are
beings possessed of soul, mind, and understanding" (B. 97).
Spinoza, in the Scholium to Ethica ii. 13, remarking on the
union of thought and extension in man, continues " nam ea,
quse hucusque ostendimus, admoduin communia sunt, nee
magis ad homines quam ad reliqua Individual pertinent, qu?e
oninia, quamvis diver sis gradilus, animata tamen sunt." The
parallelism is all the more striking in that in this very
Scholium a classification is suggested based on the degrees
wherein the two attributes are present in individuals. Dr.
Martineau, in a note on this passage (p. 190), remarks on a
superficial resemblance between Giordano Bruno and Spinoza :
" Bruno animates things to get them into action ; Spinoza to
fetch them into the sphere of intelligence" It will be seen at
once how Spinoza coincides on this point with Maimonides,
who wished to explain how it is that all things in their
degree know the wisdom of the Creator and glorify him.
Each intelligence, according to the latter philosopher, can in
its degree know God ; yet none know God as he knows him
self. From this it follows that the measure of man s know
ledge of God is his intelligence. With regard to this intelli-
MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 131
gence Maimonid.es speaking of it as that " more excellent
knowledge which is found in the soul of man " identifies it
with the " quality " of man, i.e. his thought-attribute ; this
" quality " of man, indeed, is for him identical with the soul
itself (B. 105). The bearing of all this on Spinoza s theo-
sophical conceptions must be apparent ; yet it is but a stage
to a far more important coincidence, which lies in the prin
ciple : that the knowledge of God is always associated in an
equal degree with the love of God. This is what Spinoza
termed the " Amor Dei intellectualis" Understanding the
work of God is " an opening to the intelligent man to love
God," writes Maimonides (B. 82). Further, " a man, however,
can love the Holy One, blessed be he ! only by the knowledge
which he has of him ; so that his love will be in proportion
to his knowledge : if this latter be slight, the former will also
be slight ; but if the latter be great, the former also will be
great. And therefore a man ought solely and entirely to
devote himself to the acquisition of knowledge and under
standing, by applying himself to those sciences and doctrines
which are calculated to give such an idea of his Creator as it
is in the power of the intellect of man to conceive" (B. 321).
This intellectual love of God is for Maimonides the highest
good ; the bliss of the world to come will consist in the
knowledge of the truth of the Shechinah ; the greatest worldly
happiness is to have time and opportunity to learn wisdom
(i.e. knowledge of God), and this maximum of earthly peace
will be reached when the Messiah comes, for his government
will give the required opportunities (B. 308, 311, etc.).
Furthermore, the intensity of this intellectual love of God, of
this pursuit of wisdom, is often insisted upon ; the whole soul
of the man must be absorbed in it " it cannot be made fast
in the heart of a man unless he be constantly and duly
absorbed in the same, and unless he renounce everything in
the world except this love " (B. 320). It will be seen at once
how closely this approaches Spinoza s "Ex his clare intelligimus,
qua in re nostra salus, sen Beatitudo, seu Libertas consistit ;
nempe in constanti et seterno erga Deum Arnore " (v. 36,
Schol.), and " Hie erga Deum Amor summum bonum est, quod
132 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
ex dictamine Kationis appetere possumus" (v. 20). Spinoza s
" third kind of intellection," his knowledge of God, is associated
with the renunciation of all worldly passions, all temporal
strivings and fleshly appetites ; it is the replacing of the
obscure by clear ideas, the seeing things under the aspect of
eternity, i.e. in their relation to God. There is in fact in
Spinoza s system a strong notion of a renunciation or
rebirth/ by means of which a man becomes free, thenceforth
to be led " by the Spirit of Christ, that is, by the idea of God,
which alone is capable of making man free" (iv. 68, Schol.).
This notion of rebirth or renunciation has very characteristic
analogues in the Nirvana of Buddha and the Ewige
Geburt of Meister Eckehart. It is, however, peculiarly
strong in the theosophy of Maimonides. First recalling to
the reader s mind that the contemplation of the highest
truths of the Godhead has been figuratively termed by
"Rabbinical writers, " walking in the garden," I proceed to
quote the Yad :
" The man who is replete with such virtues, and whose
bodily constitution, too, is in a perfect state on his entering
into the garden and on his being carried away by those great
and extensive matters, if he have a correct knowledge so as to
understand and comprehend them if he continue to keep
himself in holiness if he depart from the general manner of
people, ivho walk in the darkness of temporary things if he
continue to be solicitous about himself, and to train his mind
so that it should not think at all of any of those perishable
things, or of the vanities of time and its devices, but should
have its thoughts constantly turned on high, and fastened to
the Throne so as to comprehend those holy and pure intelli
gences and to meditate on the wisdom of the Holy One ; . . .
and if by these means he come to know His excellency then
the Holy Spirit immediately dwells with him ; and at the time
when the spirit rests on him, his soul mixes with the degree
of those angels called Ishim, so that he is changed into
another man. Moreover he himself perceives from the state
of his knowledge that he is not as he was" (B. 112).
Separate the notions of this paragraph from their Talmudic
MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 133
language and they contain almost the exact thoughts of
Spinoza the passage from obscure to clear ideas, and the
consequent attainment to a knowledge of God. Maimonides
assertion that the man himself perceives that he has attained
this higher knowledge is perfectly parallel with Spinoza s
proposition, that the man who has a true idea is conscious
that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt its truth (ii. 43).
The parallel between this medkeval Jewish philosophy and
Christian theology is of course evident, and is probably due
to the fact that both had a common source, if the analogy
of Buddhism does not point to a still wider foundation in
human nature.
I will cite one point more in the relation of God and man,
wherein Maimonides and Spinoza follow the same groove of
thought. With the former the " cleaving to the Shechinah," the
striving after God, is identified with the pursuit of wisdom. The
attainment of wisdom is in itself the highest bliss it is as
well the goal as the course of true human life ; wisdom is not
to be desired for an end beyond itself for the sake of private
advantage or from fear of evil, above all not owing to dread
of future punishment or hope of future reward but only in
and for itself because it is truth, because it is wisdom. Only
"rude folk" are virtuous out of fear (B. 314). Spinoza
expresses the same thought in somewhat different words : he
tells us that the man who is virtuous owing to fear does not
act reasonably. The perfect state is not the reward or goal of
virtue, but is identical with virtue itself. The perfect state is
one wherein there is a clear knowledge and consequent in
tellectual love of God ; and this is in itself the end and not
the means (iv. 63 and v. 42, etc.).
We may now pass to a subject which, in the case of both
philosophers, is beset with grave difficulties namely, God s
knowledge and love of himself. We have seen that in both
systems the knowledge of God is always accompanied by a
corresponding love of God ; we should expect therefore to find
God s knowledge of himself accompanied by a love of himself.
This inference, however, as to God s intellectual love of him
self seems to have been drawn only by Spinoza ; Maimonides
134 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
is, on the other hand, particularly busied with God s know
ledge of himself. To begin with, we are told : that God,
because lie knows himself, knows everything. This assertion
is brought into close connection witli another : all existing
things, from the first degree of intelligences to the smallest
insect which may be found in the centre of the earth, exist
by the power of God s truth (B. 87). Some light will perhaps
be cast on the meaning of these propositions by a remark
previously made as to Maimonides conception of the Deity
as an intellectual cause or law. Behind the succession of
material phenomena is a succession of ideas following logically
the one on the other. This thought-logic is the only form
wherein the mind can co-ordinate phenomena because it is
itself a thinking entity, and so subject to the logic of thought.
The pure thought which has a logic of its own inner
necessity is thus the cause, and an intellectual one, of all
phenomena. That system which identifies this pure thought
with the Godhead may be fitly termed an intellectual
pantheism or a pantheistic idealism. It is obvious how in
such a pantheistic idealism the propositions that God in
knowing himself knows everything, and that all things exist
by the power of God s truth can easily arise. Such a
passage as the following, too, becomes replete with very deep
truth : " The Holy One . . . perceives his own truth and
knows it just as it really is. And he does not know with a
knowledge distinct from himself as we know ; because we and
our knowledge are not one; but . . . his knowledge and his
life are one in every possible respect, and in every mode of
unity. . . . Hence you may say that he is the knower, the
known, and knowledge itself all at once. . . . Therefore he
does not perceive creatures and know them by means of the
creatures as we know them ; but he knows them by means of
himself; so that, by dint of his knowing himself, he knows
everything ; because everything is supported by its existing
through him" (B. 87). What fruit such conceptions bore in
the mind of Spinoza must be at once recognised by every
student of the Ethica.
Let us compare these conceptions with their Spinozistic
MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 135
equivalents. " All things exist by the power of God s truth."
To this EtJiica i. 15 corresponds " Quicquid est, in Deo est,
et nihil sine Deo esse neque concipi potest."
" God in knowing himself knows everything." I am not
aware of any passage in the Etliica where this proposition is
distinctly stated, yet it follows immediately from Spinoza s
fundamental principles, and is implied in i. 25, Schol. and
CorolL, and elsewhere (ii. 3, etc.). It is of course involved in
God s infinite intellectual love of himself (v. 35).
" God does not know with a knowledge distinct from him
self." " His knowledge and his life are one." " He is the
knower, the known, and knowledge itself." " His perception
differs from that of creatures." Compare the following state
ments of Spinoza. " Si intellectus ad divinam naturam
pertinet, non poterit, uti noster intellectus, posterior (ut
plerisque placet), vel simul natura esse cum rebus intellectis,
quandoquidem Deus omnibus rebus prior est causalitate ; sed
contra veritas et formalis rerum essentia ideo talis est, quia
talis in Dei intellectu existit objective. Quare Dei intellectus,
quatenus Dei essentiam constituere concipi tur, est re vera
causa rerum, tarn earum essentise quam earum existentise "
(i. 17, Schol.). These words are followed by the remark that
this is the opinion of those " who hold the knowledge, will,
and power of God to be identical," which probably refers to
Maimonides. " Oinnia qute sub intellectuni infinitum cadere
possunt necessario sequi debent " (i. 16). " Sicuti ex necessi
tate divinse naturae sequitur, ut Deus seipsum intelligat, eadem
etiam necessitate sequitur, ut Deus iiifinita infinitis modis
agat. Deinde, i. 34, ostendimus Dei potentiam nihil esse,
prteterquam Dei actuosam essentiam " (ii. 3, Schol.). Such
expressions sufficiently show that God s knowledge, i.e. his
" intellectus," and his action, i.e. his life, are one and the
same. " Nam intellectus et voluntas, qui Dei essentiam con-
stituerent, a nostro intellectu et voluntate toto coelo differre
deberent " (i. 1 7, Schol.) ; this sufficiently marks the difference
between the divine and human intellect. Shortly, although
in certain formal assertions of the Etliica this view is some
what obscured, yet I venture to suggest that the only con-
136 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
sistent interpretation of Spinoza s system is summed up in the
following words : That the intellect of God is all ; his
thought is the existence of things ; to be real is to exist in
the divine thought ; that very intellect is itself existence ; it
does not understand things like the creature-intellect because
it is one with them} This is the equivalent of Maimonides
proposition that God is " the knower, the known, and know
ledge itself."
As a step from theology to anthropology we may compare
the views of the two philosophers on the immortality of the
soul. We have seen that Maimonides identities the soul with
the " quality/ i.e. the thought-attribute in man. This quality
not being composed of material elements cannot be decomposed
with them ; it stands in no need of the breath of life, of the
body, but it proceeds from God (the infinite intellect). This
quality is not destroyed with the body, but continues to know
and comprehend those intelligences that are distinct from all
matter (i.e. it no longer has knowledge of material things, and
therefore must lose all trace of its former individuality), and
it lasts for ever and ever (B. 106). A certain crude resem
blance to Ethica v. 23 and Schol. will hardly be denied to
this view of immortality ; but a still closer link may be dis
covered in the question whether this immortality is shared
by all men alike. From the above it would seem that for
Maimonides this question must be answered in the affirmative,
but when we come to examine his notion of future life we
shall find this by no means the case. For him goodness and
wisdom wickedness and ignorance are synonymous terms. 2
He classifies all beings from the supreme intelligence down to
the smallest insect according to their wisdom, the degree of
" quality " in them. The wise man who has renounced all
clogging passions, and received the Holy Spirit, is classed
even with a peculiar rank of angel " the man-angel." On
the other hand, the fool, the evil man, may be in possession
1 Cf. also Kuno Fischer s identification of Spinoza s Substance with Causality.
2 Many passages might be quoted from the Yad to prove this. A some
what similar though not quite identical distinction of good and evil occurs in
the More Nebuchim (b. i., c. 1), where they are held equivalent to true and
false respectively.
MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 137
of no " quality," and therefore incapable of immortality. The
future life of the soul of the wise is a purely intellectual one ;
it consists in that state of bliss which Spinoza would describe
as perceiving things by the " third kind of intellection " : it
lies in perceiving more of the truth of God than was possible
while in the dark and abject body ; it is increased knowledge
of the Shechinah ; or again, to use Spinoza s words, a more
perfect "Amor Dei intellectualis " (B. 296). On the other
hand, the reward of the evil man is, that his soul is cut off
from this life ; it is that destruction after which there is no
existence ; " the retribution which awaits the wicked consists
in this, that they do not attain unto that life, but that they
are cut off and die" (B. 294). Shortly, Hell and Tophet are
the destruction and end of all life ; there is no immortality for
the wicked. I will only place for comparison by the side of this
a portion of the very remarkable Scholium with which Spinoza
concludes the Ethica : " Ignarus enim, prrcterquam a causis
externis multis modis agitatur, nee unquani vera animi
acquiescentia potitur, vivit praeterea sui et Dei et rerum
quasi inscius, et simul ac pati desinit, simul etiam esse desinit.
Cum contra sapiens, quatenus ut talis consideratur, vix animo
rnovetur, sed sui et Dei et rerum seterna quadam necessitate
conscius, nunquam esse desinit, sed semper vera animi acquies
centia potitur." Obviously Spinoza recognised some form of
immortality in the wise man, which the ignorant could not
share ; the one ceased, the other never could cease to be. 1
The influence of Maimonides on Spinoza becomes far less
1 It is a curious fact that the last words of the Ethica are very closely related
to a paragraph in the last chapter of the More Nebuchim, wherein we are told
that it is knowledge of God only which gives immortality. The soul is only so
far immortal as it possesses knowledge of God, i.e. wisdom. To perceive things
under their intelligible aspect is the great aim of every human individual, it
gives him true perfection and renders his soul immortal. In striking corre
spondence with this is chap. 23 of the 2nd part of the Korte Verhandeling van
God, etc. We are told that the soul can only continue to exist in so far as it is
united to the body or to God. (1) When it is united only to the body it must
perish with the body. (2) In so far as it is united with an unchangeable
object, it must in itself be unchangeable. That is, in so far as it is united to
God, it cannot perish. This "union with God" is what Spinoza afterwards
termed the "knowledge of God." The coincidence has been noted by Joel (Zur
Genesis der Lehre Spinozas).
138 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHO TIGHT
obvious when we turn to his doctrine of the human affections.
On the one hand, this is perhaps the most thought-out,
finished portion of Spinoza s work ; on the other hand, Mai-
monides somewhat crude " Precepts relating to the Govern
ment of the Temper " are an unsystematic mass of moral
precepts, exegesis, and interpretation of the Talmud ; added
to which only certain portions are yet available in translation.
Nevertheless, we may find several points of contact and even
double contact.
According to Spinoza the great end of life the bliss
which is nothing less than repose of the soul springs from
the knowledge of God. The more perfect the intellect is, the
greater is the knowledge of God. The great aim, then, of
the reasoning man is to regulate all other impulses to the
end that he may truly understand himself and his surround
ings that is, know God (iv. Appendix, c. 4). All things,
therefore, all passions, are to be made subservient to this one
end the attainment of wisdom. Following up this concep
tion Spinoza proves that all external objects, all natural affec
tions, are to be so treated or encouraged, that the body may
be maintained in a state fit to discharge its functions, for by
this means the mind will be best able to form conceptions of
many things (iv. Appendix, c, 27, taken in conjunction with
iv. 38 and 39). For this reason laughter and jest are good
in moderation ; so also eating and drinking, etc. ; music and
games are all good so far as they serve this end ; " quo
major! Ljetitia afficimur, eo ad majorem perfectionein transi-
mus, hoc est, eo nos magis de natura divina participare
iiecesse est" (iv. 45, SchoL). Nay, even marriage is consis
tent with reason, if the love arises not from externals only,
but has for its cause the " libertas animi " (iv. App., c. 20).
Shortly, Spinoza makes the gratification of the so-called
natural passions reasonable in so far as it tends to the health
of the body, and hence to the great end of Jife the perfect
ing of the understanding or the knowing of God. We may
gather a somewhat similar idea from Maimonides. I have
already pointed out that in the terminology of the latter s
philosophy " to be wise," to " delight in the Shechinah " or
MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 139
" to serve the Lord " are synonymous. Eemembering this,
the following passage is very suggestive : " He who lives
according to rule, if his object be merely that of preserving
his body and his limbs whole, or that of having children to
do his work and to toil for his wants his is not the right
way ; but his object ought to be that of preserving his body
whole and strong, to the end that his soul may be fit to know
the Lord, ... it being impossible for him to become intelli
gent or to acquire wisdom by studying the sciences whilst he
is hungry or ill, or whilst any one of his limbs is ailing. . . .
And consequently he who walks in this w 7 ay all his days will
be serving the Lord continually even at the time when he
trades, or even at the time when he has sexual intercourse ;
because his purpose in all this is ; to obtain that which is
necessary for him to the end that his mind may be perfect to
serve the Lord" (B. 174). Elsewhere Maimonides tells us
that a man should direct all his doings trading, eating,
drinking, marrying a wife so that his body may be in per
fect health, and his mind thus capable of directing its energies
to knowledge of God (B. 172).
Other points of coincidence may be noted. Spinoza attri
butes all evil to confused ideas, to ignorance. Maimonides
states that desire for evil arises from an infirm soul (here it
must be remembered that soul is the " quality " of a man,
his thinking attribute). " Now what remedy is there for
those that have infirm souls ? They shall go to the wise, who
are the physicians of soul" (B. 159). Here evil is brought
into close connection with ignorance as its cause. 1 The char
acteristic of the wise man is that he avoids all opposite
extremes, and takes that middle stage which is found in all
the dispositions of man ; the rational man calculates his dis
positions (i.e. his affections or emotions) and directs the same
1 It may be worth while remarking how the keynote to the moral Reformers
who preceded the so-called Reformation is the conception that the wicked man
and the fool are one and the same person. In woodcuts (cf. those in the
Narrenschiff, 1494, and the recently discovered Block-book, c. 1470) and in
words (cf. Sebastian Brand, Geiler von Kaiserberg, and Thomas Murner) it is
the ever-inculcated lesson. It is curious that this re-establishment of morality
on a higher intellectual basis in preference to the old penal theory has ever
from Solomon to Spinoza found such strong support in Hebrew philosophy.
140 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
" in the intermediate way to the end that he may preserve a
perfect harmony in his bodily constitution" (B. 152). There
is an echo of this in Spinoza s " Cupiditas quee ex Eatione
oritur, excessum habere nequit " (iv. 61). Maimonides holds
haughtiness and humility extremes ; the wise man will steer
a middle course between them (B. 154). Spinoza tells us:
" Humilitas virtus non est, sive ex Eatione non oritur " (iv.
53). In the Yad we read, when a man is in a country where
the inhabitants are wicked (i.e. ignorant), " he ought to abide
quite solitarily by himself" (B. 176). In the Ethica: "Homo
liber, qui inter ignaros vivit, eorum, quantum potest beneficia
declinare studet" (iv. 70). According to Spinoza all the
emotions of hate, for example vengeance, can only arise from
confused ideas, they have no existence for the rational man
who marks the true causes of things. Maimonides writes of
vengeance that it shows an evil mind, " for with intelligent
men all worldly concerns are but vain and idle things, such
as are not enough to call forth vengeance" (B. 197). Spinoza
terms the passions obscure ideas (iii. final paragraph), and in
so far as the mind has obscure or inadequate ideas its power of
acting or existing is decreased. Curiously enough Maimonides,
speaking of the passion anger, says : " Passionate men cannot
be said to live" (B. 164).
Taken individually these coincidences might not be of much
weight, yet taken in union, I think, they show that Spinoza was
even in his doctrine of the human affections not uninfluenced by
Maimonides, albeit to a lesser degree than in his theosophy.
It may not be uninteresting to note one point of diverg
ence, namely, on the insoluble problem of free-will. Spinoza
reduces man s free-will to an intellectual recognition of, and
hence a free submission to, necessity. Maimonides, on the
other hand, tells us distinctly that "free-will is granted to
every man " ; that there is no predestination ; every man
can choose whether he will be righteous or wicked, a wise
man or a fool (B. 263). With regard to the question of
God s pre-knowledge, and whether this must not be a pre
destination, Maimonides writes : " Know ye that with regard
to the discussion of this problem, the measure thereof is
MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 141
longer than the earth and broader than the sea." He hints,
however, that its solution must probably be sought in the fact
that God s knowledge is not distinct from himself, but that he
and his knowledge are one (" the knower, the known, and the
knowledge itself are identical "). Maimonides cautiously adds
that it is impossible for man fully to grasp the truth regarding
the nature of God s knowledge ; and, while granting God pre-
knowledge, still concludes : " But yet it is known so as not to
admit of any doubt that the actions of a man are in his own
power, and that the Holy One, blessed be he ! neither attracts
him nor decrees that he should do so and so" (B. 270).
Perhaps the ordinary workaday mortal will find Maimonides
evasion of the problem as useful as Spinoza s attempted solution !
In the above remarks I have considered only the Yad
HacliazakaJi, because hitherto attention seems to have been
entirely directed to the More Nebucliim (cf. Joel, Sorley, and
others). It is not impossible that in the intervening ten
years Maimonides somewhat altered his views. I should not
be surprised to hear that the More was held more orthodox
than the Yad. The latter, despite much Talmudic verbiage
and scriptural exegesis, notwithstanding many faults and in
consistencies, yet contains the germs of a truly grand philo
sophical system, quite capable of powerfully influencing the
mind even of a Spinoza. Such a reader would, while rejecting
the exegesis, recognise the elements of truth in the pure
theosophy (cf. Joel, Zur Genesis, p. 9), and this is the point
wherein the two philosophers approach most closely. In the
second place, I have confined myself entirely to the influence
of the Yad on the JEthica. Greater agreement would have
been found with the Korte VerJiandeling van God, etc., while
Spinoza s views of Biblical criticism (especially his conceptions
of prophets and prophecy as developed in the Tractatus
Theologico - Politicus) owe undoubtedly much to the Yad.
But I wished to show that the study of Maimonides was
traceable even in Spinoza s most finished exposition of his
philosophy. Those who assert that Spinoza was influenced
by Hebrew thought have not seldom been treated as though
they were accusing Spinoza of a crime. Yet no great work
142 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
ever sprung from the head of its creator like Athena from
the head of Zeus ; it has slowly developed within him, influ
enced and moulded by all that has influenced and moulded
its simper s own character. Had we but knowledge and
critical insight enough, every idea might be traced to the
germ from which it has developed. While recognising many
other influences at work forming Spinoza s method of thought,
it is only scientific to allow a certain place to the Jewish
predecessors with whom he was acquainted. Critical com
parison must show how great that influence was. We natur
ally expect to find considerable divergences between any
individual Jewish philosopher and Spinoza ; these divergences
have been carefully pointed out by Mr. Sorley, but they are
insufficient to prove that Spinoza was not very greatly in
fluenced by Hebrew thought. My aim has been to call in
question the traditional view of Spinoza s relation to Jewish
philosophy, i.e. that he learnt enough of it to throw it off
entirely. I am compelled to hold that, while Spinoza s form
and language were a mixture of mediaeval scholasticism and
the Cartesian philosophy, yet the ideas which they clothed
were not seldom Hebrew in their origin. He might be cast
out by his co-religionists, but that could not deprive him of
the mental birthright of his people those deep moral and
theosophical truths which have raised the Hebrews to a place
hardly second to the Greeks in the history of thought.
Hebrew philosophy seems to have a history and a de
velopment more or less unique and apart from that of other
nations ; once in the course of many centuries it will produce
a giant-thinker ; one who, not satisfied by the narrow limits
of his own nation, strives for a freer, wider field of action,
and grafts on to his Hebrew ideas a catholic language and a
broader mental horizon. He becomes a world-prophet, but is
rejected of his own folk. Such an one of a truth was
Spinoza, and another perhaps, albeit in a lesser degree,
Moses, the son of Maimon. 1
1 When the More NebucMm became generally known, its author was looked
upon by a large section of the Jews as a heretic of the worst type, who had
"contaminated the religion of the Bible with the vile alloy of human reason " !
VII
MEISTER ECKEHAKT, THE MYSTIC 1
Diz 1st Meister Eckeliart
Dem Got nie nilit verbarc.
Old Scribe.
STUDENTS of mediaeval philosophy must often have been struck
by the unexpected occurrence of phases of thought, even in
Christian writers, which are utterly out of keeping with the
framework of scholastic theology within which they are usually
mounted. M. Eenan has done excellent service in showing-
how many of these eccentricities may be attributed to the in
fluence, to the fascination of the arch-sinner Averroes. There
is, however, one field of Averroistic influence to which M.
Eenan has only referred without entering on any lengthened
discussion ; this is the extremely interesting, but undoubtedly
obscure subject of fourteenth century mysticism. I purpose in
the following paper to present the English reader with a slight
sketch of the philosophical (or rather theosophical) system of
Meister Eckehart, the Mystic, 2 who may be accepted as the chief
exponent of the school. There are two points which ought
1 Reprinted from Mind : a Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy,
vol. xi. No. 41.
2 The Germans possess an excellent book on Eckeliart from the pen of Prof.
Lasson, but, for the purposes of this essay, I have made use only of Eckehart s
own writings in the second volume of Pfeiffer s Deutsche Mystiker. That my
results differ so often from those of Prof. Lasson is due principally to his strong
Hegelian standpoint ; at the same time I have to acknowledge the debt which I
owe, not so much to his book, as to the charm of his personal teaching. English
readers will find a short account of Eckeliart due to Prof. Lasson in Ueberweg s
History of Philosophy.
144 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
peculiarly to attract the student of modern philosophy to
Eckehart : the first lies in a possible (and by no means im
probable) influence which his ideas may have exercised over
Kant ; the second consists in a peculiar spiritual relationship
to Spinoza. This can be in no way due to direct contact, but
has to be sought in a common spiritual ancestry. Nor is this
link in the past by any means difficult to find. The parallelism
of ideas in the writings of Averroes and Maimonides has led
some authors hastily to conclude an adoption by the latter of
the ideas of the former. The real relation is a like education
under the influences of the same Arabian school. On the one
hand, Maimonides was the spiritual progenitor of Spinoza ; on
the other, Averroes was the master from whom fourteenth
century German mysticism drew its most striking ideas.
During this century Averroism was the ruling philosophical
system at both the leading European universities at Paris
and at Oxford. It was the result of Averroistic teaching
which produced two of the most characteristic thinkers of the
age. The theologico-philosophical system which John "Wyclif,
the Oxford professor, develops in his Trialogus is unintelligible
without a knowledge of Averroistic ideas. The mysticism of
Eckehart, the far-famed Paris lecturer, owes its leading char
acteristics to a like source. In 1317 the then Bishop of
Strasburg condemned Eckehart s doctrines; in 1327 the Arch
bishop and Inquisitors of Cologne renewed the condemnation,
and Eckehart recanted ; in 1329, a year after Eckehart s death,
a papal bull cited twenty-eight theses of the master and rejected
them as heretical. What a parallel does this offer to the pro
ceedings of the hierarchy against Wyclif, culminating in his
posthumous condemnation by the Council of Constance ! Yet
what more natural, when both men were deeply influenced by
the ideas of the arch-sinner Averroes, whom later Christian art
was to place alongside Judas and Mahomet in the darkest
shades of hell ? 1
1 A further link between Eckehart and Wyclif is perhaps to be found in the
pseudo-Dionysius with his commentator Grossetete. Eckehart was acquainted
with Lincolniensis " (Deutsche MystiTcer, ii. 363), whom Wyclif regarded as
peculiarly his own precursor.
MEISTEE ECKEHAKT, THE MYSTIC 145
Wyclif and Eckehart each in their individual fashion
represent the Averroistic ideas under the garb of Christian
scholasticism ; in strange contrast with these thinkers we find
in Spinoza the like ideas treated with a rationalism which has
not yet, however, quite freed itself from the idealistic influence
of Hebrew theosophy. The contrast is one possibly as interest
ing and instructive as could well be found in the whole history
of the development of human thought.
Before entering upon a discussion of Eckehart s ideas, it
may not be out of place to recall those features of Averroism
with which we shall be principally concerned, and at the same
time to prove by citations from, a remarkable tractate of an
anonymous writer of the fourteenth century the direct con
nection of Averroistic thought with German mysticism.
Aristotle in his De Anima (III. v. 1) distinguishes in man
a double form of reason, the active and the passive ; the first
is separated from the body, eternal, and passionless ; the second
begins and ends with the body and shares all its varied states.
Unfortunately Aristotle has nowhere clearly explained what he
understands by the relationship of these two reasons, and, as
Zeller remarks (Die Philos. der Griechen, ii. Abth., 2 Theil, p.
572), it is not possible to reconcile his various statements by
any consistent theory. Alexander of Aphrodisias endeavoured
to construct such a consistent theory by seeking the active
reason, not in the human soul, but in the divine spirit. This
view, although probably not the interpretation Aristotle would
have given of his own statements, was yet eagerly adopted by
the Arabian commentators, and the comparatively insignificant
distinction made by Aristotle became with Averroes the basis
of all that is original in his ideas.
While Alexander identifies the active reason or intellect,
which brings the images (^avrdcr/jLara) before the passive
intellect, with the divine spirit, Averroes looks upon it as
emanating from the last celestial intelligence. He considers,
however, with Alexander, that it is possible for the human or
passive intellect to unite itself to the purely active intellect.
This union takes place, this perfection or blessedness is attained,
by long study, deep thought, and renunciation of material
10
146 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
pleasures. This process, consisting in the widening of human
knowledge, is the religion of the philosopher. For what
worthier cult can man offer to God than the knowledge of his
works, through which alone he can attain to a knowledge of
God himself in the fulness of his essence ? 1
But to recognise fully what is original in Eckehart we
must examine Averroes views somewhat more closely.
Averroes holds that things perceived by the understanding
(intelligibility) stand in the same relation to the material
intellect (passive reason) as things perceived by sensation
to the faculty of sensation. This faculty is purely recep
tive, and pure receptivity belongs also to the material
intellect. Its nature is only in potentia, it is a capacity for
intellectual perception. At this point Averroes introduces a,
statement which disagrees with Aristotle and brings obscurity
into his theory ; he holds that, as this passive reason exists
only in potentia, it can neither come into being nor perish.
Alexander s view, that the material intellect is perishable, is
described as utterly false. 2 The statement was probably intro
duced to quiet the scruples of the Arabian theologians, which
would be excited by anything appearing to destroy individual
immortality. The like inconsistency recurs with Eckehart.
Three premisses of Alexander are stated by Averroes to prove
how in the course of time it is possible for the material to
attain perfection through the separate intellect. In accordance
with these premisses (which are based on the analogy mentioned
above of the intellectual and sensatory faculties) we ought to
conclude that some portion of mankind can really contemplate
the separate intellect, and these men are they who by the
speculative sciences have perfected themselves. Perfection of
the spirit is thus to be obtained by knowledge, nor can it ever
again be lost. Often, however, it comes only in the moment
of death, since it is opposed to bodily (material) perfection.
The separate intellect (active reason) exercises two
activities. The one, because it is separate, consists in self-
1 Cf. Drei Abhandlungcn ilbcr die Conjunction des separaten Intellects mit
dcm Menschen von Averroes, herausgegeben von T. Hercz, Berlin, 1869.
2 Ibid. p. 23.
MEISTEE ECKEHAKT, THE MYSTIC 147
contemplation or self-perception. This self-perception is the
mode of all separate intellects, because it is characteristic
of them that the intellectual and the intelligible are ab
solutely one. The second activity is the perception of the
intelligibilia which are in the material intellect, that is,
the transition of the material intellect from possibility to
actuality. Thus the active intellect attaches itself to man
and is at the same time his form, and the man becomes by
means of it active that is, he thinks. These statements
can hardly be said to be free from obscurity, but they receive
considerable light from Eckehart, who identifies the active
reason with the Deity, and explains the life of the universe
by his two activities : self-contemplation, wherein to think is
to create or act, and human contemplation, which is the
" bearing of the Son."
The question now arises as to what follows upon the
complete union of the separate and individual intellects.
What happens to the man for whom there no longer remains
any intelligibile in potcntia to convert into an intelligibile in
actu ? Such an individual intellect then becomes in char
acter like to the separate intellect ; its nature becomes pure
activity ; its self -consciousness is like that of the separate
intellect, in which existence is identified with its purpose
uninterrupted activity. This statement Averroes holds to
be the most important that can be made concerning the
intellect.
While Eckehart himself makes no direct reference to
Averroes, a remarkable tractate written by one of his school
does not hesitate to cite the Arabian commentator as an
authority. 1 A short sketch of the views contained in this
tractate will serve to link more clearly the preceding state
ment of Averroes s theory with our sketch of Eckehart s
theosophy.
The writer quotes Meister Eckehart to the effect that
when two things are united one must suffer and the other
1 Philosophischer Tractat von der wirklichen und tnoglichen Vernunft aus dem
vierzehnten Jahrhundert. This was printed by B. J. Docen in his Miscellaiieen
zur Geschichte der teutschen Lileratur, Miinchen, 1809 : vol i. p. 138.
148 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
act. For this reason human understanding must suffer
the " moulding of God " (ulerformvnge Gotz). Since God s
existence is his activity, the blessedness of this union can
only arise from the human understanding remaining in a
purely passive, receptive state. Only a spirit free from all
working of its own can suffer the " rational working " of God
(daz vernunftige v:ercli Gotz). The writer, after describing
the soul as a spark of the divine spirit, declares that the
union of this spark with God is possible, and that the process
of union is " God confessing himself, God loving himself, God
using himself"- a phraseology which is characteristic of
Eckehart and suggestive of Spinoza. After these theosophieal
considerations, the tractate passes to the more psychological
side of the subject. There are two kinds of reason, an active
reason and a potential reason (ein wurcliende vernunft and
ein moglich vernunff). The latter is possessed by the spirit
at the instant when it reaches the body. If the potential
reason would simply subject itself to the active reason, the
man would be as blessed in this world as in the eternal life,
for " the blessedness of man consists in his recognition of his
own existence under the form of the active reason." That
is, it consists in contemplation of the individual essence in its
connection with and origin in the universal reason. The com
plete capacity for understanding all things which this implies is
not possible to the potential reason. The potential reason has
only the capacity for receiving the moulding of the active reason.
There are certain beings whose existence is their activity,
and whose activity is their understanding. In other words,
to be, to act, and to think are one and the same process
with them (their wesen, wurken, and verstan are one).
These beings are termed intelligences, and are nobler than
the angels ; they flow reasonably (vermmfticJilicJi) and in
cessantly from and to God, the uncreated substance. They
belong, as it were, to the divine flow of thought (which is at
the same time active creation), and so are not substances like
the angels. Such an intelligence is the active reason (Docen,
pp. 146, 147). As proof that this particular intelligence is no
substance, but its existence is its activity, Averroes s corn-
MEISTEE ECKEHART, THE MYSTIC 149
mentary on De Anima, iii. is quoted as authority. The
potential reason is filled with images (bilde) which are for
it externality and temporality. So soon as by the grace of
God the potential reason is freed from these images, it is
supplanted or moulded by the active reason. Whereas the
potential reason takes things only from the senses as they
appear to exist, the active reason goes to the origin of things
and sees them as they are in reality that is, in God. But
our writer is again hampered by the current theological con
ceptions, although he twists them to his own theories ; he
asks : if the active reason be ever present, ready to be united
to the potential reason, when once it is freed of the images,
must it not also be present in hell ? The answer must
necessarily be affirmitive ; but hell in truth is not what the
vulgar (grdbe Ivte] believe it fire ; the agony of hell consists
in the sufferer s unconsciousness of his own reason (irre aigen
vernunft) ; that is, he cannot contemplate himself as he
appears to the active reason, or as he exists in the divine
mind. This spiritual pain is the greatest of all pains. Hell
is thus identified with the absence of the higher insight.
Finally we may note that the author of the tractate seems
uncertain whether the potential reason can ever arrive at
perfect union with the active reason before it is separated
from all material things.
Distorted as are the ideas of Averroes in this work, we
cannot doubt that it is those ideas which are influencing its
author. A far more complete attempt to reconcile Averroism
with Christian theology is to be found in the system of
Eckehart, to which we now proceed. Many difficulties and
obscurities will arise, but some elucidation they will un
doubtedly receive from this brief examination of the relationship
of Averroes to mediaeval mysticism.
We shall be the better able to enter into Meister Ecke
hart s system, if we first note a few leading characteristics
of his intellectual standpoint. Running throughout his
writings two strangely different theosophical currents may
be discerned two currents which he fails entirely to har
monise, and which account, for the most part, for those
150 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
inconsistencies wherein he abounds. On the one hand, his
mental predilection is towards a pantheistic idealism ; on
the other, his heart makes him a gospel, his education a
scholastic Christian. He speaks of God almost in the
terms of Spinoza, and describes the phenomenal world in
the language of Kant ; his theory of the esse intelligi bile
is identical with Wyclifs, but he states the doctrines of
renunciation and of the futility of human knowledge in the
form at least of primitive Christianity. Is it to be wondered
at that the deepest thinker among the German mystics is
the least intelligible ? He is the focus from which spread
the ever-diverging rays of many mediaBval and modern philo
sophical systems.
For our purpose it is first of all necessary to obtain
some conception of the relation which Eckehart supposed
to exist between the phenomenal world and God. Accord
ing to our philosopher the active reason (dm wirJcende
vernunft) receives the impressions from external objects
(dzewendikeify and places them before the passive reason (diu
ltdende vernunft). These impressions or perceptions as pre
sented by the active reason are formulated in space and
time, have a here and a now (hie unde nti). Man s know
ledge of objects in the ordinary sense is obtained solely by
means of these impressions (bilde), he perceives things only
in time and space (Pfeiffer, .Deutsche Mystiker, ii. 17, 19,
143, etc.). Of an entirely different character from human
knowledge is the divine knowledge. While the active
reason must separate its perceptions in time and space, the
Deity comprehends all things independently of these per
ceptional frameworks. The divine mind does not pass from
one object to another, like the human mind, which can only
concentrate itself on one object at a time to the exclusion of
all others. It grasps all things in one instant and in one
point (alle mitenander in eime Uicke und in eime punte. Ib.
20, cp. 14, 15). Shortly, in the language of Kant, while the
human intellect reaches only the world of sense, the divine
is busied with the Dinge an sich. This higher knowledge is
of course absolutely unintelligible to the human reason. " All
MEISTEE ECKEHAKT, THE MYSTIC 151
the truth which any master ever taught with his own
reason and understanding, or ever can teach till the last day,
will not in the least explain this knowledge and its nature "
(ib. 10). Shortly, the Dinge an sicli form a limit to the
human understanding. 1 But, just as Kant causes the
practical reason to transcend this limit, so Meister Eckehart
allows a mystical revelation or implantation of this higher
knowledge ; this process he terms the eternal birth (diu
ewiye geburt}. The soul ceasing to see things under the
forms of time and space grasps them as they exist in the
mind of God, and finds therein the ultimate truth, the reality,
which cannot be reached in the phenomenal world (ib. 12).
The world as reality is thus the world as it exists in God s
perception ; but, since God s will and its production are
absolutely identical (there being no distinction between the
moulding and the moulded entgiezunge und entgozzenlieit\ we
arrive at the result that the world as reality is the world as
will. Thus both Eckehart and Kant find it necessary to
transcend the limit of the human understanding ; both
find reality in the world as will. 2 The critical philosopher
is desirous of finding an absolute basis for morality in the
supersensuous, and accordingly links phenomena and the
Dinge an sich by a transcendental causality, which somehow
bridges the gulf. The fourteenth-century mystic, desirous
of raising the idea of God from the contradictions of a
sensuous existence, places the Deity entirely beyond the
field of ordinary human reason. In order to restore God
again to man, he postulates a transcendental knowledge ; in
order to show God as ultimate cause even of the phenomenal,
he is reduced to interpreting in a remarkable manner the
chief Christian dogma. We shall see the meaning of this
more clearly if we examine somewhat more closely the concep
tion Eckehart formed of God and his relation to the Dinge
1 Cp. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Elementarlehre, ii. Th., 1 Abth.,
2 Buch, 3 Hauptst.
2 This principle, usually identified with the Gfrober PMlosoph, is clearly
expressed in the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, i. Theil, 1 B., 3
Hauptst. The will, however, with Kant and Eckehart is very different in
character.
152 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
an sick (vorgendiu Hide, or prototypes as we may perhaps
translate the expression).
Things -in -themselves are things as they exist free from
space and time in God s perception (D. M. ii. 325, etc.).
Thus the prototype (vorgSndez bild) of Eckehart corresponds
to the esse intelligibile of Wyclif, who in like manner identifies
God s conception and his causation (Omne quod habet esse
intelligibile, cst in Deo, and Deus est caque intellectivus, id est
causativus, etc. Trialoyus, ed. Lechler, pp. 46-48). 1 This
form in God is evidently quite independent of creature-exist
ence, and, not bound by time or space, cannot be said to
have been created, or indeed to come into or go out of
existence. The form is in an eternal now (daz cwige 71??).
To describe a temporal creation of the world is folly to the
intelligent man ; Moses only made use of such a description
to aid the ignorant. God creates all things in an ever-
present now (in eime gegenwilrtigen nil. D. M. ii. 2 6 6, and
267). 2 The soul, then, which has attained to the higher
knowledge grasps things in an eternal now, or, as we may
express it, sub specie ccternitatis. We can thus grasp more
clearly Eckehart s pantheistic idealism. By placing all
reality in the supersensuous, and identifying that super-
sensuous reality with God, he avoids many of the contra
dictions of pantheistic materialism. God is the substance
of all things (ib. 163) and in all things, but as the reality of
things has not existence in space or time there can be no
question as to how the unchangeable can exist in the pheno
menal (ib. 389). Since all things are what they are owing
to the peculiarity of God s nature, it follows that the indi
vidual though a work of God is yet an essential element of
God s nature, and may be looked upon as productive with
God of all being (ib. 581). The soul, then, which has
attained the higher knowledge, sees itself in its reality as an
1 This is absolutely identical with Spinoza, Ethica, i. 16, Omnia quce sub
intellectum infinitum caderc possnnt, nccessario sequi debent. Cp. Prop. 17,
Scholium.
2 Cp. Wyclif s Omtie quod fuit vel erit, est, which is based upon the concep
tion that things secundum esse intelligibile are ever in the time- and space-free
cognition of the Deity. (Trialogus, ed. Lechler, p. 53.)
MEISTEE ECKEHAKT, THE MYSTIC 153
element of the divine nature ; it obtains a clear perception
of its own uncreated form (or vorgendez bild), which is in
reality its life ; it becomes one with God. The will of ^the
individual henceforth is identical with the will of God, and
the Holy Ghost receives his essence or proceeds from the
individual as from God (da enpfdhet der Heilig Geist sin wescn
unde sin iverk unde sin werden von mir cds von Gote. 11}. 55).
The soul stands to God in precisely the same relation as
Christ does ; nay, it attains to " the essence, and the
nature, and the substance, and the wisdom, and the joy, and
all that God has" (il. 41, 204). "Have I attained this
blessedness, so are all things in me and in God (secundum
esse intelligibile f), and where I am there is God" (ib. 32).
From this it follows that the higher knowledge of the soul
and God s knowledge are one. 1 It is scarcely necessary to
remark that Eckehart defines this state of higher know
ledge as blessedness. Thus both Spinoza and Eckehart base
their beatitude on the knowledge of God, but in how different
a sense ! Eckhehart s knowledge is a kind of transcendental
instinct of the soul steeped in religious emotion ; Spinoza s
knowledge is the result of an adequate cognition of the essence
of things it is a purely intellectual (non-transcendental)
process. A striking corollary to this similarity may be found
in the two philosophers doctrines of God s love. The love of
the mind towards God, writes Spinoza (Ethica, v. 36 and Cor.),
1 The whole of this may be most instructively compared with Spinoza s
Uthica, v., Prop. 22 : In Deo tamen datur necessario idea (Eckehart s
vorgendez bild), quse hujus et illius corporis human! essentiam (Eckehart s
u~ewendigcs ding) sub oeternitatis specie exprimit.
Prop. 23 : Mens hum ana non potest cum corpore absolute destrui ; sed
ejus aliquid reman et, quod feternum est (the vorgendez bild exists in an
etvige nti).
Prop. 29 : Quicquid meus sub specie seternitatis intelligit, id ex eo non
intelligit, quod corporis prpesentem actualem existentiam concipit ; sed ex eo,
quod corporis essentiam concipit sub specie teternitatis. (The higher
knowledge of the soul is concerned with the vorgendez bild and not with the
phenomenal world.)
Prop. 30 : Mens nostra, quatenus se et corpus sub seternitatis specie
cognoscit, eatenus Dei cognitionem necessario habet, scitque se in Deo
esse et per Deum concipi (a proposition agreeing entirely with Eckehart s).
After this it is hard to deny a link somewhere between these two
philosophers !
154 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
is part of the love wherewith God loves himself, and con
versely God, in so far as he loves himself, loves mankind.
The love of God towards men, says Meister Eckehart, is a
portion of the love with which he loves himself (D. M. ii.
145-146, 180).
In both cases God s self-love is intellectual it arises
from the contemplation of his own perfection. 1 Eckehart
perhaps even more strongly than Spinoza endeavours to free
God from anthropomorphical qualities. His God, placed in
the sphere of Dinge an sick, is freed from extension, but this
by no means satisfies him God must have no human at
tributes; he is not lovable, because that is a sensuous quality
he is to be loved because he is not lovable. Xor does he
possess any of the spiritual powers such as men speak of in the
phenomenal world nothing like to human will, memory, or
intellect ; in this sense he is not a spirit. He is nothing that
the human understanding can approach. One attribute only
can be asserted of him and of him only namely, unity. Other
wise he may be termed the nothing of nothing, and existing in
nothing. Alone in him the prototypes or uncreated forms
(voryendiu Hide} can be said to exist, but these are beyond the
human understanding and can only be reached by the higher
transcendental knowledge. " How shall I love God then ?
Thou shalt love him as he is, a non-god, a non-spirit, a non-
person, a non-form ; more, as he is an absolute pure clear one!
(Wie sol ich in define minnen ? Dti solt in minnen als er ist,
ein nihtgot, ein nihtgeist, ein nilitpersone, ein nihfbild : mer
als er ein later pwr Uar ein ist, etc. Ib. 320 ; cp. 319, 500,
506, etc.). Into this inconceivable nothing the soul finds
its highest beatitude in sinking. How is this to be accom
plished ? What is the phenomenal world, and how can the
passage be made to the world of reality ? What is the price to
be paid for this surpassing joy ? These are the questions which
now rise before us, and which Eckehart endeavours to solve in
his theory of renunciation.
1 "Wyclif, Trialogus, 56 ; Coynoscit et amat se ipsum. Wyclif s whole theory
of the divine intellect as the sphere of reality, and cognition by God as the test
of possible existence, has strong analogy with Eckehart s.
MEISTEE ECKEHAET, THE MYSTIC 155
All important is it first to note how the philosopher
deduces the phenomenal from the real the externality
(uzewendikeii) from the prototypes (diu vorgendiu Hide}. The
solution of this apparent impossibility is found in a singular
interpretation of the Christian mystery The Word became
flesh ; the idea in God passing into phenomenal being is
the incarnation of the divine \6yos. God s self-introspec
tion, his " speaking " of the ideas in him, produces the
phenomenal world. " What is God s speaking 1 The Father
regards himself with a pure cognition, and looks into the pure
oneness of his own essence. Therein he perceives the forms of
all creation (i.e. diu vorc/endiu bilde"), then he speaks himself.
The Word is pure (self-)cognitiou, and that is the Son. God
speaking is God giving " birth." The real world in the divine
mind is " non-natured nature " (diu ungendttirte ndttire) ; the
sensuous world which arises from this by God s self-introspec
tion is " natured nature " (diu gendturte ndture}} In the
former we find only the Father, in the latter we first recognise
the Son (D. M. ii., 591, 537, 250). Of course this process of
" speaking the word " or giving birth to the Son is not temporal
but in an eternal now ; but we had better let Eckehart speak
for himself ; " Of necessity God must work all his works. God
is ever working in one eternal now, and his working is
giving birth to his Son ; he bears him at every instant.
From this birth all things proceed, and God has such joy
therein, that he consumes all his power in giving birth (daz
er alle sine maht in ir verzerf). God bears himself out of
himself into himself; the more perfect the birth, the more is
born. I say : God is at all times one, he takes cognition
of nothing beyond himself. Yet God, in taking cognition of
himself, must take cognition of all creatures. God bears
himself ever in his Son ; in him he speaks all things " (ib.
254). Eckehart in identifying God s self-introspection with
the birth of the Son, and the " phenomenalising " of the real,
has rendered it extremely difficult to reconcile this divine
process in the Swige ml with the historical fact of Christianity.
1 These are in close agreement wfth Spinoza s natura naturans and natura
iiMturata, Cp. Ethica, L, Prop. 29, Schol.
156 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
The difficulty is still further increased when we remember that
the converse process, by which the individual soul passes from
the phenomenal to the higher or divine knowledge, is also
termed by Eckehart " God bearing the Son." The difficulty is
lightened, though not removed, by uniting the two processes.
The soul may be compared to a mirror which reflects the light
of the sun back to the sun. In God s self-introspection the
real is " phenomenalised " (as the light passes from the sun to
the mirror) ; but the soul in its higher knowledge passes again
back to God, the phenomenal is realised (as the light is
reflected back to the sun). The whole process is divine
" God bears himself out of himself into himself" (ib. 180-181).
Logically, the process ought to occur with every conscious
individual, for all have a like phenomenal existence. In order,
however, to save at least the moral, if not the historical side of
Christianity, Eckehart causes only certain souls to attain the
higher knowledge ; the Son is only born in certain individuals
destined for salvation. Thus Eckehart s phenomenology is
shattered upon his practical theology ; it is but the recur
rence of an old truth, that all forms of pantheism (idealistic
or materialistic) are inconsistent with the assertion of an
absolute morality as fundamental principle of the world.
The pantheist must boldly proclaim that morality is the
creation of humanity, not humanity the outcome of any
moral causality. 1
Let us now observe how the soul is to pass from the world
of phenomena to the world of reality. So long as the active
reason continues to present external objects to the soul, the
soul cannot possibly grasp those objects sub ceternitatis specie.
The human understanding which can only perceive things in
time and space is useless in this matter, nay, it is even harmful ;
the soul must try to attain absolute ignorance and darkness
(ein dunsternusse und ein umuizzen, D. M. ii. 26). Eckehart s
contempt for the creature-intellect is almost on a par with
Tertullian s, and is in marked contrast with the fashion in
1 That the world was created for the moral perfecting of mankind is a dogma
alike with Kant and Averroes (Drci Abhandlungen, p. 63). It has been wisely
repudiated by Spinoza and Maimonides.
MEISTEE ECKEHABT, THE MYSTIC 157
which Gotama, Maimonides, and Spinoza make it the guiding
star through renunciation to beatitude. The first step to the
eternal birth (ewige gebilrf) is the total renunciation of creature-
perception and creature -reason. The soul must pass through a
period of absolute unconsciousness as to the phenomenal world ;
all its powers must be concentrated on one object, on the
mystical contemplation of the supersensuous deity, the
nothing of nothing, of which the soul, if it seeks for true
union, cannot and must not form any idea (ib. 13-15). Not
by an intellectual development, but by sheer passivity, by
waiting for the transcendental action of God, can the soul
attain the higher knowledge, pass through the eternal birth.
This intellectual nihilism, this ignorance, is not a fault, but the
highest perfection ; it is the only step the mind can take
towards its union with God (ib. 16). The soul must, so far as
in it lies, separate itself from the phenomenal world, renounce
all sensuous action, even cease to think under the old forms.
Then, when all the powers of the soul are withdrawn from their
works and conceptions (von alien irn iverken und lilderi), when
all creature-emotions are discarded, God will speak his word,
the Son will be born in the soul (ib. 6-9). This renunciation
of all sensational existence (alle tizewendikeit der creaturen) is
an absolutely necessary prelude to the rebirth (ewige geburt, ib.
14). Memory, understanding, will, sensation, must be thrown
aside ; the soul must free itself from here and from now, from
matter and from manifoldness (lipliclikeU unde manicvaltikeit).
Poor in spirit, and having nothing, willing nothing, and knowing-
nothing, even renouncing all outward religious works and
observances, the soul awaits the coming of God (ib. 24-25,
143, 296, 309, 280). Then arrives the instant when by a
transcendental process the higher knowledge is conveyed to
the soul, it attains its freedom by union with God. Hence
forth God takes the place of the active reason, and is the
source whence the passive reason draws its conceptions. The
soul is no longer bound by matter and time ; it has tran
scended these limits and grasped the reality beyond. Every
where the soul sees God, as one who has long gazed on the
sun sees it in whatever direction he turns his glance (ib. 19,
158 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
23-29). Such is the beatitude which follows the rebirth
(ewige gebdrt}. " Holy and all holy are they who are thus
placed in the eternal now beyond time and place and form
and matter, unmoved by body and by pain and by riches and
by poverty" (ib. 75). Strange is this emotional Mrvana of
the German mystic, though it is a religious phenomenon not
unknown to the psychologist. This seclusion (Abgeschiedenheit,
ib. 486-487), as Eckehart calls it, is pronounced to have
exactly the same results as the intellectual beatitude of
Gotama and Spinoza. The soul has returned to the state in
which it was before entering the phenomenal world ; it has
recognised itself as idea in God and thrown off all creature-
attributes (cratilrlichkeit), the remaining in which is what
Eckehart understands by hell ; it sees everything sub specie
ceternitatis. Secluded from men, free from all external objects,
from all chance, distraction, trouble, it sees only reality. To
all sensuous matters it is indifferent. " Is it sick ? It is as
fain sick as sound ; as fain sound as sick. Should a friend
die ? In the name of God. Is an eye knocked out ? In the
name of God." It is complete submission to the will of God,
absolute indifferentism to heaven or hell, if they but come as
the result of that will (ib. 59-60, 203, etc.). This is the
state of grace wherein no joyous thing gives pleasure and no
painful thing can bring sadness. It is the extreme to which
Christian asceticism Christian renunciation of the world of
sense can well be pushed. 1
Putting aside the antinomy between Eckehart s pheno
menology and practical theology, let us endeavour to see the
exact meaning of his theory of renunciation. He asserts that
it is possible by a certain transcendental process to attain a
" higher knowledge " ; that this higher knowledge consists of a
union with God, whereby the individual soul is able to
recognise and thus absolutely submit to the will of God. The
will and conception of God are identical. His conceptions are
the prototypes (vorggndiu Hide) or reality. Hence we might
well interpret Eckehart s mystical higher knowledge to refer
1 Meister Eckehart even goes so far as to assert that pain ought to be
received, not only willingly, but even eagerly t (D. M. ii. 599.)
MEISTEE ECKEHAKT, THE MYSTIC 159
to a knowledge of the reality which exists behind the pheno
menal, and consequently the submission of the individual will
to the laws of that reality. Such a theory possesses a certain
degree of logical consistency, and is strikingly similar to
Spinoza s doctrine of the beatitude which flows from the
higher cognition of God. Spinoza s cognition, however, leads
to joy and peace in this world, while Eckehart s produces only
a pure indiffereutism. Still more striking is the contrast
when we examine the methods by which the cognition is
supposed to be attained. Spinoza s is only to be reached by
a renunciation of obscure ideas, by a casting forth of blind
passion, by a laborious intellectual process. Eckehart declares,
on the other hand, that all knowledge of reality is only to be
gained by a transcendental act of the divine will ; the act
itself must occur during an emotional trance, wherein the
mind endeavours to free itself from all external impressions, to
disregard the action of all human faculties. Seclusion from
mankind, renunciation of all sensuous pleasure, the rejection
of all human knowledge and all human means of investigating
truth, are the preparations for the trance and the consequent
eternal birth (ewige yebdrf). Physiologically there can be
small doubt that such overwrought emotions as this trance
denotes cannot be conducive to physical health. 1 To this, of
course, the mystic may reply that health is only a secondary
consideration in matters of religious welfare. A greater evil
than that of danger to health is the social danger which may
arise from ignorant fanatics, who suppose themselves to have
attained the " higher knowledge " by divine inspiration. Tliey
are acquainted with absolute truth and are acting according
to the will of God. More than once in the world s history the
cry has gone up from such men that all human knowledge is
vain, and the populace believing them have destroyed the
weapons of intellect and checked for a time human progress.
What test have we, when once we discard reason and appeal
to emotion, of the truth of our own or others assertions ? To
1 That great excitement might produce the trance can hardly be doubted.
The mystics seem at least to have been acquainted with such ecstatical phases.
Cp. the curious tale of Swester Katrei Meister Ekehartes Toliter (D.M. ii. 465).
Numerous instances occur also in the Life of Tauler.
160 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
borrow the language of theology, who shall be sure that God
and not the Devil has been born afresh into the soul ? Harm
less perhaps to the educated, whom it calls upon to renounce
their knowledge, Eckehart s doctrine becomes in the hands of
the ignorant a most dangerous weapon. In the place of
laborious toil, by which alone truth can be won, it allows the
individual consciousness to claim inspired insight ; the
emotions of the individual alone tell him whether he is in
possession of the " higher knowledge," and there ceases to be a
standard of truth outside individual caprice. Brilliant as are
portions of Eckehart s phenomenology, arid powerful as his
language often is when expatiating on the goal of his practical
theology, there hangs over the whole a strangely oppressive
atmosphere of possible fanaticism which warns the thinker
against trusting in any such version of Christianity/ in any
such perversion of the ideas of Averroes.
1 On the effects of an extreme form of rebirth under the influence of
strong emotional excitement, cp. Dbllinger, Kirche und Kirchr.u, 333, 340, etc. :
" The whole intellectual and moral character is ruined."
VIII
HUMANISM IN GEEMANY
Sctncte Socrates, orci pro nobis !
THE forty years which preceded the Beforrnation have long
been recognised as a period of intense intellectual activity, as
an age alike of conscious and unconscious protestation.
Everybody was protesting ; claiming for themselves freedom
of thought and freedom of action. Much of this protest, it is
true, was of a blind, clumsy character, yet the revolt against
established forms was none the less real. In every phase of
life there was a rebellion of the individual against the old
religious social system and its obsolete institutions. The old
method of teaching, the old theological philosophy, the old
legendary history, the old magical natural science these, one
and all, with a myriad other matters, were to be rudely bundled
out of the way; they were so many restrictions on freedom of
learning, freedom of investigation, and freedom of thought,
which formed the goal towards which the new spirit of
individualism was, albeit unconsciously, striving.
The mediaeval theory and system of education were
entirely subservient to religious ends. All forms of knowledge
were ultimately to lead to the great mother of all learning
Theology. As long as the Church was a progressive body,
as long as her theology was not definitely fixed, nor her
dogma thoroughly crystallised out, as long as monk and
1 Reprinted from the Westminster Review, April 1, 1883.
ii
162 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
priest were the best educated men in the community, and, as
such, the great teachers of the folk so long this system was
productive of good. For a time philosophy might well submit
to be handmaiden to theology ; while the latter was herself
developing, there was nothing to check absolutely philosophy s
own growth. Philosophy, as the handmaiden of theology, is
usually termed Scholasticism. The fundamental principle of
the Schoolmen is that philosophy must submit to the
control of theology in all points of possible variance between
the two. The gain to Christian culture of early Scholasticism
can hardly be overrated ; Greek ] hilosophy was adopted and
preserved for future generations, and was doubtless not without
its influence in moulding and expanding Catholic theology.
Such men as John Scotus, Auselm, and Abelard represented
the foremost thought of their day : and the assertion that
true philosophy and true religion are one and the same was
historically, not so very preposterous, even when by true
religion mediaeval Christianity was understood. As the theology
of the Church took a more and more concrete and fixed form,
owing to a succession of heresies and the consequent need for
a sharply defined dogma, more drastic measures had to be
adopted to make philosophy dovetail with theology. The
teaching of Aristotle must be somewhat forcibly modified,
J;hat it might give support to the doctrines of the Church.
Still there was a vast amount of genuine thought (nowadays
sadly neglected !) in the later Scholastics, such as Albert the
Great, the so - called " Universal Doctor," Thomas Aquinas
the " Angelic Doctor," Duns Scotus, the " Subtle Doctor/
and William of Occam, the " Invincible Doctor." These men
did probably all that was possible to harmonise natural and
revealed religion ; to preserve the peace between reason and
faith. With them Scholasticism exhausted itself. Philosophy
could go no further till she was free of theology.
As the general knowledge of man develops, his formulated
system of thought his philosophy must develop too ; but
in this case his philosophy was stifled in a stagnant theology.
As Carlyle would express it, mankind was outgrowing its
youthful clothes. Yet the Church would not give up her theology
HUMANISM IN GERMANY 163
that, in her eyes, was a fixed and eternal truth. Accord
ingly the names of these old thinkers, of these universal, angelic,
subtle, and invincible doctors, were brandished about by monk-
learning, and were used as a means of crushing any spark
of new truth which did not quite dovetail with a crystallised
theology. " You do not believe the Angelic Doctor ? You
say the Subtle Doctor is in error ? You have doubts as to
the incontestability of the Invincible Doctor ? You are a
heretic this deserves to be purged with fire ! " Shortly,
although the theologians might themselves squabble over the
merits of their various learned and holy doctors, yet each
group gave their favourite a position of far greater importance
and authority than they were inclined to allow even to one
of the Evangelists. It is easy to note how the whole of
learning must, under such a system, fall into a dead formalism ;
there was no place left for individual thought ; all ingenuity
was consumed in composing commentaries on the various great
Scholastics. On the small book of sentences of Peter the
Lombard alone, innumerable folios in the form of com
mentaries were written sufficient to stock a fair-sized library.
All intellectual power was fritted away in gloss and comment ;
all freedom of thought crushed beneath this scholastic bondage.
To speak lightly of the Angelic Doctor, or to laugh at Peter
the Lombard s sentences, was a crime worse than blasphemy.
What wonder that the intellect of man rose in revolt against
such a system ? that a race of men grew up protesting
against this slavery, declaring that this dead formalism should
no longer obscure the light ? What wonder that, as this new
spirit grew stronger and stronger, and became more and more
conscious of its power, it waxed intolerant and even abusive
of the old monkish learning, held up its supporters to the
world s ridicule as " obscure men," and mocked the childish
petticoats which it had itself only just laid aside ? This
new spirit which was to shake off the old bondage and
divide Germany into two hostile camps was the so-called
Humanism; its adherents were the so-called Humanists,
or, from their proficiency in the classical languages, poets.
Their opponents were the monks or scholastic teachers,
164 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
the ", obscure men," or the "propagators of sophistry and
barbarism."
Such is the spiritual origin of Humanism ; its outward or
historical birth has been usually associated with the capture
of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, whereby great
numbers of Greeks were scattered over Southern Europe,
especially Italy. These men endeavoured to earn a livelihood
by teaching their language, and this gave rise to a considerable
number of Greek students. The Greek tongue, with its
glorious heathen literature, was new life to the souls of men
cramped in the old formal thought. The intellect of man
began to breathe afresh, taking in long draughts of this new
atmosphere. It found in Greek literature a truth and a
freedom which mediaeval Scholasticism no longer presented.
Itf discovered something which was worth studying for itself ;
the end of which was not a barren theology nay, which in
the end might be opposed to theology, for it would lead to a
new system of Biblical criticism and a new system of Biblical
exegesis, which would refuse to submit themselves to Catholic
dogma. The monks were not slow to recognise this feature
of Humanism. - He is a poet and speaks Greek, therefore
he is a bad Christian," cried the more ignorant of their
number. " The monk is a cowl-bearing monstrosity," retorted
the Humanist.
To Italy, however, those who would trace the outward
growth of German Humanism must turn. Eudolf Agricola,
the pupil of Thomas a Kempis and Father of German
Humanism, spends seven years in Italy, studying the classical
languages. " In autumn," writes Erasmus, " I shall, if possible,
visit Italy, and take my doctor s degree ; see you, in whom
is my hope, that I am provided with the means. I have
been giving my whole mind to the study of Greek, and as
soon as I get money I shall buy first Greek books, and then
clothes."
Reuchlin, afterwards the great champion of German
Humanism, learns Greek from two exiles, the one in Basel
and the other in Paris. " To the Latin was then added the
Greek," he writes, " the knowledge of which is absolutely
HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 165
necessary for a refined education. Thereby we are led back to
the philosophy of Aristotle, which can first be really grasped
when its language is understood. In this way we so won the
mind of all those who, not yet wholly saturated wi$i the
foolish old doctrines, longed for a purer knowledge, that they
streamed to us and deserted the trifling of the schools. The
old dried-up sophists, however, were enraged ; they said, that
what we taught was far from Eomish purity, that it was for
bidden to instruct anybody in the learning of the Greeks,
who had fallen away from the Church."
Such opinions sufficiently mark the connection between
the Humanists and the study of Greek. They show, too,
how the new culture must ultimately step into open anta
gonism with the old Scholasticism. These Humanists will
soon discover a truth in classical literature which cannot be
subordinated to Catholic theology. For the first time in the
history of culture, Hebraism and Hellenism will step out as
conflicting truths. Men will for the first time become dimly
conscious that they owe as much to the Greek as to the Jew.
They will begin to feel with Erasmus that many saints are
not in the catalogue, and scarce forbear to cry with him,
" Holy Socrates, pray for us ! " They will hesitate to believe
that the souls of Horace and Virgil are not among the blest.
" Whatsoever is pious and conduces to good manners,"
writes Erasmus, " ought not to be called profane. The first
place must indeed be given to the authority of the Scriptures ;
but, nevertheless, I sometimes find some things said or
written by the ancients, nay, even by the heathens, nay, by
the poets themselves, so chastely, so holily, and so divinely,
that I cannot persuade myself but that, when they wrote
them, they were divinely inspired, and perhaps the spirit of
Christ diffuses itself farther than we imagine ; and that there
are more saints than we have in our catalogue. To confess
freely among friends, I can t read Cicero on Old Age, on
Friendship, his Offices, or his Tusculan Questions without
kissing the book, without veneration towards that divine soul.
And, on the contrary, when I read some of our modern
authors, treating of Politics, Economics, and Ethics, good
166 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
God ! how cold they are in comparison with these ! Nay,
how do they seem to be insensible of what they write them
selves ! So that I had rather lose Scotus and twenty more
such as he (fancy twenty subtle doctors !) than one Cicero
or Plutarch. Not that 1 am wholly against them either ;
but because, by the reading of the one, I find myself become
better, whereas I rise from the other, I know not how coldly
affected to virtue, but most violently inclined to cavil and
contention."
No words could paint better than these the protest of the
Humanists.
Whilst the revival of classical learning came to satisfy
man s growing desire for fresh fields of thought, it must be
noted that this revival would have been impossible had it not
been at first encouraged by the Church, had not its first pro
moters been stout supporters of her dogma and her forms. The
theologians were not at once aware of their danger, they were
unconscious of what was involved in this new spirit of indi
vidual investigation. They did not perceive that the final out
come of an Agricola or a Wimpfeling would be a Crotus Eubianus
or an Ulrich von Hutten. Only experience taught them that
" the egg hatched by Luther had been laid by Erasmus " ; that
all forms of Humanism and all types of anti-popedom were alike
phases of one great revolt, one great protest which was the
necessary outcome of the birth of individualism. The relation
of the Humanists to the Church supplies us, however, with a
basis upon which we may divide the whole movement into
successive schools. We have first the so-called Older
Humanists. These men worked for the revival of classical
learning and a new system of education, but they remained
staunch supporters of the Church, and never allowed their
culture to lead them beyond the limits of Catholic dogma.
Secondly, there was a school of Humanists, whom I shall
term the Rational Humanists. They protested strongly against
the old Scholasticism ; they protested against the external
abuses of the Church ; they took a rationalistic view of
Christianity and its creed ; but they either did not support
Luther, or soon deserted him, being conscious that his move-
HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 167
ment would lead to the destruction of all true culture. These
men were the most conscious workers for freedom of thought
among all the sixteenth -century Eeformers. The majority
of them still professed themselves members of the Catholic
Church ; rightly or wrongly, they held it possible to reform
that institution from within, and so to modify its doctrines
that they should embrace the natural expansion of man s
thought. The leaders of the Rational Humanists were Reuchlin
and Erasmus. Their party and its true work of culture were
shipwrecked by the tempest of the Eeformation. Lastly, we
have the so-called Younger Humanists. A body of younger
men of great talent, but much smaller learning, who were
ready to " protest " against all things. The wild genius of
many of them hated any form of restraint, and their love of
freedom not infrequently degenerated into license. Some of"
them were, in their fiery enthusiasm, self-destructive ; others
with age became either Eational Humanists or supporters of
Luther. The presiding spirit of this Younger Humanism
was Ulrich von Hutten.
In order to trace more clearly the bearings of these three
schools it may not be amiss to refer briefly to a few of their
members. Of the Older Humanists, first of all must be
noted the three pupils of Thomas a Kempis, namely, Eudolf
Agricola, Eudolf von Langen, and Alexander Hegius, after
wards Eector of the Deventer School ; these men have been
not inappropriately termed the Fathers of German Humanism.
To them we may add the names of Wimpfeling, the
" Preceptor of Germany," who may be said to have revolu
tionised the schools of Southern Germany ; and of Abbot
Tritheim, who helped to found the first German learned
society the Ehenish Society of Literature and whose
biographical dictionary of ecclesiastical writers is still a very
useful book. These men, one and all, worked for the revival
of learning, not only in the matter of the classical tongues,
but in all branches of knowledge. To them are in a great
measure due those few years of intense intellectual activity
which preceded the Eeformation, and caused Ulrich von
Hutten to exclaim : " century ! literature ! it is a joy to
168 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
live, though not yet to rest. Study flourishes, the intellect
bestirs itself. Thou, Barbarism, take a halter, or make
up thy mind to banishment ! " But while the Older Human
ists insisted on the importance, and worked for the spread,
of the new learning, they did not hold human culture to be the
end of their studies, but the means to a religious life. They
in nowise saw any innate opposition in classical literature to
the dogma of the Catholic Church. " All learning," writes
Hegius, " is pernicious which is attained with loss of piety."
" The final end of study," says Murmellius, another of their
number, " must be no other than the knowledge and honour
of God." In like spirit, Eudolf Agricola recommends the
study of the old philosophy and literature, but " one must
not content himself with the study of the ancients, since the
ancients either were utterly ignorant of the true aim of life,
or guessed it only darkly, as seeing through a cloud, so that
they speak, rather than are convinced, of it." Therefore one
must go higher, to the Holy Scriptures, which scatter all
darkness, and preserve from all deception and error ; according
to their doctrines we must guide our life. " The study
of the classics shall be applied to a proper understanding of
the Holy Scriptures." Wimpfeling tells us that the true
greatness of Agricola consisted in this : " that all literature
and learning only served him as aids to purify himself from
every passion, and to work by faith and prayer on the great
building of which God is the architect." When we note that
Hegius, by " piety," meant a child-like belief in the Catholic
faith ; that Murmellius, by " a knowledge of God," meant an
acquaintance with Catholic dogma, and that Wimpfeling
understood, by the " great building of which God is the
architect," the Catholic Church ; when we note these things,
we may be sure that the Older Humanists were very far
from throwing off the Scholastic bondage. The new learning
for them was to be subservient to the old theology ; I they
attempted to put new wine into the old skins. Perhaps
the inconsistency of their standpoint might be best expressed
by terming them Scholastic Humanists.
One of the most remarkable of these Scholastic Humanists,
HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 169
a man whose immense learning almost made his scholasticism
a caricature, was the famous, much -abused opponent of
Luther Dr. Johann Eck. This man, we are told by the
Protestants, was vain, ambitious, and wanting in all religious
principles : the sole aim of his life, according to D Aubigne,
was to "make a sensation." On the other hand, the
Catholics tell us -^hat he was a man of unusual talent,
possessing a rare freshness and elasticity of mind, and with
deep inner conviction of the truth of the Catholic faith.
How are we to "judge the man whom Luther termed the
" organ of the devil," and Carlstadt the " father of asses,"
but upon whose gravestone stands written that " great in
doctrine, great in intellect, he fought boldly in the army of
Christ," and whose University for long years preserved his
desk, his hood and cap, as valued relics of an honoured
master ? If there is anything which makes us inclined to
doubt the Protestant assertions, it is the abuse that party
poured upon him in the grave. Luther writes that the
impious man has died of four of the most terrible diseases,
including among them raving madness ; while the polished
Melanchthon does not scorn to mock the great opponent with
the epitaph :
Multa vorans et multa bibens, mala plurima dicens,
Eccius hac posuit putre cadaver humo.
Let us at least be as just to the peasant s son of
Ottobeuern as we are to the peasant s son of Eisleben. In
Eck s writings there is, as a rule, a moderation of language
and a depth of research, from which Luther might have learnt
a lesson. That he employed all his learning and no little
talent in defending a narrow dogma is a charge which may
be brought against any professional theologian certainly
against Luther. He was not unconscious of the abuses of the
Church ; but he believed in reformation from within : above
all, he held that her doctrines and her abuses were matters
to be kept distinct, and respect for the one did not involve
approval of the other. We, who naturally fail to sympathise
with this supporter of the old theological bondage, may at
170 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
least allow that he acted honestly, and fought for his real
convictions. The man who, in his youth, was the friend of
Brant, Reuchlin, and Wimpfeling, the leaders of German
thought ; who, in early manhood, helped to humanise the
University of Ingoldstadt, and who raised himself, by a life
of study, from the peasant ranks to the foremost place among
Catholic theologians, deserves at least our respect, though
he applied his talents in a forlorn cause. If we find in him
a certain pride in his own learning, which nowadays might
have earned him the title of " prig," the cause is obvious when
we read the account he himself gives us of his own education :
" After I had learnt the elements, Cato was explained to
me together with the Latin Idioms of Paul Niavis, ^Esop s
Fables, the Comedy of Aretin, the Elegy of Alda (?), and
Seneca s Treatise on Virtue ; then the letters of Gasparinus,
the Josephinus of Gerson, St. Jerome s prologue to the Bible :
Boethius on discipline, Seneca s Ad Lucilium, the whole of
Terence, the first six books of Virgil s ^Eneid, and Boethius on
the Consolation of Philosophy. I was practised also in the
five treatises of Isidore on Dialectic. In the afternoons my
uncle read with me the legal and historical books of the Old
Testament, the four Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles ;
I read also a work on the four last things, one on the soul, a
part of Augustine s speeches to the Hermits, Augustine of
Ancona on the power of the Church, an introduction to the
study of law, the four chapters of the third book of the
decretals with the glosses. Panormitanus Rules of Law in
alphabetical order I learnt by heart. Over and above this I
heard in school the Bucolics of Virgil, Theodulus, and the six
tractates of Isidore. The curate of niy uncle explained to me
the Gospels, Cicero s work on Friendship, St. Basil s introduction
to the study of literature, and Homer s Trojan War. Of my
own accord I read the whole History of Lombardy, the greater
part of the Fortress of the Faith, and many other scholastic
and German books, although at that time the study of literature
was not in its bloom." l
1 Seneca de Virtutibus and Cato are the well-known medireval apocryphal
classics.
HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 171
Having accomplished all this, Eck went at twelve years,
old to the University of Heidelberg, and in his fifteenth year
was made Master of Arts by the University of Tiibingen.
Such an education must necessarily have a prig -creating
tendency. It may very profitably be compared with those of
Melanchthon some few years later, and of John Stuart Mill
in our own day.
Those who will take the trouble to investigate the course
of Eck s boyish studies will see at once why he combined
Scholasticism and Humanism. That he was a Scholastic,
subordinated all his culture to theology, his works sufficiently
prove ; that he was a Humanist the following quotation will
evidence ; it is not unworthy of Ulrich von Hutten : " I
praise our century wherein, after we have given barbarism
.notice to quit, the youth is instructed in the best fashion ;
throughout Germany the most excellent speakers of the Latin
and Greek languages are to be found. How many restorers
of the fine arts now flourish, who, removing the superfluous
and unneedful from the old authors, make all more brilliant,
purer, and more attractive ; men who bring the great authors
of the past again to light, who translate afresh the Greek and
Hebrew. Truly we may hold ourselves fortunate that we live
in such a century ! "
Other types of the Older Humanists, who present us with
instructive pictures, are the Abbot Tritheim and Eudolf Agri-
cola. The worthy abbot seems to have been a universal
genius, who corresponded with the learned of Europe upon end
less topics, and was never tired of collecting information of
every kind. Well versed in Hebrew and Greek, he did not
neglect to cultivate the natural sciences just bursting into life,
and he did it in no slavish way. Of astrology, to which men
of greater name than he have fallen prey (Melanchthon s
belief in the stars was a source of constant annoyance to
Luther), he would hear nothing. " The stars," said he, " have
no mastery over us." " The spirit is free, not subject to the
stars, it is neither influenced by them nor follows their
motions." In his library at Sponheim, the collection of
valuable books and manuscripts was the admiration of the
172 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
learned world. Visitors from all parts of Europe, doctors,
masters of arts, nay, even princes, prelates, and the nobility
came to study therein, and were put up, even for months, free
of expense by the genial abbot. Eound him, too, under their
president Dalberg, gathered the distinguished members of the
Rhenish Society of Literature, Conrad Celtes, Reuchlin, Wimp-
feling, Zasius, Peutinger, and Pirkheimer, the two latter repre
sentatives respectively of the culture of the citzens of Augsburg
and Nlirnberg. These men met together in a sort of discussion
club to criticise each other s writings and theories in all fields
of knowledge. For Tritheim, however, the authority of the
Church is to be decisive on all points, and the highest study is
theology. Strangely enough, he teaches that theology must
busy itself more with the Holy Scriptures ; he does not see how,
in so doing, he is raising the question whether the Bible and
Catholic theology are in perfect agreement how he is preparing
the way for Luther with his : " I will believe no human insti
tution, no human tradition, unless you can prove it in the
Bible." No, for Tritheirn the Catholic Church and the Bible
confirm one another, and he tells us that the Church alone,
on doubtful points, must interpret Scripture, and he who dares
to reject her interpretation has denied the gospel of Christ.
The worthy abbot is clearly very far from protesting ; he
cannot see that the ultimate outcome of the studies he fosters
will be to make each man think for himself; to make each
man priest, church, and pope of his own faith. Shortly, he is
unconscious of the coming freedom of thought.
Eudolf Agricola, termed by his contemporaries a second
Virgil, a man whose services to German Humanism have been
compared with those of Petrarca to Italian, was one of the
kindliest figures of the whole movement ; to spread culture in
his fatherland was the aim of his life ; not only the educated,
but the great mass of the folk should be made to feel the in
fluence of the classical spirit. The great classics should be
brought before the masses in German translations and with
German footnotes. 1 He recognised the need of cultivating the
1 Thucydides, Homer, Livy, Ovid, etc. , appeared in German translations soon
after 1500, adorned with copious woodcuts.
HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 173
language of the folk, for only through it could the folk be
made to participate in the newly acquired field of knowledge.
While many of the later Humanists were scarce able to speak
their native tongue, Agricola found time to compose German
songs, and loved to sing them to his zither. To him is prob
ably due the impulse to the study of German history and
antiquity, which brought such rich fruits in Strasburg, under
the guiding hands of Wimpfeling and Brant. Perhaps thus
indirectly may be attributed to him the fact that Brant wrote
his Ship of Fools, the greatest German literary work of the
period, in the vulgar tongue. Such men must suffice as types
of the Older Humanists.
Their enthusiasm rapidly spread throughout Germany ;
everywhere sprang up new centres of intellectual activity ; the
men of all ranks and all occupations were beginning to think,
to demand a why for everything. Within fifty years from
1456 new universities appeared at Greifswald, Basel, Freiburg,
Ingoldstadt, Trier, Tiibingen, Mainz, Wittenberg, and Frankfurt-
on-the-Oder, while a great impulse was given to the develop
ment of the old. Nor did this spirit reach the universities
alone, the imperial towns became centres for the spread of the
new culture. Round Pirkheimer in Niirnberg, who, though a
Rational Humanist, was in friendly communication with men of
the old type, gathered an unsurpassed group of men : Regiomon-
tanus, the greatest astronomer of the time, Hartmann Schedel,
the historian and antiquary, and a host of lesser men of science
and literature ; these men were assisted in their work by a
noteworthy band of artists : Wolgemuth and his apprentices
prepared the woodcuts for Schedel s great historical work, and
Diirer engraved charts of the heavens for Regiomontanus. On
all sides there was real intellectual activity. From Niirnberg
there was a constant interchange of letters with the whole
Humanistic world ; not the least pleasing are those of Pirk-
heimer s sister, the Abbess Charitas, with the great men of her
brother s circle. This Humanistic nun seems to have been a
woman of surpassing power, and to have almost justified the
extravagant praise of Conrad Celtes. Her memoirs present us
with a most remarkable picture of womanly courage and per-
174 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
severance under the brutal persecutions which befell her cloister
in the Keformation days. In all branches of art and technical
construction nay, even in pure Humanism Nlirnberg stood
second to none of the German towns or universities. A similar,
if not quite so famous, activity developed itself in Augsburg
round Conrad Peutinger, who worked especially for the study
of German antiquity ; he edited the old German historians, and
and by his Sermones convivales de mirandis Germanice anti-
qmtatibus created an interest for the national past. A lasting
witness to Peutinger s historical spirit is the monument in the
Franciscan church at Innsbruck to Kaiser Maximilian, the patron
of the Nlirnberg and Augsburg Humanists.
These few remarks must suggest rather than fully picture
the extreme mental activity which was created throughout
Germany by the Older Humanists. We must, however, re
member that these men were firm Catholics, and that this
intellectual movement was entirely in the hands of the
Church. The universities (Erfurt alone, perhaps, excepted)
were under her thumb, and the new thought was only allowed
in so far as it did not conflict with the old theology. All
knowledge might be pursued so far as it was conducive to
faith, but it must be at once suppressed if it proclaimed a new
truth beyond the old crystallised beliefs of past centuries.
This especially was the view of the leaders of the Strasburg
school of Older Humanists ; of Wimpfeling (see later pp. 185-
192); of Geiler von Kaiserberg, the folk-preacher; and of
Sebastian Brant, the author of the Ship of Fools. " Don t,"
they cried to the folk, for such is the audience to which they
appealed, " be led away from the faith if dispute arises con
cerning it, but believe in all simplicity what the Holy Church
teaches. Don t let your reason meddle with things it cannot
grasp. Go home and cure your own sins, your idleness,
drunkenness, luxury, love of dancing, of dress, and of gambling ;
when you have done that, which, however, is no light matter,
then go and fight for the unity and purity of the faith ; go
and fight for the defence of the Empire. Battle for Church
and Kaiser ! Eestore again the all-embracing Empire, and
the all-embracing Church to their old grandeur ! Study by
HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 175
all means, if you can, but always remember the end of your
study is the understanding of Holy Scripture, the refutation of
heresy ; in all this you will have need of the unerring rules of
the Catholic faith." Such preaching shows us at once that for
these men the old religious and social notions were still suffi
cient guides in life ; they still believed in Pope and Kaiser, and
tied culture to the apron-strings of theology. They still thought
it possible to revivify the old institutions. They were uncon
scious of the import of the movement they had themselves set
going. They knew nothing of the protest, the revolt man s
reason was about to make against all the old forms of belief;
they did not see that religion is a thing which, like all thought,
grows and develops, and that the Christianity of yesterday will
no more suit the man of to-day than the clothes of his grand
father suit him ; that the very culture they were themselves
propagating must ultimately oppose a theology which had
ceased to keep pace with the progress of thought. For this
reason we term them Scholastic Humanists, not from any
contempt, because they did good and necessary work, but since
they remained in the old bondage, and did not grasp the
coming struggle between the new culture and the old formal
religion.
Herein is the distinguishing mark between the Older and
Kational Humanists the latter declined to accept the old
theological tutelage. " We are going," said the Eationalists,
" to think over these matters for ourselves. We are not going
to submit our studies to any antiquated formalism." And,
after thinking over these matters, they ceased to have any
very great respect for the old institutions. For themselves
they threw off entirely the old mental yoke, but this did not
mean that they proposed the destruction of the Catholic
Church. No ! they held it possible that its framework might
be modified to suit the new state of affairs. To the folk,
who were incapable yet of thinking, they did not preach :
" These old forms are nonsense ; shake them off and destroy
their supporters." That sort of work was left to Wittenberg.
The Rational Humanists merely said : " Our first business is
to spread culture, to educate the folk, to tell them the truths
176 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
we have discovered ; then it will be time enough for a vast
public opinion to react on the Catholic Church. All we insist
upon at present is the right to teach, to clear away ignorance
of all sorts, even that of monk and priest. The obscure men
shall not silence us, but we do not term them a devil s litter
to be destroyed by force. We are going to educate them, we
are going to educate the folk to understand something better ;
our labour is not that of a day, but of long years. Some
abuses, however, are so obvious, and strike so deeply at all
national life, that we shall insist upon their removal at once.
We must have the misuse of indulgences, pluralities, simony,
the misapplication of the Church s temporal power, seen to
immediately, please." Such is the teaching of the Eational
Humanists, varying, of course, in the individual from active
propaganda to quiet disbelief in the Catholic dogma. Of the
two leaders of this party, Eeuchlin and Erasmus, it is needless
to say anything now. We have already mentioned the names
of Pirkheimer and Celtes. One of the most remarkable
Eational Humanists, however, Conrad Muth, is less generally
known, and may be taken here as a type of the class. Like
so many of the first men of his time, Muth was educated
under Hegius at Deventer, and afterwards completed his
studies in Italy. He finally retired to Gotha, where he had
been presented to a small canonry, and devoted his life to
study. Attracted by his personal influence and the charm of
his character, a group of young men, whose names were soon
to be resounding through Germany, gathered round the genial
Canon. He may truly be termed the " Preceptor of Younger
Humanism." From the Canon s house, behind the church at
Gotha, spread the fiery youths who were to subvert all things,
and protest against all forms of discipline. Here might have
been found Eoban Hesse, who tried most things, but proved
faithful to poetry alone ; Crotus Eubianus, the devisor of that
immortal satire, the Epistolce Olscurorum Virorum ; Justus
Jonas, later secretary to Martin Luther ; Spalatin, afterwards
most respectable of Keformers ; and last, but greatest, we may
mention Ulrich von Hutten, the glowing prophet of Eevolu-
tion. There this little band gathered round the older Canon,
HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 177
were fired by his eloquent talk, and adopted his radical and
rationalistic notions without tempering them by his learning.
From this centre was directed the battle of Humanism against
Scholasticism ; from thence went forth the biting satires in aid
of the Humanistic champion, Eeuchlin, in his contest with
obscurity; from thence the youthful Humanistic evangelists
spread through the German Universities, calling upon the
students to protest against the so-called "barbarism" and
" obscurity " of the theologians and monkish teachers. The
University of Erfurt, close at hand, was soon won for the good
cause, Heidelberg and Wittenberg followed ; everywhere, when
a " poet " commenced to lecture on the classics, his lecture-
room was crowded with students, and the theologians had to
expound the works of subtle and invincible doctors to empty
benches. Satirical dialogues, Latin epigrams, street mocking,
and even ill-usage, were cast in a perfect torrent upon the old
teachers. Youth, ever ready for something fresh and dimly
conscious of the barrenness of the old, seized upon this new
culture without fully grasping its meaning or penetrating to
its calmer delights. Students no longer desired to be bachelor
or master, but to be " poets," skilful composers of Latin verse
with pens ready in the wit of Horace and Juvenal. These
" Latin cohorts " despised everything savouring of German as
barbarism, even to their names, so that a Schneider became a
Sartorius, a Konigsberger a Eegiomontanus, and a Wacher a
Vigilius. 1 With this youthful party Humanism degenerated,
and while Erasmus, Eeuchlin, and Muth viewed Luther s
propaganda with distrust, the younger Humanists nocked to
the new standard of protest and revolt, and so doing brought
culture into disgrace and shipwrecked the revival of learning
in Germany. It was a foretaste of the future, when, in 1510,
as the outcome of an anti-scholastic riot of the Erfurt students,
the mob destroyed the university buildings, the colleges, and
bursaries, and, worst of all, the fine library with all its old
1 It ia often extremely difficult to conceive how some of the poets arrived at
their classical names. Thus plain Johann Jager of Dornsheim became Crotus
Rubianus, and Theodorici, Ceratinus ! Perhaps the most ingenious adaptation
was that of the Erfurt printer Knapp, who styled himself Cn. Appius.
12
178 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
documents and charters ! It is only party bigotry which
induces Catholic historians to attribute these disasters to the
teaching of Erasmus and Muth ; they were the outcome of
that spirit of protest and revolt which accompanied the birth
of individualism. The Eational Humanists,; while working for
freedom of thought, strove, as far as lay in their power, that
that freedom should be achieved by a gradual evolution ; the
more violent religious party produced a revolution.; 1 Nothing
will show more strongly the spirit of Kational Humanism than
a few quotations from the letters of the Canon of Gotha to his
youthful friends :
" I will not lay before you a riddle out of Holy Scripture/
he writes to Spalatin, " but an open question, which may be
solved by profane studies. If Christ be the way, the truth,
and the life, what did men do for so many centuries before
his birth ? Have they gone astray, wrapt in the heavy dark
ness of ignorance, or did they share salvation and truth ? I
will to thy help with my own view of the matter. The
religion of Christ did not commence with his becoming man,
but has existed for all time, even from Christ s first birth.
Since what is the true Christ, what the peculiar son of God,
if it be not, as St. Paul says, the wisdom of God ? that, not
only the Jews in a narrow corner of Syria, but even the
Greeks, Italians, and Germans possessed, although they had
different religious customs." " The command of God which
lights up the soul has two chief principles : love God and thy
neighbour as thyself. This law gives us the kingdom of
heaven ; it is the law of Nature, not hewn in stone as that of
Moses, not graven in brass as the Eoman, nor written upon
parchment or paper, but moulded in our hearts by the highest
teacher. Who enjoys with pious mind this memorable and
holy Eucharist does something divine, since the true body of
Christ is peace and unity, and no holier host exists than
reciprocal love."
In a letter to Urban l he writes :
" Who is our redeemer ? Justice, peace, and joy, these are
1 Not the better known Urbanus Rhegius, but Heinrich Urbanus, a very
interesting personality of the Gotha circle.
HUMANISM IN GERMANY 179
the Christ who has descended from heaven. If the food
of God is to obey the divine commandments, if the highest
commandment is to love God and our neighbour, so consider,
my Urban, if those fools rightly enjoy the food of the Lord,
who swallow holy wafers and yet against the Sacrament of
Christian love disturb the peace and spread discord. The
true Christ is soul and spirit, which can neither be touched
with the hands nor yet seen. Socrates said to a youth,
Speak, that I may see thee. Now note, my Urban, that
we only reveal by our speech the spirit and the God which
dwells in us. Therefore we only share heaven, if we live
spiritually, philosophically, or in a Christian manner, obeying
the reason more than our desires."
In this letter Muth goes so far as to say the Mahomedans
are not so wrong, when they say that the real Christ was not
crucified. Another time he writes to Urban :
" New clothes, new ceremonies are introduced, as if God
could be honoured by clothes or attire. In the Koran we
read : Who serves the eternal God and lives virtuously,
whether he be Jew, Christian, or Saracen, wins the grace of
God and salvation. So God is pleased by an upright course
of life, not by new clothes ; since the only true worship of
God consists in not being evil. He is religious who is up
right ; he is pious who is of a pure heart. All the rest is
smoke."
Yet again we read :
" There is only one god and one goddess, but there are
many forms and many names Jupiter, Sol, Apollo, Moses,
Christ, Luna, Ceres, Proserpine, Tellus, Mary. But be
cautious not to spread that. We must bury it in silence
like the Eleusinian mysteries. In matters of religion we
must use the cloak of fable and riddle. Do you with Jupiter s
grace, that is, with the grace of the best and greatest god,
silently despise all little gods. If I say Jupiter I mean
Christ and the true God. Yet enough of these all too high
matters."
Muth had need of caution ; the " godless painters " were
exiled even by the Protestants for much less than this ! A
180 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
man who cast aside confession, neglected the services of the
Church, and laughed at fasting, had reason, even in the
neighbourhood of Erfurt, to be very careful. Another
interesting letter is almost as venturesome :
" Only the stupid seek their salvation in fasting. I am
tired and stupid. That is due to the food of stupidity, to
say nothing more severe. Donkeys, forsooth donkeys they
are, who don t take their usual meals and feed on cabbage
and salt fish." " I laughed heartily," Muth writes to Peter
Eberbach, " when Benedict told me of your mother s lamenta
tions because you so seldom went to church, would not fast,
and eat eggs contrary to the usual custom. I excused this
unheard-of and horrible crime in the following fashion : Peter
does wisely not to go to church, since the building might fall
in, or the images tumble down ; much danger is always at
hand. But he hates fasting for this reason, because he knows
what happened to his father, who fasted and died. Had he
eaten, as he was formerly accustomed to do, he would not
have died. As my hearer continued fco knit his brows and
asked : Who will absolve you bad Christians ? I answered :
Study and Knowledge
Still a last quotation :
"Where reason guides, we want no doctors. The school
is the grammarian s field of action ; theologians are of no
use there. Nowadays the theologians, the donkeys, seize
the whole school and introduce no end of nonsense. In a
university it were enough to have one sophist, two mathema
ticians, three theologians, four jurists, five medical men, six
orators, seven Hebrew scholars, eight Greek scholars, nine
philologists, and ten right-minded philosophers as presidents
and governors of the entire learned body."
These extracts will perhaps convey some notion of the
man who gave the tone to Younger Humanism. With his
ridicule of fasting, saint -worship, and outward religion, we
might on the first thought suppose he would support Luther.
But, like Erasmus, he saw that the Reformer s movement
would destroy all true freedom of thought, and he remained
formally in the Catholic Church. Luther s journey to Worms
HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 181
was followed by the so-called "priest -riots," in which the
Lutheran mob stormed the house of the Canon of Gotha.
From this time Muth s circumstances grew worse and worse ;
a few years afterwards he appealed for a little bread and
money for necessaries to the Elector Friedrich, but no aid
came. Yet a little struggle with bitter poverty, and he
passed calmly away with the words, " Thy will be done/
amidst the turmoil of the Peasant Eebellion that first out
come of the Eeformation. He found at last the " Beata
tranquillitas," which he had in vain inscribed over his door
at Gotha. His death is very typical of the disregarded
death of culture amid the noise of mob-protestation and the
braying of rival theological trumpets.
But though this nigh-forgotten Canon of Gotha was the
preceptor, he was by no means the parent of Younger
Humanism. Strangely enough its spirit has a far longer
history than the renascence of the fifteenth century. The
Younger Humanists were the direct descendants of the stroll
ing scholars, who, from the twelfth century onward, con
tinued to protest in life and writings against the habits of
respectable society in general and of the Catholic hierarchy in
particular. These strolling scholars are the material out of
which the Latin cohort was formed. It preserved their tradi
tions, their wild method of life, and later, in its battle with
monkdom and Eorne, even adopted their satires and poems. It
is impossible now to consider at any length this most interest
ing phenomenon of European history. A few remarks may serve
to show its relation to Younger Humanism. We find these
strolling scholars in the thirteenth century at home in England,
France, Italy, and Germany ; they were banded together into
societies, as those of the Goliards and the Ordo Vagorum. They
wandered about from school to school all over Europe. Latin
was their common language, and the capacity for drinking and
song-making the sole qualifications for admission to the order.
At first all were clerks, but later they became less exclusive,
and their numbers were recuited from every class. They led
a wild, careless life, an open protest against all forms of
social order. A monk, a long beard, a jealous husband, were
182 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
the favourite subjects for their satire ; a good tavern, jovial
company, and a merry-eyed damsel their idols. Their hatred
for the Church was intense ; not so much for her dogma as
for the greed and stupidity of her priesthood. They poured
out line upon line of bitter satire against Eome and the
temporal power of the Pope ; they were in the field a century
before Wyclif, and yet did much for the propagation of his
opinions : traces of them may be found throughout the
fifteenth century, and Luther shows knowledge of their
songs. Their numerous writings against the dominion of Home
are a curious memento of protestation and individualism
struggling in dark corners for more than three centuries
before the Reformation. There is a genuine ring of true
poetry about some of their verses which makes them one of
the most valuable literary productions of mediaeval Latinity.
Strolling scholars, too, had their poets and archpoets
long before Humanism was thought of. The Church in
council and synod in vain issued decrees against them ; that
they should not be given charity ; that they should be ex
cluded from mass ; that they should be imprisoned and
punished. They flourished all the same, they continued to
make satires on the Church, to lie about on the public
benches, to drink in the taverns, and make love to the
burghers daughters. They read their Horace and Juvenal,
and filled themselves with the classical spirit, long before
the days of Humanism. They parodied the songs of the
Church in drinking songs ; they parodied the words of
Scripture : " In those days were many multitudes of
players of one soul and with no tunic ; " or, again, " In the
spring-time the wine-bibbers were saying to one another, Let
us cross over even to the tavern " ; or, " What is to be done
that we may gain money ? The Pope replied : It is written
in the law which I teach you : Love gold and silver with all
thy heart and with all thy soul and riches as thyself; do
this and live."
For these strolling scholars, as for Wyclif, Hus, and
Luther, the heads of the Catholic Church are the disciples
of Antichrist. More pleasing than their satires on Church
HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 183
and monk are their love and drinking songs ; some of the
former possess surpassing grace, and the humour of the latter
in undeniable. 1 There is no want of genius, but it is genius
which has sunk to the tavern, has joined the order of
vagabonds, and delights in roving over the face of the earth
and protesting against all forms of established order. Such
is the heritage of the Younger Humanists ; they are the
strolling scholars coming again into prominence. No one can
truly appreciate the spirit or understand the origin of the
Epistolce Olscurorum Virorum who has not read the satires of
the strolling scholars ; the one was a natural outcome of the
other. Such men as Ulrich von Hutten and Hermann von
dem Busche were really strolling scholars under a new name.
They led a restless, wild life, now listening in the halls of the
universities, now serving as soldiers, or even the day after
playing the highwaymen. There is a charm about their life
which it is difficult to cast aside ; there is the stamp of
genius, though it be too often saturated in wine or openly
dragged through the mire. If, in modern times, breaches of
social custom have been on more than one occasion cast into
the shade by the greatness of a poet s talent, we shall not find
it hard to forgive Ulrich von Hutten lesser offences, for he had a
wider and more enthusiastic genius. Such, then, is the spirit
of Younger Humanism of the men who will by satire, wit,
and even violence destroy the old scholastic theology ; they
will be among the first to protest, to revolt. They will join
Luther, they will join Von Sickingen ; they will eagerly
deform and upset, but, unlike the Eational Humanists, they
are incapable of reconstructing. What the effect of such a
party gaining the mastery of the universities must be, is too
obvious. The old learning toppled over and carried the new
culture with it. Such was the end of Humanism and the
beginning of Protestantism the meeting of Ulrich von
Hutten and Martin Luther. All energies, all intellectual vigour
were turned into theological channels. Culture in the higher
sense understood by an Erasmus or a Muth disappeared.
1 Since the above was written, Mr. J. A. Symonds has, in Wine, Women,
and Song (1884), translated some of these songs into English verse.
184 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
" All learned studies lie despised in the dust," writes the
Rector of Erfurt in 1523, "the academic distinctions are
scorned, and all discipline has vanished from among the
students." " So deep are we sunk/ moans even Eoban Hesse
himself, " that only the memory of our former power remains
for us ; the hope of again renewing it has vanished for ever.
Our university is desolate and we are despised."
In a like melancholy tone Melanchthon writes of the state
of affairs in Wittenberg : " I see that you feel the same pain
as I over the decay of our studies, which so recently raised
their heads for the first time, yet now begin to decline."
Surrounded by narrow uncultured spirits, Melanchthon declares
Wittenberg a desert without a congenial soul.
Not only utter dissoluteness and disorder ruled among
the students, but their numbers rapidly decreased at all the
universities. In the fourteen years before the Eeformation
(1522), 6000 students matriculated at Leipzig, in the fourteen
following years less than a third that number In Basel,
after 1524, we are told the University lay as if it were dead
and buried, the chairs of the teachers and benches of the
students were alike empty. In Heidelberg, in 1528, there
were more teachers than students. In Freiburg the famous
jurist Zasius must content himself (1523) with six hearers,
and these French ! The University of Vienna, which formerly
numbered its 7000 students, was frequented only by a few
dozens, and some of the faculties were entirely closed. Every
where the same complaint no students, or useless students.
The old scholastic system was destroyed, but the study of the
ancients, which was to replace it, had disappeared likewise ;
the minds of men were directed into one channel only. Youth
had no thought of study, but was eager for religious dis
putation, for theological wrangling. The rival trumpets
were resounding throughout the schools, and their noise was
rendering dumb all honest workers. Luther had brought back
a flood of theology on Europe, and men could and would no
longer delight in the sages of Greece and Home. We grasp
fully what Erasmus meant when he declared that, " Wherever
Lutheranism reigns, there learning perishes."
HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 185
NOTE ON JACOB
It is impossible to appreciate the work of a reformer without some con
ception of the state of affairs he set himself to remedy. I shall, therefore,
describe briefly the type of school-books in existence before 1500. We
have seen that the chief aim of the schools was to teach Latin, and that
Latin was taught chiefly for theological ends. In the twelfth century
the generally accepted Latin grammar \vas that of Donatus ; at the
commencement of the thirteenth, rules from Priscian were turned into
hexameter verse by Alexander de Villa Dei. Both these books were
somewhat miserable productions ; still it was possible to learn some
Latin out of them, and for centuries they remained the standard school
grammars. Now, when Scholasticism lost its early vigour, and degenerated
into a mere drag on human thought, it not only produced enormous
folios on every line of the great doctors, but even these poor school-
books, Donatus and Alexander, were absolutely buried beneath a mountain
of commentary and gloss. This was especially prevalent towards the end
of the fifteenth century. The unfortunate scholars were not only compelled
to learn their Donatus by heart, but the whole of the commentary in
which he was embedded ! The absolute nonsense and idiocy of the
commentaries can nowadays hardly be conceived. All their absurdities
the children had to learn by heart, so that, as Luther said, " a boy might
spend twenty to thirty years over Donatus and Alexander and yet have
learnt nothing." For example, a certain commentary entitled : Exposition
of Donatus, with certain new and beautiful notes according to the manner
of the Holy Doctor (Thomas Aquinas), 1492, commences with ten con
siderable paragraphs as to what Donatus meant by his title : TJie Dialogue
of Donatus concerning the Eight Parts of Speech. Thus the expression of
Donatus is said to show that Donatus was the cause of the grammar ; but
then the poor schoolboy must distinguish whether Donatus as the cause
of the grammar was an efficient moving cause, or an efficient moved
cause, or a material cause, or a second cause, or an efficient first and
ultimate cause ; also the relation between God and Donatus as to the
creation of the book and its ultimate end and approximate end is con
sidered. A like flood of nonsense accompanied every word of the
grammar ; a still worse muddle was made of Alexander. Long para
graphs were written on the nature of the man who first wrote a grammar,
wherein it appeared that the first grammarian must have been a natural
philosopher with a knowledge of metaphysics. It is argued : " Before
the invention of grammar there was no grammar, therefore the first
inventor of the grammatic science was not a grammarian. That is to
say, the first inventor of the grammatic science had an imperfect grammar
by nature ; this he perfected by study and labour through his sense of
1 This note was printed for students attending a course of lectures on
mediaeval Germany, given in 1882.
186 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
memory and experiment." What wonder that if boys learnt anything
at all from such a method of education, it was to quibble, wrangle, and
play with words ! School and university both led to the same result ;
argumentations and discussions were the order of the day. In these
discussions the great end was to catch your opponent in a word-trap to
make him contradict himself even by the use of a double-meaning phrase
or the like. To wrangle was the great end of university education ; and
a public wrangling would precede the conferring of all degrees. Such
a method has given its name to the Cambridge mathematical honoursmen ;
such a method of public dispute, the theological wrangle, forms a marked
feature in the Reformation. Catholic and Protestant held disputations.
Luther, Eck, Melanchthon, Carlstadt, Murner, publicly wrangled over the
various dogmas of their respective faiths. So hot did the wranglers often
grow, that in the Sorbonne a wooden barricade was erected between the
contending parties to prevent them appealing to physical argument.
Books were written to assist the student in "wrangling" as for
example : Tlie Incontestable Art : teaching how to dispute indifferently
concerning all things knowable (1490). Let us examine some incontestable
cases out of this latter book. The two wranglers are termed the opponent
and respondent.
Granted, the respondent will give something to drink to any one
who tells him the truth, and to no other. The opponent says to the
respondent : " You w r ill not give me anything to drink." The question
is whether the respondent ought to give anything to drink to the
opponent or not ? If he does give, then opponent has spoken falsely
in which case he ought not to give. If he does not give, then opponent
lias spoken the truth, and consequently the respondent ought to
give.
Suppose that Peter always runs till he meets some one telling a lie ;
and first, Paul meets Peter, and says : " Peter, you do not run." The
question is whether Paul has spoken truly or falsely ?
Granted that Plato says : " Sortes is cursed if he has cursed me ; "
and Sortes says : " Plato is cursed if he has not cursed me." The
question is whether Plato has cursed Sortes or not ?
Such are the quibbles which the schools taught and wherein the
universities delighted in the fifteenth century. 1 The first to attack this
method of education was Laurentius Valla ; but the man who, working
on his lines, did the most for educational reform in Germany was
Jacob Wimpfeling; Erasmus put the finishing touch to their labours.
Wimpfeling cut away the commentaries on Doiiatus and Alexander, and
prepared a practical reading book and grammar for schoolboys. " It is
madness," he writes, " to teach such superfluities while life is so brief."
Now I think we can grasp that it was no commonplace when Wimp
feling, in his epoch-making book, the Adolescentia, commenced with the
chapter : " To the preceptors of boys, that they teach them useful
1 My guide is Zarncke : see his edition of the Narrenschiff, p. 346.
HUMANISM IN GEKMANY 187
matters." Far from being a commonplace, it is the protest of the
educational reformer of Germany.
In this chapter he bids schoolmasters and instructors of boys not to
devote great time and much study to obscure and difficult matters, which
are not necessary, but to care rather for straightforward things worthy of
knowledge : not for those only which strain the intellect, as the subtle
knots of dialectic, syllogisms with their first and second premises.
Parents and friends wish children educated so that their studies may
lead them to the salvation of their souls, the honour of God, and the
glory of the commonweal. The ready minds of the young are to be
excited to virtue, to honesty, to fear of God, to remembrance of death
and judgment, not to subtleties of logic. Do not encumber their tender
years with speculations, unproductive opinions, quibbles of words, with
genera, species, and other universals. These very universals are taught
as though the Christian religion grew out of them, as though the worship
of God, our reverence, the enthusiasm of the soul, had their foundation
in universals as though the knowledge of all arts and sciences flowed
from them ! " Just as if the use of body and soul, the government of
kingdoms and all principalities, the happy rule of all lands, the extension
of the commonweal, the defence of states, the excellence of the clergy,
the honour of the orders, the reformation of the Catholic Church, the
safety of the Roman hierarchy, the strength of virtue, the destruction of
vice, the glory of peace, the escape from war, the concord of Christian
princes, the vindication of Christian blood, the repulse of the Turks and
the foes of our religion, the end of human, life, and the whole machine
even of the world would break down did it not depend on, consist in,
turn about universals ! "
Such is Wimpfeling s protest against Scholasticism in education !
Let us consider his theory of education. Many of its precepts will
not seem new ; but they were new to the fifteenth century ; and not a
few of our public schools could study them with advantage to-day.
Children at an early age are to be handed over to discipline, as they
are then most susceptible. Parents and preceptors are always to ascer
tain what is the nature of the child s capacity ; the mind of the child is
to be measured and examined in order to ascertain for what study it
seems best fitted. This method of varying education with the individuality
of a child is too often neglected to-day ; whatever the child s peculiar
bent may be, it is treated as uniform raw material, which is all passed
through the same educational machine ; and the result is too often disastrous.
Next, Wimpfeling tells us that children of high birth and position must
especially be educated in order that they may set a good example to
others. (He is thinking peculiarly of the children of the robber nobility
of his own time ; but the remark still applies.) They are not to be left
to idleness, to give themselves up to boorish and violent amusements
here, as elsewhere, he is particularly bitter against those who spend their
time in hunting but to devote themselves to those studies wherein they
may excel their own subjects. Why should these nobles despise all the
188 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
labours and exercises of the mind ? They ought rather to study the
customs of the ancients, the usages of their own lands and history, so
that they may act wisely at home and in war.
Then we are told the various signs by means of which the existence
of talent may be detected in a child. These are : (1) its being excited to
study by praise ; (2) its striving at the highest things in hope of glory ;
(3) its promptness in working and its shunning of idleness ; (4) its fear of
scolding and the rod, or rather looking upon them as a disgrace, so that on
reproof the child blushes, and on being birched grows better ; (5) its
love of teachers and its having no hatred of instruction ; and lastly (6)
obedience freely given, an absence of obstinacy.
Since youth is an age lightly given to sinning, and unless held in
check by the example and authority of elders, rapidly slips from bad to
worse, Wimpfeling gives us a list of the six good and the six bad
qualities of the youthful disposition, and suggests methods of encouraging
the one set and repressing the other. Thus the six good qualities are :
generosity, cheerfulness, high-spiritedness, open-heartedness that is, not
being readily suspicious, fulness of pity, the lightly feeling ashamed.
The six bad qualities are : sensuality, instability, lightly believing all
things, stubbornness, lying, and want of moderation.
It will be seen at once how Wimpfeling makes the keynote of
education, not the knowledge of Latin, but the inculcating of morality,
or, as he himself expresses it, the teaching of good conduct and morality.
He belongs essentially to the Strasburg School of Religious Humanists,
who hoped to reform religion by laying less stress on dogma and striving
for a new and purer morality. Such was the object of Sebastian Brant in
his Ship of Fools, of Geiler von Kaisersberg in his sermons, and Wimp
feling in his pedagogic works. This makes the following passage of the
Adolescentia peculiarly characteristic ; it might stand for a manifesto of
the whole School : " The instruction of boys and the young in good
morals is of the utmost importance for the Christian religion and for the
reformation of the Church. The reformation of the Catholic Church by
a return to its primitive pure morals ought to begin with the young,
because its deformation began with their evil and worthless instruction"
Strange to find in 1500 a strong Catholic recognising the deformation of
the Church, and its cause ; seeing also that its true reformation can only
be brought about by a process of genuine education ! Well if Luther,
seventeen years afterwards, had grasped this truth !
Wimpfeling s four means of correction do not show much originality,
yet they prove that even here he had thought and classified. They are
as follows : Public attendance to hear the divine word, a private talking
to, corporeal correction where verbal has failed, and that peculiar to the
Catholic faith, namely, confession.
The old Scholastic system made Latin the chief subject of education
with a view to theology. Wimpfeling, giving morality the first place,
introduced something beyond theology : " The instruction of youth in
good morals is highly conducive to the welfare of the civic and political
HUMANISM IN GEEMANY 189
community." This apparent commonplace was a veritable battering-ram
against the old Scholastic education.
Wimpfeling s so-called Laws for the Young possess perhaps more
value for the history of culture than for that of pedagogic ; but they are
not without interest for the latter. They run : (1) To fear and rever
ence God. (2) Not to swear. (3) To honour parents. (4) To respect
the aged, and seek their friendship and society. (5) To respect the clergy
(here the attention of the young is specially drawn to the state of the
Bohemians, owing to their disobedience to this law). (6) Not to speak ill
of men, especially those in authority (evil merits our compassion rather
than abuse, Wimpfeling refers particularly to the Pope, and quotes
St. Paul about resisting the " powers ordained," the very text which
Luther was afterwards to use as an argument for implicit obedience to the
princes in their opposition to Popedom !). (7) Bad society to be fled.
(8) Also covetousness. (9) To be cautious against talkativeness. (10) To
show modesty, especially in matters of dress. The dress of the students
must often have been very improper to need the rebukes here ad
ministered. Elsewhere in the book Wimpfeling makes propriety in
dress a point of religion ; long close-fitting tunics ought to be worn.
Other forms of dress are due to a total want of devotion and religion, or
at least to a desire to please shameless women. An improper dress
denotes improper morals ; the dress, no less than the tongue, belongs to
the inner man. Many years afterward Melanchthon, in an oration on
dress to the students of Wittenberg, harps on the same theme. 1 (11) To
avoid idleness, and seek honest work. The famous Dalberg is here
quoted as example of such work ; his occupation, among other matters,
being the study of the vulgar tongue. It was from the Strasburg circle
that the first impulse was given to the study of the German language
and history. (12) To be frugal. (13) There are three virtues peculiarly
necessary for the young, both towards themselves and others, namely,
that they should have firm guard over themselves ; that they should be
an example to others ; and lastly, that they should be loved sincerely
and in Christian fashion by all, especially the good. (14) We have a
law as to the means of increasing virtue and as to the efficacy of habit in
a child. The keynote here is an expression of sympathy in all its
doings. We must accustom ourselves to be moved by childish grief and
childish pleasure, so that from the beginning even to the end of life
children may hate what ought to be hated, and love what is worthy of
love. Even as when we wish a boy to be an architect we show pleasure
in his building toy-houses, so play is to be made use of to create and
confirm good habits in children. " We ought to strive in all matters,
even in playing, that we may turn the inclination and desire of children
towards those things of which we wish them to attain knowledge." This
precept itself was epoch-making in the fifteenth century, yet even to
this day has hardly been generally accepted as a leading principle of
1 1480-1580 is the century of Dress-Degeneration.
190 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
education. (15) Against luxury ; especially against children feeding and
drinking too extravagantly. (16) Against foppery in general, but par
ticularly against the curling of the hair. We are told it offends God,
injures the brain, disfigures the head, creates a "sylva pediculorum,"
deforms the face, ultimately makes the countenance hideous, shows that
the youth loves his hair more than his head, cultivates his curls rather
than his intellect ; and the saying of one Diether, an honest and valiant
knight, is quoted to the effect, that a curler will be excluded from the
kingdom of heaven, because the great and best God will not deem him
worthy of the kingdom of the saints, who, not content with His image,
His face, and His curls, with which He had endowed him, has not
blushed to create these spurious things for himself a despiser and hater
of the divine gifts, and one who longs for strange matters. The just
Judge, on the Day of Judgment, will not be able to upbraid the curler
severely enough : " We did not fashion this man ; We did not give him
these features ; these are not the natural locks with which We furnished
him!" (17) Youth is to avoid all perturbations of the mind, violent
passions of all kinds, great hate, desire, anger. The child should be
taught to bridle itself in great and little matters alike. (18) Life is to
be corrected by others example ; yet the child must not argue that what
others do is permitted to it. (19) The end of study : this is to learn the
best mode of life (optima ratio Vivendi), and consists in the true per
formance of the duties of social and civic life in this world and in the
preparation for the next, (20) And lastly, there must be willing sub
mission to correction. A list of the vices to which the youth is inclined
follows, but it presents no very great originality or merit. Five things
to be observed by a child when in the presence of its elders or superiors
may be noted : " When you stand before your master you must observe
these five things Fold the hands ; place the feet together ; hold the
head erect ; do not stare about ; and speak few words without being bid."
Much of the rest of the book is filled with quotations, proverbs, or
letters from friends and admirers ; these extend over such a wide field as
Horace, Seneca, Jerome, Gerson, Petrarca, Solomon, yEneas Sylvius,
Hermann von dem Busche, Sebastian Brant, homely satirist of human
folly, and the folk -preacher of Strasburg, Geiler von Kaisersberg. The
letter of the latter is peculiarly characteristic of this new didactic school.
He mourns that the age produces few poets * like Jerome and Augustine,
but a host of Ovids and Catulluses. Geiler finds in his own land an army
of theologians, but few theophils. It is the letter of a man of deep,
earnest, moral purpose, but of somewhat narrow power. He is weary of
the Scholastic philosophy which is choking religion ; but his only
alternative seems to be the reduction of religion to the teaching of
morality. Wimpfeling caused this letter of Geiler s to be read before the
assembled University of Heidelberg ; and the reading resulted in the
professors and students setting to work to write epigrams on the various
1 Plato was termed poet by the Humanists.
HUMANISM IN GEKMANY 191
virtues and vices, which epigrams are inserted in Wimpfeling s book. It
is obvious that thus a great deal of padding is introduced which has very
little to do with education. Perhaps the only other matters which
possess any particular interest are certain short sentences of Wimpfel
ing s own, containing maxims for children. These were first inserted in
later editions of the book. I translate some of them which seem to have
a more general value for folk-history : Love God ; honour your parents ;
rise early in the morning ; make the sign of the cross in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; put on your clothes ; wash and
dry your hands ; rinse the mouth, the water being not too cold, as it
injures the teeth ; comb the hair, particularly with an ivory comb (if you
have one) ; rub the back of the head with a hard and coarse cloth ; say,
with bended knees, the prayer Christ taught his disciples ; repeat the
salutation which Gabriel bore to the Virgin Mary ; repeat the same
to your own guardian angel, or say this distich : " Angel, who- by
the grace of heaven art my guardian, save, defend, guide me, who am
committed to thy charge." 1 After prayer gird thyself to study, because
" the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom " ; if there be time,
look through your next lesson before going to school ; pay great attention
to your master ; do not be ashamed to inquire of him or of another
wiser than yourself ; practice the Latin tongue frequently ; love Christ
who redeemed you on the Cross ; do not say, " by God, pon. my soul, on
my oath, i my faith " ; on Sunday and holy days read the lessons
appointed concerning the Lord ; in knocking do not violently shake the
door or bell, lest you be judged mad or a fool ; beware of horses and
water ; never carry a candle without a candlestick ; carrying a candle for
the purpose of showing the way, go first although a worthier follow you ;
do not place your hands upon your hips ; do not examine the letter, purse,
or table of another ; being called to meals, do not be late, content
yourself with the seat your host appoints, and do not bring a dog with
you ; meeting your superior, take his left side and leave his right free, do
not change this side ; passing the cup among those at meals, do not give
it into their hands, but place it upon the table ; do not enter unbid into
the kitchen of a prince (I suppose this means, do not go where you are
not bid, or you will be punished for it ; it may be connected with the
mediaeval German proverb ; " At court every seven years a kitchen knave
is devoured ") ; do not place on the plate bread you have touched with
your teeth ; pour wine rather into another s belly than your own ; put
1 This notion of a guardian angel was very prevalent in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, and possesses much poetic beauty. In Geiler von Kaisersberg s
Hoiv to Act with a Dying Man there is an invocation to the angels, with special
reference to the "good angel, my guardian." The good and bad angels
accompanied a man through life, the one assisting, the other tempting ; they
may be seen in the woodcuts of the old law books on either side of the prisoner,
and they stand beside the dying man in the well-known block-book, the Art of
Dying. What is now a delicate fantasy was, in the fifteenth century, an article
of faith.
192 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
all your tilings in their appointed and proper places ; avoid hot food ; do
not touch the teeth with your knife ; wash after cake, honey, etc. ; he
who lends money to a friend loses friend and money ; the blood of
princes does not make good sausages, with which enigmatical proverb
we will leave Wimpfeling s short sentences.
Of the other educational works of Wimpfeling, I may mention : the
Isidoneus (1497), a vigorous criticism of the then usual methods of teach
ing, the Germania (1501), with a description of an improved gymnasium.
as well as general hints on the education of boys and girls, and lastly,
the earlier Elegantiarum Medulla (1490). This latter is a Latin reading
and exercise - book for boys, and made at that time a revolution in school-
books. On the title page is a woodcut of a schoolmaster seated on a large
carved chair ; in his right hand a birch ; below him, on low stools, are
seated three pupils one to the extreme left is apparently construing
from a book.
The slight sketch which I have given of Wimpfeling s educational
theories will, perhaps, be sufficient to indicate the excellent work he did
for German education. 1 He may be said to have humanised the schools ;
and his Adolescentia may be fitly termed the first great German perhaps
the first great modern book on education. His contemporaries, with
just admiration, termed him the " Preceptor of Germany," the " Father
of German Pedagogic."
His true value has hardly yet been recognised, partly owing to his
having been a Catholic, and thus passed over by Protestant historians ;
partly to the extreme scarcity of his works, several of which are wanting
even in a library like that of the British Museum.
For the present I must content myself with having indicated the
magnitude of Wimpfeling s educational labours. Germany, at least, owes
to its Preceptor a complete reprint of his pedagogic works.
NOTE. The reader will find excellent material for the study of German
Humanism in the following works :
J. Janssen : Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, vol. i. pp. 54-134 ; vol. ii. pp.
1-128. (Strong Catholic bias.)
K. Hagen : Deutschlands literarische undreligioseVerhaUnisse im Reformations -
zeitalter. (Strong Protestant bias.)
L. Geiger : Johann Reuchlin. (Without bias.)
Tli. Wiedemann : Dr. Johann EcJc. (Catholic bias.)
D. F. Strauss : Ulrich von Hutten. (Slight Protestant bias.)
F. W. Kampschulte : Die Universitdt Erfurt. (Without bias.)
C. Krause : Dcr Briefivechsel des Mutiaus Rufus.
B. Schwarz : Jacob Wimpfeling, der Altvater des deutschen Schulwesens.
1 Within twenty years 30,000 copies of his pedagogic works were sold.
IX
MARTIN LUTHEE 1
Vevnimjt ist des Teufels hochste Hure.
DUEING the past year there has been so much talking and
so much writing concerning Luther that we might suppose
the majority of people, for whom direct historical research is
impossible, to have been provided with sufficient material for
arriving at a true judgment of the man and of the movement
wherein he was the principal actor. Probably more books
have been written about the Eeformation than about any
other period of history. Yet since the time when history
emerged from the mist of legend, such a mass of myth has
never grown up to obscure all true examination of fact. Not
only is this myth the predominant element in popular lives of
Luther, but its influence may be continually traced in works
having far greater claims on the consideration of scholars.
The origin and growth of this myth are perhaps not hard
to explain ; the upholders of a particular phase of religion
invariably invest its originator with a legendary perfection
all the great achievements of mankind during his century, and
often those of an even more distant date, are attributed to
him ; all human errors, all sins of the age, are thrust upon his
opponents. To every sect its founder becomes the saviour of
mankind, and his adversaries a generation of vipers. So it
has arisen that numerous well-meaning folk look upon Luther
as almost a second St. Paul, and upon the Pope as undoubted
1 Reprinted from the Westminster Review, January, 1884.
13
194 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
Antichrist. It is impossible to escape the dilemma : the
orthodox Christian must regard Luther either as nigh inspired
of God, or else as a child of the Devil. There can be no
reconciliation of Lutheranism and Catholicism ; if the teach
ing of the one is true, the doctrine of the other is false. An
" Interim " would be no more successful to-day than it was in
1548. It may perhaps be suggested that the contradiction
is to be found in the Apostolic writings themselves ; yet the
orthodox Christian is hardly likely to make an admission
which would certainly deprive those writings of all claim to
inspiration. To be consistent, he must adopt one view or the
other ; and having done so, Luther at once appears to him
either as a prophet or a heretic the discoverer of a long-
forgotten truth, or the perverter of the teaching of Christ.
As long as there is a shred of dogma left about Christianity,
there is small chance that Christendom will not divide itself
into two hostile parties the admirers and the contemners of
Luther. When we consider this fundamental distinction, and
the proverbial intensity of theological hatred, it is no wonder
that myth should survive and persistently obscure even the
most prominent facts of Reformation history. Again and
again scholars have shown that Luther s Bible was neither
the first translation, nor was it immeasurably superior to its
predecessors ; that vernacular hymns and sermons were common
long before the Reformation ; that Luther s methods were
entirely opposed to the spirit of Humanism ; that the German
Reformation was by no means a great folk-movement yet
these and innumerable other facts have been persistently
contradicted in the flood of magazine and newspaper articles
which the centenary has brought into existence. Myths,
which were first invented to blacken the character of opponents,
and found a fitting receptacle in the scurrilous tracts of the
sixteenth century, are still dealt out to the public by journalists
and pseudo-historians as facts of the Reformation. We are
told that toleration was a part of the programme of the
German Reformers, a statement absolutely opposed to all
critical investigation ; we are told that Luther s coarseness
and violence were only typical of his age, without the least
MARTIN LUTHER 195
attempt to inquire whether the greatest thinkers of the age
were really coarse and violent ; we are told that the Reforma
tion swept away intolerable abuses, yet we search in vain for
any scientific comparison of the moral and social conditions of
the clergy and laity at the beginning and at the middle of the
sixteenth century ; we are told that literature and learning
were fostered by the Reformation, and yet we find absolute
ignorance as to the intellectual collapse of Germany in the
sixteenth century ; lastly, we are told, on the one hand, that
the thought of to-day owes its freedom to Luther, while the
theologians insist, on the other, that Luther was by no means
the father of modern Rationalism. Here, the theologians, for
the most part guided by instinct rather than by research, are
undoubtedly right. The whole history of Rationalism is as
much opposed to Lutheranism as to Catholicism. Rationalists
ought never to forget that thought could express itself far
more freely in Basel and Erfurt in 1500 than it could any
where in Europe by the middle of the century. Not from the
doctrines of Lutheranism, but from the want of unity among
theologians, has intellect again won for itself unlimited freedom.
To the Protestant, who asserts that all our nineteenth-century
culture is the outcome of Luther and his followers, the
Rationalist must reply : " Yes, but not to their teaching, only
to that squabbling which rendered them impotent to suppress."
It is sectarian prejudice which has hitherto obscured the history
of the Reformation, and has led a distinguished German critic
thus to conclude his review of the literature on the subject :
" The field of history must be thoroughly cleared of all
such theological tendencies, whether they come from the right
or the left or the middle. A true history of the Reformation
must fundamentally and completely reject all theological and
ecclesiastical party considerations and party aims of whatever
character. A history of Luther is only possible for him who
contents himself with writing history, and without the smallest
reservation despises making propaganda for any theological
conception." l
1 Maurenbrecher : Studien und Skizzen zur Geschichte der Reformationszeit,
p. 237, 1874.
196 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
The object of the present essay is neither to write a
history of Luther, nor to endeavour to dispel all the myths
which obscure our view of the Eeformation. It will entirely
avoid theological discussion as to the truth or falsehood of any
particular dogma, or as to the degree of sacrifice in intellectual
and moral progress which ought to be made in order to attain
a phase of doctrine asserted to be most in accordance with
divine revelation. This essay will confine itself solely to the
effect of Luther s teaching on the social and intellectual
condition of the German people. It will endeavour to raise
the question : Can any progress whatever be made by a
violent reformation, or must it not always be the outcome of a
slow educational evolution ? It will ask whether the folk as
a body can ever be elevated by a vehement appeal to their
passions, or whether all advance does not depend on a gradual
intellectual development.
Let us endeavour to describe, as briefly as clearness will
permit, the position of affairs in the Catholic Church towards
the close of the fifteenth century. It must never be forgotten
that throughout the Middle Ages the Church was by no
means an institution concerned only with the spiritual element
of man s nature, it was besides the basis of the entire mediaeval
social system, and the keynote to the whole of mediaeval
intellectual life. All social combinations, whether for labour,
for trade, or for good fellowship trade unions, mercantile
guilds, and convivial fraternities were part of the Church
system. A higher spiritual side was thus given to the most
everyday transactions of both business and pleasure. It was
the Church which formed a link between man and man,
between class and class, between nation and nation. The
Church produced a unity of feeling between all men, a certain
medieval cosmopolitanism, which it is hard for us to conceive
in these days of individualism and strongly marked nationalism.
. So long as the Church was powerful, so long as it could make
its law respected, it stood between workman and master,
between peasant and lord, dealing out equity and hindering
oppression. The battle which arose in Germany in the latter
half of the fifteenth century between the Canon and the Eoman
MARTIN LUTHER 197
Laws was not a mere contest between Church and State for
supremacy, between ambitious ecclesiastic and grasping lay
ruler. It involved the far more important question whether
the peasant should be a free man or a serf. The Roman Law
had been created for a slave State ; the Canon Law, Roman in
form, was yet Christian in spirit, and infinitely more in accord
with the Christianised folk-law of the German people. The
supporters of the " Reception of the Roman Law " were the
German princes, for it increased immensely their power and
importance ; each became a petty Roman Emperor within
the boundaries of his own dominions. The opponents of
the Reception were first and foremost the leading Catholic
preachers and theologians. Wimpfeling recognised in the
contest of the two laws " the most fruitful mother of future
revolutions."
" That among the heathen, slavery was at home and
the greater part of humanity reduced to an almost brute
service is, alas ! " writes the Abbot Tritheim, " only too true.
The light of Christendom had to shine for a long time before
it was able to scatter the heathen darkness, godlessness, and
tyranny. But what shall we say of Christians, who, appealing
to a heathen system of law, wish to introduce a new slavery,
and natter the powerful of the earth that they, since they
possess the might, have also all right, and can measure out to
their subjects at will justice and freedom ! Surely this is a
hideous doctrine ! Its application has already given rise to
rebellion and rioting in many places, and in the near future
great folk -destroying wars will break out, unless an end be put
to it, and the old law of the Christian folk, the old freedom
and judicial security of -the peasants and other labouring men,
be again restored."
That freedom was never restored ; the Roman Law was
" received " throughout Germany, notwithstanding the advice
of Popes, the protests of the Catholic clergy and the murmurs
of the people. All who were interested in oppressing the
masses became eager workers for the introduction and spread
of Roman Law. As the Catholic Church lost power, the
advance was more and more rapid, till it became all-victorious
198 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
in the Reformation, culminating in Luther s doctrines of the
divine right of princes and of the duty of implicit obedience. 1
Thus Tritheim s prophecy was fulfilled, and that " great folk-
destroying war/ the Peasants Eebellion, broke out. Only one
other point can be noted here with regard to the Reception ;
the Roman Emperor had been head of the heathen religion ;
the new Jurists said to the German princelets ; " You, too,
have a right to be Pope in your own land ! " Such teaching
was not long in bearing fruit.
These few remarks may suffice to show that, apart from
religious teaching pure and simple, the Catholic Church was
the foundation of mediaeval society. Any violent attempt to
destroy that Church would in all probability be perilous to the
established social life it would lead to the triumph of might
over all forms of right. Such, quite apart from dogmatic
considerations, was the effect of the German Reformation ; it
consummated the degradation of the free peasant to the serf:
it destroyed or reduced to a mere shadow of their former
selves the innumerable guilds, partly by decrying them as
" Papist institutions," partly by removing the old Church
influence, the old moral restraints which prevented their
becoming selfish trade monopolies ; above all. by suddenly
weakening the old religious beliefs, it brought about what
might almost be described as a break-up of German society :
the immorality and dissoluteness of the German people in
the middle and second half of the sixteenth century are almost
I indescribable. They only find their parallel in the almost com
plete disappearance of all true intellectual and artistic activity.
Such is no overdrawn description of what Mark Pattison has
fitly termed " the narrowing influence of Lutheran bigotry."
The reader must not suppose that we at all blind ourselves to
the abuses which had grown up in the Catholic Church in the
fifteenth century ; we recognise them to the full ; but in
return we ask : Did the Lutheran Church produce a purer and
more enlightened clergy ; did it increase the moral and social
welfare of the people ; was it foremost in the support of
1 It is a significant fact that Luther burnt, with the papal bull, a copy of
the Canon Law.
MARTIN LUTHEK 199
literature and art ; was it more tolerant, more charitable, nay,
even more Christian, than that which it attempted to replace?
Shortly, did it reform more evil than it destroyed good ? To
none of these questions can \ve give an affirmative answer.
The Catholic Church needed reform urgently enough, but the
reform which it needed was that of Erasmus, not that of
Luther. Had the labours of Erasmus not been blighted by
the passionate appeals of Wittenberg, at first to the ignorance
of the masses, and then to the greed of the princes, we believe
that the Catholic Church might have developed with the
intellectual development of mankind, might possibly have
become the universal instrument of moral progress and mental
culture, and dogmas gradually slipping into forgetfulness
we should now be enjoying the blessings of a universal church,
embracing all that is best of the intellect of our time. If the
Church in 1500 could contain an Erasmus, a Eeuchlin, and a
Muth, who shall say that in our days Huxley and Matthew
Arnold might not have been numbered among its members ?
Luther, by insisting on details of dogma, dragged Europe into
a flood of theological controversy, and forced the Church into
a process of doctrinal crystallisation, from which it can now
never recover. This is probably what was passing through
the mind of the greatest of German poets when he declared :
that Luther threw back by centuries the civilisation of Europe.
Let us, however, examine still more closely the condition
of the Roman Church at the beginning of the sixteenth
century. What were the particular failings which pressed so
peculiarly for reform ? We may note first the ignorance of
both monks and clergy. It is quite true that the typical monk
was by no means that .combination of stupidity and bestiality
which the Epistolce Olscurorum Virorum paints for us. There
were monasteries which preserved something of the old literary
spirit, and the schools of which were not utterly despicable ;
there were still convents of both sexes where the old earnest
religious spirit was very far from dead, and which were broken
up only by the most violent methods of "reform." Nevertheless
the_Church had^ceased to represent the foremost culture, the
deepest thought of the time. She was no longer the intellec-
200 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
tual giantess she had been in earlier centuries a certain
spiritual sloth had grown upon her, while wealth and power
had deadened her mental activity. She was behind the current
knowledge of her age and wanting in sympathy for its methods.
A second failing almost more grave, but yet closely
linked with the former was the moral collapse of the
spiritual members of the Church. Clergy, monks, and nuns
had lost consciousness of the meaning of their vows, and
the spiritual calling had become merely a means of obtaining
an easy subsistence. Let us grasp fully the very worst
that can be said on this point. Many monasteries were
little better than taverns ; occasionally nunneries approached
something still more repulsive. In an order of the liegens-
burg administrator of 1508, we road of the clergy seated at
night in the public taverns, consuming wine to drunkenness,
playing at dice and cards, brawling with their neighbours, and
even fighting with knives or other weapons ; the dress, too, of
these tavern clergy, we are told, was luxurious and improper.
Erasmus bears faithful witness to the condition of many of the
monks and clergy in his day : " I know," he says through one
of his characters, " some monks so superstitious that they think
themselves in the jaws of the Devil, if by chance they are
without their sacred vestments ; but they are not at all afraid
of his claws, while they are lying, slandering, drunken, and
acting maliciously." Yet Erasmus does not indiscriminately
abuse clergy and monks ; he points out pious and worthy
examples of both, and such undoubtedly existed in far greater
numbers than Protestant polemic would allow us to believe,
even when Luther was pouring out his most violent anathemas
against the monastic life. Insults, threats and bribes were often
insufficient to break up the convents in Saxony and elsewhere.
The reforming Church Visitors frequently found a passive
resistance, which could only be the outcome of a deep religious
conviction, and which to the modern investigator throws all
charges of intolerance and bigotry upon the shoulders of the
reforming party. Noteworthy in this respect was the system
of insult and petty tyranny which the high-minded Abbess
Charitas Pirkheimer and her convent had to endure at the hands
MARTIN LUTHER 201
of the coarse and fanatic Osiander. Her diary of these events
is one of the most interesting records extant of the methods
of Lutheran reformation. 1 Yet her experience was by no means
unique ; we possess other records of a like kind which show
how unfounded were Luther s charges : that in no nunnery was
there daily reading of the Bible, and that among a thousand
nuns scarce one went with pleasure to divine service, or wore,
except under compulsion, the dress of her Order. Such asser
tions as these, however, have, on the authority of Luther, been
handed down from writer to writer till they are quoted as
facts in modern history books. That the cloister life of the
early part of the sixteenth century needed much reform is
indisputable ; but that any real good was effected by absolutely
forbidding the members of the Orders to wear their distinctive
dress, by bribing the more worldly-minded to leave their
convents, by forcing the remainder to listen to Lutheran
preachers abusing the Catholic faith and the ascetic life in the
coarsest fashion, and finally by the appropriation as soon as
possible of the convent revenues, may very reasonably be
doubted. Considering how small a portion of those revenues
was ultimately devoted to educational or charitable purposes,
Cobbett s charge against the Eeformation that it was a
plundering of the heritage of the poor is not without founda
tion. The doctrine of salvation by faith alone may perhaps
be most in accordance with St. Paul s teaching, yet it is
perfectly certain that the belief that works are of assistance,
not only saved pre-Reformation Germany from a State pauper
system, but adorned her churches with the noblest works of
Christian art. Luther s doctrine, misunderstood if the reader
please to term it so, was immediately destructive of charity,
and endless were the lamentations of the Reformers that
people had ceased to give as they did in the dark ages of
Popery.
The third great evil under which the Church laboured
lay in the worldly aims.- of the hierarchy. The Church had
become not only a spiritual but a great social and even
1 Charitas Pirkheimer : Denkivurdiykeiten aus dem Reformationszeitalter.
Bamberger Hist. Verein, Bd. iv. Edited by Hofler, 1852.
202 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
political authority. The princes of the Church had power
equal to or greater than the lay rulers , and they needed a
princely revenue to support their state. Still more excessive
were the wants of the Papal Court, and the means by which
those wants were supplied was not at all calculated to make
Home acceptable to the German people. The national unity
of France and Spain had enabled those countries to resist
successfully the Papal extortions, and to establish a fairly
equitable modus vivendi with the head of the Church. But
national unity was the very thing wanted in Germany. Her
princes were eager for self-aggrandisement, and there was no
security for that permanent union which alone could dictate
terms to the Pope ; one and all of them were ever open to
the conviction of a bribe. This disunion of the German
princes rendered a solution of the question after the French
fashion impossible. The same grievances were expressed time
after time at successive Reichstage, but no genuine attempt
at self-help ever seems to have been made. The pocket has
usually far greater influence than the idea, hence it came to
pass that the mass of the people at first welcomed Luther as
their champion against the Fioman imposition ; they by no
means grasped that his enterprise would ultimately shake the
very foundations of their social life. The grievances of the
German nation against the Pope are very clearly expressed in
a document presented in 1518 by then Catholic Germany
to Kaiser Maximilian. 1 The Pope, euphonistically described
as " pious father, lover of his children, and faithful and wise
pastor," is warned to give heed to Germany s grievances, or
else there may be a rising against the priests of Christ, a
falling away from the Roman Church even as in Bohemia.
The grievances are endless, the archbishops and bishops exact
terrible sums from their flocks to pay the Pope for the
pallium, the sign of his sanction to their appointment ; the
income from German fields, mines, and tolls, which might be
used for administering justice, exterminating robbers, and for
war against infidels, all goes to Rome. So-called " courtesans "
1 Gravamina Germanicce Nationis cum remediis et avisamentis ad Cccsaream
majestatem, 1518.
MARTIN LUTHEK 203
that is, the Pope s courtiers, his cardinals, notaries, and
officers hold the best benefices in Germany, a land many of
them have never seen. The money of pious founders, which
should be used not only for the repair of churches and
monasteries, but for hospitals, schools, paupers, widows, and
orphans, is grasped by avaricious Italians. These and other
ignorant priests add living to living. Learned and earnest
clergy, of whom Germany provides a sufficiency, can find no
fitting posts. The begging friars, mere agents of the Pope,
need to be sternly held within bounds. If Maximilian will
only remedy these, and a, good many other ecclesiastical
grievances, he will be hailed as the deliverer of Germany,
the restorer of her liberty, the true father of his country !
It should be rioted that these grievances are not in the least
matters of dogma, they are precisely the difficulties which
national unity enabled France and Spain to surmount.
On the other hand, it is well to mark the character of
the men into whose hands these ill-gotten revenues passed.
They were the patrons, the enthusiastic patrons of literature
and art ; they were by no means particular as to dogma, and
looked upon the Church rather as a means of social than
religious government. An anecdote of Benvenuto Cellini is
peculiarly characteristic of their conception of the relation
between religion and art. Notwithstanding that Cellini had
just committed what can only be termed a murder, the new
Pope, Paul, sent for him, and prepared at once a letter of
pardon. One of the courtiers present remarked that it was
hardly advisible in the first days of office to pardon such an
offence. But the Pope turned sharply to him and said :
" You do not understand this as well as I. Know that men
like Benvenuto, who are unique in their skill, are not bound
by the law." The Pope then signed the letter of pardon,
and Cellini was received into the highest favour. 1 Cellini s
autobiography presents us with no edifying picture of six
teenth-century Popes, when we look upon them merely as
spiritual authorities. It is singular to mark the Pope jesting
over the power of the keys at the very time when Luther is
1 Vita di Benvenuto Cellini ; Colonia, p. 99.
204 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
forging iron bands of dogma for Northern Germany. But
these are the Popes who built St. Peter s, and were the
patrons of Kaphael and Michael Angelo, and the character of
their religion is essentially reflected in the works of those
artists. They were not insensible to the need of reformation
in the Church ; the Lateran Council shows sufficiently that
it was the ignorance of the monks and greed of the clergy
rather than the will of the Popes which hindered reform.
Yet they looked for improvement rather by education and
culture in the spirit of Erasmus, than by a sweeping destruc
tion after the fashion of Luther. They were as a rule toler
ant even to excess, and only the progress of Protestantism
forced the Eoman See again into the path of bigotry, again to
lay stress upon subtle phases of dogma.
What the Popes were to Italy, such were the spiritual
princes in Germany. Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz, whom
Luther thought fit to class with Cain and Absalom, was one
of the most cultivated men of his time. His Court, under
the direction of Ulrica s cousin, Frowin von Hutten, may be
described as the centre of German art and literature. Here
men like Keuchlin, Ulrich von Hutten, 1 Erasmus, Georg
Sabinus, Diirer, Griinewald, and Cranach, met with support
and sympathy. Albrecht was probably neither an exceed
ingly moral nor a deeply religious ecclesiastic. There are
several pictures by Griinewald of St. Erasmus and the Mag
dalene, which are portraits of the Cardinal and, as is supposed,
of the fair daughter of one Elidinger of Mainz. It is not so
many years ago since certain narrow zealots in Halle wished
to have Cranach s grand altar-piece removed from the Market-
Church, because they thought they recognised in the face of
the Virgin a portrait of the same lady. The table also, now
in the Louvre, which " the godless painter," Hans Sebald
Beham, prepared for Albrecht, breathes anything but a re
ligious spirit. 2 The leaders of the Church, both in Italy and
1 Hutten s Panegyricus on Albrecht will be found in the Opera, Ed. Becking,
iii., p. 353.
2 Of. Fb rster und Kugler s Kunstblatt : Der Kavdinal Albrecht als Kunst-
beforderer, 1846, Nos. 32 and 33. Also Hefner Alteneck : Trodden dcs christ-
lichen Mittelalters. Description to Plate 136, Bd. iii.
MAKTIN LUTHEE 205
Germany, were what we should nowadays term emancipated ;
they were enthusiastic encouragers of the fine arts and of all
forms of humanistic culture. Is it to be wondered at that
they could not sympathise with a movement which reintro-
duced doctrinal subtleties ; which completely checked the
spread of Humanism ; which in Augsburg, 1 Braunschweig,
Hamburg, Frankfurt, Basel, Zurich, everywhere north and
south, handed over the noblest works of art to the fire and to
the hammer ; or which, as in Wurzen, by the direct orders
of Luther s patron, Johann Friedrich, the " Great-hearted,"
caused the works of art, " so far as they were not inlaid with
gold, or represented serious subjects (ernstliche Historien), to
be chopped up, and the rest laid by in the crypt " ? These
are matters which must influence the cultured mind of to-day
when judging the Eeformatiori, however indifferent or even
justifiable they may have seemed or seem to the iconoclastic
zealots either of the past or present.
Granting, then, the existence of serious evils in the state
of the Church, we may ask, whether those evils were un
recognised by the more thoughtful Catholics of the time ;
was there no attempt at reform, which might have avoided
that break-up of moral, intellectual, and artistic life which
followed upon the violent destruction of the mediaeval church
system ? We reply that there was such a recognition and
such an attempt a reform constructed on a far broader basis
than Luther was capable of conceiving ; this attempt at
reform has been not inappropriately named after its most
zealous supporter, the Erasmian EeformajtiojL A comparison
of the standpoints of Luther and Erasmus is of peculiar
importance at the present time, when we are so frequently
told that, apart from all theological questions, we owe our
modern intellectual freedom to Luther. The plans of
Erasmus were shipwrecked by the violence of the Lutheran
movement. We have to inquire whether our modern thought
1 "We have never either prayed to the saints or worshipped their images,"
writes the Bishop of Augsburg. "These monuments and pictures might at
least have been preserved from destruction for the sake of their age and artistic
merit."
206 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
has not been the outcome of a gradual return to the principles
of Erasmus, a continuous rejection one by one of every
doctrine and every conception of Luther. Mr. Beard, in his
Hibbert Lectures, remarks, with great truth, that while the
Reformation of the past has been Luther s, that of the future
will be Erasmus s ; we venture to remind Mr. Beard that but
for Luther the Reformation of Erasmus would have been the
Reformation of the past as well as of the future. It is
impossible to reverse the course of history, but it is not idle
to point out the failures of mankind ; they form all-important
lessons for our conduct in the future. What was the means
then that the Humanistic party adopted to cure those two
great evils the ignorance and the immorality of clergy and
monks ? It may be shortly described as the revival of the
religious spirit by inoculating the Church with the humanistic
enthusiasm, by identifying Catholicism with the newly won
scholarship and its progressive culture. Ecclesiastical ignor
ance could only be conquered by a gradual process of education,
not by driving monk and priest into stubborn opposition, but
by teaching them to appreciate at their true value the higher
intellectual pursuits. It required above all a reform in the
teaching of the schools and of the universities, especially in their
theological faculties. When we look back now at the forty years
which preceded the so-called Reformation, we are astonished
at the amount of improvement which the party of educational
progress had in that time achieved. It must be stated at
once that the Erasmian Reformation was essentially rational
rather than emotional, it appealed to men s reason not to
their passions. On this ground it is interesting to mark
the great emphasis laid by the Humanistic moralists on
the identification of sin and folly. It is folly, stupidity,
ignorance which are the causes of immorality and crime,
not the activity of the Devil, nor any theological conception
of an inherited impulse to evil. Once make men wise and
they will cease to commit sin. This is the keynote to
Sebastian Brant s Ship of Fools (1494), to Wimpfeling s
pedagogic labours, but above all to Erasmus s Praise of
Folly. Like the great folk -preacher, Geiler von Kaisersberg,
MARTIN LUTHER 207
these men do not discard religion, but they lay stress upon
its ethical side in preference to the dogmatical. They see
well enough the abuses in the Church, but they do not there
fore cry out for its destruction ; they lay ignorance and
folly bare with the most biting of satire. If we open the
sermons of Geiler on Brant s Ship of Fools, and mark how
he turns its satire into the deepest religious feeling, we are
convinced that the highest moral purpose is at the bottom
of these satirical productions. They are not written for the
reader s amusement, but to teach him the weightiest moral
truths. There is an intense earnestness about these men,
they are imbued with the one idea of reforming the Church,
of purifying and elevating both clergy and laity, and the
keynote of their method is education. Humanistic culture,
combined with a higher moral conception, shall bring back
vitality to the old ecclesiastical institutions. The spirit of
Geiler, Wimpfeling, and Brant was in the main the spirit of
Erasmus. He, too, satirises ignorance and folly ; he, too,
preaches a practical Christianity. The Enchiridion Militis
Cliristiani, he tells us, was written " as a remedy against the
error which makes religion depend on ceremonies and an
observance almost more than Judaic of bodily acts, while
strangely neglecting all that relates to true piety." Yet
Erasmus in this very work recognises throughout man s
capacity for good, and expresses his belief in the guidance of
the reason. The whole scope of life is to be Christ, but
Christ is not an empty name, he is charity, simplicity,
patience, purity shortly, whatever Christ taught. Not of
food or drink but of mutual love was Christ s talk. While
rejecting merely formal works, Erasmus still places man s
salvation in the practice of Christian virtue ; he is very far
from accepting Luther s doctrine of justification by faith alone.
The book is full of practical piety ; there is no trace of
theological dogma, nor any regard to obscure theories of
redemption and original sin. Nevertheless it does not
hesitate to attack superstition, the common abuses of the
Church, and the ignorance and stupidity of the monks. " To
be a Christian is not to be anointed or baptised, nor is to
208 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
attend mass ; but to lay hold of Christ in one s inmost heart,
and show forth his spirit in one s life." Such is the keynote
to the religion of Erasmus, and it is precisely identical with
what Christianity means to the best minds of to-day.
The proposal of these Humanistic moralists was to reform
the Church by educating her. They believed that the more
the intellectual side of a man was developed, the less likely he
w r as to be selfish and bestial. They put faith in human reason.
In what a totally different fashion does Luther regard this
safeguard of human action ! Without the pre- existence of
faith, reason, according to Luther, is the most complete vanity;
it is blind in spiritual matters, and cannot point out the way
of life. " In itself it is the most dangerous thing, especially
when it touches matters concerning the soul and God."
Luther saw in the reason the " arch-enemy of faith," because
it led men to believe in salvation by works ; nay, he went
further, and asserted that whoever trusted to his reason must
reject the dogmas of Christianity. In another passage he
describes the natural reason as the " arch whore and devil s
bride, who can only scoff and blaspheme all that God says
and does." Elsewhere, Luther declares that the reason can
only recognise in Christ the teacher and holy man, but not
the son of the living God ; and on this account he pours out
his wrath upon it. " Reason or human wisdom and the devil
can dispute wondrous well, so that one might believe it were
wisdom, and yet it is not." " Since the beginning of the
world reason has been possessed by the devil, and bred un
belief." This particular dislike of Luther for human ...reason,
even found expression in his translation of the Bible, and he
has in several passages introduced the word reason, where
nothing of the kind is referred to in the original text, notably
in Colossians ii. 4, where he replaces " enticing words " by
" vernlinftige Eeden." ] It will be seen at once, then, that
the theologians are right in asserting that Lutlier_^aS-Jio.t
the father of modern Rationalism. He considered reason as
the chief instrument of the devil, unless its application had
been preceded by the mystical process of redemption, the
1 Cf. 2 Cor. x. 5 ; Eph. ii. 3 ; Col. i. 21, etc.
MARTIN LUTHER 209
transcendental attainment of perfect faith. It is obvious
that such a condition destroys the only ground upon which
reason can be treated as a basis for truth common to all
mankind. Nothing marks more strikingly than this con
tempt of human intellect the difference between Luther and
Erasmus ; it expresses exactly the difference of the methods
they proposed for the reformation of the Church.
Let us consider how this fundamental difference between
the Humanists of Erasmus s school and the Lutherans expresses
itself in their teaching. We have already noted what a
great step had been taken by the Humanistic moralists in
the identification of sin with folly ; it at once suggested a
rational method namely, education by which sin might be
diminished. "What the Humanists, however, attributed to
folly, the Lutherans asserted to be the direct action of the
devil; not by education, but only. by_di vine grace was -man
enabled to resist sin. It was the perpetuation, if not the
re - establishment, of the temporal government of a personal
devil and his assistants. Those human errors which in
the Praise of Folly and the Ship of Fools were attributed
to stupidity and ignorance, were as a result of the Lutheran
doctrine distributed to individual devils. The Lutheran
preachers wrote books on the Devil of Usury, the Devil
of Greed, the Devil of Pride, the Drink - Devil, the Devil
of Cursing, the Devil of Gambling, the Devil of Witch
craft, nay, even of the Devils who make wives bad-
tempered and induce men to wear inordinately large
breeches. 1 The Lutherans held that Satan was particularly
active against them, because they were the only hindrance to
his absolute rule. It was not a mere allegorical representa
tion of evil, but a belief in an active set of personal devils,
who walked the face of the earth, and could do bodily as well
as spiritual harm to mankind. Not only were the people
taught from the pulpit that Catholic clergy and laity were
possessed of the devil, " every German Bishop," preached
1 In the second half of the sixteenth century appeared a mass of works
under such titles as : Gcytz- und Wucherteufel, Hoffteuffel, Saufftcuffcl, Huren-
l, Eheteu/el, Fluchteu/el, Spielteuffel, Hausteuffel, Hosenteu/el, etc.
14
210 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
Luther, "who went to the Augsburg Keichstag, took more
devils with him than a dog carries fleas " but we know of
more than one instance where the stake or the sword was
the result of this supposed intercourse between an ti- Pro
testants and the devil. Children were taught, even in
Luther s catechism, that the devil not only brought about
quarrelling, murder, rebellion, and war, but by his instigation
came storm and hail, destruction of crops and cattle,
poisoning of the atmosphere. " Shortly, it annoys him that
any one should have a bit of bread from God, and if he had
it in his power, he would not leave a blade in the field, a
farthing in the house, not even an hour of a man s life."
Luther s writings and his Table-Talk teem with reference to
this active personal Devil. The hazel - nut tale and the
ink - pot tale of the Wartburg are common property ; but
many other anecdotes of how his friends and he put the devil
to night have been expurgated from modern editions of his
works. There is no obscurity about his doctrine of demons.
Satan, he tells us, lays changelings and urchins in the
place of true children, in order to annoy people. " Since
magic is a shameful defection, wherein a man deserts God to
whom he is dedicated, and betakes himself to the Devil,
God s foe, so it is only reasonable that it should be punished
with body and life." " There are many devils in forests,
waters, wastes, and damp marshy places, in order to
damage wayfarers. Some are also in black and thick
clouds ; they raise storms, hail, and thunder, and poison
the air. When this happens the philosophers and doctors
say it is Nature or the stars ! The doctors consider
diseases to arise only from natural causes, and attempt to
cure them with medicines and that rightly, but they forget that
the Devil originates the natural causes of these diseases. I
believe that my sicknesses were not all natural, but that Squire
Satan by magic practised his roguery upon me. God, how
ever, rescues his elect from such evils." Again, in the year
1538, there was much talk of witches who stole eggs from
the hens nests and milk and butter from the dairy. Luther
said, " No one should show mercy to such people ; I would
MARTIN LUTHEK 211
myself burn them, even as it is written in the Bible that the
priests commenced stoning offenders." We shall be told
that all this was merely the current superstition of Luther s
age. 1 We allow that such beliefs were very general, but we
must, at the same time, point out that the Humanists were,
if perhaps not quite free, yet distinctly far more emancipated
on this point than Luther. Very strong is Brant against
those " fools " who believe in days good for buying, for building,
for war, for marrying, and so forth. Great is the folly
of all kinds of fortune-telling, belief in the cry of birds, in
dreams, in seeking things by moonlight, and in all related to
the black arts. The printers, who spread such stuff among
the folk, are much to blame. Still more clearly does Erasmus
speak out his mind in the colloquy of the Exorcism which,
in the words of its argument, " detects the artifices of
impostors, who impose upon the credulous and simple by
framing stories of apparitions, of demons, and of ghosts and
divine voices." Perhaps the dulness of Erasmus s orthodox
opponents may be best shown by quoting the following satires
which they have used to prove his belief in witchcraft.
Once in Freiburg he was tormented with fleas, which were so
small that it was impossible to catch them ; they bit his neck,
filled his clothes and even his very shoes as he stood writing.
He used to tell his friends in a solemn tone that these were
not fleas but evil spirits. " This," he added, " is really no
joke, but a divination ; for some days ago a woman was burned
who had carried on an intercourse with an evil spirit, and
confessed, among other crimes, that she had sent some large
bags of fleas to Freiburg." On another occasion Erasmus
narrates with all gravity how in the town of Schiltach a
demon carried off a woman into the air and placed her upon
a chimney-top, then gave her a flask which by his command
she upset, and within a short time the town was reduced
to ashes. The following caustic remark is then added :
1 Osiander denied the existence of ghosts, but Luther remarked that the
said 0. must always have a crotchet. He himself knew that persons were
possessed by devils, and that ghosts frightened people in their sleep. Tischreden,
Bd. iii. p. 337.
212 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
" Whether all the reports about it are true I will not venture
to affirm, but it is too true that the town was burned, and the
woman executed after confessing." 3 We do not assert that
the Humanists were free from superstition, but their ration-
| alistic tendency was distinctly opposed to it. The resusci-
I tation by Luther of an active personal devil brought back
! superstition in a flood upon Northern Europe. Nowhere were
witches so prevalent, nowhere were faggots and torture so
common as in the Protestant countries in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. It is not our present purpose to
enter into comparative statistics of the growth and preval
ence of witch-superstition. We recognise the curse of such
books as the Witch - Hammer, but we note that it was
the Humanists not the Lutherans who were struggling
against such criminal ignorance. It must suffice here to
quote the words of a distinguished Protestant literary critic
with regard to one Protestant country Braunschweig :
" Eeligious fanaticism was revived by the introduction of
Protestant doctrine and kept well alive by the representa
tives of the Church. This the district has to thank not only
for the increased severity of the laws against the Jews, but
for the inconceivable number of witch-trials conducted with
out any regard to person. The devil appeared to be
peculiarly active where the Gospel was preached in its
greatest purity, and the contest against him more necessary
than ever. . . . Duke Heinrich Julius looked at the matter
simply as a jurist and confined himself to what torture
brought forth. . . . During his rule ten or twelve witches
were often burnt in one, day, so that on the place of execution,
before the Lechenholz, near Wolfenbiittel, the stakes stood like
a small forest." ^
Closely related to witchcraft is heresy ; it will be generally
1 It is worth noting that shrewd old Hans Sachs, who is always bringing
witches and the Devil on to the stage, yet remarks :
"Devil s dames and devil s knights
Are only dream- and fancy-sprites ;
To ride a goat exceeds belief."
2 Tittmann : Die Schauspiele des Herzogs Heinrich Julius. Einleitung,
S. xxvii.
MAETIIST LUTHEK 213
found that superstition and intolerance are bred by the same
causes. In the sixteenth century witches and heretics were
alike treated as devil-possessed. Thus Erasmus tells us in
his Praise of Folly, how " an irrefragable and hair
splitting theologian" had deduced from the Mosaic law
" Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live " the like law with
regard to a heretic, since " every maleficus or witch is to be
killed, but a heretic is maleficus, ergo, etc." For those who
would know, even nowadays, what true toleration means,
nothing can be more profitable than the study of Erasmus s
works. The keynote to his position * is contained in that
wonderful bit of satire in the Divinity Disputation of the
Praise of Folly. "Why should it be thought more proper
to silence all heretics by sword and faggot rather than correct
them by moderate and sober arguments ? " Such was the
spirit of toleration which Erasmus would have impressed,
and, we may add, was impressing upon the Catholic Church
when the Lutheran movement destroyed his labours. Note
worthy also is the contempt which the younger Humanists
poured upon the Fortalitium Fidei. This remarkable work,
due to Alphonsus de Spina, may be looked upon as the
fortress of mediaeval bigotry and ignorance. Its first book
deals with the beauty of the Christian faith, its second with
the crime of heresy, its third and fourth are bitter tirades
against Jews and Saracens, while the last is concerned
with demons and witchcraft. The whole is not a bit too
strongly described in the Letters of the Obscure Men, as men-
dosus liber, et non valet ; et quod nemo allegat istum librum nisi
stultus et fatuus. 2 Yet its theory of witchcraft was accepted
by the Protestant party, and its language with regard to the
Jews can only be paralleled from the works of Luther !
We have now to answer an all -important question :
What were the views of Luther and his disciples with regard
1 Concisely expressed in a letter to Cardinal Campeggio : "Neminem
quidem conjeci in vincula, sed plus efficit qui medetur ammo quani qui
corpus affligit." Monumenta Reformation/is Lutherance, p. 306.
2 Fortalitium Fidei is not the full title, but my early edition has no title
page. The book is thus quoted in the Epistolaz Obscurorum Virorum, I. Epist.
xxii. ; II. Epist. xiii.
214 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
I to toleration ? We have already stated that all Catholics
1 who did not desert their Church were, in the opinion of
\ Luther, children of the devil. Now, as such, they were
deserving of no charity, and must be removed from those
districts in which only pure gospel might be preached.
Had they been treated as heretics and burnt, the immediate
result would have been war with the German Catholic States,
in which the latter, during the earlier part of Luther s career
the stronger, would probably have prevailed, and so Pro-
* testantism have been stamped out. Accordingly, in the early
I days of the Reformation, it was customary to banish Catholics,
while Anabaptists, who were a weak body, were imprisoned
and executed. When Protestantism was firmly established,
then there was no hesitation in sending Catholics to the stake
or to the block. There is nothing to choose in the matter of
toleration between either theological party ; Protestant and
Catholic were alike intolerant, alike opposed to the spirit of
Erasmus. It is simply ignorance of historical facts which
attributes toleration to the Reformers. As early as the Saxon
Church Visitation of 1527 does bigotry break out. In the
Instructions we read that not only are the clergy, who do not
follow the prescribed code of teaching and ceremonial, to lose
their posts, but even the laity, who have given rise to any
suspicion as to their views on the Sacrament, or as to
their faith generally, are to be questioned concerning the same,
and instructed ; then if they do not reform their ways within
a given time, they must sell their goods and leave the country.
" For," remarked the Elector, " although it is not our intention
to dictate to any one what he shall believe or hold, yet we
will not allow any sect or separation in our land, in order that
there may be no riots or other disturbances." Such was the
mildest form of toleration to be found in any of the German
Protestant countries, and it soon changed to something con
siderably more severe. But is not this a mere sarcasm on
the name ? This form of " toleration " was supported by a
noteworthy doctrine of Luther s. Before the Peasants War,
when struggling to assert himself, Luther taught that heresy
could not be repressed by force, that no fire, could burn it, and
MAETIN LUTHEE 215
no water drown it. Yet so soon as Luther saw other sectaries
springing up around him, and claiming the same privilege as
himself, he declared that as rebels to the State they deserved
punishment, even banishment and death. This, then, is
Luther s doctrine: The, State is the head of religion, and
all sectaries are rebels to the State. Luther iimiriably
associates his opponents with murderers and rebels. Those
sectaries who meet in secret for their primitive service " have
not only the false doctrine, but meet for murder and riot,
because such folk are possessed of the devil. . . . Such knaves
are to be forbidden by the severest punishment, in order that
every subject may avoid such conventicles, even as all subjects
are in duty bound to do, unless they themselves wish to be
guilty of murder and riot." a Still further did Martin Butzer,
afterwards distinguished as an English Eeformer, carry this
Lutheran doctrine. If thieves, robbers, and murderers are
severely punished, how much more harshly ought the followers
of a false religion to be treated, since the perversion of religion
is an infinitely graver offence than all the misdeeds of corporal
offenders. Government has the right to destroy with fire and
sword the followers of a false religion, aye, to strangle their
wives and children, even as God has ordered in the Old
Testament. Is it surprising after this to find another
Lutheran, namely Melanchthon, approving of the burning of
Servetus, and terming that hideous deed of Calvin s " a pious
and memorable example for all posterity " ? There are
passages in Luther s works which can be cited against the
execution of heretics ; but the expulsion of those not believing
in the State -creed was an essential characteristic of that
system of State - churches which he founded. Those who
will take the trouble to investigate the reports of the Church
Visitors in the young Protestant States will have some con
ception of the extent and the accompanying misery of that
system of banishment which it was no small portion of the
Visitors duty to organise. Nor was charity to each other
1 Von den Schlewhern und Winckdpredigern, 1532. It should be
noted that at this time the Anabaptists were innocent of any political
schemes.
216 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
any more a characteristic of the early Reformers than tolera
tion of their opponents ; the slightest divergence of view was
sufficient to raise infinite hatred and abuse. Luther terms
Butzer a "chatter-mouth, and his writings potwash," while
Zwingli, Oecolarnpadius, and Schwenkfeld are " in and in,
through and through, out and out, devil-possessed, blasphemous
hearts, and impudent liars." Flacius terms Melanchthon " a
papal brand of hell. . . . He and all his followers are nothing
other than servants of Satan : since the time of the apostles
there have been no such dangerous men in the Church."
Carlstadt, because he differs as to the Sacrament, is termed,
by his former Wittenberg colleagues, a " murderer, one who
wishes only bloodshed and riot." Still more ignorant, still
more violent and intolerant is Luther s judgment upon the
Jews. We must search the writings of Alphonsus de Spina
and of the renegade Pfefferkorn to find a parallel. That most
delectable bigot, Herr Hofprediger Stb cker, has recently been
republishing Luther s words as an incitement to further anti-
Jewish riots. To begin with, Luther tells us that he will
give us his true counsel :
" First, that the Jewish synagogues and schools be set on
fire, and what will not burn be covered with earth, that no
man ever after may see stick or stone thereof. . . . Secondly,
that their houses in like fashion be broken down and destroyed,
since they only carry on in them what they carry on in their
schools. Let them content themselves with a shed or a stall
like the gipsies, that they may know they are not lords in our
land. . . . Thirdly, all their prayer-books and Talmuds must
be taken from them, since in them idolatry, lies, cursing, and
blasphemy are taught. . . . Fourthly, that their Rabbis, on
penalty of death, be forbidden to teach. . . . Fifthly, that
safe conduct on the highways be denied to Jews entirely, since
they have no business in the country, being neither lords,
officials, nor traders, or the like ; they ought to remain at
home. . . . Sixthly, usury shall be forbidden them. All that
they have is stolen, and therefore it is to be taken from them,
and used for pensioning converts."
These are Luther s propositions for treating the Jews as
MAETIN LUTHEE 217
he thinks they deserved, and which he tells us he would
carry out in earnest, if he only had the power of the princes ;
nay, he works himself up to a stronger pitch of passion than
this : These " impudent lying devils " ought not to be allowed
to praise or pray to God, since " their praise, thanksgiving,
prayer, and teaching are mere blasphemy and idolatry." The
penalty for any act of worship on the part of a Jew should be
loss of life. Not only all their books, but even " the Bible to
its last leaf" shall be taken from them. Not only are their
synagogues to be burnt, but " let him, who can, throw pitch
and sulphur upon them ; if any one could throw hell-fire, it
were good, so that God might see our earnestness, and the
whole world such an example." l
In the face of such teaching we must solemnly protest
against that ignorance which terms Luther tolerant, or which
attributes to him the origin of our culture to-day. We refuse
to recognise in him either the prophet or the great moral
teacher. We could fill pages with infinitely harder sayings
against the Catholics, 2 but we have chosen the Jews as a
neutral sect, with whom Luther was not waging a life and
death battle. The effect of such teaching upon the people
can easily be imagined, and, as example, we have already
mentioned the increased severity of the laws against the
Jews in Braunschweig. How strangely, too, it stands in
contrast with the conduct of the Humanist Eeuchlin a
man whose writings show a sympathetic study of Jewish
literature, 3 and whose defence of the Hebrew books against
PfefTerkorn s violent pleas for their destruction brought down
upon him the wrath of the whole Dominican Order and was
the cause of that notable battle between the party of intel
lectual progress and the party of ignorance and bigotry
1 Von den Juden und ihren Liigen, 1543. Sammtl. "Werke, Bd. xxxii.
2 For example : " If we punish the thief with the rope, the robber with the
sword, the heretic with fire, how much rather should we attack with every
weapon these masters of perdition, these cardinals, these popes, this whole filth
of the Roman Sodom, which corrupts without end God s church ; how much
rather wash our hands in their blood?" Opera LoMna, v. a., Frankfurt, ii.
107. Perhaps the worst things are the indecent Avoodcuts by Cranach, with text
by Luther. These are too offensive to be either reproduced or exhibited.
3 De verbo mirifico, 1494, and De arte cabalisUca, 1517.
218 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
the " obscure men." Mr. Beard, in his Hibbert Lectures,
writes :
" Luther used the weapons of faith to slay reason, lest
perchance reason should lure faith to her destruction. But
who can tell what might have been the effect upon the Ke-
formation, and the subsequent development of the intellectual
life of Europe, had Luther put himself boldly at the head of
the larger and freer thought of his time, instead of using all
the force of his genius, all the weight of his authority to crush
it?" (p. 170).
No truer words have ever been spoken with regard to
Luther, and yet this same writer blames us, because we refuse
to express any gratitude to the man who crushed all those
influences which we believe tend most to the progress of
humanity ! It is, perhaps, needless to add that the real
Luther, a man without culture and without intellectual insight,
could never have been the " head of the larger and freer thought
of his time."
We must briefly touch upon one or two other points con
nected with intellectual development, before we consider the
social effects of the Reformation. Under the influence of the
Humanists, Germany had at the beginning of the sixteenth
century attained to an unparalleled activity in art and litera
ture. 1 Those who have not visited the galleries at Miinchen
and Augsburg or the cathedral at Ulm, can form but a slight
conception of the artistic perfection of that age. Innumerable
art treasures perished in the iconoclastic storms of the sixteenth
century, but enough remain to show the wondrous activity,
which was brought to such an abrupt conclusion. On the one
hand, religious art almost ceased, and thus a great source of
occupation for the painter and the sculptor disappeared ; on
the other, wealth found baser demands upon it in the religious
wars which so soon devastated Germany. Holbein cannot find
a living in his fatherland 2 ; Cranach and others are reduced to
employing their genius on the coarsest and most repulsive of
1 See the previous essay on German Humanism.
2 Note the expressive sentence: "God has cursed all who make pictures."
"Woltmanu s Holbein, p. 356.
MAETIN LUTHEK 219
theological caricatures ; Diirer laments that " in our country
and time the art of painting should by some be much despised
and be asserted to serve only idolatry." Luther himself, in his
sermons against the iconoclasts, blames only the manner of re
moving the works of art from the churches, not the removal
itself. " It should have been preached," he said, " that the
pictures were nothing, and that it was no service to God to
put them up ; if this had been done the pictures would have
disappeared of themselves." But others were far from being
as tolerant even as this : " It were ten thousand times better,"
they cried, " that the pictures were in hell or in the hottest
oven rather than in the houses of God." And we hear of the
churches being stormed and the images and pictures trodden
under foot. Down in the south under the influence of Zwingli,
the works of art in the churches of Zurich, Bern, Basel, St.
Gallen, and other towns, were committed to the flames or the
melting-pot, in some cases by the Protestant mob, in others by
order of the authorities. Honest Hans Sachs, too, bemoans
the decay of art, though he does not recognise its cause :
" Formerly art flourished, all corners were full of learned men,
skilful workers and artists, and books enough and to spare.
Now the arts are neglected and despised, few are their disciples,
and these looked upon as dreamers; the world runs after
pleasure and money ; the Muses have deserted the Fatherland ! "
Still more mournful is another follower of the new Gospel :
" God has by the peculiar divine ordinance of his holy word
now in our time in the whole German nation brought about a
noteworthy contempt for all the fine and free arts." Only just
now in the nineteenth century are certain earnest workers
trying to rouse again among the masses that love for the
beautiful which gave art such a potent influence in mediaeval
folk-education.
Equally destructive was the effect of the Wittenberg move- i
ment pn_ literature. All thought was directed into theological /
channels, every pen was busied with oloctrinal controversy, the
very printers refused to accept anything but controversial and
theological works, because those found the greatest or only
sale ; the more violent, the more mud-bespattering a tract was,
220 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
the greater the number of authorised and of pirated editions.
Even the stage itself was perverted to sectarian purposes, and
a mass of plays concerned with abuse of the Pope and the
Catholic Church, checked that advance which had been so
marked under Hans Sachs and his contemporaries. The
remarkable didactic literature and satire of folly ceased, or
rather was transformed into theological pasquinade, while,
according to Gervinus, folk-song and folk-book decayed rapidly
with the sixteenth century. 1 It has been occasionally stated
that if the vernacular literature of Germany was at a low ebb
in the sixteenth century, at least it produced one all-sufficing
writer Luther. While recognising Luther s very great power
of language, we think that the oft-repeated statement, that
Luther was the founder of modern German literature, arises
rather from ignorance of preceding and contemporary writings,
than from any careful comparison. Luther was distinctly a
linguistic giant, but he was only a step in a long development,
and we are not prepared to admit that controversial theology
can ever take rank as pure literature. That the Germans them
selves do not think so, may perhaps be judged from the tardy
sale of the last edition of his works. If we turn to the more
scholarly side of literature, we find no one to replace Erasmus
and Reuchlin. Protestantism after a time produced the
plodding critic, and ultimately the independent investigator
and man of letters arose, but arose not infrequently to throw off
Christianity, or at least Protestantism, altogether. Some will
perhaps be inclined to cite Casaubon, but even if we disregard the
fact that Casaubon was a Calvinist, and " Galvanism, intolerant
as it was, was not so narrow, nor had it so cramping an effect
on the mind as the contemporary Lutheranism," 2 it must still
be remembered that Casaubon was no Humanist, he had none
of the spirit of Erasmus. He approved of the burning of
Legatt, that " feeble imitation by the English Church of the
great crime of Calvin " ; he wished the body of Stapleton to be
dug up and burnt, because he had used extravagant expressions
1 The decay, such as it is, may be marked by a comparison of Eulenspiegel
and Dr. Faustus. We are not inclined to lay great stress upon it.
2 Cf. Pattison s Isaac Casaubon, pp. 73, 244, 502, etc.
MAETIN LUTHEE 221
with regard to the power of the Church. Shortly, he was
narrow in the extreme : a man who could believe that the
Greek equivalents of Christ s Hebrew speeches were put directly
into the mouths of the Gospel writers by the Holy Ghost !
But even Casaubon was French, and Scaliger thoroughly ex
presses the state of Germany in the words : " It is Germany,
look you, Germany, once the mother of learning and learned
men, that is now turning the service of letters into brigandage."
Closely connected with literature comes the subject of
education. The work of the Humanists in this direction
cannot be overrated. How far was it adopted by the Ee-
formers ? The very s^wegpin^ reconstruction of the German
universities by the Humanists is too well known to need
comment here. One after another became centres for the new
culture, and their general intellectual activity is one of
the most pleasing characteristics of the age. Education was, .
as we have before noted, the fundamental instrument by
which the Humanists hoped to reform the Church, and the
success of their educational efforts can hardly be questioned.
But they did not confine their endeavours to the universities.
Jacob Wimpfeling 1 was essentially a school-reformer. It was
he who broke down the old scholastic system, and declared
that grammar and dialectic were not the only or the best means
of expanding the youthful mind. He insisted on the need of
inculcating reverence and morality, while special subjects of
education were to be chosen suited to each individual child.
Noteworthy for our purpose are his words in the Adolescentia ;
" The instruction of boys and the young in good morals is
of the utmost importance to the Christian religion and the
reformation of the Church. The reformation of the Catholic
Church to its primitive purity ought to begin with the
young, because its deformation began with their evil and
worthless instruction." Could the Humanistic conception be
more clearly expressed ? The true reformation can only be
brought about by a process of genuine education. It would j
have been well if Luther had fully grasped this law of develop
ment ! It is one of the most striking examples of theological
1 See the Note upon Wimpfeling, pp. 185-192, above.
222 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
bias, that the term " Preceptor of Germany " has been trans
ferred from Wimpfeling to Melanchthon. It is true that
Melanchthon was one of the few cultured Lutheran teachers,
and that he wrote certain school-books, but it is very doubtful
whether even the titles of these works would have survived
had not their author won a name for himself in other ways.
How many have ever investigated Melanchthon s theory of
education at first hand, and of those who have done so, what
proportion have taken the trouble to compare his theory with
Wimpfeling s ? 1 Melanchthon s views as to the constitution
of a " reformed " school are given in the Instructions of the
Saxon Church Visitors (1528). Xone can fail to be
startled by the barren formalism of his system ; he has
nothing to propose beyond the old Latin Trivial School, and
he is years behind the Brethren of Deventer, and immeasur
ably behind Wimpfeling. In this respect Luther is far
superior to Melanchthon ; his book " To the Town Councillors
of Germany upon the organising of Christian Schools" (1524),
contains many noble thoughts, and it was written before he
had learnt to despise and fear human reason. But the main
object even in this work was sectarian. Luther had recog
nised the enormous power which the education of the young
confers on a church, and he was not slow in endeavouring to
avail himself of it. His gospel and church were to be the
first to profit by the proposed educational organisation. One
of the greatest difficulties of the Reformers was to obtain men
of any culture or learning as evangelical preachers ; it is the
constantly recurring dilemma of the Church Visitors that
they cannot dismiss the unfit or even Catholic clergy, because
they have no theologians to replace them. From Luther
downwards we have constant complaints that no one will
study divinity as a profession, and that the Protestant
universities do not furnish the necessary evangelical ministers.
Praiseworthy as Luther s attempts in 1524 were, they by no
means point to a great school reform. The Reformers might
1 How theological bias reacts even on independent writers may be noted in
Mr. 0. Browning s recent History of Educational Theories, wherein we seek in
vain for even the name of Wimpfeling !
MARTIN LUTHEK 223
have made the Humanistic education their own ; they did not
seize their opportunity. Mr. Browning has very truly observed,
in his History of Educational Theories, that had the Protestants
adopted the new method of instruction, they might have
advanced by a hundred years the intelligence of modern
Europe. They not only failed to adopt it, but by the turmoil
of their movement checked indefinitely the revival of learning
in Germany. Their universities and schools fell into decay,
and it is mournful to read their self - confessions, their con
sciousness of the difference between past and present.
The outcome of the Reformation, if not indeed of the later
teaching of Luther, was to hand over reason, bound and
chained, to an emotional faith ; all learning was to flow from
a " natural light." Christians were taught immediately by
God ; the whole of the Aristotelian philosophy was a " creation
of the devil," and all speculative science sin and error. In
Strasburg the Protestants proclaimed that no other languages
or studies besides Hebrew were necessary ; others held that
there must be no study whatever but the Bible ; above all,
Latin and Greek were superfluous and harmful. Preachers
declared from the pulpit that the inexperienced youth must
be warned from studying, and that all learning was a deceit
of the devil. It is true that Melanchthon wrote that such
preachers ought to have their tongues cut out ; but were
they not the natural result of Luther s doctrine of the blindness
of the human reason ? Nay, had not Luther himself written :
" The universities deserve to be pulverised ; nothing savouring
more of hell or devil has come upon earth since the beginning
of the world. . . . All the world thinks that they are the
springs whence flow those who should teach the folk ; that is
a hopeless error, for no more abominable thing has arisen
upon earth than the universities." What wonder that such
words sometimes the outcome of transient passion should
have been seized by the ignorant, and have led the folk to
despise education ? What wonder that cobbler and tinker
mounted the pulpit too often quarrelling on the steps and
proclaimed a new age, when learning should not be the result
of years of study, but a direct revelation of God to those of
224 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
the true their own faith ? Erasmus, the apostle of culture,
was bitter in his lamentations over the decay of all earnest
study wherever the new piety appeared. Still later in the
century Dresser, Protestant Professor of Greek in Erfurt,
wrote : " There is no hope, no prospect of saving learning any
longer ; in this decrepit time its total decay and collapse
approach. Note how all learned occupations are laid aside,
the schools stand empty, knowledge is despised." The
Protestant Maior loses all hope when he thinks of the glowing
eagerness, the unrestrainable desire for knowledge in the old
dark Catholic days of his youth, and compares it with the
idleness and the neglect of study under the rays of the recently
kindled light of Protestantism. From 1550 to 1600 we
(have endless complaints from the Protestants of the utter
decay and collapse of their schools. 1 They could find (even as
Luther in Wittenberg had found) no other cause to which
they could attribute it than the direct interference of the
devil, for he must bear an intense hatred to men in possession
of the true gospel !
Thus much follows then from a comparison of the methods
of the Erasmian and Lutheran Eeformations : that, differing
totally in their aims, the one proposed a gradual educational
change, the other proceeded to a violent destruction. Before
we can judge between the two, we must endeavour to answer
the following questions : Had Erasmus any chance of success ?
And, secondly, admitting that some sacrifice of intellectual
progress may be justifiable, if it be accompanied by the
increased moral and social welfare of the masses, we have
still to ask : Did the Eeformation improve the moral and
social condition of the German people ?
What chance of success had Erasmus ? It should be
remembered that the Humanistic proposals were not of a
revolutionary character, at least not those of the older party,
which fell more directly under the influence of Erasmus.
1 The evidence for this decay has been collected by Dollinger, Die Reforma
tion, i. 420-545. Although his book, from its sectarian bias, must be read
with great caution, my own investigations are on this point in material agree
ment with Dollinger s.
MAETIN LUTHER 225
They embraced an educational reform, which must from its
very nature be a gradual change. To say, then, that Erasmus
was unsuccessful in his attempts because monkish abuses
still remained, is quite beside the point. The investigation
must turn on the progress which had been made, and the
probability of its advancing with increasing yet stable
rapidity. Neither a church nor a nation can be educated in
one man s lifetime ; it is the labour of long years. Erasmus
wished to gradually reform existing institutions, that they
might aid the intellectual development of mankind. Luther
pulled them down ; but his attempt to reconstruct them
upon his own ideas was by no means a success. How far
did the older Humanists revivify ecclesiastical institutions ?
To a far greater degree, we hold, than is generally supposed.
The German schools and universities, with few exceptions,
had suffered a transformation, which, considering its magni
tude and rapidity, can only be described as magical. There
was an unparalleled activity, and this of no narrow dog
matical kind, from Vienna to Strasburg, and from Erfurt to
Basel. 1 We have already pointed out how emancipated the
Pope and the Princes of the Church had become, how they
were the patrons of art and letters, and how thoroughly they
were in sympathy with the Erasmian spirit. We have evi
dence enough that the Humanistic influence was beginning to
make itself felt not only in the cloisters, but among the clergy.
Great moral preachers arose among the people ; theology itself
could hardly be accused of sluggishness in an age which could
lay claim to such men as Cusanus, Heynlin von Stein, Tritheim,
Geiler von Kaisersberg, and Gabriel Biel. The consciousness
of the spiritual leaders of the people was again aroused ;
special preachers were appointed for the folk throughout the
various German towns ; in vernacular sermons and didactic
works increased stress was laid on the moral and practical side
of Christianity. The press served for the popularising of
religious ideas ; edition after edition of the Biblical books was
1 A most characteristic picture of the rise of a German university under the
Humanists, and its collapse with the Reformation, is given in Kampschulte s
Die Universitat Erfurt, 1858-60.
226 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
offered to the public and eagerly bought up. Collections of
sermons, religious contemplations, prayer and confessional books
in the vernacular., followed each other in rapid succession, and
marked a revival of the religious spirit both in the clergy and
laity. A succession of cultured and high-minded bishops like
Johann von Dalberg arose in the German Church at the close
of the fifteenth century. To quote an impartial writer :
" We note how the bishops compete with one another in
visiting the convents in their dioceses, in order to effect in
Ihem the re-establishment of the old discipline ; we see them
founding and extending educational establishments to forward
theological and theologico-humamstic studies ; we find that,
according to the canons of the Church, they hold periodical
synods to collect their clergy about them, and to issue detailed
instructions for their guidance. We note how the leading-
spirits of the learned world are on terms of the most friendly
and confidential intimacy with the Princes of the Church ;
how, in harmony as to the goal of their mission in life, they
labour and strive together with united powers." l
Assuredly the reformation of Erasmus was a possible one,
and in 1517 had already made great progress. The union
between the leaders of the Church and the leaders of thought
was one of its most noteworthy features. But in the work for
the education of the clergy and for the elevation of the folk, the
general progress of knowledge was not forgotten. Noteworthy
was the battle between the Dominicans and the Humanists
for the freedom of study, which occupied the early years of
the sixteenth century. We cannot enter into the Pfefferkorn-
Eeuchlin controversy here, but we may note two facts con
cerning it. The first is, that among the supporters of Eeuchlin
were men whom the Eeformation was soon to convert into
the bitterest foes ; Erasmus and Hutten, Luther and Eck,
Melanchthon and Cochlseus, Spalatin and Carlstadt, all declared
themselves Reuchlinists. The second fact, which is of extreme
interest for our present purpose, is, that the first two judgments
of the leaders of the Church were in favour of the Humanists ;
1 Maurenbrecher : GescJiichte der katholischen Reformation, Bd. i. S. 80 ; also
S. 60-80 generally.
MAKTIN LUTHEB 227
only after Luther had commenced his battle against the
Church did Eome pronounce a third judgment against Keuchlin.
The revolt of Luther caused the Church to reject Humanism,
and was the death-blow of the Erasmian Eeformation. What
else could the Church have done ? Had not Luther expressed
his admiration for Keuchlin, and in Luther s rebellion did it
not seem as if the whole body of Humanists were moving
against the Church ? In an instant Luther was hailed as a
deliverer by all classes of the people. The Humanists
believed he had come as a new champion of learning, who
would sweep away the ignorance and obstinacy of the
" obscure men." Pirkheimer, Ulrich von Hutten, Crotus
Eubianus, Muth, even Erasmus, welcomed Luther as a new
ally in their battle against monkish stupidity. Humanistic
moralists like Brant and Wimpfeling waited anxiously for the
result of what they thought only an attack on the immorality
of the clergy. The denizens of the towns and the German
people generally looked upon Luther as the giant who had
come to free them from ecclesiastical extortions, to put an end
to the "grievances of the German nation." The peasantry
hoped in some mysterious fashion that Luther would free them
from tithes and the growing oppressions of the newly received
Eoman Law. The princes and nobles were not slow to
recognise in Luther an instrument whereby they might satisfy
their own peculiar greeds. Lastly, there were some simple,
homely folk, who imagined that Luther was about to teach a
form of primitive Christianity, a general reign of brotherly
love, some hitherto unrealised union of communism and
pietism. This class was not infrequent among the peasantry;
it was the source of the various sects generally classed as Ana
baptists, who were driven alike by Catholic and by Protestant
persecution into fanaticism. Those who would understand
the earlier writings of Luther must grasp clearly his relation
to these various groups, and his endeavours to satisfy each of
them. The Diet at Worms marks the extreme height of
Luther s popularity. Eobanus Hesse, Pirkheimer, Hutten and
other Humanists hailed his journey southwards. Franz von
Sickingen promised him more material aid in case of need ;
228 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
the Elector of Saxony was his protector ; the well-to-do
burghers made his entries into Erfurt and Worms triumphal
processions ; and on the very day after Luther s audience a
threat to march with 8000 men against his Papal foes was
found nailed to the door of the council house. It concluded
with the cry of peasant insurrection: "Bundschuh, Bundschuh,
Bundschuh ! "
It is of peculiar importance, in judging the value of the
Reformation, to mark how one by one the various parties we
have noted ceased to be supporters of Luther. Gradually the
Humanists learned that the Reformation was not making for
learning and culture ; that it was destroying the schools,
and introducing a race of theologians, who were as narrow
and as bitter as their old enemies the monks ; they saw the
" obscure men " perpetuated in a new class of dogmatists,
and ignorance and passion trampling knowledge under foot.
Erasmus withdrew the approval he had once given to Luther,
regretting that he had not exhibited the same zeal in avoiding
violence and preaching morality as he had in defending dogma,
Erasmus saw new tyrants, but not a spark of the gospel spirit.
Above all, he noted the increasing immorality of the people
and the collapse of true learning. Eeuchlin, once the great
opponent of monkish bigotry, tried to recall his nephew
Melanchthon from Wittenberg, and, failing, withdrew from
him the promised legacy of his library. The author of the
Augenspiel died in the Catholic Church. To that Church
Pirkheimer also was reconciled Pirkheimer, whose satire on
Dr. Eck had caused him to be included in the Papal Bull
against Luther. " I confess," he writes, " that at first I was a
good Lutheran, even as our late Albrecht (Diirer), since we
hoped that the Eoman trickery, as well as the knavery of monk
and priest, would be lessened. But, as one sees, matters have
grown worse, so that these evangelical rogues make the former
ones appear pious. ... I hoped, to begin with, for a certain
spiritual freedom, but all is now obviously turned to pleasure
of the flesh, so that these later things are far worse than the
first." In like spirit, Crotus Eubianus, the Humanist, who
had conceived the bitterest satire ever written against monkdom,
MAETIN LUTHEE 229
who had hailed with his chosen comrade Hutten the outbreak
of the Eeformation, returned to the Catholic faith, full of bitter
ness at the growing immorality and the destruction of culture.
" In most places," he writes, " where the anti-papists rule,
severe laws have already been published against the professors
of the old religion. He who does not renounce all intercourse
with the papists must go to prison, or purchase his freedom
by a heavy fine. Woe to him who dares to enter a papist
Church, to hear a sermon there or attend mass, to confess to a
priest or perform any ecclesiastical rite ! The new dispensation,
which came from Heaven yesterday, has its watchful spies,
with Argus eyes, ready to denounce the offender to the judge.
... just law, so wholly eye and ear with regard to obser
vation of ecclesiastical routine, but with regard to the
adulterer or the blasphemer struck with blindness, and sunk
in the deepest sleep ! "
Do not these words of Eubianus lay out clearly before us
the cause why the Humanists deserted Luther ? They had
wished for a " spiritual freedom," for a cessation of dogma, for
a new view of life and broader thought ; and they found
themselves treated to Augsburg Confessions and the pitiable
tyranny of evangelical church regulations.
Still worse fared the simple folk who had hoped to find in
the new gospel the foundation of a millennium of Christian
love and charity. Their pious enthusiasm was the stumbling-
block of the Lutherans ; they carried Luther s own gospel to
its logical outcome, and claimed in their turn that freedom of
belief which Luther had demanded from Eome for himself, but
which he practically refused to others. Luther saw that the
mass of the people were drawn rather to this primitive faith
than to his own doctrines, and as Melanchthon and he were
unable to convince these sectaries by argument, at first banish
ment, and then the sword and stake, became the chief weapons
of Protestant logic. 1 In such a book as Luther s tract of 1 5 3 2
1 Luther attributes the obstinacy of the early Anabaptists to the " influence
of the devil." The writings of Luther, Melanchthon, and other Protestants
against these simple folk are the quintessence of bigotry and of the narrowest
theological intolerance.
230 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
Upon Sneaks and Hole-and-Corner Preachers we have all the
hatred of an established and privileged church against any
trespassers on its domain. Closely related to the Anabaptists
were the oppressed peasants ; only these latter found out their
delusion at a somewhat earlier date and suffered more com
plete discomfiture. In 1525 the brutal tyranny of princes
and nobles reached its height, and the peasants broke into
open rebellion. We have lying open before us now the
original Twelve Articles printed and circulated by the peasant
leaders. This curious tract tells its own tale of oppression
and delusion. It appeals throughout to the " Holy Evangely/
as Luther s teaching was then termed. Article 6 demands
that all parsons and vicars shall be called upon to teach and
preach the " Gospel," and on their refusal shall be dismissed
from office. The claims of the peasants would appear to most
modern readers very far from unreasonable. Noteworthy is the
naming of umpires to decide between the peasants and their
oppressors ; immediately following the Imperial Stath alter are
placed Duke Friedrich of Saxony, together with Martin Luther,
Philip Melanchthon, and " Pomeran " (Bugenhagen). We have
thus the most complete evidence of how the peasants inter
preted Luther s teaching. From the purely historical stand
point it is absolutely impossible to deny that the preaching
of Luther and his followers was the immediate cause of the
Peasant Eebellion. Doubtless Luther s doctrine of " evangelical
freedom " was grasped by the peasants in a cruder fashion than
he understood it, yet it was most certainly the spark which
set on fire the inflammatory material collected and heaped up
by oppression. 1 A man who appeals to the unlearned masses
is responsible, not only for his direct statements, but for the
results which may arise from his being misinterpreted by his
audience. Luther s position was at the time of this outbreak
an extremely difficult one. In his first book on the Twelve
Articles he endeavours to act the part of umpire. He asserts
that the peasants demand for the " pure gospel " is a most
justifiable one, and he does not hesitate to attribute the out-
1 This has been very strongly expressed by Maurenbrecher : Die katholische
Reformation, Bd. i. p. 257. Cf. also p. 275.
MARTIN LUTHER 231
break to the conduct of the princes, nobles and " more
especially to you, ye blind bishops, ye mad priests and monks."
On the other hand, he defends serfdom to the peasantry on
Biblical grounds. " There shall be 110 serf, since Christ has
made us all free ! What is that ? That is making Christian
freedom purely of the flesh. Had not Abraham and other
patriarchs and prophets serfs also ? Eead St. Paul what he
teaches of servants, who in his day were all serfs." " There
fore this article is directly against the Gospel, and robbery,
since each takes from his lord that body which belongs to his
lord." But this position of umpire was impossible for Luther ;
it would in all probability have led to the collapse of his
Gospel between the two parties. After a few weeks con
sideration Luther threw in his lot with the princes. His;
tract, Against the Murderous and Rapacious Habile of Peasants \
(1525), is the most terrible appeal to bloodshed ever published j
by a minister of Christ s Church. It is the first manifesto of \
the doctrine, afterwards generally adopted by the Reformers, j
of the. divine institution of all civil authority, and the duty of ;
implicit obedience on the part of all subjects, alike in matters |
spiritual and temporal. 1
" A rebel," he writes in this book, " is outlawed by God
and Kaiser, therefore who can and will first slaughter such a
man does right well ; since upon such a common rebel every
man is alike judge and executioner. Therefore who can, shall
here openly or secretly smite, slaughter, and stab, and shall
hold that there is nothing more harmful, more poisonous, more
devilish than a rebellious man. ... Lord God, when such
spirit is in the peasants, it is high time that they were
slaughtered like mad dogs."
Luther tells the princes that they are commanded by the
Gospel, so long as the blood flows in their veins, to slay such
folk. Those who are killed in such attempt are true martyrs
before God. Carlyle has described Luther s conduct in the
1 See, however, Luther s Von wcltlicher Obrigkeit, 1523. Luther himself
declares that he was the first to state the divine origin of all civil power (Werke,
Bd. xxxi. S. 24). See also Melanchthon s Wider die Artikel der Bawrnschaft,
where the argument is based on Rom. xiii. 1.
232 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
matter of the Peasants War as showing a " noble strength
very different from spasmodic violence." The sober historian
must agree with our opinion, " that it is the most terrible
appeal to bloodshed ever published by a minister of Christ s
Church." Nothing could excuse it, not even the news of the
Weinsberg atrocities, had it reached Wittenberg before the
publication of the book. It was the death-blow of Lutheranism
as a popular movement ; henceforth the Eeformation was
carried out by the order and force of the temporal powers,
the folk being indifferent or even hostile ; henceforth Luther
depends for support on the greed of princes or on the rapacity
of town councillors. Before 1530 he has lost the sympathy
not only of the Humanists, the party of culture, but even
of the mass of the folk. The tyranny of petty princes has
received the sanction of the Eefonners, and learning has been
crushed under the heel of theological dogma. It remains for
us to consider how a Eeformation carried through under
such auspices affected the social and moral condition of the
people.
A comparison between the condition of the masses in
1500 and 1550 far exceeds anything which can possibly be
attempted within the limits of an essay of the present kind.
It is a question purely of statistics, and these often of the
dullest nature. Hitherto the topic has been entirely neglected
by Protestant historians, and we owe most of our information
on the subject to Catholic authors writing with an obvious
party tendency. Notwithstanding this, however, we have
evidence more than enough to show a remarkable breakdown
in the social and moral welfare of the German people. How
far this was due to the direct teaching of the Eeformers is a
matter of the utmost importance. If the Eeformation only
checked culture, if freedom of thought and the rational method
have only grown up in spite of the Eeformation because the
theologians were not sufficiently united to suppress them
then the influence of the Eeformation upon the social and
moral welfare of the people will be the crucial question which
must settle our judgment on Luther and his movement. Mr.
Beard has thought fit to refer to this crucial question in >a
MARTIN LUTHER 233
short note only to his Fourth Hibbert Lecture. He there cornes
to the conclusion that " the Reformation did not at first carry
with it much cleansing force of moral enthusiasm." If Mr.
Beard is referring solely to Germany, we are compelled to add
that neither " at first " nor " at last " did the Lutheran move
ment carry with it any force of moral enthusiasm. It reduced
the parts of Germany it reached to a moral torpor ; for almost
the whole of the two following centuries Germany s social as
well as literary life was " stale, flat, and unprofitable." Only
the emancipation of thought, the reaction against all religious
dogma in the eighteenth century, awoke Germany from her
slumbers. What Mr. Beard relegates to a note is, we hold, the
ground upon which the Reformation must ultimately be judged.
We have before remarked that the Catholic Church was the
basis of mediaeval social life ; we have drawn attention to the
triumph of the Roman over the Canon Law, and the reduction
of the peasant to a serf; we have noted how intimately the
decay of the guild system was connected with the collapse o^
the Church ; we have yet to place before the reader some
evidence of the direct influence of the Lutheran doctrines upon
the morality of the folk. We shall confine ourselves here to
two of them : the one relating to redemption by faith alone,
the other to the meaning of marriage. On both these points
we must again repeat a caution we have given above namely,
that it is not sufficient excuse for Luther to say that his
doctrines were misunderstood. He did not publish them in a
form intended only for scholars, he thrust them into the hands
of the ignorant, and he must be held responsible for the results
of misinterpretation.
The emphasis which Luther laid upon the doctrine of
justification by faith alone has identified it for ever with the
Reformation ; so greatly was he enamoured of it, that he
introduced in the ardour of his passion the word " alone "
into his translation of Romans iii. 28, a passage which
certainly does not contain the word in the most corrupt of
manuscripts. Any dogma which lays, or appears to lay,
stress only on the inner faith of the individual, is liable to
most dangerous misconceptions. It misses what nowadays
234 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
would be so generally acknowledged as the chief function of
religion the insistence on an upright, neighbourly, pure life.
Instead of making it the first concern of man to live well in
this world, it occupies his time with some process whereby he
secures a satisfactory life hereafter. The individual retires
into himself, he is satisfied that his faith will save his own
soul, he becomes almost, or quite regardless of the material
welfare of his neighbour. It is not surprising, then, to find
that sects grew up even as under similar circumstances
they had done among the Mahomedans who based upon
this doctrine the theory, that to the believer all things (even
the most immoral) are permitted. Luther, of course, would
have rejected any such enormity ; still it was the logical
outcome of his statement, that the works of the righteous,
or rather of the elect, are all alike good ; the most unimportant
actions, and the greatest self-sacrifice, have the same worth
before God. Obviously, such a theory destroys the possi
bility of a moral ideal, towards which man can only approach
by a lifelong struggle. " God," said Luther, " does riot ask
how many and how great are our works, but how great is
our faith ? . . . Thou owest God naught but confession and
belief. In all other matters thou art free to do as thou wilt,
without any danger of conscience." It is perfectly true that,
if real faith be defined as that which is always followed by
good works, such expressions are harmless. But the danger
of emphasising, as the key to salvation, a merely subjective
state of the emotions instead of a particular course of action,
can hardly be over-estimated in treating of the moral value of
a dogma. To the great uncultured masses it is all-important
to insist upon good works, upon a pure, charitable life, as the
means to redemption. Is it not easy to understand how
teaching like the following was misinterpreted by the folk ?
" The proposition that good works are needful for salvation
must be entirely rejected, since it is a false and deceptive
doctrine that good works are needful either to justification or
salvation." " There is no law sanctioned by God Himself
which demands a single work from the believer as necessary
for salvation." " Works do nothing ; only consider one thing
MAKTIN LUTHEK 235
as needful to hear God s Word and believe it that suffices
and nothing else." How the folk understood these expres
sions was very soon obvious. " Under Popery," Luther him
self writes, "people were charitable and generous, but now
under the Gospel nobody gives any longer ; now every man
skins his brother, and each will have all for himself. The longer
the Gospel is preached, the deeper people sink in pride, greed,
and luxury." What a strange confession of failure lies in
this, though Luther hardly recognised its cause ! Such com
plaints as to the absolute decay of charity are constantly
repeated by the Reformers ; they can obtain no support either
for the clergy, the churches, or the schools. Luther tells us
on another occasion, how every town, according to its size,
once supported several convents, to say nothing of mass-priests
and charitable foundations ; but now, under the new dispensa
tion, men refuse to support two or three preachers and in
structors of youth in a town, even when the cost does not fall
on their own property, but on that which has been left from
Popish times. It is a fact, which is no less true of Germany
than of England, that of the property of the old Church, which
passed into the hands of princes, nobles, and town councillors,
but very little was again applied to charitable or public
purposes. Most pitiable are the lamentations of the Church
Visitors over the decay of charity. The lower orders through
out Saxony refused not only voluntary but even legal church
dues. In 1525, Luther wrote that unless very stringent
measures were taken there would soon be neither preachers
nor parsonages, neither schools nor scholars. In some villages
the religious spirit had entirely died out ; three or four persons
went to church, and the peasants marched about with drums
during the service ; in others, even the building itself had
been converted into a sheep-stall, or made a depository for
Whitsun beer ; in further instances we read of the beer-cans
being handed about during the sermon, or of the peasants
threatening to stone their parsons. The clergy themselves
were terribly degraded. One minister had three wives living,
another did not even know the Ten Commandments, a third
earned his livelihood as a weaver, while in many cases two or
236 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
more cures had to be thrown together in order to obtain
support for one preacher. In several villages the Visitors
declared that the only remedy was the "executioner and the
stocks." The moral decay of both peasantry and clergy is
extraordinary ; both are given to drink, both to sexual vice.
In one small village alone there were fifteen illegitimate
children in one year. One parson is described as " tolerably
good/ but he does not receive unqualified praise, because of
his passion for drinking. Most charitable foundations had
disappeared, to a great extent appropriated by the nobility ;
the revenues of the parsons had melted away ; the parsonages
were tumbling down, and cattle fed in the open churchyards.
The schools, where they continued to exist, were in a most
pitiable condition, while monastic teaching had of course
disappeared with the monks. Villages had sold their church
ornaments and vessels to pay the commune debts, or appro
priated church funds for a like purpose. Scarcely anywhere
in the rural districts was there the faintest trace of enthusiasm
for the new dispensation. In one town, however, we find a
Lutheran Council had been elected ; they had bought out the
nuns, and shut up their convents ; they had dismissed the
eighteen monks with thirty gulden apiece, and their guardian
with double that sum. All the provisions or movables of the
convent had been given away or sold ; the windows had been
transferred to the " Kaufhaus " ; innumerable persons had
been found ready to take charge of the large stock of cheese
and lard left by the monks. " One sees," as the historian of
the events naively remarks, " in what a short time a town
government, inclined to Luther s views, could accomplish an
immense amount ; it is the towns peculiarly that we have to
thank for their great services in forwarding the Keformation." ]
Such was the state of the Saxon Church even under Luther s
nose in 1528. We by no means propose to thrust all these
failings upon his shoulders ; some of them were undoubtedly
a legacy from Papal times, others were a result of the Peasant
War (but even so indirectly due to the Eeformation) ; enough,
1 Burkhardt : Geschichte der sachsischen Kirchen- und Schulmsitationen ,
1879, p. 67, et ante.
MARTIN LUTHER 237
however, remains to show that the destruction of the Catholic
Church involved a break-up of social life in Saxony. It is
quite sufficient for our purpose if we can convince the reader
that the so-called Reformation did not improve the condition
of the people, neither of clergy nor of laity ; if it did not, it
failed in its object. What we have here described, on the
report of the Visitors in 1528, is very closely akin to what
we learn from Church Visitations, until the Thirty Years
War quite destroys the possibility of judging between cause
and effect. It is quite true that the number of " stubborn
Papists " with whom the Visitors met, became fewer and
fewer, but as one of the chief functions of successive Visita
tions had been to get rid of them, this is scarcely to be
wondered at. In 1 5 3 9 we find the schools still in a miserable
condition, and the people themselves quite indifferent to
education. The general tendency of the time was, as Musa
reports, against learned, but especially against clerical occu
pations ; above all, charity no longer provided for the poor
wandering scholar. The Reformers found themselves in
absolute need of men of the most moderate education for
their church. In 1532, in the second Visitation, we find
the old complaints as to how unthankful the people are
towards the new gospel. By this time, uniformity has become
an absolute law. All who defend articles of belief, other than
appear in the printed " Instruction of the Visitors," are to be
banished from the country. The increasing moral decay of
the folk is to be checked by stringent regulations ; crime,
swearing, gambling, drunkenness, adultery, and the " passion
ate discussion of the dogmas of religion in the taverns/ 5 are to
be investigated and punished by ecclesiastical superintendents.
We find the same difficulties as to the support of the clergy,
the same complaints as to the concession of churches and
church property; one church has become a granary, the
property of another has been used to build a tavern, and so
forth. Childish were the means the Visitors took to bring
people into the church ; for example, those who did not
attend the baptismal service were not to partake of the bap
tismal feast, and irregular communicants were to be banished
238 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
from the parish. 1 We note the beginning of a second and
still worse ecclesiastical tyranny.
At the same time in the Wittenberg district itself matters
were still more deplorable. The laity were given not to
charity but to dissoluteness in its widest meaning ; many had
quarrelled with the clergy, and for long years abstained from
the Sacrament. Parsonages were in ruins, the cattle frequented
or were even driven into the churchyard. The villagers refused
the preacher his dues, or met together to consume them in
drink. In the lordship of Schwarzburg the Visitors found
forty-six Protestant preachers and seven Catholic priests.
Eight or nine Protestants, although permitted to marry, were
living witli concubines, as also five of their Catholic brethren.
Not only are these early Church Visitations strong evidence
of the want of a " force of moral enthusiasm " in the Lutheran
movement, but they are the best record we have of the method
of the Reformers. Most strange is the picture of the manner
in which the evangelical faith was forced upon the semi-
dependent principalities and bishoprics ; they were compelled
to accept Lutheranism whether they would or not ; monks
and nuns were forbidden to wear the dress of their Order,
were pensioned off, or allowed to await their end in a convent
where the old religious routine was entirely prohibited.
Many, who thus found themselves deprived of the only
advantages of the ascetic life, returned again into the world,
or wandered into Catholic countries, thus assisting the rapid
process of secularisation. In 1535 we find much the same
condition of things ; the Visitors complain of an increase in
godlessness, of contempt for the Divine Word, of small
attendance at church, and almost total refraining from com
munion. Then we hear of most indecent behaviour during
divine service, increase of vices of all kinds in a most marked
degree, and above all, of the sad collapse of conjugal relations?"
Even the conduct of the clergy calls for the gravest reprobation.
Everywhere there was a want of spiritual supervision, which
had entirely ceased with the old Church. So much must suffice
to give the reader a conception of the Saxon clergy and laity
1 Burkhardt, p. 140. 2 Ibid. pp. 198-9.
MAETIN LUTHEE 239
under the influence of the Eeformation. There was most
undoubtedly a break - up of social and moral relations, and
more than one Protestant of that day was bold enough to
attribute it directly to Luther s doctrine of redemption.
Noteworthy is the almost unanimous rejection of this doctrine
by the sects of primitive Christians, which so rapidly grew up
among the folk. They declared that Christ had given a
model for life, rather than a mere matter for belief. To this
" babble of faith " they attributed the increase in adultery,
greed, and drunkenness. We will conclude this subject by a
characteristic but by no means unique passage from the
writings of Schwenkfeld :
" One may reasonably accuse the Lutherans of discarding
external matters as unnecessary for salvation, since they not
only teach that faith alone, sola fides, makes a man righteous
and holy, but with complete indiscretion write and have
written so sharply and severely against the good works of
faith that many have entirely discarded all good works and
godliness, and thus an atrocious and godless manner of
existence has become frequent. Alas ! it is everywhere
obvious that the masses do not know what to make of good
works. How can it be otherwise, since these men have taught )
and written from the beginning that good works, even the j
best, are sins : nay, even that a righteous man sins in all
good works ! " 1
Turning to our second point, the theory of marriage, we
have first to note the historical fact, and then to search for
its cause. The undoubted fact is the decay of sexual morality,
the collapse of the sanctity of marriage in Germany during
the sixteenth century. Not only do we find strange evidence
of this in the reports of the Visitors, but both Protestants
and Humanists bear witness to the same effect. In one
Protestant university we hear of the moral conduct being
such "as Bacchus and Venus might prescribe to their
following." Luther himself is continually crying out against
the moral collapse in Saxony itself, and even compares it
1 Many expressions in Luther s works quite justify what some might fancy
to be an exaggeration of Schwenkfeld s,
240 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
unfavourably with the state of things under Popery. Weary
of battling against this increasing mass of disorder, he exclaims
in despair : " It would almost seem as if our Germany, after
the great light of the Gospel, had become possessed of the
devil." Melanchthon attributes the greater difficulties of
government to the increasing immorality of the folk. Luxury,
sharnelessness, and riotousness are ever extending. Bugen-
hagen, Osiander, Mathesius, and other evangelical preachers
bear evidence to the decay of chaste manners ; they attribute
it, not to the collapse of the old religious sanctions, but to the
singular activity of the devil. The growth of little com
munities and sects, who not only taught but practised
polygamy and even promiscuous intercourse, is one of the
peculiar features of the time. It is necessary to inquire
whether any ground can be found for these results in the
teaching of the Reformers. There has been much discussion
recently with regard to Luther s sermons on marriage, and
it is necessary to say a few words about them here. These
sermons bear dates varying from 1519 to 1545, and we may
state generally that the same conception of marriage runs
through all of them ; they contain Luther s views as a
Protestant, and are essentially opposed to the teaching of
the Catholic Church. The most characteristic of these sermons
were preached by Luther as an evangelical teacher from the
Wittenberg pulpit. They were likewise preached to an
audience mixed as to age and sex. We will say nothing
here of their coarseness, allowing that to be peculiar at least
to a certain section of his contemporaries ; l we have to con
sider only their doctrine. The Catholic Church has always
taught that marriage is a sacrament. We should be the
last to defend the truth of such a conception, but we must
call attention to the fact that it emphasised something beyond
1 Sebastian Brant set his face against all forms of coarseness. A new
saint has arisen," he writes, "called Grobian, whom now all men worship and
honour on every side with coarse words and dissolute works." Of this passage,
Gervinus writes, There was something great in attempting to stem such a
torrent as this then \vas, and this aim Brant had." If the author of the Ship
of Fools could resist the tendency of his time, might we not demand the same
of the Hero as Priest ?
MARTIN LUTHER 241
the physical in the sexual relation, it endowed it with a
spiritual side. The conception of marriage as a spiritual as
well as physical union seems to us the essential condition of
all permanent happiness between man and wife. The in
tellectual union superposed on the physical is precisely what
raises human above brute intercourse. Those marriages which
arise purely from instinctive impulse are notoriously the least
stable. We believe that the spiritual side must be kept
constantly in view, if the stability of the sexual relationship
is to be preserved. Here it is that Luther, rejecting the
conception of marriage as a sacrament, rushes with his usual
impetuosity into the opposite and more dangerous extreme.
He lays entire stress upon the physiological origin of the
sexual union. He teaches not only, truly, that chastity has no
peculiar value in the eyes of God or man, but also that it is
impossible and directly contrary to the divine mandate. The
vows of monks and nuns are void because they have vowed an
impossibility. He repeatedly proclaims from the pulpit that
neither man nor woman can control the sexual impulses. He
tells boys and girls that they cannot, and that God does not
bid them, resist their passions. They must either marry or do
worse. A boy must marry at latest when he is twenty, a
girl between fifteen and eighteen, and "let God take care
how the children are to be supported." This revolutionary
doctrine of the impossibility of chastity Luther carries into
the sanctity of wedded life, and makes statements at which
the modern reader can only shudder. 1 What Luther taught
to the folk, old and young, man and woman, from the Wit
tenberg pulpit was repeated throughout the Protestant churches
of Germany. Is it not necessary to connect the decay of
sexual morality with the propagation of doctrines such as
Luther s ? We are quite willing to allow that Luther s primary
aim was to sweep away the mass of corruption which un
doubtedly existed in the cloisters, and for this purpose it was
needful to assert that the ascetic life was not a peculiarly
holy one. But Luther, with his usual love of extreme dogma,
propounded a doctrine which must be subversive of moral
1 See the essay in this volume on the Relations of Sex in Germany.
16
242 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
order. He took the lowest conceivable view of the relation of
man and woman, and the masses of the folk, ever ready to
accept a physical impulse as a divine commandment, did not
hesitate to embrace his theory, and carry it to most disastrous
results. 1
There is another point to which Luther s purely physical
conception of marriage led him namely, to what we are
really justified in terming an approval of polygamy. It is
a common, but a quite erroneous opinion to suppose that Luther
only expressed his views on this matter in relation to the
bigamy of Philip of Hesse. As early as 1524 Luther
declared that polygamy is not forbidden by the word of
God, but to avoid scandal and preserve decency, it is
necessary to reject some things which are permitted to
Christians. " It is well that the husband himself should be
sure and certain in his own conscience that by the Word of
God this thing is allowable. ... I must forsooth confess
that I cannot prohibit any man from taking several wives,
nor is it repugnant to the Scriptures." Melanchthon went
still further, and advised our Henry VIII. not to divorce his
first wife, but to take another, because polygamy was not
forbidden by the divine law. We by no means assert that
either Luther or Melanchthon openly advocated polygamy ; but
they did not oppose it, and the result of their vacillation was
obvious in their followers. Carlstadt was not the only Protestant
who plainly expressed- approval of polygamy, and in the tragedy
of Miinster it was adopted and carried to the most anti-social
extremes. It is precisely in the spirit of the above quotations
that in 1540 Luther and Melanchthon replied to the Landgrave
of Hesse on his proposal to take a second wife. A special
dispensation may be granted to him, if bigamy be the only
means of preserving him from worse vices. Such bigamy is
allowed in the law of Moses, and is not forbidden in the Gospel.
At the same time, it would not be wise to allow polygamy to
1 In 1518 Luther still wrote from the Catholic standpoint. He remarks
that God grants grace to unfruitful marriages, and concludes : " Haec si quis
animadverteret, facillime concupiscentiam carnis refreuaret." De Afatrimonio.
Concivnes, Opera Latina. Wittenberg, 1545, i. fol. xc.
MARTIN LUTHER 243
the common folk on account of the scandal to which it would give
rise. On this ground it is necessary that the second marriage
should he kept an absolute secret. There is no mention
whatever that a second marriage is null and void, or tears
up by the very roots the hitherto accepted Christian theory of
marriage. 1 Other Protestant divines, such as Bugenhagen
and Butzer, gave their sanction to this pitiable quibble ; and
Philip s court-chaplain preached after the ceremony on the
legality of polygamy ! We are forced to recognise in the matter
that doctrine of marriage which, disregarding the spiritual
lays all stress on the physical relation. The Protestant sanction
of polygamy did not arise merely from a special political
necessity ; for we have seen that Luther in 1524, and Melanch-
thon in 1531, expressed opinions of a similar kind. It
was not out of keeping with a movement which through
out appealed rather to the passions than to the intellect,
which at every turn sacrificed reason to the dictates of
undisciplined emotion. With this slight reference to that
which even Protestant theologians admit to be a black spot
in the Reformation, we must close our consideration of the
influence of that movement upon the moral condition of the
German folk. That influence, as we have endeavoured to show,
was not in favour of moral progress.
The facts which we have now laid before the reader will,
we hope, enable him to form some judgment of how Luther
must be considered in relation to modern culture. We are
perfectly aware that it is possible to cite passages from his
writings full of truth and piety ; we leave to Catholic theo
logians the task of denouncing Luther as a knave, a sensualist,
or a heretic ; we decline to discuss whether his dogmas were
more or less in accordance with Holy Writ than those of
the Catholic Church ; we recognise to their full extent the
1 The point to be noticed here is, not that these Reformers attacked life
long monogamic union, but that they made the physical the sole criterion of
the social fitness of any type of marriage. They made no attempt to balance the
spiritual and the physical elements in the sex-union. Indeed, like James Hinton
and other modern advocates of polygamy, they had not the courage to publicly
teach the final outcome of their creed of the physical, it remained an esoteric
doctrine.
244 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
abuses which that church presented in the sixteenth century ;
we only ask : Did Luther give the world anything of greater
purity ? Is it a fact that there was nothing to choose between
the immorality and bigotry of Catholic and of Protestant
clergy in the second half of the sixteenth century ? We
ask bluntly : What have we to thank Luther for ? For
a particular set of dogmas ? Dogmas are to us matters of
perfect indifference. For our freedom of thought ? We reply
that freedom of thought was more possible in 1500 than a
hundred years later, and that our present freedom is not
the result of Luther s teaching any more than of Eck s. It
arises solely from the fact that Luther, Eck, and their
co-theologians could not agree. The Protestants banished the
freethinking painters from Niirnberg, they burnt Conrad in
der Gasse in Basel, they executed Krauth, Moller, and other
Anabaptists in Jena and elsewhere ; they burnt Servetus in
Geneva, they beheaded Hetzer in Constance (it is said on a
charge of polygamy !). Shortly, their intolerance was, if
possible, even narrower than that of their Catholic brethren.
We owe our freedom not to their doctrine, but to their
j impotence. Toleration has grown to be a leading factor of
i our modern faith, in the very teeth of Protestant, or at least
Lutheran opposition. Again, does any one ask us to be
grateful to Luther for modern culture ? We answer, that
\he checked the growth of culture ; that literature, and art,
; and scholarship, decayed under the influence of the Lutheran
Church. Nay, if we are told that we must sacrifice intellec
tual progress for the sake of the moral and social welfare of the
masses, we reply : Willingly ; but the German Eeformation was
a moral catastrophe for the folk at large. We refuse entirely
to fall down and worship this man ; we do not recognise him
as a hero, nor proclaim him a great moral teacher. Where we
allow only the gradual influence of education to be effectual,
we see a reformation attempted by an appeal to passion.
We note the frustration of Erasmus s attempt at rational
reform by a violent conjuration of emotional ignorance.
History, it is true, cannot be rewritten ; but the reason why
we separate myth from fact is that we may learn history s true
MAETIN LUTHEE 245
lesson ; and the lesson of the Eeformation is that all true
progress of the folk at large can be attained only by a gradual
process of education. If an appeal be made to popular passion,
then scholarship, culture, and true morality will be dragged
into contempt, while narrowness, intolerance, and ignorance
will triumph. It is because we believe in the former as true
essentials of human progress that we sympathise with
Erasmus, and see in his methods the methods of the future.
It is on this ground that we hail the recent refusal of the
University of Oxford 1 within whose walls Erasmus taught
to take any part in the glorification of Luther, as a manifesto
of the modern historical spirit. We see in this decision no
victory of High Church over Low Church, but the triumph of
the party of progress over that of obscurity.
1 This was written in the year 1883.
X
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MONSTER 1
Der Feind, den wir am tieffsten hassen,
Der mis umlagert schwarx und diclit,
Das 1st der Unverstand der Massen,
Den nur des Geistes Schwert durclibriclit.
Arbeit er-Marseillaise.
SOME few years before the end of the first quarter of the
sixteenth century the dawn of a brighter day seemed about
to burst upon the dark night of the myriad toilers in
Germany. A free peasantry had been forced into the most
galling serfdom by a brutal and ignorant nobility, whose
chivalry had degenerated into vulgar license, and whose
knightly spirit of adventure found profitable, if somewhat
hazardous, employment in highway robbery. The spirit of
selfishness growing rampant with the decay of the old
religious influences had led the German princelets to the
most detestable doctrines of petty autocracy, and they
welcomed with delight the Eoman jurists, who found no
place in their system for primitive folk - customs, village
jurisdiction, or the communal rights of a free peasantry.
The peasant could no longer fetch his firewood from the
forest, drive his cattle into the common meadow, nor kill the
game which destroyed his crops. His barns were burnt at
night, he was carried off for a pitiable ransom even on his
1 Reprinted from the Modern Review, 1884.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 247
way to mass, and if he did not fulfil his legal or imposed
obligations to the letter, he was punished in a most
barbarous fashion, not infrequently culminating in death.
On the other hand, the mad craving for wealth in the towns
was destroying the old independence of the handicraftsman ;
the great extension of trade, the rise of commercial speculation,
and the perversion of the old guild system were making
him more and more a tool in the hands of the moneyed
classes. The Church, which for long had held in check with
its spiritual terrors the individual struggle for power, had
fallen into a state of corruption, which called forth the con
tempt of the whole community. The poor and the helpless
no longer found in the established religion that spiritual
comfort which might have strengthened them to endure
their material misery. The great ideas of mediaeval Chris
tianity were fast losing their influence over the minds of
men ; the spiritual seemed dying out in the folk, which was
rushing blindly along in its race for material prosperity, and
with the usual result the stronger arm, the stronger head
went to the fore, but the weaker, the more ignorant were
forced closer and closer to their hopeless grinding toil. The
nobles hated the princelets, the towns detested both alike,
while the peasantry was bitter in its denunciation of all who
took refuge behind walls of stone. On every side were signs
of the decay of the social spirit, of the rise of a new
materialistic and selfish conception of life irreligious in the
truest sense of the word. Self-sacrifice which can arise
only from clearness of vision, or from a strong and fervid
social consciousness was to all appearance dead. Every
man was hurrying along in the race for worldly prosperity,
and a Church no longer conscious of its mission, nay, which
scarcely blushed at its own impurity, was unable to cry, " Halt !
remember thy neighbour ! " In vain the poorer members of
the community sought around them for the cause of this
misery, they sat helplessly looking into the night and waiting
for a prophet ! And then Luther came Luther, the son of
a peasant, boldly facing the indolent priest and the tyrannic
prince preaching a new gospel, a pure evangely/ full of
248 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
comfort for men s souls. What wonder that the dawn
seemed breaking for the folk, that they fancied the national
deliverer had arisen ?
For a short time peasant and craftsman, the humble toiler
of all sorts, looked to Luther as to a god. What could this
pure evangely mean which proclaimed the Bible as sole
authority, and itself as the primitive Christian faith if it did
not herald a return to brotherly love, mutual charity, and an
apostolic simplicity of life ? What wonder that these poor
ignorant folk, when they read the fiery appeals which Luther
and his fellow-theologians cast abroad o er the land, thought
the battle was not for a dogma, not for the letter, but for a
total change in men s habits of life. They did not want a new
set of doctrines, they did not want a new pope, they wanted a
richer life for the listless struggler in the city, a more joyous
home for the toiler on the land. They wanted the bread
of a new emotion in life, and they were given dogmatic
stones.
Worn out by generations of oppression the peasants banded
themselves together, and took as their password the pure
evangely ; throughout the district of the league this, and this
only should be proclaimed from the pulpit. Could the people,
could the princes once hear this divine word, there would be no
need of dispute, its very simplicity would bring conviction to
the minds of all. Poor simple peasants, the pure evangely
was clear enough to you, but it was hardly what the rulers of
men were inclined to accept ! Nevertheless you drew up your
twelve modest demands and based each one of them on an
appeal to Scripture and a plea of brotherly love. Brotherly
love indeed I Were you not rebels disobeying the higher
powers or worse, disobeying God, by whom all the powers
that be are ordained ? So Melanchthon told you, so Luther
told you. Nay, even if there were some shadow of justice in
your claims, you still deserved a fearful judgment for the
terrible sin of angering the powers that be. Even if all your
articles were in the pure evangely, which Wittenberg was
not inclined to admit, still you must wait, sit down and wait
in your misery, till the pure evangely should develop itself.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEB 249
That was the only consolation the new prophets had to offer
you ! l
It was little wonder that the peasants grew restless, that
the terrible wrongs of the past would be ever reminding the
present of its strength. Here and there the pent-up passion,
the blind brute impulse to revenge, broke its fetters, and an
awful judgment of blood fell upon the toilers oppressors.
Then Luther gave tongue to words which shocked even his
own century: "A rebel is outlawed of God and Kaiser, there
fore who can and will first slaughter such a man does right
well, since upon such a common rebel every man is alike judge
and executioner. Therefore who can shall here openly or
secretly smite, slaughter and stab, and hold that there is
nothing more poisonous, more harmful, more devilish than a
rebellious man." Those words were the funeral knell of the
pure evangely in the hearts of the simple and ignorant
oppressed. The peasants were slaughtered by the thousand,
massacred as they stood nigh helpless with pitchfork and hoe
racked, flayed, burnt, one or all ay, any other refinement
of agony the scared ruler of men could contrive was eagerly
adopted. But note, from that day forth Luther might found
churches, but they were built on the will of the princes ; he
might still be a prophet, but not of the masses he was a
prophet of the bourgeoisie.
The peasant rebellion was repressed, and society breathed
again, conscious that it had got the turbulent stream once
more into its narrow bed, and, so long as it stayed there and
turned society s mill-wheels at the wonted pace, society re
mained quite regardless of its chafings and eddyings and foam-
ings. Not so, however, the toilers, not so many others, who
were weary of the round of theological disputation, the tossing
about of dogmas, the religion of the letter. The longings, the
almost heart-sick yearning of the weary for a new spiritual
guide was not utterly blunted, not yet quite reduced to a dull
mechanical feeling of the hopelessness of life. If they had
thrown off the yoke of Antichrist, rejected the Eoman Sodom,
could they not likewise discard the new pope of Wittenberg/
1 Melanchthon : Wider die Artikel der Eaucrnschaft, 1525.
250 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
the priest of the letter ? If the teachers had all gone astray,
could not the simple-minded build up a faith for themselves ;
and what better foundation than the Bible, the undoubted
word of God ? Here was a new world, a new light for the
folk this Bible should be their priest and their church ; its
wondrous powers should illuminate the craftsman at his bench
and the peasant at his plough. Here was a theology without
need of learning, a faith without dogma. Each might draw
pure religion from the one book, and none dreamt that much
was unintelligible, or might be interpreted in a thousand
different fashions. The Bible spoke directly to men in the
voice of God ; nay, might not that voice itself speak once
again to them as to the faithful of old I So arose afresh the
conception of a strange mystic converse with God, of the
Divine Spirit within comforting the miserable and oppressed.
Even their very misery, the toil and burden of life might be
the origin of this strange union, the very cause which carried
men heavenwards. How could those who held this creed
believe in Luther s dogma of justification by faith alone ? A
life of suffering, of labour, of self-repression, was the key to
their most spiritual emotions. With the failure of the Peasant
Eebellion they had given up all hopes of a social or political
reconstruction ; they awaited in patience for all the future might
bring forth ; they would willingly have separated themselves
from the world, if the world had but left them, which it
would not, in poverty and peace.
" dear brothers and sisters, we know how false the Pope
is, but from those who should teach us this we hear nought
but quarrelling and abuse ; the whole world sees how they are
divided against each other. Almighty God, we appeal to
thee ! I pray, in God s name, all men who desire salvation,
not to despise his message, since the times are very terrible !
Every day we hear those who should teach the folk, say that
he whom God has ordained to sin must sin, and he whom God
has ordained to salvation must be saved. most beloved
sisters and brothers, let us fly from this error! Has not
Christ said : Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy
laden ? And shall not each one of us go and be saved ? Our
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER 251
teachers have led us astray ; it is time that we turn from
them, and depart from this darkness. We believe no longer
in the mass, nor in the invocation of saints. We believe no
longer in the cloister, the priest, or aught of popedom. We
know they have long led us astray. We do not think long
prayers are good, as prayer has been hitherto ; if one only says
Our Father, and understands it, tis enough. We do not
want pictures and images, nor should God be worshipped
in a temple built with human hands ; the only temple in
which he will dwell is the heart of man. dearest sisters
and brothers throughout the world, help me to pray fervently
to God for safety from these errors. Oh, how long we have
been living in sin ! But what did the folk who, ignorant of
the crucified One, had been living in sin, say to the Apostle ?
O dear friend, what shall we do ? And Peter answered
them : Eepent, repent, and let each one be baptised to the
forgiveness of sins in the name of Christ Jesus ! Then all
men went and were gladly baptised to the number of three
thousand. Shall we not do likewise ? dearest brothers
and sisters, take this book with patience and in fear of God,
since in my whole life I have not written a syllable against any
man I speak in the truth which is God himself." ^
Such is the simple spirit of these early Anabaptists ; there
is not a touch of the bitterness or abusive language of the
current theology ; there is an unmistakable, almost terrible
earnestness about it, which carries no ring of falsehood. For
such men the Catholic Church had in earlier days found an
outlet in new monastic orders ; this was now impossible.
Still less could the pope of Wittenberg give them a place in
his new evangelical Church. His justification by faith alone
and his serfdom of the human will were to them unintelligible
doctrines ; nay, the rapid spread of this simple-minded faith
threatened to destroy the purely evangely altogether ; the
oppressed of all parties turned to the new brotherhood. The
enthusiasm which Luther had once evoked flowed into the new
channel ; here was a simple-minded piety, a brotherly love, an
1 Mn Gottlich vund griindtlich offenbarung ; von den warhafftigen wider -
teuffern : mit gotlicher warhait angezaigt. MDXXVII.
252 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
apostolic Christianity, which the masses had sought for in
vain in the pure evangely. With Bible as guide the
members of this new community separate themselves from the
rest of the world ; rebaptism shall be the passage from the old
world of sin to the new world of love. Simple in the extreme
are their tenets community of earthly goods and a future
where there shall be no usury or tax. The brethren accept
no office, and carry no sword ; patience is to be their sole
weapon, and brotherly correction, followed, if necessary, by
expulsion from the community, the only punishment. Besides
baptism, their one ceremony is that of bread-breaking, a
communion of love and a reminder that all are brothers and
sisters in the Lord Christ. Simple, and yet almost grand in
its simplicity is this re-establishment of primitive Christianity
among the first Anabaptists.
The evangelical leaders, however, grow alarmed for the
safety of their own Churches : Luther sees in it all the
direct agency of hell ; lie has no sooner stopped one mouth
than the Devil opens ten others. The Anabaptists are
prophets of the Devil, and as heretics to the pure evangely
are rebels to be punished by the authorities. He has done
his duty in refuting them, and the blood of all who will not
listen to his advice must be upon their own heads. 1 It is
painful nowadays to note how Luther utterly failed to grasp
the religious essence of this primitive faith. He saw neither
the want which called it forth, nor the earnest truth of its
followers. Had he been of a more tolerant, more broadly
sympathetic mind, the history of German Protestantism
might have had brighter chapters to record amidst its dreary
waste of theological wrangling. Zwingli, too, began to fear
for the safety of the Swiss Church. His toleration had
drawn many of the religious radicals to Zurich, and at first
he had condescended to dispute with them, leaving, as usual,
the decision to the Town Council. Town Council, indeed !
What had these enthusiasts to do with such a body ? " God
has long ago given judgment," they cried ; " it is not in the
1 Von der Wiedertmife, an zwei Pfarrherrn, 1528. Von den tichleichcrn
und Winkdpredlyern, 1532.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEK 253
power of men to judge." Then Zwingli began to talk about
heresy, and the need of extermination. " No one has a
right " he said, " to leave the church or follow any other
opinion than that of the majority than that appointed by
the legal representatives of the community." Whereupon
the Anabaptists girded themselves about with rope, and, as if
prepared for a journey, wandered through the streets of
Zurich. In the market-place and in the open squares they
halted to preach, talked of the need of a better life, of justice
and of brotherly love. " Woe, woe upon Zurich ! " they
cried, half threatening, half warning. What was to be
done with these fiery enthusiasts ? They were not criminals,
they were not rebels ! Banishment, suggested Zwingli, and
banishment and repression followed throughout Switzer
land.
Banishment scattered the sparks all over Southern Ger
many from Strasburg to the Tyrol. The apostles of this
simple faith came like the early Christian teachers into the
homes of the poor. They entered with the greeting of peace,
and taught in plain, homely words, bringing new light, untold
comfort unto many a weary heart. The preacher arrived,
taught, aroused the listless spirit, baptised, took up his staff
and passed on. So in a few hours he might plant a little
community of the new faith on a spot where he had never
been seen before, and never might come again. The little
community chose its own head, who had the simple duties of
Bible-teaching, reproving, baptising, and bread-breaking. The
brethren and sisters would meet on Sundays for Bible-reading,
for mutual exhortation, and to celebrate their primitive form
of the Communion. Their clothing was simple and without
ornament, they saluted one another with a kiss and " Peace
be with you," while each termed the other brother or sister.
Their property was at the service of all members who might
need it, they prohibited the oath and the sword. None of
them might engage in a lawsuit or take a place of authority,
for all government to them was the rod of God sent to
chastise his folk ; the brethren should obey it, paying rather
too much than too little, patiently enduring suffering and
254 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
persecution, awaiting the coming of the Lord. 1 These primitive
Christians endeavoured to live apart from the world, avoided
the churches, the taverns, the social gatherings of citizens and
guilds, nay, even the greeting of unbelievers, for were they
not Clod s own folk, men who had taken up Christ s cross and
were determined to follow him ? Justification by faith alone,
indeed ! Was not a life of suffering itself their justification ?
Persecuted, deprived of all means of subsistence, or hunted
down like wild beasts, they had in truth a witness in their
lives which passed all the power of words. There was some
thing far beyond Luther here. There was a depth of earnest
conviction about these Anabaptists which completely puzzled
the Lutherans, for whom even the very courage with which
they met a martyr s death was the work of the devil, or an
obstinacy born of passionate hatred to their persecutors ! In
Strasburg Capito saw the truth more clearly than Luther : " I
testify before God," he writes, " that I cannot say their con
tempt of death arises from infatuation, much rather from a
divine impulse. There is 110 passion, no excitement to be
marked ; no, with deliberation and wondrous endurance they
meet death as confessors of Christ s name."
Such was the material upon which persecution was brought
to bear, and it is one of the most instructive, although one of
the most terrible lessons of history to mark what persecution
made out of it. First and foremost let us obtain some con
ception of what that persecution meant ; only then shall we
be able to judge truly of the catastrophe which followed.
Men are so apt to be shocked by the brutal outrages of a
great folk -upheaval that they cannot grasp to the full the
long years of oppression, the grinding torture, the bitter
injustice, what at last causes the repressed passions to break
forth in a torrent as of molten lava sweeping before it all
the bonds of customary morality and every restraint which
knits society together. Persecution first reached a head in
the Catholic districts, where Anabaptism was held a capital
offence. In the Tyrol we find in 1531 upwards of a thousand
1 See Carl Alfred Cornelius : Gcschichte des Munsterischen Aufruhrs, a
most excellent book, which unfortunately remains incomplete.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 255
persons executed ; at Linz alone, in six weeks, seventy-three.
Duke William of Bavaria gave orders that those who recanted
should be beheaded, those who would not were to be burnt.
The Swabian Bund organised bands of soldiers to hunt down
Anabaptists, and to kill on the spot, without trial, those
captured ! As soon as the Evangelicals felt strong enough,
they, too, joined in this wild hunt. The Anabaptists had
introduced a partial community of goods among themselves ;
it was declared from the pulpit that they aimed at the con
fiscation of all property ; their prophecies as to the end of the
world were declared open rebellion ; the darkest and most vile
political and social motives were attributed to them. Lutheran
preachers poured out the foulest abuse upon them, and en
couraged the growth of a religious hatred which sprang up
with its wonted rapidity and all its characteristic bitterness.
The Anabaptists were promptly declared political offenders.
They were beheaded in Saxony and drowned in Zurich. The
blood of leaders and disciples flowed in streams upon the
land : Mantz was executed at Ziirich ; at Eottenburg Michael
Sattler was torn in pieces by red-hot pincers and then burnt ;
Hubmaier, comforted by his faithful wife, was burnt at Vienna ;
Blaurock was burnt in the Tyrol, Biiick was imprisoned for
life in Hesse, Hiitzer beheaded at Constanz. In Salzburg,
however, the tide of brutality seenis to have reached its flood.
Here a brotherhood had been founded which met on waste
spots, worshipped in a primitive fashion, and shared their
goods together. The sign of membership was rebaptism.
Thirty of its members being captured, their preacher and two
others were burnt alive in the Fronhof, because they could by
no means be brought to confess their errors. A woman and a
* bright maiden of sixteen years refused to recant, although
told their lives would be spared ; the executioner dragged
them to the horse-pond, held them under the water till they
were drowned, and then burnt their bodies. Two others, one
even of noble birth, the other a wallet-maker, were, on con
fessing their error beheaded and burnt. A button-maker and
a belt -maker who remained obstinate were burnt on the
market-place ; we are told " they lived long and cried with all
256 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
their hearts to God ; it was pitiable to hear them." Ten
women and several men who confessed w r ere banished. " Upon
the following Wednesday, a town notary, a priest, and three
others, among them a young and handsome belt-maker, were
led out of the town to a house, where they had held their
services, and as they would not recant, but boldly defended
their opinions and had no fear of martyrdom, they were placed
inside the house, which was then set on fire : they lived for a
long while, and cried piteously to one another. God help
them and us according to his pleasure." Not content with
destroying the persons of these poor folk, the very houses in
the town where they had met, we are told, were burnt down
for a memorial. " Forty-one persons still lie in gaol, no one
knows what will be done with them. God settle it for the
best." 1
Needless, perhaps, to collect further evidence of this
terrible baptism of blood ! Men, women, and even children,
went boldly singing psalms to the stake ; the very bonds
which bound the community together seemed to grow stronger
and stronger as the list of martyrs increased. Heart-rending
are the songs which the poor suffering peasants and handi
craftsmen sent up to God from their prison houses ! Some
breathe a quiet spirit of resignation : " God, to thee I must
appeal against the violence which in these evil days has
befallen me. For thy word s sake I suffer greatly, lying in
prison I am threatened with death. They led me bound
before their rulers, but with thy grace I was ready to confess
thy name. They asked me of our faith, and I told them it
was the word of Christ. They asked me who was our leader,
and I told them Christ and his teaching. He, our true
Saviour, has promised us peace. To that I hold fast ; that I
will seal with my blood." " He, who first sang this song was
named Johann Schiitz, and to strengthen his comrades he sent
it from the prison cell : Let man trust in God, however great
his need let him put faith in no other. He can give life for
death." Or again : " The world rages and palms off its false-
1 Newe Zcyttuny von den widderteuffern und yhrer Sect neivlich erwachsen
yhm stifft zu Salzburg xnd an andern enden. MDXXVIII.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEK 257
hoods upon us ; it terrifies us with its burning and slaughter.
We are scattered as the sheep who have lost their shepherd ;
we wander through the forests ; like the ravens we seek refuge
in cave and cleft. We are pursued like the birds of the air,
we are hunted down *with dogs, and led like dumb lambs
captive and in bonds. Through the agony and sorrow of
death the bride of the Lord hastens to the marriage feast."
Other songs again show a spirit which, like the worm, will
turn at last. " Lord, how long wilt thou be silent ? Judge
their pride, let the blood of thy saints ascend before thy
throne." Painfully intense hymns, evidently written for
congregational singing, call upon God for aid and, at last, for
vengeance. 1 Ballads of their martyrs, as that of the Two
Maidens of Beckum burnt by the tyrants of Burgundy/
strengthened the faith in the hearts of the persecuted, and
fanned their conviction almost to the fanaticism of despair.
In vain we seek a justification for this reign of terror ; its
only cause lay in the ignorant, nay, rather brutish self-
assertion of the powerful of earth. They never troubled
themselves to examine the real beliefs of these simple-minded
folk ; they accepted every denunciation by their own narrow-
minded theologians as based on fact ; they saw rapidly
spreading what they were taught to believe was a vast political
conspiracy, and they stopped at no brutality which they
fancied might check its growth, at no bloodshed which could
assist the work of extermination. Persecution brought, as it
always does, a terrible retribution upon blind humanity. The
Anabaptists driven wild with cruelty began to take a harsher
view of their persecutors. Such horrors could only precede
the day of judgment. They were surely among the terrors of
the last days announced in the Book of the Eevelation. God
would surely come to avenge the blood of his saints : " Await
your Shepherd, since He is near who shall come at the end of
1 See Auss Bundt, Etliche schone cliristcnliche Licdcr, 1583 (Reprint, 1838),
and Munsterische Gcschichtcn iLtid Legcnden, 1825. Inter alia, we may note the
song beginning
" In diesen letzten Zeiten,
Wo wir auf beiden Seiten
Mit falschen Schlangen streiten." (i.e. Luther and the Pope.)
17
258 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
the world." " Eejoice with all your heart and all your soul,
thank God and praise him, since the Lord has revealed to us
brothers the time wherein he will punish those who have
persecuted and scattered you. Those who have slain with the
sword shall be themselves slain with the sword ; those, who
have hanged the faithful, shall themselves be hanged ; those
who have condemned the pious, shall meet with a like judg
ment. So shall they also be condemned without mercy,
according to the terrible anger of the Lord." Let the
brethren be prepared to cross the Red Sea, girded to leave
the land of Pharaoh. God is building a new Siou a place
of comfort for his people. The day of redemption is at
hand. 1
It is strange what very great influence the Book of Revela
tion has had in shaping many of the most characteristic
religious movements. The notions of a coming destruction,
of a terrible retribution upon the oppressors of men, of the
founding of a new and purer era a kingdom of the good
alone of the millennium of joy and of the coming of Christ, have
a wondrous attraction for the injured and the miserable ; such
is the reef-bound channel into which the thoughts and hopes of
Franciscan dreamers, of Lollards and of Anabaptists alike have
drifted. The allegory of some hysterical Jew becomes the
prophecy of an immediate future to all those who feel strongly
the need of a great reformation, a judgment on centuries of
abuse and intolerance ; they require a voice for their passionate
protest, and they find it in the Apocalypse. In its wild
demoniacal destruction of the past and its errors, in its
prophecy of a brighter future, they hear expressed, even in
the weird language of inspiration, the pent-up emotion of their
own dumb souls. Such was the first thought to which per
secution drove the Anabaptists : the Divine Avenger would
come and found a new Sion for His saints. But as the months
rolled by, and the bloody baptism of fire continued, a new
idea began to spread among the community : the Avenger
surely meant to use the righteous themselves as the sword
1 Zwen ivunderscltzamen Scndbrieff zweyer Widertauffer an ire Rotten gen
Augsburg gesandt. Verantwurtung : durch Urbanum Ehegium, 1528.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEB 259
of Gideon ; the saints should themselves arise and exterminate
the worshippers of idols, then they might found the kingdom
of righteousness and of love. The worm was beginning to
turn at last ! Let him, who will, cast the first stone. He,
who shuts his eyes to the misery of one half the human race,
or he, who thinks its wretchedness is an eternal necessity of
all forms of human society, may smile cynically when they mark
the simple faith of these toilers rapidly developing into a self-
destructive fanaticism. Ignorant, misguided people, why did
you not keep the hand to the plough, the foot to the treadle,
and the body to its bench ? Why did you strive in your
darkness to build up a faith for yourselves, and take that
unfathomable Book for a basis ? That was work better left
to the priest, to the noisy theologian, to the professional
twister of words. Get you back to your toil, that the wheels
of the social machine may run smoothly along ! Your
brotherly love and justice are absurd impossibilities. Cannot
you see that the Book and actual life are quite different
matters, and society at least, the civilised half of it is by
no means inclined to your theory of Christian love and
brotherhood ? As the ass must be beaten, or it will not move,
so must the ruler drive, beat, hang, and burn the populace,
Sir Omnes, or it will get the bridle between its teeth ; the
rough, ignorant Sir Omnes must be driven as one drives swine. 1
Crudely put, but that was still the view of the " inevitable "
darkness of the toiling myriads taken then, as it is now, by
many a most worthy citizen. Why should lie be responsible
for the outrages, grotesque and terrible, which spring from
the ignorance and folly of these " dregs of the folk " ? 2
But the " dregs " do not always take the same view of
matters as the worthy citizen does, and in the last years of
the third decade the blood of the Anabaptists began to approach
boiling pitch. Their leaders were nearly all slaughtered ; their
organisation destroyed ; they could not meet together to
impart mutual advice or to seek mutual comfort. Each little
community went on its own way, and often that way was a
curious one. Nay, beyond the simple bread-breaking and
1 Luther. 2 So Zwingli termed them.
260 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
adult baptism there was little in common among the various
groups ; persecution drove each to fanaticism in its own
peculiar fashion. The ties of everyday morality were in
some cases cast to the winds. If Luther could find nothing
forbidding polygamy in the Bible, why should not Hatzer and
a few followers declare polygamy instituted by God ? l In
other cases madness broke out in its most extravagant forms.
Some grovelled upon the earth to free themselves from sin ;
some acted as little children, for the Gospel declared that to
be a stage to salvation ; Thomas Scheyger, at the command of
the Heavenly Father, beheaded his brother, with indeed
the brother s consent ; Magdalen Miillerin and her fellows
went about as Christ and the Apostles ; some, believing
themselves divinely freed from all the curses of flesh, made
their liberty an excuse for every license ; prophets arose,
interpreting wondrous dreams, and proclaiming the coming of
the Lord. Isolated as such outbreaks of fanaticism were, and
steadily as the majority preserved their primitive tenets of a
simple and moral piety, it was evident that any strong new
impulse, any enthusiastic prophet, might rouse the excited
Anabaptists into an unbridled furor either of religious
fanaticism or of social license.
Nor had either to wait long for an efficient motor. Eeli-
gious fanaticism found its prophet in Melchior Hofmann
social license in his pupils the prophets of Leyden. These
men were the formal instruments, as persecution was the
essential cause, which changed the Anabaptists from passive
martyrs to ungovernable fanatics. While the process of ex
termination had driven the Anabaptists out of Upper Germany,
some had found refuge in Moravia ; others, with whom alone
we are concerned, had fled to Strasburg, where for a time
toleration ruled. Here they and other religious radicals had
gathered in such numbers that the Lutherans found comfort
in the thought, that Providence, in order to save the rest of
1 Luther s Wcrke,. Erlangen. Bd. 33, p. 322. It is needless, perhaps, to
note that the views of Hatzer were not generally accepted by the Anabaptists.
In their songs polygamy was at first repudiated as against the direct teaching of
Christ ; nor is it part even of the Milnsterische Apologic.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER, 261
the world, had allowed the dregs of heresy to flow together into
the sink of Strasburg. Here, soon after 1530, Melchior
Hofmann appeared on the scene.
This man was a native of Halle in Suabia, and a skinner
by trade. At first he was an eager disciple of Luther s, but his
Biblical studies and his keen sympathy with the sufferings of
his fellow-toilers soon led him beyond the pure evangely.
For seven years he passed a strange, adventurous life, preach
ing in almost all the countries of Northern Europe, but still
earning his bread by the work of his hands. Driven from town
to town and country to country, persecuted by both Lutheran
and Zwinglian, he wandered with wife and child from trouble
to trouble, ever persisting in his self-appointed task. We find
him at last in Strasburg, very busy with the Apocalypse,
and denouncing all evangelical doctrines as mere faith of the
letter ; true Christianity is a religion of the meek, the humble,
and the suffering. What wonder that the Anabaptists welcome
him as their own ! From Strasburg he passes as the prophet
of Anabaptism into the Netherlands ; but the faith he teaches
is not the old brotherly love, not primitive Christianity ; its
leading doctrine is the immediate coming of Christ. He
appeals to an excited imagination, to a fancy overwrought
by persecution abroad and by suffering at home. Surrounded
by minor prophets, his life is half mysticism, half madness.
Strasburg is to be the New Sion, the chosen city of the Lord,
from which the 144,000 saints shall march out to preach the
word of God. He himself will then appear as Elias. Holland
and Westphalia soon become covered with a network of Ana
baptist communities. The poor, the handicraftsman, and the
peasant, are carried away by Melchior s enthusiasm. Louder
and louder, more and more earnest, grow his prophecies as the
year 1533 approaches, which is to end the rule of unrighteous
ness and witness the coming of God. Returning to Strasburg
he stirs up the folk almost to an outbreak. He is imprisoned,
but preaches to the people in the town ditch through a window
in his tower. He is shut up in a cage, but he manages to
communicate with his disciples : " The end of the world is at
hand, all the apocalyptic plagues are fulfilled except the venge-
262 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
ance of the seventh angel. Babylon totters to its fall, and
Joseph and Solomon come to establish the kingdom of God." x
Wondrous are the reports of his doings which reach Holland,
where the excitement becomes intense. A second prophet and
witness, he who is to reveal himself as Enoch, arises, Jan
Mathys, baker of Haarlem, fanatic of a deeper dye even than
Hofmann, a man who will lead the persecuted to break through
all restraints. Mathys s creed has a far more aggressive character
than Hofmann s. He teaches that the saints must themselves
prepare the way of the Lord. He curses all brothers who will
not hear his voice, and his fanaticism overpowers the scruples
of the hesitators. He points out the lesson of those nine
heads wagging on their poles over the harbour of Amsterdam.
He sends out apostles to baptise, and proclaims that the blood
of the innocent shall no longer be shed, that the tyrants and
the godless will shortly be exterminated. Everywhere is end
less commotion, unlimited fermentation among the Anabaptists.
In Munster Mathys s disciple, the youthful Jan Bockelson, has
won a strong foothold for the Anabaptist doctrines. The worm
is beginning to turn at last ; simple folk are grasping to the full
the notion that God s people must separate themselves, in order
that there may be a destruction of the godless. And then follows
persecution renewed and bitter throughout Holland ; the Ana
baptists fly before it with one accord to Munster. Jan Mathys
is with the fugitives, and he announces that God has chosen
Munster for the New Sion, owing to the faithlessness of Strasburg.
There towards the beginning of the year 1534 are gathered
together men, women, and children, from all quarters and of
many classes, peasant, noble, trader, handicraftsman, monk and
nun. The majority, it is true, are poor, miserable, and per
secuted ; the few, religious or political idealists ; all are bent on
establishing the rule of righteousness and love the Kingdom
of God in Munster.
Before entering on an account of this weird Kingdom of
God this grotesque and yet terrible drama it will simplify
matters to relate briefly the events which prepared the way
1 See Cornelius, vol. ii. chaps, iii. and ix. The best account of Hofmann is
to be found in F. 0. zur Linden s Melchior Hofmann, 1885.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 263
for it in Minister. From the very first the Keformation in that
town took a strongly political character. On the one side we find
a prince-bishop, Graf Franz von Waldeck, personally utterly
indifferent alike to the old faith and to the new evangely/
and ready to adopt one or the other, as it may serve his
purpose, the maintenance of his autocratic authority. On the
other side we have a populace who fancy that the pure
evangely means the abolition of the bishop and the triumph
of self-government. We have the bishop, licentious, drunken,
grasping after power in order to support his concubines and
to enjoy his feastings to the full ; we have the populace eager for
freedom, ignorant, and full of contempt for the bishop and his
underlings ; between bishop and populace, the Town Council,
composed for the most part of the patrician burghers, and by
no means anxious for either bishop or democracy ; the bishop
supported by a corrupt chapter and an indolent, if not immoral
clergy the democratic element introducing the preachers of
the pure evangely, and the Council desirous of organising them
into a church, which while opposing the bishop shall yet remain
under its own thumb. Such is the state of Miinster. Among
the preachers who found their way into the town was Bernhardt
Eottmann by no means a leader of men, incapable either of
effectively guiding or of restraining the populace. His broad
sympathy with the oppressed classes, unchecked by a clear and
dispassionate reason, caused him to follow folk-opinion rather
than direct it ; while at the same time his power of language
marked him out as a chief advocate of the popular cause. Carried
along on the top of the stream he is the central object of attention
till he dashes with it over the precipice and is engulfed. At
first we find him preaching outside the gates of the city, as some
say, with the connivance of the bishop. He adopts the Lutheran
doctrine that faith alone can save mankind, all the rest form
and ceremony is the devil s own handiwork. In spite of this,
he has a large following in Miinster, and the handicraftsmen and
their wives flock out to hear him. His teaching is not without
effect, and on Good Friday of the year 1531 the mob during
the night storm the Church of St. Maurice outside the gates,
and destroy the altars, pictures, and carving. Kottmann
264 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
seems to have thought it better after this event to retire not,
however, without the suggestion of a bribe from the Catholic
clergy. 1 In the following year, notwithstanding, he returns
once more to Munster, and although he is forbidden to preach,
the folk erect a wooden pulpit for him in the churchyard of
St. Lambert inside the city, and at last, to prevent a riot, that
church itself is given up to him. The pure evangely having
thus obtained a sure footing, Eottmann writes to Marburg for
assistance, and we soon find six evangelical preachers in
Munster struggling to destroy the old faith. The Town Council
and the Syndic Van der Wieck favour the preachers, because with
their assistance they hope to free themselves from the obnoxious
dean and chapter. The six preachers prepare thirty articles,
and, with the connivance of the Council, force the Catholic
clergy to a disputation. The Evangelicals are declared to have
God and reason on their side, and the six parish churches are
surrendered to their preachers. Meanwhile the dean and
chapter have left the town and appealed to the prince-bishop.
The bishop at first attempts to play one party off against the
other, and even temporises with democracy. Finally, however,
he holds a council at the little town of Telgte on the Ems, and
determines to starve his sheep out of their c pure evangely.
Democracy laughs him to scorn, marches out guild-fashion to
Telgte by night, and surprises the bishop s court, the council,
and the dean and chapter only unfortunately not his grace,
who happens to have left a few days before. The captives are
brought into Munster, and handed over to the Town Council.
" Here we bring you the oxen ; hark how they bellow ! " The
bishop deprived of his oxen comes to terms ; the preachers
shall be recognised in Mlinster, the cathedral alone reserved
for the Catholics. So the pure evangely seems to be
triumphantly established.
But democracy, having tasted evangelical freedom, is by
no means disposed to stop here, and where it drifts Eottmann
will follow. As the Lutherans said : " The devil finding it
impossible to crush the pure evangely by means of the
1 Dorpius : Warhaffliye historic wie das EvangeUum zu Munster ange-
fangen, etc.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 265
priests, hunted up the Anabaptist prophets." Already Kott-
mann, the idol of the populace, has begun to be in bad odour
at Wittenberg. Luther writes to the Town Council : " God
has given you, as I hear, fine preachers, especially Master
Bernhardt. Yet it is fitting that all preachers be truly
admonished and checked, since the devil is a knave, and can
easily seduce even fine, pious, and learned preachers." Master
Bernhardt, it is true, had been instituting somewhat curious
ceremonies. The Holy Supper, he argued, was only a feast of
brotherly love, and accordingly he broke bannocks in a pan,
poured wine over them, and invited all who would to partake.
He preached from the pulpit against the " bread and wine
God " of the Catholics and Evangelicals alike. He found
that democracy was in perfect accord with Gospel teaching,
and the poor the toilers not only of Miinster, but from far
and wide, gathered round him. " His doctrine is wonderful,"
wrote the Syndic Van der Wieck, "a miserable, depraved mob
gathers round him, none of whom, so far as I know, could
scrape together two hundred gulden to pay their debts ! "
Still the Syndic and Council grow anxious, the scum the
toiling oppressed the persecuted and now fanatical Ana
baptists are gathering round " Bannock-Bernt " in Miinster.
Forced on by his more radical following, he begins to express
doubts as to infant baptism. Hermann Strapraede of Morse
declares from the pulpit that it is an " abomination before
God." The Council appeals to Luther and Melanchthon, but
these names have long lost all authority among the masses.
The Council orders that the Anabaptist teachers shall be
driven out of the gate of the city, but the Spirit of the Lord
(or the devil, as the Evangelicals said) moves them to inarch
round the walls and re-enter at the opposite gate. The
Council, doubting its own strength, appeals to reason in the
shape of a disputation, and imports Hermann von dem Busche
to combat Bannock-Bernt. But Bannock-Bernt has by far
and away the glibber tongue, and, after he has spoken for
several hours, the Council breaks up the disputation in despair.
After a little further bickering, in which the power of the
radical preachers becomes more and more evident, the Council
266 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
shuts up all the churches. The preachers are even more
effective outside their pulpits than in them. Rottmann, with
the working classes and an ever-increasing mob of Anabaptists
at his back, scoffs at the Council. He will fulfil the duty
laid upon him by God, however stiff-necked be the authorities.
Then the Council try a new expedient ; they introduce into the
town the Catholic orator, Mumpert. Mumpert preaches
against Bannock-Bernt in the cathedral, Bannock -Bernt against
Mumpert in the Church of St. Servatius ; this only leads to
rioting and the banishment of Mumpert. In desperation the
Council strive to establish an evangelical church order/ and
import Lutheran preachers from Hesse. Rottmann and his
colleagues shall be banished. Crowds of women threaten the
burgomasters, and demand the restoration of their beloved
preacher and the ejection of the Hessians. Again the mob
triumphs ; the Evangelicals are driven from the churches,
even torn from the pulpit. Heinrich Rollins, 1 formerly a
Lutheran, now a prophet, rushes through the town crying :
" Repent ! repent ! and be baptised ! " Many are baptised,
some for fear of God, others for fear of their property.
Suddenly the Anabaptists pour out of their holes and corners
and seize the market-place, the Eathhaus and the town-
cannon ; Catholics and Evangelicals entrench themselves by
the Church of Our Lady across the Water. Yet the party
of order is still the stronger ; they march across the cathedral
close, and plant cannon facing the approaches of the market
place. But then fear seizes them that the bishop will take
the opportunity of falling upon the town. The Anabaptists
find that they are still too few in numbers, a truce is made ;
all men shall hold what faith they please. " The day of the
Lord has not yet come." Peace !
Peace in a seething mass of fanaticism like this ? Nay !
Miinster is to be the fortress of righteousness ; wait but a
while, till more of the saints have arrived. From that day
onward the saints continue to pour into Miinster, and the
party of order dwindles away, flying with all its portable
property out of the city. Bannock-Bernt declares he will
1 Shortly after Rollins was burnt as an Anabaptist at Maastricht.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER 267
preach only to the elect. Haggard-looking faces and people
in strange garbs appear on the streets ; families are broken
up ; wives speak of their husbands as the godless/ and even
children leave their parents to become c saints. At midnight
the gun booms over Miinster, calling the Anabaptists to
prayer ; prophets rush with the mien of madmen, shrieking
through the streets ; the power of the Council vanishes in the
whirlpool of fanaticism which, dark and terrible, is involving all
things. On the 31st of February 1534, the election of burgo
masters falls entirely into the hands of the Anabaptists, and they
appoint their own leaders, Knipperdollinch and Kibbenbroick.
From that date the Kingdom of God commences in Miinster.
Of the four principal actors in this terrible judgment of
history we have marked the leading characteristics of Jan
Mathys and Eottmann ; it is necessary to say a few words of
the other two, Knipperdollinch and Jan Bockelson of Leyden.
Bernt Knipperdollinch was a draper of Minister, a favourite
with the folk, probably on account of his burly figure and
boisterous nature. Long before the outbreak he seems to have
got into difficulties with the bishop ; he had sung satirical
songs about him in the streets, and won folk-applause by his
somewhat ribald satires on the dean and chapter. At one
time the bishop had put him in gaol, and the burly draper
by no means forgave the insult ; he determined " to burn the
bishop s house about his head." Not in the least an enthusiast,
he yet pinned his faith to democracy ; desirous himself of
power, he was yet not strong enough to be anything but the
tool of others. His fanaticism when once aroused tended
rather to sensual than spiritual manifestations. He represents
the brute, almost ape-like, element in the mad dance. He
seems at times to have been conscious of the grim humour
of this mock Kingdom of God; and it is difficult to grasp
whether his fanaticism was a jest, or his jests the outcome
of his fanaticism. Yet when captured and examined under
torture, he could only say that he had done all from a feeling
of right, all from a consciousness of God s will ! l Of a far
1 See Die Geschichtsquellen des Bisthutns Miinster, where the confession is
given in full.
268 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
different nature was Jan of Leyden. As the illegitimate son
of a tailor in that town his mother was the maid of his
father s wife Jan s early life was probably a harsh and bitter
one. Very young he wandered from home, impressed with
the miseries of his class and with a general feeling of much
injustice in the world. Four years he spent in England seeing
the poor driven off the land by the sheep ; then we find him
in Flanders, married, but still in vague search of the Eldorado :
again roaming, he visits Lisbon and Liibeck as a sailor, ever
seeking and inquiring. Suddenly a new light bursts upon
him in the teaching of Melchior Hofmann ; he fills himself
with dreams of a glorious kingdom on earth, the rule of justice
and of love. Still a little while arid the prophet Mathys
crosses his path, and tells him of the New Sion and the
extermination of the godless. Full of hope for the future, Jan
sets out for Minister to join the saints. Still young, hand
some, imbued with a fiery enthusiasm, actor by nature and
even by choice, he has no small influence on the spread of
Anabaptism in that city. The youth of twenty-three ex
pounds to the followers of Rottmann the beauties of his ideal
kingdom of the good and the true. With his whole soul
he preaches to them the redemption of the oppressed, the
destruction of tyranny, the community of goods, and the rule
of justice and brotherly love. Women and maidens slip away
to the secret gatherings of the youthful enthusiast ; the glow
ing young prophet of Leyden becomes the centre of interest in
Minister. Dangerous, very dangerous ground, when the pure
of heart are not around him ; when the spirit " chosen by
God " is to proclaim itself free of the flesh. The world has
judged Jan harshly, condemned him to endless execration. It
were better to have cursed the generations of oppression, the
flood of persecution, which forced the toiler to revolt, the
Anabaptists to madness. Under other circumstances the noble
enthusiasm, with other surroundings the strong will of Jan
of Leyden might have left a different mark on the page of
history. Dragged down in this whirlpool of fanaticism,
sensuality, and despair, we can only look upon him as a factor
of the historic judgment, a necessary actor in that tragedy of
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEK 269
Miinster, which forms one of the most solemn chapters of the
Greater Bible.
All is enthusiasm, ready self-sacrifice, and prophetic joy
in the New Sion during the first few days of its establish
ment. At every turn God be with you ! is heard in the
streets, and the cheery reply Amen, dear brother ! On
Saturday the new burgomasters had been elected ; on the
following Monday they at once proceeded to take steps for
the defence of the town. With 1500 saints they march out
from the St. Maurice Gate, and destroy the cloister of the
same name. The buildings and all their art treasures ascend
in flames to heaven, that they may not form a shelter for the
godless ; meanwhile bands of women carry into the town all
the provisions that can be found in the neighbourhood.
Then precautions are taken for the safety of the walls and
protection against surprise. No sooner is the new kingdom
safe from the godless without, than it befits the saints to
destroy the godless within. What are these pictures, these
carvings, these coloured windows to the chosen of God ?
Symbols, which have long lost their meaning, badges of a slavery
which is past, signs of a faith in the letter ; they are but cursed
idols in the light of the new freedom. Let the stone prophets
and apostles come crashing from their niches ; carry out these
painted semblances of God and his saints, and burn these
abominations on the market-place ! Have we not prophets
and apostles of real flesh and blood, are not the saints
of New Sion better than these tawdry fictions, for God is
enshrined in their hearts ? Away with these outward forms,
these altar trappings, these gorgeous missals, these sacra
mental cups ! The Spirit of God works within us, why mask
it in idle display ? Let us show our contempt for such devilish
delusions in the coarsest and most forcible fashion. But
further, these archives and documents, what need can there
be for such legal distinctions in Sion ? Naught of the past
remains holy ; what are these bones to us bones of bishops
and saints, relics of men who lived in the age of sin ? On
to the dunghill with them, for they cannot help us to the
light of day ! So thought the Anabaptists, and stormed
270 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
the churches, cleared out the relics, the art treasures, and
the labour of many a generation ; what for years men in
faith had been creating, the folk of New Sion in faith
and a night destroyed. Barbarous, fanatic, the world has
called it ! Yet, while the Anabaptists cast down stone
images and burnt forms of canvas and paint, your prince-
bishop also played the iconoclast, only his images were of
flesh and of blood. He drowned five Anabaptist women at
Wolbeck, he burnt five at Bevergem, ten helpless, ignorant
souls, yet panting as all souls for life. What wonder the
saints in Minister grew mad in their fancies, and madder
in their deeds ! Not only was ornament in the churches
grievous to the saints, but even the churches themselves.
God will not be worshipped in a temple made by human
hands. Let, then, these masses of stone be turned to
fitting purpose ; the cathedral and its close becomes Mount
Sion, the gathering-place for God s elect ; the Church of
St. Lambert becomes St. Lambert s stone quarry, whence
all may fetch stone for building their houses or repairing the
city walls. A like fate meets the other sacred buildings,
and over their portals are inscribed new names : Our
Lady s Quarry, and so forth. Woe to the brother whose
unlucky tongue lets slip the old name ! As penance he
shall be forced to drink " einen pot watter " ! l The
destruction, however, does not stop here ; the innumerable
spires and towers of the city are not only dangerous as
marks for the enemy s cannon, but are also reminiscences of
an idolatry which has obscured the knowledge of God ; so
our children of the New Sion are " mighty to the pulling
down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every
high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God."
The convents, too, can be turned to useful purposes, when
once the idols have been destroyed and the idolaters ejected ;
for a home can be found in them for the crowd of Anabaptist
strangers. Not that ejection is always necessary, since
the nuns of St. ^gidius soon flock to be baptised, and their
1 Hcinrich Gresbecks JSericht in the Geschichtsquellen des Bisthums Miinster,
Bd. 2.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 271
sisters of Overrat follow. The true spirit of aceticisrn is
long since dead, and in the New Sion the nuns hope to
unite holiness and the pleasures of sense. Nor are some
of the monks behindhand, for we hear at least of one old
convent guardian who, remaining, took unto himself in the
latter days of Sion four wives ! Tis a poor race of folk this,
with none of the noble aims of early Christian asceticism, a
very dangerous earthly element in the new kingdom of the
spirit. Nay, a stupid little abbess, who with her nuns refuses
baptism, can tell us but little of the doings of the saints.
She has no conception of the meaning of this great religious
fermentation. It is all very wicked, all very terrible, all
comes of a runaway Wittenberg monk sayiog mass in
German, and administering the communion under two forms.
So she fled with her nuns to Hiltorppe, and there on the
first night they found nothing to eat and drink, and some of
the sisters were so very thirsty that they were compelled
to drink water ! * Both the saints and godless seem to have
had a horror of water. Still one more test follows of the
faith of the saints. On the night of Thursday, the 26th, the
prophet Mathys preaches against the letter, and calls upon
the folk to destroy all the books in Israel, all except the
Bible. Books it is that have led men astray, twisting with
words, and quibbling o er phrases. The truth has been
strangled in a network of written lies, and God could not
reach the heart of man. Pile up the books in the market
place, the kingdom of Sion is based on the spirit, not the
letter, and the wisdom of the past is idle delusion in the
light of the new day. Ascend in flame, ye vain strivings of
the human brain ; Sion starts unhampered by your dark
questionings ; her knowledge springs directly from God ; her
wisdom is the outcome of inspiration ; she has naught to
do with the toiling, erring reason of the past !
But not even yet is Sion purified, not even yet are the
godless separated from the saints. On Friday, the last day
of the first week of the establishment of God s kingdom in
Minister, the prophets rush inspired through the streets with
1 Chronik des Schwesterhauscs Niesinck in the Geschichtsquellen.
272 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
the cry : " Eepent, repent, ye godless ! Out of the city of
the blessed, ye idolaters ! God is aroused to punish you ! "
On the same day the saints hunt the godless out of the town ;
all who will not be baptised must go. The poor unfortunate
Evangelicals escape from the fury of the Anabaptists only to
fall into the hands of the bishop. The Syndic Van der Wieck
and two Lutheran preachers are promptly beheaded without
trial. What wonder that many remain and are baptised ?
For three days the cry of " Out with the godless ! " resounds
through the streets, for three days the prophets stand
baptising in the market - place. Before each prophet is
placed a pitcher of water, and as the folk come up one by
one and kneel before him, he exhorts the converts to
brotherly love, to leave the evil and follow the good ; then
he baptises them with three handfuls of water in the name
of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Each new
brother or sister is given a metal token with the letters
D. W. W. F. inscribed upon it : " Das Wort ward Fleisch,"
the Word became Flesh. Even when the baptising in the
market-place is over, the prophets go round the town baptis
ing the old and feeble. Every house is inspected, and if any
godless are found, their property is seized for the benefit of
the community, while the owners are driven from their
homes. So at last the New Sion is purified! What is the
value of such a purification ? It might purge the Kingdom
of God of human foes ; could it reach the germs of disease
within the hearts of the saints themselves ? We have yet to
note how the rule of righteousness prospered in Sion ; how
unchangeable are the laws of human development ; how
inexorable the judgments of historical evolution.
II
The saints and the godless had been separated, but still
the folk of New Sion were not quite one at heart. There
were religious fanatics, who thought that all alike must share
their enthusiasm for the kingdom of righteousness ; there
were knaves, who had joined it simply for plunder, and would
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEK 273
not hesitate to convert it into an earthly hell ; there were
cowards, whom fear had impelled, and whose hands would fail
when most needed ; finally, there were the simpletons, who at
first were stirred by words, the meaning of which they scarcely
grasped, to join a fool s paradise, but whose spirit would die,
when their material wants were not supplied, and who would
in the end be butchered with small resistance ignorant
simple folk, conscious of some great injustice, easily guided by
the stronger will, and then finally left to bear the brunt of
outraged and relentless authority. It was not long before
the lukewarm spirit showed itself, and called forth a terrible
judgment. One Hubert, a smith, as he kept watch on the
walls at night, ventured to say to some of his comrades :
" The prophets will prophesy till they cost us our necks, for
the devil is in them." x Small wonder that the enthusiastic
brethren of Sion were shocked to find the godless within their
very ranks, a traitor within the purified city ! The saints
gathered in the market-place, and the wretched smith he
who had been the first to dim the bright hopes of the New
Jerusalem was led out into their midst. Then the prophets
sat in judgment, and declared the poor trembling sinner
worthy of death. " He had scorned the chosen of God God
whose will it was that there should be naught impure in the
city. All sin must be rooted up, for the Lord wanted a holy
folk." Let us try for an instant to feel as those prophets felt ;
to feel that if once a citizen of Sion could doubt their mission,
nay, if once a shadow of doubt were allowed to settle in their
own minds, if once the cold touch of reason should question
their inspiration, then all the glorious hopes of this Kingdom
of God would crumble into the dust. It was based solely 011
the saints belief in the prophets, and on the prophets belief
in themselves; they were the direct means of communication
between God and His chosen folk. And here came one out of
the very fold in the dawn of the new era, and ventured to
doubt to doubt where the very suspicion of doubt meant the
madness of recognised self-delusion ! Nay, after the prophets
1 Gresbecks Bericht. Dorpius has the more expressive " Sie sind scheisscnde
Propheten."
18
274 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
had fallen, even when they were questioned under torture,
they replied : " We have failed, yet still we were tools in God s
hand." Awful is that first judgment in Sion, but not more
awful than the maiden drowned in the horse-pond at Salzburg.
In old Germanic days the priests had been the executioners,
and now the prophets took upon themselves the dread office.
The trembling smith was led to the cathedral to the Mount
of Sion ; there Jan, the prophet of Leyden, took a halberd and
struck twice at him, but in vain ; Death grimly refused its
prey. Back to prison the wounded man was taken, and a
strange scene followed. God had deprived the arm of their
prophet of strength, and the saints grovelling on their faces
in the market-place shrieked that Sion had lost the grace of
God ! Then the prophet Mathys orders the prisoner again to
be brought out and placed against the cathedral wall ; but he
will not stand, falls crosswise on the ground, and begs for
mercy. Mercy there is none in Sion, arid Mathys takes a
musket and shoots him through the back. And still he does
not die. Then say the prophets : Tis the Lord s will that
he live. Live, however, he cannot, and he dies within the
week. Such is the first blood shed in Sion, foretaste of the
flood to come. Mad, raving mad, judged the world, when it
heard of this and the like. Shoot them down like wild
beasts ! it cried. And the world was right : twas the only
way to cure the pest. But the world never learnt the lesson
will it ever ? the judgment of history on the crimes of
the past. It forgot the butchered Anabaptists of the decade
before ; it forgot the laver of degeneration it had itself
administered in the baptism of blood.
But let us turn for a moment from the darker side of the
picture, which will soon enough demand all our attention, to
glance at what too often is forgotten the social reconstruc
tion in Sion. So soon as the labour of separating the saints
from all taint of the godless was completed, the leaders began
to organise the new kingdom of righteousness according to
their glowing ideals of human perfection. First, a community
of goods was proclaimed. " Dear brothers and sisters, now
that we are a united folk, it is God s will that we bring
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 275
together all our money, silver and gold ; one shall have as much
as another. Let each bring his money to the exchequer in
the Council House. There will the Council sit to receive it."
So the prophets and the preachers arise and speak of the
mercy of God, and of brotherly love, calling upon all the saints,
with terrible anathemas against defaulters, to bring their
wealth to the common stock. In each parish three deacons
are appointed to collect all the food, which is then stored in
houses hard by the gates. Here the common meals are held
the women at one table and the men at another while
some youth reads the weird and soul-stirring prophecies of
Isaiah or Daniel. The deacons have the entire domestic
economy in their hands, particularly the charge of the common
food and property. So great is at first the enthusiasm for the
commonweal, that even little children run about pointing out
hidden stores. 1 The doors of the houses are to be left open
clay and night, that all who will may enter ; only a hurdle is
allowed to keep out the pigs. Some half-dozen schools are
founded for the children, wherein they are taught to read and
write, and to recite the psalms ; but above all they learn the
doctrine of brotherly love, and the glorious future in store for
Sion. Once a week the children inarch in pairs to the
cathedral, hear one of the preachers, sing one or two psalms,
and return home in like fashion. Money, too, is coined in
Sion, not, however, for its inhabitants, but to bribe the men-
at-arms who serve the godless. Twelve elders are appointed,
and they sit morning and noon in the market - place to hear
plaint and administer justice. Terrible is the justice of the
saints, for a thief is a traitor to the brotherhood, and even
soldiers in Sion are shot for forcibly tapping a barrel of
beer.
Not all, however, is stern earnest in the city ; in these
first weeks the joy of the folk shows itself in coarse jest at the
bishop s expense. An old broken-down mare is driven out of
the city towards the bishop s camp, and tied to her tail is the
treaty of peace with its great episcopal seal, whereby his grace
1 The Lutheran Dorpius terms them maidens possessed of the Devil, who
betrayed what was hidden." E. i.
276 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
had recovered the oxen captured at Telgte. Then with
ringing of bells a procession is formed, and a straw-stuffed
dummy covered over and over with papal bulls and indulgences
is conducted out of the gates and despatched in like fashion
towards the enemy s lines. Another time it is a huge tun
which arrives on a waggon without driver ; great is the
curiosity of the bishop and his court to know its contents,
being opened, they find themselves mocked with Anabaptist
excrement pure and simple ! Nor do the saints content
themselves merely with jests ; they make successful sorties,
carry off gunpowder and spike guns even under the very nose
of his episcopal grace. There is small discipline in the
bishop s camp, and the appeal to his neighbours for aid is but
slowly complied with. Later, during the siege, we hear of a
mock mass in the cathedral ; fools dressed in priest s raiment
officiate, while the folk offer rubbish, filth, and dead rats at
the altar ; and the whole is concluded with a sham fight in
the aisle. Upon another occasion the chancel is turned into
a stage, and the play of the rich man and Lazarus is given.
Merrily the three pipers play accompaniment, and the devil
fetching the rich man to hell causes the building to ring
with laughter. But this is in the latter days of Sion, when
Sion has chosen a king, and suspicion stalks darkly amid
the starving Anabaptists. The farce ends with tragedy.
Sion s ruler has reason to suspect the queen s lacquey who acts
the rich man ; and the rich man is dragged from hell to be
hanged on a tree in the market-place. There was small room
for jest in those latter days of Sion.
Yet at first even the most fanatical could unbend, and
we hear that when the sternest Anabaptists were together
" they sat joyously over the table, and all their talk was
not of the Lord, of Paul, or of the holiness of life." ] Shortly
before Easter we find the arch-prophet Mathys with his wife
Divara the young and the beautiful, for whom he had
thrown off a union of the flesh at a marriage-feast. Who
shall say what dark thoughts had entered the mind of the
austere prophet ? Had he seen a glimpse of the spiritual
1 Gresbecks Bericht.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEK 277
decay which was soon to fall over the New Sion ? Had he
doubts as to the future, mistrust of himself ? Did the shadow
of the butchered smith haunt his mind ? Who shall say ? We
know only, that in the midst of the general joy, Mathys was
suddenly moved by the Spirit, he raised his hands above his
head, his whole frame shook, and it appeared as if the hour of
death were upon him. The bridal party sat in hushed fear.
Then the prophet arose and said with a sigh : " dear Father,
not as I will, but rather as thou wilt." Giving to each his
hand and a kiss, he added : God s peace be with you, and
left the gathering. A few hours after the saints in Miinster
learnt that their chief prophet seizing a pike, and crying like
a madman : " With the help of the heavenly Father I will
put the foe to flight and free Jerusalem," had rushed out of
the gates, followed by a few fanatic enthusiasts, and had been
slaughtered by the bishop s troops. So the first and chief
prophet of Miinster, honest and true to his idea, died before
the moral decay of the saints. He may have been a fanatic,
his idea may have been false ; still he fought and died for a
spiritual notion his grace the bishop fought and triumphed
for himself!
Strange scenes follow the death of Mathys. The prophets
and the folk gather in the market-place crying, " God, grant
us thy love ! Father, give us thy grace ! " In the most
abject fashion the saints grovel on the ground. Women and
maidens go dancing through the streets with wild cries.
With loosened hair and disordered dress they dance and
shriek till their faces grow pale as death, and they fall
exhausted to the ground. There they strike their naked
breasts with clenched fists, tear out their hair in handfuls,
and roll in the mud. But the youthful Jan of Leyden arises
and proclaims that God will grant them a greater prophet
even than Mathys. For long ago he saw a vision, wherein
Mathys was bored through with a pike, and the voice of God
bade him take the lost prophet s wife as his own. 1 So the
1 Even in his confession under torture Jan maintained the truth of this
vision, and his own wonder when it was fulfilled. Geschichtsquellen des
JSisthums Miinster.
278 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
folk cries, " Grant it, Father, grant it ! " and from this day Jan
is the chief ruler in Sion. Unfortunately, however, the young
prophet is already wed to a serving-maid of Knipperdollinch s,
and how can he take in addition the beautiful Divara ? For
three days and three nights he remains in a state of trance,
and then the power of evil triumphs, the floodgates of social
license are thrown open, and Jan Bockelson awakes to preach
the gospel of sense. In the one scale are the sensuous vigour
of youth, the feeling of power, the animal will ; in the other
the hope of a new future for men, the rule of human love,
the old moral restraints based on the experience of long
generations. Sensuous pleasure and the toil of self-renuncia
tion, tis an old struggle which has oft recurred in history,
and is like to recur, till centuries of progress shall perchance
harmonise the material and spiritual in man. And what
remains to restrain the youthful tailor of Leyden, filled as
he is with the consciousness of will and of power ? There is
no respect for the slowly acquired wisdom of the past, for
the past is cursed with sin ; no appeal to the common sense
of the folk is possible, for God dictates truth through the
prophets only. Nay, there is this great danger in Sion
the women far outnumber the men and in the hysterical
religion of the female saints the sensuous impulse is strong.
So it comes about that Jan preaches the gospel of sense.
The preachers and the twelve elders declare that a man may
have more wives than one. God has bid his chosen people
be fruitful and multiply. None shall remain single, but
every Anabaptist bring up children to be saints in Sion. It
is said that at first even some of the saints resisted this new
license, but that the unmarried women themselves dragged
the cannon to the market-place, and were mainly instru
mental in destroying all opposition. Be this as it may, it
is certain that on Good Friday, April 14, the prophet Jan,
amid the ringing of bells and the rejoicing of the folk, marries
Divara, widow of the prophet of Haarlem. From that date
onward the number of Jan s wives increases till they reach,
besides their chief, Divara, the goodly total of fourteen.
Eottmann had four wives, and Knipperdollinch and other
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 279
leaders at least the same number. No woman might refuse
marriage, though she might reject any proposed husband.
Girls of tender age were given to the saints, and even the old
women in Miinster were distributed as wives among the folk,
who had to look after them and see they fully grasped the
great Anabaptist doctrines. " Dear brothers and sisters,"
said the preachers, " all too long have ye lived in a heathen
state, and there has been no true marriage." Simple in the
extreme was the new ceremony. The man went with a few
friends to the home of the woman, and both taking hands in
the presence of their friends proclaimed themselves husband
and wife. But polygamy brings almost at once a grotesque
judgment on the saints of Sion, for the wives quarrel endlessly
with one another, and the saints have no peace at home.
Daily cases of fighting and disorder among the women come
before the twelve Elders, and imprisonment is found useless.
So at last Bannock-Bernt declares that the sword will be
tried, but the mere threat loses its force after a while, and
several women have to be executed. The leaders finding still
that no punishment avails, bid all the women, who will, come
to the Council House. There several hundred women who
have been forced into marriage or are tired of polygamy, give
in their names. Summoned a few days afterwards before
the Elders they are declared free from their husbands, and
the preachers rising in the market - place proclaim them
cursed of God, and body and soul the Devil s ! The veil is
best drawn over this plague-spot in Miinster ; suffice it, if the
reader remember that tis ever at work undermining the
Kingdom of Sion, that it leads to terrible abuses, and ends,
as that kingdom totters to its fall, in little short of sexual
anarchy.
Even in Miinster great social changes are not completed
without rebellion. A less fanatical group, aided by the native
saints, who by no means approve of the community of goods,
suddenly rises, and, seizing the prophets and Knipperdollinch,
imprisons them in the Council House cellar. The uxorious
preacher Schlachtschap is torn from the midst of his wives,
and placed in the pillory, where women, with old-fashioned
280 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
ideas, pelt him with dung and stones, asking whether he wants
more wives, or if he does not now think one enough ? The fate
of Sion hangs in the balance, and a messenger is despatched
to the bishop s camp. But before he is out of the town, the
strangers from Holland and Friesland have seized the gates,
and are marching six hundred strong upon the Council House.
There is a short but severe fight, the defenders firing from
the windows upon the strangers below ; but alas ! they have
been spending the night in drinking from the stores in
the town cellar, and the Dutchmen force their way in
and make some 120 prisoners. Terrible is the vengeance
of the enraged fanatics. Jan of Leyden, Knipperdollinch,
the twelve Elders, and the prophets being released, cause
the rioters to be brought out daily in batches of ten ;
then some are shot, some beheaded, some stabbed with
daggers. Whoever desires to kill a traitor to Sion, may
take one and slay him as he pleases. For four or five days
the massacre lasts, the bodies being cast into two large pits
in the cathedral close. Awful is this dance of death, this
masquerade of loosened passion ; but those who will learn
its lesson must ever remember the baptism of blood. At
last the fury of the fanatics is glutted, the remaining prisoners
are pardoned and taken into the cloister of St. George, where
many-wived Schlachtschap, mounted on a high stool, preaches
a sermon to them on their crime ; how they have acted against
the will of God and must thank him that they have received
grace. The preacher addresses each by name, and tells him
how he has sinned against the brothers and sisters in Sion.
They have been received into the fold again, may they duly
appreciate such mercy. 1 There must have been many sore
hearts in Sion, many weary and sick of this Kingdom of
God, and yet enthusiasm was not dead, it wanted but
opportunity to show itself with all the force of old.
Since February the bishop had made but little progress,
and even within his camp he could not feel safe from the
fanaticism of these strange children of Sion. A curious
incident had happened about Easter. A maiden of the
1 Gresbecks Bericht.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEK 281
Anabaptists, Hilla Feichen by name, 1 had heard the story of
Judith and Holofernes read aloud at the common meal.
Inspired by it, she determined to repeat the deed on the
shameless bishop in his camp at Telgte. She announced
this as the will of God to his prophets, and they allowed the
damsel to go. Dressed in her best and adorned with gold
rings, the present of Knipperdollinch, she arrived at the hostile
camp. Only, poor deluded child, to fall into the hands of the
men-at-arms, to excite suspicion by her wondrous garb, to be
tortured, to confess, and pay for the wild vision with her life.
Why should her name not be remembered along with those
whose bearers have planned nobler, if less heroic deeds ?
There was power, there was genius in Hilla, had the world
brought it to fairer bloom, had it not been poisoned in this
slough of profanation at Miinster ! By the following Whit
suntide the bishop feels strong enough to attack the town by
storm ; and now an opportunity presents itself to the in
habitants of Sion to show in mass the enthusiasm of Hilla,
Men, women, and children flock to the walls on the first
report ; only the aged and sick are left in the town. Out of
every hole and corner, from every rampart boiling oil and
water, melted lead and glowing lime a perfect devil s broth,
is poured upon the foe. Blazing wreaths of tar are thrown
round the necks of the bishop s soldiers, a hail of shot and
stones greets them as they approach. She-devils on the wall
batter with pitchforks the skulls of those who mount scaling
ladders. The folk of Sion are mad in their rage, as though
the oppression of years, the whole baptism of blood were to
be avenged in this one day. " Are ye come at last ? Three
or four nights have we baked and boiled for you ; the broth
has long been ready, had ye but come ! " Once, twice, thrice,
the men-at-arms rushed to the storm ; once, twice, thrice, a
shattered remnant retired. Theirs is the bull s love of fight,
but not the enthusiasm which springs from an idea. Their
pluck fails and they retreat. The defenders mockingly shout :
1 See her confession in Nieserts Munsterische Urkundensammlung, Bd. L,
and also the confessions of Jan of Leyden and Knipperdollinch in the Geschichis-
quellen.
282 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
" Come again, come again, will ye already fly ? surely the
storm might last the whole day." Then the Anabaptists
fall upon their knees and sing : " If the Lord himself had not
been on our side when men rose up against us, then they had
swallowed us up quick." Jan of Leyden and the minor
prophets go dancing and singing through the streets : " Dear
brothers, have we not a strong God ? He has helped us. It
has not been done by our own power. Let us rejoice, and
thank the Father." The inspired declare approaching de
liverance; Christ will come at once and found the 1000 years
kingdom of the saints. There is new unity in Sion, fresh
hope and fresh enthusiasm. God has been but trying his
saints. His grace the bishop has also learnt a lesson, in
future he will adopt the surer method of blockade, he will
shut these fanatics up till starvation has won the battle for
him. So, as aid comes in from his allies, he completely cuts
Minister off from the outer world, and Sion becomes the centre
of an impassable circle of blockhouses.
The victory seems to have brought new inspiration to Jan
Bockelson. Were but the hand of one strong man to guide
these enthusiasts, surely the kingdom of Sion might even now
be established, even now the elements of decay might be cut
off, and the baser, selfish passions of the saints subdued. The
thought in the man becomes the will of God in the prophet.
A revelation comes to Jan that he is called to be king of the
New Jerusalem nay, king over the whole world, the viceroy
of God on earth ; a lord of righteousness, who shall punish
all unrighteousness throughout the world. Nor does the re
velation come to Jan alone. On June 24 Johannistag,
mysterious and holy sun-feast Johann Dusentschuer, formerly
a goldsmith of Warendorff, but now a prophet of the Lord,
stumps, so fast as his lameness will allow, through the streets
of Sion, crying to the folk to assemble in the market-place.
There the limping prophet throws himself upon the ground, and
declares the will of heaven. God has ordained that Jan. of
Leyden, the holy prophet, shall be king over the whole world,
over all emperors, kings, princes, lords, and potentates. He
alone shall rule, and none above him. He shall take the
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEK 283
kingdom and the throne of David his father, till the Lord
God requires it again of him. Then the folk look to their
beloved prophet, and he, falling on his knees, tells them Ms
revelation. " God has chosen me for a king over the whole
earth. Yet further I say to you, dear brothers and sisters, I
would rather be a swineherd, rather take the plough, rather
delve, than thus be a king. What I do, I must do, since the
Lord has chosen me." Many another king has fancied himself
appointed by heaven with as little justification ; few have
been so successful in convincing their subjects of their divine
right. The bride Divara comes out among the people. The
limping prophet, taking a salve, anoints the new king, and
presents him with a huge sword of battle ; the twelve Elders
lay their weapons at his feet, and the tailor-monarch calls
upon heaven to witness his promise to rule his people in the
spirit of the Lord, and to judge them with the righteousness
of heaven. Then the excited folk dance round their king
and queen, singing : " Honour alone to God on high ! "
Mock - majesty forsooth ; but the divinity which hedges a
king has oft been more grotesque. Sion, like Israel, has
passed from a theocracy to an autocracy; but there is no
Nathan to check its ruler, because he himself is chief
prophet.
The sovereign of Sion although since the flesh is dead,
gold to him is but as dung yet thinks fit to appear in all
the pomp of earthly majesty. He appoints a court, of which
Knipperdollinch is chancellor, and wherein there are many
officers from chamberlain to cook. He forms a body-guard,
whose members are dressed in silk. Two pages wait upon
the king, one of whom is a son of his grace the bishop of
Munster. 1 The great officers of state are somewhat wondrously
attired, one breech red, the other grey, and on the sleeves of
their coats are embroidered the arms of Sion the earth -
sphere pierced by two crossed swords, a sign of universal sway
and its instruments while a golden finger-ring is token of
their authority in Sion. The king himself is magnificently
1 Newe Zeytung von den IVidertaiiffern zu Munster, 1535. Usually found
with Luther s preface : Auf die Newe Zeytung von Munster.
284 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
arrayed in gold and purple, and as insignia of his office, he
causes sceptre and spurs of gold to be made. Gold ducats are
melted down to form crowns for the queen and himself; and
lastly a golden globe pierced by two swords and surmounted
by a cross with the words ; " A King of Eighteousness o er
all " is borne before him. The attendants of the Chancellor
Knipperdollinch are dressed in red with the crest, a hand
raising aloft the sword of justice. Nay, even the queen and
the fourteen queenlets must have a separate court and brilliant
uniforms. Thrice a week the king goes in glorious array to
the market-place accompanied by his body-guards and officers
of state, while behind ride the fifteen queens. On the market
place stands a magnificent throne with silken cushions and
canopy, whereon the tailor - monarch takes his seat, and
alongside him sits his chief queen. Knipperdollinch sits at
his feet. A page on his left bears the book of the law, the
Old Testament ; another on his right an unsheathed sword.
The book denotes that he sits on the throne of David ; the
sword that he is the king of the just, who is appointed to
exterminate all unrighteousness. Bannock-Bernt is court-
chaplain, and preaches in the market-place before the king.
The sermon over, justice is administered, often of the most
terrible kind ; and then in like state the king and his court
return home. On the streets he is greeted with cries of:
" Hail in the name of the Lord. God be praised 1 " There can
be small doubt that the show at first rouses the nagging
spirits of the saints in Sion.
The new government is more communistic even than the
old. To the limping prophet Dusentschuer God has revealed
how much clothing a Christian brother or sister ought to
possess. A Christian brother shall not have more than two
coats, two pair of breeches, and three shirts a Christian sister
not more than one frock, a jacket, a cloak, two pair of sleeves,
two collars, two par hosen und vehr hemede ; while four pair
of sheets shall suffice for each bed. The deacons go around
the town with waggons to collect the surplus clothing : " God s
peace be with you, dear brothers and sisters. I come at the
bidding of the Lord, as his prophet has announced to you, and
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEK 285
must see what you have in your house. Have you more than
is fitting, that we must take from you in the name of the
Lord, and give it to those who have need. Have you want
of aught, that for the Lord s sake shall be given to you
according to your necessity." So the deacons return with
waggon-loads of clothes, which are distributed among the poorer
brethren, or stored for the use of the saints, whom God will
soon lead into Minister. 1 Then conies an order for the inter
change of houses, for no brother must look upon anything as
his own, and it is but right that all should share in turn
whatever accommodation Sion provides.
But difficulties are coming upon the Kingdom of God in
Miinster, which no system of government will obviate, no
amount of show drive from the thoughts of the saints.
Provisions are becoming scarcer, and though the prophets
announce the relief of the town before the New Year, yet
they permit the pavements to be pulled up, and the streets
sown with corn and vegetables. As want becomes more
urgent, despair begins to find more willing votaries, and
fanaticism takes darker and more gloomy forms. Fits of
inspiration become more frequent and more general among
the saints ; while at the same time social restraint becomes
weaker, and the grotesque yet terrible union of the gospels
of sense and of righteousness presents us with stranger and
stranger phases of this human riddle. Two maidens, eight
or nine years old, go about begging from all the brothers
w T hom they meet their coloured knee-ribbons ; from the
sisters their ornamental tuckers ; they pretend to be dumb,
and when they do not get what they want, they try to seize
it, or grow furious. What they do get they burn. The
same children are attacked by the spirit, and in fits of
inspiration require each four women to hold them. The
prophets themselves, from the king downwards, are often
possessed of God, and rush through the streets with the
1 The chief authority for the above account is Gresbeck. His story of the
last days of Miinster seems the fullest and least biassed. Two pair sleeves,
twe par mouwen, would have been more intelligible two centuries earlier, when
ladies used their enormous sleeves as wrappers.
286 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
wildest cries ; or again they will give themselves up entirely
to pleasure, and throughout the night dance with their wives
to the sound of drum and pipe. Soon, too, a new freak of
fanaticism seizes the limping prophet. He declares that
after three trumpet blasts the Lord will relieve Sion, then
without clothes or treasure the saints shall march out of
Minister. At the third blast all shall assemble on Mount
Sion and take their last meal in the city. Twice the
stillness of the night is broken by the trumpet blast of the
limper. All wait the fortnight which must precede its last
peal. Again it is heard in Sion, and men, women, and
children collect in the cathedral close. Two thousand armed
men, some nine thousand women with bundles containing the
little treasures they have preserved from the grasp of the
deacons, and twelve hundred children await the will of God
on Mount Sion. Then the king comes in state with his
queens, and explains that tis only a trial of God to mark out
the faithful. N"ow, dear brothers, lay aside your arms, and
let each take his wives and sit at the tables, and be joyous in
the name of the Lord. Long lines of tables, and benches
have been arranged in the close, and here the disappointed
saints sit themselves down. But the meal itself, though it
consists only of hard beef followed by cake probably a rare
feast even in those days l arouses the drooping spirits of
the Anabaptists. The king and his court wait upon the
populace, and the preachers go about talking to the brothers
and sisters. The limper proclaims that there are some on
the Mount of Sion who before the clock strikes twelve shall
have been alive and dead. Little notice is taken of the
prophecy, as the saints are cheered with the unwonted food
and drink. Tis true that Knipperdollinch desires to be
beheaded by the king, as he feels confident of resurrection
within three days, but the king will not comply with his
request ; Jan has some other fulfilment of the prophecy in
view. After the meal the king and queen break up wheat
cakes and distribute them among the populace, saying : Take,
eat and proclaim the death of the Lord. Then they bring a
1 Ncwe Zeytung, die Wid&rteuffer zu Munstcr belangendc. MDXXXV.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 287
can of wine and pass it round with the words : Take and
drink ye of it, and let every one proclaim the death of the
Lord. So all break bread and drink together, and then the
hymn is sung : Honour alone to God 011 high. After this
the limping prophet mounts a stool, and announces a new
revelation. He has in his hand a list of nearly all the
prophets in Sion, divided into four groups : " Dear brothers,
I tell you as the word of God, you shall before night leave
this city, and enter Warendorff, and shall there announce the
peace of the Lord. If they will not receive your peace, so
shall the town be immediately swallowed up and consumed
with the fire of hell." Then he throws at the feet of the
prophets one -fourth of his list, with the names of eight
servants of God who are to proclaim the glory of Sion in
Warendorff. In like words he bids three other groups of
prophets go to the three other quarters of the world -
Ossenbrugge, Coisfelt, and Soist, he himself being among
the last. All declare that they will carry out God s will.
Then Jan the king mounts the stool, and cries to the folk
that owing to the anger of God he renounces the sceptre in
Sion, but the prophet Dusentschuer promptly replaces him,
and bids him punish the unjust. The king sets himself at
table with the twenty-four prophets who are about to depart
on their mission. As it grows dark the regal fanatic stands
up, and bids his attendants bring up a trooper captured from
the bishop s army, and with him the sword of justice. The
word of God has come to him, this trooper has been present
at the meal of the Lord. He is Judas, and the king himself
will punish the unjust. In vain the trooper begs for mercy ;
he is forced upon his knees, and the tailor-king beheads him,
so fulfilling the limper s prophecy. Thus ends in bloodshed,
in dire fanaticism, the Lord s supper among his saints. Tis
autumn now, and yet no relief; can God have forgotten his
chosen folk in Minister ?
What of the prophets that go forth ? Some fall at once
into the hands of the bishop, others arrive at the four towns
to which they were despatched and begin preaching in the
streets : " Kepent, repent, for the Lord is angry, and will
288 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
punish mankind." They are seized at once by the authorities,
and examined under torture. They remain firm, and only
confess that since the time of the apostles there have been
but two true prophets, Mathys of Haarlem, and Bockelson of
Leyden, and two false prophets, Luther and the Pope and
of these Luther is mure harmful than the Pope. So all the
twenty-four but one meet with a martyr s death. That one
Prophet Heinrich had been despatched with two hundred
gulden and a banner of the righteous. He was to place the
banner upon the bridge at Deventer, and when the Ana
baptists had flocked to his standard, he was to lead them to
the relief of Sion. So soon as the banner reappeared near the
blockhouses, the saints would flock out to meet it. Prophet
Heinrich, however, with his gulden and banner, goes straight
to the bishop, and writes to the town bidding the saints
surrender and receive the bishop s grace. But the saints are
not yet so hungry that they cannot scorn a traitor. Bannock -
Bernt preaches against the false prophet Heinrich : " Dear
brothers and sisters, let it not seem strange to you, that false
prophets should rise up amongst us. We are warned thereof
in Scripture. Such an one was Heinrich. We have only
lost two hundred gulden with him." But the Anabaptists
are not content with sending out prophets. Bannock-Bernt
writes a book, the Restitution, painting the glories of Sion
and the wrath of God ; it is to be scattered among the
bishop s soldiers, in the hope that they may desert. He
writes another work also, the Book of Vengeance, which is to
be sent into Friesland and Holland. " Vengeance shall be
accomplished on the powerful of earth, and when accom
plished, the new heaven and the new earth shall appear for
the folk of God." " God will make iron claws and iron horns
for his folk ; the ploughshare and the axe shall be made into
sword and pike. They will set up a leader, unfurl the
banner, and blow upon the trumpet. A wild, unmerciful
people will they stir up against Babylon ; in all shall they
requite Babylon for what she has done yea doubly shall
Babylon be requited." " Therefore, dear brothers, arm your
selves for battle, not only with the meek weapons of the
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 289
apostle for suffering, but with the noble armour of David for
vengeance, in order with God s strength and help to exter
minate all the power of Babylon and all godlessness. Be
undaunted, and hazard wealth, wife, child, and life." J Some
thousand copies of this Book of Vengeance are smuggled
through the bishop s lines. The Anabaptists in Holland
and Friesland begin to stir, and gather together in various
places, intending to march for the relief of Miinster. Poor
ignorant folk, ill-armed and undisciplined, they are shot down
and massacred wherever found. In Amsterdam they seize
the Council House, but are soon defeated and captured.
While still living the prisoners have their hearts torn out
and flung in their faces, then they are beheaded, quartered,
and impaled. So a terrible sequel is added to Rottmann s
Book of Vengeance, and all hope of outside relief vanishes.
Worse and worse grow matters in Sion ; a new prophet
of the future, noiseless and yet awfully explicit, replaces the
twenty-four martyrs : Starvation begins to preach among the
saints. As despair increases, madness and lust stride forward
too. Let us enjoy while we can, for to-morrow we shall be
slain becomes the watchword of a larger and larger party
in Sion. At the New Year the king prophesies sure deliver
ance at Easter. " If salvation come not," he cries, " then hew
off my head, as I now hew off the head of him who stands
before me." Executions by the King of Righteousness are
now commonplace to the saints. Everything is done to keep
the folk employed, to distract their attention from the grim
prophet. All preparations are made for the relief which is
impossible ; a waggon-camp is constructed to be used on the
march from Miinster. A sham battle is held on the market
place ; a battalion of female saints is formed to assist in the
glorious campaign which approaches ; the folk is summoned
to the market-place and formed into two divisions, one of
which is to be left to guard Miinster. Twelve dukes are
named, and the lands of the world distributed among them ;
tailors, cobblers, pedlars, sword -makers and what-not are
appointed rulers of the world ; for the present they must
1 There is a reprint of the Bericht van der Wralce, by Bouterwek, 1864.
19
290 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
content themselves with small districts in the city, where
they strive to keep the people quiet. Poor, miserably poor
comfort this to the saints, who now are thinking the flesh of
horse and dog luxuries, who are eating bark, roots, and dried
grass ! The gilt, too, is wearing off from royalty in Sion.
One of the queenlets, Else Gewandscherer, grows sick of her
life, throws her trinkets at the feet of the king, and asks to
be allowed to leave Sion. Poor Jan ! Is enthusiasm utterly
dead among his nearest ? Shall they be examples of cowardice
and treachery to the lesser saints in Sion ? On to the
market-place with her and fetch the sword of righteousness !
There let her bite the dust the very corpse spurned by the
foot of its lord example of disloyalty, of faithlessness to the
few who can take aught to heart in Miinster. So the
trembling wives of the king sing Honour alone to God on
high, as they stand round the headless form of their fellow.
At last Easter comes, and of course no relief. The king
summons the folk to the market-place. He asks whether
they will venture to fix a time for God ? Not material relief
had been prophesied, but only salvation from sin. He, Jan
the prophet, has been laden with all their sins, and they in
heart and spirit are now free. It cannot last very much
longer, and not even a rule of terror will restrain for ever the
starving folk. Execute twenty a day, and treat the suspected
traitor with every horror you please yet it must end at last.
A wild demoniac dance are these latter days of Sion. Terror
and jest trying to fight it out with starvation. Day by day
something new must be found to keep the folk engaged.
First a religious fete. Gaily attired their king reclines at a
window in the market-place, reads from the Book of Kings
how David fought, and how an angel from heaven came with
a glowing sword and slew his foes. " Dear brothers, that can
happen to us, tis the same God that still lives." Still lives,
and yet makes no move to help you, poor fanatics ? What
terrible doubt those words must have raised in the souls of
the starving saints of Mtinster ! Still lives/ and leaves you
to perish, you misguided, mad, oppressed folk ! Peace, you
are judged and condemned. Then the school-children come
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 291
with their teachers, and sing psalms wan, pale little faces,
it were best not to sing, for singing only increases the void.
Finally Bannock-Bernt concludes with a sermon from the
window. But religious nourishment is a poor thing on an
empty stomach, and Jan tries next a more lively entertain
ment. Another great folk-meal is held in the market-place,
but this time there is only bread and beer. After it is over,
the king and his officers, midst blowing of trumpets, ride
with spears at a wreath stuck on a pole, and marksmen fire
at a popinjay. Then the folk play at ball and all this :
because it is the will of God. Home again they go, chant
ing : Honour alone to God on high. How hollow, how
mocking it sounds now, when it is compared with the
enthusiastic shout of the first weeks of Sion ! The next day
another section of the people is fed, and afterwards there is a
general dance on the market-place, the king and queen leading
off. Picture the emaciated, hunger -torn, lust -worn, and
passionate faces of those despairing Anabaptists, as they
danced before the Council House in Miinster. Grimmest of
jests that dancing can stave off starvation ! Bannock-Bernt
preaches that it is God s will that those who can shall
dance and enjoy themselves. Every restraint has long since
vanished in Sion. But will any such sensuous, physical joy
stand as a substitute for bread ? Tis a dance of devils, not
of men or rather, a dance of death where skeletons only
appear, to drag off themselves as prey. What a strange rdle
to be playing in the world s drama ; where shall we seek the
answer to this weird riddle ?
Yet another day and all the leaders of Sion seem them
selves to enter into the dire humour of this very devil s jest.
The starving folk are again gathered in the market-place.
In vain the deacons have gone round searching every house,
and finding naught beyond pitiable scraps hidden in the
mattresses or under the eaves. Something must be done to
occupy the minds of the people. Suddenly Knipperdollinch
is moved by the spirit : " Holy, holy, holy is the Lord ! " he
shouts, " Holy is the Father, and we are a holy folk." Then
he begins to dance, and all the people wait in expectation, till
292 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
he dances before the king, and cries to him : " Sir King, a
vision has come to me o er night. I shall be your fool."
After a while he continues : " Sir King, good-day to you !
Why do you sit here, Sir King ? " Then Knipperdollinch turn
to the king, sits down at his feet, and grins like a practised
jester : " Mark you well, Sir King, how we will march, when
we leave Miinster to punish the godless." The new prophet-
fool now takes an axe, and struts about among the folk,
mocking them. He tumbles over the benches ; he proclaims
this or that man or woman holy, and kisses them : " Thou
art holy, God has sanctified thee ! " He refuses to sanctify
the old women, and one who comes forward is threatened with
a cudgelling. He makes no attempt, however, to blow the
spirit of holiness into the king. But after awhile Jan him
self is moved by the spirit ; his sceptre falls from his hands,
and he drops from his throne upon the ground. Now the
women are all seized with inspiration, and shriek in chorus.
Knipperdollinch comes and picks Jan up, replaces him upon
the throne, and blows the spirit into him. Then the king
arises and cries : " Dear brothers and sisters, what great joy I
see ! The town goes round and round, and you all appear as
angels. Each one of you is more glorious than the other, so
holy are you all at once become ! " The women shriek :
Father ! Again the spirit comes upon the king. He ex
plains the fact of the town going round and round to mean
that the Anabaptists will march round the earth. In the
midst of his explanations, however, he spies a man among the
folk in a grey cap, and orders him to come up to the throne.
All expect he will behead him, but instead he puts the
trembling saint on his own seat, then he hugs him and blows
the spirit into him. Placing a ring on his finger, he declares
it all a revelation from God. Upon this the honoured saint
begins to dance, and behaves as one possessed of the devil,
till from sheer exhaustion he falls to the ground. So ends
this wonderful day in Miinster ! l These starving Anabap
tists are nigh madmen now ; religion has become an absolute
mockery ; morality is dead ; yet immorality is dying too, and
1 Gresbccks Bericht.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTER 293
the starving man gazes wildly round on the half-dozen wives
who would share his crust. The sooner his grace the bishop
puts the epilogue to the tragic farce the better now. Let
him come in and butcher what remains. Again we ask :
What is the key to the riddle ? The finger of philosophic
history points unregarded to the generations of oppression, to
the baptism of blood. Will the world ever learn to educate
its toilers, and to redeem them from serfdom ? Or must the
old tale ever repeat itself misery, dogmatic stones instead of
bread, uprising, and bloody repression by a shocked society ?
Are Peasant Rebellions, Kingdoms of God, French Revolutions,
and Paris Communes to be periodically recurring chapters of
history ? Is the development of man the evolution of fate,
or can humanity roughly shape itself, if perforce it must leave
its final purpose to the mystery of futurity ?
Scarce need to follow the story further ; its lesson is
written so that even they who run might read. Let us
hasten through the last days of Sion. Knipperdollinch
places himself on the throne of the King of Righteousness
in this mad dance, why should not a fool be king ? Jan
drags him off, and imprisons him for several days to do
penance ; even yet the prophet of Leyden can influence the
haggard saints in Miinster. But the gaunt prophet Starva
tion has greater power than he ! Closer and closer the
siege-works creep. Hunger is lord of the saints. All grease
and oil are collected by the deacons; shoes, grass, rats, and
mice are the meagre fuel of life in Sion. Then come the
women and the weaker brethren, in whom not a shadow of
faith is left, who have not even the wild strength of despair.
Out, we must out, is all they cry to the king. And out
they are sent stripped to a shirt, traitors, but who has
strength to punish them now even the fourteen queenlets
may go with the rest ! Out from the gates and towards the
bishop s blockhouses, but what mercy is like to meet you
there ? Poor starving shirted brothers, one and all of you,
are cut down. The women alone are driven back. Three
days and three nights they feed upon grass and roots between
blockhouses and gates, and then are allowed to pass. To
294 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
pass whither and to what ? History has nought to tell us
of these wretched outcast women. Fancy in vain tries to
picture what became of the fourteen wives of the King of
Sion. The saints who are left determine to burn the city to
ashes and force their way through to Holland. But not even
so shall they die ! Treachery shall at last be successful in
Sion. On St. John s Day, 1535 just one year after the
limping prophet had placed Jan of Leyden on the throne of
the New Jerusalem Hensgin von der langen Strasse and
Heinrich Gresbeck determine to introduce the bishop s
soldiers into Minister. In the night the former watchmaster
and the later historian of Sion lead three hundred of the
bishop s men-at-arms over a low part of the wall near the
Zwinger. Stealthily they creep on towards the Fish Market,
leaving St. Martin s Church on their right, onward through
the deserted streets to the very cathedral close. Then the
blast of trumpets tells the scared Anabaptists that Sion is
in the hands of the foe, and the bishop that the treachery is
successful. The saints rush to arms, the godless must be
forced out of Sion. Back they do force them, too, in bloodiest
of fights, back to St. Martin s Church gaunt skeletons
struggling in the frenzy of despair. But the party of
order is pouring in over the deserted walls, and the king
and Knipperdollinch already have fallen into the hands of
the bishop s men. Still the starving fanatics fight like
demons round the walls of St. Martin s. A truce some
one sanctions a truce the Anabaptists shall go to their
homes and await the bishop s coming. Home they go,
deceived to the last. No sooner scattered through the town,
than the soldiers enter the houses, drag them out one by
one, and hew them to pieces in the streets. Soon the whole
town is strewn with the bodies of Anabaptists, or half-dead
they crawl back to their holes, while their cries of agony
rend the air. The butchery ceases at last ; all that are
captured shall be brought before the commander and then be
beheaded ! As for the women and children, drive them
out of the city, but not before due notice is given throughout
the surrounding district notice put up on every church of
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEK 295
God that whoever shall succour these starving and helpless
folk shall be held a cursed Anabaptist himself and punished
accordingly. " So nobody knows what became of these
people, though some say the most crossed over to England." 1
So in a second baptism of blood ends the Kingdom of God in
Minister. " Twas not the rage of his grace the bishop," so
the Evangelicals said, " but the terrible vengeance of God,
which thus punished the devilish doctrines of Sion." When
will mankind learn that human selfishness ever brings down
its terrible curse, and that the future never forgets to enact
grimmest judgment on the sins of the past ? Barely that
judgment touches the individual defaulter ; humanity at
large must bear the burden of each man s peculiar sin.
What judgment his grace the bishop thinks fit to pass
on the leaders of Sion at least deserves record. Eottmann
has fallen by St. Martin s Church, fighting sword in hand,
but Jan of Leyden and Knipperdollinch are brought prisoners
before this shepherd of the folk. Scoffingly he asks Jan :
" Art thou a king ? " Simple, yet endlessly deep the reply :
" Art thou a bishop ? " Both alike false to their callings
as father of men and shepherd of souls. Yet the one cold,
self-seeking sceptic, the other ignorant, passionate, fanatic
idealist. " Why hast thou destroyed the town and my folk ? "
" Priest, I have not destroyed one little maid of thine. Thou
hast again thy town, and I can repay thee a hundredfold."
The bishop demands with much curiosity how this miserable
captive can possibly repay him. " I know we must die, and
die terribly, yet before we die, shut us up in an iron cage,
and send us round through the land, charge the curious folk
a few pence to see us, and thou wilt soon gather together all
thy heart s desire." The jest is grim, but the king of Sion
has the advantage of his grace the bishop. Then follows
torture, but there is little to extract, for the king still holds
himself an instrument sent by God though it were for the
punishment of the world. Sentence is read on these men
1 Warhafftigcr bericht der wundcrbarlichen handlung der Tenffer zu Minister
in Westualen, etc., . . . with woodcut of Jan of Leyden, King of the New
Jerusalem and the whole world, Etates 26.
296 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
placed in an iron cage they shall be shown round the bishop s
diocese, a terrible warning to his subjects, and then brought
back to Minister ; there with glowing pincers their flesh shall
be torn from the bones, till the death-stroke be given with
red-hot dagger in throat and heart. For the rest let the
mangled remains be placed in iron cages swung from the
tower of St. Lambert s Church. On the 26th of January,
1536, Jan Bockelson and Knipperdollinch meet their fate.
A high scaffolding is erected in the market-place, and before
it a lofty throne for his grace the bishop, that he may glut
his vengeance to the full. Let the rest pass in silence. The
most reliable authorities tell us that the Anabaptists remained
calm and firm to the last. 1 Art thou a king ? Art thou
a bishop ? The iron cages still hang on the church tower at
Mlinster ; placed as a warning, they have become a show ;
perhaps some day they will be treasured as weird mentors of
the truth which the world has yet to learn from the story of
the Kingdom of God in Miinster. 2
NOTE ON BERNHAiibT ROTTMANN S WRITINGS
Hofinanii and Rottmann represented opposite poles of Anabaptist
thought, the directions respectively of spiritual and sensual fanaticism.
David Joris, the author of T wonderboecJc, is the connecting link between
the two parties. This is strikingly brought out by the Anabaptist Con
venticle held in Strasburg in 1538, when the followers of Hofmaim
refused to accept the sensual elements of Joris s teaching (F. 0. zur Linden,
p. 393). It was a friend of Joris, Hendrik Niclaes of Miinster, who
established the Family of Love, and his disciple, Vitello, founded the first
English branch at Colchester in 1555. Niclaes himself came to England
about 1569, and it is to the Minister fugitives, as reorganised by Niclaes,
that we must look for the origins of our own Anabaptists. The writings
of Rottmann and Twonderboeck are thus of extreme interest for the
beginnings of English Anabaptism. As it is improbable that an essay I
had planned on Rottmann will now be completed, I append a list of his
writings :
(1) Bekentnisse van beyden Sacramenten, Doepe vnde Nachtmaele,
1 The Lutherans declared that Jan confessed to two of their number that
he was an impostor ; the Catholics asserted that he went to the scaffold receiv
ing the ministrations of a priest.
2 Since the above was written, the cages have been removed.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MUNSTEE 297
der predicanten tlio Minister. (November 8, 1533.) Extracts from this
Confession are given by Bouterwek : Zur Literatur und Geschichte der
IViedertaufer, Erster Beitrag, Bonn, 1864, pp. 6-10.
(2) Bekantnus des globens vnd lebens der gemein Cliriste to Minister.
The date of this Confession printed by Cornelius as the Miinsterische
Apologie in his book Berichte der Augenzeugen uber das Miinsterische
Wiedertaiiferreich, 1853, pp. 445-464 is not clearly determined, but it
preceded the Restitution (cf. Bouterwek, pp. 37-8).
(3) Eyne Restitution, edder Eine wedderstellinge rechter vnde
gesuiider christliker leer, gelouens vnde leuens vth Gades genadeii durch
de gemeynte Christi tho Munsteran den Dach gegeuen. (October, 1534.)
I possess one of the fe\v extant copies of the original ; it shows the
difficulties the Anabaptists had in printing. The work was reprinted in
1574 in five hundred copies by the Second King of Sion, Johann
Wilhelmsen, but all the copies seem to have perished, and it has not been
again reprinted. An analysis will be found in Bouterwek, pp. 18-33.
(4) Eyii gantz troestlick bericht van der Wrake vnde straft e des
Babiloiiischen gruwels, an alle ware Israeliten vnd Buiidtgenoten Christi,
liir vnde dar vorstroyet, durch de gemeinte Christi tho Minister.
(December, 1534.) No printed copy of this work appears to have sur
vived. Bouterwek reprints it in full (pp. 66-101) from a manuscript
copy made in 1663, and now in the Diisseldorf archives.
(5) Von verborgeiiheitt der Schrifft des Eickes Christi vnd von dem
dage des Herrn durch die gerneinde Christi zu Minister. (February, 1535.)
Printed copies of this tract exist in the library at the Hague and in a few
other places. It has been reprinted from a manuscript in the Cassel
archives by H. Hochhuth in Bernhardt Bottmanns Schriften, I., Gotha,
1857 a publication which would have been very valuable, had it got
beyond the first fasciculus.
SOCIOLOGY
Do I seem to say : Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die ?
Far from it ; on the contrary, I say : Let us take hands and help, for
this day we are alive together. Clifford.
XI
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 1
Miichtig 1st Eins nur auf Erden : die waltenden ewigen Maclite,
Welclie die Volker bewegen ; und was in selmoder Verblendung
Diesen entgegen sicli stellt und verwegeu auf menscliliclie Maclit trotzt,
Oder auf gottliche liofft, ein Koloss ist s auf thonemen Fiissen !
IT is scarcely ten years since our daily papers, noting the
rapid growth of the Socialistic party in Germany, congratulated
their readers on the impossibility of a like movement in this
country. To - day Socialism in England has immeasurably
outgrown its German progenitor. While in Germany
Socialism, has remained the vague protest of the oppressed
worker, suffering under the introduction of the factory system
of industry, in England it has become already a great social
factor tending to leaven our legislation, and likely, before
long, to revolutionise our social habits. In Germany it has
remained an ill-regulated political protest with an impracti
cable programme. In England, owing partly to the vigorous
emotionalism of Carlyle and Euskin, but principally to our more
advanced economic development, it has become an economic
tendency and a moral force long before it has reached self-
consciousness and formulated itself as a recognised political
movement. As a recognised movement we shall find in the
first place that various crude manifestations will be singled
out for fierce condemnation, but that, after some contempt and
misrepresentation, not a little justified by the Utopian schemes
1 Originally written as a lecture, this paper, with some revision, was
published as a pamphlet in June, 1887.
302 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
of social reconstruction propounded by the earlier Socialistic
writers, 1 the doctrines of Socialism will be at least listened to
with respect, and finally exert an acknowledged influence on
all social and legislative changes.
I have spoken of Socialism as a recognised movement, but
it is essentially necessary to mark the characteristics which
distinguish it from other political movements of this century.
The difference lies in the fact that the new policy is based
upon a conception of morality differing in toto from the
old or the current Christian ideal, which it does not hesitate
to call anti-social and immoral. It is, however, this very fact
that Socialism is a morality in the first place, and a polity
only in the second, that has led to the introduction of the
absurd misnomer " Christian Socialist " for a section of the
Church party which vaguely recognises the moral aspect of
Socialism. As the old religious faith disappears, a new basis of
morals is required more consonant with the reasoning spirit of
the age. That view of life which, seeing in this world only
sorrow and tribulation, finds it a field of preparation for a
future existence, is more and more widely acknowledged to
be a superstition invented and accepted by the prevailing
pessimism of a decadent period of human development.
Harmful as the superstition has been, the common sense
of mankind has saved us from the logical consequences of its
full acceptance. At the very best, however, it has justified
poverty, misery, and asceticism of all kinds. The modern
Socialistic theory of morality is based upon the agnostic
treatment of the super sensuous. Man, in judging of con
duct, is concerned only with the present life ; he has to
make it as full and as joyous as he is able, and to do this
consciously and scientifically with all the knowledge of the
present, and all the experience of the past, pressed into his
1 It seems to me extremely unadvisable for Socialists to formulate at the
present time, elaborate Socialistic organisations of the State. The future social
form is at present quite beyond our ken ; it is sufficient for the time to trace
the probable effect of the Socialistic movement in modifying existing institutions,
and in influencing the legislation of the near future. It is a waste of energy to
build in the air co-operative commonwealths, the destruction of which is no hard
task for the hostile critic ; it is even harmful, since it associates the universal
movement with the easily controverted dreams of the individual Utopian.
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 303
service. Not from fear of hell, not from hope of heaven,
from no love of a tortured man-god, but solely for the sake
of the society of which we are members, and the welfare
of which is our welfare for the sake of our fellow-men
we act morally, that is, socially. * Positivism has recognised
in a vague impracticable fashion this, the only possible basis
of a rational morality ; it places the progress of mankind in
the centre of its creed, and venerates a personified Humanity.
Socialism, as a more practical faith, teaches us that the first
duty of man is to no general concept of humanity, but to the
group of humans to which he belongs, and that man s
veneration is due to the State which personifies that social
group. Yet even thus there is sufficient ground for the
sympathy which is undoubtedly felt by Positivists for Socialism.
Can a greater gulf be imagined than really exists between
current Christianity and the Socialistic code ? Socialism
arises from the recognition (1) that the sole aim of mankind
is happiness in this life, and (2) that the course of evolution,
and the struggle of group against group, have produced a strong
social instinct in mankind, so that, directly and indirectly, the
pleasure of the individual lies in forwarding the prosperity of
the society of which he is a member. J Corporate Society the
State, not the personified Humanity of Positivism becomes
the centre of the Socialist s faith. The polity of the Socialist !
is thus his morality, and his reasoned morality may, in the
old sense of the word, be termed his religion. It is this \
identity which places Socialism on a different footing to the
other political and social movements of to-day. Current
Christianity is not a vivifying political force ; it cannot be,
for it is the direct outcome of a pessimistic superstition, and
can never be legitimately wedded to a Hellenic rationalism.
Can we more strongly emphasise the distinction between the
old and the new moral basis ? To the thinkers of to-day
crucified gods, deified men, heaven and hell have become in
tolerable nonsense, only of value for the light they have cast
on past stages of human development. These theories of the
supersensuous, which our forefathers have handed down to us,
deserve all the respect due to relics of the Past. They are
,304, THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
x^
invaluable landmarks of history, sign-posts to the paths of
man s mental growth. They were the banners under which
mankind has struggled, the symbols borne in the march across
the arid deserts of the Past, where the sources of knowledge
were few, and none ran copiously. Now that those deserts
are behind us, and we live in a fertile land, with wide fields
of truth only awaiting cultivation, with innumerable springs
of knowledge freely open to the thirsty, we can afford to lay
these symbols aside. Let us reverently hang these old
colours up in the great temple of human progress. Man
kind, following them, has fought and won many an arduous
battle ; but the best energies of our time can no longer rally
round them. They belong to history, and not to the glorious
actuality of that century in which we live. We are, it is
true, only just at the preface of the great volume of reasoned
truth, wherein is endless work for many generations of men,
yet we have, at least, found the only legitimate basis of
knowledge, the only fruitful guide to conduct. Kejoicing in
that discovery, we can lay aside the weird images of the
childhood of mankind, for History has taught us their
origin, and Science their value. The images are beautiful,
but they are lifeless ; they are but idols carved by the ignor
ance of the Past. Still, like the Greeks of old, we may
glory in the beauty of our idols, long after the Intellect has
ceased to bend her knee in worship, or to sacrifice herself
upon the altar erected by the vague aspirations of a dead
humanity to a splendid shadow of itself. Yes ! sympathy
with the Past we must have, but war, ceaseless war, with
that Past which seeks with its idols to crush the growth
of the Present ! The right to re -shape itself is the chief
birthright of humanity, and the vested interests of priest
or of class, the sanctity of tradition and of law, will be of as
little avail in checking human progress as the gossamer in the
path of the king of the forest.
It is because the old bases of religion and morality have
become impossible to the Present, that Socialism, which
gives us a rational motive for conduct, which demands of
each individual service to Society and reverence towards
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 305
Society incorporated in the State, is destined to play such
a large part in the re -shaping of human institutions.
Socialism, despite Hackel, despite Herbert Spencer, is
consonant with the whole teaching of modern Science, and
with all the doctrines of modern Kationalism. It lays down
no transcendental code of morality ; it accepts no divine
revelation as a basis of conduct ; it asserts the human origin,
the plastic and developable character, of morals ; it teaches
us that, as human knowledge increases, human society will
tend to greater stability, because History and Science will
show more and more clearly what makes for human welfare.
The new morality, while recognising the value of customary
modes of action and of inherited social instinct, still looks
upon knowledge and experience as the guides of human
conduct. It trusts in the main to human reason, not to
human emotion, to dictate the moral code. To give all a
like possibility of usefulness, to measure reward by the
efficiency and magnitude of socially valuable work, is surely
to favour the growth of the fittest within the group, and the
survival of the fittest group in the world-contest of societies.
Socialism no less earnestly than Professor Huxley demands
an open path from the Board School to the highest council
of the nation. It is as anxious to catch talent, and to profit
by its activity, as the most ardent disciple of Darwin.
It may seem to many of my readers that veneration for
personified Society, or the State, and the identification of
moral conduct with social action, are very old truths, which
the world has long recognised. I venture to doubt this, or
at least to think that, if recognised, they have never been
given their true value, or been pushed to their logical outcome.
I doubt whether all Socialists even yet grasp the large con
sequences which flow from their full admission. I propose
to examine somewhat more closely these two fundamental
principles.
At the present time it can hardly be said that there is any
veneration whatever for personified Society, the State. The
State is brought to our notice, not as the totality of the
society in which we live, but as government, and government
306 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
we are accustomed to look upon as a necessary evil ; we have
no faith in our statesmen s capacity for right ruling. To
sacrifice our lives for government appears utterly ridiculous ;
but to do so for the welfare of the State ought to be the truest
heroism. It is the loss of veneration for the State which has
made our government in all its forms something nigh despic
able. We have been content to allow the State to be served
by self-seekers, by men whose all-absorbing object has been to
fill the pockets of themselves or of their family, whose highest
patriotism lias been to conserve the anti-social monopolies of
their class. We have chosen our senators neither for their
experience nor their wisdom, but for the glibness of their
tongues and the length of their purses. So it lias come
about that the very name of politician is a term of reproach.
Our legislation, our government, has been a scarcely dis
guised warfare of classes, the crude struggle of individual
interests, not the cautious direction of social progress by the
selected few. Veneration for the State has been stifled by
a not unjustifiable contempt for existing government ; it has
survived only on the one hand in an irrational feeling of
loyalty towards a puppet, degenerating into snobbism, and
on the other hand in a chauvinism, a claim to national pre
eminence, chiefly advanced by those who are contributing
little to the fame of their country in art, literature, or science,
still less in hard fighting. To bring again to the fore a
feeling of genuine respect for personified Society, the State,
to purify executive government, is obviously a hard but
primary necessity of socialistic action. We must aristo-
cratise government at the same time as we democratise it ;
the ultimate appeal to the many is hopeless, unless the many
have foresight enough to place power in the hands of the fittest.
Government has become what it is, because our respect
for the State has grown so small, and not conversely. We
have had fit men, and we could have put them in places of
trust ; we could have demanded better action from our
rulers, had we had real veneration for the State. In early
Eome and at Athens such a feeling existed ; it was, indeed,
a direct outcome of the old group kinship, the gentile
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 307
organisation of both those states. It is something more than
this respect for a widened family which we require to-day.
With modern habits of life, with the emancipation of women,
the strength of the family tie, one of the last binding links
of the old social structure, is disappearing. We must learn
to replace it in time by respect for personified Society, by
reverence for the State. The spirit of antagonism between
the Individual and the State must be destroyed. How low
our social spirit has fallen may be well measured by remark
ing how few recognise the immorality of cheating the State
in any of its industrial departments, say the Post Office ;
how nearly all regard the tax-gatherer with a feeling akin
to that which mediaeval burghers bore to the city hangman.
The man who goes whistling along, and with a heavy stick
knocks off the ornamental ironwork in the Embankment
Gardens, would think it highly immoral to whittle the arm
chair of his friend ; the woman who encloses a letter inside
a book-post packet would be indignant if you suggested that
she was capable of picking her neighbour s pocket. Yet in
both cases the offence against the State ought to be looked
upon as a far graver matter than the offence against
the individual. The clergyman who some years ago was
detected cutting out engravings from the books of a great
public library, ought to have been pilloried and publicly
ejected from society ; yet the matter was hushed up,
apparently because it was only an offence against the State.
Had he stolen his churchwarden s spoons, a much less
heinous matter, he would undoubtedly have found himself
in the police court. So long as there is a large group of
persons who find pleasure in ripping up the cushions of
public carriages, in defacing public statues, in tearing down
the hawthorn bushes in the parks, and in generally
destroying what is intended for the convenience or pleasure
of the whole community above all, so long as the majority of
the community treat such offences lightly, so long it is hope
less to think of vastly extending the property of the State.
Socialists have to inculcate that spirit which would give
offenders against the State short shrift and the nearest
308 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
lamp-post. Every citizen must learn to say with Louis XIV.,
L ttat c est mm ! The misfortune is that wealth l has become
so individualised since the Reformation that the spirit of
communal ownership is almost dead. That spirit, the joint
responsibility for the safeguard of common wealth, is one of
the most valuable factors of social stability, and the sooner
we re-learn it, the better for our social welfare. To preach
afresh this old conception of the State, so fruitful in the
cities of ancient Greece and the towns of mediaeval Germany,
ought to be the primary educative mission of modern
Socialism. If the welfare of society be the touchstone of
moral action, then respect for the State the State as res
pullica, as commonweal ought to be the most sacred
principle of the new movement.
Let us turn to the other fundamental of socialistic morality
the definition of moral conduct as socialised action and,
commonplace as the definition may seem, inquire whether
this, any more than respect for the State, is a currently accepted
guide to conduct. I fear we can only answer in the negative.
Whether we turn to practice or to theory, we shall find that
the current notion of morality has reference to some absolute
and, I venture to think, unintelligible code. It is rarely, if
ever, based upon social wants as ascertained by past experience,
or upon an accurate study of the tendencies of present
social growth. We are very far indeed from recognising the
momentous consequences which logically flow from the
abandonment of the Christian morality and the Christian
conception of life. Darwin has destroyed the old Ptolemaic
system of the spiritual universe. We can no longer regard
all creation as revolving about man as its central sun. We
can no longer believe that the conduct of man is influencing
the birth or destruction of worlds, or that his salvation has
any relation to the great physical laws which regulate cos-
mical evolution. Man s morality has no bearing on the
1 It has become so entirely property. When wealth and goods
were first used to describe that state of material prosperity which is well
and good for men, individual ownership or property had not yet been
evolved.
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 309
infinite and the eternal/ but solely on his own temporal
welfare. Surely this Copernican view of human morality is
one of the most obvious, the most unassailable, and yet the
most revolutionary truths of our age. Yet how far we are
from accepting it fully and loyally ! The whole parapher
nalia of Christian worship, with its complete perversion of
the fundamental principles of human conduct, and its deaden
ing effect upon human morals, is still spread far and wide
over the land. Nay, what is even still more suggestive of
our bondage to the Past is the fact that a thinker, whose
writings have perhaps done as much to obscure as they
probably have to enlighten the ideas of our century, finds the
raison d etre of the universe in the absolute necessity that
man should be provided with a field for moral action ! Thus
it is that Kant and the neo-Hegelian reconcilers have given a
new lease of life to a fallacious moral system by a process
which is superficially rational. The influence of this neo-
scholasticisni, not only on the church, but on many of our
popular teachers, is a factor which it is hardly wise to dis
regard. That it should have taken considerable root in a
rationalistic age proves how far the socialistic basis of morality
is from frank and universal acceptance.
At first sight the identification of morality and sociality
may seem a principle that even our most conservative friends
can accept. " If this is all Socialism means, we also are
Socialists," they say. : We too are desirous of improving the
condition of the poor." Let them follow the doctrine into its
consequences, however, and they will soon discover the cloven
hoof. They have not yet grasped that this view of life re
places that select body they term Society (does not that
abuse of terms alone fully condemn them ?) by the whole
mass of the folk. It does not leave the welfare of large
sections of the community to the caprice of the few ; it takes
as of right what they would tithe for charity ; it will inevit
ably touch not only their emotions, but their more sacred
pockets ; it sweeps away an anti-social class monopoly, and
with it class-power. " You must either be working for the
community, or leave it," is the ultimatum of the socialistic
310 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
moral code to each and to all. No amount of conscience-
money spent on the most philanthropic object can atone for
individual idleness. The progress and welfare of society
demand for common use not only the stored labour of the
past, but the labour-power of each existing individual. With
out sharing in the social work of the present there shall be
no part for you in the goods of the present, or in the wealth
garnered by our forefathers. The socialistic toe tingles with
scarce restrainable impulse to eject in precipitate fashion
from the human hive the many endowed idlers who with
ineffable effrontery term themselves Society. The member
ship of Society, the moral right to enjoy the fruits of social
labour, can be based solely on the claim of contributing to
the welfare of Society in the present to be still working, or
to have worked while the strength was there, physically or
intellectually, for the maintenance, progress, or pleasure of
our fellow -citizens. It is this fundamental conception of
modern Socialism, with its ennobling of all forms of labour,
which will revolutionise modern life, and, once accepted as
morality, will cause all political measures to be examined
from a new standpoint. From morality Socialism will become
a polity. It is a common accusation against Socialists that
they are capable only of destructive criticism ; but it is surely
of primary importance to cut away the old superstitions, the
old mistaken notions of human conduct, to create a wide-felt
want for a new basis of action, before any wooden and in
flexible system of social reconstruction is propounded. The
time for constitution-mongers has not come, if, indeed, they
are not always a bar to progress. We want at present to
inculcate general principles, to teach new views of life.
Society will reconstruct itself pari passu with the spread of
these new ideas ; the rate at which they will become current,
while depending to some extent on the energy and enthusi
asm of their propagators, will be chiefly influenced by the
failure of the old economic system, owing to the sweeping
industrial and commercial changes which are in progress, and
by the failure of the old Christian morality, owing to the
rapid growth of rational methods of thought.
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 311
"Educate your workpeople," cry some of our leading
scientists, " if you wish to maintain a position among com
peting nations in the world-markets." A falser reason for
education it is hard to conceive, unless our scientists are
prepared to prove that social welfare at home is impossible
without successful huckstering abroad. It is worthy rather
of the Lancashire cotton printer, who measures national
prosperity by the import of china-clay, than of the genuine
scientist. Let us educate our workpeople to face the diffi
culties which our society at home has to encounter ; let us
train them to value intelligent labour as a means, not an end,
to grasp that the general progress of society here, the raising
of the common standard of comfort and intelligence, is of the
first importance. After all, restriction or removal of popu
lation may be a more efficient aid to social progress than an
endless rivalry with other nations in the monotonous labour of
breeching the less civilised races of earth.
If I interpret socialistic ideal at all correctly, it?
insists primarily on the moral need that each individual,
according to his powers, should work for the community.
The man or woman who does not labour, but, owing to a
traditional monopoly, is able to live on the labour of others,
or the stored labour of the community which indeed requires,
as a rule, present labour to utilise it will be treated as a
moral leper. The moment the majority have adopted this
code of morality and the economic development, taken in
conjunction with the fact that the majority even at present
do labour, will render its adoption rapid then the legislation
or measures of police, to be taken against the immoral and
anti- social minority, will form the political realisation of
Socialism. To some extent this political realisation of Socialism
has already, although blindly and unconsciously, begun.
Socialistic measures, the limitation of the privileges of those
who live on the labour -power of others, or on the stored
labour of the past, have become by no means an incon
spicuous feature of current legislation, and a feature which
will yearly gain greater prominence.
There may be differences of opinion as to how the elimina-
312 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
tion of idlers from the community may best take place, but the
majority of Socialists are convinced that, to destroy the private
ownership of the physical resources of the country and of the
stored labour of the past to socialise the land and to socialise
the means of production are the only efficient and permanent
means of restraining idleness, and the resulting misdirection of
the labour -power of the community. We believe that, by
destroying the pecuniary privileges of birth, and the class
exclusiveness of education, we shall in reality be removing a
great bar to the survival, or rather to the pre-eminence, of the
fittest. It is for the welfare of society that it should obtain
from all ranks the best heads and the best hands as its
directors and organisers. This can only be secured by giving
equal educational chances to all, by allowing no pecuniary
handicapping in favour of the feeble in mind or body. Here
Socialism is at one with modern Eadicalism, and is certainly
not opposed to the teachings of Evolution.
At the same time Socialists are fully aware of the diffi
culties which lie in the realisation of their ideal, and the more
reasonable are fully prepared to face, and duly weigh, the
arguments which may be brought against them. I propose to
devote the remainder of this paper to a brief consideration of
some of the more important of these arguments, which I may
state as follows :
(1) Socialism would destroy the rewards of successful
competition, and so weaken the incentive to that individual
energy, which is of such primary social value.
(2) No government can be trusted to conduct fitly the
vast task of organisation which Socialism would thrust
upon it.
(3) The proposed socialisation of land and of stored labour
would destroy confidence, and check enterprise, to an extent
which might have disastrous effects on the community long
before the socialised State could be got into working order.
(4) The increase of population would very soon render
nugatory any benefit to be derived from the socialisation of
surplus-labour.
(5) There is no means of measuring the value of an
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 313
individual s contribution to the labour -stock of the com
munity.
Let us take these objections in order ; all of them deserve
very careful consideration.
(1) Socialism would destroy the rewards of successful com
petition, and so weaken the incentive to that individual energy,
which is of such primary social value.
If the result of socialistic reconstruction were to be the
deadening of individual energy, it would undoubtedly not
tend to the welfare of Society. But I believe that the
importance of real incentive is fully recognised by all
thinking Socialists, and that they would be the last to deny
the social value of especially rewarding transcendent talent,
or remarkable social energy. It is because the rewards at
present given to such talent and energy are far more than
sufficient to achieve their end, are utterly unsuitable in
character, and most frequently go to anti- social cunning
rather than to real worth, that I am compelled to look upon
these rewards of the present competitive system as little short
of disastrous to the community. I hold that public dis
tinction, public gratitude, and State recognition, are the
only suitable recompense, and at the same time are quite
sufficient incentive to individual energy. There is no
necessity for endowing for an indefinite period the posterity
of a valuable member of society with a possibility of complete
idleness. Such rewards as large grants of public money
or land, perpetual pensions, or the accumulation by suc
cessful industrial organisers of stored labour or any other
monopoly of the means of utilising existing labour -power,
are neither necessary, nor are they conducive to the general
welfare of society. These incentives did not produce an
Albrecht Diirer, a Newton, a Shakespeare, or a Watt, nor
induce them to do work of first-class social value. The
opportunity of a free education, given by a sizarship at
Trinity College, had more to do with the making of a
Newton than all the rewards of the competitive system. It
is the opportunity for self-development, the provision of a
field for its activity, and some amount of social recognition,
314 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
which are really needed to produce, and utilise, all forms of
talent in the community. The German trader will display as
much energy, fertility of resource, and downright hard work
in making 500 a year as an English manufacturer in
clearing 50,000. I do not think any real danger to the
incentive to energy is involved in the socialisation of in
dustry, when literature, science, and art have invariably
been found to thrive best with a minimum of pecuniary
honour, and a maximum of social recognition. The schools
of Athens and the Churches of the Middle Ages offer evidence
enough on this point, while Galilei, at the height of his
reputation, had to pay for the printing of the DC Systemate
Mundi.
Socialists assert that under a state-control of industry
the recognition of a new inventor by the State would be
as great an inducement to enterprise as the idea of twenty
per cent profit is held to be at present ; more especially will
such honour have weight in the educated community of the
future. No practical Socialist advocates in the present stage
of human development an equal distribution of the profits
of labour as advantageous to society. He even recognises
the importance, if necessary, of distinguishing by physical
rewards such energy and talent as are of great value to
the community. He is willing to admit that any one who
labours longer and better than another should reap a greater
return, but that this return shall be in its nature con
sumable, not reproductive. It must not take the form of
a permanent tax (rent, interest, etc.) on the labour-power
and labour-store of the community. The socialisation of
all means of production would render this impossible. It is
to the advantage of Society as a whole, when it has given
equal educational chances to its members, that the better
work should be encouraged by the better pay. The accept
ance of Socialism, in short, does not involve approval of the
communistic principle of equalised distribution. It still
leaves room for the socially healthy rivalry of individual
workers, provided that rivalry does not result, as in the present
competitive form of industry, in the standard of life per-
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 315
manently remaining for the great mass of toilers very close
to the point of bare subsistence.
(2) No government can be trusted to fitly conduct the vast
task of organisation which Socialism would thrust upon it.
This objection has very real weight, as there cannot be a
doubt about the current distrust of all government under
takings. I have already referred to the disrepute into which
the State executive has fallen, and endeavoured to point out
how serious a difficulty in the way of Socialism as polity is
this want of confidence in the State. Owing to the meagre
education of our present democratic Electorate, to the intel
lectual and moral inferiority of the class of men who serve
as politicians, and to the resulting bad measures and wide
spread corruption owing to the monopoly of wealth, which,
placing time and opportunity for political action in the
hands of a class, fosters class-legislation owing to these
and other concomitant causes the State at present is dis
credited. It is the mission of Socialists to reintroduce the
true conception of the State, to revivify respect for per
sonified Society ; to teach that the misappropriation of public
property is the first of crimes, and that the mismanagement
of public affairs is a disgrace, which, like the sin against the
Holy Ghost, can never be condoned. We must bring home
to each citizen the feeling of the Athenian vine -dresser,
or the craftsman of the mediaeval town. Such an educa
tional change can only be gradual ; but, on the other hand,
Socialists neither strive for, nor expect, any but a gradual
assumption by the State of the means of production and
the stored labour of the Past. I may point to the
efficiency of the post-office in Germany and to the scientific
perfection of the military organisation of the same country,
especially the readiness of both to discover and adopt real
advances, as evidence that the State can successfully under
take and direct great enterprises. Even in our own country,
where faith in the State is much lower, it is difficult to
believe that a large railway company would be less efficiently
conducted if its directors were State officials, liable to
instant dismissal if failing in their duties, instead of being
316 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
private capitalists struggling to fill their own pockets. How
often is a false economy, or an anti-social line of action, adopted
with a view to immediate profit ? l Education is another of
the vast enterprises which the State has often undertaken
with the result of increased efficiency. It may be quite true
that in England there is a tendency in the State-code to
crystallise education, but even in this country, I firmly believe,
our Board Schools are on the average more efficient than
the private schools of the voluntary system. 2 What is
wanted in matters educational, as in other State affairs in
our country, is their complete divorce from party politics.
We must educate the Electorate to such a degree that it
will not return stump-orators. This goal, I believe, will be
more and more nearly reached as the children who have been
educated in the State schools form a larger and larger part of
the Electorate. There is not, I contend, any inherent im
possibility in the management by the State of large under
takings ; the examples I have cited suffice to prove its possi
bility. That many others have been only partially successful
can, I think, be accounted for by evils peculiar to our existing
form of government, and its singular anomalies. Socialists,
I cannot too often repeat, are not called upon to draw up
any constitution for an ideal socialised State. Like any other
party, they are quite justified in proposing a programme
of immediately possible legislative changes. They believe
that the realisation of their ideal will be very gradual, and
that, to be really efficient, it must be to a large extent tenta
tive ; the possibility of central organisation, of organisation
by counties, towns, or communes, are certainly matters for
1 It is worth while noting that it is through the enterprise of private
companies that the lives of Londoners are endangered by a network of over
head telephone lines ; in London the State already carries its wires under
ground.
2 The Girls Public School Company has recently (1887) testified to the value of
our State system by the announcement that the majority of their scholarships are
annually gained by girls whose primary education is the work of Board Schools.
This Company has to some extent opened a path for the girl from State school
to the University. How long will it be before boys have a like advantage ?
[This want is now to some extent supplied by the County Council Senior Scholar
ships ; unfortunately the method of selection seems to be very unsatisfactory in
its results.]
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 317
discussion, but the comparative efficiency of each can be
tested only by experience. As yet we have not even the
results of a comprehensive system of local government to
guide us, and any attempt to picture a fully-developed
socialised commonweal is, I hold, unnecessary and ill-
advised. To demand it of Socialists is about as reasonable
as it would have been to ask Jesus, the Christ, when
propounding his new morality, to wait before he did so,
and draw up a constitution for that World-Church, which
was one day to include the Gentiles. There is little doubt
that he would not have hit upon the historical development
his teaching took in the Holy Catholic Church. He rightly
left the matter to after ages, when councils and constitutions
first became necessary. Socialism may well do likewise ; it
can content itself by showing that the State is not inherently
incapable of organising industry, and, strong in its convic
tion of the moral truth of the new movement, it can well
leave the exact form of the socialised State to be worked
out in the future.
(3) The proposed socialisation of land and of stored labour
will destroy confidence, and check enterprise, to an extent which
may have disastrous effects on the community long before the
socialised State can be got into working order.
It is suggested that these disastrous effects will result
from the existence of a strong political Socialist party, and
the adoption of socialistic legislation. There might very
possibly, at first, be a partial feeling of insecurity, followed by
some evil effects. At the same time any over-hasty phase of
socialistic legislation would produce sufficient industrial dis
turbance to react quickly upon the labour Electorate, and so
upon the over-hasty legislator. It would tend to counteract
itself. Socialists recognise the fact that socialisation, for the
sake of the worker himself, can only be comparatively slow,
and will have as far as possible to use and absorb all existing
industrial enterprises and their management. Eevolutionary
measures, which would paralyse the industry of the country,
are simply impossible, because several millions of people would
never submit to the starvation which a few weeks of idleness
318 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
would inevitably produce ; indeed the stored labour of the
community would hardly last weeks. We look forward, then,
to a gradual change, which will be accompanied by an educa
tion, not only of the artisan, but of the capitalistic class. The
Socialist has to teach that social approbation and public honour
are worth more than pecuniary reward. The alteration of
the standard of enjoyment from purely physical luxury to more
intellectual forms of pleasure will do much to form a new goal
for ambition, and so very materially lessen the evil effects which,
it is asserted, must result from limiting the profits of private
enterprise and discouraging all monopoly of surplus-labour.
(4) The increase of population will very soon render nugatory
any benefit to be derived from tlic socialisation of surplus-labour.
Hitherto I have assumed that the increased welfare of
society, which Socialists hold would result from the socialisa
tion of the means of production and of stored labour, would be
a permanent increase. Let us examine this question of per
manency a little more closely. At each epoch in any given
community there is a certain amount of labour-power and a
certain amount of stored labour. Socialists assert that it is
for the general good of the community that this labour-power
and this stored labour, after providing the necessaries of
existence for the entire community, should then be utilised in
raising the standard of comfort of the whole body, and not
that of individual members. This application of what I term
surplus -labour is prevented by the traditional or legal
monopoly of individuals, which enables them to enforce upon
the labourer a different application, namely, that after a low
standard of comfort is provided for the masses, the surplus-
labour shall be applied to indefinitely raising the standard of
life of the monopolists themselves. The surplus energies of
society are expended on the luxuries of the few. This condi
tion of affairs would to a large extent be destroyed by the
State ownership of capital and the State direction of labour-
power. The present monopolists would be driven to provide
themselves, by labour of social value, with such pleasures as
they could obtain as its equivalent.
But, although I hold that the surplus -labour, thus
THE MOKAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 319
socialised, would go at the present time a long way towards
increasing the general comfort and pleasure of Society, I do
not think this gain would be permanent, if the change were
accompanied by an ever -increasing population. Up to a
certain limit each increase of labour-power may raise, if social-
istically organised, the general standard of comfort of a definite
group of persons ; "by which I understand a group living on a
definite area, having definite internal resources, definite means
of communication with the outside world, and a definite series
of products to exchange with neighbouring groups. When
this limit, which is essentially local and temporal, is once
reached, each accession of fresh labour-power tends to lower
the general standard of comfort, and ultimately to force it
down to that bare level of subsistence at which the starvation
check abruptly brings it up. It is this " limit to efficient
population " which it is the duty of the statesman to discover,
and to maintain, as far as possible, at each period of social
growth. Eemoval of population, prohibition of immigration,
and, if necessary, limitation of the number of births, are the
means whereby the limit to efficient population may be
approximately conserved. Does the existing organisation of
Society regard this limit ? If not, would it be possible for a
socialised Society to so do ? These are the questions which
form the population problem, and demand our consideration.
The Socialist of the market-place, who ignores them, places
himself outside the field of useful discussion. We must
recognise the problem ; and, when carefully investigated, it
will be found to offer one of the strongest arguments in favour
of Socialism with which I am acquainted. We may even say
that Socialism is the logical outcome of the law of Malthus.
Let us consider how the present ecomonic structure of
society bears on the problem of population. To begin with,
we find that there exists a small body of thinkers, who believe
that much of the social misery of the present would be relieved,
were we, instead of attempting to transform the present
economic relation of capital and labour, to devote our energies
to inducing the working-classes to limit their numbers. Such
limitation, they hold, would, by increasing wages, raise the
320 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOQGHT
standard of comfort, and so, to a great extent, effect what
Socialists desire. The standard of comfort once raised would
be permanently maintained. To this I reply that, without an
extremely large and scarcely probable reduction in population,
the standard thus raised would be far below what would be
reached by the socialisation of surplus -labour, and that it
would still leave untouched other anomalies of class-monopoly.
Further, that there is absolutely no security that even such
standard, if reached, could be maintained. Indeed it would be
directly prejudicial to the capitalistic classes that it should be ;
the export price of a commodity, depending largely on the cost
of labour, would have to be lowered to the price fixed by that
manufacturing country where the standard of life is lowest.
The English trader would not only be unable to compete with
his foreign rival, but, without protection, the home-markets
would be Hooded by the cheaper foreign ware. It cannot be
to the interest of the monopolist class that labour should be
dear, and there is not the slightest possibility that, under our
present system of production for profit, not for use, any
attempt on the part of the workers for limitation of population
will be effectual in raising the standard of life. The moment
the standard of living here is sensibly higher than abroad,
we have an invasion of foreign labour accustomed to a lower
standard of life, or a reduction in the home demand for labour
due to the impossibility of exporting at the higher prices.
Further, it is only natural that our capitalistic rulers should
show no signs of hindering any foreign labour invasion, nay,
they are often directly concerned in importing labour. We
are periodically sickened with false sentiment as to a free
country, as to free trade in labour, and the like sentiment
which, in the mouths of the speakers, is not the outcome of a
well-thought-out social theory, but consciously or unconsciously
takes its origin directly in the feelings of their pocket. Under
a capitalistic form of Society the practical plutocracy which
results will never hinder the importation of foreign labour
with a lower standard of life ; it cannot for the sake of its
own existence take any real steps to preserve the limit of
efficient population.
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 321
It is one thing to limit population in order to maintain,
another, to limit population in order to raise, an existing
standard. The former is difficult enough, the latter almost
impossible, yet this latter is practically what the non-
socialistic Malthusians propose. The standard of life of a
great proportion of the working-classes is so near the bare
level of subsistence, beneath which even the workhouse system
does not allow it to fall, that there remains little to be main
tained by restraint ; the attempt to raise the standard
requires, if it is to be effectual, united action on the part of so
many, and is, under our present social regime, so extremely
unlikely to be successful, that restraint is not calculated to
evoke much sympathy.
There is, indeed, little to induce the great mass of unskilled
labourers to limit their numbers, more especially if that limi
tation imply an abstinence from one of the few pleasures
which lie within their reach ; a pleasure, too, which does not,
like drinking, appear immediately and directly to reduce the
weekly pittance. But the line between skilled and unskilled
labour is not so rigid that the amount of the latter does not
sensibly affect the wage - standard of the former; if skilled
labour is for a time highly paid, a new machine will too often
make it feel at once the whole weight of proletariat competi
tion. The restraint of the skilled working-class avails little,
if there is no limitation of the proletariat, and if the capitalist
is always seeking to lower wages, and so the standard of life,
by the introduction of machinery. I think it is sufficiently
clear that the limitation of population in the capitalistic
organisation of Society will hardly be attempted, and, if
attempted, would not be successful.
Let us now investigate the possibility of maintaining the
limit of efficient population in the socialistic organisation of
the State. In the first place, by socialising surplus -labour
the standard of comfort would be raised without having
recourse to restraint as a means. Other than the merest
physical pleasures would thus be placed within the reach of
the worker ; this, in itself, would give him a standard worth
maintaining, and tend to limit population. Moral restraint
322 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
by men with rational pleasures is far more likely to be effec
tual than even a positive check in the present state of affairs.
But while I believe that the moral check will never in our
present social organisation become usual, except in those
classes whose standard of comfort is far above the level of
bare subsistence, I am inclined to doubt whether, under any
form of Society, it will be adopted by the great mass of man
kind. We are dealing with one of the most imperious of the
animal instincts of man, and it may well be questioned, not
only whether such restraint is possible, but whether, having
due regard to the sanitary and social value of the instinct, it
is advisable to endeavour to restrain it. With the coming
emancipation of women, and the approaching decay of our foreign
trade, the problems of sex and of population will come more
and more into the foreground. It is becoming of really urgent
importance to discuss earnestly, scientifically, and from every
possible standpoint, the difficulties which present themselves ;
to calmly weigh all the theories which may be honestly
propounded, and not to dismiss every discussion as both
unpleasant and unfitting. The truly unpleasant and unfitting
conduct is to be brought daily face to face with these great
race-problems, and yet daily to ignore their existence, and
to condemn all, however earnest, consideration of them as
obscene and unprofitable. Yet this has been essentially the
spirit of our modern social and political leaders. They have
denied that these problems which are uppermost in fact and
thought have any existence, and those who would meet the
difficulties of the labouring classes have been professionally
reproved, socially ostracised, or legally silenced. There was
a time when any discussion of the population problem was
repressed ; time was when even mention of the moral restraint
of the disciples of Malthus was tabooed ; the time is still
when Neo-Malthusianism is treated as outside the field of
legitimate discussion. Far be it from me to assert that Neo-
Malthusianism will solve the problem ; l but of this one thing
I feel certain that the problem will grow more and more
1 [Actually, I believe that any doctrine of restraint which does not distin
guish between the fit and the unlit is a grave national danger.]
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 323
urgent, and that society will have to face and to solve it in
one way or another. No amount of hypocrisy will suffice to
hide its existence, and, if we are wise, we shall consider,
while there is time, any solution which may be propounded
in all its bearings, physiological and social. We cannot
afford to reject any possible solution till we are scientifically
convinced that it must be anti-social in its results.
The apparent horror with which any discussion of this
matter has been met is, I fear, to no little extent due to our
present economical conditions. The same ultimate feeling of
pocket, which, to some extent perhaps unconsciously, demands
free trade in labour, demands also the repression of all free
discussion of this great race difficulty. For the same reason
that it is not to the interest of our modern plutocracy that
the wages of labour should be high, for this reason we
cannot hope, under the existing state of affairs, for any solution
of the complex problem of population. It is because, with a
socialisation of surplus -labour, there would cease to be a
class interested in the lowness of wages, that we trust to
Socialism for a thorough and earnest investigation of the
problems of sex. We are Socialists, because we believe that
Socialism alone will have the courage to find a satisfactory
solution. It alone can raise the standard of comfort to such
a height that the worker will be able to procure other than
the merest physical pleasures ; so long as he is tied down to
the bare means of subsistence it is idle, unreasonable, and
even impertinent, to suggest that he should renounce his one
unpaid-for excitement. Under Socialism alone shall we be
able to confine the importation of foreign labour to those few
skilled artizans who have really something to teach our own
workers. Under Socialism alone will it be possible to reap
the advantages of any limit of population, because one class
will not be interested in the over-production of another.
Then only will it be possible to consider dispassionately, and
without the suspicion of class bias, all the difficulties of the
problem. With the socialisation of surplus-labour it will be
to the interest of the whole community to maintain its labour-
power at that amount which gives the greatest surplus value,
324 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
to discover and maintain the limit of efficient population.
Indeed, the socialistic seems the only form of community
which can morally demand, and, if necessary, legally enforce,
restraint of some kind upon its members.
Thus the possibility of meeting and solving the population
problem is seen to be closely connected with the socialisation
of surplus-labour. But the possibility of the continued exist
ence of Socialism depends, as was long ago remarked by
John Stuart Mill, on the solution of this very population
problem. 1
(5) There is no means of measuring an individual s con
tribution to tJte labour stock of the community.
We have seen that it is a fundamental principle of the new
moral code that each individual shall undertake labour of
social value, that is, not merely labour, but labour which is
really useful to the community. The reward of any individual
is to depend on the quality and quantity of the labour which
he has contributed to the common stock. It is needful,
therefore, that there should be some general equality, some
practical coincidence, between this reward and the service
rendered to the community. Putting aside the labour of direc
tion, education, and amusement, which requires special valuation,
the reward of productive labour has in some manner to be
made proportionate to the amount of production. By the
consumption of certain quantities of stored labour and of
labour-power a commodity is produced, and placed at the
disposal of the community. The utility of this commodity
to the community is to be in some manner equated to the
sacrifice of the individual, to the labour-power which he has
usefully expended. The measurement of value by useful
labour is the idea which naturally suggests itself. Protest
as the orthodox economists may, it is useful labour, which, I
firmly believe, can be the only moral, that is, socially advan
tageous, basis of exchange. Without attempting, in the
brief space I have still at my disposal, any analysis of Karl
Marx s theory of value, still less entering upon its defence,
it yet may be profitable to inquire briefly whether even the
1 Political Economy (People s Edition), p. 226.
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 325
admissions of its critics do not lead us to the same conclu
sions as the great economist draws from his theory ; whether
these admissions, indeed, are not sufficient to justify us in
assuming that useful labour can be made a reasonable basis
of exchange. A criticism of Marx which has met with the
approval of some of our orthodox economists, and which is
certainly lucid, if it be not unanswerable, is that published
by Mr. P. H. Wicksteed in To-Day (October, 1884). I propose
to refer to it in the following remarks. The really important
features of Marx s theory are :
(1) That the cost of labour-power (say for one day) to
the capitalist, when measured in labour-power, is less than
the amount of labour put into the commodities produced
by that labour-power in the same time (one day).
(2) That the exchange- value of a commodity is determined
by the average labour required for its production.
(3) That the difference between the cost of labour-power
in labour-power, and the exchange-value of the commodity
produced, the surplus value in Marx s theory (or, what it is
perhaps better to term the output of surplus -labour), goes
into the pocket of the capitalist.
The first point will probably be admitted, as well as the
third, if for a moment we use the word surplus-labour, and
do not complicate matters by identifying it at present with
surplus-value. These conclusions are, indeed, forced upon
us if we take the total result of the labour of the industrial
classes. This labour is not only sufficient to procure or
prepare the bare necessaries of life for those classes, and
such measure of comfort as they enjoy (i.e. the cost of
labour -power in terms of labour -power), but at the same
time it provides the monopolist class with every imaginable
luxury and convenience which their fancy demands, or their
control of labour-power will extend to (i.e. the surplus-labour
is monopolised). It is obvious that there is a vast amount of
such surplus-labour, the results of which are either stored for
future use, or at once consumed as luxuries by the monopolists
themselves. The monopoly, as opposed to the socialisation,
of this surplus -labour is the great economic fact of our
326 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
present social organisation. It does not stand or fall with
Marx s theory that the essence of exchange-value is labour,
but Marx s discussion of that theory has first placed the fact
clearly before us in all its full hideousness. Now I contend
that the all - important outcome of Marx s theory is really
accepted, if on other grounds, by his critic. Mr. Wickstecd
admits " the fact that a man can purchase as much labour-
force l as he likes at the price of bare subsistence" (To-Day,
p. 409), and further tells us that there is " a coincidence in
the case of ordinary manufactured articles between exchange-
value and amount of labour contained " (p. 399). Thus
we see that, if the labourer can produce more than his bare
subsistence in a day of labour a fact scarcely disputable
Mr. Wicksteed himself really allows that the results of this
surplus -labour go, owing to the above coincidence, to the
capitalist. But this is precisely Marx s (( inherent law of
capitalistic production."
Now our critic, by means of the laws first laid down
by Stanley Jevons (those " of indifference " and " of the
variation of utility ") logically 2 deduces that the coincidence
between exchange -value and amount of labour contained,
by which is meant socially useful labour, does really exist
for all ordinary articles of manufacture. Xow these are the
very articles with which the socialised State would in the
first place have to deal, and this fortunate "coincidence,"
whether it be deduced from a jelly theory of labour, or a jelly
theory of utility, is just the practical fact which we require in
order to measure, with some degree of approximation, the
services of each member of the community, the magnitude of
his contribution to the common labour-stock. Since in all
ordinary manufactured articles the value coincides with the
amount of labour contained, we are at liberty to take for such
articles labour as the standard of value. This standard will
1 Rather labour-power ; we cannot purchase force, but only the capacity for
changing various motions, i.e. poAver. Force is not an entity at all, but a mode
of changing motion. The confusion has arisen from the double sense of the
German word Kraft.
2 We are certainly not called upon to question this logic, if it leads our
opponents to a truth we Avere already on other grounds convinced of.
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 327
in those cases be as convenient, and as legitimate, a medium
of exchange as gold. If we now turn to other articles, the
supply and quality of which is uninfluenced by labour the
" natural and artificial monopolies " of which Mr. Wick-
steed speaks it is perfectly true that the labour theory of
value is inapplicable. But we do not think they would
introduce confusion into the exchange system of the socialised
State. When we analyse these natural and artificial mono
polies we find :
(1) That the exchange-value of many is fictitious, being
due to the survival of a barbaric taste, which would almost
certainly disappear with the spread of education (e.g. precious
stones, gold and silver utensils and ornaments).
(2) That others, which, owing to special artistic merit,
stand above competition from modern production, ought on
any sound socialistic theory to be removed from the field of
barter, and placed in local and national museums, or, at any
rate, used to adorn public buildings.
(3) That some few natural monopolies, as, for example
a limited local supply of water, or output of salt, would
require to have their distribution regulated by the State ;
this is a not infrequent occurrence even under our present
organisation.
(4) That there is nothing to hinder, under a socialistic
system, disproportionate amounts of labour being given by
those who are inclined to do so for the majority of the re
maining artificial monopolies. An enthusiastic china-maniac
might, in a socialistic community, devote the whole of a year s
labour to purchase an artistically valueless, but absolutely
unique pot if he were so uneducated as to take pleasure in that
form of self-sacrifice. His doing so w r ould doubtless be a
source of gratification to the supporters of the utility theory
of exchange ; it is not obvious how it would shake the founda
tions of a socialistic community, except as evidence of that
want of common sense which is a primary condition for the
stability of any form of society.
It seems to me unnecessary for the Socialist to assert that
the common something in all commodities is the useful labour
328 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
consumed in their production. It is sufficient if such labour
can, in all ordinary cases, and with the approximation really
sufficient in practical life, be taken as a measure of their value.
Socialism insists that in the relation of the individual to the
community the amount and quality of his contribution to the
labour-stock can fairly be taken as a measure of his reward,
since this contribution has practically a definite exchange-
value in terms of all ordinary manufactured articles. It is
this coincidence between the labour, or social value of an
individual and the exchange-value of wares, which is destined
to introduce the moral element into the industrial system of
the future. It suggests how Society can be as safely, and as
reasonably based upon labour, upon the social energy of its
members, as upon the individual ownership of wealth, the
monopoly by a few of the surplus -labour of the whole com
munity.
I have endeavoured to give in this paper a brief sketch
of the arguments with which, as it seems to me, a rational
Socialist may meet some of the principal objections raised to
the gradual reconstruction of society on Socialistic lines. But
such arguments will undoubtedly have far less weight in the
minds of our opponents than the stubborn logic of fact, than
those inexorable economic changes which the most obstinately
conservative temperament must at last recognise to be steadily
taking place, ever in the direction of socialisation. No appeal
to human or divine power, no custom or tradition, will check
the forces which are remoulding the wants and ideas of
human societies. They stand outside us ; we can investigate,
understand, and follow, but we cannot control. There are
some who interpret these changes as a national decadence, and
accordingly paint the future in the blackest colours. They
find the old religious notions toppling down like the old
mediaeval churches ; they do not see that both alike are worn
out, and they would restore where they ought to rebuild.
Finding the old conceptions of morality, social and sexual, in
which they have been reared, unworkable in the present, they
cry that there is no light, when, if they were couched for the
cataract of prejudice, they could scarce face the gleams of the
THE MOEAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 329
sun. On the other hand, the Socialist finds in the moral and
economic changes in progress the development of mankind to
a fuller enjoyment of life, the substitution for superstition of a
faith in knowledge, the replacement of a worship of the un
knowable by a reverence for concrete Society as embodied in
the State. The Socialist teaches that the aim of industry is not
in the first place supremacy in the world-markets, but is the
general welfare of the community, as evidenced by the raising of
the general standard of physical comfort and intellectual develop
ment. Viewed from this standpoint, the changes which we see
in progress, bring a feeling of unmixed satisfaction, and throw
open a field of healthy social work and fruitful thought to all
who would partake of that activity which is the joy of life.
So far from our age being an age of stagnation, or of decadence,
it is an age of greater movements than have been witnessed
since the sixteenth century, and it is in our own country that
two at least of these movements will more immediately bear
fruit, and most powerfully influence the development of the
rest of mankind. On the one hand to w T ork out the emanci
pation of women will be one of the gravest tasks, replete with
the most far-reaching consequences, that England has ever
taken upon herself. On the other hand we have received
Socialism from France and Germany as an ideal of Utopian
dreamers, we must strive to return it to them as a political
possibility, not as a blind protest of suffering toilers, but as a
workable social polity.
XII
SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PRACTICE
Let him who will, prai.-H- your legislators, but I must say what I
think. Plato.
IN the course of last year there was a great deal of discus
sion in the newspapers and out of them concerning the
dwellings of the so-called poor." Numerous philanthropical
people wrote letters and articles describing the extreme misery
and unhealthy condition of many of our London courts and
alleys. The Prince of Wales got up in the House of Lords
and remarked that he had visited several of the most wretched
slums in the Holborn district, and found them " very deplor
able indeed." The whole subject seemed an excellent one out
of which to make political capital. The leader of the
Conservatives wrote an article in a Tory magazine on
1 This lecture was originally delivered in February 1884 to a Deptford
working-men s club. It lias since been twice printed as a pamphlet. The
following dedicatory note to the first edition may serve to explain its object and
its limitations :
To E. C.
This lecture has been printed just as it was delivered. You would have
wished it carefully revised. Other labour has hindered my touching it, and it
noAv seems better to let its homely language stand. It was addressed to simple
folk ; had it been intended for a middle-class audience it would have adopted a
more logical, but undoubtedly harsher tone. The selfishness of the upper
classes arises to a great extent from ignorance, but these are times in which such
ignorance itself is criminal. The object of this pamphlet will be fulfilled should
it bring home even to one or two that truth which I have learned from you,
namely that the higher Socialism of our time does not strive for a mere
political reorganisation, it is labouring for a moral renascence. K. P.
INNER TEMPLE, Christmas Eve, 1884.
SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PKACTICE 331
the dwellings of the poor. He told us that things are
much better in the country than they are in the towns,
that the great landlords look after the housing of the
agricultural labourers. It is the employers of labour, the
capitalists, who are at fault. THEY ought to provide proper
dwellings for their workpeople. This was the opinion of
Lord Salisbury, a great owner of land. But the Conservatives
having come forward as the friends of the working-man, it
seemed impossible, with a view to future elections, to let the
matter rest there. Accordingly, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, a
Radical leader and capitalist, wrote another article in a
Liberal magazine, to show that it is no business whatever of
the employers of labour to look after the housing of their
workpeople. It is the duty of the owner of the land to see
that decent houses are built upon it. In other words, the
only men who under our present social regime could make
vast improvements, threw the responsibility off their own
shoulders. " Very deplorable indeed," said Lord Salisbury,
" but of course not the landlord s fault ; why does not that
greedy fellow, the capitalist, look after his workpeople ? "
" Nothing could be more wretched ; I am sure it will lead to
a revolution," ejaculated Mr. Chamberlain, " but, of course,
it has nothing to do with the capitalist ; why does not that
idle person, that absolutely useless landlord, build more decent
houses ? " Then the landlord and capitalist smiled in their
sleeves, and agreed that it would be well to appoint a Eoyal
Commission, which meant, that after a certain amount of
philanthropic twaddle and a wide sea of political froth, the
whole matter would end in nothing, or an absolutely fruitless
Act of Parliament. 1 Any change would have to be made at
the cost of either the landlord or the capitalist, or of both, and
whether we like it or not, it is these two who now practically
govern this country. They are not likely to empty their
pockets for our benefit, t It is generally known how strong
the interest of the landlords is in both Houses of Parliament,
but this is comparatively small when we measure the interests
1 [Sixteen years afterwards we see that it has ended in nothing of the least
practical value.]
332 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
of the capitalists. You will be surprised, if you investigate
the matter, to find the large proportion of the House of
Commons which represents the interests of capital. The
number of members of that House who are themselves
employers of labour, who are connected with great com
mercial interests, who are chairmen or directors of large
capitalistic companies, or who in some other way are
representatives of capital (as well as of their constituents) is
quite astounding. It is said that one large railway company
alone could muster forty votes on a division ; while the railway
interests, if combined, might form a coalition which, in
conceivable cases, would be of extreme danger to the State.
I have merely touched upon this matter to remind you how
thoroughly we are governed in this country by a class. The
government of this country is not in the hands of the people.
It is mere self-deception for us to suppose that all classes
have a voice in the management of our affairs. The
educative class (the class which labours with its head) and the
productive class (the class which labours with its hands) have
little or no real influence in the House of Commons. The
governing class is the class of wealth, in both its branches
owners of land and owners of capital. This class naturally
governs in its own interests, and the interests of wealth are
what we must seek for would we understand the motive for
any particular form of foreign or domestic policy on the part
of either great State party.
It may strike you that I have wandered very far from the
topic with which I started, namely, the dwellings of the
poor, but I wanted to point out to you, by a practical example,
why it is very unlikely that a reform, urgently needed by one
class of the community, will be carried out efficiently by
another, a governing class, when that reform must be paid for
out of the latter s pockets. Confirmation of this view may
be drawn from the fact that the governing class pretend to
have discovered first in 1884, that the poor are badly housed.
There is something almost laughable in all the pother lately
raised about the housing of the poor. So far as my own
experience goes and I would ask if it is not a fact the
SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 333
poor are not worse housed in 1884 than they were in 1874.
The evil is one of very old standing. It was crying out for
reform ten years ago, twenty years ago, forty years ago.
More than forty years ago in 1842 there was a report
issued by a " Commission on the sanitary condition of the
labouring population of Great Britain." The descriptions
there given are of a precisely similar character to what was
recently put before the public in the little tract entitled The
Bitter Cry of Outcast London. In that report we hear of
40,000 people in Liverpool alone living in cellars underground.
We are told that the annual number of deaths from fever,
generated by uncleanliness and overcrowding in the dwellings
of the poor, was then in England and Wales double the
number of persons killed in the battle of Waterloo. We
hear of streets without drainage, of workshops without
ventilation, and of ten to twenty people sleeping in the same
room, often five in a bed and rarely with any regard to sex.
The whole essence of that report went to show that, owing
to the great capitalistic industries, the working classes, if
they had not become poorer, had become more demoralised.
They had been forced to crowd together, and occupy unhealthy
and often ruinous dwellings. The governing class and the
public authorities scarcely troubled themselves about the
matter, but treated the working classes as machines rather
than as men. We see then that precisely the same evil
was crying as loudly for remedy in 1842 as it cries now in
1884. We ask : Why has there been no remedy applied during
all these years ? There can only be two answers to that
question: either no remedy is possible, or else those in whose
power the remedy lies refuse to apply it. 1
Is no remedy possible ? A thoughtful Conservative recently
stated that although he recognised the misery of the
poorer members of the working classes, he still held no
remedy was possible. The misery might become so intense
that an outbreak would result ; still, when the outbreak
was over, matters would sink back into their old course.
1 Applying a remedy connotes more than passing a Public Health Act. It
means forcing vestries and local boards to carry out its spirit.
334 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
There must be poor, and the poor would be miserable. 1 No
violent revolution, no peaceful reform, could permanently
benefit the poorer class of toilers. It was, so to speak, a
law of nature (if not of God) that society should have a basis
of misery. History proved this to ~be always the case.
It is to this latter phrase I want to call your attention
History proved this to he always the case. Our Conservative
friend was distinctly right in his method when he appealed to
history. That is peculiarly the method which ought to be
used in the solution of all social and political problems.
It is of the utmost importance to induce the working classes
to study social and political problems from the historical
standpoint. Let us listen to no emotional appeals, nor to
the mere talk of rival political agitators. Let us endeavour,
if possible, to see how like problems have been treated
by other peoples in other ages, and with what measure of
success. The study of history is, I am aware, extremely
difficult, because the popular history books tell us only of
wars and of kings, and very little of the real life of the
people how they worked, how they were fed, and how they
were housed. But the real mission of history is to tell us
how the great mass of the people toiled and lived ; to tell us
of their pleasure, and of their misery. That is the only
history that can help us in social problems. Does, then,
history tell us that there always has been, and therefore
always must be, a large amount of misery at the basis of
society ? The question is one really of statistics, and ex
tremely difficult to answer ; but, after some investigation, I
must state that I have come to a conclusion totally different
from that of our Conservative friend. I admit, in the words
of the man who worked for the poor in Galilee, that at all
times and places " the poor ye have always with you" ; but the
amount of poverty, as well as the degree of misery attending
it, have varied immensely, I have made special investigation
of the condition of the artisan class in Germany some three
to four hundred years ago, and do not hesitate to assert that
1 This seems to be also the doctrine recently expounded to Church
Paraders," March, 1887.
SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 335
anything like the condition of the courts and dwellings of
poorer London was then totally unknown. If this be true,
the argument from history is false. The artisan class has
occupied a firmer and more substantial position in times gone
by than it at present occupies. If it has sunk in the scale of
comfort, it can certainly rise. In other words, a remedy for
the present state of things does seem to me possible. Should
any of you want to know why the working classes were better
off four hundred years ago than they are at present, I must
state it as my own opinion, that it was due to a better social
system. The social system of those old towns, so far as the
workman was concerned, depended on his guild, while the
political system was based as a rule upon the combined guilds.
Thus the union which organised the craftsmen and their
work, which also brought them together for social purposes,
was practically the same as that which directed the municipal
government of their city. If you would exactly understand
what that means, you must suppose the trades unions of to
day to have a large share in the government of London. If
they had, how long do you think the dwellings of the poor
would remain what they are ? Do you believe the evil would
remain another forty years ? or that in 1924 it would be
necessary to shuffle out of immediate action by appointing
another Eoyal Commission ?
As I have said, the guilds of working men had originally
a large share in municipal government. The City guilds, as
you know, are still very wealthy bodies, and have great
influence in the City. This is all that remains in London of
the old system of working-men s guilds taking a part in the
management of the City s affairs.
In old days, then, the labouring classes were united in
guilds, and these guilds had a considerable share in local
government. The social and political system was thus, to
some extent, based upon labour. Such an organisation of
society we call socialistic. The workmen of four hundred years
ago were better off than are the workmen of to-day, because
the old institutions were more socialistic; in other words,
society was organised rather on the basis of labour than on the
336 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
basis of wealth. A society based upon wealth, since it grants
power and place to the owners of something which is now in
the hands of a few individuals, may be termed individualistic.
To-day we live in an individualistic state. I believe the
workman of four hundred years ago was better off than his
fellow now, because he formed part of a socialistic rather than
an individualistic system. I believe a remedy possible for the
: present state of affairs, because history seems to teach us that
the artisan has a firmer and happier position under a socialism
than under an individualism. It also teaches us that some
forms of socialism have existed in the past, and may therefore be
possible in the present or in the future. I hold, and I would ask
you to believe with me, that a remedy is possible. If it is, we
are thrown back on the alternative that the governing class
has refused or neglected to apply it. We have seen that the
evil did not arise, or did not accumulate to such an extent,
where society was partly based upon labour ; we are, there
fore, forced to the probable conclusion, that the evil has
arisen, and continues to subsist, because our social and
political system is based upon wealth rather than upon labour
because we live under an individualism rather than under
a socialism. It is the fault of our present social system, and
;not a law of history, that the toilers should be condemned to
^extreme misery and poverty.
We have now to consider the following questions : What
do we mean by labour and a social system based upon labour ?
By what means can we attempt to convert a system based
upon wealth to one based upon labour ; in other words, how
shall we proceed to convert our present individualism into a
socialism ? Under the latter question it will be necessary to
include the consideration of the attitude which the artisan class
should itself take with regard to organisations for socialistic
change, and how it should endeavour to take political action,
especially with regard to the two great capitalistic parties.
Let me first endeavour to explain what I understand by
labour. You may imagine at first, perhaps, that I refer only
to labour of the hand such labour as is required to make a
pair of boots or turn a lathe. But I conceive labour to be
SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 337
something of far wider extent than this. I hold the term to
include all work, whether work of the head or of the hand,
which is needful or profitable to the community at large. The
man who puts cargo into a ship is no more or less a labourer
than the captain who directs her course across the ocean ;
nor is either of them more of a labourer than the mathema
tician or astronomer whose calculations and observations
enable the captain to know which direction he shall take when
he is many hundred miles from land. The shoemaker or the
postman are no more labourers than the clerk who sits in a
merchant s office or the judge who sits on the bench. The
schoolmaster, the writer, and the actor are all true labourers.
In some cases they may be overpaid ; in many they are
underpaid. Men of wealth have been known to pay the
governess who teaches their children less than they pay their
cook, and to treat her with infinitely less respect. I have laid
stress on the importance of labour of the head, because I
have met with certain working men who believed nothing but
labour of the hand could have any value; that all but labourers
with the hand were idlers. You have doubtless heard of the
victory gained last year by English troops in Egypt. Now,
how do you suppose that victory was gained ? "Were the
English soldiers a bit braver than the Arabs ? Were they
stronger ? Not in the least. They won the victory because
they were better disciplined, because they had better weapons,
shortly, because what we may term their organisation was
better. That organisation was due to labour of the head.
Now, what happened in Egypt is going on in the world at
large every day. It is not always the stronger, but the
better organised, the better educated man who goes ahead.
What is true of individual men is true of nations. The
better organised, the better educated nation is victorious in
the battle of life. We English have been so successful
because we were well organised, because we were better
educated than the Egyptians, Zulus, and other races we have
conquered. You must never forget how much of that
organisation, that education, is due to labourers with the
head. Some of you may be indifferent to the great empire of
338 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
England, to this superiority of Englishmen, but let me assure
you that, small as in some cases is the comfort of the English
working classes, it is on the average large compared with
that of an inferior race compared, say, with the abject
condition of the Egyptian peasant. I want, if possible, to point
out to you the need for sympathy between labour of all kinds
that labourers with the hand and labourers with the head
are mutually dependent. They are both true labourers as
opposed to the idlers the drones, who, by some chance
having a monopoly of wealth, live on the labour of others.
I would say to every man " Friend, what is your calling,
what are you doing for society at large ? Are you making
its shoes, are you teaching its children, are you helping to
maintain order and forward its business ? If you are follow
ing none of these occupations, are you relieving its work hours
by ministering to its play ? Do you bring pleasure to the
people as an actor, a writer, or an artist ? If you are doing
none of these, if you are simply a possessor of wealth,
struggling to amuse yourself and pass through life for your
own pleasure, then why, then, you are not wanted here, and
the sooner you clear out, bag and baggage, the better for us
and perhaps for yourself." Do you grasp now the significance
of a society based upon labour ? The possessor of wealth,
simply because he has wealth, would have no place in such
a society. The workers would remove him even as the
worker bees eject the drone from their hive.
Society ought to be one vast guild of labourers workers
with the head and workers with the hand ; and so organised
there would be no place in it for those who merely live on the
work of others. In a political or social system based upon
labour nobody on the mere ground of wealth could lay claim
to power. How far we are at present from sucli a Socialism
may be best grasped by noting that wealth has now almost
all political and social power; labour may have the name
but has little or none of the reality.
We have now reached what I conceive to be the funda
mental axiom of Socialism. Society must be organised on the
\basis of labour, and therefore political power, the power of
SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 339
organising, must be in the hands of labour. That labour, as
I have endeavoured to impress upon you, is of two kinds.
There is labour of the hand, which provides necessaries for
all society ; there is labour of the head, which produces all
that we term progress, and enables any individual society to
maintain its place in the battle of life the labour which
educates and organises. I have come across a tendency in
some workers with the hand to suppose all folk beside them
selves to be idlers, social drones, supported by their work.
I admit that the great mass of idlers are in what are termed
the upper and middle classes of society. But this arises
from the fact that, society being graduated solely according
to wealth, the people with the most money, the richest and
the idlest, of course take their place in these viciously named
upper classes. In a labour scale they would naturally appear
at the very bottom, and form the dregs of population. It
is true the labourer with the head is, as a rule, better clothed,
housed, and fed than the labourer with the hand, but this
often arises from the fact that he is also a capitalist. Still,
if the labourer with the head, whose labour is his sole source
of livelihood, is better clothed, housed, and fed than the
artisan, it does not show that in all cases he is earning more
than his due ; on the contrary, it may denote that the artisan
is earning far less than his due. The difference, in fact, often
represents the work which goes to support the drones of our
present social system.
At this point I reach what I conceive to be the second
great axiom of true Socialism. All forms of labour are equally
honourable. No form of labour which is necessary for society
can disgrace the man who undertakes it, or place him in a
lower social grade than any other kind of work. Let us look
at this point somewhat more closely, as it is of the first
importance. So long as the worker looks upon his work as
merely work for himself considers it only as a means to his
own subsistence, and values it only as it satisfies his own
wants, so long one form of work will be more degrading than
another. To shovel mud into a cart will be a lower form of
work than to make a pair of shoes, and to make shoes will
340 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
not be such high -class labour as to direct a factory. But
there is another way of regarding work, in which all forms
of real labour appear of equal value, viz., when the labourer
looks at his work, not with regard to himself, but with regard
to society at large. Let him consider his work as something
necessary for society, as a condition of its existence, and then
all gradations vanish. It is quite as necessary for society that
its mud should be cleared from the streets, as it is that it
should have shoes, or that its factories should be directed
Once let the workman recognise that his labour is needful for
society, and, whatever its character, it becomes honourable at
once. In other words, from the social standpoint all labour
is equally honourable. We might even go so far as to assert
that the more irksome forms of labour are the more honour
able, because they involve the greater personal sacrifice for
the need of society. Once let this second axiom of true
Socialism be recognised the equality of every form of
labour and all the vicious distinctions of caste, the false
lines which society has drawn between one class of workers
and another, must disappear. The degradation of labour
must cease. Once admit that labour, though differing in
kind, as the shoemaker s from the blacksmith s, is equal in
degree, and all class barriers are broken down. Thus, in a
socialistic state, or in a society based upon labour, there can
clearly be no difference of class. All labourers, whether of the
hand or the head, must meet on equal terms ; they are alike
needful to society ; their value will depend only on the fitness
and the energy with which they perform their particular duties.
Before leaving this subject of labour there is one point,
however, which must be noticed. I have said that all forms
of labour are equally honourable, because we may regard
them as equally necessary for society. But still the effect on
the individual of various kinds of labour will be different.
The man who spends his whole day in shovelling up mud will
hardly be as intelligent as the shoemaker or the engineer.
His labour does not call for the same exercise of intelligence,
nor draw out his ingenuity to the same extent. Thus, although
his labour is equally honourable, it has not such a good in-
SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 341
fluence on the man himself. Hence the hours of labour in
such occupations ought to be as short as possible ; sufficient
leisure ought to be given to those engaged in the more
mechanical and disagreeable forms of toil to elevate and
improve themselves apart from their work. When we admit
that all labour is equally honourable, and therefore deserving
of equal wage, then to educate the labourer will not lead him
to despise his work. It will only lead him to appreciate and
enjoy more fully his leisure. This question of leisure is a
matter of the utmost importance. We hear much of the
demand for shorter hours of labour ; but how is the increased
spare time to be employed ? Many a toiler looks with envy
upon the extravagant luxury of the wealthy, and not un
naturally cries : " What right have you to enjoy all this,
while I can hardly procure the necessaries of life ? " But
there is a matter for which I could wish the working classes
would envy the wealthy even more than they might reasonably
do for their physical luxury namely, their power to procure
education. There is to me something unanswerable in the
cry which the workman might raise against the wealthy :
" What right have you to be educated, w r hile I am ignorant ? "
Far more unanswerable than the cry " What right have you
to be rich while I am poor ? " I could wish a cry for educa
tion might arise from the toilers as the cry for bread went
up in the forties. It is the one thing which would render an
increase of leisure really valuable to the workers ; which
would enable them to guide themselves, and assist society,
through the dangerous storms which seem likely to gather in
the near future. Leisure employed in education, in self
improvement,, seems to me the only means by which the
difference in character between various forms of labour can
be equalised. This is a matter in which the labourers with
the head can practically assist those with the hand. Let the
two again unite for that mutual assistance which is so
necessary, if between them they are to reorganise society into
one vast guild of labour.
If we pass for a moment from the possibilities of the
present to those of a more distant future, we might conceive
342 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
the labourers with the hand to attain such a degree of
o
education that workers of both kinds might be fused together.
The same man might labour with his pen in the morning and
with his shovel after mid-day. That, I think, would be the
ideal existence in which society, as an entire body, would
progress at the greatest possible rate. I have endeavoured,
then, to lay before you what I understand by labour ; how
all true labour is equally honourable and deserving of an
equal wage. If many of the anomalies and much of the
misery of our present state of society would disappear, were
it organised on a socialistic or labour basis, it becomes
necessary to consider in what manner the labour basis differs
from, and is opposed to, the present basis of wealth.
In order to illustrate what the present basis of wealth
means, let me put to you a hypothetical case. Let us suppose
three men on an island separated from the rest of the world.
We will also suppose that there is a sufficient supply of seed,
ploughs, and generally of agricultural necessaries. If, now,
one of the three men were to assert that the island, the
seed, and the ploughs belonged to him, and his two comrades
for some reason or want of reason accepted his assertion,
let us trace what would follow. Obviously, he would have
an entire monopoly of all the means of sustaining life
on the island. He could part with them at whatever rate
he pleased, and could insist upon the produce of all the
labour-power which it would be possible to extract from
these two men, in return for supplying them witli the barest
necessities of existence. He would naturally do nothing ;
they would till the ground with his implements, and sow his
seed and store it in his barn. After this he might employ
them in work tending to increase his luxuries, in providing
him with as fine a house and as easy furniture as they
were capable of producing. He would probably allow them
to build themselves shanties as protection from the weather,
and grant them sufficient food to sustain life. All their time,
after providing these necessaries for themselves, would be
devoted to his service. He would be landlord and capitalist,
having a complete monopoly of wealth. He could practically
SOCIALISM: IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 343
treat the other two men as slaves. Let us somewhat extend
our example, and suppose this relation to hold between the
one man and a considerable number of men on the island.
Then it might be really advantageous for all the inhabitants,
if the one man directed their labour. We may suppose him
to be a practical farmer, who thoroughly understood his
business ; so that, by his directing the others, the greatest
amount possible would be produced from the land. As such
a director of farming operations, lie would be a labourer with
the head, and worthy as any man under him to receive his
hire. He would have as great a claim as any one he directed
to the necessaries of life produced by the labourers with the
hand. In a socialistic scheme he would still remain director ;
he would still receive his share of the produce, and the result
of the labour of the community would be divided according to
the labour of its members. On the other hand, if our farm-
director were owner of all things on the island, he might
demand not only the share due to him for his labour of the
head, but also that all the spare labour of the other inhabi
tants should be directed to improving his condition rather
than their own. After providing for themselves the bare
necessities of life the other islanders might be called upon to
spend all the rest of their time in ministering to his luxury.
He could demand this because he would have a monopoly of
all the land and all the wealth of the island. Such a state of
affairs on the island would be an individualism, or a society
based upon wealth. I think this example will show clearly
the difference between a society based upon labour and one
based upon wealth. Commonplace as the illustration may
seem, it is one which can be extended, and yet rarely is
extended, to the state of affairs we find in our own country.
We have but to replace our single landowner by a number
of landowners and capitalists, who as a group will have a
monopoly of land and of wealth. They can virtually force
the labouring classes, who have neither land nor capital, to
minister to their luxury in return for the more needful
supports of life. The degree of comfort to which they can
limit the labouring classes will depend on the following con-
344 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
siderations, which, of course, vary from time to time : First,
their own self-interest in keeping at least a sufficient supply
of labour in such decent health and strength that it can
satisfy their wants ; secondly, their fear that too great pinching
may lead to a violent revolution : and, thirdly, a sort of feeling
arising partly perhaps from religion, partly perhaps from in
herited race-sympathy of discomfort at the sight of suffering.
The greater demand there is for luxury on the part of
the wealthy, the smaller is the time that the labouring
classes can devote to the improvement of their own condition
and the increase of their own comfort. Let us take the following
case, which may not be the absolute truth, but which will
exemplify the law we have stated. Suppose that the labour
ing classes work eight hours a day. Now, these eight hours
are spent not only in producing the absolute necessities of
existence, and the degree of comfort in which our toilers live,
but in producing also all the luxuries enjoyed by^the rich. Let
us suppose, for example, that five hours suffice to sow and to
till, and to weave, and to fetch and carry shortly, to produce
the food-supply of the country, and the average comfort which
the labourer enjoys as to house and raiment. What, then,
becomes of the other three hours work ? It is consumed in
making luxuries of all kinds for the monopolists, fine houses,
elegant furniture, dainty food, and so forth. These three hours
are spent, not in improving the condition of the labourer s
own class, not in building themselves better dwellings or
weaving themselves better clothes, nor, on the other hand, are
they spent in public works for the benefit of the whole com
munity, but solely in supplying luxuries for wealthy indi
viduals. The wealthy can demand these luxuries because
they possess a monopoly of land and of capital shortly, of
the means of subsistence. This monopoly of the means of
subsistence makes them in fact, if not in name, slave-owners.
Such is the result of the individualistic as opposed to the
socialistic system. We see now why the houses of the poor
are deplorable namely, because that surplus -labour which
should be devoted to improving them is consumed in supply
ing the luxuries of the rich. We may state it, indeed, as a
SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PKACTICE 345
general law of a society based upon wealth : that the misery
of the labouring classes is directly proportional to the luxury of
the wealthy. This law is indeed a very old one ; the only
strange thing is that it is every day forgotten.
Having noted, then, wherein the evil of the social system
based upon wealth lies, we have lastly to consider how far,
and by what means, it is possible to remedy it.
The only true method of investigating a question of this
kind is, I feel sure, the historical one. Let us ask ourselves
how in past ages one state of society has been replaced by
another, and then, if possible, apply the general law to the
present time.
Now, there are a considerable number of socialistic
teachers I will not call them false Socialists who are
never weary of crying out that our present state of society
is extremely unjust, and that it must be destroyed. They
are perpetually telling the labouring classes that the rich
unjustly tyrannise over them, and that this tyranny must be
thrown off. According to these teachers, it would seem as if
the rich had absolutely entered into a conspiracy to defraud
the poor. Now, although I call myself a Socialist, I must
tell you plainly that I consider such teaching not only very
foolish, but extremely harmful. It can arise only from men
who are ignorant, or from men who seek to win popularity
from the w r orking classes by appealing to their baser passions.
So far from aiding true Socialism, it stirs up class-hatred,
and instead of bringing classes together, it raises a barrier of
bitterness and hostility between them. It is idle to talk of a
conspiracy of the rich against the poor, of one class against
another. A man is born, into his class, and into the traditions
of his class. He is not responsible for his birth, whether it
be to wealth or to labour. He is born to certain luxuries,
and he is never taught to consider them as other than his
natural due ; he does as his class does, and as his fathers
have done before him. His fault is not one of malice, but of
ignorance. He does not know how his luxuries directly in
crease the misery of the poor, because no one has ever brought
it home to him. Although a slave-owner, he is an unconscious
346 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
slave-owner. Shortly, he wants educating ; not educating
quite in the same sense as the labouring classes want educat
ing : he probably has book-learning enough. He wants teach
ing that there is a higher social morality than the morality of a
society based upon wealth. Above all things he must be taught
that mere ownership has no social value at all that the sole
thin" 1 of social value is labour, labour of head or labour of
o
hand ; and that individual ownership of wealth has arisen in
the past out of a very crude and superficial method of re
warding such labour. The education of the so-called upper
or wealth -owning classes is thus an imperative necessity.
They must be taught a new morality. Here, again, is a point
on which we see the need of a union between the educational
and hand-working classes. The labourers with the head must
come to the assistance of the labourers with the hand by
educating the wealthy. Do not think this is a visionary
project ; at least two characteristic Englishmen, John
Kuskin and William Morris, are labouring at this task :
they are endeavouring to teach the capitalistic classes that
the morality of a society based upon wealth is a mere im
morality.
But you will tell me that education is a very long process,
and that meantime the poor are suffering, and must continue
to suffer. Are not the labouring classes unjustly treated, and
have they not a right to something better ? Shortly, ought
they not to enforce that right ? Pardon me, if I tell you
plainly that I do not understand what such abstract justice
or liarht means. I understand that the comfort of the
O
labouring classes is far below what it would be if society
were constituted on the basis of labour. I believe that on
such a basis there would be less misery in the world, and
therefore it is a result to be aimed at. But because this is a
result which all men should strive for, it does not follow that
we gain anything by calling it a right. A right suggests
something which a man may take by force, if he cannot
obtain it otherwise. It suggests that the labouring classes
should revolt against the capitalistic classes, and seize what is
their right.
SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PRACTICE 347
Let us consider for a moment what is the meaning of such
a revolt. I shall again take history as our teacher. History
shows us that whenever the misery of the labouring classes
reaches a certain limit, they always do break into open
rebellion. It is the origin, more or less, of all revolutions
throughout the course of time. But history teaches us just
as surely that such revolutions are accompanied by intense
misery both for the labouring and the idling classes. If this
infliction of misery had ever resulted in the reconstruction
of society we might even hope for good from a revolution ;
but we invariably find that something like the old system
springs again out of the chaos, and the same old distinction
of classes, the same old degradation of labour, is sure to re
appear. That is precisely the teaching of the Paris Commune ;
or again of the Anabaptist Kingdom of God in Minister.
Apart from this, the labourers with the hand will never be
permanently successful in a revolution, unless they have the
labourers with the head with them ; they will want organisa
tion, they will want discipline, and this must fail unless
education stands by them. Now, the labourers with the
head have usually deserted the labourers with the hand,
when the latter rise in revolt, because they are students of
history, and they know too well from history that revolution
has rarely permanently benefited the revolting classes. You
may accept it as a primary law of history, that no great change
ever occurs with a leap ; no great social reconstruction, which
will permanently benefit any class of the community, is ever
brought about by a revolution. It is the result of a gradual
growth, a progressive change, what we term an evolution.
This is as much a law of history as of nature. Try as you
will, you cannot make a man out of a child in a day : you
must wait, and let him grow, and gradually educate him and
replace his childish ideas by the thoughts of a man. Pre
cisely so you must treat society ; you must gradually change
it by education if you want a permanent improvement in its
structure. Feeling, as I do, the extreme misery which is
brought about by the present state of society based upon
wealth, I should say to the working classes : Eevolt, if history
348 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
did not teach us only too surely that revolution would fail in
its object. All progress towards a better state of things must
be gradual. Progress proceeds by evolution, not by revolu
tion. For this reason I would warn you against socialistic
teachers who talk loudly of right and justice who seek
to stir up class against class. Such teaching merely tends
towards revolution ; and revolution is not justifiable, because
it is never successful. It never achieves its end. Such
teachers are not true Socialists, because they have not studied
history, because their teaching really impedes our progress
towards Socialism. We may even learn again from our island
illustration with its landlord -capitalist tyrannising over the
other inhabitants. We have supposed him to be a practical
farmer capable of directing the labours of the others. Now,
suppose the inhabitants were to rise in revolt, and throw him
into the sea, what would happen ? Why, the very next year
they would not know what to sow, or how to sow it ; their
agricultural operations would fail, and there would very soon
be a famine on the island, which would be far worse than the
old tyranny. Something very similar would occur in this
country if the labouring classes were to throw all our capital
ists into the sea, There would be no one capable of directing
the factories or the complex operations of trade and commerce ;
these would all collapse, and there would very soon be a
famine in this island also. You must bring your capitalist
to see that he is only a labourer, a labourer with the head,
and deserves wage accordingly. You can only do this by two
methods. The first is to educate him to a higher sociality,
the second is to restrict him by the law of the land. Now,
the law of the land is nothing more or less than the morality
of the ruling class, and so long as political power is in the
hands of the capitalists, and these are uneducated, they are
not likely to restrict their own profits.
If, then, my view, that we can only approach Socialism by
a gradual change, be correct, we have before us two obvious
lines of conduct which we may pursue at the same time.
The first, and, I am inclined to think, the more important, is
the education of the wealthy classes ; they must be taught
SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 349
from childhood up that the only moral form of society is a
society based upon labour; they must be taught always to
bear in mind the great law that the misery of the poor is
ever directly proportional to the luxury of the rich. This
first object ought to be essentially the duty of the labourers
with the head. Let the labourer with the hand always regard
himself as working in concert with the labourer with the
head ; the two are in truth but members of one large guild,
the guild of labour, upon which basis we have to reconstruct
society. The second line of conduct, which is practically open
to all true Socialists, is the attainment of political power ;
wealth must cease to be the governing power in this country,
it must be replaced by labour. The educational classes and
the hand- workers must rule the country ; only so will it be
possible to replace the wealth basis by the labour basis. The
first step in this direction must necessarily be the granting
of the franchise to all hand-workers. This is a very practical
and definite aim to work for. Now, I have already hinted
that I consider both great political parties really to represent
wealth. Hence I do not believe that any true Socialist is
either Liberal or Conservative, but at present it would be idle
to think of returning Socialistic members to Parliament. 1
Socialists will best forward their aims by supporting at
present that party which is likely to increase the franchise.
So that to be a true Socialist means, I think, to support at
present the Liberal Government. This support is not given
because we are Liberals, but because by it we can best aid
the cause of Socialism. But with regard to the franchise,
there is a point which I cannot too strongly insist upon. If
the complete enfranchisement of the hand-worker is to forward
the Socialistic cause, he must be educated so as to use it for
that purpose. Now, we have laid it down as a canon of
Socialism that all labour is equally honourable ; in a society
/ N >
1 This was written in 1883. The extension of the franchise, incomplete as
it is, has since considerably increased the possibility of returning Socialistic
members for at least one or~two towns. Even where it would be impossible to
return such members, a local Independent Labour Party may, like the boy on
the fulcrum of a see-saw, work wonders by controlling the ups and downs of
Whig and Tory (1887).
350 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
based upon labour there can be no distinction of class. Thus,
the true Socialist must be superior to class -interests. He
must look beyond his own class to the wants and habits of
society at large. Hence, if the franchise is to be really profit
able, the hand-worker must be educated to see beyond the
narrow bounds of his own class. He must be taught to look
upon society as a whole, and respect the labour of all its varied
branches. He must endeavour to grasp the wants and habits
of other forms of labour than his own, whether it be labour of
the head or of the hand. He must recognise to the full that
all labour is equally honourable, and has equal claims on society
at large. The shoemaker does not despise the labour of the
blacksmith, but lie must be quite sure that the labour of the
schoolmaster, of the astronomer, of the man who works
with his brains, is equally valuable to the community. Here,
again, we see how the labourer with the head can come to the
assistance of the labourer with the hand. In order that the
franchise may be practically of value to the artisan, he must
grasp how to use it for broader purposes than mere class aims.
To do this he requires to educate himself. I repeat that I
should like to hear a cry go up from the hand-workers for
education and leisure for education, even as it went up forty
years ago for bread ; for the mind is of equal importance with
the stomach, and needs its bread also. Apart from the fran
chise, there is another direction in which, I think, practical
steps might be taken, namely, to obtain for trades-unions, or
rather, as I should prefer to call them, labour -guilds an
influence or share in municipal government. Let there be a
labour -guild influence in every parish, and on every vestry.
As I have said before, I cannot conceive that the housing of
the poor would be what it is if the trades-unions had been
represented in the government of London. Such a representa
tion would be the first approach to a communal organisation
based upon labour, and ultimately to a society on the same
foundation. You can hardly support your trades-unions too
energetically, and you have in this respect taught the labourers
with the head a lesson. These labourers with the head are
just beginning to form their labour -guilds too guilds of
SOCIALISM: IN THEOKY AND PEACTICE 351
teachers and guilds of writers and it is to these labour-guilds,
and to your trades- unions, that we must look for much useful
work in the future.
These surely are practical aims enough for the present,
but I may perhaps be allowed to point out to you what
direction I think legislative action should take, supposing
the franchise granted to all hand - workers. As I have
endeavoured to show, any sudden change would be extremely
dangerous ; it would upset our old social arrangements, and
would not give us any stable new institutions. It would
embitter class against class, and not destroy class altogether.
We must endeavour to pass gradually from the old to the new
state ; from the state in which wealth is the social basis to
one in which labour is the sole element by which we judge
men. Now, in order that wealth should cease to be
mistress, the individual monopoly of the means of subsist
ence must be destroyed. In other words, land and capital
must cease to be in the hands of individuals. We must
have nationalisation of the land and nationalisation of
capital. Every Socialist is a land-nationaliser and a capital-
nationaliser.
It will be sufficient now to consider the first problem, the
nationalisation of the land. Mr. George says : Take the land
and give no compensation. That is what I term a revolu
tionary measure ; it attempts to destroy and reconstruct in a
moment. If history teaches us anything, it tells us that all
such revolutionary measures fail ; they bring more misery
than they accomplish good. Hence, although I am a land-
nationaliser as every Socialist must be I do not believe in
Mr. George s cry of No compensation. Then we have
another set of land-nationalisers, who would buy the land
lords out. Let us see what this means. The landlords
would be given, in return for their lands, a large sum of
money, which would have to be borrowed by the nation, and
the interest on which would increase for ever the taxes of
the country. In other words, we should be perpetuating the
wealth of the landlords and their claims to be permanently
supported by the classes that labour. That is not a socialistic
352 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
remedy. It would seem, at first sight, as if there were no
alternative either compensation or no compensation. Yet
I think there is a third course, if we would only try to legislate
for the future as well as for the present. Suppose a Bill
were passed to convert all freehold in land into a leasehold,
say, of 81 to 100 years, from the nation. Here there would
be no question of compensation, and little real injury to the
prese?it landowner, because the difference between freehold
and a hundred years leasehold (especially in towns) is com
paratively small. At the end of a hundred years the nation
would be in possession of all land without having paid a penny
for it, and without violently breaking up the present social
arrangements. In less than a hundred years, with the land
slipping from their fingers, the children of our present land
owners would have learnt that, if they want to live, they must
labour. That would be a great step towards true Socialism.
Precisely as I propose to treat the land, so I would treat most
forms of capital. With the land, of course, mines and
factories would necessarily pass into the hands of the nation.
Kailways would have to be dealt with in the same fashion.
The present companies would have a hundred years lease
instead of a perpetuity of their property.
These are merely suggestions of how it might be possible
to pass to a stable form of society based upon labour to a
true Socialism. The change would be stable because it
would be gradual ; the State would be Socialistic because it
would be based upon labour ; wealth, in its two important
forms land and capital would ultimately belong to the
entire community.
Some of you may cry out in astonishment : " But what is
the use of working for such a Socialism ? We shall never live
to see it ; we shall never enjoy its advantages." Quite true,
I reply, but there is a nobler calling than working for ourselves,
there is a higher happiness than self-enjoyment namely, the
feeling that our labour will render posterity, will, perhaps,
render even our children, free from the misery through
which we ourselves have had to struggle ; the feeling that our
work in life has left the world a more joyous dwelling-place
SOCIALISM: IN THEOEY AND PEACTICE 353
for mankind than we found it. The little streak of social
good which each man can leave behind him the only
immortality of which mankind can be sure is a far nobler
result of labour, whether of hand or of head, than threescore
years of unlimited personal happiness.
XIII
THE WOMAN S QUESTION 1
The legislator ought to be whole and perfect, and not half a man
only ; he ought not to let the female sex live softly and waste money
and have no order of life, while he takes the utmost care of the male sex,
and leaves half of life only blest with happiness, when he might have
made the whole state happy. . . . There appears to be need of some bold
man who specially honours plainness of speech, and will say what is best
for the city and citizens, ordaining what is good and convenient for the
whole state, amid the corruptions of human souls, opposing the mightiest
lusts, and having no man his helper but himself, standing alone and
following reason only. Plato.
THE rapidity with which women in this country are obtaining
an independent social and political position the near approach
of their complete emancipation is one of the most marked
features of our age. Yet, like so many other social changes,
we allow it to take place in a tentative and piecemeal fashion,
without first intelligently investigating whither the movement
is leading us, or how far it may not be really undermining the
existing basis of our whole society. The remoulding of existing
institutions may be desirable in itself, but is it not also advan
tageous that we should see the real bearing of what is taking
place in this revolution of the relations of sex, and endeavour,
so far as is humanly possible, to guide the movement into such
channels that it may gradually change the foundations of
society without at the same time depriving society of its
stability? It is the conviction that the emancipation of
women will ultimately involve a revolution in all our social
1 Read at a men and women s discussion club and printed for private circula
tion in 1885.
THE WOMAN S QUESTION 355
institutions, which has led me to attempt a statement of some
of the numerous social and sexualogical problems with which
the woman s question abounds. These problems remain to a
great extent unsolved, partly on account of their difficult
nature, partly because the danger of being classed with char
latans and quacks has restrained investigators of genuine
historical and scientific capacity. Not until the historical
researches of Bachofen, Girard Teulon, and McLennan, together
with the anthropological studies of Tylor and Floss, have been
supplemented by careful investigation of the sanitary and
social effects of past stages of sex-development, not until we
have ample statistics of the medico-social results of the various
regular and irregular forms of sex -relationship, will it be
possible to lay the foundations of a real science of sexualogy.
Without such a science we cannot safely determine whither
the emancipation of women is leading us, nor what is the true
answer which must be given to the woman s question. It is
the complete disregard of sexualogical difficulties which renders
so superficial and unconvincing much of the talk which pro
ceeds from the Woman s Eights platform. We have first
to settle what is the physical capacity of woman, what would
be the effect of her emancipation on her function of race-
reproduction, before we can talk about her rights, which are,
after all, only a vague description of what may be the fittest
position for her, the sphere of her maximum usefulness in the
developed society of the future. The higher education of
women may connote a general intellectual progress for the
community, or, on the other hand, a physical degradation of
the race, owing to prolonged study having ill effects on
woman s child-bearing efficiency. This is only one example
of the many problems which are thrust upon us ; and those
who are the most earnest supporters of woman s independence
ought to be the first to recognise that her duty to society is
paramount. They must face sex-problems with sexualogical
and historical knowledge, and solve them, before they appeal
to the market-place with all the rhetorical flourish of justice
and of right. They must show that the emancipation will
tend not only to increase the stability of society and the
356 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
general happiness of mankind, but will favour the physique
and health of both sexes. It is this want of preliminary
sexualogical investigation which renders nugatory much of
what John Stuart Mill has written on the subject, and in a
somewhat less degree the more powerful work of Mary Woll-
stonecraft. With the view of strongly emphasising this need
of preliminary investigation I have put together the following
remarks ; I do not profess to give opinions, but to suggest
problems. It has been difficult to avoid individual bias, and
I cannot natter myself that I have been really successful. I
shall be satisfied, however, if my paper should convince even
a small number of the earnest men and women who are
labouring for woman s freedom, that there are certain problems
which demand more than emotional treatment ; they require
careful collection of facts, and the interpretation of such facts
by scientific and impartial minds.
In order to group the problems I am about to suggest, I
shall first draw attention to what I think will be generally
admitted as the fundamental distinction between man and
woman. It lies in the capacity for child-bearing, not
solely in the activity, but in the potentiality as well of the
function. This capacity is the essence of the physiological
difference between men and women ; and the first problems
which arise before us spring from the effects of the child-
bearing potentiality on the physical and mental development
of woman. Are these effects of such a kind as to make a
fundamental distinction in social and political position be
tween man and woman ? Do they connote a physical and
mental inferiority on her side ? The question is not so easily
answered as some old-fashioned folk and some new-fashioned
platform agitators seem to imagine ; it must be treated from
the scientific and historical bases only, and even then any
definite answer will not be easily obtained. Yet the problem
is radical, and without some solution it is difficult to see how
we can profitably advance in our discussion. Some have
argued that history shows the position of women to have
been always secondary ; others have pointed out that the
tendency towards women s emancipation has been steadily
THE WOMAN S QUESTION 357
growing of late years, and they have cited the generations it
took to convince mankind at large of the justice of slave-
emancipation. Here we may, however, note the argument
that the negro-emancipation has wrought its best effects in
an improved moral tone among the white population. The
negro, although free, remains intellectually and morally the
white man s inferior. We may ask whether the emancipa
tion of women may not have a like excellent effect on the
moral tone of men, but in nowise raise women to an intel
lectual equality. Closely associated with this problem is
that of the like or unlike inheritance by male and female
children of their parents intellectual capacity. 1 Is the girl
at a disadvantage in this respect as compared with the boy ?
Does she start life handicapped ? If we admit the inferiority
of women at the present time and the tone of the great
mass of men, especially the characteristics they peculiarly
desire in a wife, is strong evidence of it we have still to
determine whether it is a necessity for all women. Is child-
bearing a check on intellectual development, and thus the
subjection of child-bearing women a part of an inevitable
natural law ? How, again, are we to treat non-child-bearing
women ? Does a like inferiority exist here ? Or must we,
with a recent writer in the Westminster Review, draw a broad
distinction between the two classes ? This question is ex
tremely important with regard to the increasing number now
roughly, twenty per cent of single women in the community.
Are these women hampered in their physical or intellectual
development by merely potential functions ? The writer of
a recent pamphlet 2 has spoken of the stifled cry of the un
married woman, the Rachel -like appeal, "Give me children,
or else I die." It is an open question how far there is a
physiological basis to this cry. It has, however, led certain
disciples of James Hinton to replace his chief argument for
polygamy, namely, the evil of unsatisfied sexual desire, by an
1 Some attempt to answer this problem will be found in the memoirs,
Heredity, Regression, and Panmixia, Phil. Trans, vol. 187, p. 253, and On the
Inheritance of the Cephalic Index, Royal Society Proceedings, vol. 62, p. 413.
2 The Future of Marriage. An Eirenikon for a Question of To-day.
358 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
appeal to the insatiable and passionate wish of women to give
society what they alone can give. Our present social arrange-
merts are such that there is no demand for children ; the
acquisition of a great tract of land is viewed by our governing
classes not as a field for fresh population, but as opening up
a new market for traders profits. Hence, under our present
social system, woman s prerogative function child-bearing
is of small account, and would probably be exercised to a
much less extent than it is, were it not associated with the
gratification of sexual desire. If race-evolution has implanted
in women a physical craving for children, it is obvious that
it remains unsatisfied in more than twenty per cent of woman
kind. "We may ask whether this affects the physical health
of women, whether as such it may not act as a check on.
intellectual activity ? Thus either child-bearing or its
absence may possibly be a hindrance to woman s development.
Such are the sort of arguments which can be produced
against woman s being able to occupy an equal position with
man ; they are not arguments against her being admitted to
equality, but against her power of maintaining it. In most
historical forms of society the honour in which women have
been held depended to a considerable extent on the value
which society then placed on children. Hence we see the
extreme importance of social and political questions to
woman, notably those relating to great social changes and
to population ; but these are matters whereon she has hitherto
had little or no opinion, and wherein she has hitherto been
allowed no voice. The creator of a new machine, which
throws a quantity of labour upon the market, and so
decreases the demand for population, is at present deemed
a public benefactor ; the woman who can bring forth a
new T human being is at a discount. It is possibly due
to this fact, that the position of woman in America and
our colonies is admittedly superior to that of woman in
England.
I have, perhaps, said enough to point out the important
problems which centre round this prerogative function of
woman. For our present purposes I shall divide women into
THE WOMAN S QUESTION 359
two classes, child-bearing and non-child-bearing women ; l the
distinction is in some respects an evil one, but will perhaps
suffice to mark two different kinds of problems. Let us con
sider first those which relate to the single woman.
If twenty per cent of womankind remain single, we must
consider whether it be not absurd on the face of it to talk of
woman s proper place being the home, and her sphere the
family ; to hold that the first duty of society is to educate
women to be mothers (We may question, however, whether
society either frequently, or fitly, performs this duty). Granted
that there is a large and increasing number of single women, we
shall have to consider whether they are hopelessly handicapped
by the present competitive constitution of society. Are they
merely surplus machines which cannot be turned to their
proper purpose, or do they form a contingent whose labour
will be ultimately of the utmost importance to the community ?
The problem as to the inferiority of the single woman can
be solved only by an investigation of her intellectual and
physical condition. If we put aside the question of any child-
bearing desire affecting her welfare, it seems probable that
she may be less, certainly not more, influenced by sexual
impulse than the single man. On the other hand, her
physical activity is probably more though, perhaps, to a
less extent than is generally supposed affected by her sexua-
logical life than man s activity by his. Whether a single woman
is physically I use physically in its broadest sense, not
only of strength, but also of power of endurance equal to the
single man, is a question which wants very fully investigating.
That the average woman including both child and non-
child-bearing classes is at present considered as physically
inferior to the man, is best evidenced by the smaller wages she
receives for manual labour. Whether the non-child-bearer
would not fetch as high a price in the labour market as man,
if the competition of child-bearing women, who are necessarily
at a disadvantage, and of prostitutes, who have other means
of subsistence, were removed, is an important problem. The
1 Corresponding to the parous and nulliparous women of gynaikological
writers.
360 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
astounding powers of endurance exhibited by the peasant girls
of Southern Germany and Italy, and sometimes by domestic
servants in England, point to no physical inferiority, where
the physique has been developed.
When we turn to the intellectual position of women we
find a condition of affairs which ought to occupy much
attention. Woman s past and present subjection probably
depends to as great an extent on her presumed intellectual
as on her presumed physical inferiority. We must face the
problem of her being naturally man s intellectual inferior ;
her prerogative function of child-bearing may possibly involve
this. If it be so, we can only accept the inferiority, and
allow woman to find compensation for it in other directions.
Possibly, however, the present average intellectual inferiority
may be due to centuries of suppression, which have produced
directly or by sexual selection an inherited inferiority. Mental
difference is closely related to physical ; and there seems as
much reason for woman s inheriting a less fully developed
mental organ than man, as for man s inheriting rudimentary
organs which are fully developed in the woman. But we
shall have further to consider and here I fancy we approach
nearer the core of the matter whether present suppression be
not a more potent cause than past ; whether the fact that,
bad as men s education undoubtedly is, the great mass of
women as yet receive nothing worthy of being called intel
lectual training, is not the root of all this presumed mental
inferiority ? What women can do when they compete with
men intellectually has been well brought out by their recent
college and university successes. At the same time I must note
that higher educational institutions at present draw picked
women, but hardly picked men. Both of the reasons I have
given : inheritance of a less fully developed brain, and want of
intellectual training, deserve careful investigation, because it
seems probable that remedies may be found for both. The
intellectual and physical training of single women ought to
receive the special attention of the state, because to them will
fall in all probability much of the work of the community in
the future, because the great restrictions which are at present
THE WOMAN S QUESTION 361
placed on their development care such an obvious evil. The
general tone of the family, of society, of the state, with regard
to single women, is still at a very low level. The first
puts restrictions on individual study and activity by absurd
domestic and social demands ; the second checks to a great
extent freedom of action and intercourse by still more absurd
social prejudices ; while the third, the state, giving women no
voice in public affairs, leaves their interests practically un
represented in legislature and executive. Nowadays neither
intellectual nor physical inferiority excludes from the franchise
possibly they ought to do so. There must be some other
disqualification which deprives a George Eliot of the vote that
is granted to the dullest yokel ; the only obvious difference is
the child-bearing potentiality. Why it should exclude is by
no means clear. Yet there may be some deep race experience,
some more valid cause to be produced for this apparent self-
assertion of men than the historical origin of our institutions
in an age when might was right, and most women, being
child-bearers, were for this reason rendered dependent on and
subservient to men. Granted that woman s emancipation is
desirable, still I am not sure whether even its ardent advocates
have fully recognised the fact that her enfranchisement and
universal suffrage would at one stroke theoretically place the
entire power of government in her hands, for she possesses a
majority of upwards of half a million in this country. If
there were a proposal which does not seem improbable in
the future to create a woman s political party, this
would be indeed a momentous, I will not say an undesirable,
revolution.
Whether the throwing open of all public institutions and
professions to women be or be not advisable is a problem
for much consideration. In our present state of society (I
emphasise present] it may not be so easily answered as some
at first may think. Is it or is it not possible for the sexes
to mix freely in all relations of life ? The hitherto almost
complete separation of the sexes in the business of life has
led to what appears to me a very artificial relation between
them. It is a fact which we have to face and to consider
362 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
that, whereas friendship between a man and a married woman
is possible, close friendship between single men and women
is almost impossible. It] may be due to something inherent
in human nature, the existence of a sexual attraction pro
duced by the struggle of group against group in the battle of
life, or it may be due to an artificial relation, the outcome of
a false social system. It may be needful that existing society
should put its veto on such friendships, but we may still
question whether this veto be not a real] hindrance to human
development. So far is this restriction carried in some ranks
of life at present that, if a single man and woman are once
seen walking alone together, society points its finger ; if they
are seen twice, society pronounces them engaged ; if this be
denied, on the third occasion it damns, not the man s be it
noted, but the woman s reputation. The nigh complete
separation of the sexes from youth upwards in the upper
and middle classes of our present society is a point which
demands our careful investigation. Is it expedient ? niay it
not hinder general progress ? is it even healthy ? The boy
at the public school and the university is kept, to a great
extent, from woman s society. He is then thrown into it in
an extremely artificial manner at a time when his sexual
impulses are most rapidly developing. George Eliot, I think,
felt this keenly when, in the last years of her life, she said
that far too much of family influence is " ruthlessly sacrificed
in the case of Englishmen by their public school and uni
versity education." The same process occurs to a great extent
with the girl. Neither boy nor girl fully and clearly under
stands what influences them ; and thus the making or the
marring of the whole future life too often depends entirely on the
blind direction of a sudden sexual impulse. How many men,
how many women, wonder in after life what attached them to
their present partners ? They try to believe that characters
have changed, because they are unwilling to admit that they
had not the inclination, nor the knowledge, nor the oppor
tunity to study character before marriage.
Whether the co-education of boys and girls would not be
advantageous is a problem demanding thoughtful consideration.
THE WOMAN S QUESTION 363
Possibly the continuous association of men with women of equal
position and intelligence from childhood upwards might have a
good influence on the general moral tone ; it might lead some
men to understand that sex-friendship had other pleasant and
more worthy elements than mere sexual passion. It might
thus go some way in hindering prostitution, or, at any rate, in
enforcing some degree of refinement on the prostitute. To
this it may be replied that in our present social organisation it
would often lead to long engagements, against which there
appears to be considerable objection from the medical side.
If comparative separation of the sexes in youth be advis
able, we have still to note the possible desirability of fuller
sexualogical knowiedge, which might be imparted by home or
school education. Men and women are not only surprisingly
ignorant of each other s modes of thought and phases of feeling,
but, extremely often, of each other s constitution ; nay, not
only of each other s, but occasionally of their own. Tho
question is an extremely difficult, but immensely important
one, especially for teachers and parents, having regard to what
is said to be a growing evil in boys public and girls private
schools. Some parents believe that ignorance is the best safe
guard, but ignorance may hinder a child from knowing the
very danger into which it has fallen. Want of sexualogical
knowledge, or even a false sense of shame may prevent parents
speaking out freely upon these matters. It is a question whether
society has not through the schoolmaster a right to interfere
here between parent and child.
We must not forget that the emancipation of woman,
while placing her in a position of social responsibility, will
make it her duty to investigate many matters of w T hich she is
at present frequently assumed to be ignorant. It may be
doubted whether the identification of purity and ignorance has
had wholly good effects in the past ; l indeed it has frequently
been the false cry with which men have sought to hide their
own anti-social conduct. It is certain, however, that it cannot
last in the future, and man will have to face the fact that
1 If we may trust Alexandre Dumas fils, eighty per cent of marriages in France
are made in ignorance, and regretted within a month.
364 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
woman s views and social action with regard to many sex-
problems may widely differ from his own. It is of the utmost
importance, then, that woman, not only on account of the part
she already plays in the education of the young, but also
because of the social responsibilities which her emancipation must
bring, should have a full knowledge of the laws of sex. Every
attempt hitherto made to grapple with prostitution has been a
failure what will women do when they thoroughtly grasp the
problem, and have a voice in the attitude the state may
assume with regard to it ? At present hundreds do not know
of its existence ; thousands only know of it to despise those
who earn their livelihood by it ; one in ten thousand has
examined the causes which lead to it, has felt that degradation,
if there be any, lies not only in the prostitute, but in the society
where it exists ; not only in the women of the streets, but in
the thousands of women in society who are ignorant of the
problem, ignore it, or fear to face it. What will be the result
of woman s action in this matter ? Can it possibly be
effectual, or will it merely tend to embitter the relations of
men and women ? Possibly an expression of woman s opinion
on this point in society and in the press would do much, but
then it must be an educated opinion, one which recognises
facts, and knows the innumerable difficulties of the problem.
An appeal to chivalry, to a theological dogma, or to a Biblical
text, will hardly avail. The descriptions we have of Calvin s
Geneva show that puritanic suppression is wholly idle. What
form will be taken by the opinion and reasoned action of
women, cognisant of historical and sexualogical fact ?
Perhaps it may be that women when they fully grasp the
problem may despair, as many men do, of its solution. They
may remark that prostitution has existed in nearly all historic
communities, and among nearly all races of men. It has existed
as an institution as long as monogamic marriage has existed,
it may be itself the outcome of that marriage. I do not know
whether any trace of a like promiscuity has been found in
the animals nearest allied to man I believe not. The
periodic instinct has probably preserved them from it. How
mankind came to lose the periodic instinct, and how that
THE WOMAN S QUESTION 365
loss may probably be related to the solely human institution
of marriage, are problems not without interest. On the one
hand, it has been asserted that prostitution is a logical out
come of our present social relations ; while, on the other hand,
it is held to be historically a survival of matriarchal licence,
and not a sine qtud non of all forms of human society. There
is very considerable evidence to show that a large percentage
of women are driven to prostitution by absolute want, or by
the extremities to which a seduced woman is forced by the
society which casts her out. This matter is all important. It
may, perhaps, be that our social system, quite as much as
man s supposed needs, keeps prostitution alive. The frequency
with which prostitutes for the sake of their own living seduce
comparative boys, may be as much a cause of the evil as male
passion itself. The socialists hold the sale of woman s person
to be directly associated with the monopoly of surplus-labour.
Is the emancipated woman likely to adopt this view ? and if
so, shall we not have a wide - reaching social reconstruction
forced upon us ? That emancipated woman would strive for
a vast economic reorganisation, as the only means of pre
serving the self-respect and independence of her sex, is a
possibility having the gravest and most wide -reaching conse
quences. We cannot emancipate woman without placing her
in a position of political and social influence equal to man s.
It may well be that she will regard economic and sexual
problems from a very different standpoint, and the result will
infallibly lead to the formation of a woman s party and to a more
or less conscious struggle between the sexes. Would this end
in an increased social stability or in another subjection of sex ?
Woman may, however, conclude that the alternative is
true that prostitution is not the outcome of our present
economic organisation, but a feature of all forms of human
society. She must, then, treat it as a necessary evil, or as a
necessary good. In the former case she will at least insist
on an equal social stigma attaching to both sexes, if she does
not demand, as in the case of any other form of anti
social conduct, as far as practicable its legal repression. In
the latter case, that is, if its existence really tends in some
366 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
way to the welfare or stability of society, women will have to
admit that prostitution is an honourable profession ; they
cannot shirk that conclusion, bitter as it might appear to
some. The social outcast would then have to be recognised
as fulfilling a social function, and the problem would reduce
to the amelioration of her life, and to her elevation in the
social scale. There is a means of practically abolishing prostitu
tion, or both participators must be treated alike as anti-social,
or the prostitute is an honourable woman no other possi
bility suggests itself. Society has hitherto failed to find a
remedy, perhaps because only man has sought for one ; woman,
when she for the first time fully grasps the problem, must be
prepared with one, or must recognise the alternatives. There
cannot be a doubt, however, that in a matter so closely
concerning her personal dignity, she will take action ; and
then, if only in this one matter, her freedom will raise
questions, which many would prefer to ignore, and which,
when raised, will undoubtedly touch principles apparently
fundamental to our existing social organisation.
Hitherto I have roughly endeavoured to suggest problems
which arise from a consideration of the position of the non-
child-bearing woman only I have, of course, only touched the
veriest fringe of a vast subject, but it is needful that I should
pass on to others more directly related to the second or
child-bearing class of women.
The recognised state of the child-bearing woman is, under
our present social conditions, marriage. Even if we admit
generally the advantages of this institution, we may ask
whether emancipated and economically independent woman
hood will permit social stigma to be put upon those of their
number bearing children and upon the children born out of
marriage. They may demand that society and the legislature
shall reconsider the position of such women and children.
The demand, if granted, might involve very revolutionary
changes in our present views on the devolution of property,
and in the general laws of inheritance. It might ultimately
result in something like a return to the ancient matriarchal
principle of tracing descent through the female.
THE WOMAN S QUESTION 367
Turning to marriage itself, we may remark that the
permanency of the existing type has been questioned by more
than one recent writer. It has been argued that this institu
tion is plastic, and that its present form is not necessarily the
fittest, but possibly only a phase in the evolution of sex. Indeed
a well-known modern advocate of polygamy has asserted its
unfitness by postulating prostitution as the necessary re
ciprocal of inonogamic marriage. Without being able to assent
in any way to the characteristically illogical arguments of
this advocate, I must yet confess that there seems to me no
prospect that the educated woman of the future will regard
marriage and its duties from the same standpoint that man
has done ; it is difficult to conceive that she will sanction the
Church-Service view of the institution, that she will be pre
pared to limit her sphere of activity to marriage, or her
function in life to child-bearing. The disgust generated by
the ecclesiastical conception of marriage will go far towards
destroying all faith in the religious character of the institu
tion. Questions of its duration and of its form will not
seem beyond discussion, and a characteristic prop of existing
society may rightly or wrongly be shaken by the complete
emancipation of women. The religious sanction having col
lapsed, and social welfare, rationally investigated, being the
only possible sanction left, a number of problems lying at the
very root of the institution will demand investigation.
Arguments of the following kind will have to be faced, con
firmed, or refuted. It will be asked whether the binding of
man and woman together for life be either expedient or
necessary whether it may not be a real hindrance to progress,
and this in more respects than one ? Whether marriage,
after all, be not the last, the least-recognised, and therefore
the greatest, superstition which past barbarism has handed
down to the present ? We shall have to search for the true
social grounds upon which the institution may be defended.
Can we argue that because monogamic lifelong union exists
among certain Christian peoples, whom we are accustomed to
look upon as in the van of civilisation, therefore it must be a
needful condition of progress ? Might not the same argument
368 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
have been used at one time for slavery, at another for the
Holy Catholic Church, and even now be used for prostitution ?
Is not this last as much a social institution of our Christian
civilisation as marriage ? It will not do to translate the law
of " survival of the fittest " into " whatever is surviving is
fittest." Fit possibly for the age in which it exists, but may not
that age be passing away ? Will or will not the independ
ence of woman shake this institution ? I merely suggest the
problem ; this is not the time to attempt, were it possible,
any solution. I would only add that, personally, I see no
reason why two persons, who may be in no way responsible to
a third, should be bound together for life, whether they will
or no. The birth of a child undoubtedly makes them re
sponsible to a third being, and may be a strong social reason
for making marriage permanent, at least till the child has
reached its majority. If we except the case, where young
children might suffer, may not the question be raised whether
marriage should not be a socially recognised but far more
easily dissoluble union ? Can marriage, lasting when the
sympathy which led to it has died out, do aught but make
two lives miserable ? The life-long tie may be needful so
long as society casts a slur on a woman who is separated
from her husband, so long as woman is not in as stable an
economic position as man that is, so long as separation
would cast her helpless on the world, or so long as she is a
mere plaything with no individual activity. Bat let us put
the case of equal education, of equal power to earn a liveli
hood, of equal social weight ; what woman, under these circum
stances, would desire to continue a union which had become
distasteful to either party ? The union enforced in such cases
by our present system is surely a nightmare which even
Goethe s WcMverwandtscJiaften fails to paint. On the other
hand, so long as marriage is entered upon without any study
of character, upon the bidding of some slight sexual inclina
tion or fancied sympathy as so frequently happens at the
present day any relaxation of the marriage tie would
certainly lead to an anti-social spread of sexual irregularity.
How will the self-dependent women of the future regard this
THE WOMAN S QUESTION 369
problem ? What line have such women taken in the past ?
With the past to guide us it seems not improbable that, when
woman is truly educated and equally developed with man, she
will hold that the highest relationship of man and woman is akin
to that of Lewis and George Eliot, of Mary Wollstonecraft
and Godwin ; that the highest ideal of marriage is a perfectly
free, and yet, generally, a lifelong union. May it not be that
such a union is the only one in which a woman can preserve
her independence, can be a wife and yet retain her individual
liberty ? I suggest no solution to these problems, but I
believe that without facing them we cannot fully grasp
whither the emancipation of woman is likely to lead us.
Taking marriage as it is, we may ask how far it neces
sarily cramps a woman s growth ? This is not a question
we can lightly answer. There are many women who distinctly
affirm that it does. Even if we admit this to be true in the
present state of subjection, will it be possible to remedy the
evil in any state so long as the wife is a child- bearer ? Can
such a woman ever hope to equal intellectually the single
woman ? If not, how will it be possible for her to meet the
average man with an equal mental force, and so preserve her
individuality? The possibility of woman s individual develop
ment after marriage is important ; all the more so, as certain
ardent advocates of woman s higher education have put for
ward as a plea for it, the happiness which would arise if
woman were only educated so as to understand her husband s
ideas and enter into his pursuits. A baser argument for
woman s education it is hard to conceive. It denies her an
individuality, even as the Mahommedan denies her a soul.
But there is another problem of marriage, which is all-
important, and which the advocates for emancipation are
called upon to face. How will it ever be possible for the
child-bearing woman to retain individual freedom ? She
cannot during child-bearing and rearing preserve, except in
special cases, her economic independence ; she must become
dependent on the man for support, and this must connote a
limitation of her freedom, a subjection to his will. How is
this to be met, or does the very fact of child-bearing in-
24
370 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
evitably produce the subjection of women ? The happiness
of any human being is commensurate with the sphere of
its individual activity, of its freedom to will ; how infinitely
narrowed this sphere is for woman in the average marriage is
obvious enough. How far woman s individuality can be pre
served by a truer education of both sexes is a very complex
problem. By such means a more social tone might be intro
duced into men s and women s conceptions of their mutual
relations and duties, into their respect for the individual s
sphere of freedom. Perfect legal and political equality might
strengthen this respect in the family, but I fail to see how,
without perfect economic equality, the freedom of woman can
ever be absolutely maintained. Yet without a complete
reorganisation of society how can there be economic indepen
dence for the child-bearer ? Here again the emancipation of
woman seems opposed to the economic basis of existing society.
It is not only the form of marriage, but the feelings and
objects, with which it is entered upon, that are likely to be
questioned and remoulded by the woman s movement. Pro
testantism cannot be said to have formed an elevated con
ception of the conjugal relation, 1 and there can be little doubt
that the cultivated woman of the future will find herself com
pelled to reject its doctrines on this point. It has repeatedly
taught that early marriage is a remedy for vice, and disregarded
the social misery which arises not only from improvidence, but
also from that ill-considered choice of life-partners, which is
customary to passionate youth. Only render early marriage
possible and then prostitution will disappear is a wide-spread
opinion, especially among the evangelical clergy. Let boys
and girls marry the moment they feel the sexual impulse,
insisted Luther, and we shall have no vice. The problem of
early marriage and the difficulties which stand in the way of
it, at least for many in our present social state, is undoubtedly
important ; but Luther s reason for early marriage seems to
me the most degrading ever discovered by the Christian
Church, which has never taken a very ideal view of wedlock.
1 See A Sketch of the Sex-Relations in Primitive and Mediaeval Germany below
for some account of the nature of Luther s teaching.
THE WOMAN S QUESTION 371
The passion which cannot be bridled out of marriage, will
hardly be bridled in marriage. On this account early mar
riage for the reason advocated by Luther, seems unlikely to
be the basis of a happy lifelong union, which requires some
sympathy of aim and much similarity of habit. It will hardly
aid the stability of society or the permanence of the institu
tion. From Protestantism, indeed, has arisen divorce.
So long as monogamy subsists, restraint for the man is
as much a duty in as out of marriage, and Luther s cure for
prostitution is by no means a social one. To what extent
this restraint is not exercised, or again to what extent pros
titution is a supplement to monogamic marriage, are points on
which it is difficult to obtain information, but which are not
without direct issue on the future position of woman. Evidence
of the resort of married men to prostitutes, as an almost re
cognised custom among our rural population, was brought to
my notice some years ago ; further evidence of its frequency
among the working classes in London has been supplied to me
by hospital friends ; while its prevalence, to some extent in a
different form, among the upper classes can hardly be denied.
The early marriage theory as a remedy for sexual irregularity
has been pushed so far that various methods have been
suggested for rendering it economically possible under the
present pressure of population. The whole question of Neo-
Malthusianisin is fraught with immense social and sexua-
logical difficulties. As a mode, indeed, of preserving the wife
from the cares of a large family, and of enabling her to retain
her economic independence, it may possibly commend itself
to the woman of the future. It raises, however, a very grave
problem of race-permanence : Will the material prosperity and
the individually greater efficiency of a limited population
counterbalance the advantages of unlimited production ? It
may require another Franco- German war to answer this prob
lem to the satisfaction of the evolutionist.
If we now turn to the intellectual sympathy and similarity
of habit which alone appear likely to contribute to the stability
of marriage, we shall find that historically they have been
much overshadowed by the more sensual side of which we
372 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
have been treating. Sexual impulse (taken, however, in the
broadest sense) has almost always been the cause of marriage.
The man or woman who quietly sat down to argue with
themselves whether such a one would or would not suit them
as a partner for life, would be the scorn of poet and of
"moralist." If we take our modern poets, from Goethe
downwards, not one has represented a woman with whom an
intellectual man, in his saner moments, would think of
passing his life. Gretcheri is a type of the whole round of
iheir creations ; and she, the poet s ideal of womanhood, is the
perfection of dolldom. It may be questioned whether this
following of mere instinct, this want of intellectual influence,
has not reduced marriage to a mere lottery, and so brought it
into deserved contempt with many thinking men and women.
It is indeed hard to conceive how marriage can be otherwise,
unless greater freedom in friendship between single men and
women becomes possible and habitual.
If the ideas I have described are at all likely to replace
the old Protestant conception of marriage, then it is obvious
that the education and emancipation of woman will go far to
revolutionise both men s and women s sexual ideals. Yet we
may rightly demand that the new ideals shall be shown to be
consistent with race-permanence, before we possibly sacrifice
future efficiency to increasing the present freedom and happi
ness of women.
Hitherto I have been suggesting problems which bear
essentially on the position of women, or which raise questions
of the relation of man to woman in a somewhat ideal future.
They are questions which only those will discuss who have
to some extent raised the veil of life ; who allow that no
human institution can be so holy that it lies beyond the
sacred right of human reason to test its foundations ; that the
whole truth is to be reached only by the rational process
which starts with universal questioning ; that the conviction
of knowledge the one true creed can be attained only by
those who have completely grasped the catholicity of doubt.
But there are, besides, certain vital, if less exciting problems of
philosophical and scientific interest to which I may refer.
THE WOMAN S QUESTION 373
Thus there are some writers who assert that civilised man s
sexual instincts have been so abnormally developed that they
amount to a disease. I do not say that this opinion is true ;
I think possibly anthropological investigation would show it
to be false. Perhaps the very fact that the opinion is held
proves that these instincts are more restrained than of old ;
that we now term disease what formerly was held natural may
possibly be a sign of their decreased average vigour. We may
question whether the public tone has not changed since the
days when the highest honour a German town could show
its princely guests was to throw the public brothels open to
them free of charge. It may be that our princes are still
as sensual as in those days of old, but our towns offer up
turtle rather than women in honour of royalty. On the other
hand, there is something to be said from the evolutionary
standpoint for the increase in sexual instinct. Those nations
which have been most reproductive have, on the whole, been
the ruling nations in the world s history ; it is they who
have survived in the battle for life. The expansion of Eng
land has depended not so much on the dull brains of the
average English man or woman as upon their capacity for
reproducing themselves. If race-predominance depends, then,
to any extent upon race-instinct for reproduction, that race
which survives will have this instinct strongly developed.
Strongly developed sexual instinct may accordingly be a con
dition for race -permanence, and may thus tend to increase
among the surviving races. This is only a suggestion, which
we shall do well to bear in mind; there are, of course, many
other factors which help to turn the balance race-physique,
energy, and foresight. It must also be sexual instinct not
abused, but manifesting itself in an increased birth-rate. There
remains, however, a possibility, and it is one which I think is
worthy of our attention, that sexual instinct may never tend
to decrease, but even to increase in the predominant races
of mankind. If child-bearing women must be intellectually
handicapped, then the penalty to be paid for race-predominance
is the subjection of women. In this respect we may remark
how in Greece the wives, or child-bearing women were in
374 THE ETHIC OF EREETHOUGHT
complete subjection, they were held in social honour merely
as legitimate child-bearers ; on the other hand, the prosti
tute and the mistress, as a rule non-child-bearing, were often
the intellectual equals, the genuine comrades of the men.
The fact is noteworthy not only for the complete change
which has taken place in this latter relation in modern times,
but also for the light it throws on possible limitations to the
emancipation and education as well of child-bearing as of non-
child-bearing women. It almost suggests that child-bearing
will ultimately differentiate the female sex.
Another general problem arises from the law of inherited
characters. If it be true, that the more highly educated
members of a community have more or less restrained sexual
instinct, and so fewer children than their more animal fellows,
then there will always be a restriction on inherited intellectual
development. The race will not tend to develop greater brain
power nor a more refined nature. May not this possibly be
the reason why the progress of the great mass of the people
is so disheartcningly slow ? Our middle classes are now
filled with men whose intellectual powers would have
astounded a medieval philosopher ; but place a modern
working man beside a mediaeval craftsman, and morally or
intellectually should we be able to mark an absolute progress ?
I doubt it. Both Darwin and Galton have emphasised the
loss to the Middle Ages produced by the ascetic life of its
best men and women thousands of the noblest -minded of
those days left only a personal, not a transmitted influence
to posterity. Much the same tendency is visible to-day ;
educated men and women often do not marry or marry late.
The writer in the Westminster Review already referred to
holds that in the future the best women will be too highly
developed to submit to child-bearing ; in other words, the
continuation of the species will be left to the coarser and
less intellectual of its members. This seems to me a very
serious difficulty, demanding the most thorough investigation.
Educated men and women may even in this respect owe a
duty to society, which society, as it is at present constituted,
hinders them from fulfilling. , The right to bear children is
THE WOMAN S QUESTION 375
a sacred right, and in a better organised society than the
present, would it not be fitting that either the state should
have a voice in the matter, or else a strong public opinion
should often intervene ? Shall those who are diseased, shall
those who are nighest to the brute, have the power to re
produce their like ? Shall the reckless, the idle, be they
poor or wealthy, those who follow mere instinct without
reason, be the parents of the future generation ? Shall the
pthisical father not be socially branded when he hands down
misery to his offspring, and inefficient citizens to the state ?
It is difficult to conceive any greater crime against the race.
Out of the law of inherited characters spring problems which
strike deeply into the very roots of our present social habits.
It is not one, but a whole crop of questions which will
be raised when the old ideal of sex-relationship is shaken.
The movement involves a change in the whole nature of woman s
occupations and enjoyments, and a corresponding outcry on
the part of those who have ministered to them or profited by
them. Picture the change which even the growth of a public
opinion among women will involve ; the old literature and
special press will become extinct, because social and political
questions will be of equal importance to both man and woman.
Damen - Lecture, that peculiar curse of the German woman,
would vanish into nothingness. That any general literature
should be written especially for woman s reading would be
too absurd to require criticism. Women and their views
would be influential factors in the public press, because
publishers and editors would soon recognise that for com
mercial success they must respect the opinions of a moiety
of their possible customers. Not only journalistic literature,
but even the very appearance of the streets would mark the
change which must follow on woman s emancipation. Her
assumption of definite social and political responsibilities
would revolutionise the sight which meets our eyes between
three and four in the afternoon in any fashionable London
thoroughfare. Hundreds of women mere dolls gazing
intently into shop windows at various bits of coloured ribbon.
The higher education of women, so far as it has gone at
376 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
present, has hardly touched the fringe of this great mass.
Perhaps nothing is more disheartening than this sight, except
the mob of women in these very same streets between twelve
and one at night. Both phenomena are calculated to make
us despair utterly of modern civilisation. Scorn and sympathy
are inexplicably mingled ; on the whole our scorn is greater
for the woman of the day, and our sympathy for the woman
of the night. The latter suggests a great race-problem, and
is an unconscious protest against the subjection of woman and
a decadent social organisation. Can as much be said of the
former, the shopping doll, the anti-social puppet, whose wires
(well hidden under the garb of custom and fashion) are really
pulled by self-indulgence ?
How often do men take to heart the too obvious fact that
they are to a great extent responsible for the way in which
the life of the subject-sex has been moulded ? How to reach,
to influence the average man and woman is one of the most
difficult problems with which those who are working for
woman s emancipation can possibly concern themselves.
Those only who have endeavoured, without appeal to pre
judice, to move the commonplace man or woman can fully
grasp what I mean. Put aside all dogmatic faith, all
dogmatic morality, regard the sexual relation as in itself
neither good nor evil, but only so in the misery it brings to the
individual or to the race : and then try to influence the average
human being ! If you have sufficient Hellenism in you to
regard all exercise of passion as good in moderation, provided
it be productive of no mediate or immediate misery ; if you
see no virtue in asceticism, but only something as unworthy
of humanity as excess, then how infinitely difficult you will
find it to influence the average mortal !
I am very conscious that in mentioning the above problems
I have only skirted the great field of social difficulties. To
many with a wider experience, a more scientific training, and
a truer power of insight into human nature, there will appear
no problem where all is to me obscure. Especially to the
woman many of these difficulties will appear in a totally
different light ; while to her, others, which have remained un-
THE WOMAN S QUESTION 377
mentioned, may seem of far greater importance. I quite
recognise that man alone cannot understand or formulate the
difficulties which form the woman s question ; that " there
will be very little hope of real reforms unless men and women
know one another s aims and views in detail, and then accept
to some degree the same standard, the same ideal for the
community." We must not, however, for a moment forget
that the woman s question is essentially also a man s question.
It opens up great racial problems, and economically it goes
to the very basis of our existing social structure. I have
endeavoured to show that the complete emancipation of
woman connotes a revolutionary change in social habits and
in sexual ideals certainly not paralleled since that subversion
of medieval modes of thought and action which took place
between the years 1460 and 1530. Let us take warning
from the results of that revolution, and to-day endeavour to
see what we are doing and whither we are going.
In concluding this necessarily insufficient outline of a
difficult and complex subject, I would ask the reader to note
that every historical change in the relative position of man
and woman has been accompanied by great economic and
social changes. The sex-relationship has itself been the basis
of most of the rights of property. Social economy and sex-
relationship have changed together, ever in intimate association.
Hence it seems to me to follow that the present movement for
the emancipation of women cannot leave our social organisation
unaffected. Every change in sex-relation has brought moment
ous changes to the family, and to the public weal as well.
The matriarchate and the patriarchate connote totally diverse
family and tribal organisations. It is difficult to imagine
that the perfect social and legal equality of men and women
the goal to which we seem tending will not be accom
panied by the entire reconstruction of the family, if not of
the state. It may become still more important than at present
for the state to hold the balance between man and woman, to
interfere between parent and child, to restrain mere physique
from dominion in the field of labour. There have been periods
in the world s history when there was an approach to equality
378 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
between the two sexes, but those periods have been marked by
an equality in freedom, rather than by an equality in restraint.
By restraint I do not mean asceticism, but such regulation
of the sex-relations as permits a folk to reproduce itself in
sufficient numbers for permanence, and the older generation
to transmit its tribal knowledge and traditions to the younger.
These matters are necessary for the stability of the state, they
are incompatible with complete sexual freedom. The right
and wrong of the sex-relations (morality in its narrow sense)
is synonymous with the stability and instability of society.
If the growing sex-equality connote sex-freedom a return to
general promiscuity then it connotes a decay of the state,
and it will require a second Pauline Christianity and a second
subjection of one sex to restore stability. But sex-equality
must either be marked by the cessation of prostitution among
men, or, if it remains, by the like freedom to women. I see no
other alternative. We shall have the choice between equal
promiscuity and equal restraint. The misfortune for society
is that the former is a much easier course to take than the
latter, and one which history shows us has generally been
adopted.
Yet there is one ray of hope, which may after all forecast
the dawn of a new social era. If it does, then the equality of
the sexes may not again connote the return of a " swamp-age "
such as befell the tottering Koman Empire. That the past
subjection of woman has tended largely to expand man s selfish
instincts I cannot deny ; but may it not be that this very
subjection has in itself so chastened woman, so trained her to
think rather of others than of herself, that after all it may
have acted more as a blessing than a curse to the world ?
May it not bring her to the problems of the future with a
purer aim and a keener insight than is possible for man ? She
may see more clearly than he the real points at issue, and as
she has learnt self-control in the past by subjecting her will
to his, so in the future she may be able to submit her liberty
to the restraints demanded by social welfare, and to the
conditions needed for race-permanence.
XIV
A SKETCH OF THE SEX-EELATIONS IN PKIMITIVE
AND MEDIAEVAL GEKMANY 1
Die Mutter ! Mutter ! s klingt so wunderlich ! Goethe.
IN tracing the historical growth of a folk, there are two
questions which it is needful to keep prominently before us,
namely, (1) What were the successive stages in that growth;
(2) What were the physical causes which produced this
succession ?
1 I have had considerable hesitation in printing this paper unaccompanied
by the analysis of German folklore, mythology, and hero-legend, upon which
the statements of the earlier pages are really based ; they appear merely
deductive, but are nevertheless the outcome of a lengthy, if some may hold ill-
directed, historical inquiry. The paper was written some time ago, and
although, as the mass of material increases, I see reason to modify in one or
two points the statements I then made, still, the general drift of social growth
as it is here described has in my opinion been amply confirmed. The chief
point which requires modification is the want of sufficient stress laid upon group-
marriage. This phase of social growth I now recognise has played an enormous
part in the development of pre-historic Germany, and the proofs I can adduce
of its existence and, influence would, I think, have satisfied the sceptical
McLennan. I have determined to publish the paper in its present form because
it throws light on the preceding essay, and may help to explain the origin of
the ideas which are formulated in the succeeding one. It represents, to some
extent, the passage of the writer s mind from agnostic questioning through
historical inquiry to a more definite social theory.
My collection of facts bearing on the social condition of early Germany I
hope ultimately to classify and publish. But this will hardly be for some years.
Meanwhile I would ask the reader to take nothing on faith, to treat this paper
as one of fanciful suggestions, till the sparse leisure moments of an otherwise
occupied life may have sufficiently accumulated for me to convince him by
reasoned treatment of facts, that the suggestions have a real historical
basis. [A small part of them has since appeared in the essays in vol. ii. of my
Chances of Death and other Studies in Evolution, 1897.]
380 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUaHT
The answer to the first question is embodied in what I
may term formed history. The formal historian has to con
struct from language, from tradition (folklore and saga), from
archaeological finds, and ultimately from monument and
document, the form of growth peculiar to a given folk. Only
when this very necessary formal history is in its broad out
lines established, can the rational historian enter the field and
point out the physical and biological causes which have produced
each particular phase of development. This distinction
between formal and rational runs through all branches of human
knowledge. Formal history has made, of recent years, great
advances ; it may be said to have had its Kepler and Koper-
nicus, but the Newton or Darwin, who shall rationalise it,
who shall formulate axioms of historic growth in complete har
mony with the known laws of physical and biological science,
has yet to arise. He awaits the completion of formal history. 1
Of one point we may be quite sure. Since the entire
development of our species is dependent on the sex-relations,
the rational historian of the future will appeal, to an extent
scarcely imagined in the present, to the science sexualogy
and to the formal history of sex. The formal history of sex
is becoming a recognised branch of research ; it is a neces
sary preliminary to a science of sexualogy, and to the ultimate
acceptance of the laws of that science as factors in the
rationale of historic growth. What is this but to assert that
the higher statescraft of the future historically and scientifi
cally trained will recognise the sex-relations as fundamental
in the organisation of the state ?
In the present paper I wish to place before you a slight
sketch of what I hold to be the formal history of sex among
the Germans. In the course of this sketch I shall suggest
various causes which have probably produced the development
described. I shall, in fact, make various excursions possibly
of a rather idle character into the field of rational history.
I cannot ask you at present to examine with me at any
length the material upon which I have based my formal history.
1 Herder attempted it, and failed, because pre-Darwinian, he was really
pre-scientific.
THE SEX-EELATIONS IN GEKMANY 381
If many of the statements of my paper appear to you to
sound wonderful, exaggerated, or even impossible, I would ask
you to suspend judgment until you have analysed the evidence
I hope one day to place before you.
The Germans belong to a group of peoples which, common
features of language, custom and folklore, show to have sprung
at some distant date from a common stock. 1 This folk-
group is usually termed Aryan, and the first home of the
Aryans was formerly placed in Asia. This view has, of
recent years, been contested, and Northern Europe has replaced
Asia in the opinion of some first-class historians. Be this
true or not, we have to bear clearly in mind, that the Germans
probably did not pass through the preliminary stages of their
civilisation within their present geographical limits.
In the stone age, in the ages of cave and pile dwellings,
a race of men, which was not Aryan, occupied geographical
Germany so much we know, if but little else, concerning them.
The Germans developed from brutedom towards manhood,
passed through the long centuries of primitive culture outside
geographical Germany. When we learn to know the Germans
historically they have reached a stage of fair civilisation a
stage, however, which is not greatly in advance of what they
had received from the common Aryan stock. Let me recall
to your minds briefly what that Aryan civilisation amounted
to. It bred cattle, milked the cow and the goat, kept flocks
of sheep, swine, geese, and poultry, had tamed the dog, and
discovered butter and cheese. It sowed corn, prepared mead
out of honey, spun roughly, wove and sewed clothes out of
wool and flax ; it used roads and discovered fords ; it made
ships, waggons, and houses of wood, and also had learned the
potter s art. It had weapons, spear and shield, bow and
arrow, possibly only of stone and wood. It had villages, folk-
meetings, folk-customs, petty chiefs, and tribal organisation.
Further, it could count to nearly a thousand, reckoned time by
months and years, had the elements of medicine, a complex
mythology, and possibly believed in the immortality of the soul.
1 Common custom and folklore seem to me more valid arguments for a
common Aryan parentage than languages sprung from a common stock.
382 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
Above all, the family life was fairly developed, our usual
grades of relationship being recognised. 1
The Aryan migration must be looked upon, then, as that
of a semi-agricultural folk. An agricultural folk does not,
like a purely hunting folk, lightly leave its dwellings and
pastures. Possibly some social oppression, some subjection of
the plebs, drove the Aryans from their first homes. Be this
as it may, we have to note that the Germans remained much
behind the Aryans who migrated further southwards. This,
very probably, may be accounted for by the nature of the
country into which stress of circumstances drove them ; the
huge forests of Northern Europe checked their development,
the hunting instincts of the people were encouraged or
resuscitated ; the growth of the patriarchate was thus delayed,
the complete annihilation of the matriarchate postponed.
Our first historic notices of the Germans bring before us clear
evidences of the existence of the mother-age ; the power of
woman, although no longer at its zenith, is far from the nadir ;
the contest between man and woman for supremacy is not con
cluded. The existence of that contest is one of the causes of
the rapid reception of Christianity by the Germans ; it was
the religious weapon needed by the man ; the old faith, if
remodelled by the man, had yet been invented by the woman
and did not admit of being readily used as a weapon against
her. It is this retardation in the subjection of women which
renders German primitive history of such value in the general
history of culture. The Aryan civilisation, if we except tribal
organisation and possibly herding of cattle and use of weapons,
is the civilisation of the woman of the mother-age ; and, as
I have remarked, the German of Tacitus has not got immeasur
ably beyond it. The development of sex-relations in mediaeval
Germany is only intelligible when we bear in mind that the
conflict between man and woman only terminated with the
complete subjection of the latter in the sixteenth century.
What the Greeks had accomplished in the age of Pericles
the domestication of the woman the Germans achieved
only in the age of Luther.
1 [Much of this paragraph requires modification in the light of more recent work.]
THE SEX-KELATIONS IN GEKMANY 383
Let us endeavour to form some rough scheme of the succes
sive stages of sex-relationship in early Germanic culture.
Anthropology shows us that while many savage races have
passed through, or are passing through, similar phases, the
scheme does not provide us with a universal law of evolution.
Possibly it may not hold for every member of the Aryan stock ;.
that it holds for the Greeks, has, to my mind, been sufficiently
proved by Bachofen, 1 for the Slavs by Zmigrodzki, 2 while all
that I have been able to glean with regard to the early
Hindoo sex-relations is, I venture to think, confirmatory.
The following are the stages to which I wish to draw
attention :
(1) The Period of Promiscuity.
In this period mankind is not far from the brute stage.
There is no conception of relationship, and sexual intercourse
is absolutely promiscuous. The food of man is raw, whether
vegetable or animal, and he is a creature of the woods.
Sex-relations have the chance character of perfectly wild
nature. The plant drops its seed, and it fructifies or not
as surrounding circumstances admit. The man pursues
animals for his food, or woman in the breeding-season when
he would gratify his passions. Traces of this stage abound
in Aryan myth. The promiscuous period, or raw-food age.
has for essential characteristics the wood and the swamp.
God-conceptions, if such they can be called, are of the darkest,
most inhuman type. They are the natural forces of the
wood, particularly the nocturnal forces ; the creatures of the
swamp, which is the symbol of unregulated fertility. These
natural forces are the foes of mankind, particularly of com
paratively helpless children and women ; they take the form
of beast, or half -beast, half-man. As they prey upon the
helpless, so arises later the conception of propitiating them by
the sacrifice of children and captives. These human sacrifices,
occasionally followed by cannibalism, are typical of a whole
group of myths, German, Greek, and Slavonic, which are only
reminiscences of the late promiscuous period. We find also
1 Bachofen : Das Mutterrecht, 1861.
2 Zmigrodzki : Die Mutter lei den Volkern des arischen Stammes, 1886.
384 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
survivals from this age in the folk-lore of child-birth and of
marriage from every part of Germany.
Let us turn to the position of the woman who has been
rendered pregnant by the man, and then left by him to her
own devices for self-preservation. Granted that, at any rate
in an advanced state of pregnancy, she is no longer an object
of pursuit on the part of the male, still she lias a difficult
task before her in self-preservation during the period of child
birth. I put self-preservation in the first place, although
undoubtedly the mother-instinct to preserve the young would
be evolved by natural selection early in the course of develop
ment ; the impulse, however, of self-preservation would
probably be foremost in an age when the mother was not
unaccustomed to the destruction of children. Further, we
must note that among primitive races the period of suckling
is extremely prolonged, amounting often to two or three
years even more. During the whole of this time primitive
woman, obeying a well-known physiological law, abstains from
intercourse with the man. As she is of less value to him, so
she is largely left to provide for herself. We have, then, in
these facts, the prime factor in human culture. The
"birth of civilisation must he souyht in the attempts of the
woman at self -preservation during the times of pregnancy and
child-rearing. What the man achieved in the promiscuous
age was due to the contest for food with his fellows and with
wild beasts. He invented and improved weapons ; but the
woman, handicapped as she might appear to be by child-
bearing, became on this very account the main instrument in
human civilisation. The man s contributions in this early
period are a mere nothing as compared to the woman s. Take
the earliest German or Scandinavian mythology, remove all
the goddesses ; what is left ? An utterly impossible state.
No agriculture, no wisdom, no medicine, no tradition, no
family, no conception of immortality. Now take away all the
gods ; we have left quite a possible phase of civilisation,
without, however, war or sea-traffic; hunting remains, although
much less emphasised ; some, indeed, might even suggest
war or at least occasional contest between man and
THE SEX-RELATIONS IN GERMANY 385
woman. 1 This social organisation is that of the mother-age, and
is the work of women. Women evolved it in their struggles
for self-preservation during pregnancy and child-nurture. The
part woman has played, and, I venture to think, will play, in
civilisation differs from man s part exactly in this element of
child-bearing. Take away this element, and the like character
of the struggle for existence will lead the non-child-bearing
woman along the same lines of development as man. What
woman has individually achieved for civilisation is, I think,
due to her child-bearing function. It raised her to intellectual
and inventive supremacy, it made her the teacher and guide
of man in the mother-age.
Let us attempt to sketch the rational side of this formal
change from promiscuity to the mother-age.
The pregnant woman owing to the instinct of self-pre
servation seeks the cave, the den, or some retreat in the darkest
part of the forest ; there she collects leaves, sticks, or whatever
will protect her. She must shelter herself from man and
wild beasts. She must also hoard food for the days or weeks
when she can neither hunt nor seek roots and berries with the
former ease. Her task is the harder if the birth takes place
towards winter. Here are wants enough urging her towards
invention, developing her cunning and her positive knowledge.
The den or cave becomes the basis of the home, for the child
depends for a long period on the mother ; she communicates
to the child her knowledge of roots, and her methods of
preserving food. She becomes the centre of traditional
culture ; she hands down to the child her primitive beliefs ;
she shapes religion and custom. Round the den arise the first
attempts at agriculture ; roots and berries are thrown forth,
and collect alongside human excrement and other refuse.
The fertility produced by a chance neighbourhood is ultimately
made use of as a basis for food-supply. Thus woman becomes
the first agriculturist ; nor does the folklore of child-birth
forget to commemorate this fact. Probably long before the
first child can maintain itself, the mother is again pregnant,
not improbably by a different father ; the woman has now
1 For a like result based upon Slavonic tradition, see Zmigrodzki, p. 222.
25
386 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
a double burden upon her, a double call for invention and
ingenuity. The child -mortality is probably very great,
exposure of children and their sacrifice frequent ; still natural
selection points to the survival of that type of woman who
provided for several children ; we see the woman increasing
the capacities of the den, increasing her knowledge of roots
and of agriculture. I have already referred to the long
period of suckling among primitive races ; during this time
must have arisen a contest in the woman between duty
towards the child and sexual inclination. Probably in many
cases it ended in the desertion of the child, or in its formal
sacrifice by man or woman. But from this contest arises the
most marvellous stage in the mother-civilisation. Mankind
at some period of its growth has tamed the animals and used
their milk and flesh for its food-supply. To man or woman
do we owe this boon ? To those who have examined the
folklore of child-birth, there cannot be any hesitation as to the
answer. In great part, if not entirely, to woman. The cow,
swine, butter and milk, the cock and hen, are all associated
with the German and Slavonic child-birth traditions in a
fashion which admits of one interpretation only. The needs
of the child-bearing woman, her struggles for the preservation
of self and children, her desire to shorten the period of
suckling, led to the domestication of animals. The woman
surrounded by a group of children becomes in the long lapse
of centuries the central civilising force. From this group
springs the family based on the mother alone ; the man learns
of the woman the elements of agriculture, the tending and
breeding of at least the smaller domestic animals, the
properties of roots and herbs. She forms religion and
tradition, and she naturally reverences women, not men
goddesses, not gods. The oldest, the wisest, the most mysteri
ously powerful of the Teutonic deities are female. The
Altvater Wuodan must sacrifice his eye to learn their mysterious
knowledge. I even find traces in Fru Gude, an earth-
goddess, of a primitive female form of Wuodan himself. The
natural powers deified by the woman are of two kinds. She
has fled from the sight of man, she and he are at feud during
THE SEX-KELATIONS IN GEKMANY 387
pregnancy and child-nurture. She is guarded from man at
this time by beings of the den and cave, goddesses of the
dark and the night, at war with man. To approach the
pregnant woman is dangerous to the man, she is surrounded
by spirits hostile to him ; but there are other beings around
her too, hostile to her, the old nature forces, half-animal, half-
man, of the promiscuous period, ready to take her life and
that of her children. These are, as it were, the personified
difficulties with which she has to struggle for self-preservation.
Eound the woman at child-birth collect a group of infernal
beings unfriendly to man arid woman alike. Later folklore
represents them by a crowd of witches and devils eager to
destroy child and mother. How shall she escape them ?
Place against the door an axe, a broom, and a dung-fork ;
let her eat certain roots ; bring in sacred milk and cheese, or
slaughter a cock. Then they cannot touch her. These are
symbols of the means taken by the woman for self-preserva
tion in the earliest ages symbols of her work of civilisation.
They are more akin to the brighter spirits, who are there to
protect her, the prototypes of the goddesses we find in later
German mythology. Thus it comes about that the woman in
child-bed is to the German peasantry of to-day something at
the same time pure and impure. The witch is there ready to
harm both husband and wife ; but the angel, the good deity, is
there likewise, and the woman who dies in child-birth avoids
purgatory and goes straight to heaven.
Jacob Grimm said of the German goddesses, years before
modern investigations had brought the mother-age to light :
" In the case of the gods the previous investigation could
reach its goal by separating individuals; it seems advisable,
however, to consider the goddesses collectively as well as
individually, because a common idea lies at the basis of them
all, and will thus be the more clearly marked. They are con
ceived of peculiarly as divine mothers (goiter mutter}, travelling
about and visiting mortals ; from them mankind has learnt
the business and the arts of housekeeping as well as agriculture,
spinning, weaving, watching the hearth, sowing and reaping.
These labours bring peace and rest to the land, and the
388 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
memory of them remains firmer in pleasing traditions than
war and fighting, which, like women, the majority of the
goddesses shun." ]
A truer, although quite unconscious, tribute to the civilis
ing work of women can hardly be imagined. If we add to the
arts mentioned by Grimm, the art of healing, the elements of
religious faith as a tradition, and, as far as the Germans are
concerned, apparently the runic art of writing, we have a slight
picture of what women accomplished in the centuries which
intervened between the promiscuous period and the complete
establishment of the father-age.
(2) The Mother-Age (Matriarcliate).
In this age raw food has been supplemented or replaced
by milk and butter ; hence the period has been called the
milk -and -butter period. The den has developed into the
home or house, of which the mother is the head. She is the
source of all traditional knowledge and of all relationship.
Her children are by different, and very probably unknown,
fathers ; such property as there is, descends through her. In
the earlier phases of the mother-age, when the food-supply
and the shelter of the den were limited, the boy would, as he
grew older, go off hunting for himself, and live freely like other
men. As the supply and comfort of the den increased to those
of the hut, there would undoubtedly be two types of men, the
huntsman who went forth, and the agriculturist who stayed
at home, remaining under the influence of his mother. As a
rule the daughter would also remain at home, and, when she
reached puberty, consort temporarily with some man. The
earliest Aryan names of relationship denote merely sex-
functions. Daughter and son are not correlated to father
and mother ; the one is simply the milk-giver, the other
the ^begetter. The word mother is connected with a root
signifying the quickening one. The conception of father
could hardly be very prominent during the promiscuous period
and the earlier portion of the mother-age. Its signification
is said to be double the protector and the ruler ; this, if
correct, would point at least to the later mother-age, if not to
1 Deutsche Mythologie, i. p. 207.
\
THE SEX-RELATIONS IN GERMANY 389
the patriarchate, or father-age. 1 Till the mother had estab
lished the comparative comfort of the den, there was no
inducement for the father to stay by her and protect or rule
the offspring. The father-instinct has been evolved in some
animals, notably birds, in the struggle for existence. I do
not know whether it has been found in any carnivorous, and
therefore hunting mammal ; especially I doubt whether it
existed in man before the mother-age.
The above remarks will suggest the prominence of the
women in the primitive family. The man remains at first
outside it he is a hunter. His whole knowledge is the
1 mother-wit he has received in the den. The woman stands
on a higher level ; she has become located, and has an interest
in the soil. No longer the swamp, but the field becomes the
symbol of sex-union. In both cases it is Mother Earth which
is productive, but it is no longer the unregulated fruition of
the swamp period :
Her plenteous womb
Expresseth its full tilth and husbandry.
The conception of sexual union in folklore becomes tilth,
the goddess of child-birth is the goddess of agriculture.
The superior position of woman leads, as we have said, to a
division of mankind into two classes : the agriculturist stays
in the family, the huntsman leaves it, and remains in a lower
grade of culture. Probably the same promiscuous sexual
relations between the women, of what we may now venture
to call the family, and the men outside continue, but the
agriculturists, the men of the family, have now to be provided
for. This provision seems to have been made in a variety of
ways which we find clearly marked in early mythology and
folklore. I note the following :
(1) They have promiscuous sexual relations, like the
hunter, with women of other families, still retaining their
place in their own. Their offspring are quite independent of
them, and belong to a family in which they have no position.
1 A. Kuhn : Zur altesten Geschichte der mdogermanischen Volker, Bd. I.,
1850. Deecke : Die deutscfte Vcrwandtschaftsnamen, 1870. See also the
present writer s essay on group-marriage and the significance of names of relation
ship in The Chances of Death, vol. ii., 1897.
390 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
(2) They have sexual relations with the women of their
own family, their sisters. Brother-sister marriage and group-
marriage are the very usual relations pointed to by German
as well as Greek mythology, folklore, and philology.
(3) They unite themselves to women of other families,
and transfer themselves to those families ; in this case their
position seems to have been unstable, if not dangerous, even
when they brought, as in later days, a dowry with them.
(4) They capture women from other families, and intro
duce them into their own. This was probably also a danger
ous method, if the women were not paid for.
With regard to the modes in which the agriculturists
satisfied their sexual instincts, (3) and (4) apparently belong
to a later state of development than (1) or (2). They pass
over into the father -age, and the fourth develops into the
ordinary forms of marriage by capture and by purchase. But
there is an important point to be recognised here : three out
of these four forms tend towards permanency in the sexual
relation, and limitation in its field, or ultimately to a lasting
monogamy. It is quite true that brother-sister and group-
marriages led in many cases to polygamy or polyandry, but
even here there was a permanent and limited system. The
Teutonic mythology dates from an age when brother -sister
marriage was becoming monogamic. The agriculturist in the
mother-age developed a regulated sex-relation on the side of
the man, and in our earliest traces of German culture we find
monogamy general, if not absolute.
But although the property in the wife can be shown by
her capture, and the husband-right thus established, it is a
different matter with the child. That the child follows the
womb and that ownership is shown by the labours of child
birth, was a principle which our forefathers held for centuries,
and found extremely difficult to circumvent, as with the decay
of the mother-age the sexual father rose into importance. The
same method of claiming father-rights has been discovered
among the natives of Africa, South America, and the Celts of
Strabo s time. It was that the husband also should simulate
the labours of child-birth, and take to bed at the same time as
THE SEX-KELATIONS IN GEBMANY 391
his wife, if he wished to be held as the father and proprietor
of the child. We find several traces of this na ive device in
German folklore. It belongs to a period of development later
than that which we are at present considering, but it is
intimately connected with the marriages by purchase and
capture, which marked the end of the mother -age. Thus
Strabo tells us of the primitive people of Spain that they
suffered a most foolish governaunce by women ; that the
women possessed the property, and it passed from mother
to daughter ; that the latter gave away their brothers in
marriage, and that the men took a dowry with them into
the houses of their wives ; that the women performed all
agricultural work, and became so hardened by it that child
birth was nothing to them. Indeed, Strabo remarks, they
on these occasions put their husbands to bed and wait upon
them! Strabo s account of the Cantabri has been ridiculed
by an unbelieving age. Modern research, however, and the
discovery of the matriarchate, are doing much to re-establish
the good faith, not only of Strabo, but even of that supposed
arch-liar Herodotus.
Let us return for a moment to the hunting, as distinguished
from the agricultural portion of the population. It presents,
as it were, the man s side of primitive civilisation. It has
improved its arms, become skilled in the artifices of the chase,
and, according to Lippert, domesticated herds of cattle, prob
ably beginning, like the Egyptians, with the antelope or some
kindred form of easily tamed deer. 1 From the huntsman
develops the nomad, and here arises the culture of the man
in opposition to the culture of the woman. Where no men,
or few, have become agriculturists, we have a distinction of
food between men and women ; they live apart and feed apart
a state of affairs which evidently existed in some primitive
German tribes, and is still to be found in parts of Central
Africa. On the other hand, where the agricultural element
is strong, there arises a division and probably a conflict between
the nomadic and agricultural sections of primitive mankind.
Their interests are opposed, especially in matters of sex. The
1 Die Geschichte der Familie, p. 41.
392 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
primitive agriculturist reared among women has not the
fighting skill of the nomad. The nomad has not the easy
access to women. With him woman must be captured, but
owing to the long period of suckling without assuming any
great disparity in the number of men and women we must
suppose sexually fit women to have been comparatively scarce.
Hence arise contests with the agriculturist, polyandry, and
often a comparatively inferior position of woman as a captive
or chattel among nomads.
The permanency of the sex -relation among the agricul
turists, the necessity for organisation in matters of defence,
which must be entrusted to the men these are the beginnings
of the father-age. But, as Lippert ! has pointed out, the man
appears as tribal organiser, ruler, or tribe -father, before his
position as sexual father is recognised. The first conception
of father is ruler/ protector, not progenitor. The first stage
towards the father -age is the need of a physical protector.
The mother still rules the house, but the c Altvater rules the
fight, often indeed guided by the women. For woman is
still essentially the wise one, she is the source of traditional
religion, and the charge of the gods is essentially hers. About
the hearth arise the first conceptions of altar and sanctuary.
She writes with her staff in the ashes the will of the gods,
and her pots and kettles reappear in every witch-trial of the
Middle Ages. Her spirit lingers round the hearth even after
death, and to-day the solitary student sitting over his fire, or
the peasant when his family are out, will tell you they have
been mutterseelen allein, meaning absolutely alone. Unrecog
nised relic of the mother-age, they are alone at the hearth
with their mother s soul !
If I might venture on a fanciful suggestion, which, how
ever, seems to me to receive much confirmation from German
folklore, I should say, that it was a conflict between nomadic
and semi-agricultural populations, which drove the Germans,
if not all the Aryan stock, from their earlier dwelling-places.
Be this as it may, our first historical traces of the Germans
1 Ibid., pp. 6, 7, 218, et seq. [I should not now accept this origin for the
feed root in father or pater. 1901.]
THE SEX-KELATIONS IN GEKMANY 393
are of a semi-agricultural people, among whom the mother- age
has not yet passed away; the women are priestesses and
rulers of the house, the deities are in great part goddesses ;
learning runic lore is in the hands of the woman, and
folk-custom recognises her superiority to man at many points ;
the man may he Altvater, or tribal ruler, but as sexual father, he
is not yet fully recognised. But it is the period of struggle,
the man is asserting himself, a regulated sexual relation has
appeared, the possibility of a sexual father is there, and the
power of woman is on the decline. But the victory of man
is not easy ; it takes long centuries to fully confirm it, and
traces of the mother-age remain throughout mediaeval times.
The transition from the mother- to the father-age is, indeed,
marked by the appearance of women of gigantic stature and
nigh infernal nature. There is as yet no sanctity in the rela
tion of wife and husband ; the wife is the result of purchase or
capture, and she does not lightly submit to the loss of the
mother-power. The old legends of contest between men and
women are not such idle fancies as some would have us
believe, and very dark shadows indeed do such figures as those
of Ildico, Fredegunde, and Brunhilde cast across the pages
of history. Such women, indeed, are only paralleled by the
Clytsemnestra and Medea of a like phase in Greek develop
ment. Nor does the poet fail even among the Germans to
represent the contest between man and woman for the mastery ;
it is the victory of the new day- or light-gods over the old
night- or earth-goddesses. Wuodan replaces Hellja and Mother
Earth, Siegfried conquers Brunhilde, Beovulf defeats the off
spring of the swamp goddess Grindel, and Thor fights with
Gialp and Greip, the daughters of Geirrod. 1
It is this struggle between the mother- and father-stages
of civilisation which is all-important in considering the develop
ment of the sex-relations. As external marriage took the place
of group-marriage, the capture of the bride must have met with
active opposition on the part of the mother ; equally hostile
must she have been to the necessary changes in the customs
relating to the devolution of property. The mother-in-law,
1 Corpus Boreale, Mythic Fragments, i. p. 127.
394 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
or the chief-woman of the wife s family, becomes an object of
peculiar hatred to the husband ; she is his special foe, and,
in some primitive tribes, she and he never after the marriage
exchange a word or meet under the same roof. 1 Evidence of
the like feeling is very apparent in Germanic folklore. To
such bitterness did the marriage by capture lead, to such blood
feuds, that we find in early German tradition great merit
ascribed to those rulers who ordered that the wife should
be obtained by purchase, not by capture. Driven from the
commanding position of house -mother, and deprived of her
mother- rights in the matter of property, the last fortress of
the Teutonic woman was her sacerdotal privileges. She
remained holy as priestess, she had charge of the tribal
sacrifice and the tribal religion. From this last refuge she
was driven by the introduction of Christianity among the
Germans. In the Roman world that view of the sex-rela
tions symbolised by the swamp had long given place to a
regulated sex-system, which had culminated in the strongest
father -rights possibly ever attained by any folk. The re
action against these father -rights had led, in the course of
centuries, to what appears, at least in Rome itself, as a
revival of the swamp -age. A regulated sex -relationship had
become impossible to the body social, for it had adopted equal
license, not equal restraint, as the keynote to sex-equality.
Upon this field appeared Christianity with the difficult
task of reconstruction and the terrible narrowness of the
Pauline doctrine. It succeeded, with the aid of Chrysostom
and Jerome, in damming out the swamp, but at the entire
cost of woman. Woman is to be, so long as she is con
sidered a creature of sex, entirely subject to the man. She
is mentally and physically his inferior, and must obey him.
Considered as an asexual being, she can attain to a position
in the ecclesiastical world, but on this condition only. Thus
it is not the natural character of mother, but the artificial quality
of chastity which marks a woman as holy, or confers on her
religious importance as a saint. This may have been necessary
to dam the Roman swamp, but it was not a version of
1 Lippert, quoting from Nachtigals Reisen, pp. 44-45.
THE SEX-KELATIONS IN GEKMANY 395
Christianity likely to be popular with a folk still in the mother-
age, and it led to not a few eccentric heresies. Taking, however,
the Germans as we find them in the midst of the transition from
mother- to father-age, the Christianity of Paul and Jerome
was to the men by no means an unpleasant faith. There was
much in it which favoured the spread of the father-power, and
when Christ was reduced to a warrior-chief, and the disciples
to his head-men much as we find them in that earliest
German version of Christianity, the old Saxon Heliand
then, indeed, it might be accepted as a suitable faith for the
father- or hero -age. On the other hand, the women, the
priestess -mothers of the old faith, were unlikely to receive
warmly these doctrines of subjection and chastity. They and
their deities became the object of hatred to the Christian
missionaries, and later of alternate scorn and fear to pious
ascetics and monks. The priestess-mother became something
impure, a creature associated with the devil, her lore an infernal
incantation, her cooking a brewing of poison ; nay, her very
existence a perpetual source of sin to man. Thus woman as
mother and priestess became woman as witch. The witch-
trials of the Middle Ages, wherein thousands of women were
condemned to the stake, were the last traces of a very real
contest between man and woman. For one man burned there
were at least fifty women, and when one reads the confessions
under torture of these poor wretches, a strange light is thrown
over the meaning of all this suffering. It is the last struggle
of women against complete subjection. There appears in these
confessions all the traditional lore of the mother- age ; the old
gods and goddesses are there, and the old modes of thought ;
nay, the very forms of sex-relationship due to the promiscuous
age and the mother-age reappear. Nor was it only tradition,
there can be little doubt of a sexual cult, and child-birth rites
lasting on into the father -age and even into the Christian
Middle Ages. I hope on another occasion to throw some
light upon this secret sexual cult as evidenced by German
witch-trials.
(3) The Father -Age (Patriarchate}.
This age cannot be said to have been fully established
396 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
among all Germanic folks until the reception of Christianity.
Of course, its essential features, the rule of the Altvater, the
capture or purchase of wives, the reckoning of descent by the
father s side, and the inheritance of property by sons only, are
all manifest in the heroic age the age of the Germanic folk-
wanderings and of the Vikings. The hero -legends of the
HeldenbucTi and of the JSdda testify to this state of affairs only
too clearly. But we find at the same time, even in these very
legends, as well as in early custom and law, an anomalous
position of the woman. The hero-age is a period of transition.
Christianity is necessary to make the father-age universal, and
complete the subjection of the woman.
But Christianity left a loophole to the woman, which is of
singular importance ; it allowed her to play a really impor
tant part in the state on condition of her leading the ascetic
life. It threw open its schools to men and women alike ; and,
provided the woman retained her virginity, she might rise to
any degree of intellectual eminence. As abbess of an im
portant nunnery she had a social and intellectual influence
which is not always sufficiently recognised. The history of cul
ture in Germany shows a series of women like Hroswitha of
Gandersheim and Herrad of Landsberg, who were scarcely
equalled, certainly not surpassed, by any men of their time.
The popular theology of the age expressed the new position
of woman in the phrase, Eva (a mother and a wife) had
deprived man of paradise ; Ave (Ave = Maria (sic) a virgin)
had restored salvation to him/
We have thus again a great division drawn across woman
kind ; the non-child-bearing woman is holy and has a career
before her ; the child-bearing woman is of an inferior caste,
and is a necessity of the weak and sinful nature of man. It
must not be supposed that this was merely the view of the
Church Fathers, or of scholastics and monks. It passed into
folk literature and the proverbial philosophy of the people,
and remained there long after it had ceased to be the opinion
of the educated. A comparison of monkish and folk writings
would, did space permit, bring this clearly before the reader.
If every peasant and burgher did not hold the same view of
THE SEX-RELATIONS IN GERMANY 397
wedlock as an endless penaunce, which is expressed by a
mediaeval English poet who has been saved from the hell of
marriage when he to wed saught fyrst occasioun, l still every
peasant and burgher looked upon the woman as an inferior
being, ever ready to contest his authority and lead him into
evil. Nor do I think, considering that the subjection of
woman, and the establishment of the father-age, were not of
remote date, that this feeling was by any means unreasonable.
Be this as it may, there is small doubt that the folk accepted
the theologian s views and divided woman into a higher and
lower order of beings, the virgin and the wife. For centuries
woman as wife almost disappears from the sphere of political
and social influence.
The contrast, however, between the beauty of virginity and
the comparative degradation of motherhood could not be main
tained in human life, full as it was of sexual influences. The
way in which the contradiction was solved presents us with
one of the most remarkable instances of the close relation
which always seems to exist between intense religious
enthusiasm and sexual excitement.
The Germans were in far too primitive and natural a state
to shake off entirely their old polytheistic faiths, and while,
on the one hand, witchcraft maintained its place, on the other
the influence of the old reverence towards women, due to the
mother-age, made itself felt in the new religion. Owing to
the Jews having chosen Jahveh, not Astoreth, as their tribal
deity Christianity presented the strange spectacle of a religion
without a goddess. As such we recognise that it is not the
production of an agricultural people, but of one among whom
women held a very secondary place. Jews and late Greeks
together were not likely to give to the world a religion of the
woman. Hence, when this religion of the man came among a
people still full of the beliefs and feelings of the mother-age,
although it came as an instrument working towards the sub-
1 But of his grace God hath me preserved
Be the wise coimcell of aungelis three ;
From hell gates they have my silt conserved
In tyme of yere, when lovers lusty be.
398 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
jection of woman yet the spirit of the folk was too strong
for it ; they demanded and obtained a goddess. 1 If the ideal
woman be no longer the mother, at least a virgin goddess
shall be added to the Christian pantheon ; the tritheistic faith
shall become tetra-theistic, and ultimately polytheistic. Some
Protestants are apt to look upon this change in Christianity
as the mark of the Devil ; to me it seems the great triumph of
mediaeval Christianity. With one stroke it threw off Hebraism
and the still more baneful late Hellenism, and became Germanic.
It became a matter of feeling and imagination ; it was possible
for a great art, a great literature, and a great theology to grow
up under it. It became the means by which the Germanic
element could influence civilisation as the Greek and the Indian
had done. The condition of the reception of Christianity by
the Germans was the fuller reception of the mother-element by
Christianity of the woman even in the shape of a virgin.
The new goddess, once incorporated in the Christian
mythology rapidly replaced in affection and reverence the older
gods. Every virtue, every form of praise, was heaped
upon her, in the most exaggerated language. The ascetic
monk, deprived of the natural outflow for his sexual feelings,
gave expression to it in songs to the Virgin, which, as the
years rolled by, gained a stronger and stronger sensual colour
ing ; the most remarkable, not to say dangerous, similes were
used ; all the ardour of the sexual passion is poured out in
these Latin Virgin-songs. Nor did the matter end here :
the strolling scholars adopted these Virgin -songs, modified
and extended them so that we find occasionally the same
lines in a sacred hymn and in a rollicking, drinking love-song.
The virgin became merely a peg on which every expression of
the wildest passion could be hung. The hymn to the Virgin
became the basis of a new phase in sex-relationship.
In the cloister - manuscripts, among these extravagant
hymns to the Virgin, we find the first love- songs. Little
1 Although the Germans did not invent mariolatry, which not improbably
had its origin in the direct transformation of the priestesses of Ceres into priestesses
of the Christ-Mother, yet mariolatry was from the earliest time an essential and
much emphasised feature of Germanic Christianity.
THE SEX-KELATIONS IN GEKMANY 399
more than translations of the Latin Virgin-hymns, their scope
is yet obvious : whether used by the monks, or, what is very
probable, written by them for the knights, they are purely
songs of sexual love, songs in adoration of an earthly, and
not a heavenly, mistress. They are the germs of the Minne-
sang. We have reached the age of the German Minnesinger,
the beginning of what we in England term chivalry, but what
the Germans denote by Minne, a word which in the oldest
German signifies spiritual love as for the gods, but in Middle
High German has almost a purely sensual meaning. Woman
at least in the upper classes of society is to regain a place
of influence. She has, indeed, revenged herself upon the
theology which placed chastity above motherhood. But her
power over men is to be based not upon the rights of a
mother, but upon the charms of a mistress. Man is her
slave so long as she retains her beauty, or his fancy be not
sated. It is the Periclean period of German development ;
Hetairism triumphant, only with a difference the woman is
paid for her sexual service in a more spiritual form. She
remains before the law and the church subject to man, but
she rules him through the senses. That is the strange out
come of the father-age in Germany ! We are too apt to look
upon the chivalry of the Middle Ages from the standpoint
of nineteenth-century romance-writers to consider it as the
single-minded service of a generous manhood towards a noble
but weaker womanhood. Such a service may be, I venture to
think occasionally is, a feature of nineteenth -century life,
certainly it was not a prominent factor of Minnedienst. It
was, indeed, a service on the part of the man, often arduous
and prolonged ; but there was always one end in view, and
that, the gratification of sensual passion. Those who have
studied the great Arthurian epics in their original forms, and
have some acquaintance with the vast mass of lyric poetry
due to the Minnesinger, will undoubtedly agree with this con
clusion. It was, indeed, a time of unrestricted sexual in
dulgence on the part of both men and women. The maiden,
the dmie, and the married woman were all alike the object of
homage on the part of the knight ; but the favour which fair
400 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
ladies gave to the victor in the tournay was of the most
material kind. Chastity was prudery, and long -continued
reserve on the part of either man or woman ill-breeding ; the
only disgrace, discovery and mutilation by an enraged husband ;
the only crime, forcible seduction. The dmie was received in
all knightly society, and free-love only restrained in one or
two cases by a formal etiquette the morality of the day.
Nay, even to the field, the dmie and the recognised prostitute
followed the knight. The crusaders were accompanied by a
second army of women, and such were the sexual extravagances
in the Holy Land, that the failure of the second crusade is
attributed by the old writers to license alone.
This marked characteristic of courtly society was imitated
by the burgher, and to a less extent by the peasant, so that
the period is distinguished by a scarcely paralleled freedom in
matters of sex. The love of boys, probably arising in the
cloister, infected Germany, although it never appeared so
markedly as in England and France. Women, especially
married women, were perpetually found in intrigue with monk
and priest, who for their own sake preserved a secrecy which
the knight at the drinking bout might forget. Not a few
mediaeval songs discuss the comparative merits of the sacerdotal
and knightly lovers, generally to the advantage of the former.
But I have said enough to indicate the character of the
period. At first sight it appears like a return to the swamp -
age a period of social collapse like the last years of the
Roman Empire.
But it is really something very different ; this age of
chivalry has given Germanic civilisation one of its noblest
factors, one which in our modern world has played a great
part in the sex-relationship. Let us recall the fact that we
are still in the father -age, that marriage by purchase has
only recently taken the place of marriage by capture ; that
the father has yet power to give or sell his daughter to
whom he pleases ; that even yet he occasionally offers her
to the victor in a tournay ; that every woman is legally in
some man s hand, or, as the Germans termed it, in mund.
Note all this, and then recognise the advance when the
THE SEX-KELATIONS IN GEKMANY 401
woman is allowed to freely dispose of her person, when it is
once admitted that she has a choice in sexual matters. It
is indeed a great step towards the modification of the harsh
sex-relationship peculiar to the father-age. But this is not
all ; the century of the Hohenstaufen is the age of great
plastic development ; Germanic institutions were then moulded
to the form in which some of them have lasted even to the
present clay. It was a freethinking age, as well as a free-
loving age. It was an age which built cathedrals, and fought
the pope. In architecture and decorative sculpture Germany
achieved what few nations have ever equalled. We talk
much of the Parthenon and its friezes, but how shall we
compare them with the western faqade of a Gothic minster ?
In epic and lyric poetry how little have after-ages that can
rival Tristan und Isolt or the love-songs of Meister Walther !
It was the boyhood of German vigour, and not the senility of
a dying empire, which produced this age of sense. The rela
tion of man to woman was primarily sensual, but it was a
sensuality idealised by the highest phases of art. It was an
age of music and of song, of noble buildings, of flowing drapery
and graceful forms of dress. It was the peculiarity of this period
of German civilisation that, while as in Imperial Some the
sex-relationship was marked by a free choice for both sexes, yet
also as in the Periclean age of Athens sensuality was idealised
by art. It was human sense superseding brute sense. Put
these two things together sexual instinct guided by co-option
and idealised by artistic appeal to the emotions and we
have the basis of that which, with a good many centuries of
spiritualising, has developed into what we now term love. There
is an element in the love of Borneo and Juliet still more in
that of Faust and Gretchen, sensual as both alike are whicli
I have never come across in the classical authors with whom
I am acquainted ; there is a certain inexplicable tenderness
which it is quite impossible for me to analyse, but which I
believe is due to mediaeval chivalry.
We have, then, towards the close of the thirteenth century
a new stage in the sex-relationship which is fairly widespread.
The woman was legally in complete subjection to the man,
26
402 THE ETHIC OF FREETHOUGHT
but socially co-option had been established, and there was a
tendency to idealise sexual attraction. This result was not
obtained without a considerable weakening of the customary
sexual restraints. I now pass to the last period which I
shall lay before you : this, from one of its leading features, I
shall characterise as :
(4) The Age of Prostitution.
The prostitute, who Tacitus informs us had no existence
among the primitive German tribes, became a recognised
personage in the age of chivalry. It is not very easy to trace
what the exact causes were which led to the reimposition
of sexual restraint on the married woman; they are, of
course, due partly to the re -establishment in the thirteenth
century of the influence of the Church, and to the purer
character of that influence ; partly to the decay of the old
knight - culture. The knights owing to their increasing
poverty could no longer indulge in the courtly gathering, in
music and in song; the archer, and later the arquebusier,
made the knight useless in the field, and the man of learning
the theologian or the jurist was of more value at the
council-board. With the disappearance of chivalry and the
rise of burgher-culture came a now phase of the sex-relation ;
the woman had free option in the choice of a husband, but
once married she was legally, and to a large extent socially,
in complete subjection. On the other hand, the free sexual
relations of the age of chivalry continued to exist in the form
of prostitution. Prostitution began to play a great part in
the social life of the mediaeval cities. It must also be noted
that at the same time the line between capitalist and worker
became more prominent, and a town proletariat first made its
influence felt. The prostitute in the medieval city played a
singular part ; she was alternately honoured and contemned.
She was used to grace the banquet of the town-council or the
reception of the emperor ; but she was often compelled to wear
a distinctive dress, or was deprived of all legal rights. Nothing
is more characteristic of the absolute subjection of woman than
this treatment of prostitutes ; and the police regulations con
cerning them in such towns as Niirnberg, Frankfurt, and
THE SEX-EELATIONS IN GEEMANY 403
Augsburg present us with one of the most instructive examples
of the result of allowing men and men only to legislate on
matters of sex. The prostitute was treated in the first place
not as a woman, but as a necessary, although troublesome,
part of the town -property, which had to be dealt with as
might seem for the time most convenient. Only occasionally
had she to thank the Church for a little human consideration.
Long before the spread of venereal disease at the end of the
fifteenth century, the maintenance by the town-councils of
brothels, generally placed in charge of the hangman or the
town-beadle, had become universal. A typical instance of the
moral feeling of the time is the vote of public money by the
town -councils for the free opening and decoration of the
public brothels when they had a visit from distinguished
strangers. The historical study of this old town -life un
doubtedly throws light on one or two problems of to-day.
It remains for me to note the influence of the Ee-
formation upon this last period, marked as it is by inono-
gamic marriage arid organised prostitution. Let me first
state the exact results of chivalry following upon the father-
age. These are :
(1) Free option for the woman in marriage, usually
accompanied by what we term love. After marriage complete
domestication of the wife ; she plays no part in the state
and has no function outside the home.
(2) Prostitution organised by men, with only the slightest
social or legal rights allowed to the prostitute.
(3) The ascetic life for both men and women, offering the
only means by which the middle -class woman could obtain
knowledge and power. The convents in the fifteenth century
show, in some cases, a remarkable revival of earnestness ; in
others, they have sunk to the level of brothels.
We are apt to look upon the Eeformation as a purely
religious movement, neglecting the far more important social
revolution which produced and accompanied it. The begin
ning of the sixteenth century is the birth of Individualism
a phase of development which, while producing infinitely rich
results for human knowledge, has in some respects been little
404 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
less than disastrous for the physical well-being of society. The
discovery of the New World and the concurrent decay of the
old faith led to an entire reconstruction of the relationship of
master and handicraftsman. The whole organisation of trade
and of labour was destroyed and remodelled. The age of
the capitalist, of the trading company, and of the speculator
began. Hochstetter and Welser of Augsburg formed rings
in the wine and corn markets ; Koberger of Niirnberg ruled
the publishing trade of Europe ; capital started on its long
years of labour -exploitation, and the handicraftsman soon
felt the pinch of the new methods of production. The
Catholic Church witli its strong socialistic doctrine, the Canon
Law with its exaltation of manual labour, and the semi-
religious guilds the bulwark of the handicraftsmen were
driven out of the best part of Germany as snares of the
Antichrist. The evil first made itself felt in the decreased
capacity of large classes of the community to marry, and a
resulting increase in prostitution. As I have already pointed
out, the existing convents were of two kinds the one class,
owing to the spirit of moralists like Geiler, Wiinpfeling, and
Thomas a Keinpis, was filled with really earnest men and
women ; the other class contained monks and nuns ready for,
or actually practising, every form of sexual indulgence. The
Reformers made no distinction, they raged against all forms
of ascetic life as the service of the woman in scarlet ; they
demanded the closing of all convents alike. The effect of this
may be easily imagined. Monks and nuns of the inferior kind
rushed from their cloisters, and too often did penance for
their past sin of asceticism with all the ills which flow
from extreme sexual excess. It is no exaggeration to say
that throughout Germany more monks were converted to
Lutheranism by the strength of their sexual passions than
by their enthusiasm for the Wittenberg evangely. The
sexual relations of the mass of early Protestant divines, and
even of some of the chief reformers, form a remarkable,
although little regarded side of Reformation history. At
the same time with the licentious the earnest class of monks
and nuns were expelled from their homes. A woman
THE SEX-KELATIONS IN G-EKMANY 405
like Charitas Pirkheimer, driven with her nuns out of the
St. Clara nunnery at Niirnberg, is the last type of the
educated nun. In correspondence with the leading Humanists,
enthusiastic for the new knowledge and the old literature,
she was driven at the instigation of the uneducated and brutal
Osiander from her convent. Her diary is one of the most
suggestive books to which the modern reader can turn for
light on the dark problems of that time. It is the last
glimpse we get of the great value which the ascetic life even
in the sixteenth century had been to an enslaved womanhood.
Henceforward domestication and prostitution were the only
careers open to the German woman.
As I have remarked, the first result of closing the convents
was an increase in licentiousness. The economic changes in
progress during this period tended in the same direction. It
was impossible for the reformers to disregard this increase ;
they admitted it, attributing it, as they did many other
things, to the peculiar activity which their piety aroused in
the Devil. Like many good people of to-day, they held up
their hands in horror at the extent of what they termed vice,
they preached against it, and they got stringent laws passed
against it ; but they never took the trouble to investigate the
social causes which produced it. Once term sexual extrava
gance sin, and attribute it to the Devil, then it is illogical to
seek for any further cause of its existence. The Devil was a
convenient whipping-post, and as the obvious manifestation of
his presence was the prostitute, the Protestant town-councils
were not long before they closed the town -brothels. The
prostitutes, like the nuns, were turned out upon the streets
and bade to go their way ; occasionally they were driven with
exemplary harshness out of the towns. Such action, since it did
not touch the real economic cause of the difficulty, tended rather
to increase than decrease the rate at which licentiousness was
spreading. Luther, more clearly than any one else, seems to have
marked the social problem at the bottom of the sex-difficulty,
and he proposed a remedy one of the most heroic kind. We
have seen that the Eeformation destroyed the ascetic life,
and more forcibly even than Catholicism branded the pros-
406 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
titute as a social outcast ; we have, in the last place, to
consider its consequent teaching as to marriage.
Under the influence of chivalry marriage had become
a matter of co- option, and mere sexual instinct had been
ennobled by art, and to some extent spiritualised. A good
deal of the love which ends in marriage has undoubtedly a
sensual basis, but the pure gratification of sexual appetite is
usually kept in the background, or remains quite in abeyance.
It was this factor in marriage which Luther did not hesitate
in the plainest of language to bring again to the fore.
" Marriage," said the early Christian Fathers, " is a lower
state than chastity. If man or woman cannot remain
chaste, let them marry for their bodies sake." While this
degraded marriage, it at least left an if to save humanity.
Luther left no if. " When God made man and woman He
blessed them and said to them, Increase and multiply/
From this verse we are certain that man and woman shall
and must come together in order to multiply. . . . Since as
little as it stands in my power that I should not have the
form of a man, so little is it in my power to remain without
a woman. Further, so little as it stands in your power that
you should not have the form of a woman, so little is it
possible for you to remain without a man. Since this is not
a matter of free-will or advice, but a necessary, natural thing ;
what is man must have a woman, what is woman a man. This
word of God s : Increase and multiply, is not a command,
but more than a command, namely, a divine work that it is
not possible for us to hinder or to neglect, but is even as
necessary as that I have the form of a man, and more
necessary than eating and drinking, bodily offices, sleeping
and waking." x
" If one promises to fly like a bird, and does so, then there
is a miracle from God. Now it is just as much when a man
or woman vows chastity. Since they are not created for
chastity, but as God said : ( To increase and multiply. He
who must refrain from bodily easement, when he yet cannot ;
what would happen to him ? " ( Wer seinen Mist oder Ham
1 Vom Ehelichen Leben, 1520.
THE SEX-KELATIONS IN GEKMANY 407
Jialten musste, so er s dock nicht kann; was soil aus dem werden f) 1
Luther asserts that chastity is possible for the impotent alone,
and that he who does not marry is perforce an adulterer, or
commits worse vices.
It may have been necessary at that time to stigmatise the
ascetic life in this fashion I will not enter upon that now
but the doctrine of the impossibility of restraint was certainly
calculated to increase the sexual license of the age. Sexual
intercourse, Luther tells us, is never without sin, but it is a
needful sin, and marriage renders it legitimate. 2 It is here
where the worst feature of the Eeformatiori doctrine of
marriage comes in, all sexual relations outside marriage are
criminal. Luther goes so far as to assert that the adulterer
ought to be stoned ( Dead, dead with him to avoid the bad
example ! 3 ). Marriage is established for the legitimate
gratification of the sexual instinct that is the basis of the
institution. The licentiousness of his age Luther proposes
to stem by early and general marriage : the primary object
of marriage is the satisfaction of the sexual appetite. It is
obvious that this doctrine raised the sexual appetite into an
irresistible natural force, and must in practice lead to most
disastrous results. Thus, when Philip of Hesse finds one
wife not sufficient, Luther allows him a second, because
appetite cannot be restrained; when Marquard Schuldorp
marries his niece, Luther writes a book in his defence, 4
because appetite cannot be restrained ; when Henry VIII.
of England writes to Melanchthon on the matter of his
divorce, Melanchthon recommends him instead to take a
second wife, if his appetite cannot be restrained. Nay, this
teaching touches the inmost privacy of married life. The
wife is to be a mere breeder of children. " One sees how
weak and sickly are unfruitful women. But the fruitful are
sounder, fresher, and stronger. If a woman becomes weary
and at last dead from bearing, that matters not; let her only
1 Schreiben von August, 1523, De Wette, 2, 372.
2 Von dem ehelichen Stande, p. 44.
3 Ibid. p. 28.
4 Grundt vnd orsake ivorup Marquardus Schuldorp hefft syner suster dochter
thor Ehe genamen, 1526.
408 THE ETHIC OF FEEETHOUGHT
die from bearing, she is there to do it. It is better to live a
short and sound life, than a long and sickly one." ] If the
wife refuses to submit to such a life, what then ? " Then it
is time for the man to say : Will you not, so will I another ;
will not the wife, so let the maid come a doctrine which
is supported by the biblical example of Yashti and Esther. 2
I have remarked on the sexual license of the time, and on
the economic depression ; the Reformers, advocating marriage
as the cure for license, were still obliged to recognise the
depression. How is early marriage possible when the handi
craftsman has nothing to support a family with ? " We have
to meet a great and strong objection," preaches Luther.
" Yes, they say ; it were good to marry, but how shall I
support myself ? . . . This is, indeed, the greatest hindrance
to wedlock, its ruination, as well as the cause of all whore
dom. But what shall I reply thereto ? It is unbelief and
doubt in God s goodness and truth. Hence, no wonder, where
it exists, that vain whoredom follows and every misfortune.
Here lies the rub : they wish first to be sure of property,
whence they can obtain food, drink, and clothes. They
want to draw their head from the noose, In the sweat of
thy brow, thou shalt earn thy bread. . . . Hence, to con
clude, who does not find himself suited to chastity, let him
early find work and take to wedlock in God s name. A boy
at the latest when he s twenty, a girl at the latest when she s
fifteen or eighteen. Then they are still sound and fitted
thereto, and let God take care how they and their children are
to be supported. God creates children, and will certainly
support them." These doctrines on marriage, which I have
exemplified from Luther, repeat themselves in the writings of
many reformers. It will be seen how much at variance they
are with the conceptions of the Catholic Church. St. Jerome
declared that virginity fills heaven; the Eeformers described
this as blasphemy. 4 "The smallest sin is theft, after that
comes adultery, then murder, and last the ascetic life." The
Catholic Church held marriage a sacrament that is, it gave
1 Von dcm ehelichen Stande, p. 41. 2 Ibid. p. 29. 3 Ibid. p. 43.
4 De servo arbitrio, Opera; Wittenberg, 1554, ii. 472.
THE SEX-RELATIONS IN GERMANY 409
to the physical facts a spiritual meaning. " Marriage is an
outward bodily thing/ said the Reformers, " as any other
worldly bargaining." This new conception of the sexual
relation was not only opposed to the Catholic standpoint, but
is, in my opinion, distinctly inferior to the faith of chivalry.
It reduced marriage to a merely sensual relationship to a pure
physical union the idea of which would be repugnant to
every modern man and woman of culture. It tended to
check the idealising of the sex -relationship, and, at the same
time, to degrade woman by treating her as a mere breeder of
children. The Reformation completed the subjection of woman
by destroying the cloister-life ; its view of woman may, in fact,
be summed up in the following words of its chief hero :
" The woman s will, as God s says, shall be subject to the
man, and he shall be master (Gen. iii. 16) ; that is, the woman
shall not live according to her free-will, as it would have been
had Eve not sinned, for then she had ruled equally with
Adam, the man, as his colleague. Now, however, that she
has sinned and seduced the man, she has lost the governaunce ;
and must neither begin nor complete anything without the
man ; where he is, there must she be, and bend before him as
before her master, whom she shall fear, and to whom she shall
be subject and obedient."
This is the unqualified doctrine of the father-age, unblush-
ingly based on the Hebrew myth which in the early days of
the father-age man had called to his aid.
For three centuries after the Reformation the history of
woman in Germany is a blank. Domestication or prosti
tution, subjection or social expulsion, were almost the only
possibilities for her. Perhaps no modern nation has been so
backward as Germany to start the work of emancipation, or
has been so lukewarm in the support it has given to the
higher education of women. It has organised a special class
of books for their feebler intellects, and many an educated
German will say to his women of the masterpieces of literature,
like the savage of Polynesia, Ai tabu this food is forbidden
you. That is a cry which contrasts strangely with the mother-
wit of primitive man, with the literature of chivalry written
410 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
in the service of the lady-love, or even with the select circle
of learned and earnest women to be found round several of
the early Fathers or the later Humanists. I do not attribute
the modern subjection of women to the teaching of the Ke-
formers, it is really an outcome of the father-age ; but the more
repulsive side of German courtship, and the more complete
domestication of the German woman are, I believe, in no small
degree due to the manner in which the ascetic life was in the
sixteenth century first abused and then rendered impossible.
XV
SOCIALISM AND SEX 1
At last they came to where Reflection sits, that strange old woman,
who has always one elljow r on her knee, and her chin in. her hands, and
who steals light out of the past to shed it on the future.
And Life and Love cried out : " Oh ! wise one, tell us, when first we
met, a lovely radiant thing belonged to us gladness without a tear, sun
shine without a shade. Oh ! how did we sin that we lost it ? Where
shall we go that we may find it ? "Olive Schreiner.
THERE is a principle lying at the basis of all growth which
was first made manifest by the naturalist, but will one day
receive its most striking corroboration from the scientific
historian. This principle is somewhat rnisleadingly termed
the survival of the fittest. A slight change for the better
would be made were we term it the survival of the fitter.
In all forms of existence in brute and human life, in brute
and human habits, in human institutions, religions and philo
sophies the fittest is never reached, has never come into
existence, and cannot therefore survive. When it does, evolu
tion will cease, a final epoch that may for the present be
classed with a certain catastrophe termed the day of judg
ment, which formerly played a conspicuous part in mediaeval
cosmogony ; we may leave them both to that storehouse of
1 This paper, written in 1886, was originally read to a small discussion club.
It was printed in To-Day (February, 1887), and afterwards issued as a pamphlet.
Some points I should probably put differently, were I to rewrite it now (see tbe
essay, "Woman and Labour," in The Chances of Death, vol. i.), but I allow it to
stand, because it describes what I still hold to be the ideal of the near future, if
not the realisable of the immediate present. Its dogmatism may even do service
as an irritant, and cause those who disagree with it to think for themselves.
412 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
unintelligible lumber whence paradoxers and super naturalists
draw their material. I, the more matter-of-fact sensationalist, 1
content myself with recognising that every form of life, every
human institution and mode of thought, is ever undergoing
change ; not change by hap incalculable, but to a great and
ever wider extent foreseeable and capable of measurement both
as to magnitude and direction. There is no absolute code of
morality, no absolute philosophy nor absolute religion ; each
phase of society has had its special morality, its peculiar
religion, and its own form of sex-relationship. Its morality and
its religion have often been stamped as immorality and supersti
tion by later generations. Promiscuity, brother-sister marriage,
infanticide, the subjection of women, and the serfdom of
labour have all in turn been moral and again immoral. No
property, group-property, tribe-property, chief-property, and
individual property in both land and movables have all had
their day, and foolish indeed is the man who would term one
absolutely good and another absolutely bad. One thing only
is definite, the direction and rate of change of human society at
a particular epoch. It may be difficult to ascertain, but it is
none the less real and measureable. The moral or good action is
that which tends in the direction of the growth of a particular
society in a particular land at a particular time. In this
sense, to avoid all preconceptions of the absolute, I shall use
the word social for moral, and anti-social for immoral. An
action which is social (or moral) may have arisen from custom,
from feeling, or from faith, but to understand wliy it is social
or moral requires knowledge. It requires knowledge of the
historical growth and the consequent present tendency of a
particular phase of society. Hence we see why it is that
many actions arising from feeling, custom, or faith are anti
social ; if custom could dictate a moral code, I fear Socialism
would at present have little basis of support ; it must throw
itself back on rational judgment based on historical study.
1 I use this word to exclude on the one side the absurdities of materialism
of the Biichner type, and on the other the muddle-headed mysticism of some of
our neo- Hegelian friends. A sensationalist is one who does not attempt to get
beyond his sensations and their interrelations.
SOCIALISM AND SEX 413
For this reason I cannot look upon Socialism as a mere scheme
of political change : it is essentially a new morality, it denotes
the subjection of all individual action to the welfare of society ;
this welfare can be ascertained only by studying the direction
of social growth. Socialists must claim to be, and act as,
preachers of a new morality, if they would create that
enthusiasm which only human love, not human hatred can
arouse. Therein lies the only excuse for the absurd title of
Christian Socialist. l Socialism as a polity can only become
possible when Socialism as a morality has become general ; as
a polity it will then be only a matter of police, a law restrain
ing a small anti-social minority.
In all social problems there are two questions which need
investigation: (1) What is the ideal we place before our
selves ? (2) How shall we act so as best to forward the
realisation of our ideal ?
Before I attempt to consider these questions in their
relation to the problem of sex, it is needful to explain what
I understand here by the term ideal/ By ideal I do not
denote some glorious poet-dreamed Utopia, the outcome of
individual wishes, inspiration or prejudice, but solely the
direction wherein, the goal to which, it seems to me from the
history of the past that the history of the immediate future
must surely progress. Our ideal is the outcome of our read
ing of the past, the due weighing, so far as lies in our power,
of the tendencies and forces at present developing humanity
in a definite direction. It is the one absolute we have got
upon which to form a judgment, and so the test of moral or
social action. We are students of history, not because we
are Socialists, but Socialists because we have studied history. 2
We have now to ask the following questions with regard
1 It reminds me of a well-knowii lady doctor wlio terms herself Christian
physiologist, as if socialism and physiology were not the co-ordination of facts by
scientific laws independent of any form of religious faith !
2 A leader of the Anarchist Group recently read a paper in my hearing
which deduced anarchy as a necessity of the coming ages by a metaphysical
process quite unintelligible to me since the idealist days of German student life.
I ventured to ask him if he thought the same conclusion would be reached by
the historical method. He had not applied it, he said, but he was quite certain
that that method could not contradict his process.
414 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
to the sex-relationship. What is its ideal form ? How can
we best work towards its attainment ? that is What will
in the future be the true type of social action in matters of
sex ? It is because I hold that the present sexual relation
ship is far removed from the ideal (the relationship of the
near future), and that the present marriage law tends to
hinder our approach to the ideal, that I have written this
essay.
Briefly let me state here, for it is impossible at present to
enter on any lengthy historical investigation, that I believe
the forces and tendencies of the present as evidenced in the
history of the past are working strongly against our present
relationship of sex, and are not unlikely in the future to
sweep it as completely, and as roughly, out of existence as
rational knowledge is sweeping away metaphysics, freethought
Christian theology, and socialistic doctrines orthodox political
economy. I will try to enumerate shortly the tendencies I
have found at work, and point out how they must come into
conflict, and ultimately modify our present legal and customary
views on the sex-relationship.
I have spoken of one principle of the. law of evolution,
the survival of the fitter. According to the Darwinian theory,
evolution is chiefly brought about by sexual selection and
the struggle for food. All-mastering as these factors are
easily seen to be in the development of the brute-world, they
appear at first sight insufficient to explain the growth of man
and the changes in human institutions. The scientific student
of history, however, will find them just as forcibly at work
in directing the course of man s progress from barbarism to
civilisation. The future Darwin of the history of civilisation
will probably recognise that his subject falls into two great
divisions the history of sex and the history of property,
into the changes in sex-relationship and the changes in the
ownership of wealth. The explanation of these two main groups
of changes lies for the most part in sexual selection and
in the struggle for food. 1 One by one various forms of sex-
1 Herder attempted a philosophy of history on the basis of metaphysics and
naturally failed. The philosophy of history is only possible since Darwin, and
SOCIALISM AND SEX 415
relationship have succeeded each other, there has been no
permanent type, and the historical growth of the relationship
has at each stage agreed closely with the state of development
of the other social and legal institutions of that stage. Legal
ised life-long monogamy is in human history a thing but of
yesterday, arid no unprejudiced person (however much it may
suit his own tastes) can suppose it a final form. Thus it is
that a certain type of sex-relationship and a certain mode of
ownership are essential features of the present stage of human
growth. In the past others have marked the successive
stages reached by man in his long course of evolution. To
each fresh type of sex-relationship has corresponded a different
mode of ownership a special phase of human society. When
the sex-relationship was pure promiscuity, then possession was
based on finding and keeping as long as the finder had strength
to retain the found ; with brother-sister marriage and with
group-marriage, property was held by the group. communism
in the group ; with the matriarchate, at least in its zenith,
property could be held by individuals, but descended only
through women ; with the patriarchate property was held
only by the men, and descended through them, woman was
a chattel without any right of ownership. With the centuries
as the last traces of the patriarchate vanish, as woman
obtains rights as an individual, when a new form of possession
is coming into existence, is it rational to suppose that history
will break its hitherto invariable law, and that a new sex-
relationship will not replace the old ?
The two most important movements of our era are without
doubt the socialistic movement and the movement for the
complete emancipation of women. Both of them go to the
very root of the old conception of property, and to the careful
observer connote a corresponding change in the old relationship
of sex. To the thoughtful onlooker the Socialist and the advocate
of woman s rights are essentially fighting the same battle,
however much they may disguise the fact to themselves.
the rationalisation of history by the future Darwin will consist in the descrip
tion of human growth in terms of the action of physical and sexualogical laws
upon varying human institutions.
416 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
Change in the mode of possessing wealth connotes to the
scientific historian a change in the sex-relationship. It is
because I hold that Socialism will ultimately survive as the
only tenable moral code, that I am convinced that our present
marriage customs and our present marriage law are alike destined
to suffer great changes. It is not a question of the triumph
of sense nor of sexual experiment, but of indomitable law.
Variations are taking place in our views and actions with
regard to sex, which are but forerunners of a new stage ; a
stage which will possibly for many centuries hold the field.
Sexual experiments are not to be treated a priori as social
outrages, they are the variations from the normal type of the
present, some of which may be destined to survive as the
normal type in the future.
As far as may be possible in a paper of this kind, let me
examine the leading principle of modern Socialism as a moral
code, and its bearing on the current relationship of sex. I
may state this principle as follows :
A human being, man or woman, unless physically or
mentally disabled, has no moral right to be a member of the
community unless he or she is labouring in some form or
another for the community that is, unless he or she is con
tributing to the common labour-stock.
By no moral right I simply mean that it is anti-social,
and therefore deserving of the strongest social censure, or
even punishment, if any person, not disabled, lives in, and
therefore on the labour of the community without contributing
to the labour-stock.
It follows as a necessary result of this first principle that
it is anti-social for the able-bodied : () to live on inherited
property, (ft) to receive interest on accumulated property.
For, in doing either, the human being is in reality taxing the
labour of others for his or her support, and is not repaying
that taxation by an equal labour-contribution to the common
labour-stock. I am quite aware that these dictates under our
present social regime are very hard to accept, and impossible
to fully act up to, but I am convinced that they will have to
be accepted as the basis of the moral code of the future. A
SOCIALISM AND SEX 417
human being may labour and acquire, but he has no moral
right to endow himself or his posterity with that idleness
which merely connotes a living on the labour of others. 1
There is a point here which deserves special notice, because it
bears on a remark I shall presently make of the wife and her
home life. The endowed idler is largely able, owing to his
monopoly of possession, to misdirect the labour of others and
to give it an anti-social direction ; he employs labour in creating
luxuries for himself, labour which ought to be employed
socially in improving the dwellings of the people, in the
ordering and beautifying of the public streets, in the build
ing of public institutions, and for the like social purposes.
The society of the future will apply the above principle
as a test of right conduct to all its members, be they men or
women. But that men and women shall be able to live
socially there must be a field of genuine labour freely open
to them. This is only possible under two conditions: (1)
economic independence of the individual, and (2) a limitation,
when requisite, of population. Both these conditions go, I
think, to the very root of our present sex-relationship. They
denote an entire change in the position of husband and wife,
and a very possible interference of society (the state) in the
heart of the family, at least in the family of the anti-social
propagators of inefficient and unnecessary human beings.
By economic independence of the individual/ a term
likely to be misunderstood, I denote a maintenance due to
the individual for genuine contributions to the labour-stock
of the community. The moral dignity of the individual is
preserved only so far as his or her labour is such a genuine
contribution, and not the fulfilment of somebody else s caprice
or anti-social desire for pure luxury.
In order that a woman, to use a theological expression,
1 Under our present individualism, the interest on accumulated property is
often the only provision possible for disablement, old age, or the education
of children. In this case it may form a return, for past contributions of the
individual to the common labour-stock of the community. But it is often a
return very badly proportioned to the service. In a socialistic state the old age
pension, the pensions to the widow and to the children under age granted in the
Indian Civil Service would approach far closer to the ideal.
27
418 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
may save her own soul, may preserve her moral dignity, in
order that she may fulfil the moral code of the future, she
must have economic independence. I think men in this
respect are very apt to underrate the feelings of women. A
man might he quite willing to put half his income at the
disposal of a friend, but how few are the men with any social
feeling, who (unless such gift would enable them to perform
a recognised public service) would not feel a loss of moral
dignity in accepting it ! They so far obey the socialistic code,
that they refuse to live without return on the labours of others
who are their friends ; unfortunately they have rarely any
objection to live without return on the labour of others who are
not their friends. But it seems to me that the majority of
women under our present social system are bound to live on
men s labour. A man may be willing enough to give, but the
woman cannot morally afford to receive. Women must have
economic independence, because they cannot act honestly so long
as they depend for subsistence on father, brother, husband, or
lover, and not on their own labour. It may be suggested
that a woman often brings property to the husband, and con
tributes as much as, or more than he to the joint establishment.
This might be rendered still more frequent were there likely in
the future to be a return, however partial, to the matriarchal
principle. Some signs of such a return are indeed to be found,
but I think it could only be of a very transitory kind, for it
seems opposed to the fundamental principle of Socialism,
namely, that the property of the individual shall not be in
herited property, but the outcome of his or her own labour.
Very few, indeed, are the cases wherein the property a woman
brings in marriage is the outcome of her own labour ; it may
render her economically independent of her husband, but it
makes her economically dependent on the community. The com
munity, not her husband, is thus supporting her ; this is a still
graver evil, if the support be not a return for the woman s
social service. The reader may suggest as a further plea for
woman s idleness, that her home duties are really her labour-
contribution to the community. So far as such duties have
to do with the rearing of children, I at once admit that they
SOCIALISM AND SEX 419
may indeed form an all- important contribution to the social
stock. But the possibility of this depends entirely on the
social (moral) right of the particular man and woman to pro
pagate under the present pressure of population. By physique
and mental power a particular man and woman may be fitted
to carry on the race, or they may not. If they are fitted, it
does not follow that they have a social right to an unlimited
family. Indeed the men and women who are socially fitted
to be parents of the future race, and at the same time rearers
and educators of that race, are not nearly so frequent as current
habits might lead us to imagine. The birth of children is a
responsibility, the moral gravity of which is far from being
properly weighed by the average husband and wife of to-day.
Let us put aside for the present the social value of such
part of woman s home labour as is spent in rearing and
educating children, a function which she may, indeed, often
exercise better on a wider field than that of the home. Let
us confine ourselves for the present to childless families, to
those where the children are not educated at home or have
left home, and to the home -life of single women. The
home duties of the woman are those towards husband,
father, brother, towards aged parents, or disabled rela
tives. These are the labour -return the woman makes for
her support by the community, they form the basis on
which she can claim to be moral, the source from which her
feeling of independence, and her sense of contributing to
society something for what she receives from it, must arise.
It is difficult for me to suppose any man would accept cheer
fully a similar dependence on the dearest friend, and it is
surprising that customary modes of thought allow so many
women to submit to such chattel- slavery. I have no hesita
tion in asserting that the home duties of the non-child-bearing
woman do not in the great majority of cases satisfy the
standard of the socialistic code. If the woman is called upon
to labour, it is to labour beyond the household limits. The
great changes introduced into domestic economy during the
last fifty years by machinery, by the wholesale production of
provisions, by the division of labour, by the flat-system, etc.,
420 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
have revolutionised home life, and " what the housewife and
her attendants sixty or eighty years ago had good reason for
doing, has now become a pastime of no value, the machine
mocks the individual woman s hand." ] The reader will prob
ably be able to call to mind, not only several cases where a
single man or woman successfully manages his or her own
home, but instances where the husband and the non-child-
bearing wife follow their own professions, and yet their home
is not a scene of hopeless disorder. I could myself produce
much evidence on the same side from the life of the Swabian
and Baden peasantry. Many a farmer s wife undertakes not
only her home duties, but the whole business of a village inn ;
or, again, while her husband is occupied in the forest, she with
the aid of knave and maid manages entirely the little farm
and its homestead. I have seen her ploughing, dunging,
reaping and thrashing, milking and making butter ; I have
sat with her in the evening by the kitchen fire, and the home
did not seem neglected, nor her spiritual life utterly void. At
such times I have learnt that woman s labour has a social
value which must carry her in all classes beyond home duties.
Most of the time spent by women of the middle classes in
England in increasing the comforts and ornaments of home,
with the corresponding round of shopping and the purchase
of nicnacs and trifles, is simply anti-social, a misdirection of
the labours of others. 2
There may indeed be some who will say : "But you are
neglecting the value of home comforts and woman s function
in producing social happiness ? " To this I reply : If it be
not the function of woman to labour in the same manner as
men, but to be centres of comfort, sympathy, and happiness in
social life, then to be consistent we must apply this rule to all
women. We must stop every woman from receiving wages for
her labour. We must prohibit entirely her employment for
wages in factories, mills, offices, shops, and domestic service;
1 Marianne Hainiscli : Die Brodfrage der Frau, Wien, 1875.
2 The enormous number of women of the middle classes doing nothing, or
busy over trivialities, is terrible to think of, when one sees in one branch of work
only scientific research how much might be done by organised workers of
every grade of capacity.
SOCIALISM AND SEX 421
to be consistent we must prohibit paid prostitution and paid
literary work. Are, then, the great mass of women who now
earn money to be left to chance dependence on men, or to be
supported by the state ? As woman s function would be different
from man s, and involve immunity from social labour, so there
would be for her a different code of morality. Women would
indeed have a delightful time of ease were this millennium
ever reached ; my only regret is that men also could not share
it ! It seems to me, however, that all assumption of a
distinction in social function between men and women which
reaches beyond the physical fact of child-bearing, is absolutely
unwarranted, and calculated to reduce women again to the
position of toys, of creatures having no souls, and incapable of
acting according to the higher social code laid down for men.
The labour of woman is a fund of infinite value to the com
munity, 1 and her right to have educational and professional
institutions thrown open to her is based upon her duty to
contribute to the common labour-stock of the community.
The moral force behind the Woman s Eights platform is
woman s duty to labour. Such labour, I am sure, in the case of
the great majority of non-child-bearing women is not synony
mous with home duties.
My argument, then, reduces itself to this : Economic inde
pendence is essential to all human beings in order that they
may develop their full individuality, and freely obey the higher
code of moral conduct. The current ideal of sex-relationship
which confines the wife to the home, and encourages little, if
any, free action and free labour on her part, is inconsistent
with this economic independence, and therefore is an ideal
ultimately destined to extinction. The socialistic movement
with its new morality and the movement for sex -equality
will surely undermine our current social customs, and probably
alter the existing marriage laws.
So far I have treated this question from the woman s
standpoint, but to the thoughtful man surely the current view
1 Were labour socially organised, the introduction of female labour would
increase the number of workers, and so decrease the amount required of the
individual, without increasing the number of mouths to be fed.
422 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
of sex-relationship must appear intolerable, almost repulsive.
The idea will suggest itself that the woman married him
possibly for a livelihood or for a position ; possibly she remains
with him for the same reason, or because she thinks she has
a duty towards one who has so long supported her ; or again, it
may be, because she feels the customary social ostracism follow
ing on separation would be unbearable. The charm of friend
ship lies in the spontaneity of its nature ; two human beings
remain friends as long as they find in each other a sympathetic
attraction ; it is the very danger of a rupture which produces
mutual forbearance, and renders friendship so frequently lifelong.
To be bound to treat a person as a friend after sympathy has
vanished would be intolerable, yet this is too often the outcome
of lifelong monogamy. Is it any wonder that there are men
as well as women who shrink from such a union ? Deprive life
long legal monogamy of its monopoly of respectability, or men
and women of their sex-instincts, which can now only be
socially exercised in this mode, and I do not believe a single
man and woman would again sign the register which replaced
the freedom of friendship by a lifelong Siamese twin ship.
The economic independence of women will for the first time
render it possible for the highest human relationship to become
again a matter of pure affection, raised above every suspicion
of constraint, and every taint of commercialism.
If we consider legalised monogamy necessary because
women have not yet economic independence, and because man
is by nature so knavish that he must needs take advantage of
woman s dependence and this view has much evidence in its
favour then we have obviously clear ends to work for in the
emancipation of w 7 omen arid the propagation of the socialistic
morality. But one result of maintaining without exception
legalised monogamy may well be noted ; namely, that more
and more men and women, as we get nearer the epoch when
possession and sex-relationship will change in character, are
likely to remain unmarried ; the transition from one type to
the other will thus be more abrupt, more revolutionary than
evolutionary. It may well be doubted whether this mode of
change will be more advantageous to society as a whole, than
SOCIALISM AND SEX 423
that whereby society would grow accustomed to the new
type by its appearance as a more and more frequent
variation.
I am now in a position to state what I hold the new
ideal of sex -relationship will be, and how law or social opinion
will act with regard to it. I will start from the fundamental
principles economic independence for women, and the duty
as well as right of all to labour, possibly involving as we have
seen a limitation of population. As other Socialists I demand
that all shall labour, and that a lield of labour shall be pro
vided for all. Differing, however, from the majority of
Socialists, 1 I believe that the provision of such a field must
ultimately, if not at once, involve a limitation of population. 2
1 Marx by abusing Malthus has not solved the population difficulty.
Leroux s theory that the food-supply is a question of dung, and that the
excrement of each individual if properly applied suffices to produce his quota of
food, and Duhring s doctrine that each additional labourer increases the
labour-stock, and so the social capacity for producing food are alike naive, as
they beg the question by presupposing a jidd for the dung and the labour.
Engels would apparently find such a lield in the valley of the Mississippi, or he
suggests the remedy of emigration ; this remedy Hyndrnan, on the other hand,
declaims against as a capitalistic expatriation. Bebel s treatment of the prob
lem is as wanting in logic and historical accuracy as the rest of his writings.
Champion has recently preached the pernicious doctrine that the country is
" frightfully under-populated ! " The minor Socialists will not face the problem,
but practically shelve it. The real solution is simply that the limitation of
population without loss of national vigour is possible in a socialistic community,
but not in a capitalistic one. In our present capitalistic society the Neo-
Malthusians have by their teaching very sensibly lowered the birth-rate, but all
the evidence I can collect seems to show, that this lowering of the birth-rate is
at the expense of national vigour, for it has taken place among the physically
and mentally fitter. Kautsky seems to stand alone among Socialists in accept
ing the Malthusian law and its consequences.
2 I have more fully on another occasion treated of the relation of Socialism
to the problem of population, and pointed out how the acceptance of the law
discovered by Malthus is an essential of any socialistic theory which pretends to
be scientific. I would, however, recommend to the reader the following passages
from John Stuart Mill s Political Economy (People s Edition, pp. 220, 226) :
Every one has a right to live. We will suppose this granted. But no one
has a right to bring creatures into life, to be supported by other people. Who
ever means to stand upon the first of these rights must renounce all pretensions
to the last. If a man cannot support even himself unless others help him, those
others are entitled to say that they do not also undertake the support of any
offspring which it is physically possible for him to bring into the world. . . .
It would be possible for the state to guarantee employment at ample wages to
all who are born. But if it does this, it is bound in self- protection, and for the
sake of every purpose for which government exists, to provide that no person
shall be born without its consent. . . One cannot wonder that silence on this
424 THE ETHIC OF FBEETHOUGHT
It will profit little, however, that the social man and woman
without state-interference limit the number of their offspring,
if large anti-social sections of society still continue to bring any
number of unneeded human beings into the world. Society
will have in some fashion to interfere and to restrict the anti
social in the matter of child - bearing. For this reason I
think the sex-relationship of the future will not be regarded
as in the first place a union for the birth of children, but as
the closest form of friendship between man and woman. We
shall once and for all dismiss the Lutheran or Protestant
doctrine of marriage. Sex-friendship will mean infinitely more
than a union for reproducing mankind.
The union of the future will be accompanied by no child-
bearing and rearing, or by these in a much more limited
measure and with a far greater sense of responsibility than at
present. Hence one of the chief causes of woman s economic
dependence will disappear. Her sex - relationship will not
habitually connote incapacity for active labour and thus sex-
dependence. I must here make a distinction which appears
to me fundamental, although objections have been raised
against it, namely, between child-bearing and non-child-bear
ing women. A woman may pass and repass from one class
to the other, but the position of society with regard to the
two classes is essentially different. With the sex-relationship,
so long as it does not result in children, I hold that the state
of the future will in no way concern itself; but when it does
result in children, then the state will have a right to interfere,
and this on two grounds : first, because the question of popula
tion both in quantity and quality bears on the happiness
of society as a whole ; and secondly, because child-bearing
great department of human duty should produce unconsciousness of moral obliga
tions, when it produces oblivion of physical facts. That it is possible to delay
marriage, and to live in abstinence while unmarried, most people are willing to
allow ; but when persons are once married, the idea, in this country, never
seems to enter any one s mind that having or not having a family, or the
number of which it shall consist, is amenable to their own control. One would
imagine that children were rained down upon married people direct from heaven,
without their being art or part in the matter ; that it was really, as the common
phrases have it, God s will and not their own, which decided the numbers of
their offspring."
SOCIALISM AND SEX 425
enforces for a longer or shorter interval economic dependence
upon the woman.
The reader will note that we have assumed that the
non-child-bearing woman of the future will possess economic
independence, and that there will be no legal or social dis
tinction between such a woman and a man. It may be asked
whether such economic independence, such sex - equality is
really possible ? I believe it will be so in the future, I
doubt whether it is so in the present. The Post Office
employs women clerks, not because of their equality with
male clerks, but because their decreased efficiency and increased
sick-leave are more than compensated for by the diminished
wages. This fact lies at the basis of much of the employment
of female labour under our present system, 1 But the lesser
physical strength and the smaller general intelligence of the
average woman of to-day are no real arguments for those who
would for ever maintain her present enslaved condition. The
student of the history of civilisation will find that there was a
time when the woman physically was quite on a par with the
man, while mentally she was much his superior. 2 There is no
rigid natural law of feminine inferiority, and what we see now in
certain classes of our current society is largely the outcome of
woman s physique and intellect being little trained at present
and not severely selected in the immediate past. Every teacher
1 Examples of this are common enough ; I will only cite the following
striking instance just (1886) brought to my notice. A London firm of lemonade
manufacturers recently discharged twelve men to whom they had paid 4s. a day
per head, and replaced them by sixteen women who could do the same work, but
to whom they only paid Is. 8d. a d&yper head. The firm thus saved, by employing
in greater numbers less efficient workers at starvation wages, 11s. 4d. a day.
This was of course only an act of self-preservation on the part of the manu
facturers ; the real sources of the evil lie much deeper, namely, in competitive
production and the unchecked increase of unskilled workers. Owing to these
influences more and more men in London are being supported by their women s
labour. This fact taken in conjunction with the great disproportion of the sexes in
the metropolis points indeed to a painful form of return to the matriarchate.
Were the capitalistic phase of society enduring, we might expect to find
the male of the working classes ultimately reduced to the sole function of
drone, to the mere procreator of workers !
2 The evidence I have collected on these points is far too complex and
copious to be reproduced here. Suffice it to say that it seems to me highly
probable that among the Aryans women were the first to practise agriculture
to create primitive religion, and to discover the elements of medicine.
426 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
or examiner who has had to deal with women students will
admit their capacity to grasp the same intellectual training
as men. The wanderer in the mountainous lands of Southern
Germany, Switzerland, and Northern Italy knows to what
an extent woman s physical strength can be developed by a
healthy outdoor life. I have often rested in a Tyrolese Alp,
miles away from the nearest hamlet, where for four or five
months two or three maidens had charge in all weathers of
forty to fifty cows. Morning and evening these cows had to
be milked, cheese had to be made, and occasionally butter
carried down into the valleys. Still early in the morning
after milking, some of these women might be seen one or two
thousand feet above the Alp, almost on the snow- line, mowing
green fodder, and later carrying it down in masses that many
a man would fail to lift. In bad weather, in mist and snow,
the cows had to be sought for and brought home ; at other
times they had to be driven to pastures which could only be
reached by crossing considerable snow -fields. Yet, notwith
standing the physical severity of their task, these Tyrolese
Dirndl are among the healthiest, freshest, and happiest women
I have met. I am not pointing to any abnormal cases of
mental and physical power in women, they are merely types
of what training easily produces. I have faith, that, when
one or two generations of w T omen have received a sound
intellectual training, when the physical education of girls is
as much regarded as that of boys, and when in sexual selection
men are guided more by the physique and mental capacity of
their mates than at present, then the non-child-bearing woman
will be the economic equal of man, and so be able to preserve
her independence ; she will be his physical and mental
equal in any sex-partnership they may agree to enter upon.
For such a woman I hold that the sex-relationship, both as to
form and substance, ought to be a pure question of taste, a
simple matter of agreement between the man and her, in
which neither society nor the state would have any need or
right to interfere. The economic independence of both man
and woman would render it a relation solely of mutual
sympathy and affection ; its form and duration would vary
SOCIALISM AND SEX 427
according to the feelings and wants of individuals. This free
sexual union seems to me the ideal of the future, the outcome
of Socialism as applied to sex. Legal or state interference is
not to be advocated for its own sake, only when it appears
of social value as capable of checking the anti - social
oppression of one individual by a second more favourably
situated. Children apart, it is unbearable that church or
society should in any official form interfere with lovers.
Were it not customary it would seem offensive ; it has
become customary as a protection for a subject class. When
marriage is no longer regarded as a profession for women,
and nigh the only way in which they can gain the comrade
ship of men and a wider life, when the relations of men
and women are perfectly free, and they can meet on an equal
footing, then so far from this free sexual relationship leading
to sensuality and loose living, I hold it would be the best
safeguard against it. Men and women having many friends
of the opposite sex with whom they were on terms of close
friendship, would be in far less danger of mistaking fancy or
friendship for love, and the relation of lovers would be far
less readily entered upon than at present, when in some social
circles man and woman must be lovers or exhibit 110 sign of
friendship. Every man and woman would probably ultimately
choose a lover from their friends, but the men and women
who, being absolutely free, would choose more than one, would
certainly be the exceptions exceptions, I believe, infinitely
more rare than under our present legalised monogamy,
accompanied as it is by socially unrecognised polygamy and
polyandry, by the mistress and the prostitute. But the
possibility of this ideal sex-relationship depends upon the
economic independence of the woman, and the acceptance of
the socialistic morality ; until these are in some measure
secured, such a union is only feasible to the Georges Sand
or to the George Lewis of to-day.
If the above, to any extent, express the future solution
of the sex-problem for the non-child-bearing woman, whose
economic independence will preserve her individuality, how
are socialists to regard her sister, the child-bearing woman ?
428 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
Here again it seems to me needful that she should first be
rendered economically independent of the father and lover. In
the society of the future the birth of a child will be a social
gain or it will not. If the parentage warrants the expectation
of a healthy vigorous citizen, then I hold that the w r oman in
bearing such a child is fulfilling a high social function, and
on society at large, on the state, falls the correlative duty of
preserving her economic independence. The state, not the
individual, should in one form or another guard that its child-
bearing women do not lose their independence owing to their
incapacity to undertake other forms of social labour while
bearing and rearing its future citizens. Let not the reader
picture to himself huge state lying-in hospitals, free nurseries,
and the like; I see no reason why dismal barracks of this kind
should replace our ordinary home life, nor why the father s
affection for his children, even as it exists to-day, should be
based solely on the fact that he is bound to support their
mother ; there is surely a deeper root to it than that ! Nay,
I imagine that as friends dwell together now, so lovers will
seek to do in the future ; that as they will not have children
without the mature consideration and desire of at least the
woman, if not of both mates, so they will desire to have those
children about them, and form round themselves a home life.
But in this home life the wife, no longer a chattel, will possess
an economic independence assured by the state.
Let me take a purely hypothetical example on the details
of which I lay no stress, and which is not given to raise idle
discussion on its numerical value let me suppose that on an
average three births to a union have been found sufficient at
any epoch to maintain the limit of efficient population. 1 Some
1 With an extensive system of state-colonisation (not the haphazard emigration
of individuals into colonies where the necessary land has been already bought
by individual or associated capitalists) as high a birth-rate as the present, if it
were levied on the physically and mentally fitter classes of the community, might
still continue and yet increase for many generations the vigour and power of
the empire. A high birth-rate among the efficient classes, and the absorption
and state-colonisation of such parts of the world as will support whites, are far
more worthy of statesmen s attention than our present capitalistic policy of
encouraging the over-production of the unfit, and seizing, for the sake of trade
or other profits, uncolonisable territories, which are insecurely held against an
alien population.
SOCIALISM AND SEX 429
women would doubtless have more, others less or none : in
such cases there might well be a communal balance ; any
individual might have a sanctioned addition to the local
average ; but for each sanctioned birth it would be the duty
of the commune or state to contribute a certain annual sum
for the maintenance of the mother while child-bearing and
rearing incapacitated her for other social labour ; and this not
with the view of decreasing the father s interest or responsi
bility in his child, but solely to render the mother a free
individual. As the national wealth increased, a larger number
of births or a greater annual allowance for maternity might
be made. This seems to me the only satisfactory method
of placing the child-bearing woman of the future on a true
footing of economic equality with the man, of destroying her
chattel-slavery to the husband. Obviously births beyond the
sanctioned number would receive no recognition from the
state, and if times were ever to come of great over-population
it might even be needful to punish positively, as well as
negatively, both father and mother. That there is a possi
bility of limiting the number of births the example of France
sufficiently testifies. With the general raising of the standard
of comfort, which would result from a socialisation of surplus-
labour, with the increased independence of w r omen, due to
their complete emancipation, it is very probable that there
would be small occasion for the state to interfere in the
matter ; the number of births would fall, were it needful, as
it has done in France. It is sufficient here to note the possi
bility ; the manner of checking the population lies outside the
sphere of this discussion. It is a problem requiring the careful
and scientific investigation of the state itself, only by such
investigation shall we be able to determine what is social or
anti-social, what is healthy or unhealthy, in the proposals of
both old and new Malthusians.
Such, then, seems to me the socialistic solution of the sex-
problem of the future : complete freedom in the sex-relation
ship left to the judgment and taste of an economically equal,
physically trained, and intellectually developed race of men
and women ; state interference if necessary in the matter of
430 THE ETHIC OF FKEETHOUGHT
child-bearing, in order to preserve intersexual independence
on the one hand ; and the limit of efficient population on the
other. To those who see in these things an ideal of idle
dreamers and not a possibility of the future, I can only reply :
Measure well the forces which are at work in our age, mark
the number and character of the men and women who are
dissatisfied with the present, weigh carefully the enthusiasm
of the teachers of our new morality socialistic and sexual, then
you will not class them as dreamers only. To those who would
know their duty at the present, I can but say: The first steps
towards our ideal are the spread of Socialism as a morality, and
the complete emancipation of our sisters. To others who, like
the aged poet, halt and are faint at heart, seeing .in the greatness
of our time only pettiness and lust, we must bid a sorrowful
but resolute farewell " Father, thou knowest not our needs,
thy task is done, remain and rest, we must onward farewell."
We are full of new emotions, new passions, new thoughts ; our
age is not one of pettiness and lust, but replete with clearer
and nobler ideas than the past, ideas that its sons will generate
and its daughters bring to birth. Dangers and difficulties
there are, misery, pain, and wrong-doing more than enough.
But we of to-day see beyond them ; they do not cause us to
despair, but summon us to action. You of the past valued
Christianity aye, and we value freethought ; you f the
past valued faith aye, and we value knowledge ; you have
sought wealth eagerly we value more the duty and right
to labour ; you talked of the sanctity of marriage we find
therein love sold in the market, and we strive for a remedy
in the freedom of sex. Your symbols are those of the past,
symbols to which civilisation owes much, great landmarks
in past history pointing the direction of man s progress, even
suggesting the future, our ideal. But as symbols for our
action to-day they are idle, they denote in the present serf
dom of thought, and serfdom of labour, and serfdom of sex.
We have other ideals more true to the coming ages
freedom of thought, and freedom of labour, and freedom of
sex ideals based on a deeper knowledge of human nature
and its history than you, our fathers, could possess. Term
SOCIALISM AND SEX 431
them impious, irrational, impure, if you will ; tis because
you have understood neither the time nor us. We must
leave you sorrowfully behind, and go forward alone. The
age is strong in knowledge, rich in ideas ; we hold the future
not so distant when our symbols shall be the guides of con
duct, and their beauty brought home to humanity by their
realisation in a renascent art.
His omnia, quae de Mentis Libertate ostendere volueram, absolvi.
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